ON EDUCATION

SELF-EDUCATION

AT BIRKBECK COLLEGE

20th March, 1924

The faith that can remove mountains was the faith of the pioneers of Birkbeck College, and some of them lived to see the College as we know it to-day—a solid, stable and permanent institution. It is a great and triumphant story of which you may well be proud. But I think that it would be useful to remember that if you wished to understand history and sympathise with the founder and pioneers of the College, you must not make the fatal mistake of reading our history to-day, or of a hundred years ago, in the light of the present time; you must try to throw yourselves back a century, and consider a few of the ways in which the training you have had may help you in your after life.

A hundred years ago popular education, so far as any one thought of it, was regarded as a dangerous explosive. Those times have passed. A hundred years ago London was a comparatively small city compared with the one we know. There were no police. The parish constables were not allowed to go beyond the confines of their own parishes, and the night watchman kept the peace of the city. Old London Bridge was still in existence. Waterloo Bridge had only just been built. Gas had only just been introduced into the streets when the first students came to the College. Contrast the position of the Press to-day with what it was in those days. At that time there was a bye-law under which no man who contributed to the Press was eligible to be called to the Bar, and the Lord Chancellor of the day caused great consternation and indignation amongst his friends by asking the editor of the Times to dine with him. To-day, which of us would not feel proud if we were asked to dine with a newspaper proprietor?

Again, to touch upon another aspect of life, the Elizabethan Poor Law was still the law of the land. Of the million and a quarter people in London at that time one in every eight was in receipt of Poor Law relief.

But hardly ever in the history of our country, or of any other country, was there a more wonderful and brilliant period in the literature of England than in and around the years when the College was founded. It shows that, although in many ways the country was what the people of to-day would call backward and unprogressive, yet a literary movement was going on which would be a glory to any country for all time. I need only name Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron (who died in 1824, within two years of Keats and Shelley), Carlyle, Tennyson, John Henry Newman (one of the greatest masters of English prose), Thackeray, Browning and Dickens. There was a galaxy of talent of the highest order in a literature that stands second to none in the world, and it was a great thing that the College took its origin from such a time. No country can compare with our own in the literature of that period, and yet at that time there was Goethe in Germany, while Dumas had just gone to Paris and was to present in the succeeding year his first play. That amazing efflorescence in literature was accompanied, as sometimes it is, by an efflorescence in art and music.

I have always firmly held that there is no race with more ability latent than our own, or with a higher aptitude for mechanical genius. When the College was founded, Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, all sons of working men, were inventing the machines which brought in the cotton industry. I mention these names to show the stuff of which our people are made, and how that stuff is worth training and educating. It would be a very interesting subject, for anyone who cared to explore it, to see how many of the mechanical inventions which are light-heartedly attributed to Americans are really the product of British brains, whether they were British brains which have gone to work in that country, or the brains of children of British parents who have gone there. But, having regard to the foundation of this College and the men who went to it in its early days, it is a wonderful thing to reflect that practically the Industrial Revolution, for good or evil, was the work very largely of six or seven men who sprang from the ranks of the people, with no advantages such as you have had; and that they were men who changed the face of the country and the habits of the lives of the people.

It is probably true that the great number of men who sacrificed their time and their leisure to work and study did so to help themselves to get on in life. But that was not the fundamental reason: there lay behind it the desire of knowledge for its own sake, the will to force a way through those doors that lead to a kingdom of beauty, literature and art.

I am a fair sample myself of the evening student. Many people tried to educate me, but the reaction was not always successful. A great part of my education took place after I had gone into business, on railway journeys and at odd moments, and for some years, when I was working all day, I would read nearly every night. This was the education, I feel, that did me most good. I learned that all of us have to work hard for our living. Some may do work they enjoy; some may not. Then there comes a time when one feels that one is no use, and that the work itself is difficult and sordid. It is at these times that we may thank God for what we have learned in any school which will enable us to get away from our surroundings into an inner secret chamber. From this we may go with renewed strength to any work that is toward.

There are many definitions of education. The first thing is to be master of our own job; but to be educated we must know enough of the other man's job to be able to understand the part he is playing in life, and to play our own part in sympathy with him. We have also to learn to play our part as members of the commonwealth, or, in other words, to have humanity, by which I mean the knowledge of the things that pertain to humanity, of the way to go about among our fellows, ready to help and to sympathise with them. Do not go through life as a perpetual blister.

