ainst which we need to be on our guard. If, therefore, without mere
dissipation of interest, we can widen the range of mental activities
and encourage, by discussions, essays, lectures and so forth, reading
round and outside the subjects dealt with in class, this is all to the
good.

And all this has a social as well as an individual aspect. The
meetings for the purposes just mentioned, as well as those for
entertainment, have, like games, a real educational value, and do
much to cement the comradeship of common interests and common aims
that is one of the best things school has to give. And not only among
those of the same age. These are things in which the example and
influence of the older are particularly helpful to the younger. They
can become, like the games, and perhaps to an even greater extent, one
of the interests that help to bind together past and present members
of a school. And they afford an opportunity for masters to meet boys
on a more personal and friendly footing, and to get the mutual
knowledge and respect which are all-important if education is to be,
in Thring's definition, a transmission of life through the living to
the living. That the organisation of leisure-time pursuits is of the
utmost help to the school as well as to the boy, is the unanimous
verdict of the schools in which it has long been a tradition. The
master who has had charge, for the past five-and-twenty years, of this
organisation in one such school writes that there they consider such
pursuits as the very life-blood of the school, and the only rational
method of maintaining discipline.

If what has here been said is admitted, it is plain that to teach, by
every means in our power, the use of leisure, is one of the most
important things a school has to do. We might, therefore, turn at once
to the consideration of the various means for such teaching that
experience has shown to be practicable in the school. But before doing
so, there is yet another reason, the most far-reaching of all, to be
urged for regarding this as a side of education fully as necessary,
at the present time above all, as those sides that none would
question. Great as is the direct and immediate value of the interests
and occupations thus to be encouraged, their indirect influence is
more valuable still, if they teach not only handiness and
adaptiveness, but also call forth initiative and individuality, and so
help to develop the complete and many-sided human p