efore his death, woman's bearing
and nursing and raising children will be useful to humanity only when
she raises up children not merely to seek pleasure but to be truly the
servants of mankind. The ultimate question underlying every other is,
what are you giving to the souls of your children? And the answer
is,--what you are. "In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek,
my accomplishments and my money, stead me nothing. They are all lost
on him: but as much soul as I have avails. If I am merely willful, he
gives me a Roland for an Oliver, sets his will against mine, one for
one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my
superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will and act for the
soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes
looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me."[E]

Thus pleads Emerson in the name of the child's potential oversoul.
Not long ago, I made an attempt to interest a young woman of a
well-known family in social service. She shuddered as if some
verminous thing had been held up to her gaze. "Not for me that kind of
thing." You must teach your children the methods and the practice of
selfless service. If you do not, well, your children may rise up
against you or fall to your own level, or, worst of all, awaken and
discover what you are.

CHAPTER VI

WARS THAT ARE NOT WARS

Every difference between parent and child is somehow assumed to be
rooted in and ascribable to the inherent perversities of the
parental-filial relation. When scrutinized, these will often be found
to be wholly unrelated thereto. Ever are parents and children ready to
take it for granted that their clashing arises out of the relation
between them when in truth, viewed dispassionately and from the
vantage-ground of remoteness, parent and child are not pitted against
each other at all. They are persons whose conflict has not the
remotest bearing upon the relation that obtains between them. Would
not much heartache be avoided, if parents and children clearly
understood that the grounds of difference between themselves, however
serious and far-reaching these sometimes become, are not related to or
connected with the special relation that holds them together?

Thus the irritations of propinquity may not be less irritating when
seen to arise out of the fact of physical contact rather than from the
circumstance of intellectual antagonism or moral repulsion, but it