There is no more exhilarating
experience than to be able to read the street signs along the highway of
life, and this ability is one of the great objectives of every vitalized
school.
=Trained minds.=--Nature reveals her inmost secrets only to the trained
mind. No power can force her, no wealth can bribe her, to disclose these
secrets to others. Only the mind that is trained can gain admission to
her treasure house to revel in its glories. John Burroughs lives in a
world that the ignorant man cannot know. The trained mind alone has the
key that will unlock libraries, art galleries, the treasure houses of
science, language, history, and art. The untrained minds must stand
outside and win what comfort they can from their wealth, their social
status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training
that would admit them. All these things are parts of life, and those who
cannot gain admission to these conservatories of knowledge cannot know
life in its completeness.
=Achievements of trained minds.=--In order to know life in the large,
the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the
stars; must become intimate with the movements of the tides, the
glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the
eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the
zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the
chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve
into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the
heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must
be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to
the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils of the poets, the
statesmen, the orators, the artists, the scientists, and the historians
of all time.
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