son, and acted as if he were a small boy who had just got
the answer to his sum in vulgar fractions. Nobody had helped him; he had
found it out for himself; and now he could go out and play. "Let nothing
confine me: I will indulge my sacred ecstasy. I will triumph over
mankind.... If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I cannot
help it." In fact, Kepler didn't care whether school kept or not.

Now in the first years of our existence we are in the way of making
first-rate discoveries every day. No wonder that we find it so hard to
keep still and to listen respectfully to people whose knowledge is
merely reminiscent. Above all, it is difficult for us to keep our
attention fixed on their mental processes when our minds make forty
revolutions to their one.

There, for instance, is the Alphabet. Because the teacher told us about
it yesterday she is grieved that we do not remember what she said. But
so many surprising things have happened since then that it takes a
little time for us to make sure that it's the same old Alphabet this
morning that we had the other day. She is the victim of preconceived
ideas on the subject, but our minds are open to conviction. Most of the
letters still look unfamiliar; but when we really do learn to recognize
Big A and Round O, we are disposed to indulge our sacred ecstasy and to
"triumph over mankind."

If the teacher be a sour person who has long ago completed her
education, she will take this occasion to chide us for not paying
attention to a new letter that is just swimming into our ken. If,
however, she is fortunate enough to be one who keeps on learning, she
will share the triumph of our achievement, for she knows how it feels.

There is coming to be a greater sympathy between teachers and learners,
as there is a clearer knowledge of the way the mind grows. But even yet
one may detect a certain note of condescension in the treatment of the
characteristics of early childhood. The child, we say, has eager
curiosity, a myth-making imagination, a sensitiveness to momentary
impressions, a desire to make things and to destroy things, a tendency
to imitate what he admires. His mind goes out not in one direction, but
in many directions. Then we say, in our solemn, grown-up way: "Why, that
is just like Primitive Man, and how unlike Us! It has taken a long time
to transform Primitive Man into Us, but if we start soon enough we may
eradicate the primitive things before they have done mu