d on useful, the ideal we hold up complete. The
child, whatever his powers, cannot react to something which is not
there; he can't digest food that is not given to him, use faculties for
which no objective is provided. Hence the great responsibility of our
generation, as to providing a complete, balanced environment _now_, a
fully-rounded opportunity of response to life physical, mental and
spiritual, for the generation preparing to succeed us. Such education as
this has been called a preparation for citizenship. But this conception
is too narrow, unless the citizenship be that of the City of God; and
the adjustments involved be those of the spirit, as well as of the body
and the mind.

Herbert Spencer, whom one would hardly accuse of being a spiritual
philosopher, was accustomed to group the essentials of a right
education under four heads:[146]

First, he said, we must teach self-preservation in all senses: how to
keep the body and the mind healthy and efficient, how to be
self-supporting, how to protect oneself against external dangers and
encroachments.

Next, we must train the growing creature in its duties towards the life
of the future: parenthood and its responsibilities, understood in the
widest sense.

Thirdly; we must prepare it to take its place in the present as a member
of the social order into which it is born.

Last: we must hand on to it all those refinements of life which the past
has given to us--the hoarded culture of the race.

Only if we do these four things thoroughly can we dare to call ourselves
educators in the full sense of the word.

Now, turning to the spiritual interests of the child:--and unless we are
crass materialists we must believe these interests to exist, and to be
paramount--what are we doing to further them in these four fundamental
directions? First, does the average good education train our young
people in spiritual self-preservation? Does it send them out equipped
with the means of living a full and efficient spiritual life? Does it
furnish them with a health-giving type of religion; that is, a solid
hold on eternal realities, a view of the universe capable of
withstanding hostile criticism, of supporting them in times of
difficulty and of stress? Secondly, does it give them a spiritual
outlook in respect of their racial duties, fit them in due time to be
parents of other souls? Does it train them to regard humanity, and their
own place in the human life-stream, from t