an odd little bite out of history. He knows practically nothing of the
world of thought embodied in English literature, and absolutely nothing
of contemporary thought; he is totally ignorant of modern political or
social science, and if he knows anything at all about evolutionary
science and heredity it is probably matter picked up in a casual way
from the magazines. Art is a sealed book to him. Still, the
inapplicability of his higher education to any professional or
practical need in the world is sufficiently obvious, it seems, to
justify the claim that it has put him on a footing of thought and
culture above the level of a shopman. It is either that or nothing. And
without deciding between these alternatives, we may note here for our
present purpose, that the conception of a general upward prolongation
of schooling beyond adolescence, as distinguished from a specific
upward prolongation into professional training, is necessary to the
complete presentation of the school and college scheme in the modern
state.

There has always been a tendency to utilize the gathering together of
children in schools for purposes irrelevant to schooling proper, but of
some real or fancied benefit. Wherever there is a priestly religion,
the lower type of religious fanatic will always look to the schools as
a means of doctrinal dissemination; will always be seeking to replace
efficiency by orthodoxy upon staff and management; and, with an
unconquerable, uncompromising persistency, will seek perpetually either
to misconduct or undermine; and the struggle to get him out and keep
him out of the school, and to hold the school against him, will be one
of the most necessary and thankless of New Republican duties. I have,
however, already adduced reasons that I think should appeal to every
religious mind, for the exclusion of religious teaching from school
work. The school gathering also affords opportunity for training in