entirely as an unauthoritative observer, I would say it is a
regrettable thing that so large a proportion of British secondary
schoolmasters and mistresses are unmarried. The normal condition of a
healthy adult is marriage, and for all those who are not defective upon
this side (and that means an incapacity to understand many things)
celibacy is a state of unstable equilibrium and too often a quite
unwholesome condition. Wherever there are celibate teachers I am
inclined to suspect a fussiness, an unreasonable watchfulness, a
disposition to pry, an exaggeration of what are called "Dangers," a
painful idealization of "Purity." It is a part of the normal
development of the human being to observe with some particularity
certain phenomena, to entertain certain curiosities, to talk of them to
trusted equals--_never_, be it noted, except by perversion to
parents or teachers--and there is not the slightest harm in these quite
natural things, unless they are forced back into an abashed solitude or
associated by suggestion with conceptions of shame and disgust. That is
what happens in too many of our girls' schools and preparatory schools
to-day, and it is to that end mainly that youthful intimacies are
discouraged, youthful freedom is restricted, and imagination and
individuality warped and crippled. It is astonishing how much of their
adolescence grown-up people will contrive to forget.

So much for schooling and what may be done to better it in this New
Republican scheme of things. The upward continuation of it into a
general College course is an integral part of a larger question that we
shall discuss at a later stage, the larger question of the general
progressive thought of the community as a whole.