The function of education, then, is to foster the growth of the child's whole nature, or, in a word, of his soul. I ought, perhaps, to apologise for my temerity in using this now discredited word. In the West Man does not believe in the soul. How can he? He does not believe in God either as the eternal source or as the eternal end of his own nature. It follows that he does not and cannot believe in the unity of his own being. He has been taught that his nature is corrupt, evil, godless; and that the "soul," which is somehow or other attached to his fallen nature during his "earthly pilgrimage," was supernaturally created at the moment of his birth. He is now beginning to reject this conception of the soul; but he cannot yet rise to the higher conception of it as the vital essence of his being, as the divine germ in virtue of which his nature is no mere aggregate of parts or faculties, but a living whole. So deeply rooted in the Western mind is disbelief in the reality of the soul that it is difficult to use the word, when speaking to a Western audience, without exposing oneself to the charge of insincerity,--not to speak of the graver charge of "bad form." A savour either of _cant_ or _gush_ hangs about the word, and is not easily detached from it. That being so, it must be clearly understood that I mean by the soul the nature of Man considered in its unity and totality,--no more than this, and no less. In the opening paragraph of this book I said that some of my readers would regard my fundamental assumption as a truism, others as a challenge, and others again as a wicked heresy. Whether it shall be regarded as a truism, a challenge, or a heresy, will depend on the way in which it is worded. To say that the function of education is to foster the growth of human nature, is to invite condemnation from those who regard human nature as ruined and corrupt. To say that the function of education is to foster the growth of the soul, is to issue a challenge to Western civilisation, which is based on the belief that the end of Man's being is not the growth of his soul, but the growth of his balance at the bank of material prosperity. To say that the function of education is to foster the growth of certain faculties, is to insist on what no one who had given his mind to the matter would care to deny. For even the orthodox, who regard Man's nature in its totality as intrinsically evil, admit without hesitation that there are faculties in Man which can be and ought to be trained; while the "man of the world," whom we may regard as the most typical product of Western civilisation, is clamorous in his demand that education shall foster the growth of certain mental faculties which will enable the child to become an efficient clerk or workman, and so contribute to the enrichment of his employer and the community to which he belongs.