If it be not heresy to say so, do not pay too much attention to examinations. Do not be afflicted with pride of intellect. In my view, pride of intellect is more vulgar that the pride of the nouveau riche in his wealth, for the simple reason that the nouveau riche has made his own money, whereas your intellect is the gift of God. You may polish it up and get the best out of it, but for the instrument you are less responsible than any man.

Just as I would advise no man to become a political leader—although political leaders are necessary—so I would strongly advise no man to become merely a specialist. Always have other interests which will keep you in touch with your fellow-men and women. There is no real republicanism except that of literature. If I find a human face light up at some quotation which everyone ought to know, that man, be he duke or dustman, is my brother. That is the bond of literature. Study it, the glorious literature of the first country in the world—your own.

POLITICAL EDUCATION

AT THE PHILIP STOTT COLLEGE

27th September, 1923

Amidst all the multifarious duties that fall to my lot, some pleasant and some less pleasant, you have combined to give me to-day a really happy afternoon's outing. I have the greatest admiration, Sir Philip, for this great work upon which you have embarked. It is the grain of mustard seed which will become a great tree that may overshadow the earth, and I am proud to meet so many of those who are fired with the same enthusiasm that you have and that I have for education of the kind that you provide here. It is a great privilege to be allowed to speak to you for a few minutes on that subject. There are few movements in this country in my view that augur better for the future, or that in themselves bear a higher and truer tribute to the best that is in our nature than the great, voluntary efforts that are being made in this country for adult education; and if there be anyone here who may at times feel a passing regret for the closing of the great houses of England, it must be an immense consolation to see from the ashes of the past springing up a new and hopeful life like this within their walls. That can do nothing but good for the men who come here, and for the country of which they are a part.

I have a peculiar sympathy with adult education, because I have followed it to the best of my ability all my life. I was very much interested to find a peculiar instance recently of that interest which all English people take in education, not always instructed, but always present, because, when I became Prime Minister, a well-known lady in society whose acquaintance I had not had the pleasure of making, asked this question of a friend of mine: "Is the new Prime Minister what you would call an educated man?" I doubt very much whether she knew what was implied by the word "educated"; but it showed, at any rate, that she felt that education was a good thing in itself, and a thing which it was desirable should be possessed by anyone aspiring to the post of Prime Minister. That is all to the good. But I expect all of you have learned, as I have, that education is a process and a thing that is never finished. And it is a wonderful thing that here, in this movement, we find one more instance in our history of that triumph of voluntary effort from which have sprung all the best movements and the best things in our country from the beginning of its history. You take a movement like that of the Boy Scouts; it did not originate with the War Office. You take the Salvation Army; it did not come from Canterbury. The Franciscans did not come from Rome; and in the same way this great movement of education did not take its origin in Whitehall. It sprang—where all these things have sprung from—it sprang from the very heart of the people, and that is what gives it its strength, and that is what is going to continue to give power to the movement.

I was very impressed by a few words that I read in a prospectus of the College, that the aim of the curriculum here is "to furnish instruction which will equip the trade unionist or the co-operator, on the one hand, to take an active and effective interest in the affairs of his or her society, and on the other, a Parliamentarian or a business man to discharge with greater knowledge and insight such duties of citizenship as may devolve upon him."

These words go right down to the root of the matter, because the great task of this generation, in my view, is to save democracy, to preserve it and to inspire it. The ideal of democracy is a very fine one, but no ideals can run of themselves, and if democracy is to be preserved and yield the fruits that those who believe in it would fain see, the only way it can be done is by all the individuals, according to their power, equipping themselves sufficiently to keep the whole mass sweet and true, and to preserve in their plenitude and sanity the ideals that inspire them. I have used this figure of speech before, but I want to use it again. All government of the people can be represented, as it were, on the circumference of a wheel, and government runs in very, varying degree from the most complete and absolute autocracy, step by step, to chaos, and you find instances in history of governments passing through every phase on that circumference; often autocracy will end in chaos, and chaos will, with equal infallibility, lead back once again to autocracy. Now we are at a point in that wheel, and that point is Democracy, with representative government. We have to remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and, I may add, eternal knowledge, eternal sympathy, and eternal understanding; and it is our duty in this generation to keep the State steady at the point to which we have attained, knowing full well the risks that lie on either hand by slipping back in the one direction of the wheel or the other, the one direction drawing to a curtailment of our liberty, the other direction being that in which liberty tends to licence.

