ve a healthy balance of mental faculties, even if they are not
very learned or artistic. They are kept temperate because they
cannot afford many luxuries. Their healthy life prevents an undue
craving for them. They help one another and cultivate unselfishness.
The good old word, neighbor, means something to them. They have a
sturdy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral
crises. They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so
many, or so enslaving, selfish interests. They have always been
trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hardship; and heroism
is natural to them. They have a strong will, cultivated by the
battle of daily life. And among them religion never loses its hold.

But what of our tendencies to specialization in education and
business? Are these wrong and injurious? Specialization, like great
wealth, is a great danger and a fearful test of character. It tends
to narrowness. If you will know everything about something, you must
make a great effort to know something about, and have some interest
in, everything. The great scholar is often anything but the
large-minded, whole-souled man which he might have become. He has
allowed himself to become absorbed in, and fettered by, his
specialty until he can see and enjoy nothing outside of it. There is
no selfishness like that of learning.

We can accomplish nothing unless we concentrate our efforts upon a
comparatively narrow line of work. But this does not necessitate
that our views should be narrow or our aims low. Teufelsdroeckh may
live on a narrow lane; but his thoughts, starting along the narrow
lane, lead him over the whole world. The narrowness of our horizon
is due to our near-sightedness.

But the only absolutely safe specialization is the highest possible
development of our moral and religious powers. For their cultivation
only enlarges and strengthens all the other powers of body and mind.
"But," you will object, "does religion always broaden?" Yes. That
which narrows is the base alloy of superstition. But a religion
which finds its goal and end in conformity to environment,
character, and godlikeness can only broaden.

But there is the so-called "breadth" of the shallow mind which
attempts to find room at the same time for things which are mutually
exclusive. God and Baal, right and wrong, honesty and lying,
selfishness and love, these are mutually exclusive. You cannot find
room in your mind for both members of