Towards A Philosophy of Education

by Charlotte Marie Mason

 “ALL KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL MEN.” 
                  - Comenius.

                                     “Books, we know,
 Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
 Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
 Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”
                                 -Wordsworth.

BOOK I

Chapter 1 - Self Education

Not self-expression--A person, built up from within--Life, sustained on food--Plant analogy misleading--Mental and physical gymnastics--Mental food--The life of the mind--Proper sustenance--Knowledge, not sensation or information--Education, of the spirit--Cannot be applied from without--Modern educators belittle children--Education will profit by divorce from sociology--Danger of an alliance with pathology--A comprehensive theory--Fits all ages--Self-education--All children have intellectual capacity--Should learn to ‘read’ before mechanical art of reading--Are much occupied with things and books--A knowledge of principles, necessary--Education chaotic for want of unifying theory--The motive that counts.

Chapter 2 - Children are Born Persons

1.--The Mind of a Child: The baby, more than a huge oyster--Poets on infancy--Accomplishments of a child of two--Education does not produce mind--The range of a child’s thoughts--Reason and imagination present in the infant--Will and wilfulness.

2.--The Mind of a School-Child: Amazing potentialities--Brain, the organ of mind--The “unconscious mind,” a region of symptoms--Mind, being spiritual, knows no fatigue--Brain, duly fed, should not know fatigue--A “play-way” does not lead to mind--Nor does environment--Mind must come into contact with mind--What is mind?--Material things have little effect upon mind--Education, the evidence of things not seen--Ideas, only fit sustenance for mind--Children must have great ideas--Children experience what they hear and read of--Our want of confidence in children--Children see, in their minds--Mind, one and works altogether--Children must see the world--Dangers of technical, commercial, historical geography--Every man’s mind, his means of living--All classes must be educated--The æsthetic sense--A child’s intellect and heart already furnished--He learns to order his life.

3.--Motives for Learning: Diluted teaching--Every child has infinite possibilities--The Parents’ Union School--The House of Education--Teachers must know capabilities and requirements of children.

Chapter 3 - The Good and Evil Nature of a Child

1.--Well-Being of Body: “Children of wrath”--“Little angel” theory--Good and evil tendencies--Education, handmaid of Religion--Religion becoming more magnanimous--New-born children start fair--Children, more of persons in their homes--Appetites--Senses--Undue nervous tension--Overpowering personality--Parasitic habits.

2.--Well-Being of Mind: Mind, not a chartered libertine--Has good and evil tendencies--Intellectual evil--Intellect enthroned in every child--A child’s vivifying imagination--Explanations unnecessary--Children sense the meaning of a passage--Incuria--Going over same ground--Dangers of specialisation--Of the questionnaire--Capacity v. aptness--Imagination, good and evil--Reason deified by the unlearned--Fallacious reasoning--A liberal education necessary--The beauty sense.

3.--Intellectual Appetite: The desires--Wrong use of--Love of knowledge sufficient stimulus.

4.--Misdirected Affections: The feelings--Love and justice--Moral education--Children must not be fed morally--They want food whose issue is conduct--Moral lessons worse than useless--Every child endowed with love--And justice--Rights and duties--Fine art of self-adjustment--To think fairly requires knowledge--Our thoughts are not our own--Truth, justice in word--Opinions show integrity of thought--Sound principles--All children intellectually hungry--Starve on the three R’s.

5.--The Well-Being of the Soul: Education and the Soul of a child--Ignorance of the child--Approaches towards God--How knowledge grows--Narration--Great thoughts of great thinkers illuminate children--Education drowned by talk--Formative influence of knowledge--Self-expression--Education, a going forth of the mind--The “unconscious mind”--Mind always conscious--But thinks in ways of which we are unconscious--Dangers of introspection--“Complexes”--Necessity for a Philosophy of Education.

