ich life puts
before it. We, as individuals and as a community, control and form part
of this environment. Under the first head, we play by influence or
demeanour a certain part in the education of every child whom we meet.
Under the second head, by acquiescence in the social order, we accept
responsibility for the state of life in which it is born. The child's
first intimations of the spiritual must and can only come to it through
the incarnation of Spirit in its home and the world that it knows. What,
then, are we doing about this? It means that the influences which shape
the men and women of the future will be as wholesome and as spiritual as
we ourselves are: no more, no less. Tone, atmosphere are the things
which really matter; and these are provided by the group-mind, and
reflect its spiritual state.

The child's whole educational opportunity is contained in two factors;
the personality it brings and the environment it gets. Generations of
educationists have disputed their relative importance: but neither party
can deny that the most fortunate nature, given wrongful or insufficient
nurture, will hardly emerge unharmed. Even great inborn powers atrophy
if left unused, and exceptional ability in any direction may easily
remain undeveloped if the environment be sufficiently unfavourable: a
result too often achieved in the domain of the spiritual life. We must
have opportunity and encouragement to try our powers and inclinations,
be helped to understand their nature and the way to use them, unless we
are to begin again, each one of us, in the Stone Age of the soul. So
too, even small powers may be developed to an astonishing degree by
suitable surroundings and wise education--witness the results obtained
by the expert training of defective children--and all this is as
applicable to the spiritual as to the mental and bodily life. That life
is quick to respond to the demands made on it: to take every opportunity
of expression that comes its way. If you make the right appeal to any
human faculty, that faculty will respond, and begin to grow. Thus it is
that the slow quiet pressure of tradition, first in the home and then in
the school, shapes the child during his most malleable years. We,
therefore, are surely bound to watch and criticize the environment, the
tradition, the customs we are instrumental in providing for the infant
future: to ask ourselves whether we are _sure_ the tradition is right,
the conventions we han