ombination of our souls with the things that
are, in such a way as to make a perpetual progress toward the things
that are to be.

We lose much because we lose avidity out of our lives, the eagerness to
grasp what spiritually belongs to us,--to share the universal
enthusiasm, the universal hope. Day by day the world wheels about
us--sunset and moonrise, wind, hail, frost, snow, vapor, care, anxiety,
temptation, trial, joy, fear. Whatever touches the sense or the soul is
something by which, rightly used, we may grow. There is nothing we need
fear to take into our lives, if it receives the right assimilation. Each
experience is meant to be a vital accession. We narrow our lives and
enfeeble our powers when we try to reject any of these things, or
unlawfully escape them, or are yet indifferent to them. Prejudice,
cowardice, and apathy are death.

Experience is what the race has been through. Each of us has his
personal variant of this common life. Thought is the power by which we
make it available for our own better living, and the future life of
the race.

To the early man, there existed earth, air, water, fire, heat, cold,
tempest, and the growth of living things. He lived, ate, fought, but his
thoughts were primitive and personal. Have _I_ had enough dinner? he
asked, not, Is the race fed?

By and by some one arose who began to consider things in the abstract,
and to relate them to his neighbor, and formulate conclusions about
them. He was the first real Thinker, Then air-philosophy and
element-philosophy grew up--beast-worship, animalism, fire-worship, and
the rudiments of simple scientific learning, as, for instance, when men
found that they could make a tool to cut, a spike to sew.

Since then, what the sage has done is to teach men to see, read, write,
think, count, and to work; to love ideals, to love mankind and relate
his work to human progress.

Man's first primer was near at hand. When he wished to write, he made a
picture with a stick, a stone, on a leaf, or traced his idea in the mud.
When he wanted to count, he kept tally on his fingers, or with pebbles
from the beach or brook. When he wished to communicate an idea orally,
it was with glances, shrugs, gestures, and imitative sounds. Once, in a
game of Twenty Questions, this was the question set to guess: Who first
used the prehistoric root expressing a verb of action? Who, indeed?

Out of that leaf-writing, and bark-etching, and later rune, have grow