With a Difference

Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff

This article by Elsie Kitching first appeared in the December 1921 issue of The Parents’ Review.

By E.K.
The Parents’ Review, 1921, pp. 876-888

“To see a child in itself implies benediction.”

—Wordsworth.

“What is the P.N.E.U.? Oh, it’s a society for parents and teachers. Yes, but what does it do? Well, I’m not quite sure, but there are meetings and lectures on educational and other subjects and Mrs. Jones was telling me the other day that her children belonged to a school in connection with it and I asked her what she knew about it. She said her children liked the school. I asked her what there was special about it but she said she really did not know except that the books cost a lot. The books were certainly nice, at least the children enjoyed them and the children told her that they had to read the books to themselves and then tell what they had read but there doesn’t seem much in that. Anyone can tell what they have read or heard if they take an interest in it and I am sure most schools get the best books they can. Indeed an Elementary Head Teacher was telling me the other day that they had such a nice ‘traveller’ who came round with books and that she had bought some books with lovely pictures for her children. Books are easy enough to get if you want them and as for the children telling what they have heard—why you can hear them doing that in any infant school! Mrs. Jones did say she thought there was something special about the school and that she meant to go into the matter sometime but the children were happy and seemed to be interested in things you would not expect children to take an interest in and, as you know, she’s a busy woman so she’s quite content to leave it as long as the children seem to be getting on. She shewed me some exercise books they called Nature Note Books and Century books, but no one would start a society for that sort of thing.”

Again, as a friend said the other day, “there are so many methods of education and so many theories and I won’t have my children experimented upon so they are going where my sisters and I went. The school is quite out of date but the Head is a good woman so the children won’t come to any harm.” Again, a father wrote,—“My boys must make their own way and if they want to go to college they must take themselves there, so I don’t hold with teaching them subjects they won’t want for scholarship examinations.”

And so the children are sent to a school to be happy, or to work for examinations or one is chosen where they won’t get any harm and, seeing, we see, but do not perceive, what education is. The two words for seeingimply only the power of sight while that for perceive means to know. And knowing means labour, and life is all too short! “Therefore I speak in parables,” said our Lord, as if the principles He set forth were so precious that they had to be hidden lest the mere beholding without understanding should prove a curse to the beholder.

Is the test of education hidden in the same way, lest seeing we should see without knowing? For truth always suffers at the hands of those who behold without understanding her, of those who pick up “her tricks and her manners” in some stray gestures she has used and think that a formalism copied endlessly will result in some semblance of her beauty. Truth must be sought with understanding, that is, in the spirit of truth, lest seeing we should not perceive.

“Oh, well, I’ve always done that in my school.” “Yes, we’ve always used books and my children have done silent study for a long time, indeed I find I have always been working on the P.N.E.U. methods,”—and “if I haven’t, what is the difference?” is always implied. “Narration, or reproduction as we call it, is as old as the hills,” said a teacher, “but I can’t get my children to narrate. They try to remember the words read, the clever ones manage something but I have to get it out of the rest by questions or I should never know whether they had taken it in.” “Why should I not choose my own books? I know what my children like better than anyone else!” said another. “Why should I narrate,” said a little girl of six, “when I know it and you know that I know it?” What is the difference?—that is just it. It is just the difference between copying a method and understanding the principles which underlie the method; the one is of the letter that killeth, the other that of the spirit that giveth life.

The daily press is full of scientific wonders by which as in a parable the ways of God are being justified to man, and one such ‘discovery’ illustrates so aptly the principles that underlie the methods of the P.U.S. that it may be well to call attention to it.

