and development. Education is but a
process of unfolding and bringing into action the powers and capacities
with which the life at the beginning was endowed by its Creator.

THE CHILD AS THE GREAT OBJECTIVE

The child comes into the world--indeed, comes into the school--with much
potential and very little actual capital. Nature has through heredity
endowed him with infinite possibilities. But these are but promises;
they are still in embryonic form. The powers of mind and soul at first
lie dormant, waiting for the awakening that comes through the touch of
the world about and for the enlightenment that comes through
instruction.

Given just the right touch at the opportune moment, and these potential
powers spring into dynamic abilities, a blessing to their possessor and
to the world they serve. Left without the right training, or allowed to
turn in wrong directions, and these infinite capacities for good may
become instruments for evil, a curse to the one who owns them and a
blight to those against whom they are directed.

Children the bearers of spiritual culture.--The greatest business of
any generation or people is, therefore, the education of its children.
Before this all other enterprises and obligations must give way, no
matter what their importance. It is at this point that civilization
succeeds or fails. Suppose that for a single generation our children
should, through some inconceivable stroke of fate, refuse to open their
minds to instruction--suppose they should refuse to learn our science,
our religion, our literature, and all the rest of the culture which the
human race has bought at so high a price of sacrifice and suffering.
Suppose they should turn deaf ears to the appeal of art, and reject the
claims of morality, and refuse the lessons of Christianity and the
Bible. Where then would all our boasted progress be? Where would our
religion be? Where would modern civilization be? All would revert to
primitive barbarism, through the failure of this one generation, and the
race would be obliged to start anew the long climb toward the mountain
top of spiritual freedom.

Each generation must therefore create anew in its own life and
experience the spiritual culture of the race. Each child that comes to
us for instruction, weak, ignorant, and helpless though he be, is
charged with his part in the great program God has marked out for man to
achieve. Each of these little ones is the bearer of an immortal sou