Chapter 4 - Authority and Docility

Deputed authority, lodged in everyone--No such thing as anarchy--A mere transference of authority--Authority makes for Liberty--Order, the outcome of authority--Docility, universal--The principles of authority and docility inherent in everyone--Crux, to find the mean--Freedom, offered as solution--“Proud subjection and dignified obedience”--Secured by feeding the mind--Subservience v. docility--Docility implies equality--Physical activities do not sustain mind--Many relationships must be established--No undue emphasis--Sense of must in teacher and child--Freedom comes with knowledge--The office makes the man--Children must have responsibility of learning--The potency of their minds--All children have quick apprehension--And the power of attention--Humane letters make for efficiency--Delightful to use any power--Common interests--Powers of attention and recollection a national asset--But want of intellectual interests a serious handicap.

Chapter 5 - The Sacredness of Personality

An adequate conception of children necessary--All action comes from the ideas held--The child’s estate higher than ours--Methods of undermining personality--Fear--Love--“Suggestion”--Influence--Methods of stultifying intellectual and moral growth--The desires--Of approbation--Of emulation--Of ambition--Of society--The natural desire of knowledge--Definite progress, a condition of education--Doctrine of equal opportunities for all, dangerous--But a liberal education the possibility for all.

Chapter 6 - Three Instruments of Education

1.--Education is an Atmosphere: Only three means of education--Not an artificial environment--But a natural atmosphere--Children must face life as it is--But must not be overburdened by the effort of decision--Dangers of intellectual feebleness and moral softness--Bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity--Not a too stimulating atmosphere--Dangers of “running wild”--Serenity comes with the food of knowledge--Two courses open to us.

2.--Education is a Discipline: We must all make efforts--But a new point of view, necessary--Children must work for themselves--Must perform the act of knowing--Attention, the hall-mark of an educated person--Other good habits attending upon due self-education--Spirit, acts upon matter--Habit is to life what rails are to transport cars--Habit is inevitable--Genesis of habit--Habits of the ordered life--Habits of the religious life--De Quincey on going to church--Danger of thinking in a groove--Fads.

3.--Education is a Life: Life is not self-existing--Body pines upon food substitutes--Mind cannot live upon information--What is an idea?--A live thing of the mind--Potency of an idea--Coleridge on ideas--Platonic doctrine of ideas--Functions of education not chiefly gymnastic--Dangers attendant upon “original composition”--Ideas, of spiritual origin--The child, an eclectic--Resists forcible feeding--We must take the risk of the indirect literary form--Ideas must be presented with much literary padding--No one capable of making extracts--Opinions v. ideas--Given an idea, mind performs acts of selection and inception--Must have humane reading as well as human thought.

Chapter 7 - How We Make Use Of Mind

Herbartian Psychology--“Apperception masses”--Dangers of correlation--“Concentration series”--Children reduced to inanities--Mind, a spiritual organism--Cannot live upon “sweetmeats”--Burden of education thrown on teacher--Danger of exalting personality of teacher--“Delightful lessons”--Across the Bridges, by A. Paterson--Blind alleys--Unemployment--Best boys run to seed--Continuation Classes--Education Act of 1918--An eight hours’ University course--Academic ideal of Education--Continuation school, a People’s University--Dangers of utilitarian education--The “humanities” in English--Narration prepares for public speaking--Father of the People’s High Schools--Munich schools--Worship of efficiency--A well-grounded humanistic training produces capacity--Mr. Fisher on Continuation Schools--A more excellent way--Education from six to seventeen--A liberal education for all.

Chapter 8 - The Way of the Will

Will, “the sole practical faculty”--“The will is the man”--Its function, to choose, to decide--Opinions provided for us--We take second-hand principles--One possible achievement, character--Aim in education, less conduct than character--Assaults upon the will--“Suggestion”--Voluntary and involuntary action--We must choose between suggestions--Danger of suggestion given by another with intent--Vicarious choosing--Weakens power of choice--Parasitic creatures may become criminal--Gordon Riots--His will, the safeguard of a man--Indecent to probe thoughts of the “unconscious mind”--Right thinking, not self-expression--It flows upon the stimulus of an idea--Will must be fortified--Knowledge of the “city of Mansoul” necessary--Also instruction concerning the will--Dangers of drifting--A child must distinguish between will and wilfulness--A strong will and “being good”--Will must have object outside of self--Is of slow growth--Will v. impulse--A constant will, compasses evil or good--The “single eye”--Bushido--Will, subject to solicitation--Does not act alone--Takes the whole man--He must understand in order to will--Will, a free agent--Choice, a heavy labour--Obedience, the sustainer of personality--Obedience of choice--Persons of constant will--Dangers of weak allowance--Two services open to all--Self and God--Will is supreme--Will wearies of opposition--Diversion--The “way of the will”--Freewill--We may not think what we please--Will supported by instructed conscience and trained reason--Education must prepare for immediate choice--Adequate education must be outward bound.

