782 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is easier in the face of sucli failure, it is a mucli smaller pang 

 to one's conservatism, to strike out from the current curriculum many 

 of the old informational studies, and to substitute for them a train- 

 ing which is largely bodily and emotional and artistic. Reality 

 and sincerity are the two things that we most want in life. The 

 current objections to ideal schemes of organic education are that, with 

 the rapidly turning wheel of fortune in this country, a course of 

 instruction covering fourteen years — that is, from four to eighteen 

 years of age — can not be taken by any large proportion of the chil- 

 dren, and even for those who do start out with a reasonable expecta- 

 tion of completing such a course, interruptions are very likely to 

 occur. And the question is pertinently put, "What is to become of 

 these children if they are suddenly thrown out upon the world before 

 your carefully co-ordinated scheme of education has done its perfect 

 work, and they have had little or no informational studies? I want to 

 anticipate this objection, and to do it very thoroughly and very 

 clearly. The answer is twofold. 



In the first place, with the growth of educational and social 

 ideals, the State will not leave the education of its children to such 

 precarious circumstances. "We are already wealthy enough to have 

 all our children withheld from industrial occupations until they are 

 twenty; and when the social conscience becomes sufficiently sensi- 

 tive to do this we shall be still more wealthy, for we shall have 

 more efficient and intelligent workers. It is a rough guess, but I 

 should say that at the present time half of our workers are busy, not 

 in supplying absolute human wants or even capricious wants, but are 

 kept busy simply because the work of last year was so poorly done. 

 The work of plowing, harrowing, rolling, planting, and harvesting 

 a crop of wheat is practically the same whether you get sixteen or 

 thirty-two bushels to the acre. In the case of material upon which 

 human labor is afterward spent the case is even more striking. Good 

 cloth, for example, will easily wear twice as long as poor cloth. For 

 a given amount of wear poor clothing must be looked upon as a 

 luxury. In addition to the extra work at the mill in producing two 

 yards of poor cloth in place of one yard of good, there is precisely 

 twice the amount of work in the tailoring shop in making up the two 

 suits. There are, of course, clever politicians who would argue that 

 such an abundance of work for the masses is a national blessing. 

 But I do not belong to their company. I do not believe in out- 

 wardly directed, compelling, industrial work any more than I be- 

 lieve in suffering and disease. I believe in self-activity, in inwardly 

 directed work that means the expression of ourselves in action, and 

 I believe in the leisure to grow wise. 



Thoreau found that by Avorking six weeks he could maintain 



