Just as some believe that education is a sort of gospel, there are others who contend that knowledge makes for unhappiness. One evening at an informal dinner in New York a small group of thoughtful people, all of middle age, were discussing in a rather desultory manner the education of the younger generation. Suddenly the conversation became serious. One of the women said, “They are hard, disillusioned young realists. What else could we expect? It is the result of the education we are giving them. They know too much.” She continued, “I wish, though I do not see how it could have been done, that we could have retained the simple beliefs of our parents. It was very comforting to believe those things. It seems to me that everything I learn robs me of some consoling ideal and makes the world appear cruel and terrible.” To the question, what shall we put in the place of the old faiths which education leads us to doubt, there is perhaps no other answer than that we shall _exchange an infantile mentality for a mature one_. Most people will agree that it is better to grow up, but as to whether we are happier without our childish illusions, opinions differ. Much of the tenderness which people show for small children is a mixture of pity and envy. The other day I saw a business man about fifty years old gaze long and wistfully at an infant playing with his toys. He said as he turned away, “I wish I could remember what it feels like to be his age. Can you imagine what this world must look like to him?” There is my own small son who is now just learning to stand on his feet and speak a word or two. How trusting and sweet he is. He is not afraid of any one or any thing. No one would of course wish him to live always surrounded only by pretty pictures and parental kindness. But it is easy to understand how one in moments of weariness and doubt might envy him his brief day of blessed ignorance. Think of it, he does not even know that people have to work, and that it is the common lot of mankind both to endure and inflict suffering. He does not suspect the existence of such things as hospitals, slaughter houses, war, slums, jails, policemen or Congress. He does not know that he is not immortal, or that he must ever part with those he loves. He must know these things since they exist, and must learn about many other facts equally hard to endure. And as he grows up I want him to learn to cut his way through the fictions with which men strive to disguise the significance of many painful realities from which there is no escape.