“work” is non-productive, futile, fictive, fallacious and imaginary. In all Nature there is no analogy to this thing of making an animal as big as his father exempt from securing his own living ❦ The birds in the nest are fed, and the young are suckled; but a weaning-time that does not take place until long after adolescence is fraught with danger. The plan is medieval and dates to a time when conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure were the badge of respectability. The college is really a mendicant institution: its teachers and students belong to the parasitic class. ¶ The fact that a thing has to be endowed proves there is something wrong with it. It is not self-sufficient and in itself supplies no excuse for being. It requires an explanation. No explanation ever explains the necessity of making one. ¶ Our system of teaching will never approximate the perfect until we devise an Industrial College where the students will produce as well as consume. The school then will not be an imitation of life—it will be life ❦ The fact that many college graduates are highly successful men does not answer the argument—that very many college graduates are wholly incompetent is the thing that forms the damning count. The man who gets his education out of his work, at his work, is the type that has always ruled and yet rules the world. We are safe only as we move with Nature; and any system of teaching that seeks to improve on Nature is founded on fallacy. ¶ There is only one valid reason for sending a boy to college, and that is, so he can discover for himself that there is nothing in it. A college degree, as matters now stand, is like a certificate of character—useful only to those who need it. However, there must surely come a time when degrees will be given only to those who can earn a living—and this degree will be signed by the young man’s employer. ¶ All this for the simple reason that no man is a safe person whose time is not employed in some useful daily occupation where others as well as himself are the gainers. Time and energy not used, or misused, form a dangerous dynamite; while time and human effort fused with reciprocity produce radium. Can you earn a living? Also, do you? ❦ [Illustration] [Illustration] Vaccination