The self-educated person has all the handicaps of a first explorer in a new land. He may not always take the right roads. He does not see the country as a whole. He has to waste much time finding out things that everyone will know when the country has been well mapped. A genuine education should be of immense help in orienting us in the uncharted lands of the spirit. But that is just where so much current education fails us. It is merely a hodge-podge of miscellaneous and uncoördinated information that leaves the mind almost as bewildered at the end as at the beginning. Occasionally, indeed, given a strong mind, a self-educated[Pg 161] person seems to have a better understanding of what education is than our educators. I have before me a remarkable letter from a workman, whose schooling stopped at the age of twelve. Being the eldest of a family of eight he then had to go into a factory, and though his position has much improved he is still in a factory, nor is he there in an executive job. From twelve to sixteen he put in ten hours a day of the most exhausting physical toil, but continued his studies in history by himself. From history he proceeded to philosophy, and the sciences of psychology, biology, physiology and physics. In translations he has read such French authors as Rabelais, Villon, France, Barbusse, Rolland, Proust, etc. Later he developed a taste for poetry, apparently becoming interested first through Keats and Tagore. Of music, he writes me: “I am fairly well acquainted with the best music, having attended symphonies, concerts and organ recitals since I was eighteen or nineteen years old. I used to take what little money I had left after paying my board and go off to Pittsburgh alone to hear the New York, Philadelphia or Chicago orchestras perform. My taste for music was not created by the modern radio concerts. I acquired it from seeing and hearing Paur, Herbert, Stock, Damrosch, Muck and others.” Much of his recent reading has been in Bosanquet, Alexander, Eddington, Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. He does not own a car but spends his holiday time hiking and studying nature as far from cars as he can get. He is bringing up his children and trying to instil into them the idea that education is much more than learning how to get a living; and incidentally he says he has found some of the secrets of a contented life.