education, the partisans of the former being confronted with a demand for a more practical and economically useful kind of school. In this demand there is some exaggeration. The object of schools is to teach the young to think, to accustom them to sound methods and to a scientific spirit, not merely to give them practical training and as much knowledge as possible. Whether the pupil presently forgets much of what he has learned is not the main point. He may forget mathematics and other necessary and useful branches of study as well as Latin and Greek. What matters is that he shall be able to find his bearings easily when he specializes and adopts a career. The secondary schools should certainly provide general and philosophical education; and, from the democratic standpoint, it is very important that secondary schooling should be of a unitary type as a step towards social unity.
The defects of our school system reflect the transitional character of our period. All that I have said of the disjointed, uncoordinated, incomplete, anarchical features of our modern era is reflected in the schools from the highest to the lowest. For some time past their influence upon the health and upon the nerves of children and students has rightly been a subject of investigation. But we have to think of mental and moral influences quite as much as of physical; and, in the pathology of education, suicide among children forms a special chapter. In the schools, that is to say, in our children, are reflected the conflict between Church and State, between philosophy and theology, between old and young. It is a fight for an outlook upon the world and upon life. And it is from this point of view that we should judge the claim of our school teachers that they themselves should receive higher academic training; for those very teachers who, amid their fatiguing work, strive to educate themselves more highly, are the most painfully conscious of the inadequacy of their own education.
Democracy and Publicity.
From the democratic principles of liberty and equality it follows that democracy is based upon publicity. In this it differs from aristocracy. Hence, too, the great importance of public opinion in modern life. Freedom of opinion is a form of political freedom, and a condition of it. In practice, journalism and the daily press are extensions of parliamentary control over Governments if not substitutes for it—a circumstance that is sometimes used as an argument against parliamen-
