to express its life in the physical world.  The actual additions to curriculum which it demands may be few:  it is the attitude, the spirit, which must be changed.  Specifically moral education, the building of character, will of course form an essential part of it:  in fact must be present within it from the first.  But this comes best without observation, and will be found to depend chiefly on the character of the teacher, the love, admiration and imitation he evokes, the ethical tone he gives.  Childhood is of all ages the one most open to suggestion, and in this fact the educator finds at once his best opportunity and greatest responsibility.

Ruysbroeck has described to us the three outstanding moral dispositions in respect of God, of man, and of the conduct of life, which mark the true man or woman of the Spirit; and it is in the childhood that the tendency to these qualities must be acquired.  First, he says,—­I paraphrase, since the old terms of moral theology are no longer vivid to us—­there comes an attitude of reverent love, of adoration, towards all that is holy, beautiful, or true.  And next, from this, there grows up an attitude towards other men, governed by those qualities which are the essence of courtesy:  patience, gentleness, kindness, and sympathy.  These keep us both supple and generous in our responses to our social environment.  Last, our creative energies are transfigured by an energetic love, an inward eagerness for every kind of work, which makes impossible all slackness and dullness of heart, and will impel us to live to the utmost the active life of service for which we are born.[148]

But these moral qualities cannot be taught; they are learned by imitation and infection, and developed by opportunity of action.  The best agent of their propagation is an attractive personality in which they are dominant; for we know the universal tendency of young people to imitate those whom they admire.  The relation between parent and child or master and pupil is therefore the central factor in any scheme of education which seeks to further the spiritual life.  Only those who have already become real can communicate the knowledge of Reality.  It is from the sportsman that we catch the spirit of fair-play, from the humble that we learn humility.  The artist shows us beauty, the saint shows us God.  It should therefore be the business of those in authority to search out and give scope to those who possess and are able to impart this triumphing spiritual life.  A head-master who makes his boys live at their highest level and act on their noblest impulses, because he does it himself, is a person of supreme value to the State.  It would be well if we cleared our minds of cant, and acknowledged that such a man alone is truly able to educate; since the spiritual life is infectious, but cannot be propagated by artificial means.