influence, that is, on the moral conduct of man—­should be adequately brought into prominence.  The teacher is not urged by a single syllable to impress religious ideas on the receptive child-mind; the whole course of instruction, in conformity with regulations, deals with a formal religiosity, which is quite out of touch with practical life, and if not deliberately, at least in result, renounces any attempt at moral influence.  A real feeling for religion is seldom the fruit of such instruction; the children, as a rule, are glad after their Confirmation to have done with this unspiritual religious teaching, and so they remain, when their schooling is over, permanently strangers to the religious inner life, which the instruction never awakened in them.  Nor does the instruction for Confirmation do much to alter that, for it is usually conceived in the same spirit.

All other subjects which might raise heart and spirit and present to the young minds some high ideals—­more especially our own country’s history—­are most shamefully neglected in favour of this sort of instruction; and yet a truly religious and patriotic spirit is of inestimable value for life, and, above all, for the soldier.  It is the more regrettable that instruction in the national school, as fixed by the regulations, and as given in practice in a still duller form, is totally unfitted to raise such feelings, and thus to do some real service to the country.  It is quite refreshing to read in the new regulations for middle schools of February 10,1910, that by religious instruction the “moral and religious tendencies of the child” should be awakened and strengthened, and that the teaching of history should aim at exciting an “intelligent appreciation of the greatness of the fatherland.”

The method of religious instruction which is adopted in the national school is, in my opinion, hopelessly perverted.  Religious instruction can only become fruitful and profitable when a certain intellectual growth has started and the child possesses some conscious will.  To make it the basis of intellectual growth, as was evidently intended in the national schools, has never been a success; for it ought not to be directed at the understanding and logical faculties, but at the mystical intuitions of the soul, and, if it is begun too early, it has a confusing effect on the development of the mental faculties.  Even the missionary who wishes to achieve real results tries to educate his pupils by work and secular instruction before he attempts to impart to them subtle religious ideas.  Yet every Saturday the appointed passages of Scripture (the Pericopes) are explained to six-year-old children.