492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on the staff of one of the leading periodicals, and, in view of the 

 chaste and elegant English then at my command, I fear that I 

 expected a pretty high post. Among others, I carried a letter of 

 introduction to Mr. Roswell Smith, the editor of The Century. 

 He received me very kindly and talked with me for some mo- 

 ments. Finally he said to me : " Yon want to write ? " I said 

 that I did. " Well," he answered, " if yon want to write, write," 

 and he held out his hand. The interview was over. As I re- 

 turned to Philadelphia I conld not help the reflection that I had 

 gone a considerable distance for so obvious advice. But do you 

 know, the more I thought over the matter the more I came to the 

 conclusion that Mr. Smith had touched off the position with great 

 nicety. If I wanted to write, there was just this one thing open 

 to me to do, and that was to write. This bit of obvious advice 

 has never quite got out of my head. But it is not a principle 

 which often leads along the line of least resistance. On the con- 

 trary, like the Czar's railroad from Moscow to St. Petersburg, it 

 goes in a straight line, quite regardless of mountain and morass. 

 It asks us frequently to oppose what is of all the most difficult to 

 oppose the wishes and counsel of friends. If you want to do a 

 thing, do it. This is simple advice, but it sometimes takes a hero 

 to follow it. In this matter of education I see no other way open 

 to us. If we want for our children life in its fullness and totality 

 and beauty, we must address ourselves to the task of realizing 

 this, and be contented with no partial solution. It is not an easy 

 task. 



Life in its totality this means twenty-four hours, seven days, 

 four weeks, twelve months, threescore years and ten; it means 

 feeling, thinking, acting ; it means the life of the organism 

 birth, nutrition, growth, reproduction, death ; it means the life of 

 the emotions ; it means the life of the intellect acquisition, re- 

 flection, creation. It means nothing less than this ; and the moral 

 measure of our work as teachers will be the measure of the full- 

 ness of life that we open to our children. Were we tried by this 

 standard to-day, I dread to reflect how many of us would be found 

 wanting ! 



And yet I have said that this gigantic problem, like mathe- 

 matics, is only difficult in appearance ; is in reality quite simple. 

 I believe this to be true, provided, observe, that we can attain a 

 clear statement of the problem, and maintain this clearness in all 

 our dealing with it. And we gain clearness and rationality, the 

 stronger our hold upon the principle of causation. If we really 

 believe in cause and effect and in the necessary relation between 

 them, we will realize that we can never gain complete effects by 

 setting in operation partial causes. This is, indeed, the great les- 

 son in method that we all have to learn. With a clear idea of the 



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