§ 1. When an English University established an examination for future teachers,[109] the “special subjects” first set were “Locke and Dr. Arnold.” The selection seems to me a very happy one. Arnold greatly affected the spirit and even the organization of our public schools at a time when the old schools were about to have new life infused into them, and when new schools were to be started on the model of the old. He is perhaps the greatest educator of the English type, _i.e._, the greatest educator who had accepted the system handed down to him and tried to make the best of it. Locke on the other hand, whose reputation is more European than English, belongs rather to the continental type. Like his disciple Rousseau and like Rousseau’s disciples the French Revolutionists, Locke refused the traditional system and appealed from tradition and authority to reason. We English revere Arnold, but so long as the history of education continues to be written, as it has been written hitherto, on the Continent, the only Englishman celebrated in it will be as now not the great schoolmaster but the great philosopher. § 2. In order to understand Locke we must always bear in mind what I may call his two main characteristics; 1st, his craving to know and to speak the truth and the whole truth in everything, truth not for a purpose but for itself[110]; 2nd, his perfect trust in the reason as the guide, the only guide, to truth.[111] § 3. 1st. Those who have not reflected much on the subject will naturally suppose that the desire to know the truth is common to all men, and the desire to speak the truth common to most. But this is very far from being the case. If we had any earnest desire for truth we should examine things carefully before we admitted them as truths; in other words our opinions would be the growth of long and energetic thought. But instead of this they are formed for the most part quite carelessly and at haphazard, and we value them not on account of their supposed agreement with fact but because though “poor things” they are “our own” or those of our sect or party. Locke on the other hand was always endeavouring to get at the truth for its own sake. This separated him from men in general. And he brought great powers of mind to bear on the investigation. This raised him above them. § 4. 2nd. Locke’s second characteristic was his entire reliance on the guidance of reason. “The faculty of reasoning,” says he, “seldom or never deceives those who trust to it.” Elsewhere, borrowing a metaphor from Solomon (Prov. xx, 27), he speaks of this faculty as “the candle of the Lord set up by Himself in men’s minds.” (F. B. ij., 129). In a fine passage in the _Conduct of the Understanding_ he calls it “the touchstone of truth” (§ iij, Fowler’s edition, p. 10). He even goes so far in his correspondence with Molyneux as to maintain that intelligent honest men cannot possibly differ.[112]