Chapter 9 - The Way of the Reason

Reason brings forward infallible proofs--May be furtherer of counsels, good or bad--Inventions--How did you think of it?--Children should follow steps of reasoning--Psychology of crime--Reasonable and right, not synonymous--Reason works involuntarily--Reason never begins it--Reason will affirm any theory--Logic, the formula of reason--But not necessarily right--Beauty and wonder of act of reasoning--But there are limitations--We must be able to expose fallacies--Karl Marx--Socialistic thought of to-day--Reason requires material to work upon--Reason subject to habit--Children must have principles--Be able to detect fallacies--Must know what Religion is--Miracles--Quasi-religious offers--Great things of life cannot be proved--Reason is fallible--Children, intensely reasonable--Reasoning power of a child does not wait upon training--But children do not generalise--Must not be hurried to formulate--Mathematics should not monopolise undue time--Cannot alone produce a reasonable soul.

Chapter 10 - The Curriculum

Standard in Secondary Schools set by public examinations--Elementary Schools less limited with regard to subjects--A complete curriculum in the nature of things--Education still at sea--Children have inherent claims--Law of supply and demand--Human nature a composite whole--The educational rights of man--We may not pick and choose--Shelley offers a key--Mistakes v. howlers--Knowledge should be consecutive, intelligent, complete--Hours of work, not number of subjects, bring fatigue--Short hours--No preparation.

Section I: The Knowledge of God

Knowledge of God indispensable--Mothers communicate it best--Relation to God a first-born affinity--“Kiddies” not expected to understand--School education begins at six--No conscious mental effort should be required earlier--Dr. Johnson on “telling again”--Two aspects of Religion--Attitude of Will towards God--Gradual perception of God--Goethe on repose of soul--Children must have passive as well as active principle--New Testament teaching must be grounded on Old--Sceptical children--Must not be evaded or answered finally--A thoughtful commentator necessary--Method of lessons, six to twelve, twelve to fifteen, fifteen to eighteen--Aids of modern scholarship--Dogmatic teaching comes by inference--Very little hortatory teaching desirable--Synthetic study of life and teaching of Christ, a necessity--“Authentic comment” essayed in verse--Catechism--Prayer Book--Church History.

Section II: The Knowledge of Man

(a) History: Montaigne on history--The League of Nations and its parallels--Henry VIII on precedent--Dangers of indifference to history--Rational patriotism depends upon knowledge of history--History must give more than impressions and opinions--P.U.S. method multiplies time--Concentrated attention given to the right books--Condition, a single reading--Attention a natural function--Teacher’s interest an incentive--Teacher who “makes allowance” for wandering, hinders--Narration in the history lesson--Distinction between word memory and mind memory--English history for children of six to nine--Of nine to twelve--French history--Ancient history--For children of twelve to fifteen--Indian history--European history--History for pupils of fifteen to eighteen--Literature--A mental pageant of history--Gives weight to decisions, consideration to action, stability to conduct--Labour unrest--Infinite educability of all classes--Equal opportunity should be afforded--But uneasiness apt to follow--Knowledge brings its own satisfaction--Education merely a means of getting on, or, of progress towards high thinking and plain living.

(b) Literature: Literature in Form I--Classics, not written down--In Form II--Children show originality in “mere narration”--Just as Scott, Shakespeare, Homer--Children all sit down to the same feast--Each gets according to his needs and powers--Reading for Forms III and IV--Abridged editions undesirable--Children take pleasure in the “dry” parts--Must have a sense of wide spaces for the imagination to wander in--Judgment turns over the folios of the mind--Statesmanship, formed upon wide reading--Reading for Forms V and VI (fifteen to eighteen).

