the cleverest writer of to-day. Look back at the quotations on page 90 f.; have the discovery of the Antipodes or the advances of science antiquated them?

Sir H. Johnston's fallacy springs from the idea that education is acquisition of knowledge; and no one has more concisely stated the objection to this than a Greek thinker of the sixth century B.C. πολυμαθία νόον οὐ διδάσκει, said Heraclitus, (C masses of knowledge do not instruct a mind." If the sole object of education was to impart facts, then a modern text-book on morals might be more useful than Aristotle, though its moral teaching would probably be feebler, and though it might possibly contain more cardinal errors. But, while education must impart the knowledge necessary for the conduct of life, its prime end is not Toλvualía but the development of vous, the training of an inquisitive, acute, industrious, patient, truth-loving mind, which knows what facts are essential and what are unimportant, when a thing is proved, and when it is not. When this has been done, we have something which knows how to collect facts, and when collected, how to use them. Without it we are like men who try to carpenter before they have

;

got tools. It is not developed by studying textbooks, but by living with the great men who have had a portion of this spirit, and who inspire it. It is the prophet's mantle, which only the prophet can bestow. In education, as in life, the deepest impressions are made on us by contact with great personalities.

Anyone who looks back on his school-days, recalls a long succession of teachers. Some were full of knowledge, some were able to impart it; some were neither. But few really influenced us, and those, most people would say, were the men with personality. We remember them, for they gave us not knowledge, but something rarer, more fertile, more unforgettable—a way of looking at life. If we could have our education over again, we should ignore the others and go back to them, for they are the real educators. Facts we can pick up for ourselves, but an outlook on life, a spirit in which to interpret and face it, cannot be had from manuals, but only from living personalities or from books into which such personalities have passed. That is why, as any teacher knows, it is far more profitable for a student, say of philosophy, to read, for instance, Kant, with all Kant's obscurity, errors, and preposterous language, than to read a modern

book on him, which has eliminated the errors, and purified the language, but in which the personal touch of the master is no longer felt. In the one case he has met and known a genius, in the other he has not. That is why the Greeks maintain a hold on education. With a clearness of thought and expression, very foreign to Kant, they offer us many things-unsurpassed achievements in art and literature, the example of a rich, complete life, the spectacle of reason incarnate, reason in religion, politics, philosophy, history, letters, life. They knew less than we, but they had more of the spirit which begets knowledge; otherwise they could not have brought, as they did, light out of dark

ness.

And what is equally important, they present knowledge not as a dull necessity, but as an ideal, beautiful, imaginative, passionate quest. If we want vous rather than Toλuμalía, where shall we find purer than in them?

it

Let us evoke the most famous of them; for in popular thought Socrates is generally so regarded; and certainly to know nothing of him is to ignore a man who is in the world of thought almost what Christ is in the world of religion. The scene is a market-place, and an elderly man is the centre of

a group, chiefly young and well-to-do. The conversation shifts over a wide field, from the belief in immortality to the qualities of a good general, or the means of making men patriotic, but it tends to come back to a discussion of general ideas-what are righteousness, justice, temperance, courage, love? And it is always conducted by question and answer, Socrates leading his audience round to the conclusion which reflection shows them to hold. It is a method which he calls, from his mother's profession, intellectual midwifery. At this moment Socrates is talking to a rather pompous priest, who is arguing that 'religion' compels him to prosecute his father for leaving a murderer bound hand and foot to die in a ditch from neglect. "And what is religion, Euthyphro?" Socrates says. Then follow various definitions, as Euthyphro is driven from position to position by the searching enquiries of his friend. "It is doing what I do, prosecuting anyone guilty of murder or similar crimes." "It is what is dear to the gods." "It is attention to the gods, serving and ministering to them as our servants minister to us." But one by one the definitions, as Euthyphro says, "on whatever ground they are rested, seem to turn round and walk away from us" before that remorseless

dialectic. After all, how many people could give a satisfactory account of what 'religion' really is?

Why is this little history of thought?

society so important in the Why is it possible to compare the influence of Socrates in his own particular sphere with that of Christ in religion-Socrates who spent his life in trying to discover, by question and answer, the real meaning of justice, virtue, courage and other abstract terms?

Partly it is the personality of this Greek who charged himself with the mission of preaching virtue to men and the duty of improving their souls,' who spent his life in giving his message, refused to modify it when it was unpopular, and for its sake went so willingly to death; partly it is the message itself, partly the manner in which it was delivered.

One great danger of the modern world is our susceptibility to the general ideas that float around us, thick as bacilli, in the air, that pass our lips so often, and are so influential in our lives, that we use so readily without ever having analysed what we really mean by them. We are hardly conscious of this danger, though the example of a great nation on the Continent, besotted and maddened by false ideas, might have brought it home to us.