Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/196

Counter-Currents trusted to develop habits of work. Our efforts to protect the child from doing what he does not want to do, because he does not want to do it, are kind, but unintelligent. Life is not a vapid thing. "The world," says Emerson, "is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality." No pleasure it can give, from the time we are seven until the time we are seventy, is comparable to the pleasure of achievement.

Dr. Münsterberg, observing with dismay the "pedagogical unrest" which pervades our communities, expresses a naïve surprise that so much sound advice, and so much sound instruction, should leave the teacher without inspiration or enthusiasm. "The pile of interesting facts which the sciences heap up for the teacher's use grows larger and larger, but the teacher seems to stare at it with growing hopelessness."

I should think so. A pile of heterogeneous facts—segments of segments 180