Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/810

790 to be a good citizen. These objects imply health and industry, that the man or woman may be a producer and not a consumer only; sufficient intelligence to recognize and perform duties to one's self, to one's neighbors, and to the State; speech which is honorable and pure; and deeds which inculcate respect for the laws. Besides these, a mother may wish her child to acquire those graces of mind and heart that are difficult to define in words, but whose presence or absence is easy to feel in a man or woman; those graces which lift their possessor above the power of petty passions, of foolish conventionalities, above even the necessity to forgive injuries.

Emerson, in speaking of Lincoln, said: "His heart was as great as the world, but in it there was no room for the memory of a wrong." From the days of early manhood to the crowning act of his life, what a succession of kindly deeds are found in Lincoln's history! As the mind dwells on them, the great Proclamation is seen to be but the consummate flower on a plant which could bear no other. Such men do not fail when the time for great action comes. They do without fear what lesser men shrink from, or dally with, until the time for action has passed. No small soul, no life full of petty motives, ever rises to a great emergency. To one who meets the details of every-day life with a vain, selfish spirit the great occasion may come; but his will not be the honor of seeing it and of using it worthily. So, if a mother would have her children become men and women of the larger type, she must look well to "the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character."

What can natural sciences do toward this character-building? Have not studies other uses? Yes; but, while serving other uses, a study which does not mold character is of small value. This character-building receives little or no consideration in much that passes for education—a mistake from which the whole after-life of the child suffers. There is at present a "craze for information," as though to be a store-house of facts were a thing desirable in itself. Information so assimilated as to be a source of ready power in thought and conduct is a great good, but unless so available it is of little value. The mere desire for getting information might well be called intellectual avarice, for he who seeks this alone is almost as useless and miserable as the more sordid hoarder of money. Also, there is an idea, somewhat current in these days, that for children study should be transformed into play. I must protest against any such notion. Hard, patient, honest work is needed. The child who plays at his studies will play at life, play at everything, and will probably carry from cradle to grave the deception that whatever does not furnish him amusement is of no value, that work belongs of right