Now we are all one body here, no doubt, like the Christian Church in the hymn; but unhappily, and unlike the hymn, we are very much divided.  We are in two camps.  There is a conservative section who, doubtless for very good reasons, want to keep things as they are; they see strongly all the blessings of the old order; they like the old ways and believe in them; they think, for instance, that the old classical lines of education are the best, that the system fortifies the mind, and that, when you have been through it, you have got a good instrument which enables you to tackle anything else; a very coherent position, and, in the case of our conservatives, very conscientiously administered.

Then there is a strong Progressive party numerically rather stronger, to which I myself belong.  We believe that things might be a good deal better.  We are dissatisfied with our results.  We think, to take the same instance, that classics are a very hard subject, and that a great many boys are not adapted to profit by them; we believe that the consequence of boys being kept at a hard subject, which they cannot penetrate or master, leads to a certain cynicism about intellectual things, and that the results of a classical education on many boys are so negative that at all events some experiments ought to be tried.

Well, if all discussions could be conducted patiently, good-humouredly, and philosophically, no harm would be done; but they can’t!  Men will lose their temper, indulge in personalities, and import bitterness into the question.  Moreover, a number of my fiercest opponents are among my best friends here, and that is naturally very painful.  Indeed, I feel how entirely unfitted I am for these kinds of controversy.  This disgusting business deprives me of sleep, makes me unable to concentrate my mind upon my work, destroys both my tranquillity and my philosophy.

It is a relief to write to you on the subject.  Yet I don’t see my way out.  One must have an opinion about one’s life-work.  My business is education, and I have tried to use my eyes and see things as they are.  I am quite prepared to admit that I may be wrong; but if everybody who formed opinions abstained from expressing them out of deference to the people who were not prepared to admit that they themselves could be mistaken, there would be an end of all progress.  Minds of the sturdy, unconvinced order are generally found to range themselves on the side of things as they are; and that is at all events a good guarantee that things won’t move too fast, and against the trying of rash experiments.

But I don’t want to be rash; I think that for a great many boys our type of education is a failure, and I want to see if something cannot be devised to meet their needs.  But my opponents won’t admit any failure.  They say that the boys who, I think, end by being hopelessly uneducated would be worse off if they had not been grounded in the classics.  They say that my theory is only to make things easier for boys; and they add that, if any boy’s education is an entire failure (they admit a few incapables are to be found), it is the boy’s own fault; he has been idle and listless; if he had worked properly it would have been all right; he would have been fortified; and anyhow, they say, it doesn’t matter what you teach such boys—­they would have been hopeless anyhow.