DEAN INGE'S EPIGRAMS.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1926, 8 December 1913, Page 2

DEAN INGE'S EPIGRAMS.

COLENSO LOST ON PLAYING FIELDS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, in an address on "Liberal Education," at West Hill College, liampste:id, recently, said tho examination system had done inofo than smyttiinK else to poison education in Britain. The memory when most, retentive was loaded with barren facts. When the examinations irero over, the raiiul, so long drawn tight, like an overstrung bow, sprung back, and very often threw away a great deal of what had been laboriously learned. . . The greatest enemy ot all was tho ingrained contempt for the intellectual life in England. Even in Shakespeare, j was it not- true that tho most iiitelli-! gent, men were generally tho greatest j villains ? Shakespeare seemed to consider that thoro was a subtlo affinity between iutcllcctualism and rascality. In Milton's "l'aradiso Lost" the intelligent, iiiquisite mind was that of Satan. "l-low often in our iietion tho hero was a well-moaning blunderer. "Wo trust too much to pluck and luck," declared the Dean. "We are fond of saying that Waterloo was won on the playing i'selds of publio schools. Where else, I should like to know, was Colonso lost?" Liberal education was essentially disinterested. It had no motive outsido itselE. There was a real incapacity in the minds of most Englishmen to understand how anyone's mind could bo his kingdom. We were all condemned to bo our own centres, but that was no reason wiiy we should be our own circumferences too.