ather like what is known as the crank school in England.
In a manner it is the super-crank school, for everyone on the staff is
teetotal, vegetarian, and a non-smoker. Here it was that I heard of
Lightheart for the first time, and I blushed for my ignorance of the
gentleman. It appears that he was a great educational reformer, a sort
of Froebel I fancied, for handwork seemed to be the main consideration
in the school. But I regret to say that the school did not impress me
much. Too many children were doing the same sort of work; they sat in
desks and held themselves more or less rigid. Here was benevolent
authority again, not true freedom. All schools in Holland are State
schools, and the Humanitarian School is one of them. It is almost
impossible for a State school to be very much advanced; I think it is
impossible, for the State is the national crowd, and a large crowd has
little use for the crank.

I returned to Amersfoort, where by this time I had become the guest of
the International School of Philosophy. This is a building standing in
about twenty acres of ground amid the pine forests two miles south of
the town. I was the sole guest, for the summer classes had not
started. This school is the beginning of a great movement. Here
students from every country will meet and discuss life and education.
Mr. Reiman, the president, talked long and earnestly to me about the
scheme, but I found myself challenging his insistence on spiritual
education.

The aim of the school is to develop the spiritual side of man, an
excellent aim . . . so long as man does not imagine that by living on
the higher plane he is annihilating his earthly self. Everyone there
was very, very kind to me, but I did not feel quite in my element, for
I am not an obviously spiritual person. I find that I can discuss the
higher life best when I have a glass of Pilsener at my elbow and a
penny cigar in my mouth. It is clear that I have a complex about the
higher life, and it may be a sour-grapes complex. All the same I
should like to attend a summer course at Amersfoort and listen to the
wise men dilate on the Bhagavadgita, Psycho-analysis and Religion,
Plato, Sufism, and other subjects on the programme; anyway I would have
no prepossessions and prejudices in listening to Dr. G. R. S. Meads'
course of lectures on The Mystical Philosophy and Gnosis of the
Trismegistic Tractates.

From Amersfoort I went to Amsterdam.

"Umsterdum, dree kl