104 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 969 



At worst, this brings , distraction ; -while at 

 best, it makes us frugal and foresighted in 

 our mental life. At every turn, therefore, 

 the study of efficiency is forced upon us — 

 all the way from the correct position of our 

 inkstand on the desk to the arrangement 

 of our thoughts. 



The interests which pass before us in a 

 ceaseless train may prove almost embar- 

 rassing in their abundance, unless we are 

 prepared for the experience. 



Thus a man often finds himself in a posi- 

 tion analogous to that of the courteous 

 gentleman who felt that one should always 

 hold open for an approaching lady any 

 swinging door. Once at the main entrance 

 of a large department store he began this 

 practise early in the day. Closing time 

 found him still at his post, for never 

 through the long hours had the stream of 

 passing ladies been sufficiently intermittent 

 to allow him to move on without some dam- 

 age to his self respect. 



I say we find ourselves in quite an analo- 

 gous position to this with regard to cur- 

 rent ideas, and for this reason many of 

 them must be resolutely disregarded. It is 

 something of an art to use a protective in- 

 hospitality towards these many vital inter- 

 ests without creating by this act a feeling 

 of dislike for those excluded, and thus 

 weakening one's sympathy by the lack of 

 use. 



"We may recall here as having particular 

 fitness that view which regards life as a 

 continuous adjustment between internal 

 and external conditions. 



As we grow older this continuous ad- 

 justment is made only with increasing diffi- 

 culty. We become enmeshed in our special 

 habits and loaded down with our private 

 information — so that we do not move 

 lightly or change with ease. 



Perhaps one of the most striking results 

 of the rapidity with which new problems 



and new ideals follow one another is the 

 attitude of the active world towards the 

 man of sixty, or shall I say, fifty. 



Time was when the progress of ideas in 

 a community moved at so moderate a pace 

 that by gaining much experience in youth, 

 a man in old age could have a store of facts 

 as the basis of wise judgments. 



To-day we have the startling situation 

 that the matters on which sound judgment 

 is demanded often belong to a group of 

 events and happenings that have occurred 

 since the man interrogated was in a posi- 

 tion to get the needed experiences. 



Such a one may be wise in the matters 

 to which his own growing period relates — 

 but unfitted to meet the questions of the 

 moment which so often arise from situa- 

 tions developed since that period was 

 closed. So it sometimes happens that a 

 man advanced in life may belong not to 

 his own generation, but to that which has 

 preceded it — and there is a misfit. 



Yet experience is ever and always the 

 foundation of wisdom, and it follows that 

 the period of acquisition must be pro- 

 longed. The existence of this situation is 

 beyond dispute. Some method of adjust- 

 ment to it must be found, and, if need be, 

 we must revise our intellectual manners. 

 Speaking broadly, we have perhaps been 

 leading a somewhat thriftless mental life 

 and needlessly curtailing the period of 

 growth. 



Suffice it to say that the demands on our 

 attention, numerous as they are to-day, are 

 bound to be more numerous a decade hence, 

 and the first practical step is to employ a 

 method of selection among the things to 

 which one attends. We must imitate the 

 miner. Gold is pretty widely distributed. 

 There is said to be one grain in every ton 

 of sea water. The city of Philadelphia 

 stands on a brick clay deposit which con- 

 tains enough of this precious metal to buy 



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