ucated mothers and are brought into contact with poor, unhappy,
neglected children, merely feel that they are examples to these;
well-fed children refreshed by a long sleep in comfortable beds,
placed side by side with little busy workers who get up before sunrise
to sell newspapers, or deliver milk, and arrive at school already
tired, imagine themselves to be superior to these, and to serve as a
"stimulus" to them "to do better"--all these normal children are on
the wrong moral track. They are being misled into an unconscious
acceptance of injustice. They are being deceived. They are not better,
they are only more fortunate than their companions; their kindly
hearts should be led to recognize the truth; to pity the, sickly, to
console the unfortunate, to admire the heroes. It is not their fault
if, instead of all this, vanity, ambition, and error spring up in
their hearts.

It is true that the teacher makes an attempt to educate their hearts
aright, reminding them of ailing, unfortunate, and heroic children by
means of moral stories which all learn without distinction in the same
manner. She lays stress upon incidents illustrating the good feeling
of mankind. Yet no one ever considers that the ailing, the
unfortunate, and the heroic are all there among them, since all
children go to school; but they cannot communicate with each other and
recognize each other; and thus these subjects who are actually present
are distinguished only as the ones who receive all the scoldings,
punishments, and humiliations while their more fortunate companions
lord it over them arrogantly as their examples, gaining prizes and
praise, but losing their own souls in the process.

In this moral confusion, where man "loses sight of God," as in hell,
what strong spirit is stimulated to develop all his precious
activities and cultivate his own heart? All are lost, the strong as
well as the weak; few indeed are those who possess an individual
instinct capable of saving them, who do not succumb to the temptations
of prizes, threats of punishment, to the continual suggestions of
emulation and of fraudulent rivalry, and who come out with their
powers still intact and their hearts pure, sensible of the great facts
of humanity. Those who pass through the ordeal untouched by its empty
glories and persecutions, and set forth on the path of a productive
life which attains to beauty and goodness by internal energy and is
susceptible to truth--these are th