ern
"civilized" Europe, we cannot claim that any noticeable proportion of
our young people are taught during their docile and impressionable years
the nature and discipline of their spiritual faculties, in the open and
common-sense way in which they are taught languages, science, music or
gymnastics. Yet it is surely a central duty of the educator to deepen
and enrich to the fullest extent possible his pupil's apprehension of
the universe; and must not all such apprehension move towards the
discovery of that universe as a spiritual fact?

Again, in how many schools is the period of religious and idealistic
enthusiasm which so commonly occurs in adolescence wisely used,
skilfully trained, and made the foundation of an enduring spiritual
life? Here is the period in which the relation of master and pupil is or
may be most intimate and most fruitful; and can be made to serve the
highest interests of life. Yet, no great proportion of those set apart
to teach young people seem to realize and use this privilege.

I am aware that much which I am going to advocate will sound fantastic;
and that the changes involved may seem at first sight impossible to
accomplish. It is true that if these changes are to be useful, they must
be gradual. The policy of the "clean sweep" is one which both history
and psychology condemn. But it does seem to me a good thing to envisage
clearly, if we can, the ideal towards which our changes should lead. A
garden city is not Utopia. Still, it is an advance upon the Victorian
type of suburb and slum; and we should not have got it if some men had
not believed in Utopia, and tried to make a beginning here and now.
Already in education some few have tried to make such a beginning and
have proved that it is possible if we believe in it enough: for faith
can move even that mountainous thing, the British parental mind.

Our task--and I believe our most real hope for the future--is, as we
have already allowed, to make the idea of God dominant for the plastic
youthful consciousness: and not only this, but to harmonize that
conception, first with our teachings about the physical and mental sides
of life, and next with the child's own social activities, training body,
mind and spirit together that they may take each their part in the
development of a whole man, fully responsive to a universe which is at
bottom a spiritual fact. Such training to be complete must, as we have
seen, begin in the nursery and be give