Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/25

 own powers and possibilities, and the laws of human growth. He studies philosophy, and he stands face to face with the ultimate conceptions of creation and gains a basis for his thought and conduct. This is a practical view, and pertains to the making of a useful and strong man—master over the forces of nature, able to use ideas for practical ends, and capable of continuous growth.

But knowledge as such, and its use for manhood and happiness, are often underestimated. To know the processes and history of inorganic nature, to trace the growth of worlds and know their movements, and number the starry hosts, to study the structure and development of all organic life, to know the infallible laws of mathematics, to live amid the deeds of men of all ages, to imbibe their richest thoughts, to stand in presence of the problems of the infinite, make a mere animal man almost a god, direct him toward the realization of the great possibilities of his being. Imagine a man born in a desert land, and shut in by the walls of a tent from the glories of nature. Imagine him to have matured in body with no thought or language other than pertaining to the needs of physical existence. Imagine him, since we may imagine the impossible, to have a fully developed power for intellectual grasp and emotional life. Then open up to him the beauty of the forest, the poetry of the sea, the grandeur of the mountains, and the sublimity of the starry heavens; let him read the secrets of nature; present to him the writings of men whose lives have been enriched by their own labor, and whose faces radiate an almost divine expression born of good thoughts; reveal to him the glowing concepts that find expression through the chisel or brush of