which has often been suggested-the urbanization of the people. For in that case England, the most completely urbanized of the nations, would lead all the rest in crime. Urbanization has indeed a deadly effect in increasing crime,' as is generally admitted, but it cannot be allowed to be the differentiating cause in the face of the decline of English criminality.

There is room for something more than a suspicion that though the specific cause which we are seeking is neither lack of religious instruction nor lack of definiteness in its -quality, it must be connected with one or both of these. For unquestionable improvement in public morals only takes place in communities where religious instruction, and that of a definite character, has been systematically given to the children as in England and New South Wales, and in every instance where definite religious instruction is absent deterioration follows.

It may be seriously questioned whether German religious instruction has not in it a defect which quarrels with the noblest grace it has and robs it of much character-forming power. It is too much under the control of the State, too much regularized and constricted, and therefore wanting in spontaneity, too much in the nature of task-work. As an intellectual discipline it may be very well. As a moral tonic it fails because the children identify it, in after years, with the State machinery of which it forms part, and from the tender mercies of which they gladly escape when they conveniently can. German religious instruction fails, as German continuation classes fail when they are voluntary, because it savours too much of mere discipline. The family spirit is wanting. Religion has never thriven when it has been made a matter of police.

The advocates of secularized instruction have not been slow to apply the case of Germany to buttress their argument. Look where they may they can find no real support for their proposals save in this one instance. Everywhere else the facts, when dispassionately scrutinized, furnish an

1 See, e.g., U.S.A. Annual Report of the Commissioner for Education Vol. I. pp. 640 ff.

intractable body of evidence against their contention. But Germany appears to favour it. It only appears to do so, however. The German system of religious instruction fails to produce the result which we have a right to expect because it lacks the one quality which is most essential and most indispensable spontaneity. For religious instruction, if it is to have value and to produce its proper effect, must be given by teachers who prize it and are unhampered in giving it. The German system is the antithesis of what it should be, and of what we English folk should desire to retain in our schools. It is organized and administered in accordance with the Empress Maria Theresa's formula-' dass das Schulwesen ein Politicum sei.' It is always tending to become, and too commonly does become, a system of religious drill, of a mechanical kind analogous to the physical drill to which the German conscript is subjected. An instance will make this clear. In Saxony those parents who affirm themselves to be unconnected with any religious organization-the Konfessionslose '-are compelled nevertheless to submit their children to catechetical instruction in the interest of the State.' They are, however, graciously permitted to choose the form of instruction. It is this spirit and the practice which is germane to it that account for the impotence of religious instruction in Germany.

Canon Wilson is surely right when he says2:

'The one essential point bearing on national character in which we differ from all other nations is that through all the centuries, and not least during the last century, down to the year 1870, all our education was in close connexion with religious bodies, and given by teachers in communion with and trained by those bodies. In this one point our history is unique. . . . It is the teachers-men and women themselves taught, willing and free to teach all they believe-and not the memorizing by the children of a creed or a catechism, that is of vital importanceteachers, members of a religious body themselves, and naturally leading and guiding their children in perfect freedom to similar privileges.'

1 Cf. Das öffentliche Unterrichtswesen Deutschlands, Part I. (Göschen Collection.)

2 Education and Crime, 1905.

This is the lesson writ large upon the whole movement of contemporary criminality. By far the most important part of the work of teachers, from the point of view of a wise national economy, is the moral influence which they bring to bear; and this moral influence is most powerful and most effectively applied when they themselves are strengthened by the associations and habits formed in religious fellowships and by the aspirations which these communicate. The most potent antiseptic in national life is the energy of the teachers' faith in unseen realities. And the maddest thing that we as a nation could do, in the face of the moral deterioration which other nations vainly lament, is to imitate them by discouraging the employment of that supreme antiseptic. Judged from the wide standpoint of international criminality, the surest guarantee of the moral health of a people is the denominational teaching of Christian principles and practices in a denominational atmosphere. To secure this it is essential that free play be given to any well-conceived system which shall secure a supply of teachers who can give that kind of teaching freely and who will do their part loyally to maintain the atmosphere.

