For one thing, it means, if it has any meaning, that what is central in human nature is, not its inborn wickedness but its infinite capacity for good, not its rebellious instincts and backsliding tendencies but its many-sided effort to achieve perfection.
We must now make our choice between two alternatives.

We must decide, once and for all, whether the function of education is to foster growth or to exact mechanical obedience.

If we choose the latter alternative, we shall enter a path which leads in the direction of spiritual death.

If we choose the former, we must cease to halt between two opinions, and must henceforth base our system of education, boldly and confidently, on the conviction that growth is in its essence a movement towards perfection, and therefore that self-realisation is the first and last duty of Man.
It is by answering possible objections to Utopianism that I shall best be able to unfold Egeria's philosophy of education.

I shall perhaps be told that in my advocacy of that philosophy _I am preaching dangerous doctrines; that the only alternative for obedience is the lawlessness of unbridled licence; and that anarchy, social, moral, and spiritual, is the ultimate goal of the path which I am urging the teacher to enter._ Let me point out, in answer to this protest, that it is mechanical obedience which I condemn, not obedience as such.