Sr. Salas Antón brilliantly expounded the programme of the school to the small audience of journalists and others who attended the modest opening-festival, and descanted on the design of educating children in the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or what is proved to be such. His chief theme was that the founders do not propose to add one more to the number of what are known as “Lay Schools,” with their impassioned dogmatism, but a serene observatory, open to the four winds of heaven, with no cloud darkening the horizon and interposing between the light and the mind of man. CHAPTER IV. THE EARLY PROGRAMME The time had come to think of the inauguration of the Modern School. Some time previously I had invited a number of gentlemen of great distinction and of progressive sentiments to assist me with their advice and form a kind of Committee of Consultation. My intercourse with them at Barcelona was of great value to me, and many of them remained in permanent relation with me, for which I may express my gratitude. They were of opinion that the Modern School should be opened with some display—invitation-cards, a circular to the press, a large hall, music, and oratorical addresses by distinguished Liberal politicians. It would have been easy to do this, and we would have attracted an audience of hundreds of people who would have applauded with that momentary enthusiasm which characterises our public functions. But I was not seduced by the idea. As a Positivist and an idealist I was convinced that a simple modesty best befitted the inauguration of a work of reform. Any other method seemed to me disingenuous, a concession to enervating conventions and to the very evil which I was setting out to reform. The proposal of the Committee was, therefore, repugnant to my conscience and my sentiments, and I was, in that and all other things relating to the Modern School, the executive power. In the first number of the Bulletin of the Modern School, issued on October 30, 1901, I gave a general exposition of the fundamental principles of the School, which I may repeat here:—