And first let us see what it may do to stimulate a general interest in knowledge. Of late I have seen cropping out here and there what seems to me a pedagogical heresy--the thesis that no kind of training is of value in fitting the pupil for anything but the definite object that it has in view. We can, according to this view, teach a boy to argue about triangles, but this will not help him in a legal or business discussion. We may teach him to solve equations, and he will then be an equation-solver--nothing else. We may teach him to read Greek and he will then be some sort of a Greek scholar, but his reaction to other attempts to teach him will not be affected. Anything like a general training is a contradiction in terms. If this is true, a great part of what I am saying is foolish, but I do not believe it. Doubtless we have exaggerated the effect of certain kinds of training. The old college graduate who, having been through four years of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, considered himself able with slight additional training, to undertake to practice law or medicine or manage a parish, was probably too sanguine. Yet I refuse to believe that a man’s brain is so shut off in knowledge-tight compartments that one may exercise one part of it without the slightest effect on the others. I cannot now write with my toes, but I am sure that I could learn to do so much more quickly because I know how to use my fingers for the purpose. And it is indubitable, I think, that the best general preparation for mental activity of whatever kind is contact with the minds of others--early, late, and often. It tones up all one’s reactions--makes him mentally stronger, quicker, and more accurate. Some children get this at home, where there is a numerous family of persons who are both thoughtful and mentally alert. Some meet at home, besides members of the family, visitors who add to the variety of their contacts. Few get it in school, with much variety. And it is futile to expect most of our children to get it anywhere directly from persons. This being the case, it is wonderfully fortunate that we have so many of the recorded souls of human beings between the covers of books. With them mental contacts may be numerous, wide, and easy. To interest a man in a stretch of country take him up to a height whence he may overlook it. There is a patch of woods, there a hill, there is a winding stream. He will see in imagination the wild flowers under the trees, the windswept rocks behind the hill, the trout in the stream. He will wonder, too, what unimagined things there may be and he will long to find out. To interest a pupil in a subject turn him loose in a room containing a hundred books about it. He will browse about, finding a dozen things that he understands and a hundred that he does not. He will get such a bird’s-eye view that his stimulated imagination will long for closer acquaintance. And if you