This conception of what constitutes useful education differs radically from those which I have just been considering; but I believe that when it has been adequately expounded, and submitted to the judgment of those whose opinion is worth having, it will not be seriously gainsaid.
If education is useful in proportion as it tends to produce good men and women, the education given in Utopia is useful to the highest degree.

For a child cannot become a good man (or woman) except by _growing_ good; and if he is to grow good, his nature must be allowed to develop itself freely and harmoniously (for just so far as it is normal and healthy it is necessarily making for its own perfection), and the one end and aim of the teacher must be to stimulate and direct this process of spontaneous growth.

This, as we have seen, is the one end and aim of Egeria; and it is therefore clear that she is taking effective steps--the most effective that can possibly be taken--to produce good men and women.

We have but to name the qualities which are characteristic, as we have already seen, of her pupils and ex-pupils,--activity, versatility, imaginative sympathy, a large and free outlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy of heart,--in order to convince ourselves that those who have passed through the Utopian school are on the high road which leads to "goodness." So obvious is all this, that in defining the word "useful" I may be said to have decided the question in favour of Utopia; and what is now in dispute is not whether Utopianism is "useful," in any sense of the word, but whether my sense of the word is the right one.
I cannot go much further into this question without exceeding the limits of the theme which I am handling in this chapter.

For in considering the after life of the Utopian child, I am entering a region in which the idea of _education_ begins to merge itself in the larger idea of _salvation_; and though education, as begun in Utopia, is in its essence a life-long process, I must pay some heed to the limits which tradition and custom have imposed on the meaning of the word.
But before I close this chapter I must be allowed to give one illustration in support of my contention that the education given in Utopia is useful.