It is in educational matters, above all, then, that we must be careful about assumptions with regard to evolution and supposed inevitable progress because we must, forsooth, be taking advantage of the accumulated experience of previous generations. There is no inevitability about progress in any line. The attainment of any generation depends absolutely on what that generation tries to do, the ideals that it has and the fidelity with which it sets itself to work. We can make just as egregious mistakes, and we have made them, as any generation of the past. We can foster delusions with regard to our all-knowingness just as {19} many another foolish people before us have done, and our one hope of real accomplishment for ourselves and our generation is to choose our purposes carefully and then set about their accomplishment with strenuous effort. The lessons of the past in history are extremely precious not only because they show us where others made mistakes but also because they show us the successes of the past. The better we know these, the deeper our admiration for them, the better the outlook for ourselves and our accomplishment. This is the ideal that I would like to emphasize in this series of lectures and addresses and in this, far from there being any pessimism, there is, as it seems to me, the highest optimism. Any generation that wants to can do well, but it must want to do efficaciously. Any one who thinks that education, in the sense of training of character or advice with regard to practical, every-day life, has evoluted in the course of time, should read this little book that I bring to you this evening. Indeed, it is as the first chapter in the history of education that it finds its most valuable place in literature. This teacher of the old-time, who had his boy's best interest at heart, not only knew what to say but how to say it so as to attract a young man's attention. Of course it is probable that, even with all this good advice, the young man went his way in his own fashion; for that is ever the mode of the young. But, so far as the experience of another {20} could supply for that personal experience which every human being craves, and will have, no matter what the cost, surely this oldest book in the world supplies the best possible material. As literature, it has a finish that is quite surprising. Art is said to be the elimination of the superfluous. Surely, then, this is artful, in the best sense of that word, to a supreme degree. It is surprising how few repetitions there are, how few tergiversations, how few unnecessary words; and yet the style is not so austere as to be dry and lacking in human interest.