In “The Times” of last May a ‘Leader’ appeared on “Electrons and Ether Waves” from which the following is an extract,—

“Speaking at Oxford last May, Sir William Bragg described one of the disconcerting and exciting discoveries with which physical science continues to surprise us… When a powerful electric discharge acts on the matter in an X-ray tube, electrons or corpuscles are liberated, moving with a speed of at least 600 miles a second. These corpuscular radiations rapidly lose speed. But each moving electron sets up an X-ray or ether wave, which travels in every direction, as ripples spread from a stone thrown into a pool. As they travel outwards, they retain their characteristic form or wave-length, but become more and more faint, losing their amplitude or energy. They convey a qualitative, not a quantitative, message. But if, at any point of their course, they impinge upon matter, they cause the emission of electrons moving with an energy equivalent to that of the electrons which produced them. Each wave radiation is tuned, so as to give rise to an electron having the same speed as the original electron in the X-ray tube. … Suppose a log of wood to be dropped into the sea from a height of one hundred feet, and to produce a wave radiating from the point of impact; as the wave spreads, the energy is more and more widely distributed and the ripples get less and less in height until they are invisible. But, for the analogy to hold good, this wave, striking on a ship at some point of its circumference, would cause one of the timbers to fly up into the air exactly to a height of one hundred feet. There is no question of the energy having been conveyed by the ripple; some secret store of force on the ship, tuned exactly to the force which started the ripple, would have been tapped. The suggestion clearly is that, in the case of ether waves and electrons, the prodigious energies of the atom are concerned, forces so vast that they surpass imagination and are, as yet, beyond human control.”

Here we have the principle underlying the P.U.S. method. The secret store of force is the child’s mind, a force which is able to meet with any other vital force which comes within its powers of tune. Now the powers of tune of a child’s mind are infinite, therefore the forces sent against it must be infinitely varied. Again they must be ‘qualitative,’ that is vital, the best that is to be had because a child is a person and is capable of growing upon vital forces only. The teacher has only to set the forces moving and to see that impact occurs. He has not to move them nor to bring about the impact. He starts the current between the child and knowledge and when he sees the vital spark in the act of narration his work is done. “The secret store of force” on board the ship does the rest. Now the effort of narration is of no value but as the sign of impact. Therefore to treat narration as the aim of a lesson is to put it in the place of some trick or manner which copied endlessly shall result in education. Again, it is only narration of the living word after one effort of attention which sets up the vital connection between knowledge and the child’s mind. Narration of any words after several efforts of attention is mere memorising and is of no value educationally.

On these and many other educational questions we may consult the small Egerias who are full of wise counsel if only our minds were sufficiently unprejudiced to perceive it. Here comes a small Egeria dancing along, her eyes full of fun and mischief. She is two years old and is out for the afternoon. As she runs along she stops to pick the leaves sprouting from the tree trunks by the road side. Later on from her perambulator she holds out her hand and asks for ‘lili’ (lilac) growing in a garden, opening and shutting her little hand eagerly in the direction of the bush. She is told “no, that is private.” Two days afterwards in another road gazing solemnly from her carriage she points to some lilac bushes and says, shaking her head, “No, p’ivate,” and, pointing to the tree trunks, “these not p’ivate.” The impact of that idea was shewn by her narration of the point in question which she had made her own. Egeria looks at you solemnly while she is told anything, then she becomes suddenly oblivious of your presence and you can see that she is dealing with the idea herself. She is so quick in meeting the impact of new forces that her mind seems tuned to every ripple of thought, or word, or action, of her elders. She watches them and catches at what lies within her small experience, seldom failing to find something to add to that ever increasing store of knowledge which is brought forth again on the most unexpected but always appropriate occasions. Fortunately there are few people who have not some small Egeria who will bestow, with a royal and unconscious grace, counsel on many of the problems which confront us all. If we had more faith in our Egerias and less in our own or other people’s ideas about them we might more readily apprehend the virtue which comes of touching the hem of that garment of glory which sweeps about each one of them. We see our blasé ideas of what children seem to be in the light of what they are. We get below the surface of the convention that so soon makes them appear commonplace and find that they have still fresh vigorous minds able and waiting for the food which in our caution we dole out to them in limited quantity and still more limited quality as we think they are able to bear it.

