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16 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD conflict not only between the school and social progress, but also between the school and religion. Some day the child is bound to ask himself if the rewards obtained in school had not proved themselves obstacles to eternal life, or if the punishments which had humiliated him, when he could not defend himself, had not made of him the man who hungered and thirsted after justice, and whom Jesus defended from the summit of the mountain. In social life, it is true, there do exist rewards and punishments different from those which are contemplated in a spiritual light, and the adult sets himself to force the child in a good time to accom- modate itself to, and to restrain itself within the require- ments of this world. The rewards and the punishments are de- signed to accustom him to a ready submission. But if we bestow a comprehensive glance on social morality we see the yoke growing gradually less oppressive, that is, we see the gradual return in triumph of rational nature, of life governed by thought. The yoke of the slave gives place to that of the ser- vant, and this in turn to the yoke of the workman. All forms of slavery tend to disappear by degrees. The history of human progress is a history compounded of conquests and liberations, and we style that which does not come under these headings as retrogression. Now we must ask ourselves if the school has to be fixed in a permanent condition which society would consider retrogressive. Something very similar to the school corresponds in the great government administrative departments and their employees. They also write all day long for some great distant result, the immediate advantage of which is not apparent. That means that the State carries on its great undertakings through their agency, and that the welfare of the people of the whole nation is dependent on their work. For them> the immediate object is promotion, as for the pupil it means promotion from class to class. The man who loses sight of his lofty destiny is like a degraded child, like a slave who has been deceived; the dignity of man is reduced to the level of the dignity of a machine, which needs to be oiled