ll Christian in tendency.
But modern music is analytical, critical, and it has discovered the
power of ugliness. Like our martial music, it is of the upper plane,
like our martial songs, our fifes and our brass-bands. These act
direct upon the thoracic ganglion. Time was, however, when music acted
upon the sensual centers direct. We hear it still in savage music,
and in the roll of drums, and in the roaring of lions, and in the
howling of cats. And in some voices still we hear the deeper resonance
of the sensual mode of consciousness. But the tendency is for
everything to be brought on to the upper plane, whilst the lower plane
is just worked automatically from the upper.

CHAPTER VI

FIRST GLIMMERINGS OF MIND

We can now see what is the true goal of education for a child. It is
the full and harmonious development of the four primary modes of
consciousness, always with regard to the individual nature of the
child.

The goal is _not_ ideal. The aim is _not_ mental consciousness. We
want _effectual_ human beings, not conscious ones. The final aim is
not _to know_, but _to be_. There never was a more risky motto than
that: _Know thyself_. You've got to know yourself as far as possible.
But not just for the sake of knowing. You've got to know yourself so
that you can at last _be_ yourself. "Be yourself" is the last motto.

The whole field of dynamic and effectual consciousness is _always_
pre-mental, non-mental. Not even the most knowing man that ever lived
would know how he would be feeling next week; whether some new and
utterly shattering impulse would have arisen in him and laid his
nicely-conceived self in ruins. It is the impulse we have to live by,
not the ideals or the idea. But we have to know ourselves pretty
thoroughly before we can break the automatism of ideals and
conventions. The savage in a state of nature is one of the most
conventional of creatures. So is a child. Only through fine delicate
knowledge can we recognize and release our impulses. Now our whole aim
has been to force each individual to a maximum of mental control, and
mental consciousness. Our poor little plans of children are put into
horrible forcing-beds, called schools, and the young idea is there
forced to shoot. It shoots, poor thing, like a potato in a warm
cellar. One mass of pallid sickly ideas and ideals. And no root, no
life. The ideas shoot, hard enough, in our sad offspring, but they
shoot at the expense of life itsel