Let me turn from these two passages of talk to his boys--they are rescued from a mass of pencil notes in his study--to a passage from an address delivered in the Great Hall in Leeds in 1920. It shows very plainly the quality of his conception of what I have called the return of schools to reality. 'Schools should be miniature copies of the world. We often find that methods adopted in school are just the methods we should like applied in the state. We should, in fact, direct school life so that the spirit of it may be the spirit which will tend to alleviate social and industrial conditions. I will give an example of the kind of influence the ideals and methods of a school can exert upon the working life. I will take a condition of labour which is now recognised as probably the greatest of tragedies. It is the slow decay of the faculties of crowds of men and women, caused by the nature of their employment--the tragedy of the unstretched faculties. So common is it, and ordinary, that we pass it by on one side; but no one can go into a factory without seeing workers engaged in work which is far below their capacities. Decay sets in, and the death of talent and enthusiasm, the inspirer of creative work. A little thought will convince us that the process of decay of such a delicate and vital organism as the brain is bound to set up violent, destructive, anarchic forces which go on for several years. A recent writer in the _Times Educational Supplement_ (and this paper cannot be called revolutionary) says that the tragedy of undeveloped talent is being seen more and more to be a gigantic waste of potentiality and an unpardonable cruelty. It is a tragic disease and produces in early life startling intellectual and moral disturbances, which are the natural sources of unrest. As years go on a mental stupor sets in, and there is peace, but peace on a low plane of life. The loss to the community by this waste is colossal, and it is not too much to say that the output of man could be multiplied beyond conception. 'Schools should send boys out into the industrial world whose aim should be to study these tragedies, and by experiments, by new inventions, by organisation, try, we may hope, by some of their own school experience, to alleviate the disease. To my mind this is the supreme aim of schools in the new era.' CHAPTER V THE GROWTH OF SANDERSON SHOWN IN HIS SERMONS AND SCRIPTURE LESSONS § 1