" There are
many agencies which may contribute to such a result; but school
memories, school friendships, school "interests" take a foremost place
among them. Many boys by the time they leave school have developed an
interest or hobby--literary, scientific or practical; and the hobby
has an ethical, as well as an economic value. Nor is this all.
Excessive devotion to "Bread Studies," whether voluntary or
compulsory, tends to make a man's vocation the prison of his soul.
Professor Eucken recently told his countrymen that the greater their
perfection in work grew, the smaller grew their souls. Any rational
interest, therefore, which helps a man to shake off his fetters, helps
also to preserve his humanity and to keep him in touch with his
fellows. Dr A.C. Benson tells of a distinguished Frenchman who
remarked to him, "In France a boy goes to school or college, and
perhaps does his best. But he does not get the sort of passion for the
honour and prosperity of his school or college which you English seem
to feel." It is this wondrous faculty of inspiring unselfish devotion
which makes our schools the spiritual power-houses of the nation. This
love for an abstraction, which even the dullest boys feel, is the
beginning of much that makes English life sweet and pure. It is the
same spirit which, in later years, moves men to do such splendid
voluntary work for their church, their town, their country, and even
in some cases leads them "to take the whole world for their parish.
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