ward the goal
of a worthy human society may begin.

CHAPTER VIII

MORALITY

"Generally speaking, the intellectualist phase [of a boy's career] is
remarkably brief. Just occasionally its morals are such as to cause
the swift expulsion of its leaders. More often they leave in the
natural course of things, or grow weary of their pose--which has,
indeed, not made them popular--and return after the holidays frankly
and unaffectedly Philistine. This transient fashion is not new. What
is new is the deliberate encouragement given to it by a certain type of
assistant master. We do not imply that the wise master will
suppress... That kind of intellectual measles will work itself out...
But to leave the phase alone is one thing; deliberately to foster and
give it official backing is quite another."--_The Church Times_.

When the morality of the public schools is being discussed, attention
is usually concentrated almost exclusively on that particular branch of
morality which is concerned with sex. Nor is this unnatural; for sex
plays so important a part in the life of a growing boy, and the
development of his character is so closely bound up with the
development of his physical nature, that the determining part may be
very easily confused with the whole. Yet there are many boys who are
sexually virtuous, but filled with the worst type of hardness and
intolerance; many, too, who are sexually vicious, yet full of love and
sympathy. To imagine that the problem of public school morality is
solved as soon as we have discovered the best method of making public
school boys continent, is to look at the matter from an altogether too
narrow angle; for the sins of the spirit, we have been told, are more
unpardonable than the sins of the flesh.

Nevertheless, when we have said this, as say it we must, the fact
remains that the sex question is one of overwhelming importance. For
if once self-indulgence is allowed to become firmly rooted in a boy's
character, in the majority of cases it will be ineradicable; and he
will either be the victim throughout a great part of his life of
temptations which he loathes, and which will be a constant source of
unhappiness to him, or he will end by acquiescing in a manner of life
which is degrading, it may be to himself alone, it may be both to
himself and others. It will be urged, of course, as it has been urged
against every school novel which has attempted to give a true picture
of