The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-11-03


 resolute, thin Tipped mouth. His skin was very yellow and wrinkled and his hair iron gray. He was at all times an inpatient and sometimes an angry man. but this was forgiven him be cause of the hot wire of suffering that was manifestly thrust through his be- ing. At the end of his life his personal prestige was very great. To him far more than to any contemporary 1s it due that self abnegation, self identi- heation with the world spirit, was made the basis of universal education. That general memorandum to the teachers which is the keynote of the modern educa tionaI system was prob ably entirely his work:
 'sWhosoever would save his soul shall lose it, he wrote. e@That is the device upon the seal of this document and the starting point of all we have to do. 1t is a mistake to regard it as anything but plain statement of fact It is the basis for your work. You have to teach self forgetfulness, and every thing else that you have to teach is contributory and subordinate to that end. Education is the release Of man from self You have to widen the ho- rizons of your children, encourage and intensity their curiosity and their crea- tive impulses and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them they have to shed the old Adam of fnstinctive suspicious, hostflitfes and. passions and to find themselves again tn the great being of the universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out until they become arcs in the sweep of the racial purpose And this that you teach to others you must learn also seddlously yourselves Philosophy discovery. art, every sort of skill, every sort of service, love these are the means of salvation from that narrow loneliness of desire, that breeding preoccupation with self and egotistical relationships, which is hell for the individual, treason to the race and exile from God
 As things round themselves off and accomplish themselves one begins for the first time to see them clearly. From the perspectives of new age one can look back upon the great and [ widening stream of literature with complete understanding. Things link up that seemed disconnected. and things that were once condemned as harsh and aimless are seen to be fac tors in the statement Of a gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of the sin cerer writing of the eighteenth, nine teenth and twentieth centuries falls together now Into an unanticipated unanimity. One sees it as a huge us- sue of variations upon one theme. the conflict of human egotism and personal passion and narrow imagination on the one hand against the growing sense of wider necessities and possible, more spacious life
 That conflict is in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire's "Candide." ]" for example. in which the desire for justice as well as happiness beats against human contrariety and takes refuge at last in forced and incon- elusive contenment with little things. "Candide'' was but one of the pioneers of literature of uneasy complaint that was presently an innumerable multitude of books. The novels, more particularly of the nineteenth century, if one excludes the mere story tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy realization of changes that call for effort and of the lack Of that effort. In a thousand aspects. now tragica1ly. now conically. now with a funny af- fectation of divine detachment, count less host of witnesses tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations. Now one laughs, now one | weeps, now one reads with blank as- tonishment at this huge and almost un- 1 premediated record of how the growing | human spirit, now warily, now eager l fy,s now furiousIy, and always, as it seems, unsuccessfully. tried to adapt l itself to the maddening misf1t of it's l patched and ancient garments And | always in these books. as one draws 1 nearer to the heart of the matter, there comes a disconcerting evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the time l that a writer should not touch upon
 religion. To do so was to rouse the | Jealous fury of the great rnuIe1tude Of l the professional religious teachers. 1t l was permitted to state the discord, but
 t was forbidden to glance at any pos l able Reconciliation. Religion was the privilege of the pulpit.
 It was not only from the novels that l religion was omitted. It was ignored by the newspapers. 1t was pendantical- ty disregarded in the discussion of busi- 1 ness questions. It played trivial and 2, apoIogetic part in public affairs. And
 this was done not out of contempt, but
 respect The hold of the old religious
 organizations upon mems respect was
 still enormous so enormous fAat there
 seemed to be- a quality of 1rTeyerenee
 in applying religion to the develop
 rnents of every day. This strange sus-
 pension of religion lasted over into the
 beginnings of the new age. It was the
 clear vision of Marcus Karenin much
 more than any other contemporary in, : duence which brought it back into the texture of human life. He saw religion without Authorizations, without super l u%F a
 as necessary as food and afr, as land ? and energy to the life of man and the ! well being of the republic. He saw . that indeed it had already percoiate6