The difficulties set down in the last chapter exist in the conditions under which teachers must work. They should be recognized, to the end that they may be as far as possible overcome. They can be done away with only by the slow and gradual changing of public opinion and the re-forming of pedagogic intelligence. For the present they are to be reckoned with as inevitable limitations. Another class of obstacles to the ideal result of the teaching of literature exists largely in the application of the modern system or in the method of the individual teacher. These may to a great extent be done away with by a proper understanding of conditions, a just estimate of what may be accomplished, and a wise choice of the means of doing this. Teachers must take things as they find them, but the ultimate result of work depends to a great extent upon how they take them. If they must often accept unfortunate conditions, they may at least reduce to a minimum whatever is uneffective in their own method. The most serious defects which depend largely upon individual teaching are four. The first is the danger, already alluded to, of teaching children _about_ literature; the second is that of making too great a demand upon the child; the third is the common habit of endeavoring to reach the enthusiasm of the pupil through the reason, instead of aiming at the reason through the enthusiasm; and the fourth is—to speak boldly—the possible incapacity of the teacher for this particular work. The first of these is the most widespread. It is so natural to bring forward facts concerning the history of writers and of books, it is indeed so impossible to avoid this entirely; to induce students to repeat glibly what some critic has written about authors and their works is so easy, that this insensibly and almost inevitably tends to make up the bulk of instruction. Every incompetent teacher takes refuge in such formal drill. The history of literature is concrete; it is easily tabulated; and it is naturally accepted by children as being exactly in line with the work which properly belongs to other studies with which they are acquainted. If a child is set to treat literature just as he has treated history or mathematics, the process will appeal to him as logical and easily to be mastered. He will find no incongruity in applying the same method to "Macbeth" and to the list of Presidents or to the multiplication-table; and however well or ill he succeed in memorizing what is given him, he will feel the ease of working in accustomed lines. Names and dates may be learned by rote, old entrance-paper questions are tangible things, and thus examinations come to mean annual offerings of childish brains. To teach literature requires sympathy and imagination: the history of literature requires only perseverance. Much that in school reports is set down as the study of masterpieces is in reality only a mixture of courses in biography and history, more or less spiced with gossip.