words.
Why had he let this all drop? Why had he contented himself with the
easy, sociable life? Effective though he was as a teacher, he had no
real confidence in the things which he taught. They only seemed to him
a device of reason for expending its energies, just as men deprived by
complex life of manual labour sought to make up for the loss by the
elaborate pursuit of games. He did not touch the springs of being at
all. He had collapsed, he felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had
been too strong for him. He had fitted so easily into the pleasant
scheme of things, and he was doing nothing in the world but helping to
prolong the delusion, just as men set painted glass in a window to shut
out the raincloud and the wind. He was a conformist, he felt, in
everything--in religion, intellect, life--but a sceptic underneath. Was
he not perhaps missing the whole object and aim of life and experience,
in a fenced fortress of quiet? The thought stung him suddenly with a
kind of remorse. He was doing no part of the world's work, not sharing
its emotions or passions or pains or difficulties; he was placidly at
ease in Zion, in the comfortable city whose pleasures were based on the
toil of those outside. That was a hateful thought! Had not the boy been
right after all? Must one not somehow link one's arm with life and
share its pilgrimage, even in weariness and tears?

There came a tap at the door, and one of his shyest pupils entered--a
solitary youth, poor and unfriended, who was doing all he could to get
a degree good enough to launch him in the world. He came to ask some
advice about work. Howard entered into his case as well as he could,
told him it was important that he should get certain points clear, gave
him an informal lecture, distinctly and emphatically, and made a few
friendly remarks. The man beamed with unexpressed gratitude.

"What solemn nonsense I have been talking!" thought Howard to himself
as the young man slipped away. "Of course he must learn all this--but
what for? To get a mastership, and to retail it all over again! It's a
vicious circle, this education which is in touch with nothing but the
high culture of a nation which lived in ideas; while with us culture is
just a plastering of rough walls--no part of the structure! Why cannot
we put education in touch with life, try to show what human beings are
driving at, what arrangements they are making that they may live? It is
all arrangements with us--th