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subject but only crams him for a Prize? So it should be with knowledge everywhere. A man will hardly be able to succeed with a subject of knowledge unless he cares about it; but even if he does so succeed, he himself will gain no real good from it. To do us good, knowledge must have a value of its own, and be felt by us to have it.[1]
Let us apply these thoughts quickly In one or two ways.
First, they suggest something as regards our Schools, for parents and for those who have to do with the children. You send them to gain knowledge, and to be under discipline. But it rests with yourselves in great measure what they think of the knowledge, and how they take the discipline. The Schoolmaster is for them a power, a force, a stranger who can punish. It rests with him of course to gain by degrees over them, through earning their respect, an authority of a gentler and different kind; but it rests with you also to make them respect him from the first. God has taught them through the simple instincts of their hearts, until you forfeit it, respect for you. If they hear you speak with respect of the
- ↑ This will not be pressed in an extreme way as though, for example, children were able to judge fully of what it is good for them to learn, and nothing were ever to be taught against the grain. The early and more mechanical parts of the study of Language supply a very plain instance of a subject which is taught and has to be taught without the learner being able to understand what it will afterwards give him and offer to him. In all learning, perhaps, there is room for the principle "we walk by faith and not by sight"
