His words will no more bring forth life than desert winds will clothe arid sands with verdure. Much talking and writing about education have chiefly helped to obscure a matter which is really plain. The purpose of the public school is or should be not to form a mechanic or a specialist of any kind, but to form a true man or woman. Hence the number of things we teach the child is of small moment. Those schools, in fact, in which the greatest number of things are taught give, as a rule, the least education. The character of the Roman people, which enabled them to dominate the earth and to give laws to the world, was formed before they had schools, and when their schools were most flourishing they themselves were in rapid moral and social dissolution. We make education and religion too much a social affair, and too little a personal affair. Their essence lies in their power to transform the individual, and it is only in transforming him that they recreate the wider life of the community. The Founder of Christianity addressed himself to the individual, and gave little heed to the state or other environment. He looked to a purified inner source of life to create for itself a worthier environment, and simply ignored devices for working sudden and startling changes. They who have entered into the hidden meaning of this secret and this method turn in utter incredulity from the schemes of declaimers and agitators. The men who fill the world, each with his plan for reforming and saving it, may have their uses, since the poet tells us there are uses in adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head; but to one deafened by their discordant and clamorous voices, the good purpose they serve seems to be as mythical as the jewel in the toad's head. Have not those who mistake their crotchets for Nature's laws invaded our schools? Have they not succeeded in forming a public opinion and in setting devices at work which render education, in the true sense of the word, if not impossible, difficult? Literature is a criticism of life, made by those who are in love with life, and have the deepest faith in its possibilities; and all criticism which is inspired by sympathy and faith and controlled by knowledge is helpful. Complacent thoughts are rarely true, and hardly ever useful. It is a prompting of nature to turn from what we have to what we lack, for thus only is there hope of amendment and progress. We are, to quote Emerson, "Built of furtherance and pursuing, Not of spent deeds, but of doing."