Now, surely, when we want to educate ourselves for the purpose of citizenship, whatever the immediate course of study may be, whether it be history or economics, whether it be humane letters, whether it be mathematics, the object of such education must always be the same, and to my mind the purpose of such education—a purpose which we try to put in our mind—is always twofold; it is, in the first place, to clear the mind of cant, and in the second place not to rest content with having learnt enough to follow the syllogism, knowing perfectly well that to follow the syllogism alone is a short cut to the bottomless pit, unless you are able to detect the fallacies that lie by the wayside. If you can clear the mind of cant and detect the fallacy, whatever guise it may be wearing, I think you have made a long step forward in the education that every citizen in a democracy that may hope to endure must have. I think that we all of us realise to-day that no civilised community is bound necessarily and by an inscrutable fate to progress, that there are such things in civilisation as checks, that there is such a thing as retrogression, and that the mere existence of a civilised community is no guarantee either for its continuance or for its progress—in other words, that unless we are the faithful guardians of such civilisation as we have already attained to, we run the risk of seeing the whole of the progress that has been made with such infinite labour up to our own time gradually slipping back and back and back.

No one had harder words to say than Lord Morley about teaching carried on in any other spirit than that which I have endeavoured to describe. Teaching, above all things in this world, ought to be absolutely honest and absolutely free. The teacher should never be the servant of the State in this way, that he preaches and teaches what he thinks the Government would like to have him do, whether that Government come from the Right or from the Left or from the Centre. The whole object of the teacher should be to set forth the truth as he conceives it, and the whole object of the pupil should be so to prepare and develop his mind that he may, as occasion arises, when he leaves here, find himself prepared by will and competent by training to exercise a right judgment in all things.

Lord Morley, when he had laid stress on the everlasting importance of sifting the value of evidence and recognising how the bias of human nature so often prevented men from acquiring the necessary ability so to sift evidence, referred to those who taught with bias and for propaganda in this way: "There are limits to our patience with the quackish fungoids," and it is the "quackish fungoids," wherever they may be found, that you have to go out into the world to fight. "Quackish fungoids" are found in all sections of the community and in all schools of thought. They are not inherent in any one class. They are not necessarily inherent in any one party; but they are growths which must be cleared away if progress is to be made in our country, and they are growths which the training you receive here will enable you to do your part in clearing away when you leave these pleasant surroundings for the stress and the struggle of the larger world outside.

We have to learn—and it is no easy lesson—to submit all the passions and prejudices which the best of us find to be component parts of ourselves at times to the stern and acid test of the discipline of truth. That is not an easy lesson to learn, or more people would have learned it; but I think one of the most hopeful signs of the times to-day is that all over the kingdom—north and south and east and west—there are men and women who, in dreaming of a better and higher future for their country, are yet well aware that that future cannot be attained by dreams alone, and they want so to qualify and equip themselves that in that struggle for better things they may be able to play a potent and a worthy part. There is no better and there is no higher ambition, and I am perfectly certain that it is to help that ambition that Sir Philip Stott was moved to do what he has done, a great work for which every one in this room is indeed grateful, a work for which, if I am right, generations yet unborn may arise and call him blessed.

This country of ours has been the birthplace and the home of some of the greatest movements that have yet arisen for human freedom and human progress, and the strength of our race is not yet exhausted. We have confused ourselves in Great Britain of recent years by a curious diffidence, and by a fear of relying upon ourselves. The result has been that many of those who have been eager for the progress of our country have only succeeded in befogging themselves and their fellow-countrymen, by filling their bellies with the east wind of German Socialism and Russian Communism and French Syndicalism. Rather should they have looked deep into the hearts of their own people, relying on that common sense and political sense that has never failed our race, from which sufficient sustenance could be drawn to bring this country once more through all her troubles. There will be found that sense which, far from following at the tail of exploded Continental theorists, is ready once more to lead the way of the world as she was destined to do from the beginning of time, and to show other peoples, many peoples who have not yet learned what real political freedom is, that the mother of political freedom is still capable of guiding the way to her children and her children's children.

Do not let us ever be confused by the advance in material prosperity and material knowledge, and let us never confuse mere acceleration with civilisation. Civilisation is a far deeper and more profound thing than that, and there is a very real danger, in an age when science makes such wonderful advances and can bring so much in the way of material comfort and material knowledge before people without any trouble on their part to acquire it or understand—there is at that time a very great danger that the higher, the more spiritual, the only lasting qualities of civilisation may be submerged in the lower and inferior, so that the last state of that community may be worse than the first.