‘But children must learn the three ‘R’s’ and there is so little time for anything else,’ is the excuse. And we concentrate on these, give extra time to them and wonder why the children don’t seem to respond to all the labour bestowed. Again, we must consider the ‘with a difference.’ Is it possible that we have come to regard these subjects as the triple-portal gateway to knowledge? A child of two can apprehend abstract ideas with ease, that of ‘private’ for example; but it will be several years before it is necessary to teach that child that there are abstract and common nouns and then only by way of the mental training of classifying his ideas, ideas which have been in his possession for some years. Again, the teaching of a child to read is only giving him an instrument to feed his mind with just as he eats with a knife and fork. He has been able to feed in both senses all his life. These instruments only enable him to put on the pace but do not increase his power. A child can enter into the kingdom of knowledge without either writing or reading; these are instruments of education but not education. They are necessary instruments but unfortunately they are often accepted as the test of education because it is so difficult to test what is not evident to the senses. True education can only be tested by the spirit. The student who said that a problem in arithmetic was a sum to which neither of the four rules applied illustrated this point very well. The tendency to teach arithmetic as a set of four rules by one of which any sum must be worked has led to arithmetic being a ‘hopeless’ subject in many schools. The power to work a problem implies ‘mind’ as well as a knowledge of rules, and problems must be attacked by mind unprejudiced though supported by ‘rules.’ Day by day new plans of ‘education’ are set forth, plans which can be tangibly measured by apparatus, by models, what not, all offering some test to the senses, of order, of sight, of hearing.

The true test of education, according to the P.N.E.U. philosophy, is that of my parable, an impact which sets all the powers of a child’s mind free to work on the subject in hand. The problem in arithmetic, for instance, must strike a child’s mind in such a way that all his powers are free to attack it; it is not worked by this or that faculty any more than by one set of methods rather than another for these will vary according to the book or the teacher.

And so true education is a matter of faith, not of sight. The bread must be cast on the waters, the log must be dropped into the sea, the result will be seen only after many days, perhaps, so the casting forth must be one of faith. Just as the seed grows secretly so does the thought accepted grow secretly in the mind—not the unconscious mind, for the mind is one and indivisible,—until after a week or two, after a month or two the seed has grown into a plant of considerable dimensions. Just so with a child, the lesson must be narrated after onehearing to show that the seed has taken root and then the teacher may leave it. Weeks later, months later, at examination time, the seed will appear a strong growth with all the added beauties in thought of leaf and flower that the child’s mind has fostered in the growth. “He may be a man of great parts who talks from a full mind,” said Dr. Johnson, “but you cannot know it yet, nor I neither: the pump works well, to be sure! but how, I wonder, are we to decide in so very short an acquaintance whether it is supplied by a spring or a reservoir.”

Those who have heard children narrate a passage of some pages after one hearing will not hesitate to decide that their full minds are supplied by a spring and not a reservoir. The pump also works after oral teaching, but the reservoir makes its four sides only too evident.

But what is ‘the difference?’ “I am in entire sympathy with your methods, in fact they are what I have always used before I knew of the P.N.E.U.” “Yes, I’ve seen a programme and I got some of the books, but I didn’t find I could do any thing more with them than I have done with others.” How difficult it is to explain that it is not ‘good books,’ it is not narration, it is not many subjects, it is not the use we make of the child’s power of attention, that constitutes the difference. Given all these necessary adjuncts, given the same class of children, the same devoted teachers, the same circumstances, there is an intangible something which makes the difference. And the difference consists in faith in a philosophy of education, a philosophy which accounts for the whence and the whither of our aims and which makes of education a fine art instead of an exact science, an art which looks upon the problems of life as not coming under any of the “four rules” but which takes into account that intangible essence of mind which shall distil a spirit touched to great issues. And who can doubt that the spirit of a little child is already touched to great issues, that all it needs is the daily impact of ideas which shall touch it to still greater issues?

