n.
That path has transformed the children of a rustic village in a
slow-witted county into Utopians. Why should it not transform some
at least among the boys and girls who are thinking of entering the
teaching profession into Egerias, or at any rate into teachers
of Egeria's type? Even as it is, replicas of Egeria,--not exact
replicas, for she is too original to be easily replicated,
but teachers who, like her, preach and practise the gospel of
self-education,--are beginning to spring up in various parts of the
country; and each of their schools, besides being a centre of light,
may well become a nursery for teachers who will follow in the
footsteps of those who have trained them, and will in their turn do
pioneer work in other schools. The thin end of the wedge is even now
being driven into the close-grained mass of tradition and routine;
and each successive blow that is struck by a teacher of intelligence
and initiative will widen the incipient cleft.

The dream, then, of leading the children of England--the children of
the "masses" as well as of the "classes"--into the path of
self-realisation, is not so widely impracticable as to convict the
dreamer of insanity. And if we could realise the dream, if we could
go but a little way towards realising it, how immense would be the
gain to our country! If the average level of mental development in
England were as high as it is in Utopia, to what height would not the
men and women of exceptional ability be able to rise? The mountain
peaks that spring from an upland plateau soar higher towards the sky
than the peaks, of the same apparent height, that spring from a
low-lying plain. And "the great mountains lift the lowlands on to
their sides."

But this is not the only reason why the gospel of self-realisation
should be preached in all parts of the land. There is another reason
which is becoming more and more urgent. If the Utopian scheme of
education were widely adopted, an antidote would be found to a grave
and growing evil which is beginning to imperil the mental health of
every civilised community, and of this more than any other. The more
civilised (in the Western sense of the word) a country becomes, the
less educative does life--the rough-and-tumble life of the work-a-day
world--tend to become. In a thoroughly "civilised" country, where the
material conditions of life are highly organised, and where industry
is highly specialised, so much is done for the individual b