Then, I think, there is one other great advantage to be derived from the whole-hearted pursuit of knowledge, which has been the impelling force that has brought you from all over the United Kingdom to take advantage of the course which you can obtain here. I think you learn—not by being taught, but by that instinct which comes with wider knowledge—you learn a healthy distrust of rhetoric. If there is any class to be regarded with suspicion in a democracy it is the rhetorician—the man who plays on half-educated people with fallacies which they are incapable of detecting. More than one democracy has been wrecked by that. We do not want to see a democracy like ours, in which we have faith, and which we believe is destined to do such great things for the world, wrecked on any such ignoble rocks. When I was about eighteen years of age, I remember reading a verse of Froude's, in his Short Studies, which made a profound impression upon me at that age, because, when I was a boy, as is the case with many other boys, I was rather the slave of fine language and beautiful expression, and I suddenly came with a shock on the words: "Oratory is the harlot of the arts." There is profound truth in that, and I should like very much, if I had time, to give the members that as a text for an essay. It would be very interesting to see the illustrations which historical students might give in proof of the words of that thesis.

There are few things, again, to which, at the present day, we should pay more attention than this—and this again needs education, and the education which you are giving yourselves to enable you to accomplish the end in view—and that is to judge of the value of evidence. I suppose there is no man to whom the cause of the education of the people in this country—and very largely adult education—is nearer the heart than it was to a great Englishman who has just died, I mean Lord Morley. Lord Morley spoke on this subject nearly fifty years ago, and he came back to it again and again; so recently as just before the war, speaking to the Manchester students, he used these words, which I feel I must read to you:

"Generous aspiration, exalted enthusiasm, is made to do duty for renewed scrutiny. The ardent spirits see every fact or circumstance that makes their way and are blind to every other. Inflexible preconceptions holding the helm, they exaggerate. Their sense of proportion is bad."

There can be no greater object of true education than to teach and to preserve a sense of proportion, and it seems to me that the great advantage you have here over what I may call the definitely propagandist schools is that you have every opportunity of learning to exercise a trained sense of proportion, because the teachers here are chosen in exactly the same way as the teachers are chosen in the free and open universities. They are chosen because they are masters of their subjects. They are chosen not to give propaganda; they are chosen to speak the truth, and those who are responsible for the conduct of this college know that it is only by giving students the opportunity of exercising to the full the ability that is in them that they will be able to choose the truth honestly and freely, and will exercise their minds to the solution of the problems to which they have to devote themselves, without bias and without preconceived notions. They will clear their minds of cant, and try to see things as they are.

We all of us want understanding—understanding of ourselves and understanding of our brothers and sisters—and that true understanding is the salt that savours the whole life of the community. It was never more needed than it is to-day, and those who understand will realise that there is no greater need in the world, abroad and at home, than peace, peace from the warfare of arms and peace of spirit. Those are the things I intend to fight for during the time that I am Prime Minister, whether that time be long or short, and it is with that object—the object of peace above and before all things—that I am endeavouring to-day to deal with the situation in Europe.

This is not the place to talk about foreign politics. The Imperial Conference meets next week, and it must be that at one of their early meetings the whole question of the present situation in Europe and in the world must be set forth and debated. I would only say here these few words. When this Government came into office, now some ten or eleven months ago, there was an atmosphere of restraint, almost of distrust, between France and ourselves; and I have no doubt that if Mr. Bonar Law had been spared to us as Prime Minister a little longer, he, with his knowledge, with his instinct, with his transparent honesty, would have dissipated that atmosphere once and for all. But he left us before that task was accomplished, and it was my good fortune in an interview which I had last week with the President of the Council in Paris to help, as I believe, to restore that atmosphere of confidence which had for some time been lost. No more and no less. But I think there is now, both in Paris and in London, a recognition of the importance of the Entente—in this way, that without it a European settlement is far more difficult. Indeed, the events of the last two or three weeks have proved that, to those who have eyes to see, the best hope of settlement lies in intimate relationship between France and this country, and if anything occurred that might keep our two countries apart, then I fear it would make the problems which we have to face incomparably more difficult than they are to-day.

