thought for
the welfare of the "lower orders." The good man, as I understand the
phrase, is a good son, a good brother, a good husband, a good father,
a good citizen, a good townsman, a good workman, a good servant, a
good master. In fine, he is a good specimen of his kind, well
grown and well developed, efficient on all the planes of his
being,--physical, mental, moral, spiritual. This conception of what
constitutes useful education differs radically from those which I
have just been considering; but I believe that when it has been
adequately expounded, and submitted to the judgment of those whose
opinion is worth having, it will not be seriously gainsaid.

If education is useful in proportion as it tends to produce good men
and women, the education given in Utopia is useful to the highest
degree. For a child cannot become a good man (or woman) except by
_growing_ good; and if he is to grow good, his nature must be allowed
to develop itself freely and harmoniously (for just so far as it is
normal and healthy it is necessarily making for its own perfection),
and the one end and aim of the teacher must be to stimulate and
direct this process of spontaneous growth. This, as we have seen, is
the one end and aim of Egeria; and it is therefore clear that she
is taking effective steps--the most effective that can possibly
be taken--to produce good men and women. We have but to name the
qualities which are characteristic, as we have already seen, of her
pupils and ex-pupils,--activity, versatility, imaginative sympathy,
a large and free outlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy
of heart,--in order to convince ourselves that those who have passed
through the Utopian school are on the high road which leads to
"goodness." So obvious is all this, that in defining the word
"useful" I may be said to have decided the question in favour of
Utopia; and what is now in dispute is not whether Utopianism is
"useful," in any sense of the word, but whether my sense of the word
is the right one.

I cannot go much further into this question without exceeding the
limits of the theme which I am handling in this chapter. For in
considering the after life of the Utopian child, I am entering a
region in which the idea of _education_ begins to merge itself in the
larger idea of _salvation_; and though education, as begun in Utopia,
is in its essence a life-long process, I must pay some heed to the
limits which tradition and custom have i