the joy of doing a job well, that is, of mastering some fraction of his environment? This satisfaction of the craftsman in the work of his own hands, the consciousness of having finished what he undertook in a workmanlike manner in spite of difficulties and weariness, is a feeling which a boy can experience while at school, and yet if it stays with him through life it will go far towards redeeming his soul from the hopelessness of failure. So, too, loyalty to his comrades, and the larger view which leads him to forget his own narrow interests in his absorption in the common good, can also be taught at school if the right means are chosen. In these and other ways the school can, and in many cases actually does, give the boy ideals capable of fuller realisation in his after life, in whatever sphere his work may lie. It thus plays its part in the creation of a man with interests of absolute and intrinsic value. And apart from any theoretical discussion, do we not, as a plain matter of fact, know some boys and girls who in the course of their school life have passed through the vale of soul-making spoken of by Keats,[1] and have achieved not merely certain interests, but in some degree personality as a whole?
But if the school is really to be a field in which souls are made, every department of the school's life and work must do justice to each of the great fields of interest as elements in the boy's concrete personality. It must help him to master some portion of his environment; it must in some way develop his social interests; and
- ↑ Quoted by A. C. Bradley: Oxford Lectures, p. 222.