You have been extraordinarily kind to me in the reception you have given me here, a reception which touched my heart, and I just want to tell you before I sit down what a close sympathy I have with you in the work you are doing here. I am a sort of half-educated fellow myself. I worked fairly well at school. I did nothing at the University. I have been trying hard ever since to try to catch it up. You have come here to try to catch it up. I wish you all success and happiness in that task. There is no joy in this world like learning. The great joy of life is that it is a task which is never done. Go on learning all your life. I am learning now, and I mean to go on learning if I live to be a hundred. There is nothing I look forward to so much when I am out of office as to start learning again in real earnest. Until that day comes I am afraid I shall have to leave the learning to you, but I do wish you the best of luck in this high task you have undertaken. Do not let yourselves be dispirited when you get into the world again, but hold fast to what you believe to be true and what you believe to be right wherever it leads you, and whatever difficulties you may encounter. Whatever troubles you may have you will, at all events, always have the comfort of a conscience which will tell you that you have tried to act up to the highest lights that are in you, and you will feel that you are playing your part in helping to bring your country, your fellow-men and women, through one of the most difficult times that she has ever had to face in her history, and that you are laying, or trying to lay, the foundations of a happier, healthier and saner life for those with us now and for those who will come after us.

TEACHERS AND TAUGHT

AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE LONDON TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION

28th November, 1924

Great as your necessities may be, mine are greater. I was invited to be your guest when I was but a private individual, before I became Prime Minister. I would add that forty years ago all the king's horses and all the king's men would have failed to have drawn me into the presence of a company of schoolmasters, and in relation to them I once had every qualification as a passive resister and a practiser of very skilled "ca'canny." But times have altered, and I with them, and I am proud to be your guest to-day, to stand before you, not as an educational expert, nor—God forbid!—as an intellectual, but merely to convey to this representative body of London teachers my own appreciation as head of the Government and that of my colleagues of the work that the whole body of teachers throughout the country are doing for the people of this country. Nor do I propose to do what is so common, and to take a gloomy and pessimistic view of the state of our country and of education. I am not going to tell you that in foreign countries they do these things better, and I would observe in passing that we have had some respite recently from that continuous praise of German systems of education to which we were so accustomed in our younger days, and which ceased with such startling suddenness ten years ago.

The progress of education in our own country has, indeed, been remarkable, having regard to the fact that we have only occupied ourselves seriously with the problem for two generations. I know as well as you that there are still too many, far too many, insanitary schools, and that there are many ill-nourished and defective children; but let us remember that the standard by which we judge these matters to-day has risen immeasurably from the standard adopted by our parents.

You have only to read Sir George Newman's reports of recent years to see the progress that has been made, and, while we can still point to shortcomings, to apathy and negligence on the part of parents here, local authorities there, and possibly even sometimes of a Government or a teacher, yet we have to remember that the average health of the children is, and has been, steadily improving, and you have a steadily diminishing quantity in the number and the danger of the children's ailments. Thanks to the co-operation with you of the medical and nursing agencies, of the devoted services of many voluntary agencies, and thanks, too, to the increasing co-operation between teachers and parents, there has never been so much organised effort in this country on behalf of child welfare as there is to-day. We do not ignore the blemishes and the spots, but let me remind you again that we regard them through a far higher magnifying lens than we used to; but that need not prevent us from advancing all the time. I am credibly informed that the children to-day actually enjoy going to school. That is a revolution for which no historian or sociologist has given you adequate recognition. I do it to-night, but I confess that if I am correctly informed you have succeeded in working a miracle which would have been incredible in my younger days.

I agree with Mr. Samuel in this, that no one who lived through the Great War, and was in a position to observe what was taking place, will ever forget the qualities displayed by the men and women of this country, men and women who had had no other education than the elementary schools had afforded them. There are some words of Mr. H. G. Wells which are well worth remembering in this connection. He says that education is one of the newest of the arts and sciences. The idea of particular exceptional people pursuing learning has been familiar to the whole world for scores of centuries, but the idea of preparing the minds of whole classes or communities for co-operation and common action by a training in common ideas is a comparatively new one. And that is the gigantic task to which you, and, I may add, we, are all committed. We are living in days in which the powers that used to be inherent in birth and privilege are passing rapidly away. You have a franchise vested in millions where it used to be vested in thousands, and we live in an age when the preservation of such civilisation as we have already succeeded in attaining to can only be maintained by the spread and continuance of education of the people. And it has never been more urgent to wage the war of reason against the passion that may be stimulated by mob psychology.

