s next, a little less with his outside, with his mere brain or
logic-stitching machine. Let him swear by his instincts more, and live
with his medulla oblongata.

VI

An Inclined Plane

"This is a very pleasant and profitable ideal you have printed in this
book, but teachers and pupils and institutions being what they are, it
is not practical and nothing can be done about it," it is objected.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED

1. There is nothing so practical as an ideal, for if through his
personality and imagination a man can be made to see an ideal, the ideal
does itself; that is, it takes hold of him and inspires him to do it and
to find means for doing it. This is what has been aimed at in this book.

2. The first and most practical thing to do with an ideal is to believe
it.

3. The next most practical thing is to act as if one believed it. This
makes other people believe it. To act as if one believed an ideal is to
be literal with it, to assume that it can be made real, that
something--some next thing--can be done with it.

4. It is only people who believe an ideal who can make it practical.
Educators who think that an ideal is true and who do not think it is
practical do not think it is true, do not really know it. The process of
knowing an ideal, of realising it with the mind, is the process of
knowing that it can be made real. This is what makes it an ideal, that
it is capable of becoming real, and if a man does not realise an ideal,
cannot make it real in his mind, it is not accurate for him to say that
it is not practical. It is accurate for him to say that it is not
practical to him. The ideal presented in this book is not presented as
practical except to teachers who believe it.

5. Every man has been given in this world, if he is allowed to get at
them, two powers to make a man out of. These powers are Vision and
Action. (1) Seeing, and (2) Being or Doing what one sees. What a man
sees with, is quite generally called his imagination. What he does with
what he sees, is called his character or personality. If it is true, as
has been maintained in the whole trend of this book, that the most
important means of education are imagination and personality, the power
of seeing things and the power of living as if one saw them, imagination
and personality must be accepted as the forces to teach with, and the
things that must be taught. The persons who have imagination and
personality in modern life must do the