212 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



capable of being the worst, where the citizens are uneducated and incapable 

 of discerning the true values of life. Everything seems to me to depend 

 upon whether the teachers in the next generation rise to the full measure 

 of their responsibility and opportunity, whether they carry through every 

 part and parcel of our educational system the highest and truest English 

 tradition, that education is more than instruction, that character counts 

 for more than brains and lives more than learning, that the true basis 

 of life is religious, and the only real values spiritual. I would say that 

 the main end and aim is to train boys and girls for service to the com- 

 munity, and to make clear that their lives can be lived in this spirit, 

 whether they are tradesmen or merchants, engineers or manufacturers, 

 clergymen or doctors, or followers of any career whatever, and that the 

 only life deserving of contempt is the life that contributes nothing, or 

 contributes evil, to the common stock. We have a fine traditional method 

 to follow, which has been handed down to us from the best of our prede- 

 cessors ; we can build our school lives on fellowship and the sense of 

 honour, on the team-spirit and not on individualism. We can point our 

 pupils forward to the quest of seeking to establish among the citizens of 

 this country a more equitable division of the things that matter, not by 

 the self-destructive method of class-war, but by the mutual help of classes. 

 We can save them from the fallacy that money is the thing that matters 

 most, for we can show them that the values of eternal life are among us 

 now, and now can be sought. 



There is no nobler calling than that of the teacher, and the hope of 

 the future lies in this, that none can escape the teacher's influence. The 

 highest education is the gift of personality to personality, where in freedom 

 one leads, and others are fired to follow ; and this cannot occur unless 

 schools are free and individual, and the teachers within them no less free 

 to develop and give the best of which they are capable. Education can 

 and must be organised in Whitehall and the county town, but it cannot 

 there be given ; it can only pass from living men and women to living 

 boys and girls, where each is known to each. This personal relation 

 based on freedom is the most precious tradition that has come to us from 

 the greatest of the past, and any advance of organisation and extended 

 scope would be too dearly bought if it brought into question, or rendered 

 impossible, the spontaneity and independence without which no school 

 can be great. 



