e, practical and theoretical. The object of establishing a
system of knowledge is not to pass examinations,--this is the
schoolmaster's error,--but to render future action more efficient, to
further in after-life some complex interest of a practical or
theoretical nature. To the few, indeed, the establishment and
systematisation of knowledge may be an end in itself. To the many, the
systematisation and establishment is and ought to be undertaken as a
means to the more efficient furtherance of some practical end. Further,
the only justification for the seeking of knowledge for its own sake is
that thereby it may be better understood, better established and better
systematised, and so become better fitted to make practice more
efficient.

Hence the question as regards secondary education resolves itself into
the question as to the nature of the systems of knowledge which we
should endeavour to establish systematically in the mind of the child,
and before we can answer this question we must know the length of time
which the child can afford to spend at the Higher School and his
possible vocation in after-life. For if education is the process by
which the child is led to acquire and organise experiences so as to
render future action more efficient, we must know something of the
nature of this action, something of the nature of the future social
services for which his education is to train him, and the school period
must be of sufficient length to enable the required systems to be
established permanently and thoroughly.

Neglect of these two obvious considerations has led in the past and even
in the present leads to two errors in our organisation of the means of
secondary education. In the first place, until quite recently, we have
been too much inclined to the opinion that secondary education was all
of one type, and even where this error has been recognised, as in
Germany, the tendency still exists to emphasise unduly the particular
type of education which has as its main ingredients the ancient
classical languages. We spend years in the attempt to reconstruct and
establish in the mind of the youth a knowledge of these language
systems, and in a large number of cases we fail to attain adequately
even this end. We build up laboriously systems of means which in
after-life function _directly_ in the attainment of no end, and as a
consequence, in many cases, the dissolution of the system is as rapid as
its acquisition was sl