(c) Morals and Economics: Citizenship: Form I--Tales--Fables--Hears of great citizens--Form II--The inspiration of citizenship--Plutarch--Present day citizenship--Problems of good and evil--Plutarch does not label actions--Children weary of the doctored tale--The human story always interesting--Jacob--The good, which is all virtuous, palls--Children must see life whole--Must be protected from grossness by literary medium--Learn the science of proportion--Difficulty of choosing books--Chastely taught children watch their thoughts--Expurgated editions--Processes of nature must not be associated with impurity--Games--Offences bred in the mind--Mind must be continually and wholesomely occupied--A sound body and a sound mind--Ourselves, our Souls and Bodies--An ordered presentation of the possibilities and powers of human nature.

(d) Composition: Oral, from six to seven--Dangers of teaching composition--The art of “telling”--Power of composition innate--Oral and written from nine to twelve--Integral part of education in every subject--From twelve to fifteen--An inevitable consequence of free and exact use of books--Verse--Scansion--Rhythm--Accent--Subject must be one of keen interest--From fifteen to eighteen, some definite teaching--Suggestions or corrections--Education bears on the issues and interests of everyday life.

(e) Languages: English--Grammar--Begin with sentence--Difficulty of abstract knowledge--French--Narration from the beginning--Italian--German--Latin.

(f) Art: Art is of the spirit--Reverent knowledge of pictures themselves--Method--No talk of schools of painting or style--Picture tells its own tale--Drawing--Original illustrations--Figures--Objects--Colour--Field studies--Architecture--Clay-modelling--Artistic handicrafts--Musical Appreciation.

Section III: The Knowledge of the Universe

(a) Science: Huxley--“Common information”--Books should be literary in character--French approach to science--Principles underlying science meet for literary treatment--Details of application too technical for school work--Universal principles must be linked with common incidents--Verbiage that darkens counsel--Out-of-door work--Natural history, botany, astronomy, physiology, hygiene, general science--A due combination of field work with literary comments--Fatal divorce between science and the “humanities”--Nature Note Books--Science not a utilitarian subject. Geography: Suffers from utilitarian spirit--Mystery and beauty gone--Modern geography, concerned with man’s profit--A map should unfold a panorama of delight--Map work--Children read and picture descriptions--Knowledge of England, a key to the world--Naval history--Empire geography--Current geography--Countries of Europe--Romance of natural features, peoples, history, industries--Generalisations, not geography--Children must see with the mind’s eye--Two ways of teaching geography--Inferential method--But general principles open to modification--No local colour and personal interests--No imaginative conception--Panoramic method--Gives colour, detail, proportion, principles--Pictures not of much use--Except those constructed by the imagination from written descriptions--Survey of Asia--Africa--America--Physical geography--Geography in connection with history--Practical geography.

(b) Mathematics: Reasoning powers do not wait upon our training--Beauty and truth of Mathematics--A sense of limitation wholesome--We should hear sursum corda in natural law--Mind invigorated by hard exercise--Mathematics easy to examine upon--Dangers of education directed not to awaken awe but to secure exactness--Which does not serve in other departments of life--Work upon special lines qualifies for work on those only--Mathematics to be studied for their own sake--Not as they make for general intelligence and grasp of mind--Genius has her rights--Tendency to sacrifice the “humanities” to Mathematics--Mathematics depend upon the teacher--Few subjects worse taught--A necessary part of education.

(c) Physical Development, Handicrafts. No special methods for these.

