It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic. This book is concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very broad sense we here attach to the term. Our contention is that that subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the basis and foundation of liberal education. With that idea in view, we have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and religion. And then it might seem well to make an end. But an education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding. Our previous book suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a purely utilitarian one. That was not at all the impression we wished to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a curriculum which took politics as its centre. But we offer these remarks with much diffidence. If this book and its predecessor have any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of experience deserts us.

One very natural criticism of our thesis is that politics, though it may stimulate interest, cannot provide intellectual discipline. The criticism is natural because, so long as the English subjects are regarded as a subsidiary matter, they are and will be treated by masters and boys in an easy going manner. Other and sterner subjects are reckoned on to supply the disciplinary factor which the English subjects lack. There is, in fact, a very prevalent idea that interest and discipline vary inversely to one another; that discipline is to be found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found in doing what is "slack." This is very bad psychology. For we aim at training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for nothing but slavery. The only valuable discipline is self-discipline, and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has realised that he will have become interested. Again, what is interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack." The mistake seems to arise from a confusion of ideas in connection with the word "easy." It is no more "easy" to write an adequate essay on the subject of National Guilds than it is to learn the principal parts of a large number of irregular verbs: possibly it is much more difficult. But under certain conditions which we have seen produced, a boy will find it "easy" to gird himself up to the former task; indeed, he will get so absorbed that he will find it difficult to leave off. Few questions are less "easy" than those connected with a paper-money currency, but one half-holiday afternoon we found a vigorous discussion on this subject in progress between a group of cricketers whom rain had driven to the pavilion. Ordinary history teaching, if only time is allowed and certificate examinations do hot threaten, affords scope for a great variety of exercises demanding careful thought and accurate knowledge.

So much in answer to the suggestion that only through the non-political subjects can real hard work be secured.

The non-political subjects fall into three groups—languages, mathematics, and the natural sciences.

Probably no one regards the teaching of foreign languages in the public schools as at all satisfactory at present, and the chief reason is that far too much is attempted, with far too little consideration of what will be achieved. Most boys are either simultaneously learning, or have at one time simultaneously tried to learn, three foreign languages, Latin, Greek, and French, or Latin, French, and German. The burden is too heavy for them to bear. Only the minority have any real gift for foreign languages, and for the rest the aim should be one foreign language only. Little will be accomplished in any subject unless there is a real ambition to learn, and there can be no such ambition unless a definite goal is in sight. The goal here is real knowledge in a foreign language, for half or quarter-knowledge of a foreign language is a most unsatisfying accomplishment. The obvious language is French. Even so, many will not learn to write it correctly, and as for speaking it, that is an accomplishment so much more conveniently acquired elsewhere that we offer no opinion as to how far it is worth attempting at school.[1] But fluent reading of French is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that his ambitions may well be roused. And the accomplishment is one that can quickly be made useful. For instance, probably the best general history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French is about the easiest ever written. But we would go further. We remember once a boy being birched for circulating a copy of La Vie Parisienne. Does not this suggest that every house should take a French daily newspaper, and also an illustrated weekly, other than that above mentioned?

But while advocating the single language for the ordinary boy, we are pulled up short by the claims of Latin; and here we feel a difficulty. A good deal of what is said in favour of Latin we regard as pure superstition. It is not true that boys can only learn to write their own language correctly by means of Latin prose. Nor is it true that Latin prose supplies the ideal mental discipline. That is only true for the minority of boys who reach the stage at which real Latin prose is written. Most flounder about all their time in the stage of artificial Latin prose, wherein is nothing more than the meticulous application of a set of laboriously acquired grammatical rules—a tolerable training in conscientious application, such as any subject can supply, but nothing more. Yet it may well be true—on this point we feel uncertain—that an elementary knowledge of Latin supplies such a foundation for the understanding both of English and French, that it is worth making some sacrifices to retain it. If that be so, we would start every boy on Latin as his first foreign language. Those who showed little ability would abandon it at about the time they began French.

In the case of boys with some real linguistic ability, we are happy to find ourselves thoroughly conservative. We believe firmly in the grand old fortifying classical curriculum, provided it is understood that the languages themselves are but means to an end, to the understanding of the classical civilisation. In fine, the goal of classics should be to-day, as it was for the Renaissance scholars, ultimately political. The classical student who, at the time when his schooling ends, is still doing no more than "settling Hoti's business" and "properly basing Oun," is in the position of Browning's "Grammarian," with this vital difference that he probably does not intend to employ his future life in building any superstructure upon the foundations thus laboriously laid.

