Whether the need for conversion is greater in church education or in state education might be questioned; in any case the spiritual sickness of both is the same, and the remedy is the same. Both display a self-imprisonment of the spirit, though both aspire to freedom; both take steps towards freedom, but hesitate, fear, and compromise or become inefficient from both points of view. In this juncture our inescapable duty is to go forward, not into discrete freedoms doled out piecemeal, but into freedom as an all-inclusive technic and habit whereby we shall continuously outgrow ourselves both individually and collectively. Some parts of such a technic are now in process of experimental development. We shall in due time point them out. Other parts we have still to seek. The assumption under which the seeking must proceed is that the technic of freedom is not a pattern that we impose upon conduct, but itself a manifestation of freedom, and therefore something more like friendship or worship. XXVII THE FUNCTION OF MINORITIES To say “freedom” is to be reminded of the old, old story of the struggle of apparent weakness against obvious power; the desperate straits of a truth against which men stop their ears; the plight of the simply human as against the institutional; the contrast between injustice in obscure corners and massive but inert virtue in the market-place. Freedom connotes minorities. There is no instance of a majority that, having become secure in its power, spontaneously secretes freedom from within itself for any considerable time. It appears to be about as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as for those who have power over men to cultivate freedom in the same men. Even under constitutions that guarantee individual liberty, actual liberty exists, if at all, through continuous struggle of a dissatisfied few against the lethargy of a satisfied many. The only exceptions that I can think of are the few teachers and parents who, imbued with respect for the personalities of the young, endeavor to educate them through their freedom instead of by canalizing their minds.