'It is a hard duty, this duty towards your neighbour—the hardest part being to believe that he has like feelings with yourself and equal rights. The young man went away sorrowful, for he had great riches—riches intellectual or other. Yet the young man went away sorrowful, and there is no doubt that he eventually sold all that he had. This is Watts' version of it. The young man was at heart a follower of Jesus; he did not say that the commandment was an old one and well known, that it had been said before in the Hagadah and by Moses; he did not say that the language was the language of Plato or Philo; he did not say that it was too difficult and could not be true for every one—he went away sorrowful. We have no doubt that he sold all that he had.
'The system of education in the past has been based on training for leadership, i.e. for a master class, and its method has been a training of the faculties. But the sharply defined line between the leaders and the led has been broken down. The whole mass of people has been aroused towards intellectual creative efforts. The struggle going on in all communities and amongst all races is a struggle to grow and have more of life. Whether at home amongst our workers, or in India, or Egypt, or Ireland; or between China and Europe—the struggle is the same. It is a struggle to make progress, and have more of life. This urge to grow is a biological fact. We cannot tell why it is or what creates it—but everything around us has this urge to grow, and to grow in its own particular way. One seed grows into a tulip, another into wheat. We know not how, but we recognise it. And it is precisely the same urge to grow that is causing all this apparent conflict. It is the fundamental creative instinct—the most powerful instinct of the human race, by which the race is preserved. Deep down in human nature lies this instinct; it is never forgotten, it is always present in the mind. It is voluptuous, anarchic, joyful, violent, powerful.
'The other instinct is called the fighting, aggressive, acquisitive, possessive instinct. It is the instinct to acquire, to overcome. It is distinct from the creative instinct even in the biological growth, but the distinction manifests itself more clearly in the community or herd relationships. It has none of the beautiful and life-giving qualities of the creative urge. It is essentially, even in its romance (of which we have plenty), dull, selfish, destructive. It varies its forms from sheer animal force to the dialectical methods which have assumed the names of talent and culture. The same characteristics are seen in the force of the slave-driver, in the forces of the wage-nexus, and in the dialectical force of the council. These are hard sayings, but for the solution of the problems of the present times it is wise, and necessary, to look facts in the face. At any rate it is well to know of the possibilities, feelings, and loves of the uprising mass....
'But what has this to do with schools? My answer is that if we are to deal with the problems thrown up by science in our industrial system, and our close national and international contacts, the schools must be the seed grounds of the new thought and visions....'
CHAPTER VII
The House of Vision and the School Chapel
§ 1
I come now to one of the most curious and characteristic things in Sanderson's later life, a conflict and interaction that went on between two closely related and yet in many ways intensely competitive ideas, the idea on the one hand of a new sort of building unprecedented among schools, a building which should symbolise and embody the whole aim of the school and the renewed community of which it is the germ, and on the other hand the idea of a great memorial chapel to commemorate the sacrifice of those who had fallen in the war. These ideas assumed protean forms in his mind, they grew, they blended and separated again. I will call the first, for reasons that will appear later, the House of Vision; the second, the school chapel. For though Oundle had thrown up a great cluster of houses, halls, laboratories, and other buildings during its quarter of a century of growth, it had never yet produced anything more than a corrugated-iron meeting-house for its religious services. The want of some more dignified chapel had long been evident, and even before the war was very much in Sanderson's mind.