repelled altogether: they can but exhibit that mixture of superstition and profaneness which characterized the semi-barbarous societies of the middle ages; a mixture as unfavourable to the developement of man's highest excellence, as Christianity purely imbibed is favourable to it, and indispensable. The stress of this remark, however, applies to a society in a low moral state, and not to an individual. Boys in their own families, as the members of the natural and wholesome society of their father's household, may receive its lessons, and catch its spirit, and learn at a very early age to estimate right and wrong truly. But a society formed exclusively of boys, that is, of elements each separately weak and imperfect, becomes more than an aggregate of their several defects: the amount of evil in the mass is more than the sum of the evil in the individuals; it is aggravated in its character, while the amount of good, on the contrary, is less in the mass than in the individuals, and its effect greatly weakened. Now this being the case, and the very fact of a boarding-school involving the existence of such an unfavourable state of society, he who wishes really to improve public education would do well to direct his attention to this point; and to consider how there can be infused into a society of boys such elements as, without being too dissimilar to coalesce thoroughly with the rest, shall yet be so superior as to raise the character of the whole. It would be absurd to say that any school has as yet fully solved this problem. I am convinced, however, that in the peculiar relation of the highest form to the rest of the boys, such as it exists in our great public schools, there is to be found the best means of answering it. This relation requires in many respects to be improved in its character; some of its features should be softened, others elevated: but here and here only is the engine which can effect the end desired; and if boarding-schools are to be cleared of their most besetting faults and raised in all that is excellent, it must be done by a judicious improvement; but most assuredly not by the abolition of the system of authorized fagging. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, A WYKEHAMIST. January 22nd, 1835. [This Preface, written by the Author in 1835, on the completion of his Edition of Thucydides, may be regarded as expressing as it were his farewell thoughts on Greek Literature and Greek History, the critical study of which he now finally abandoned. See Life and Correspondence, 4th Ed. Vol. I. c. 4. p. 209. c. 7. p. 343.] |