Unless one sees a glimpse of truth at fifteen, enough to recognize it, one is not likely to discern it later, through the mist of unformed knowledge. And at fifteen one craves this something that can relate and shape all thought. So it happened that I organized the club of Seekers, composed of very different girls and boys, because of this one common need. The conditions necessary for membership were few. The first condition, the one in its nature inevitable, was that each member should be interested and enthusiastic in our quest, a seeker from need and desire. Only such would have stayed with us. And this, perhaps, was a selective process of extreme rigor. Otherwise the conditions of membership were not of the sort to put a premium on extraordinary ability. They were that the members should be over fourteen, and under seventeen, and should have finished their elementary school course. I also limited the membership in number. Among my acquaintances were many more girls who would have wished to join us, but no more than the two boys. I explain this not by the fact that boys are less interested in these questions, but that their interest develops later. If I had sought boys of eighteen or nineteen, I could have found them easily. At the time, however, I did not realize this fact. I think that the children were average of their kind. The kind, nevertheless, may have carried with it some intellectual superiority or precocity, such as the effects of environment and urban life. For these things, through the chance of acquaintanceship, they had in common: they were all bred in New York City, in educated families of the upper middle class (though not all of well-to-do parents), and all but one, Ruth, who is a Christian Scientist, of homes unusually liberal in their religious thought. Therefore these children were free from those clogging superstitions and false perspectives which result from early training in any symbolic and fixed creed. Take these influences for what they were worth. Beyond them the children had no special advantage or disadvantage.