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country as an argument in favor of a secular system,
and on the other, there are those who attribute all the
evils of the social condition of the people to the neglect
of religion in the schools. It is curious that
parties so antagonistic to each other in everything
else should yet agree upon what in reality is a
fallacy. So far is it from being true that the state
education of Prussia is a purely secular education,
that exactly the opposite is the case, the teaching of
religion forming an essential part of it. So that
here again that view which obtains so extensively
among ourselves, so far from receiving a refutation
from the circumstances of a country so often cited
as an illustration of the working of a secular system,
becomes, on the contrary, confirmed as soon as the
real facts are more fully inquired into.

The object of the foregoing remarks is not to discuss
how the relation between religion and education
should be dealt with. It will suffice for the present
if what has been said determines the antecedent fact
that such a relation does in truth exist. That this
relation is a natural and not merely accidental
relation, and that any attempt to ignore it or to destroy
it, would be doing violence to the instincts and feelings
of the great mass of the people.

Admitting, however, for the sake of argument,
that it is possible to exclude all religious influences
from the schools; that such rules could be devised,
for instance, as should debar a teacher, though in
daily contact with his scholars, from giving their
minds a bias on points connected with religion—
supposing that there does not exist so close a connection
between the mental and spiritual faculties as to
defy all attempts to draw a clearly defined line of
demarcation between them, still the Commission are
not of opinion that the State should ignore the value
of religious instruction. The great object which the
State has in view, it will probably be admitted, in
promoting education, is not so much to benefit the
particular individual who receives it as to increase
the well-being of the community of which he forms
a part.

The State, as such, does not chiefly concern itself
with the number of those who can read and write;
but rather inquires whether those who can do so
turn their acquirements to right ends; whether, with
their book-learning, there has been implanted in
them right principles, and whether they have been
made good citizens, thereby raising the general tone
of society, and making its members sensible of their
duties and responsibilities. The more commercial
value of education—the advantage, that is, which
its possessor acquires over those who are deprived
of it, is rather a matter of private interest than of
public concern, and is therefore peculiarly a matter
of consideration for the individual; in short, the
State looks rather to the indirect and impalpable
advantages of education in its influence on the community
as a whole, while the individual takes
account of those advantages which are more personal
and direct. Thus it being more especially the
function of the State to render those educated under
its auspices good citizens and good men, it would be
obviously inconsistent to omit any of those precautions
which, on the admission of all, tend to produce
this result.

On considerations such as these, the Commission
are of opinion that it would be unwise to shrink from
recognizing at once the natural relation between religion
and education, or from frankly accepting the
difficulty which springs from it. It is not intended
to do more in this part of the report than to consider
how the recognition of the principle here enunciated
affects the functions of the Central Board.

It is necessary to enter shortly upon this part of
the question here, because it has been frequently
assumed that the Central Board is the body
which should contain within itself the means of so
acting upon the different schools as to regulate the
nature of the religious instruction imparted in them.
It does not, however, appear necessarily to follow,
because the education is a religious education, that
therefore the board should interfere in any way with
questions arising out of religious differences; for
though the whole system may be a religious system,
yet the body entrusted with the supervision of it
may be made to confine its action to matters purely
secular. Though in the daily work of each particular
school it is, if not impossible, at least very difficult
to prevent religious influences from being
brought to bear, it does not appear by any means
difficult so to define the functions of the central
authority as to restrain it from becoming a disseminator
of any particular set of doctrines. It is not
necessary for the proper discharge of its functions
that the Board should take any direct part in the
work of teaching, nor that it should have opportunities
of itself assisting in the training of the children,
or of influencing their minds in any other way. On
the contrary, it is conceived that the functions of the
Board, though administering a religious system,
should be purely secular, so much so that it should
not possess even that indirect influence over the
mind of the schools which the power of appointing
teachers would be calculated to give.

It should, in short, be an administrator so to speak
of temporalities, not a director of consciences.

To ensure a faithful discharge of duty, the Commission
cannot devise any better or more effective
machinery than that which already exists, the controlling
power of the Legislature.

This, after all, seems to be the only real check on
abuse of power. It seems indeed to be generally the
rule that exceptional checks and exceptional precautions
have a tendency to defeat their own objects,
and to necessitate at last that ultimate appeal to the
Legislature which they were intended to supersede;
in some cases they are absolutely mischievous—either
on the one hand imposing unnecessary restrictions,
and thus impairing efficiency, or on the other, creating
a system of control found on trial to be illusory,
and thus establishing a quasi-independent body.
Thus, in the opinion of the Commission, an exceptional
system of checks is not calculated to provide
a more effective but rather a less effective security
against abuse, and they would therefore recommend
that reliance should be placed rather upon those