of school education, comes up to a university and gets to know
something of these boys at a later stage. Many of them are fine,
vigorous fellows; but they often tend to look upon their work as a
disagreeable necessity, which they do conscientiously, expecting
nothing in particular from it. They play games ardently, and fill
their hours of leisure with talk about them. Yet one discerns in
mind after mind the germs of intellectual things, undeveloped and
bewildered. Many of them have an interest in something, but they
are often ashamed to talk about it. They have a deep horror of
being supposed to be superior; they listen politely to talk about
books and pictures, conscious of ignorance, not ill-disposed to
listen; but it is all an unreal world to them.

I am all for hard and strenuous work. I do not at all wish to make
work slipshod and dilettante. I would raise the standards of simple
education, and force boys to show that they are working honestly. I
want energy and zeal above everything. But my honest belief is that
you cannot get strenuous and zealous work unless you also have
interest and belief in work. At present, education as conducted in
our public-school and university system appears to me to be neither
utilitarian nor intellectual. It aims at being intellectual first
and utilitarian afterwards, and it misses both.

Whether anything can be done on a big scale to help us out of the
poor tangle in which we are involved, I do not know. I fear not. I
do not think that the time is ripe. I do not believe that great
movements can be brought about by prophets, however enlightened
their views, however vigorous their personalities, unless there is
a corresponding energy below. An individual may initiate and
control a great force of public opinion; I do not think he can