selves and adapting themselves to the various creations of the human mind, as well as to human industries.' It aspires not to fill the memory with facts, but to train the spirit and judgment. It is generally agreed that the classical studies have unique value in these respects; and the Minister refuses to sanction the prejudice which regards the child, before trying at all, as being incapable of finding intellectual benefit in these studies.' There is no more hardship in making Greek compulsory than in so making geometry, algebra, or chemistry, which are for most people quite useless in after-life, although it is proper that they should have been learnt. As Saint-Marc Girardin once said, 'I do not demand that a good fellow should know Latin; it is enough for me that he has forgotten it.' In all such cases, to give any easy choice is fatal. If the harder ones are not protected, 'the same happens' (says M. Jaurès himself)' as in the circulation of money: it is the base coin that drives out the good.'

We need not linger over some of the objections which M. Bérard has to meet. It will seem strange that the classics should be feared as 'anti-republican,' when those literatures alone give us descriptions of the republics of Rome and of Greece. Do the objectors fear lest the readers should conclude that a republic is not so fine a thing after all? Equally strange is it to hear that M. Bérard has betrayed the Republic, that the classics are dangerous socially,' that geometry is republican and Greek aristocratic.' Here M. Bérard meets his objectors by establishing exhibitions to help poor boys, so that no one fitted to profit by such studies may be excluded. But we ourselves know what strange shapes are taken by political and social prejudices, when certain political sects believe that vaccination belongs to the Conservative Party, and certain religious sects couple national defence with drunkenness as equally works of the devil. M. Bérard tried to keep the parliamentary debates above party politics, but he could not quite succeed.

We are passing through a crisis in England not unlike that of the French, but unfortunately we have not had a man of courage and insight to stem the tides of materialism. On the contrary, both Oxford and Cambridge have lightly thrown away their ancient tradition, and the headmasters of the great schools, who were in a very strong position and might have been independent, have shown themselves ready to yield to ignorant public opinion, while the Board of Education wastes its energies in minute fussiness and has done little to instruct the nation. We have Latin in all secondary schools, it is true, but not enough; most of the newer ones are overcrowded with premature science, and their aims are too commercial to be successful in training the human spirit and judgment. For it is a notable fact that true

education is impossible when there is an ulterior motive, be it a commercial post, or an examination, or a scholarship, or material gain of any kind. It is only when these are kept in the background, or absent altogether, that the spirit and judgment can profit.

M. Bérard is, of course, dubbed reactionary, a word which, he says, 'veritably calls for the special attention of philologists and linguists, as well as the profane, by its disconcerting fluidity.' Education is not the only department of human life where a reactionary is often a Godsend. How dare we assume that progress must be for the better? I imagine that in that determined forward progress of excited creatures which we read of in the ancient record, if one of them, partially sane, had taken his stand upon a convenient trough, crying aloud: Fellow-porcs, does it not strike you that this gentle slope down which you are rushing may possibly precipitate you over yonder cliff into the sea that smiles beneath?' he would have been denounced as a reactionary and incontinently torn to pieces.

W. H. D. ROUSE.

1

OUTLOOK ON THE UNIVERSE

LIVING as we do on one of the smaller planets, revolving about one of a myriad of stars, and endowed as we are with sense-organs gradually evolved from animals for purposes of pursuit of prey and escape from enemies, we know well that we are a small and perhaps comparatively insignificant part of the Universe; which, when we are able in occasional moods to realise the majesty, is— to such understanding as we have been able to form of it-quite overwhelming. Humanity itself is but a recent comer to this planet; and from a higher point of view shows many signs of immaturity. Throughout its history it has been occupied for the most part with internecine struggles, which have usually been the outcome of personal ambition and national perversity rather than a reasonable and necessary part of the struggle for subsistence. Subsistence would be much more easily attained by co-operation than by even the most successful exercise of the arts of war. Nevertheless, dynastic and other wars are a marked feature of human history and except for a sporadic outburst of racial genius now and then, it is only within the last few centuries that a serious effort has been made-and even then only by a very few,-to understand such portion of the Universe as is open to our contemplation.

Our natural weapons of exploration were not evolved for purposes of scientific discovery or philosophical discussion; but they have been supplemented by artificially constructed instruments, whereby we have managed to explore the superficial portions of the crust of the earth, and the constitution of other bodies in that region of the Universe which we are able to recognise through our sense of sight. The progress we have made in thus exploring the material aspect of the Universe-the only part which appeals to our sense-organs and our instruments,must be regarded as rather astonishing and impressive. And the interpretation of the observed phenomena by men of superlative mathematical genius occasionally strikes us as almost superhuman.

