LP E L COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Printed in the United States of America by J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK PREFACE This is a book made up of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia by invitation of President Alderman and the faculty committee acting for the Barbour-Page Foundation. There are, as I see it, two things which a lecturer can do. He can speak with authority on some subject which he has mastered. But I am not an authority on any subject and I know only too well that I have not mastered this one. Or the lecturer can explore and inquire, aiming to open up the subject rather than to conclude upon it. That is what I have done here. And that is why at the most contentious and difficult points in the inquiry I have resorted to the Socratic dialogue. The subject of these lectures is the predicament of the modern teacher under popular government during the conflict over religious fundamentalism and over patriotic tradition. The same problem with variations presents itself to all whose business it is to popularize ideas. If any reader feels that I might more V 667457 profitably have discussed the problem as it presents itself in the office of a newspaper, my excuse is that I am too close to that phase of the problem to speak about it objectively and disinterestedly. No sensible physician ever attempts to make an important diagnosis on members of his own family. March, 1928. W. L. |