Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/138

 said, not the teacher who grows stern, but the work. We are told that the pupil gains as much power in a day in the school forge as he would gain in a year in an ordinary smith's shop.

Finally the step is taken that makes the child who for fifteen years has haunted the world of the past, unconscious of its shades, a denizen of the modern world. The pupils go into the machine tool laboratory. They are now from 17 to 20 years old. They have to resume all they have learned in science, in art, in ethics: working as modern, up-to-date artisans. The graduating test is significant. They do not sit down to examination papers or answer surprising questions. They make "a project." Language has grown frank at last—gone back to origins. Each pupil makes his own project, a complete engine, a steam pump, an electric machine. He makes every part of it, and when it is done he watches it tremble as if awakening from sleep, "watches the shaft oscillate slowly, then faster, then regularly like a strong heart-pulse." And in the emotion shown by even the oldest of these very cool, disciplined young workmen we get a revelation at last surely of the fact that the growing realization of part of the organism is necessary for the evolution of the higher life. One is held back as with bands till this is