gorical imperative,” or a set of arbitrary commandments, or an aesthetic lesson on “modesty.” You cannot in one hour teach the child to think, and in the next expect it to accept your instruction without thinking, because you are not prepared to give reasons for your commands. It is sometimes forgotten that even children share the mental awakening of our age, and must be treated wisely. The American or the Australian child well illustrates the change that is taking place. It is increasingly dangerous to give children dogmatic or mystic instruction in rules of conduct, nor is it in the least necessary to base this important part of their training on disputable grounds. Every quality of character that is inculcated may be related to the child’s actual or future experience of life, and will find an ample sanction therein. Life is full of material for such lessons: material far richer and easier of assimilation than the doings of an ancient Oriental people with a different code of morals. Let these lessons of history and contemporary life be developed, let the child learn in plain human speech the social significance of justice and honour, avoiding namby-pamby dissertations on the beauty of virtue, and there will be placed in the mind of the young, not an exotic plant which the child will be tempted to eradicate, but a germ which will grow and bear fruit under the influence of its own experience.
The modern ideal of education further implies that the State shall provide higher tuition for those
