at least, to me. The Valley-Road
Girl's mind was trained. She had obeyed scrupulously. In her case, the
first business was to re-awaken her within, and her own words have
related something of the process.

The point is this: If I have seemed at any time to make light of
intellectual development, subserving it to intuitional expression, it is
only because nineteen-twentieths of the effort of current educational
systems is toward mental training to the neglect of those individual
potencies which are the first value of each life, and the expression of
which is the first purpose of life itself. My zeal for expression from
within-outward amounts to an enthusiasm, and is stated rushingly as an
heroic measure is brought, only because it is so pitifully overlooked in
the present scheme of things.

Latin, mathematics, the great fact-world, above all that endlessly
various plane of fruition which Nature and her infinite processes amount
to, are all splendid tissue-builders; and of this tissue is formed the
calibre of the individual by which his service is made effective to the
world. As I have already written, one cannot shoot a forty-five
consciousness through a twenty-two brain. The stirring concept cannot
get through to the world except through the brain.

In the last sentence I see a difficulty for the many who still believe
that the brain contains the full consciousness. Holding that, most of
the views stated here fall away into nothing. Perhaps one is naive, not
to have explained before, that from the view these things are written
the brain is but a temporary instrument of expression--most superb and
admirable at its best, but death is at work upon it; at its best, a
listener, an interpreter, without creativeness; an instrument, like the
machine which my fingers touch, but played upon not only from without
but within.

If you look at the men who have become great in solitude, in prison,
having been forced to turn their eyes within--you will find a hint to
the possibilities. Yet they are rare compared to the many upon whom
solitude has been thrust as the most terrible punitive process. By the
time most men reach mid-life they are entirely dependent upon exterior
promptings for their mental activity--the passage entirely closed
between their intrinsic content and the brain that interprets. Solitary
confinement makes madmen of such--if the door cannot be wrenched ajar.

The human brain is like a sieve, every brain differe