Page:Education as the Training of Personality.djvu/25

 personal intercourse between us which is absent when we treat them as units in a mass or as congeries of mental processes? Is not one test of a good master his ability to come into contact with the boy's inner self, his power to make the boy feel that he is understood? When Tom Brown and his comrades listened to the Doctor's sermon they heard not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for them and by their sides, and calling on them to help him and themselves and one another.

If, on the other hand, we think of our boys as something less than persons, as essentially inferior to ourselves, we shall inevitably attempt to mould them according to our own ideas. We shall try to make them treat our standards of knowledge or morality as unconditionally binding. But if we do so we shall hinder, and not help, their progress towards true personality, for they will not be achieving value for themselves. Authority and punishment are necessary, but they must always be means to the attainment of a higher end—they must be used to strengthen the boy's higher interests against the lower, like voices of friends and kinsfolk recalling him to his better self.

This instinctive recognition of the boy's personality might be illustrated from every department of school life. I will confine myself to our treatment of our boys when teaching. For perhaps it might be argued that we respect a boy's personality in so far as he is a moral