of educating the little man in the same way as the great man,
from the inside, or by drawing out his originality, meets with many
objections. It is objected that inasmuch as no little men could be made
into great men in the time allotted, there would be no object in trying
to do it, and no result to show for it in the world, except row after
row of spoiled little men, drearily waiting to die. The answer to this
is the simple assertion that if a quart-cup is full it is the utmost a
quart-cup can expect. A hogshead can do no more. So far as the man
himself is concerned, if he has five sound, real senses in him, all of
them acting and reacting on real things, if he is alive, i. e., sincere
through and through, he is educated. True education must always consist,
not in how much a man has, but in the way he feels about what he has.
The kingdom of heaven is on the inside of his five senses.

V

Every Man his Own Genius

I do not mean by the man of genius in this connection the great man of
genius, who takes hold of his ancestors to live, rakes centuries into
his life, burns up the phosphorus of ten generations in fifty years, and
with giant masterpieces takes leave of the world at last, bringing his
family to a full stop in a blaze of glory, and a spindling child or so.
I am merely contending for the principle that the extraordinary or
inspired man is the normal man (at the point where he is inspired) and
that the ordinary or uninspired boy can be made like him, must be
educated like him, led out through his self-delight to truth, that, if
anything, the ordinary or uninspired boy needs to be educated like a
genius more than a genius does.

I know of a country house which reminds me of the kind of mind I would
like to have. In the first place, it is a house that grew. It could not
possibly have been thought of all at once. In the second place, it grew
itself. Half inspiration and half common-sense, with its mistakes and
its delights all in it, gloriously, frankly, it blundered into being,
seven generations tumbled on its floors, filled it with laughter and
love and tears. One felt that every life that had come to it had written
itself on its walls, that the old house had broken out in a new place
for it, full of new little joys everywhere, and jogs and bays and
afterthoughts and forethoughts, old roofs and young ones chumming
together, and old chimneys (three to start with and four new ones that
came when they got ready)