Along these lines, we believe, one might get in the middle and lower parts of the school results analogous to those we have described in the cases of some sixth form boys. The present writer used to teach Divinity to a middle form on the Modern Side, and whenever a Gospel happened to be scheduled, he found ample material to his hand. It is surprising how little, for all the sermons they have heard, most boys of sixteen have faced the ideas expressed in the most hackneyed texts. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle...." "Love your enemies." "Take no thought for the morrow." A most mischievous half-truth has got about that these sayings are not to be taken literally. Boys have told me that a "rich man" means one who has grown rich by robbery. Well, what is robbery? "La propriete, c'est le vol"? "Love your enemies" means, I have been told, "Have no enemies: lead a peaceable life; but if..." There was a case apparently not provided for. "Take no thought for the morrow." On this I once got the delightfully honest comment, "Christ must have said this to cheer the disciples when they were depressed. Taken literally it would be absurd." With such candour on the pupils' side, surely the teacher's task is not hopeless. Here at last we have the atmosphere of honest controversy, and without controversy there is no freedom of thought; without freedom of thought no conviction; without conviction, no education and no religion. CHAPTER X CURRICULUM It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic. This book is concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very broad sense we here attach to the term. Our contention is that that subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the basis and foundation of liberal education. With that idea in view, we have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and religion. And then it might seem well to make an end. But an education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding. Our previous book suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a purely utilitarian one. That was not at all the impression we wished to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a curriculum which took politics as its centre. But we offer these remarks with much diffidence. If this book and its predecessor have any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of experience deserts us.