“No,” said Marian, “I don’t think so. They were scientific, for they dealt with little disjointed parts of life.” I told them I wanted to paraphrase a certain verse in the Bible, the verse: “Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.” “How?” asked Ruth, much interested. “I would say,” I went on, “‘Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but the greatest of these is Beauty’—because it includes the other two.” Now I changed the first law into terms of life: “Life is a symbol of the complete Self, in a definite shape.” Life must express that Self in definite and individual lines, that is, in beauty. I spoke again of small and great genius, of art expressing a lesser or a greater completeness, of “Jenny Kissed Me” and “Faust,” Florence’s examples. “With people you must have noticed the same thing. Some people whose lives seem very limited, who understand and know little, still have such harmonious natures that in their spheres they seem complete. But with still other people you feel that their lives are much larger, that they grasp more of life and possess more, because they understand more. The more we understand, sympathize and love, the larger is our life.” Marian looked puzzled. “What is it, Marian?” I asked. “Why,” she said, “should some people be larger and more complete than others?” “How do you mean, Marian?” “Why is it so? Why aren’t we all alike?” “If we were,” said Henry, “it would be very monotonous.” “Oh, I know that,” said Marian. “But why is it so, anyway?” “Marian always asks the unanswerable,” I said. “And still—if we believe in progress, in the evolution of self, don’t you see?—some selves are more developed than others.” “If we believed in transmigration,” said Marian, “it would be easy to understand.” “You know,” I answered, “what I think of transmigration. But whether there be transmigration in the usual sense, or not, I think we all believe that in some way we have lived until now, that we are not created in one moment, that we evolve throughout all time.” And now I made a mistake, tried an experiment that was not successful. I have had misgivings, now and then—unfounded ones, I believe to-day—as to the value, to young people, of a philosophy of life which does not at once directly and concretely affect their manner of living, but does so indirectly and slowly through affecting their tastes, opinions and desires. One of the girls happened to speak of the relation of parents and children. I had realized for a long time that this was among the pressing problems of youth—especially of some of these particular young people—and instead of keeping to my prepared work, I took advantage of the remark, and launched off into that bottomless subject—without a pilot. I said: “I think it is one of the gravest—perhaps the only grave problem—of your lives, and we might as well try to solve it now, if we can. What shall we do with our parents?”