is that we accept some conventional standard
of duty and rectitude, and heavily enforce it; we neglect the interest,
the zest, the beauty of life. In my own career as an educator, I can
truthfully say that when I arrived at some of the perceptions
enunciated above, it made an immense difference to me. I saw that it
was a mistake to coerce, to correct, to enforce; of course such things
have to be done occasionally with wilful and perverse natures; but I
realized, after I had gained some practice in dealing with boys, that
generous and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, admiration,
directness, could win victories that no amount of strictness or
repression could win. I began to see that enthusiasm and interest were
the contagious things, and that it was possible to sympathize genuinely
with tastes which one did not share. Of course there were plenty of
failures on my own part, failures of irritability, stupidity, and
indolence; but I soon realized that these were failures; and, after
all, in education it matters more which way one's face is set than how
fast one proceeds!

I seem, perhaps, to have strayed into the educational point of view;
but it is only an instance of how the artistic method may be applied in
a region which is believed by many to be remote from the region of art.
The principle, after all, is a very clear one; it is that life can be
made with a little effort into a beautiful thing; that the real
ugliness of life consists not in its conditions, not in good or bad
fortune, not in joy or sorrow, not in health or illness, but upon the
perceptive attitude of mind which we can apply to all experiences.
Everything that comes from the hand of God has the quality of which I
am speaking; our business is to try to disentangle it from the
prejudices, the false judgments, the severities, the heavinesses, with
which human nature tends to overlay it. Imagine a man oppressed by all
the ills which humanity can suffer, by shame and disease and failure.
Can it be denied, in the presence of the life of Christ, that it is yet
possible to make out of such a situation a noble and a beautiful thing?
And that is the supreme value of the example of Christ to the world,
that He displayed, if I may so speak, the instinct which I have
described in its absolute perfection. He met all humanity face to face,
with perfect directness, perfect sympathy, perfect perception. He never
ceased to protest, with shame and indignation, again