§ 11. Basing his system on the Fall of Man, Saint-Cyran came to a conclusion which was also reached by Locke though by a different road. To both of them it seemed that children require much more individual care and watching than they can possibly get in a public school. Saint-Cyran would have said what Locke said: “The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged up and down: for let the master’s industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or one hundred scholars under his eye any longer than they are in school together: Nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of their minds and manners [preserving them from the danger of the enemy, Saint-Cyran would have said] requiring a constant attention and particular application to every single boy, which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone’s peculiar defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his fellows the greater part of the four-and-twenty hours.” (_Thoughts c. Ed._ § 70.) § 12. An English public schoolmaster told the Commission on Public Schools, that he stood _in loco parentis_ to fifty boys. “Rather a large family,” observed one of the Commissioners drily. The truth is that in the bringing up of the young there is the place of the schoolmaster and of the school-fellows, as well as that of the parents; and of these several forces one cannot fulfil the functions of the others. § 13. According to the theory or at least the practice of English public schools, boys are left in their leisure hours to organize their life for themselves, and they form a community from which the masters are, partly by their own over-work, partly by the traditions of the school, utterly excluded. From this the intellectual education of the boys no doubt suffers. “Engage them in conversation with men of parts and breeding,” says Locke; and this was the old notion of training when boys of good family grew up as pages in the household of some nobleman. But, except in the holidays, the young aristocrats of the present day talk only with other boys, and servants, and tradesmen. Hence the amount of thought and conversation given to school topics, especially the games, is out of all proportion to the importance of such things; and this does much to increase what Matthew Arnold calls “the barbarians’” inaptitude for ideas.