opposite direction."

It were well for parents and in children to remember that past and
future meet in the contacts of their common present, and that these
conflict-provoking contacts are due neither to parental waywardness
nor to filial wilfulness. These are not unlike the seething waters of
Hell Gate, the tidal waters of river and sound, meeting and clashing,
and out of their meeting growing the eddies and whirlpools which have
suggested the name Hell Gate bears. Through these whirling waters
there runs a channel of safety, the security of the passerby depending
upon the unresting vigilance of the navigator. The whirl of the waters
is not less wild because the meeting is the meeting of two related
bodies, two arms of the self-same sea.

CHAPTER VII

CONFLICTS IRREPRESSIBLE

If it be true, as true it is, that many of the so-called wars are not
wars at all, there are on the other hand conflicts arising between
parents and children which cannot be averted, conflicts the
consequences of which must be frankly faced. To one of such conflicts
we have already alluded,--that which grows out of impatience with what
Emerson calls "otherness." But this, while not grave in origin, may
and ofttimes does develop into decisive and divisive difference.
"Difference of opinion" need not mar the peace of the parental-filial
relation, unless parents or children or both are bent upon achieving
sameness, even identity of opinion and judgment. It is here that
parents and children require to be shown that sameness is not oneness,
that, as has often been urged, uniformity is a shoddy substitute for
unity, and that it is the cheapest of personal chauvinisms to insist
upon undeviating likeness of opinion among the members of one's
household. For, when this end is reached, intellectual impoverishment
and sterility, bad enough in themselves in the absence of mental
stimulus and enrichment, are sure to breed dissension.

An explicable but none the less inexcusable passion on the part of
parents or children for sameness--a passion bred of intolerance and
unwillingness to suffer one's judgment to be searched--is fatally
provocative of conflict and clashing. Let parents seek to bring their
judgments to children but any attempt at intellectual coercion is a
species of enslavement. It may be good to persuade another of the
validity of one's judgments, but such persuasion on the part of
parents should be most reluctant lest children feel