BOOK II: Theory Applied

Chapter 1 - A Liberal Education in Elementary Schools

A liberal education, birthright of every child--Good life implies cultivated intelligence--Difficulty of offering Humanism to everyone--Problem solved at last--by the Drighlington School (Yorks)--Teachers, not satisfied--Potency, not property, characteristic of mind--We try to give potency rather than knowledge--Result, devitalisation--Mind receives knowledge in order to grow, not to know--Office of teacher depreciated--He has prophetic power of appeal and inspiration--Delightful commerce of equal minds--And friction of wills ceases--Children not products of education and environment--Carlyle on “a person”--Children not incomplete and undeveloped, but ignorant and weak--Potentialities of a child as he is--David Copperfield--Knowledge, conceived in mind--Ignorance, a chief cause of our difficulties--Matthew Arnold--Three divisions of knowledge--All classed under Humanism--Mind acts upon it--Vitality results--Mind and knowledge like ball and socket joint--Results of P.N.E.U. method made good by thousands of children--Work done by self-effort--Single reading tested by narration--No revision--For children know--Use proper names with ease--Write fully--Rarely make howlers--Get at gist of book or subject--Children of six to eight dictate answers at examination time--Teacher reads with intention--Is careful to produce author--Children listen with attention--No selection of subjects--Book read through--Older children read for themselves--Work done in less time--No preparation--No working-up--Time for vocational work--Such education, a social lever--A venture of faith--In knowledge and in children--A new product appears--Peculiar experience, misleading--General experience testifies to laws--Usual educational equipment based on false assumption--Which intervenes between child and knowledge--Method specially suitable for large classes--Labour of correction minimised--Choice of books--Character of P.U.S. examination--Children reject wrong book--Great cause of Education v. Civilisation--Grand elementary principle of pleasure--Only one education common to all.

Chapter 2 - A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools

Pelmanism, an indictment--Monotonous drudgery the stumbling-block to education--A “play way”--Handicrafts--Eurhythmics--Enthusiasm of teachers amazing--Education, a passion--Joan and Peter types--Public School men do the work of the world--But schools do not teach what a boy wants to know--Mulish resistance--Ways of mind subtle and evasive--The error of “not what you know that matters but how you learn it”--Every school must educate every scholar--What is knowledge?--Intellectual requirements satisfied by bridge and golf--Attention acts without marks, praise or blame--But training, not education--No faculties, only mind--Text-books make no appeal to mind--Way of Natural Science through field work illuminated by literature--Mind, a crucible, but no power to distil ideas from sawdust--Dr. Arnold--“Very various reading”--Mind, a deceiver ever--Class will occupy itself and accomplish nothing--Outer court of mind--Inner place where personality dwells--We “go over it in our minds”--Attention must not be allowed a crutch--Should be tested by the reader--Knowledge, received with attention, fixed by narration--We have ceased to believe in mind--Physical brain and spiritual mind--Education must go as a bolt to the mind--Teacher not a bridge--A key to humanistic teaching in English--A liberal education, measured by the number of substantives used with fitness and simplicity--The school not merely a nursery for the formation of character--Knowledge in common for the “masses” and the “classes”--All hearts rise to a familiar allusion--Speech with those who know--Opposition, natural resource of ignorance--A democratic education--We shall cease to present motives of self-interest and personal advantage--The classics in English--Old exclusive education must broaden its base and narrow its bounds--Avoid overlapping--Academic success and knowledge not the same thing--Brilliant, average and dull children delight in knowledge--It unites the household--Makes children delightful companions--A fine sense of things worth knowing and living for--Magnanimity, proper outcome of education--The schoolboy’s sterile syllabus--In spite of culture common among teachers--A method which brings promise of relief from aphasia--Barrenness in the written essay--Oral composition, a habit from six to eighteen--Method cannot be worked without a firm adherence to principle--Otherwise the books a failure--Parents must provide necessary books--Which must take root in the homes--Spelling comes with the use of books--Books and text-books--The choice of books, a question of division of labour--Terminal examinations, records of permanent value--Bible teaching must further the knowledge of God--The law and the prophets still interpreters--History, the rich pasture of the mind--Amyot on history--Plutarch--Poets--Every age has its poetic aspect--Gathered up by a Shakespeare--A Dante--A world possession--An essence of history which is poetry--An essence of science to be expressed in exquisite prose--Art--Drawing, not a means of self-expression--Languages--Possibility of becoming linguists--Finally, another basis for education--Which must be in touch with life--We aim at securing the vitality of many minds--Which shall make England great in art and in life--Great character comes from great thoughts--Great thoughts from great thinkers--Thinking, not doing, the source of character.

