220 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
also that the need for re-construction has notoriously been made a pretext 
for paying off private grudges against individuals and whole classes in 
society. ‘Teachers—some teachers—are apprehensive of similar treat- 
ment, and are naturally stirred to take preventive action. Yet an educa- 
tional system does not consist alone of schools, however numerous and 
well articulated one with the other, nor of teachers, however highly 
qualified : it requires to be informed by an understanding on the part of 
the community at large of the purpose of the schools and the aims of the 
teachers. In the first Presidential Address of this Section, more than 
thirty years ago now, Sir John Gorst defined the task of the British 
Association as the ‘ inculcation of a scientific view of things in every 
department of life.’ 
Education is such a department of life and it cannot function ade- 
quately and healthily unless the nation applies to it that trained organised 
common sense in which, as Huxley said, science consists. On this view 
it is the increasing manifestation of public concern for education which 
enables us to have an educational system at all, and if there are gaps, it is , 
because our public have not yet learned steadily to regard the whole, but 
concentrate now on one part of the field and now on another like an 
infantry company advancing by irregular rushes. Out of the inquisition 
then to which education is being subjected, in common with other social 
services, will assuredly come a summons to advance which mere in- 
difference can never give. 
But the educationist and the teacher should not adopt a passive 
attitude toward the great debate, leaving it to go forward while he immerses 
himself in professional duties. He owes it to the service for which he is 
enrolled to think out his own position, to look before and after, so that 
where he hears education attacked or misrepresented he may be ready to 
explain and defend it. He will not be long in any company without 
having the opportunity. Teachers are often criticised, whether justly 
or not let them judge for themselves, for living wholly in an immature 
world of their own as a caste apart, different from other men. Exaggerated 
devotion of that kind in any sphere leads to unpopularity and loss of 
influence. There is a time to put off the gown: men are flesh and blood 
and apprehensive, and the teacher does right to meet them in the ways of 
the world as a man and not as a schoolmaster. I recall some words of 
Dr. Arnold’s, written at the time when he was actively engaged with the 
establishment of the new London University and was writing his History 
of Rome. ‘I hold,’ he wrote, ‘ with Algernon Sidney, that there are but 
two things of vital importance—those which he calls Religion and Politics, 
but which I would rather call our duties and affections towards God and 
our duties and feelings towards men: science and literature are but a 
poor make up for the want of these.’ 
Nor are his pupils likely to suffer by this suggested diffusion of the 
teacher’s interest. I have seen it said that Thomas Arnold found that his 
work with the Sixth at Rugby never went better than during that 
strenuous time. Routine, like a strangling weed, is only too ready to 
creep over any school with deadening effect, unless conscious efforts are 
made to keep it under. But where the teacher himself is a link between 