Scientific men—and I am afraid I must confess I am not a scientific man—are rather pessimistic, and one of our leading biologists has recently declared that the more representative Parliament becomes, the more unintelligent, as things are, it is and will be. That was, as a matter of fact, written before the election. But I never allow myself to be depressed by the utterances of theorists, and I mean to go on, in conjunction with Lord Eustace, Mr. Samuel, and all of you, to try to make things better. You have handicaps to fight against, handicaps of the bad environment where your children are raised, handicaps of heredity. We can do something to help you, and we intend to do it.

But I always think that those who speak of us who try to direct affairs of State, and of you, use the wrong analogy when they speak of us as builders and architects. Our task is more homely, and, if I may go to the country for my illustration, our work is more the work of the gardener. We have to do our utmost to secure for the child what the gardener does for his plants—the best soil and the best exposure. We must remove the noxious weeds, we must do root pruning, we must prepare and enrich the soil. But we have to wait in faith for what comes later, and that is the flowers and the fruit, and we must remember that we can never hope to gather grapes from thistles. I said the Government might do something to help. I said in the Albert Hall some months ago that I wished to see secondary and university education brought within reach of all children who were fitted to take advantage of them, and I stand by that.

I hope that before we reach the middle of this century the country will have dealt effectively with the problem of the children between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is not simply a school problem; it is a school problem and an industrial problem. We must by voluntary agencies and by our own work deal with that problem, or we run the risk of allowing a generation to grow up in the country which can only be a peril to itself, and a peril to the nation.

But all the State can do will be of little avail if you have no regard to the one thing that matters,—as always, the personal equation. That, in this case, is the general body of the teachers who are both in love with their work and properly equipped for it. It is for that reason that I welcome the improvement in the pay of the whole profession which came into force in this country of recent years. The personality of the teacher is the crucial fact of the whole work of education. It is you who have to transmit to the children some appreciation of the growth of the human spirit, some insight into our national traditions of liberty and fair play, into the material achievements of science, and into the wider problems set by racial and national divisions of mankind; and somewhere through those lessons, through you, there must reach the children some of the "murmurs and the scents of the infinite sea."

It is not for you, fortunately, to undertake the political education of the children, but it is for you to see that if they have to hear of these things they hear both sides, and they hear them dispassionately, because you cannot prostitute your position to sectarian ends. The primary concern of those who have such a sacred trust as you have is the unfolding of the child's personality, and not the victory of party.

We all know that industrialism has its ugly side; we all know we cannot maintain our population without strenuous competition, and we have a hard task in harmonising the claims of industry and the claims of an enlightened humanism. The harshest features of poverty we may hope to get rid of, and to provide against the worst crises of life, and perhaps in time to lift the level of our people; but none of those things are of avail unless we can raise their character. Mr. Bertrand Russell wrote truly when he said: "It is true that poverty is a great evil, but it is not true that material prosperity is in itself a great good. If it is to have any real value to society, it must be made the means of advancement of those highest gifts that belong to the life of the mind"—and I would say the life of the soul.

In concluding, I would stress once more what I have said to you of the pre-eminent value in the teacher of character, for, if you look back upon your own childhood—as I look back upon mine—is it not a fact that all unconsciously we were the strongest moral judges of those set in authority over us? It is not the clever teacher that we remember, or the man who taught us most—unless we gave our lives to scholarships; what we remember is the man whose character all unconsciously impressed us, the man who was patient, who was honest, who was fair, and who brought into the performance of his daily task a spirit which, when we look back over the gulf of years, makes us feel even to-day, when we are faced, as we are faced day by day, with problems that test our character, that we should be almost afraid, as it were, to take the part that we know to be the less right one, because we feel somehow that that was the one thing that would not have met with the approval of him whom we knew all those years ago.

I will give you one sentence, if I may, which I read recently with great pleasure in a work by a schoolmaster, which seems to me to embody what I have been trying very feebly to express. He is speaking of the influence in after years of the schoolmaster on the pupil, and he speaks of the pupil, as an elderly man, looking back, in these words:

"Enlightened by the experience of fatherhood, they will see with a clear remembrance firmness in dealing with their moral faults or patience in dealing with their intellectual weakness, and, calling to mind the old schoolroom, they will think it was good for us to be there. For unknown to us therein were three tabernacles—one for us, one for our schoolmaster, and one for Him Who is the friend of all children and the Master of all schoolmasters."

If words like those can be said of us long after we have taught our last lesson or made our last speech, we shall not have done our work or lived our lives in vain, and the generations to come will rise up and call us blessed.