sires which master us cannot be simultaneously gratified;
that we cannot both rest in the ordinary self and magnify it; that we
can magnify it only by _making it great_, by helping it to grow. When
we have realised this, we shall be ready to receive the further
lesson that in proportion as the self magnifies itself by the natural
process of growth, so does its desire to magnify itself gradually die
away,--die away with the dawning consciousness that in and through
the process of its growth it is outgrowing itself, forgetting itself,
escaping from itself, that the thing which so ardently desired to be
magnified is in fact ceasing to be. This vital truth,--which my
visits to Utopia have borne in upon me,--that healthy and harmonious
growth is in its very essence _out_growth or escape from self, has
depths of meaning which are waiting to be fathomed. For one thing, it
means, if it has any meaning, that what is central in human nature
is, not its inborn wickedness but its infinite capacity for good, not
its rebellious instincts and backsliding tendencies but its
many-sided effort to achieve perfection.

We must now make our choice between two alternatives. We must decide,
once and for all, whether the function of education is to foster
growth or to exact mechanical obedience. If we choose the latter
alternative, we shall enter a path which leads in the direction of
spiritual death. If we choose the former, we must cease to halt
between two opinions, and must henceforth base our system of
education, boldly and confidently, on the conviction that growth is
in its essence a movement towards perfection, and therefore that
self-realisation is the first and last duty of Man.

It is by answering possible objections to Utopianism that I shall
best be able to unfold Egeria's philosophy of education. I shall
perhaps be told that in my advocacy of that philosophy _I am
preaching dangerous doctrines; that the only alternative for
obedience is the lawlessness of unbridled licence; and that anarchy,
social, moral, and spiritual, is the ultimate goal of the path which
I am urging the teacher to enter._ Let me point out, in answer to
this protest, that it is mechanical obedience which I condemn, not
obedience as such. If I condemn mechanical obedience, I do so
because it is unworthy of the name of obedience, because the higher
faculties of Man's being, the faculties which are distinctively
human--reason, imagination, aspiration, spiritua