But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course of their professional duties. That was plainly not enough. If boys are learning from their masters something that they really value, their natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be eager to pass it on to their friends. This may seem a paradox, but it is true enough. If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence. Either he does not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care about algebra. A simple experiment will verify our conclusion. Drop an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C, D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about it before sunset. A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions of each other. Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if they do not.[2] That would be grotesque. But it seems to us that the central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought to make some such appeal to enthusiasm. Unless education produces enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm is generated, if it is generated at all. (For most, one may remark in passing, it is not generated even there. The notion that the average boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the Church of England.)