Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/71

Rh are taken. The fact that some of them seem to be above the heads of the boys does not seriously matter, for the boys, even without fully understanding, are all the time unconsciously absorbing the point of view of the speaker.

In closing I cannot do better than quote in full a letter written to a schoolmaster in England who had written to the poet asking for an account of the methods he adopts at Shantiniketan. He writes:

"To give spiritual culture to our boys was my principal object in starting my School in Bolpur. Fortunately, in India we have the model before us in the tradition of our ancient forest schools where teachers whose aim was to realise their lives in God had their homes. The atmosphere was full of the aspiration for the infinite, and the students who grew up with their teachers, closely united with them in spiritual relationship, felt the reality of God—for it was no mere creed imposed upon them or speculative abstraction.

"Having in my mind this ideal of a school which should be a home and a temple in one, where teaching should be part of a worshipful life, I selected this spot, away from all distractions of town, hallowed by the memory of a