Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/219

 that they have to make the school perhaps where their successors will learn. For them there is no college. A little while ago, when they began work, they certainly did not even know that the new learning—the kingdom of knowledge that is now widening out before their gaze—existed. They began, as we saw, by looking at the buildings. They then began to look at a great many children, and they saw that more than half of these children were not quite well, and that a great army of them were ill, and likely to be soon very much worse. And only last of all did they begin to see that learning, like eating, brings certain parts of the body into activity, and that one may learn something about the organ of thought as well as about the organs of digestion. Yet as years went by and new helpers were found in the school, the new learning began to be gained. It is won, as other kinds of knowledge are won, with effort and in doubt, and often only after many fruitless attempts and much labour. And now, though much has been fairly earned, it is still the day of small things—all the more because, after all, very few great scientists will go into an elementary school class room and think they have much to do with, or much to learn from, child or teachers.

But when the school doctor hears that any kind of