ould lastly observe, is gentle
towards that spirit which learns of it. It teaches by
_apprehension_ not by _comprehension_--which is what many
philosophers try to do, and, in trying, break their jugs and
spill the contents. Literature understands man and of what he is
capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be 'harsh and
crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' but the trouble with most of its
practitioners is that they try to _comprehend_ the Universe. Now
the man who could comprehend the Universe would _ipso facto_
comprehend God, and be _ipso facto_ a Super-God, able to dethrone
him, and in the arrogance of his intellectual conceit full ready
to make the attempt.

[Footnote 1: Do you remember, by the by, Samuel Rogers's lines
on Lady Jane Grey? They have always seemed to me very beautiful:

Like her most gentle, most unfortunate,
Crown'd but to die--who in her chamber sate
Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown,
And every ear and every heart was won,
And all in green array were chasing down the sun!]

LECTURE III

CHILDREN'S READING (I)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1917

I have often wished, Gentlemen, that some more winning name could
be found for the thing we call Education; and I have sometimes
thought wistfully that, had we made a better thing of it, we
should long ago have found a more amiable, a blither, name.

For after all it concerns the child; and is it quite an accident
that, weaning him away from lovely things that so lovelily call
themselves 'love,' 'home,' 'mother,' we can find no more alluring
titles for the streets into which we entrap him than 'Educational
Facilities,' 'Local Examinations,' 'Preceptors,' 'Pedagogues,'
'Professors,' 'Matriculations,' 'Certificates,' 'Diplomas,'
'Seminaries,' Elementary or Primary, and Secondary Codes,'
'Continuation Classes,' 'Reformatories,' 'Inspectors,' 'Local
Authorities,' 'Provided' and 'Non-Provided,' 'Denominational' and
'Undenominational,' and 'D.Litt.' and 'Mus. Bac.'? Expressive
terms, no doubt!--but I ask with the poet

Who can track
A Grace's naked foot amid them all?

Take even such words as should be perennially beautiful by
connotation-words such as 'Academy,' 'Museum.' Does the one (O,
"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy!") call up visions
of that green lawn by Cephissus, of its olives and plane trees
and the mirrored statues among which Plato walked and held
discourse with his few? Does the o