forgetting its true perspective, is well expressed by Kaufmann:[1129] ‘Der auf Unkenntniss gegründete Hochmuth moderner Bildung glaubt freilich mit dem einen Worte “Scholastik” über die Arbeit dieser Mönche hinweggehen zu können, als über eine Summe nutzloser Versuche ... allein schon die eine Beobachtung, dass in den wichtigsten Fragen schon damals dieselben Gegensätze aufeinanderplatzten, welche heute die Geister trennen, schon diese Beobachtung zeigt dass die kirchlichen Fesseln das geistige Leben nicht erstarren liessen.’ PART IV CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES While we have looked at the actual curricula and surroundings of the schools, it has been possible to treat Christian and pagan education apart. But there remain certain questions which do not directly or entirely belong to the schools, and yet are of importance for education because of the general educational principles underlying them (as in the case of history or the teaching of a strange language), or because of the ideas by which they moulded the individuality of people (as in the case of morality and art). Here the interplay of influences is such that, in the brief treatment which we propose, a strict division had better not be attempted. For not only would such a division be tedious within so limited a compass, but the merging into one another of customs and ideas makes it almost impossible. The questions we have indicated will therefore be regarded as common to either side of society. 1. MORAL EDUCATION To get an insight into the moral state of a bygone age is difficult for two reasons. The first is that the subject is one on which people are most tempted to be hypocrites in their own case, while they delight in expatiating on the wickedness of others, and the second, that there is an extraordinary tendency for particular cases to fill the horizon and prevent us from taking a general view. In our period we have to reckon with a special form of these difficulties: the preaching habit, which, though it was essential to Christianity, was nevertheless as much open to abuse as pagan rhetoric was, especially when it was a means of combating paganism. ‘The world is wide’, said Stevenson in one of his essays, ‘and so are morals.’ But there is a standard—that of the Sermon on the Mount—which presents an ideal, though it does not give the right to condemn. In trying to follow this ideal the Christians saw pagan morality in a lurid light. How far were they justified?