Ere life grows noisy and slower-footed thought
Can overtake the rapture of the sense.
The extinction of the early poetry and romance which gave beauty to the first view of these realities has often been accomplished by the most deliberate educational processes. There are two kinds of education,—that which educates, and that which eradicates. The latter is the easier and the more ancient method.
Wordsworth writes:—
Oh, many are the poets that are sown
By Nature, men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine.
But with this broad-sowing of the highest gifts it is astonishing how few come to maturity. I imagine that the Educational Man with the Hoe is responsible for a good deal of the loss. In his desire for clean culture he treats any sproutings of the faculty divine as mere weeds, if they come up between the rows.
If the Educational Man with the Hoe is to be feared, the Educational Man with the Pruning Shears is an equal menace.