At a time when his span of life is counted by months rather than by years the acquirements of a small normal person are so varied and all-embracing that one wonders parents can sit down to the fact that the school curricula for children under six take so little account of them, and a child is taught to play, to carry, to use his hands and his brain when he has been using them efficiently for years on even more difficult subjects.

I again take counsel with Egeria. She is just a normal, healthy child and parents will easily confirm from their own experience the instances taken at random of her normal powers of mind and of body.

Egeria came to England at thirteen months and at sixteen months when I first made her acquaintance she was quite at home in her English surroundings. (She was born up country in Africa and was accustomed to black faces, seeing few Europeans). She has the colouring of a peach, fair hair, soft brown with a faint auburn tinge, the bluest of blue eyes, long dark lashes that sweep her cheek, two deep dimples that hover with her smiles, a little double chin, two rows of pearly teeth, long fingers and toes. She is tall for her age, very steady on her feet, never walks, but runs fast or dances along with a hop, skip and jump waving her arms as she goes… A fierce energy consumes her all day long and she loves climbing. If she cannot get off a chair sliding on her back, she clutches whatever she can and comes carefully down on her front. She can climb into any chair, even into her two-decker high chair. If a chair is too light and over balances, she pushes it up against something steady, table or bed, holds on to this with one hand and wriggles up with both legs and the other hand. Her supreme delight is a staircase. She would go up and downstairs half the day if allowed and she never puts two feet on one stair. She goes up fast on hands and knees and before she can be caught she is dancing round in one of the bedrooms and looking mischievous. She is perfectly fearless and will throw herself into your arms from six steps up. She comes downstairs holding on to one grown-up finger and sliding her hand down the rail which she can just reach. She is full of chuckles and life is one great adventure or rather a series of endless small ones, mostly entertaining diversions. She never minds a fall or a bump unless it is really bad. She just rubs the injured part and looks puzzled. She rarely cries and her smiles are bewitching. She is an embodiment of joie de vivre: indeed the African natives call her ‘Mwana wa sanyu,’ which being interpreted is ‘child of joy.’ She illustrates to the full what J. F. Millet calls ‘the delicious greediness of little children,’ for though she never wants food out of hours the moment her bib is tied on and she is in her chair she expects to find a spoon on the way to her mouth or she begins a little impatient squeal. This is at her mid-day dinner which she has alone and has to be fed, as also with her porridge at breakfast. For the rest she feeds herself with a small fork, spiking up bits of bread with butter or honey or bacon fat as the case may be. She has generic terms which are very inclusive. For instance,—“ba,” means bath, water, sponge, towel, soap, puddle, sea, pond: ‘dor’ includes whatever opens or shuts, door, box-lid, drawer, etc. Her first word after ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ was ‘pys’ for pussy, and she will sit for a long time finding babies, dogs, pussies and boys in a picture book. She has a passion for babies whom she calls bébé (French fashion) pursing up her lips and shewing her teeth. “Bébé ky ky” is a subject full of interest, and she hears a crying baby long before her elders and holds out her little hand if a house is passed where there is a crying baby.

When she wakes after her morning sleep in the park she sits straight up at once without a turn and is wide awake peeping out from under her hood for the first dog or boy or baby and then she says, ‘b-u-o-y-ee’ or ‘bow-bow’ as the case may be with a smile as if she had been going on without any interval for sleep. She goes everyday to feed the ‘guk-guks’ in the park and very much dislikes any change in the route. If you attempt any other path she screws up her hand, shoots out the fingers in the usual direction and says ‘zis zis.’ Shedislikes having the hood of the perambulator up but always quite understands it must be up if it is raining, for she goes out in all weathers. She lay in her perambulator one day testing the noises of the trams, stopping and unstopping first one, then both ears with her fingers. She is strong in arm and leg, picks up a book with one hand, also her bottle which she has the last thing at night. She is impatient about some things. She will usually wait patiently while she is undressed but she cannot understand why one blind must be drawn first in the morning, why not the two together? Again while you put on one sock or shoe, she holds up the other foot and shakes the sock or shoe over it, making little hustling noises—such a slow business, one at a time! She never leaves a door open. If she is not allowed to escape through it, the course she prefers, she shuts it with a compensatory bang. She is a most sporting character and will always take the chance of punishment if she has set her mind on doing something. Her patience when in spite of much volubility she cannot make herself understood, her tolerance of the mysterious ways of her elders show a magnanimity one can but envy.

