ABSTRACT

The silent and unconscious influence of the teacher in the impressionable years of childhood builds up the belief in the good and true and beautiful on a wide basis. When young men and women come at the university, for good or evil, their moral natures are already shaped. The inner life of all national societies consists of a conflict of communities whose name is legion. Nations are tom asunder by them, as the man in the New Testament by the evil spirits, and wander in waste places. Science has provided means for multiplying the power of the stunt. The result is waves of crude feeling, belief and action, based on the instinct for imitation and the power of suggestion. From Plato’s Republic, it is but a step to the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and to the famous passage between Atheist and Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress.