In that little school at the crossroads we never made any preparation
for some possible visitor who might come in to survey us or apply
some efficiency test, or give us a rating either as individuals or as
a school. We were too busy and happy for that. We kept right on at
our work with our doors and our hearts wide open for every good thing
that came our way, whether knowledge or people. As I have said, our
work was elemental.
I am glad I came across this little book of William James, "On Some
of Life's Ideals," for it takes me back, inferentially, to that
elemental school, especially in this paragraph which says: "Life is
always worth living, if one have such responsive sensibilities. But
we of the highly educated classes (so-called) have most of us got
far, far away from Nature. We are trained to seek the choice, the
rare, the exquisite exclusively and to overlook the common. We are
stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and
verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the
peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often
dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more
elementary and general goods and joys.
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