"One thing I have been trying to drill into you," said his tutor, "is
that education is not a thing of books or studies or formulae of any
kind. It is the whole world; particularly the world of thought,
feeling, and expression. It is not a flower in the garden of life; it
is the garden itself, with its flowers, and its perfumes, and its
sunshine and rain. Yes, and its weeds, and droughts, and insects and
worms. There is a phase of education in the public meeting, whether
its purpose be to discuss the municipal tax rate or the flora of the
Rockies. You can't afford to miss any subject; but still less can you
afford to miss the audiences that are interested in any subject. They
are deeper than any book. There are all kinds of audiences. There is
the violent audience, and the mysterious audience, and the sentimental
audience, and the destructive audience, and the whimsical audience, and
the hysterical audience,--and every other kind. And the funny thing is
that they are all made up of much the same people. Take a sentimental
audience, for instance; a few passes, and you have an hysterical
audience. It is a difference of moods. We don't think enough about
moods. We are all subject to moods, and yet we judge a new
acquaintance by the mood he happens to be in--and the mood we happen to
be in--at the time of making the acquaintanceship. Another day, in
other moods, he would make a quite different impression--if the
impression already made could be effaced. I have a theory that the
world's sorrow is largely a matter of moods. I don't deny the sorrow,
nor the need for sorrow, nor the reality of it, but I do believe there
is a mood of happiness which even the deepest sorrows cannot suppress.
And the more you study people the more you will understand moods, and,
perhaps, be master of your own. And the man who can, by force of his
own will, determine the mood in which he will live, is master of the
world."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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