2 My Little Farm 



support of our lives, instead of squandering it on 

 the barren waste, where no harvest can be reaped 

 against the coming winter. The mechanism is pre- 

 pared to conduct the energy either way, for waste 

 or for wisdom, according to the will and judgment 

 in the upper storey of the human workshop. 



It follows that in so far as the limited fund of 

 energy is expended in any pursuit or in any set of 

 pursuits, good or bad, there is so much the less of it 

 left for any other pursuit ; and we may add here 

 the desperate fact that the mechanism itself varies 

 its efficiency by the nature and amount of the work 

 (or play) on which we keep it active, irrespective 

 of our advantage or disadvantage. It is easy to 

 infer the value of keeping the faculties consciously 

 active on the things that matter, and of bringing 

 up the young mind in familiar practice with these, 

 so that maturity and efficiency may find their 

 meeting point at pleasure. Keep the growing 

 mind of youth filled with an exclusive interest, 

 or exclude a particular interest from it, and the 

 effect for good or evil may follow to the end of life. 

 In the recent literature of industry we find a 

 striking illustration of this. The technical capa- 

 city in textile manufacture is found to be higher 

 in England than in Germany, and Dr. Shadwell 

 attributes the difference to the fact that the 

 young folk in the English factories start a year 

 younger than the Germans. If that one year can 

 make this great difference, or even a large fraction 

 of it, what of the nation that brings up the bulk 

 of its youth without any attempt at turning the 



