XXII.
CONCLUSION.
§ 1. When I originally published these essays (more than 22 years ago) the critic of the Nonconformist in one of the best, though by no means most complimentary, of the many notices with which the book was favoured, took me to task for being in such a hurry to publish. I had confessed incompleteness. What need was there for me to publish before I had completed my work? Since that time I have spent years on my subject and at least two years on these essays themselves; but they now seem to me even further from completeness than they seemed then. However, I have reason to believe that the old book, incomplete as it was, proved useful to teachers; and in its altered form it will, I hope, be found useful still.
§ 2. It may be useful I think in two ways.
First: it may lead some teachers to the study of the great thinkers on education. There are some vital truths which remain in the books which time cannot destroy. In the world as Goethe says are few voices, many echoes; and the echoes often prevent our hearing the voices distinctly. Perhaps most people had a better chance of hearing the voices when there were fewer books and no periodicals. Speakers properly so called cannot now be heard for the hubbub of the talkers; and as literature is becoming more and more periodical our writers seem mostly employed like children on card pagodas or like the recumbent artists of the London streets who produce on the stones of the pavement gaudy chalk drawings which the next shower washes out.
But if I would have fewer books what business have I to add to the number? I may be told that—
“He who in quest of quiet, ‘Silence!’ hoots,
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.”
My answer is that I do not write to expound my own thought, but to draw attention to the thoughts of the men who are best worth hearing. It is not given to us small people to think strongly and clearly like the great people; we, however, gain in strength and clearness by contact with them; and this contact I seek to promote. So long as this book is used, it will I hope be used only as an introduction to the great thinkers whose names are found in it.