people, learned,
absorbed, and grew. While there, he also saw in operation the Modern
School, which was to play such an important and fatal part in his
life.

The Modern School in France was founded long before Ferrer's time.
Its originator, though on a small scale, was that sweet spirit,
Louise Michel. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our own great
Louise felt long ago that the future belongs to the young generation;
that unless the young be rescued from that mind and soul destroying
institution, the bourgeois school, social evils will continue to
exist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen, that the atmosphere is
saturated with ghosts, that the adult man and woman have so many
superstitions to overcome. No sooner do they outgrow the deathlike
grip of one spook, lo! they find themselves in the thralldom of
ninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the mountain peak of
complete regeneration.

The child, however, has no traditions to overcome. Its mind is not
burdened with set ideas, its heart has not grown cold with class and
caste distinctions. The child is to the teacher what clay is to the
sculptor. Whether the world will receive a work of art or a wretched
imitation, depends to a large extent on the creative power of the
teacher.

Louise Michel was pre-eminently qualified to meet the child's soul
cravings. Was she not herself of a childlike nature, so sweet and
tender, unsophisticated and generous. The soul of Louise burned
always at white heat over every social injustice. She was invariably
in the front ranks whenever the people of Paris rebelled against some
wrong. And as she was made to suffer imprisonment for her great
devotion to the oppressed, the little school on Montmartre was soon
no more. But the seed was planted, and has since borne fruit in many
cities of France.

The most important venture of a Modern School was that of the great,
young old man, Paul Robin. Together with a few friends he
established a large school at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris.
Paul Robin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modern ideas in
education. He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the
bourgeois conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to exempt
society from its terrible crimes against the young. The contention
that the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers, that it must
continue in poverty and filth, that it must grow up a drunkard or
criminal, just because its parents le