Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/150

146 wants, in fact, success; that visible success which can only be attained by the use of some method which is, metaphysically-speaking, imperfect. Beneficent Nature, who implanted this desire in the teacher-mind, is wiser than the Ideal purists; she has made abundant provision for its legitimate gratification. Any clever teacher has a right to use any method he likes, and to become as successful at Examinations as he can. It is the business of the child's "Pastor" (not the preacher of a special religion, but the Shepherd-servant of the Unity) to harmonize all the special aberrations by a suitable periodic synthesis. He will seem to neutralize the work of the teachers. He will especially seem to be neutralizing the work of any teacher who either introduces a new method, becomes rapidly popular, is very successful in preparing for Examinations, or, above all, possesses Genius of a showy order. Genius and originality are dangerous factors in education, unless their action is counteracted by a specially suitable synthesis. But the more dangerous a method of teaching is when not suitably counteracted, the more capable it is of becoming a source of vitality when it is suitably synthesized. The very alternation between a method which is highly vicious (i.e., which rapidly produces showy results), and one which is sound (i.e., produces no results except accession of force), this alternation, when habitual, sets up its own glorious pulsation, and generates by induction a force, perhaps the very highest and most vital which Humanity can command. The danger of modern education does not consist in the imperfectness of imperfect methods; it is that no provision is made in the mental life for alternating their use with that of