But the present dulness of school-work is not without its defenders. They insist on the importance of breaking in the mind to hard work. This can only be done, they say, by tasks which are repulsive to it. The schoolboy does not like, and ought not to like, learning Latin grammar any more than the colt should find pleasure in running round in a circle: the very fact that these things are not pleasant makes them beneficial. Perhaps a certain amount of such training may train _down_ the mind and qualify it for some drudgery from which it might otherwise revolt; but if this result is attained, it is attained at the sacrifice of the intellectual activity which is necessary for any higher function. As Carlyle says, (_Latter-Day PP._, No. iij), when speaking of routine work generally, you want nothing but a sorry nag to draw your sand-cart; your high-spirited Arab will be dangerous in such a capacity. But who would advocate for all colts a training which should render them fit for nothing but such humble toil? I shall say more about this further on (_v._ pp. 472 _ff._); here I will merely express my strong conviction that boys’ minds are frequently dwarfed, and their interest in intellectual pursuits blighted, by the practice of employing the first years of their school-life in learning by heart things which it is quite impossible for them to understand or care for. Teachers set out by assuming that little boys cannot understand anything, and that all we can do with them is to keep them quiet and cram them with forms which will come in useful at a later age. When the boys have been taught on this system for two or three years, their teacher complains that they are stupid and inattentive, and that so long as they can say a thing by heart they never trouble themselves to understand it. In other words, the teacher grumbles at them for doing precisely what they have been taught to do, for repeating words without any thought of their meaning.