at is the one eternal education; to be sure enough
that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. From this
high audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side; and the only
excuse for them is, (of course,) that their modern philosophies are so
half-baked and hypothetical that they cannot convince themselves enough
to convince even a newborn babe. This, of course, is connected with the
decay of democracy; and is somewhat of a separate subject. Suffice it
to say here that when I say that we should instruct our children, I mean
that we should do it, not that Mr. Sully or Professor Earl Barnes should
do it. The trouble in too many of our modern schools is that the State,
being controlled so specially by the few, allows cranks and experiments
to go straight to the schoolroom when they have never passed through
the Parliament, the public house, the private house, the church, or the
marketplace. Obviously, it ought to be the oldest things that are taught
to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put
first to the baby. But in a school to-day the baby has to submit to
a system that is younger than himself. The flopping infant of four
actually has more experience, and has weathered the world longer, than
the dogma to which he is made to submit. Many a school boasts of having
the last ideas in education, when it has not even the first idea;
for the first idea is that even innocence, divine as it is, may learn
something from experience. But this, as I say, is all due to the mere
fact that we are managed by a little oligarchy; my system presupposes
that men who govern themselves will govern their children. To-day we all
use Popular Education as meaning education of the people. I wish I could
use it as meaning education by the people.

The urgent point at present is that these expansive educators do
not avoid the violence of authority an inch more than the old school
masters. Nay, it might be maintained that they avoid it less. The old
village schoolmaster beat a boy for not learning grammar and sent him
out into the playground to play anything he liked; or at nothing, if he
liked that better. The modern scientific schoolmaster pursues him into
the playground and makes him play at cricket, because exercise is so
good for the health. The modern Dr. Busby is a doctor of medicine as
well as a doctor of divinity. He may say that the good of exercise is
self-evident; but he must say it, and say