ality? This is a hackneyed request to make of the
school, but it seems certain that we do not succeed in obtaining
through our educational processes the highest possible degree of
productiveness of mind, as regards either quantity or quality. It is
because indeed we seem to be very far from our limit in these
respects, and because better results might perhaps so easily be gained
that it seems necessary to make this plea so often. More activity,
more art, greater enrichment of the mind, ought to have the desired
result, especially if the environment of the school could be so
changed that its moods would be more joyous and intense. These changes
are at any rate demanded for so many other reasons that if they fail
to make the intellect more productive, they will not be completely a
failure.

Education in the use of wealth must now be regarded as a part of
_moral_ education. In America we have ignored the necessity of thrift,
and the idea of thrift has certainly had no part in education. The
proper use of everything we produce or own is a fundamental part of
conduct, and it ought to be a persistent theme in education. We have
now the interest and incentive that have come from the war, we say,
for we have felt, if only remotely, what poverty means, and we have
seen that no amount of natural wealth and no degree of civilization
can wholly insure us against famine and disaster. We need throughout
our national life now, again, something like the old New England
conscience in the uses of things, applied in a different way, of
course, and now made more effectual by our broader science. The
encouragement of this spirit will perhaps make the difference in the
end between having a world seriously engaged in progressive tasks with
its material forces well in hand, and a world which in all its
practical affairs, large and small, is operated according to the
principle or the lack of principle of a _laissez faire_ attitude
throughout life. Saving in a good cause, and with a clear conscience
and determined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life and
is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of _adaptation of
means to ends_, and that any school which trains this power is
reaching fundamental principles of the practical life needs hardly to
be said.

The higher uses and appreciation of wealth which we are wont to call
plain living and high thinking, the moral idea of philanthropy, the
aesthetic values and hygienic im