110 



REV. H. COSTLEY WHITE, M.A., ON 



education is desired. According to the measure in whicli these 

 qualities are possessed, nature and environment conspire to 

 differentiate individual from individual and, as individuals are 

 multiplied, class from class. In any community there are also 

 other powerful forces at work differentiating individuals and 

 combining them in classes. But one of the most powerful of 

 such forces is the possession or the lack of this social culture of 

 which we speak. Now if I am right in believing that the public 

 schools have this estimable gift to give — if it be true, as the 

 witness of the figures attests, that their influence is reaching 

 over a wide and ever widening area — it follows that, instead of 

 perpetuating class distinctions, the public schools constitute a 

 potent agency for dissolving them. 



Education, however, costs money ; but what is worth having 

 is worth paying for. It is worth while for the State and the 

 municipality to pay for public education because the national 

 character depends upon it. The recently increased expendi- 

 ture upon improved salaries and the provision of pensions for 

 teachers is an economy, because it ensures that children shall be 

 taught by better teachers. Similarly, it is worth while to bear 

 the burden of educating boys in public schools, both because to 

 share in the individuality and character of a public school is 

 a valuable thing, and because, if the more cultured classes suffer 

 diminution of their culture, other classes must in measure suffer 

 with them. It is worth while to submit, not cheerfully perhaps, 

 but with resignation, to recent increases of fees, because if a 

 generous Board of Education has granted pensions and improved 

 emoluments to the masters employed under its authority, the 

 least the public schools could do was to make for their staffs 

 provision as good as that of the Board, and perhaps a little 

 better. 



I now come to the educational aspect of our subject. Educa- 

 tion is not identical with instruction. To educate means to 

 develop the capacities of the mind for work and for enjoyment. 

 Mere abihty, however great — mechanical, scientific, linguistic, 

 even literary — is a different thing from an educated mind. 

 Education involves beyond instruction the additional force of 

 inspiration. A recent writer has happily illustrated the meaning 

 of this. " The difference between instruction and inspiration," 

 he says, " seems to lie in this ; that by instruction a man can 

 learn how to handle the normal and expected, but only inspira- 

 tion will enable him to deal with what is abnormal and unexpected. 