Chapter 3 - The Scope of Continuation Schools

Napoleonic Wars outcome of the wrong thinking of ignorance--Intellectual renaissance followed--To be superseded by the utilitarian motive--Continuation School movement--Technical education--The Munich Schools--“The utilitarian theory profoundly immoral”--“Service and self-direction”--But food and work not synonymous terms--The wide reading of great statesmen--Duly ordered education means self-sustaining minds and bodies--Moral bankruptcy--Co-existent with utilitarian education--Moral madness--National insanity--The better man does better work--German efficiency--We depreciate ourselves--People’s High Schools of Denmark--“A well of healing in the land”--“To blend all classes into one”--A profoundly Christian movement--Widely liberal as that of the “Angelic Doctor”--Agricultural schools--Humanistic training for business capacity--A village should offer happy community life--Intellectual well-being makes for stability--An empty mind seizes on any notion--A hungry mind, responsible for labour unrest--Continuation Schools should not exist for technical instruction--Evening hours still free for recreation--Eight hours a week for things of the mind--Not for opinions--Lest leisure bore and strikes attract--But for knowledge--Not for due exercise but for food--No education but self-education--A great discovery has been vouchsafed--Not a “good idea” or a “good plan”--But a natural law in action--Grundtvig saw impassible barrier of no literary background--But hope of Comenius “all knowledge for all men” is taking shape--In the case of thousands of children--Even dull and backward ones--Under the right conditions--Knowledge meet for the people--The Parents’ Union School--A common curriculum for all children of all classes--Test of a liberal education--Only one education common to all--Nothing can act but where it is--National work done by men brought up on the “humanities”--Fetish of progress--The still progress of growth--The “humanities” in English alone, bring forth stability and efficiency--A common ground of thought has cohesive value--Kindles light in the eyes--Peace, signalised by a new bond of intellectual life--Danger of ignorance in action--A hopeful sign--Demos perceives the lack.

Chapter 4 - The Basis of National Strength; A Liberal Education from a National Standpoint

1. Knowledge: Failure of attempt to educate average boy--Industrial unrest often reveals virtue but want of knowledge--Dangerous tendency--The spirit of the horde--Individual, less important--“Countenance,” a manifestation of thought, dropped out of use--Never were more devoted teachers--Substitutes for knowledge--A mischievous fallacy--A child brought up for uses of society--Joy in living a chief object of education--Knowledge is the source of Pleasure--Children get knowledge for their own sakes--Assets within power of all--Intellectual resources--No dull hours--Knowledge passed like light of torch from mind to mind--Kindled at original minds--A school judged by books used--Indirect method of teaching--Parables of Christ--Not enough even of the right books--Children, beings “of large discourse”--Alertness comes of handling various subjects--Scholarship v. knowledge--Napoleon a great reader--Nations grow great upon books--Queen Louisa of Prussia--Kant--Fichte--The Danes--The Japanese.

2. Letters, Knowledge and Virtue: Classics take so much time--But University men, our educational achievement--Letters, the content of Knowledge--Knowledge, not a store but a state--Culture begins with the knowledge that everything has been said and known--We have a loss to make good--Rich and poor used to be familiar with the Bible--A well of English undefiled--And no longer rule as those who serve--Recklessness due to ignorance--Scholarship, an exquisite distinction--But not the best thing--Erudition, out of count--The average boy--Ladies of the Italian and French Renaissance--Tudor women--“Infinitely informed”--A leakage somewhere--Democracy coming in like a flood--Examination tests should safeguard Letters--Which open life-long resources--We need a practical philosophy--Not to be arrived at by Economics, Eugenics--But gathered harvests of Letters.

3. Knowledge, Reason and Rebellion: Irresponsibility characterises our generation--Lettered ignorance follows specious arguments to logical conclusions--Reason apt to be accompanied by Rebellion--Reason cannot take place of Knowledge--Shakespeare on reason--The art of living is long--Bodies of men act with momentum which may be paralysing or propelling--Glorious thing to perceive action of mind, reasoning power--Greek training in use and power of words--Great thoughts anticipate great works--People, conversant with great thoughts--Knowledge of The Way, the Truth, the Life--A region of sterility in intellectual life--Science the preoccupation of our age--Principle of life goes with flesh stripped away--History expires--Poetry, not brought forth--Religion faints--Science, without wonder, not spiritual--Eighteenth Century Science was alive--Lister--Pasteur--Science, as taught, leaves us cold--Coleridge has revealed the secret--Science waits its literature--We are all to blame--Man does not live by bread alone--We are losing our sense of spiritual values--An industrial revolution--“Humbler franchises” won by the loss of “spiritual things”--Wordsworth--Trade Unionism a tyranny, centuries ago--Predicts no triumph for Syndicalism now--Irresponsible thought and speech--Question must be raised to plane of spiritual things--Working man demands too little--And things that do not matter--For knowledge, the basis of a nation’s strength.

