en the
school life of the child is one of continuous self-expression,
opportunities for "putting his soul" into what he says and does will
often present themselves to him; and if only a few of these are made
use of, his outlook on life will widen, and his imaginative sympathy
with life will deepen, to an extent which to one who had never
visited Utopia might well seem incredible. I have spoken of the
Utopian child's love of the beautiful. This is one aspect of the
spiritual growth that he is always making. Other aspects of it are
his strong sympathy with life in all its forms, and a certain large
and free way of looking at things, which, as far as my experience of
school children goes, is all his own.

There is yet another aspect of his spiritual growth which is perhaps
the most vital and the most typical of all. When we say that the
child is growing both laterally and vertically (like a shapely tree),
we mean that he is growing as a whole, as a living soul. Now the
growth of the soul as such must needs take the form of outgrowth, of
escape from "self." Growth is, in its essence, an emancipative
process; and though it sometimes intensifies selfishness and widens
the sphere of its activity, that is invariably due to its being
one-sided and therefore inharmonious and unhealthy. When the child
or the man is growing as a living whole, with a happy, harmonious,
many-sided growth, his growth is of necessity outgrowth, and he must
needs be escaping from the thraldom of his lower and lesser self.
This conclusion is no mere inference from accepted or postulated
premises. What I have seen in Utopia has forced it upon me. The
unselfishness, the natural, easy, spontaneous self-forgetfulness, of
the Utopian child, is the central feature of his moral life,--so
marked and withal so unique a feature that its presence proves to
demonstration, first, that growth of the right sort is necessarily
emancipative, and, next, that the growth made in Utopia is growth
of the right sort. I have already commented on the singular charm
of manner which distinguishes the children of Utopia. Their
self-forgetfulness, their entire lack of self-consciousness, is
one source of this charm. The tactfulness which their life of
self-expression, and therefore of trained perception, tends to
engender, is another. But the moral aspect of Utopianism is one of
such surpassing interest, and also of such profound significance
from the point of view of my fundament