Six months later at nearly two, Egeria could say sentences. She was not forward in talking but her powers of thinking, her sense of humour (she loved a ‘gok’ (joke) as she called it), her sense of order, were displayed in every way in which she could express them.

It is very difficult to keep a stern face when at the time for morning sleep, you are invited in the most wheedling tones to see ‘a cock-a-loodle up in de twee’ or a ‘big dickie up in de ky’ (an aeroplane). Or she improvises, “Appy baby bunting, baby baby bunting, bring butter baby bunting.” If no notice is taken she proceeds to personal memories or forecasts, ‘baby got noo socks on,’ ‘baby ’pill de water,’ ‘bruver gone to kool,’ ‘baby go ‘ome, cup o’ tea, cakie’ and, then, ‘baby no go ’leep now.’ A stern reprimand, and she shuts her eyes only to open them in a minute to see if she is being watched. If she gets no encouragement, not even a look in her direction, she will give her shoulders a little shrug, roll over, close her eyes and go to sleep as if to say, ‘well, if you won’t be entertained, I may as well go to sleep!’ Her social instincts are very marked. If anyone is absent at mealtime she pushes up a chair to his or her place, and says, “That’s for——.”

During a long walk into the country she learnt ‘dickie says cheep-cheep,’ and she was greatly delighted at hearing the cuckoo and imitated it whenever she heard it. Finally we passed a garden where the cuckoo sounded very near and she said ‘cuckoo’s ’ome.’ Later I said,—“that dickie says a little bit of bread and no cheese,” and she pointed to the trees and said ‘those twees.’ I said “No, cheese, not twees,” and she looked thoughtful for a minute, and then said, pointing to the trees,—“Those twees, dickie no say twees, say cheese.” An unaccustomed aunt went up to dress her one day and went to the wardrobe, baby pointed to the bottom shelf and said “dere’s baby’s clothes.” Not finding what she wanted her aunt went to another shelf and baby said, “no, no Mummie’s s’elf,” and “that,” pointing to another, “Daddie’s s’elf.”

The piano was taken away one day for repairs and I was greeted as I came in after some hours away,—“Man come, music gone, cart, gee-gee.” What more could have been added! She pays the sun much attention,—“A mornin’ sun,” when she sees him. If he is not there she says, “Uppity, Sun, uppity.” One day a fog had made of him a glorious red ball and directly she noticed it she said,—‘funny sun.’ Again she found she could sometimes see the sun and sometimes he went behind a house and she said, “Sun play ’ide and seek.’” She cannot manage ‘h’ at all.

Much is written and said on the subject of prayers for small children and parents hesitate to begin what may prove to be only a mechanical habit. But Egeria again has counsel to offer. She had been taught to put her little hands together at night and to say “P’ease God, bless Daddy and Mummy and all kind friends.” An Aunt arrived one evening when she was eighteen months and Egeria added after “friends,” quite of her own accord, “and A—” (her aunt’s Christian name). A few nights later she added the surname of a visitor who had spent the night in the house. At two years and two months after getting back to Africa she would add the names of the native ‘boys’ and, of her ayah, but after a plague of flies she added one day ‘P’ease keep the fy-fies away.’ The child had realised she was praying to Someone who was all powerful reversing the order of the discovery of “Karshish” that the All-loving was the All-powerful too.