4. New and Old Conceptions of Knowledge: Knowledge, undefined and undefinable--Knowledge v. facts--England suffering from intellectual inanition--Mediæval conception of knowledge--Filosofica della Religione Cattolica--The Adoration of the Lamb--Promethean Fable--Knowledge does not arrive casually--Is not self-generated in man--“The teaching power of the Spirit of God”--Unity of purpose in the education of the race--Knowledge comes to the man who is ready--“Abt Vogler”--All knowledge is sacred--A great whole--Mind lives by knowledge--Which must not be limited by choice--or time--Knowledge and “learning”--Country needs persons of character--“New” educational systems present a grain of knowledge in a gallon of diluent--Rousseau’s theory--Joy in “sport”--Knowledge plays no part in these--“Get understanding,” our need--Fallacious arguments--Prejudice--Platitudes--Insincerity, outcome of ignorance--Most teachers doing excellent work--New universities full of promise--But need for the “Science of Relations”--And the Science of the proportion of things.

5. Education and the Fulness of Life: “I must live my life”--What should the life be?--We are doing something--The book of nature--Relations with Mother Earth--Sports--Handicrafts--Art--We all thrive in the well-being of each--The contribution of our generation to the science of education--Person to be brought up for his own uses--But what of mind?--Mechanical art of reading, not reading--An unsuspected unwritten law concerning “material” converted into knowledge--The Logos--“The words of eternal life”--Words, more things than events--Rhetoric a power--Motives conveyed by words--American negroes fell upon books--Mechanical labour performed in solitude--Labour goes better because “my mind to me a kingdom is”--Browning on mind--“Have mynde”--Faith has grown feeble, Hope faints, Charity waxes strong--But social amelioration not enough--The pleasant places of the mind--Books, “watered down”--Christ exposed profoundest philosophy to the multitude--Working men value knowledge--Can deal with it--Emotional disturbances come from mind hunger.

6. Knowledge in Literary Form: Mind demands method--No one can live without a philosophy which points out the end of effort--A patchwork of principles betrays us--Human nature has not failed--But education has failed us--A new scale of values--We want more life--Engrossing interests--We want hope--Pleasure comes in effort, not attainment--We want to be governed--A new start--Other ways of looking at things--We are uneasy--And yet almost anyone will risk his life--Splendid magnanimity in the War--We are not decadent--Are ready for a life of passionate devotion--Our demands met by Words--And by the manifestation of a Person--“The shout of a King” among us--But understanding, prior to good works--A consummate philosophy which meets every occasion--The teaching of Christ--Other knowledge “dumb” without the fundamental knowledge--Our latest educational authority on imagination--Rousseau--Our chief business the education of the succeeding generation--The slough of materialism--Children must have freedom of city of mind even in order to handle things--Imagination does not work upon a visual presentation--Dr. Arnold and mental pictures--“Selections” to be avoided--Dangers of the flood-gates of knowledge--Erasmus--Rossetti--Friedrich Perthes--Publishers and their educational mission--Dr. Arnold on reading--A crucial moment--John Bull on the results of forty years’ education--England can be saved--Knowledge exalteth a nation--Matthew Arnold’s monition.

Supplementary - Too Wide a Mesh

A luminous figure of Education--But only ‘universal opportunity’--No new thing--No universal boon like air--Only for the few who choose--No reflection on Public Schools but on the system of the Big Mesh--The letters of two Public School boys pathetic but reassuring--Desire of knowledge, inextinguishable--But limitations of the absence of education--No cultivated sense of humour--No sense of the supreme delightfulness of knowledge--Coningsby--Teaching how to learn, a farce--No avenue to knowledge but knowledge itself.