The menace of a secularized education which has persistently been held over us is one that will be flouted when English people are clearly shewn what is happening in countries where religious instruction is excluded, or seriously hampered, or sterilized by State regulations. The severing of the teachers from religious fellowships which has apparently become a settled purpose of our authorities, the encouragement which a policy of despair or vindictiveness is deliberately giving to a merely secular training for them is a more insidious evil. On the widest national grounds it deserves the most strenuous resistance. Though the most important thing about a man is his religion, we must admit that the State had better concern itself as little as possible with this most important thing, lest in its ruthless and unsympathetic hands it should be maimed and marred. Almost the most important thing in national life is the religion of the educators of the nation's children. We may

admit that the State had nevertheless better not concern itself with this either, but we, who know its importance, have a right to insist that the State must not be permitted to hinder and thwart where it cannot help.

1

It would be foreign to the purpose of this survey to define the principles on which a worthy and equitable re-settlement of our educational system may be reached. But these two principles may be set down as essential to any re-settlement which is to aim at the preservation of our national character and the increase of righteousness among us. Religious instruction must be welcomed as an integral part of the school training of English children. No apparatus of Sunday schools and supplemental classes would be adequate to the task of building up national character on the only solid basis—that of religious truth. And the religious instruction, thus welcomed and encouraged, must be freely given according to their own belief by men and women to whom it presents itself as an organon of life and not as a system of drill. If these two essential principles are secured, and so much atmosphere' as they imply, all else may safely be regarded as detail to be determined by the exigencies of the time.

W. G. EDWARDS REES.

1 The President of the Wesleyan Conference (1907) bears valuable testimony on this point. After noting a decrease of 12,572 Wesleyan Sunday scholars during the past year, he declared that they could not rely upon home training, and that their Sunday schools were not ready to take the place of day schools in imparting religious instruction.' Compare this with Dr. Shadwell's estimate of the effect upon American morality, and incidentally upon American Sunday schools, of the exclusion of definite religious teaching from the day schools. 'The foundations of Western morality,' he writes, 'have, in effect, disappeared from the public schools. Pari passu, attendance at Sunday schools has dropped off. It is easy to dispose of the religious difficulty by disposing of religion. In like manner the education difficulty is disposed of in the Andaman islands' (Industrial Efficiency, ii. 390).

ART. V.-SCHOOLS OF HELLAS.

Schools of Hellas. An Essay on the Practice and Theory of Ancient Greek Education from 600 to 300 B.C. By K. J. FREEMAN. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1907.)

6

IN days when the place of Greek in education is seriously threatened, it is important to review clearly how much we owe to the Greeks. Mr. Freeman's essay on Greek Education, of which a second impression has already been called for within a few months, is an interesting attempt to deal with one branch of the problem. The circumstances under which the book has appeared are sad. It was intended to be offered as a thesis for a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, but the author died in the summer of 1906, at the early age of twenty-four, three months before the autumn election at Trinity. It was felt that the book deserved to be published partly as a memorial of a remarkable career, but chiefly, to use Dr. Verrall's words in his preface, as a conspectus of facts, presented with orderly arrangement, and in a simple and perspicuous style,' dealing with a subject which no other English book has dealt with at all so fully. The Second Master of Winchester College, Mr. M. J. Rendall, has edited the work, and prefixed a short statement which reviews the author's life and ambitions. Of his intellectual merits it will be our office to speak later. The impression which we get of him as a man from the preface is that he was a genuine and persevering student who went direct to original texts. 'I have always believed,' he says, 'that education suffers immensely from the study of books about books, in preference to the study of the books themselves.' Those who have been through the school of Literae Humaniores at Oxford will understand the danger to which Mr. Freeman alludes, the danger of reading books about Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus and Thucydides instead of mastering the actual texts.

In the second place, Mr. Freeman had a refined and poetical mind, such as was well suited for dealing with an