What powers of reasoning, what a sense of direction, what a knowledge of human nature, what a sense of what is fitting, what dignity, what resources, what appropriate use of the knowledge at his disposal is displayed by any small child! Could we do more ourselves, excluding our wider experience, than does the child of only a year old? How little account we take of all his attainments when he goes to school! He comes entirely fit to cope with the demands of school-life, able as he has shewn himself in dealing with his elders, not always to his profit! “Baby, you are not to touch that knife, put it down at once,” said her father, he was sitting opposite not as usual beside her. Egeria looked up and touched it again. “Must I come and take it away?” “No, no Daddy, cakies over there!” said she pointing to a plate of cakes near her Daddy. Was it an attempt to change his thoughts?—a treatment to which she was used! The boy comes to school full of eagerness, fully able to deal with the knowledge for which he is ever on the look out and we decide that we ought to teach him first how to learn! And so instead of offering him knowledge at first hand we seek out many devices to help him to learn, to help him to acquire that knowledge with which he is fully fitted to deal. We invent games, we dramatise, we illustrate, we make models, we explain, and with all these we lay a dead hand upon a child’s imagination. A memorial tablet in a village church caught my eye this summer. The tablet bore a symbol which exactly illustrated this point of a dead hand in education. A cross bore on a scroll beneath its foot “Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling.” These words have come with a sense of comfort to thousands because of the idea of the omnipresent, overruling love of a Father who asks nothing but the reliance of His child when all earthly help has failed; but a dead hand creeping up the cross at once materialised and limited the inspiration which the writer of the words had sought to bring to sad hearts.

Just so we drill and check the activities of mind, we materialise and limit the intelligence of children. It is so much easier to carry out the logical rules of a science than to practise the methods of a fine art. Perhaps the war is teaching us that logic and science in this scientific age are not able after all to give the final word. “No, we doctors are not logical nor are we scientific,” said a wise doctor the other day. He recognised that mind must play its part above and beyond both logic and science where the issues of life are at stake. If this is true of doctors how much more should it be true of teachers! We train children to logical mental habits, to scientific ways of thought, but they must live in a region beyond either of these methods and that is the region of “the humanities.” The general acceptance of the term ‘the humanities’ is not without significance. The world has learnt during the last seven years that the decisions of life come neither under the head of science nor of logic but under the humanities. Some weeks ago the Premier in speaking on the Silesian question said,—“It is inconceivable that two countries which have made such tremendous sacrifices for a common cause and through such suffering won a common triumph for their cause should quarrel over the interpretation of the peace which they have achieved at such a cost.” And the work of the League of Nations is to raise all such decisions into the region of “the humanities,” a region where it is not the logical issues of the conflict that are discussed but rather the possibility of a common ground of thought where the opponents may meet in peace.

“There is no educational subject equal to language; for language is the most human of subjects, as most nearly corresponding with human nature itself. Linguistic and literary subjects, like the questions which arise in life itself, are matters of probability; they do not admit of such certainty as is attainable in mathematics or even of such experimental verification as in natural science; but they exercise the faculty of forming an opinion upon a balance of conflicting or at least differing evidences. It is so that these studies have long been known as litterae humaniores or humane letters. It is so that they cultivate the tastes or qualities which are proper to the humanities. For a good judge of letters may well be a good judge of life; and the literary instinct tends to a reasonable solution of life’s problems, and to a moderate equitable appreciation of life’s duties.”^[1]

How necessary therefore for children to live in the region of the humanities! For thirty-five years Miss Mason has laboured to show that in order to grow, a child must feed upon varied and sufficient food, that the humanities chiefly supply this food, that only as he is fed mentally can he exercise all the functions proper to his nature.

Since the passing of the Education Act of 1870 the tendency among teachers has been to save children from mental effort and to take upon themselves the labours which they think may prove too great for the children’s so-called ‘little minds.’ The following extract from a paper appearing in the “World’s Work” on the Editor of our greatest Daily illustrates how education has been exploited “for the children’s sake” to the great detriment of children who are quite as amenable to being taken in and done for as are many of their elders.