Moreover, we seem to have developed a power of genuine creation, that is to say, of bringing things into existence, such as

Poems, and Music, and works of Art generally, which would not otherwise have existed; and which are a real contribution, though perhaps only a small one, to the sum of things.

But in spite of all our discoveries, and all our achievements or creations, we really know and have done very little. And what we have known and done has been achieved by the genius of the few the bulk of mankind show evident signs of imperfection and immaturity. For the most part we seem content to live in the midst of quite unnecessary ugliness, and to spend our time in what we can hardly regard otherwise than as a sort of futility. Unless mankind is to develop into something far higher and altogether better than anything attained in the present stage of civilisation, the long course of preparation, the hundreds of millions of years during which this planet has been growing habitable, does not seem worth while. Unless the Universe too is meaningless and futile-which surely is a blasphemous supposition, the outcome of all this long course of preparation must be something beyond our present imaginings. It is no great effort of faith to assume that there is a real value in existence; and that the long course of evolution, with its ups and downs, its advances and regressions, must, as it presses forward like the rising tide, reach some end or elevation of permanent value : though indeed the word "end" is out of place, for there is no end. At the same time there might be periodicity of phase; and a certain standard having been reached, there might be a local re-beginning. Cyclical changes and repetitions seem appropriate to material, though not to healthy mental, phenomena. The analogy of the Seasons, and of the growth and destruction of worlds, though the time periods are so different, suggests the possibility of utilising a physical periodicity for material and spiritual advance.

But there is plenty of sub-permanence in Nature. This planet has already lasted long, in its continued blaze of sunshine, as testified to by the fossils in the rocks; and neither the earth nor the sun shows the least sign of decadence, or any likelihood of coming to a catastrophe for, let us say, twenty or a hundred million years ahead. And who can possibly imagine what progress may be made in even a fraction of such a period as that? Considering what some men have been, the hope is not unreasonable that the average of mankind may reach their standard in time; while the peaks of the race may press on to something higher still.

Regarded from this point of view, the ugliness and triviality of men are full of hope; for they are signs that we cannot already be what we are intended for. We are still far below the ideal. We are an unfinished article. We are like a building covered

with scaffolding and full of raw material. Such a building can be regarded with complacency even by its architect; for with the mind's eye he sees beforehand his completed design, and knows that all this temporary imperfection is a stage through which the structure has to pass. It is in the light of that kind of fuller knowledge that immature efforts can be tolerated. The end in that sense justifies the means. Think of the painful learning of a violin by a child; yet how else is the finished performer to be produced? Looking at the stage at which humanity has so far arrived, in the light of the æons of preparation, the lowliness of human origin, and its vast almost limitless future, we seem driven to believe that the ultimate destiny of man-man as a race—will be something extraordinarily magnificent.

And what are we to say for man as an individual? Are we to suppose, because he is at present weak and ineffective, that therefore he is of no value; that he can be scrapped and turned down into oblivion as though he had never been? Are we to think that evolution is only concerned with the race, and has no permanent interest in individuals? Although it may be called unreasonable to think so, yet that is a mode of thought that has been adopted, now and again, by thinking persons. And it seems a mode of thought which, in certain moods, is likely to return with oppressive frequency and debilitating effect.

A great deal depends upon whether we can regard each individual as an unfinished article. In the infinitude of time, seventy or eighty years is indeed a flash in the pan. And if the individual only endures as long as that, he is very temporary and insignificant. But, as a matter of fact, is he thus evanescent? We do not know the nature of Life and Mind. We see life arriving, we know not whence; and soon departing, we know not whither. Are we to assume that that is the whole of existence, as far as the individual is concerned; or is it but an episode in a far more permanent scheme?

In the physical universe we know that things never start into existence or cease to be; save in the sense that an aggregate or a crowd assembles and then disperses. The crowd has no individual existence; and as a crowd it can come to an end. But that is not so with fundamental existences. They alter, they change, they manifest themselves in different ways; and they may even cease to manifest themselves and may vanish from obvious ken; as when a cloud evaporates, or when a sound or other form of energy dies away. We know that really it has not ceased to be; it has only changed its form. Some things there are which have a beginning, but, to all appearance, need have no end. A poem, or drama, or great work of art, has an immortality of this sort, though its initial material representation may have a very