If,
after hearing a lecture or oral lesson, they can answer in writing
Borne simple questions carefully stated, it will be a further advance.
It is something to grasp accurately the scope of a question. The
plague of girls' answers is usually irrelevancy from want of thought
as to the scope of questions or even from inattention to their
wording. If they can be patient in face of unanswered difficulties,
and wait for the solution to come later on in its natural course, then
at least one small fruit of their studies will have been brought to
maturity; and if at the end of their elementary course they are
convinced of their own ignorance, and want to know more, it may be
said that the course has not been unsuccessful.

It is not, however, complete unless they know something of the history
of philosophy, the great schools, and the names which have been held
in honour from the beginning down to our own days. They will realize
that it is good to have been born in their own time, and to learn such
lessons now that the revival of scholastic philosophy under Leo XIII
and the development of the neo-scholastic teaching have brought fresh
life into the philosophy of tradition, which although it appears to
put new wine into old bottles, seems able to preserve the wine and the
bottles together.

CHAPTER V.

THE REALITIES OF LIFE.

"He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."
BROWNING, "Rabbi Ben Ezra."
"Eh, Dieu! nous marchons trop en enfants--cela me fache!"
ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL.

One of the problems which beset school education, and especially
education in boarding schools, is the difficulty of combining the good
things it can give with the best preparation for after life. This
preparation has to be made under circumstances which necessarily keep
children away from many of the realities that have to be faced in the
future.

To be a small member of a large organization has an excellent effect
upon the mind. From the presence of numbers a certain dignity gathers
round many things that would in themselves be insignificant. Ideas of
corporate life with its obligations and responsibilities are gained.
Honoured traditions and ideals are handed down if the school has a
history and spirit of its own. There