“The success of Answers was, in fact, secured less by the soundness of its general plan than by the skilful use of prize competitions, which were in essence lotteries. In the pre-Harmsworth days many papers offered small prizes for things that required some little brain work. Mr. Harmsworth offered big prizes for things that required no brainwork at all. His predecessors had appealed to the thousands who have some small gift of imagination, ingenuity or expression, or who have achieved some depth of culture. He offered great prizes to the millions to whom the slightest mental effort outside the routine of their lives is painful and even impossible.”

P.U.S. methods have proved that children do live and do grow in the most amazing way in this region of the humanities. The methods take into account the whole of a child’s natural and spiritual endowments and carry him on from them to greater issues. Wordsworth shows us in the lines that close this paper the parting of the ways,—a person with all his powers and twice ten thousand interests, and his value reduced to that of a mirror that reflects, not truth but himself!

And so when we are asked for the reason for the faith that is in us we can do more than say,—‘Yes, but P.N.E.U. is different.’ We can explain that the child must work for his own intellectual living and that it is no kindness on the teacher’s part to do the work for him or to bribe him to do it; that the child is only waiting for the impact of a great idea to set to work, that, and given the idea the impact, he at once shews himself able to deal with whatever is set before him in this way. But the idea must be vital and its expression of literary value, and the humanities afford the richest store of such ideas so expressed.

We are told of Aubrey de Vere,—

“Young Aubrey … read Latin with a tutor who … pronounced him to be an idiot and recommended him to cultivate his moral faculties as his intellectual were non-existent. … Classics and mathematics evidently failed to rouse the lad’s enthusiasm and a subsequent tutor, Edward Johnstone, who introduced him to the beauties of Wordsworth’s “Vernal Ode” was the first to tap the vein of the remarkable mental qualities of his pupil.

And to a friend De Vere could write at seventeen,—

“You know Tennyson’s exquisite line,—‘With an inner voice the river ran.’ I think every man has this inner under-current of thought, peculiarly his own, continually flowing forward with a grave and perfect harmony; it is what characterises him from other great men; it is a certain tendency of his spirit which is often called his bias, or his way of seeing things, although in truth a much more profound principle.”

And if De Vere had not had the freedom of the English ‘humanities’ would the world have ever had such a portrait as he paints at 27 of Wordsworth,—

“He strikes me as the kindest and most simple-hearted old man I know… He talks in a manner very peculiar. As for duration, it is from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same. As for quality, a sort of thinking aloud, a perpetual purring of satisfaction. He murmurs like a tree in the breeze, as softly and as incessantly; it seems as natural to him to talk as to breathe. He is by nature audible, as well as visible, and goes on thus uttering his being just as a fountain continues to flow, or a star to shine. In his discourse I was at first principally struck by the extraordinary purity of his language, and the absolute perfection of his sentences, but by degrees I came to find a great charm in observing the exquisite balance of his mind and the train of associations in which his thoughts followed each other. He does not put forward thoughts like those of Coleridge which astonished his hearers by their depth or vastness, but you gradually discover that there is a sort of inspiration in the mode in which his thoughts flow out of each other and connect themselves with outward things. He is the voice and nature the instrument, and they always keep in perfect tune.”

And who is to know which of all the “twice ten thousand interests” shall afford the “freedom of the city” to the child’s mind? Therefore, says the P.N.E.U. philosophy, must the forces (according to my parable) sent against it be of infinite powers of tune.

“Accuse me not

Of arrogance,

If having walked with nature,

And offered, far as frailty would allow

My heart a daily sacrifice to truth,

I now affirm of Nature and of truth,

Whom I have served, that their Divinity

Revolts, offended at the ways of men,

Philosophers, who, though the human soul

Be of a thousand faculties composed,

And twice ten thousand interests, do yet prize

This soul, and the transcendent universe

No more than as a mirror that reflects

The proud Self-love her own intelligence.”

—Wordsworth.

^[1] Bishop Welldon in The Contemporary Review, Sept., 1921.

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