196 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
encouragement of a habit of discriminating between good and evil, or 
better and worse, and the suggestion of the lines of such discrimination. 
For before life is far advanced, the simple problems and issues of early 
days are merged in far more complicated issues, requiring the utmost 
clarity of thinking ; and not only does the true discrimination between 
values itself become more difficult, but a knowledge of facts, a power of 
analysing them and appreciating their bearing, and therewith an under- 
standing of the particular conditions in which the realisation of ideals of 
good has to be attempted, become essential ; in short, a clearness of percep- 
tion and judgment without which the best intentions may end in disaster ; 
for it is difficult to set limits to the harm which may be done in the world 
by the muddle-headedness of good people. 
For effective thinking two conditions are necessary: first, that the 
materials with which thought has to deal shall be as far as possible true, 
or, in other words, that truth about facts shall be accessible ; secondly, 
that the mind itself shall have been trained to work accurately and 
honestly ; and if freedom in political and private life is to be preserved, 
those who educate others must put them in the way of obtaining truth 
about facts and of distinguishing truth from falsehood in what is pre- 
sented to them and in their own reasoning. It would take a very brave 
man to deny the immensity of the obstacles. Even in a country as 
free as our own, the temptations to accept opinion manufactured by others, 
not always for the best ends, are enormous. The leaders of parties, 
of trade unions, of organisations of all kinds, tend more and more to 
dictate what their followers shall accept without question, and it is 
much easier to accept it than to work out patiently the reasons for and 
against. Even more plausible and easily accepted is what a man is told 
by the newspaper which he habitually reads ; and there are few news- 
papers which any one has a right to trust as aids to right opinion and 
action, and very few which can be trusted to tell the truth and nothing 
but the truth in the presentation of facts. The effect of selection 
and suppression and of headlines beyond which many will not pene- 
trate may be to create impressions which are almost wholly false ; 
and when nearly every newspaper is the organ of a party or of a 
proprietor whose aim is to make money or to damage a particular 
statesman or group of statesmen, when the paper which would succeed 
as a commercial speculation dare not say what would be unpopular 
with its particular clientéle, how is the citizen, young or old, to obtain 
the materials for sound judgment ? Until some means can be devised 
whereby full and accurate reports of important matters are placed 
within reach of all (perhaps by a free service of State), to expect a sane 
and dispassionate public opinion is to demand bricks without straw. 
Yet some preparatory work may be done on the lines which are followed, 
at least in a few schools, in which in some upper forms present-day 
problems are discussed, or the news of the week presented, in ways which 
encourage older boys and girls at least to think about them, to be aware 
of the two or more sides that each question presents, to realise the duty 
which lies upon them, or will shortly lie upon them as citizens, to get 
the best information and to form their opinion with a high sense of 
