368 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 21 



nial visitation instead of an annual inspection of 

 the schools ; this visitation being for the sole pur- 

 pose of reporting on the staff and curriculum. In- 

 spection of such schools, in the ordinary seni-e of 

 that term, is wholly unnecessary, if not indeed 

 hurtful to the cause of education. The governing 

 body of secondary schools should be an elected 

 committee of the existing burgh boards, with the 

 addition of county representatives ; the county 

 being taxed for the support of the school up to a 

 maximum of, say, a farthing per pound. As to 

 the secondary or high-school curriculum, it is long 

 since I reluctantly came to the coQclusion that 

 this must, for the future, be mainly on the lines 

 of the German real-gymnasium ; Greek, however, 

 being taught, but only as a specific subject to the 

 few. In this way, we get rid of the anomaly of 

 ' modern sides.' These 'practical' opinions I here 

 summarize bluntly, having on many previous oc- 

 casions reasoned them, and I now pass on to the 

 special subject of my address. 'Education' is a 

 big word as well as a great word. It comprehends 

 every influence that goes to the formation of a 

 mind. No man can give an account of it. A 

 genuine autobiography is an attempt to do so. 

 But in this even a Goethe or a Ruskin will fail. 

 These men, like all others, probably owed as much 

 to those subtle influences which pass unnoticed as 

 to the more self-conscious experiences which it is 

 easy to read, record, and estimate. We who have 

 to do with education professionally are apt to for- 

 get this, and to exaggerate the influence of the 

 school. We forget that the ancient Persian pre- 

 sented to the world a fine type of manhood, with 

 no schooling at all, in our sense of the word ; that 

 the Greek leapt by one bound into the van of hu- 

 manity, and knew little but his Homer, a few 

 moral apothegms, and his simple lyre ; that the 

 Eoman had unfolded all his greatest qualities, and 

 had proclaimed himself the coming master of the 

 world in arms and laws, with little or no literary 

 acquirements. It is not by the Latin or arith- 

 metic we teach the boy that we make him a true 

 or capable man : it is by the life we present for 

 his admiration and acceptance, and, above all, by 

 the life which we live before his eyes. Our lives, 

 and the very movements and gestures and ex- 

 clamations which reveal our lives, are the most 

 potent of all influences in the education of the 

 young. 



I may seem to you to have fallen suddenly in 

 love with the trite and the obvious, and to have 

 come to this, that I would substitute for the phi- 

 losophy of education a few well-worn truisms and 

 platitudes. And, indeed, you are right ; for as 

 one grows older, and has wandered far and wide 

 over the meadow-lands and deserts of the educa- 



tional country, dwelt on the history of the educa- 

 tion of the race, and pondered the philosophy of 

 the school, one finds one's self back again at the 

 starting-point, in happy company with the crystal- 

 lized wisdom of the ages. The last function of 

 science can only be to enable us to see truly what 

 is already there before us to be seen, though 

 covered with a veil : the last function of the phi- 

 losophy of education is to see the ancient facts of 

 our moral relations to each other, and the truth of 

 the ancient truisms, — to see truly what is covered 

 by the veil of words. 



So, then, I am not ashamed to utter truisms, 

 and to say that the formative power of the 

 teacher is not in what he teaches, but in what he 

 is — what he is, first, consciously or unconscious- 

 ly, in himself, as a living and advancing mind, 

 known of all men, and especially of all boys ; and 

 what he is consciously to his pupils in respect of 

 aim, method, and manner. 



These certainly are very general reflections, and 

 yet of very close and particular application. For 

 if the end of all our school-striving be not what 

 our pupils ultimately have, but what they finally 

 are — are as receptive beings in harmonious rela- 

 tion with the simplicity, strength, and truth of 

 nature, and as active helpful beings endowed with 

 sympathy, given to sacrifice, subject to duty, 

 courteous in bearing — I say, if this be so, what a 

 multitude of practical lessons for the teacher are 

 implicit in such a conception ! 



Let me, in this connection, be strictly practical 

 for a momwit, and ask the head master of an Eng- 

 lish school, " Do you believe this that I have in- 

 dicated to be the true outcome of school-work ? 

 Do you really believe ? You are a Hellenic and 

 Roman scholar, and you are probably a theologian, 

 and know your Bible. Well, then, if you believe 

 it, is there any reason in the nature of things why, 

 for example, your boys should be kept away from 

 a knowledge of other nations and their commer- 

 cial and industrial relations with ourselves, and 

 those far-i*eaching lessons of humanity which such 

 knowledge suggests? Is there any reason why 

 the insular pride, insolence, and self-centring of 

 our British boys — sources these of much evil — 

 should not be modified by a knowledge of other 

 nations of men and their claims to our regard ? 

 Can you truly promote what you accept as the 

 true end, the life you admit to be the true life, if 

 you do not by means of the facts of human rela- 

 tions lead the boys of wealthy parents to under- 

 stand their dependence on the poor, and the true 

 significance of the co-operation of capital and 

 labor? Can any good reason, again, be given why 

 you should not protect the boy's future life by 

 giving him some knowledge of his own frame ? Do 