In mathematics there is probably a deeper cleavage than in any other subject between the real thing, as mathematicians understand it, and the elementary knowledge within the reach of all. "The real thing" is perhaps the most remote and specialised of all branches of learning. For a few it is the best, indeed, the only natural, line of development; but these are few and easily recognised, and even they should not be allowed to specialise too narrowly—that is a point which no one who is not a mathematician will dispute. At the other end of the scale comes the third of the three R's; and about that again there is no controversy, except as to the best methods of teaching it.[2] Yet the schools do not recognise sufficiently clearly this line of cleavage, and many boys who are presumed to have reached the end of the elementary stage remain for some time battering in vain at the doors of the inner temple. These should go back once over the elements again to see if they know them, and then give it up for good. This will mean a cheerful exodus from the upper-middle mathematical divisions. We confess to sympathy with the conservative-radical head master who said, "I shall not advocate the abolition of compulsory Greek in University examinations until I can get people to agree to the abolition of compulsory Algebra."

There is perhaps a middle term between elementary and "real" mathematics; that is the mathematics that is the handmaid of physics, and leads us on to the natural sciences.

To-day the claims of natural science are very insistent, and they come from more than one quarter. From one quarter comes the claim that science alone of the subjects in the time-table "means business," and makes money, and that in these strenuous times other subjects that lead to mere elegant accomplishments must crowd into a narrow space to make room for the one subject that makes for sheer efficiency. The point is often put with a certain crudity; but we may as well ignore that, and recognise that the just claims of commercial training will have to be met by the schools more fully than heretofore. Only let us recognise commercial training for what it is, and not pretend that it can ever offer a substitute for the liberal education which must continue alongside of it. But the teacher of science will more often take quite other ground, and will claim that his subject, over and above its commercial usefulness, provides most of the ingredients of a Liberal education in itself. He will point to the training it offers in habits of conscientious accuracy, its exemplification of the laws of cause and effect, its undeviating respect for truth, and the inspiration of its endless progress, built up on the heroic researches of the great pioneers.

This claim demands careful and sympathetic scrutiny. To begin with criticism, we are quite unconvinced that science alone can train the mind to logical methods, or imbue it with a respect for truth in matters outside the scientific sphere. "Science," as the term is commonly understood, deals with material things, and, as such, it gives but little support to the mind when confronted with the problems of humanity, whether personal or political. It is only too common for the science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and despise it in a newspaper. In science no passions are evoked in favour of one solution or another. The search for truth may well be disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested. A liberal education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest, and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and self-interest will not come into play.

As regards ordinary laboratory work, and lectures on laboratory detail, of which science teaching at present, as many science masters agree, far too exclusively consists, our view is similar to our view on mathematics. It is often instructive, both for boy and master, to get the boys to draw up an ideal time-table. The results, as a rule, are disappointingly conventional, it is true. Few boys have ever criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out every week. But as regards science, it will often be found that the form falls into two clearly marked divisions. One part cut it down to a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the time-table. This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a notion of method, is all that they will benefit by. For the rest the training has real value and interest; but these are a minority.

But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal education. Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled, we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of Science, alongside with modern history and political science and economics. The general principles of natural law, evolution and heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter, general principles of astronomy—these things seem to us second only in importance to the great principles of politics themselves. Here is an extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral. For it seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should react—so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already tried to show—most favourably on the political spirit. Dr. Gregory, in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the truth as to confound the other side…. A politician may place party above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at all costs. In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which views all subjects through the distorting mirage of party prejudice, stands the absolute freedom of mind of the man of science who stands with open arms to welcome truth…." And Dr. Gregory's moral would seem to be: Eschew politics and devote yourself to science. As if the world could exist without politics! As if the happy alternative to bad politicians were no politicians! The right moral surely is that which we have been drawing, with possibly wearisome repetition, throughout this book; that all that is best in the scientific mind, all that is best in the literary and artistic mind, all that is best in the religious mind, must be brought to bear upon the problems of our corporate life.

[1] We offer no opinion, also, on the "oral method" of teaching both modern and classical tongues, as we have no experience at all to guide us.

[2] Surely, too, the third of the three R's should include a knowledge of book-keeping, balance sheets, etc. Here we join hands heartily with the "utilitarian" school of educational reformers. We also wish that every one learnt shorthand almost as soon as he had learnt longhand.