THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



thus being permitted to develop its reasoning faculties 

 un warped. 



Its eyes may be trained to see things that really ex- 

 ist; its ears to hear sounds that correspond to actual 

 vibrations about it; and who shall doubt that such 

 training will make for sanity ? 



How better than by such training may the mind be 

 braced against the intrusion of those unreal visions that 

 are almost always the precursors of mental overthrow ? 

 The mind trained thus will almost beyond peradventure 

 become imbued with a spirit of healthful scepticism that 

 will challenge every new sequence of events presented 

 to it, and subject conclusions thrust upon it to the test 

 of " clear, cold logic." It will be hard indeed to foist 

 a delusional idea upon such a mind; and delusional 

 ideas are the very essence of insanity. 



As regards the child's more studied education, you 

 will do well to restrain its precocity wherein lies 

 one of its dangers never doubting that in so doing you 

 are making for the final development and stability of 

 its mental structure. To this end, and for many 

 reasons, it is desirable that the child should be much in 

 the company of children of its own age. Hence the 

 public school has for such a child a large advantage 

 over home training. Contact with many normal 

 minds in the class-room, and normal bodies on the play- 

 ground tends most helpfully to teach the child its true 

 status in relations to its fellows; repressing that egoism 

 which is one of its most dangerous tendencies. 



You will do well to restrain further the egoism of 



[236] 



