L.—EDUCATION. 219 
keep him happy in that which fortune has fixed him.’ And observe the 
implications in the quotation. Or, take again, these sentences from Dr. 
Arnold, written in 1837: “the whole good that the University (i.e. of 
London) can do towards the cause of general education depends on its 
holding manifestly a Christian character; if it does not hold this, it 
seems to me to be at once so mischievous, from giving its sanction to a 
most mischievous principle, that its evil will far outweigh its good... . . 
I have not the slightest doubt that it is better to go on with our present 
system, with all its narrowness and deficiency, than to begin a pretended 
system of national education on any other than a Christian basis.’ For 
in those sentences you have the essential core not only of Arnold’s work 
at Rugby, but of his most passionate convictions on every form of education 
from the nursery to the universities and the life of the nation as a whole. 
The years from 1825 to 1840 were a period of bitter but stimulating 
controversy ; of positive achievement to be registered they may seem 
to be scanty, if not sterile ; but three points of immense importance stand 
out from the dust that has been laid and the ashes, still treacherously hot. 
First, as regards religion and its part in the general conception of education 
as a whole, we note the transformation of an educational problem into 
a savage political warfare. The privileges and legal status of the 
established Church of England were challenged by the political and 
religious disabilities of Nonconformist Dissent. And the political battle 
was embittered by the controversies within the Church of England itself, 
which cut deep and wide into the fundamentals of the relations of Church 
and State. Itis profoundly significant that Scotland was at the same time 
rent by the issues which culminated in the epoch-making Disruption of 
1843, and that in Ireland the whole cause of Education was thrown back 
for at least one generation, if not two, by the storm that centred in what 
may be conveniently called the ‘Maynooth Grant.’ Inthe political 
welter in all three countries the real educational issue was either sub- 
merged or driven on to the surf-smitten rocks. 
Secondly, with the first Parliamentary Grant from National funds in 
1833, the State stepped into the arena, with the reluctance of a man unable 
to swim and pushed into cold water out of his depth. 
Abstract political theory—and I mean by that the definition of the 
functions and powers of the State in the sphere of intellect and of morals 
—at once became linked with the issues of controversial party politics. 
As early as 1840 it was grasped by all clear thinkers, irrespective of the 
school of thought to which they belonged, that henceforward the control 
of Parliament and of the power of the purse could be made, indeed must 
become, not the sole but the most powerful force in deciding educational 
issues. 
Thirdly, all the issues contained in the term ‘curriculum,’ were in full 
and fierce debate from 1825 onwards, the real significance of which has 
often, I think, been missed, and iargely because both attackers and 
attacked in a singularly copious literature failed to distinguish the real 
educational issue that had been raised. The champions of what to-day 
we should call modern studies—history (other than ancient history), 
modern languages, science, and even of mathematics—as indispensable 
elements of any sound curriculum—only too frequently urged their case 
