is old, that of our grandfathers; our conception of the aims and methods of education, is new, only made possible within the very last decades of the century; because it rests one foot upon the latest advances in the science of Biology and the other upon the potent secret of these latter days, that matter is the all-serviceable agent of spirit, and that spirit forms, moulds, is absolute lord, over matter, as capable of affecting the material convolutions of the brain as of influencing what used to be called the heart. Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit, and that conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow: knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and, hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to the relations of life, departments of knowledge, subjects of thought: and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas. In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to _modern_ thought, as the Supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred. We are free to give our whole force to these two great educational labours, of the inspiration of ideas and the formation of habits, because, except in the case of children somewhat mentally deficient, we do not consider that the “development of faculties” is any part of our work; seeing that the children’s so-called faculties are already greatly more acute than our own.