raid that we
must make a clean sweep of the old processes, if we have any intention
of interesting our youth in the beauty of human ideas and their
expression. But while we do not care about beauty and interest in
life, while we conscientiously believe, in spite of a cataract of
helpless facts, in the virtues of the old grammar-grind, so long shall
we remain an uncivilised nation. Civilisation does not consist in
commercial prosperity, or even in a fine service of express trains.
It resides in quick apprehension, lively interest, eager sympathy ...
at least I suspect so.

"Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter!" said the rueful
prophet. I do not write as a pessimist, hardly as a critic; still less
as a censor; to waste time in deriding others' theories of life is a
very poor substitute for enjoying it! I think we do very fairly well
as we are; only do not let us indulge in the cant in which educators
so freely indulge, the claim that we are interested in ideas
intellectual or artistic, and that we are trying to educate our youth
in these things. We do produce some intellectual athletes, and we
knock a few hardy minds more or less into shape; but meanwhile a great
river of opportunities, curiosity, intelligence, taste, interest,
pleasure, goes idly weltering, through mud-flats and lean promontories
and bare islands to the sea. It is the loss, the waste, the folly, of
it that I deplore.

X

GROWTH

As the years go on, what one begins to perceive about so many
people--though one tries hard to believe it is not so--is that somehow
or other the mind does not grow, the view does not alter; life ceases
to be a pilgrimage, and becomes a journey, such as a horse takes in a
farm-cart. He is pulling something, he has got to pull it, he does not
care much what it is--turnips, hay, manure! If he thinks at all, he
thinks of the stable and the manger. The middle-aged do not try
experiments, they lose all sense of adventure. They make the usual
kind of fortification for themselves, pile up a shelter out of
prejudices and stony opinions. It is out of the wind and rain, and the
prospect is safely excluded. The landscape is so familiar that the
entrenched spirit does not even think about it, or care what lies
behind the hill or across the river.

Now of course I do not mean that people can or should play fast and
loose with life, throw up a task or a position the moment they are
bored with it, be at the mercy of mood