change and reactions: that no idea is ever perfectly
expressed until its dynamic cause is finished; and that to continue to
put into dynamic effect an already perfected idea means the
nullification of all living activity, the substitution of mechanism,
and all the resultant horrors of _ennui_, ecstasy, neurasthenia, and a
collapsing psyche.

The whole tree of our idea of life and living is dead. Then let us
leave off hanging ourselves and our children from its branches like
medlars.

The idea, the actual idea, must rise ever fresh, ever displaced, like
the leaves of a tree, from out of the quickness of the sap, and
according to the forever incalculable effluence of the great dynamic
centers of life. The tree of life is a gay kind of tree that is
forever dropping its leaves and budding out afresh, quite different
ones. If the last lot were thistle leaves, the next lot may be vine.
You never can tell with the Tree of Life.

So we come back to that precious child who costs us such a lot of
ink. By what right, I ask you, are we going to inject into him our own
disease-germs of ideas and infallible motives? By the right of the
diseased, who want to infect everybody.

There are _few, few people_ in whom the living impulse and reaction
develops and sublimates into mental consciousness. There are all kinds
of trees in the forest. But few of them indeed bear the apples of
knowledge. The modern world insists, however, that every individual
shall bear the apples of knowledge. So we go through the forest of
mankind, cut back every tree, and try to graft it into an apple-tree.
A nice wood of monsters we make by so doing.

It is not the _nature_ of most men to know and to understand and to
reason very far. Therefore, why should they make a pretense of it? It
is the nature of some few men to reason, then let them reason. Those
whose nature it is to be rational will instinctively ask why and
wherefore, and wrestle with themselves for an answer. But why every
Tom, Dick and Harry should have the why and wherefore of the universe
rammed into him, and should be allowed to draw the conclusion hence
that he is the ideal person and responsible for the universe, I don't
know. It is a lie anyway--for neither the whys nor the wherefores are
his own, and he is but a parrot with his nut of a universe.

Why should we cram the mind of a child with facts that have nothing to
do with his own experiences, and have no relation to his own dynamic