Personality, after all,
is best defined as "capacity for fellowship," and only in the social
milieu can the individual find his real self-fulfilling. Unless he
functions socially, the individual develops into eccentricity,
negative criticism, and the cynical aloofness of the "superior
person." On the other hand without freedom of individual development,
the organisation of life becomes the death of the soul. Prussia has
shown how the psychology of the crowd can be skilfully manipulated for
the most sinister ends. It is a happy omen for our democracy that both
these complementary movements are combined in the new life of the
schools. To both appeals, the appeal of personal freedom, and the
appeal of the corporate life, the British child is peculiarly
responsive. Round these two health-centres the form of the new system
will take shape and grow.
And growth it must be, not building. The body is not built up on the
skeleton, the skeleton is secreted by the growing body. The hope of
education is in the living principle of hope and enthusiasm, which
stretches out towards perfection. One distrusts instinctively at the
present time anything schematic. There are men, able enough as
organisers, who will be ready to sit down and produce at two days'
notice a full cut-and-dried scheme of educational reconstruction. They
will take our present resources, and make the best of them, no doubt,
re-arranging and re-manipulating them, and making them go as far as
they can.
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