When perception is deeply tinged with emotion, as when one sees what is beautiful, or admires what is noble, the attempt to express it in language, action, or art, seems to be dictated by some inner necessity of one's nature.

The meaning of this is that the perception itself imperatively demands expression in order that, in and through the struggle of the artistic consciousness to do full justice to it, it may gradually realise its hidden potentialities, discover its inner meaning, and find its true self.
Once we realise that expression is the other self of perception, it becomes permissible for us to say that to train the perceptive faculties--the faculties by means of which Man lays hold upon the world that surrounds him, and draws it into himself and makes it his own--is the highest achievement of the teacher's art.

Even from the point of view of my primary truism, this conception of the meaning and purpose of education holds good.

For according to that truism the business of the teacher is to foster the growth of the child's soul; and the soul grows by the use of its perceptive faculties, which, by enabling it to take in and assimilate an ever-widening environment, cause a gradual enlargement of its consciousness and a proportionate expansion of its life.

But the perceptive faculties in their turn grow by expressing themselves; and unless they are allowed to express themselves--unless the child is allowed to express himself (for expression, if it is genuine, is always self-expression)--their growth will be arrested, and the mission which _all_ educationalists assign to education will not have been fulfilled.
The question is, then, Does the system of education which prevails in all Western countries provide for self-expression on the part of the child?
FOOTNOTES: [5] I mean by the words "original sin" what the plain, unsophisticated, believing Christian means by them.