be imparted, education would no longer
be a spiritual process but rather one of driving the boy into a corner,
imparting such instruction as the teacher might decree and keeping on
until the point of saturation was reached or the supply of instruction
became exhausted, when the trick would be done. The process would be as
simple as pouring water from one vessel into another. Sometimes the
teacher of literature strives to engender appreciation in a pupil by
rhapsodizing over some passage. She reads the passage in a frenzy of
simulated enthusiasm, with a quaver in her voice and moisture in her eyes,
only to find, at the end, that her patient has fallen asleep. Appreciation
cannot be generated in such fashion. The boy cannot light his torch of
appreciation at a mere phosphorescent glow. There must be heat behind the
light or there can be no ignition. The boy senses the fictitious at once
and cannot react to what he knows to be spurious. Only the genuine can win
his interest.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said that no one can gaze into the starry sky at
night for five minutes and not believe in the existence of God. But to
people who lack such appreciation the night sky is devoid of significance.
There are teachers who never go forth to revel in the glories of this
star-lit masterpiece of creation, because, forsooth, they are too busy
grading papers in literature. Such a teacher is not likely to be the cause
of a spiritual ignition in her pupils, for she herself lacks the divine
fire of appreciation. If she only possessed this quality no words would be
needed to reveal its presence to the boy; he would know it even as the
homing-pigeon knows its course. When the spirits of teacher and pupils
become merged as they must become in all true teaching, the boy will find
himself in possession of this spiritual quality. He knows that he has it,
the teacher knows that he has it, and his associates know that he has it,
and one and all know that it is well worth having.

It is related of Keats that in reading Spenser he was thrown into a
paroxysm of delight over the expression "sea-shouldering whales." The
churl would not give a second thought to the phrase, or, indeed, a first
one; but the man of appreciation finds in it a source of pleasure. Arlo
Bates speaks with enthusiasm of the word "highly" as used in the
Gettysburg Speech, and the teacher's work reaches a high point of
excellence when it has given to the pupil such a feeling of ap