ut fourteen. And I should teach them with a view to the lives
they were going to live. I should teach girls a good deal of house-work,
and country boys about the country--we mustn't forget that the common work
of the world has to be done. You must somehow interest people in the sort
of work they are going to do. It is hopeless without that. And then we must
gradually begin to specialise. But I'm not going into all that now. The
general aim I should have in view would be to give people some idea of the
world they were living in, and try to interest them in the part they were
going to play; and I should try to teach them how to employ their leisure.
That seems entirely left out at present. I want to develop people on simple
and contented lines, with intelligent interests and, if possible, a special
taste. The happy man is the man who likes his work, and all education is a
fraud if it turns out people who don't like their work; and then I want
people to have something to fall back upon which they enjoy. No one can
live a decent life without having things to look forward to. But, of
course, the whole thing turns on Finance, and that is what makes it so
infernally dull. You want more teachers and better teachers; you want to
make teaching a profession which attracts the best people. You can't do
that without money, and at present education is looked upon as an expensive
luxury. That's all part of the stodgy Anglo-Saxon mind. It doesn't want
ideas--it wants positions which, carry high salaries; and really the one
thing which blocks the way in all our education is that we care so much for
money and property, and can't think of happiness apart from them. As long
as our real aim in England is income, we shall not make progress; because
we persist in thinking of ideas as luxuries in which a man can indulge if
he has a sufficient income to afford to do so."

"You take a gloomy view of our national ideals, Father," said Vincent.

"Not a gloomy view, my boy," said Father Payne; "only a dull view! We are a
respectable nation--we adore respectability; and I don't think it is a
sympathetic quality. What I want is more sympathy and more imagination. I
think they lead to happiness; and I don't think the Anglo-Saxon cares
enough about happiness; if he is happy, he has an uneasy idea that he is in
for a disaster of some kind."

XLII

OF RELIGION

I found Father Payne one morning reading a letter with knitted brows.
Presently he c