Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/819

 truths as these must be emphasized. There will then he less surprise when people quarrel and go to law because they can not see the same thing in the same way. Many a business failure might have been averted had this trouble been adequately known in advance. Where a danger is philosophically foreseen, the risks incident to it may be diminished.

We need constantly to remember that human truth is a variable incomplete entity; that it differs according to whether it is your truth or my truth; that it is subject to the deflections of emotion, at the mercy of the association of ideas and of the education and personal training received in any community at any time.



T will be remembered by those familiar with biblical lore that when Saul, the son of Kish, went forth in search of his father's asses, he found, instead of these humble animals, a kingdom and a crown. Not every man is so fortunate. Indeed, as we all know, the experience is often reversed. Yet it does fall out from time to time that a very modest journey into the world of thought or action lands one in the midst of wholly unexpected possessions. The Burgomeister of Dessau, patiently gazing at the sun day after day for thirty years, and noting the sun-spots as they waxed and waned, to discover in the end their remarkable periodicity, is a more modern instance. Others might be cited. We go in quest of a given end. We travel a few paces. A chance experiment, an almost random thought, and behold—a new world! It is no miracle sprung full-grown from the womb of the impossible. It is an orderly sequence, the wider prospect which comes from a better point of view.

I have had a somewhat similar experience in this matter of manual training. I came in search of a quiet good; I find a kingdom.

We are inquiring into the inner content of manual training. Let us begin at the beginning—at the mystery of birth. It is a favorite starting point of mine, for life best stands out in all its cosmic relations when I view it as a sublime panorama, watching the human soul as it emerges from the mists of infancy and following it until it sinks below the horizon of the grave. It is a method which has the disadvantage of long prefaces, but perhaps the compensation of clearer conclusions.