774 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of observation, and we are apt to drift into a state of mind where, as 

 Professor James would say, inconsistencies cease from troubling and 

 logic is at rest. But even when we are aroused, we evoke a picture of 

 our wants in which it is easy to mistake the values. My present pur- 

 pose, however, is not to evaluate human qualities, but to seek out and 

 emphasize those that are essential, separating them very rigidly from 

 those that are secondary and unimportant. I restrict myself to the 

 narrower task because from a monistic point of view these human 

 qualities are so bound up with one another, are so thoroughly but 

 different aspects of the same unit, that they can not be stated in 

 squence. They do not follow one another. They coexist. It is 

 a single panorama, human life, crowded with different elements, but 

 making only one picture. 



The advantage of thus defining what you want at eighteen is that 

 no scheme of education will be tolerable which does not lead by direct 

 and scientific methods to the desired results. It is possible, of course, 

 to introduce various elements into the scheme of instruction, and 

 allow the principle of natural selection to work, trusting that in the 

 end there will be a survival of the fittest. But this is scarcely evolu- 

 tion made conscious. It is only consistent with an expediency system 

 of morals, which makes life a daily, hourly experiment, and rests 

 ujDon no underlying principles. 



At eighteen, boys and girls stand on the verge of manhood and 

 womanhood. Goethe says, " Be careful what you pray for in your 

 youth lest you get too much of it in your old age." What these boys 

 and girls pray for at eighteen is pretty well settled, and they will be 

 pretty sure to get it. The best part of life is still ahead, but the 

 tendencies are already there, and that is after all a large part of 

 education. You have perhaps heard of the country girl who was 

 asked what her brother was doing at the university. She replied 

 naively that he was learning to be a student. He was a lucky fellow 

 if his sister were right. I find life, myself, a tremendous experience, 

 and very, very full of interests; but when I look at the natural his- 

 tory of these interests I can trace nearly all of them to some begin- 

 ning, however faint, in the nebulous thought region of sixteen. 



The ethical ideal that I have tried to place before you is that of 

 a perfect human organism exercising its functions in the fullest pos- 

 sible measure. If I may use a biblical expression, it is the being per- 

 fect even as God is perfect. I believe, as I say, in this divine per- 

 f ectness, not as ^ thing to be gained here and now, all at once, at an 

 emotional revival meeting, but something to be grown toward and 

 cherished as the ultimate ideal, something that is to come as the result 

 of the operation of adequate causes. The special characteristic of this 

 perfectness is its inwardness and its unconsciousness. As the flower 



