them, leaving their souls untroubled and their lives undestroyed. They feel that of all things dear to them their spiritual nature is the dearest, and through their hearts alone will they let in the light. When the light of reason dawns from this side it does not blind them, or ruin their lives, or disturb the equilibrium of existence. But when the operations of development are directed exclusively to the mind, when they are begun with the imparting of generalities and the so-called knowledge of textbooks, our educators act as men who would stand a cone upon its apex.

XIII

All life is movement. Never, it seems, has the movement been so swift as in our time; but. this movement is intermittent, feverish, sickly, not a natural succession, but an involuntary course of sensations; not a constant aspiration to a single aim, but a sequence of diverse desires affected by every wind,

"Can this be life?" we ask ourselves as we watch a crowd devouring and devoured by life, in thought and anxiety for ever.

"The highest gift of God and of Nature," said Goethe, "is life, the revolution of the monad about itself, a movement which knows no stoppage or repose; while to each is given a congenital impulse which incites him to sustain and develop it, although its nature remains a mystery for all men living." To live-what a simple matter it seems. “Quel est

mon mestier ?" asked Montaigne, and answered himself, "Mon mestier d'est vivre."

But how complex are the lives created by men, above all by men of modern times, when each day they meditate more deeply upon life, its purpose and its aim, concentrating upon one object all their thoughts. Life without thought would be the life of animals, but thought should be a living thing, turned to the practical purposes of life. Yet in our day men live for thought-and life, the simple and precious gift of God, is swallowed up by it. Life is the free movement of all the powers and impulses of human nature. In this movement itself is its end, and therefore, to state the aim of life as a movement of intellect only, of heart only, of passion only, is to restrict and deform it. Life has been artificially deformed by these thoughts upon itself. Goethe in his time cried with disgust, "Poor men to whom the head is everything" (Armer Mensch, an dem der Kopf alles ist). "Do we live ?" he continues. "We have worked ourselves out of life by its analysis (herausstudirt aus dem Leben), and must attempt to enter it again." Goethe's words were inspired by thought of the professors, the scholars, and the young students of his time. Since his time how much farther has this analysis gone, and how much of life has been devoured by it. In Goethe's time, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, thinkers were struck by the growing discord between thought and life, by the prevalence of that of weariness of life (Weltschmerz), then in fashion among the younger generation. This complaint is no longer common, but its place has been

taken by the theory of pessimism, a new conception of life, which rules men's minds with a hopeless and intolerable dominion. This is no simple disillusion sprung from the contradiction between actuality and the highest ideals of the soul, it is a set negation of the world in which we move; not a simple weariness of life awakened by struggle with the ills of humanity, but a wicked, hopeless, and destroying denial, which admits of but one issue from the gulf of despair-to pluck from the soul itself the very desire to live.

To this extent have we perverted life. We trusted that thought alone would serve for the direction of life, for the better ordering of its movements; we believed that it would help us to live; yet we find that life has been annihilated by thought, till neither life nor thought remains. Such is the fashionable theory of life, greedily seized by the readers of its illustrious apostle; a theory which has made life more illusive-illusive enough before; for the partisans and supporters of this theory continue to satisfy freely all their animal impulses, in themselves proving the contradiction between life and their artificial theory of life, a theory in which there is no room for faith, or justice, or energy of will striving to embody itself in activity. What then remains? There remains a negation of life stolen from books, without experience of life, a sterile scheme of truth taken from books also, a dead effigy of Nature in the dress of a chemical formula, and a feeble will, inclined to renunciation of a life which from the material point of view has been a failure.

KNOWLEDGE AND WORK

SINCE the first awakening of thought, and its first manifestation in our society, the value and necessity of knowledge have been preached on every side, until the very idea of enlightenment in the minds of the most intelligent has been confounded with extent of learning. Everywhere we see an extension of programmes in the higher, intermediate, and even elementary schools; everywhere we find incompetent masters hastily appointed merely to fill vacancies; everywhere the formalism of examinations and inspecting commissions; everywhere a host of journals treating de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis, which swell the heads of their readers with a mass of confused and disordered information. The deplorable result is the increase of a pretended intelligence with a high opinion of itself, which lacks that for which all true knowledge is meant, that is, the ability to accomplish work, to accomplish it with conscience and skill, and to make it the interest of life.

appointed, which, to part of himself, and "Do not go beyond

To every man a task is understand, he must make a concentrate his powers upon. the limits of thy destiny," said the ancient oracle; "do not go beyond the limits of thy work." He who dissipates his powers in many directions distracts his thoughts, enfeebles his will, and loses the power of concentration upon work. Distracted by the

impulse of curiosity and the desire to know, men cannot amass and concentrate the reserve of vital force necessary for the free transition from knowledge to action. However great the knowledge acquired by the trifter, all is unfruitful if he cannot concentrate his powers and direct them to work.

By itself, knowledge educates neither the understanding nor the will. Of this we see examples daily. Daily we meet clever men, gifted with strong memories and imaginations, cultivated and learned, yet resourceless in the decisive moment when a judgment is required for work, or a firm word in council. Our life, both private and public, through the complexity of its relations, and the confusion of its ideas and tastes, demands continually a quick and firm decision. Yet, when such decisions are required, we find men approaching questions, not with firm steps, but by roundabout paths. In these moments a man of clear conscience and will, capable of apprehending all the relations of the subject, is more valuable for practical work than a multitude of feeble and vacillating minds.

From such causes spring the formalism and unfruitfulness of the many councils and conferences which are held among us: men deliver judgments without troubling to concentrate their minds upon the subject of speech. The best orator is not he who searches for means to confound his adversary with the little arm of casuistry or with torrents of splendid imprecation, but he who, inspired by a clear apprehension of the affair he deals with, expresses his thoughts clearly and firmly not he who, confusing light and shade, can prove that