374 Extracts from Addresses
occasion, when there was an agitation about something or other re-
marked that when people went about saying that something must be
done, he knew quite well that they contemplated doing something
peculiarly foolish. Now, when everybody goes about saying that some-
thing must be done in education—mind, I am speaking entirely of my
own country; I do not know enough about yours to say whether it
applies or not—when people in England go about saying something must
be done in education, and a great many of those people know nothing
about education, there is a very great peril that something peculiarly
foolish may be done. There are two dangers attendant in England upon
the growing interest in education that I will just very briefly refer to
now. The first is this: there is great danger of overmuch experimenta-
tion in education. I notice myself already amongst the undergraduates
who come to us at Oxford from school a considerable change from what
it was in my day. When I went up, an undergraduate took the course
which was recommended to him, and took it in the ordinary way. Now,
I find an increasing number who come up enormously apprehensive lest
by chance they should be betrayed into wasting an hour upon a subject
which they do not like, and I am afraid this whole theory of “French
without tears” does rather apply to the public mind. I am one of those
who venture to believe that any knowledge of French that could be
attained without tears would be worthless. Let me give you an illustra-
tion from my own experience. Many years ago when I was about
fourteen years of age, I was promoted at school into a new form the
first day of term, and I was told to prepare for the next morning a
couple of chapters of Livy, a Latin author I have always regarded as
difficult. At any rate, he was far more difficult than any Latin I was
ever put on to translate. The next morning the master said to me:
“I want you to wait,” and I waited when the lesson was over, and he
said to me: “Now, I want you to be quite straightforward. How long
did you study over the lesson prepared?” “I would rather not tell you,”
I said. He said: “I must know.” I said: “Three and one-half hours.”
I have learned since that those were three and a half of the most valuable
hours of my life, for what I learned then was what difficulties were
and how to overcome them, and if since then I have faced some diffi-
culties in life and overcome them, I think I may say I owe it, in part at
least, to the experience of those three and one-half hours.
I have no belief in education, no belief whatever in any education,
that does not teach a pupil first and foremost how to face difficulties
and how to overcome them.