Macdonald has returned. He has brought a man Macduff with him, a college friend of his, and now the headmaster of a big school in Perthshire. He has mentioned Macduff to me more than once. Macduff is his ideal schoolmaster, a stern disciplinarian and a great producer of "results." When they came up to see me to-night Macdonald\'s face glowed with anticipation; it was evident that he had come to my funeral. Macduff was to slay me, bury me, and write my epitaph. I thought of agreeing with Macduff as much as possible, so as to rob Macdonald of his triumph, but I found it impossible to find more than a few points of agreement. I managed, however, to carry the war into the enemy\'s camp, and Macduff found himself acting on the defensive more than once.

"I read your Log," he said agreeably, "and I must congratulate you on it. I laughed at many of the yarns you have in it."

"The worst of being called a humorist," said I, "is that everybody seizes on your light bits, and ignores your serious bits."

"I didn\'t ignore your serious bits," he said, "I read them carefully ... and, to be frank, thought them damned nonsense. You don\'t mind my saying so, do you?"

[Pg 123]

"Certainly not, my dear fellow! When you\'ve read the evening paper critics\' opinion of yourself you can stand anything. I am all for a free criticism; it lets you know where you stand at once."

We both became very amiable after that, and I offered him a fill of Macdonald\'s baccy. Then I brought out a bottle of whiskey, and we sat round the bothy fire like brothers.

"And now," I said, "tell me all about the damned nonsensical parts."

"Well," he laughed, "it seems a dirty trick to drink a chap\'s whiskey and slate his ideas at the same time, doesn\'t it?"

"It might be worse," I said with a smile; "you might slate his whiskey and drink in his ideas at the same time; and I\'ve never met a man who could stand being accused of keeping bad whiskey, although I know dozens of men who will sit with a grin on their faces while you tear their philosophy of life to pieces."

"They grin at your ignorance, eh?"

"Exactly!"

Macdonald held up his glass to the light and eyed it thoughtfully.

"Macduff\'s theory is that if you spare the rod you spoil the child," he said.

"Yes," said Macduff, "I agree with old Solomon. You know, it\'s all very well to be a heretic, but you are up against the wisdom of the ages. All the way from Solomon downwards parents have agreed that youngsters must be trained strictly. You can\'t smash[Pg 124] up the wisdom of the ages as you try to do."

"The wisdom of the ages!" I mused.... "When I come to think of it the wisdom of the ages taught men that the earth was flat, that the sun went round the earth, that the touch of a king cured King\'s Evil. Do you mean to say that because a thing has a tradition behind it it must be believed for ever? Because Solomon said a thing is it eternally true? The wisdom of the ages must be made to give place to the wisdom of the age."

"Then you would have each generation ignore all that had been said by men of previous generations?"

"I don\'t mean that. By all means find out what wise men of old have said, but don\'t worship them; be ready all the time to reject their wisdom if you feel you can\'t agree with it. This using the rod business is a tradition because men found it the easiest method for themselves. A child was weak and he was noisy; the easiest thing to do was to whack the little chap. Do you allow conversation in your school?"

"I do not!" he said grimly.

"And why?"

"They can\'t work if they are talking."

"And that\'s your sole reason?"

"Yes."

"If an inspector stood at your desk chatting to you about the war, would you have a silent room?"

[Pg 125]

"Certainly."

"But why?"

"Oh," he said impatiently, "for various reasons. They aren\'t there to talk; and they\'ve got to be disciplined, to understand that they are not free to do as they like whenever they like."

"Also," I suggested, "the inspector might be annoyed?"

"There\'s that in it," he confessed with a little confusion.

"The wisdom of the ages agrees with you," I said, "and I think that in this case the wisdom of the ages is wrong. In the first place I want to know what you\'re trying to produce."

"Educated citizens," he replied.

"And since the Solomon tradition has been in vogue for quite a long time, do you consider that it has produced educated citizens as yet?"

"More or less," he answered.

"I can\'t see it," I said. "When nine-tenths of the population of these isles live on the border line of starvation you can\'t surely argue that they are educated citizens. They are bullied citizens ... and the first step in the bullying of them was the refusal of authority in the shape of the parent and the pedagogue to spare the rod."

"But look here," he interrupted, "come back to the school. Do you think it wrong for a teacher to compel a boy to attend to a lesson?"

[Pg 126]

"I do. If he has to be compelled the lesson clearly fails to interest him. I would have childhood a garden in which one could wander wherever one pleased; I would abolish fear and punishment."

"And do you mean to tell me," he demanded, "that a boy will offer to learn his history and geography and arithmetic and grammar of his own free will?"

"It depends on the boy. Here, again, we come up against the wisdom of the ages. The wisdom of the ages has decreed that these subjects are the chief things in education. But are they? I should imagine that it is more important for a boy to know something about feminine psychology than about Henry the Eighth. He will one day be called on to choose a wife, but he\'ll never be called on to choose a king. Again why should geography be of more importance than anatomy? A man never wants to know where Timbuctoo is, but he very often wants to know whether the pain in his tummy is appendicitis or heartburn."

"Go on!" he laughed, "find a substitute for arithmetic now!"

"Arithmetic," I said, "is the trump card of the man who wants a utilitarian education. I can do lots of sums—Simple Interest, Profit and Loss, Ratio and Proportion, Train Sums, Stream Sums.... I could almost do a Cube Root. So far as I can remember I have never had occasion to use arithmetic for any purpose[Pg 127] other than adding up money or multiplying a few figures by a few figures. Your utilitarianism somehow leads in the wrong direction most of the time. I was brought up under the wisdom of the ages curriculum, and I\'ll just give you an idea of some of the things I don\'t know. I don\'t know the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool; I haven\'t the faintest idea of how they make glass or soap or paint or wine or whiskey or beer or paper or candles or matches; I know nothing about the process of law; I don\'t know what steps one takes to get married or divorced or cremated or naturalised; I don\'t know the starboard side of a ship; I don\'t know how a vacuum brake works. I could fill a book with a list of the things I don\'t know ... a book as big as the Encyclop?dia Britannica.

"What I want to know is this: How are we to determine what things are important to know? From a utilitarian point of view it is more important to know how to get married than how to find the latitude and longitude of Naples. As an exercise of thinking it is quite as important to inquire into the working of a Westinghouse brake as to inquire into the working of a Profit and Loss sum."

"Then what curriculum would you have?"

"I wouldn\'t have any curriculum. I would allow a boy to learn what he wanted to learn. If he prefers kite-making to sentence-making I want him to choose kite-making. If he wants to catch minnows instead of reading about[Pg 128] Napoleon, I say let him do it; he is learning what he wants to learn, and that\'s exactly what we all do when we leave the compulsion of the schoolroom."

"It won\'t do!" cried Macduff.

"Look at it in this way," I said. "Suppose I am three stone heavier than you. And suppose that I think it would benefit you if you knew all about—let us say Evolution. I come to you, take you by the back of the neck and say: \'Macduff, you g............