simple unifying political conceptions; the salutation of the flag, for
example, or of the idealized effigies of King and Queen. The quality of
these conceptions we shall discuss later. The school also gives scope
for physical training and athletic exercises that are, under the
crowded conditions of a modern town, almost impossible except by its
intervention. And it would be the cheapest and easiest way of raising
the military efficiency of a country, and an excellent thing for the
moral tone and public order of a people, to impose upon the school
gathering half an hour a day of vigorous military drill. The school,
too, might very easily be linked more closely than it is at present
with the public library, and made a means of book distribution; and its
corridors may easily be utilized as a loan picture gallery, in which
good reproductions of fine pictures might bring the silent influence of
the artist mind to bear. But all these things are secondary
applications of the school gathering; at their best they are not
conducted by the school-teacher at all, and I remark upon them here
merely to avoid any confusion their omission might occasion.

Now if we dip into this miscellany of things that figure and have
figured in schools, if we turn them over and look at them, and seek to
generalize about them, we shall begin to see that the most persistently
present, and the living reality of it all, is this: to expand, to add
to and organize and supplement that apparatus of understanding and
expression the savage possesses in colloquial speech. The pressing
business of the school is _to widen the range of intercourse_.
[Footnote: This way of putting it may jar a little upon the more or
less explicit preconceptions of many readers, who are in reality in
harmony with the tone of thought of this paper. They will have decided
that the school work is to "train the mind," to "teach the pupil to
think," or upon some similar phrase. But I venture to think that most