Page:Education as the Training of Personality.djvu/42

Hence he must hear the call which comes to him from the spirit of his time. He must be able to distinguish the true demands of the age from the cries which would lead astray. And in our own day that is no easy task. It demands a wide outlook and broad sympathies, but also a judgment both disciplined and fearless. And this, as well as a lasting inspiration for his work, he will gain only by the achievement of his own interests in some form of the ideal. In the case of the majority this central interest will be religious, using the term religious in its widest sense, but it may also take the shape of an interest in truth or beauty, that is, it may be philosophical or artistic. Still, whatever be the particular aspect under which he views the ultimate reality, he must in his own fashion be a servant of the ideal. To him must be applicable in some measure the description Plato gives of those who in his ideal city are to mould the souls of men, a description of which my words to-night have been little more than an expansion. The true educators, Plato tells us, "when engaged upon their work will often turn their eyes upwards and downwards; I mean that they will first look at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human copy, and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of a man; and this they will conceive according to that other image, which, when existing among men, Homer calls the form and likeness of God."^[1]

1. Rep. vi., 501, tr. Jowett.