364 FOSTER WATSON : mind of the sort of subject-matter in instruction of all kinds, including in their reflective outlook religious as well as all other provinces of knowledge, thought and practice which are suitable for the child-mind at its various stages. But the point I wish to emphasise is that the case of Plato shows that one of the greatest philosophers of all time, in seeing around him the prevalence of religious ideas with which he is entirely out of sympathy, does not come to the conclusion that religion is not to remain an educational dis- cipline, but demands that its place in education shall be determined by its educational significance and in accordance with educational canons. No doubt the Athenians, with their differences of view in the authority to be attached to poets and priests on religious matters, could have suggested that, for the sake of peace, religious teaching should have been dropped. But Plato held that religion had a rightful place in education, and he proceeded to show by educational standards the kind of religion that was desirable to compass the educational end. I suggest that Plato as an educationist showed that education was capable of supplying standards for judgment as to the place of religion in the mental development of the child, far in advance of the religious public of his time and with light for an age. I am not contending that Plato's educational canons are the only or the highest canons for religious teaching to-day. Their virtue consists in their realisation of the educational idea involved in school teaching of religion and their recogni- tion of religious teaching as an integral part of the educa- tional process. We have seen that he who practises an art must consider the interest of that of which the art undertakes the direction. The governor must govern for the good of the governed ; the shepherd for the good of the sheep. So the educator must consider the interest of the pupil. The teacher is relatively to education, the stronger ; the pupil, the weaker. Now if the teacher teaches religion the whole point of Plato's contention is that the religion taught must be suit- able to the child's stages of development. Nothing must be taught which will not serve as a basis for further develop- ments later on, but at the same time the subject-matter at each stage must be suitable to the child's capacity. We may go a step further and say that religion (as indeed all subjects of instruction) is not to be taught from the teacher's stand- point, but so as to help the child to observe, to think and to feel as well and as capably on religious matters as in other directions of study.
