handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. The schools and universities had no part in such knowledge; their training was for eternal ends. I am not sure that the training in reading and writing that came to be given to selected children in the village schools was not looked upon in the beginning as an initiation into the first step of the path to heavenly wisdom rather than as preparation for the art of living.
The earliest shape taken by this idea of the philosophic school or university is found in the Asram, or forest school, of ancient India. According to an old custom, the youth in his student days left home and went to stay with the Guru or wise man in his hermitage, there to lead the simple ascetic life of the learner and disciple, and to live close to the very heart of Mother Nature, away from all the excitements of cities. This old ideal of education appealed very strongly to Rabindranath. Recently he has said in a Bengali article, "We do not want nowadays temples of worship and outward rites and ceremonies; what we really want is an Asram. We want a place where the beauty of nature and the noblest pursuits of man are in a pleasant harmony. Our temple of worship is there, where outward
