interested in serious work than in puerile games, will beget essential
manliness in every boy he teaches. He need not lecture on his virtues.
A slack, emotional, unpunctual, inexact, and illogical teacher, a
fawning loyalist, an incredible pietist, an energetic snob, a teacher
as eager for games, as sensitive to social status, as easy, kindly, and
sentimental, and as shy really of hard toil as--as some teachers--is
none the better for ethical flatulence. There is a good deal of cant in
certain educational circles, there is a certain type of educational
writing in which "love" is altogether too strongly present; a
reasonably extensive observation of school-children and school-teachers
makes one doubt whether there is ever anything more than a very
temperate affection and a still more temperate admiration on either
side. Children see through their teachers amazingly, and what they do
not understand now they will understand later. For a teacher to lay
hands on all the virtues, to associate them with his or her
personality, to smear characteristic phrases and expressions over them,
is as likely as not to give the virtues unpleasant associations. Better
far, save through practice, to leave them alone altogether.

And what is here said of this tainting of moral instruction with the
personality of the teacher applies still more forcibly to religious
instruction. Here, however, I enter upon a field where I am anxious to
avoid dispute. To my mind those ideas and emotions that centre about
the idea of God appear at once too great and remote, and too intimate
and subtle for objective treatment. But there are a great number of
people, unfortunately, who regard religion as no more than geography,
who believe that it can be got into daily lessons of one hour, and
adequately done by any poor soul who has been frightened into
conformity by the fear of dismissal. And having this knobby, portable
creed, and believing sincerely that lip conformity is alone necessary