printed matter is not reading. A few minutes each day on current news is time well spent and necessary for one's development, but as a nation we are great time wasters in the reading of our newspapers, magazines and those "best sellers" whose relation to literature is what sensuous ragtime is to music. To read worth-while, thought-stimulating and action-provoking matter requires some effort, concentration and a little practice, but not one person in a hundred, even of those capable of digesting intellectual food, is willing to submit to dietetic rules and develop his mind to receive, retain and profit by real literature.

We would not give a Kindergarten child calculus to study as a first lesson in mathematics, but would commence his instruction with simple additions and subtractions, to be followed later by multiplication and division, until after years of concentrated effort and persistent application, the difficulties of integral and differential calculus might be attacked with good prospects of being mastered. Similar judgment should be displayed in reading and in the choice of books, but all reading may be educational and, therefore, profitable. Epictetus most fittingly said, "Some who can scarce digest a crumb, will yet buy and swallow whole treatises; and so they throw them up again or cannot digest them; and then come colics, fluxes and fevers. Such persons ought to consider what they can bear. No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or figs. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you, that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Since, then, the

fruit of a fig tree is not brought to perfection suddenly or in an hour, do you think to possess instantaneously and easily the fruit of the human mind? I warn you, expect it not.”

Books are storehouses of knowledge and reservoirs of wisdom. They are the record of the thought, research and intuitions of the past. If impregnated with truth they live forever, defying time. The classics of the ancients are fountains of learning and philosophic wisdom, spreading eternal truth and freedom in a world prone to drift to error and slavery; they stimulate thought, invigorate the will and encourage the exercise of reason and logic as much today as they did thousands of years ago. An ancient Sage said that even in his day, what the world needed were men to apply the eternal principles found in books-men whose actions would bear indisputable testimony to their acceptance of truth.

Reading and study are to the mind what exercise is to the body, and both the quality and the nature of the movements and the time or duration factor are essential to success. Mental as well as physical health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated by intelligent exercise and utilization of faculties. "Shall I show you the muscular training of a philosopher?" asked Epictetus. "It is a will undisappointed, evils avoided, powers duly exerted, careful resolution, unerring decisions." The beginning of philosophy is a desire for education and mental development and a consciousness of our own weakness, inability, neglected faculties and stunted growth. The true purpose of education is to develop to the

fullest extent the capabilities of every kind with which we are endowed. The more mental food we assimilate, the more conspicuous and discouraging our ignorance appears. Education alone can conduct us to that broad and satisfying enjoyment of life which can only be realized by the efficient utilization of faculties expended in true service. Plato said that "It is better to be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune." It is surprising that ignorance seems with diabolical perverseness to cohabit with conceit, most often expressed to the world as vanity, arrogance and selfish pride. Ignorance is darkness, oblivion and the phantom of mental death. The "devil" in the world, the cause of war, discord, disease, poverty, inhumanity and all evil is ignorance. It is the negative of truth and stalks abroad a frightful, soulless spectre, fed by selfishness and clothed in egoism; its motive is avarice, its religion is superstition and in its wake are suffering and death.

In the discourses of Epictetus we read, "Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions; as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running. If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write. After sitting still for ten days, get up and attempt to take a long walk and you will find how your legs are weakened. Upon the whole, then, whatever you would make habitual, practice it-all things are preserved and improved by exercising their proper functions.' Man seems to revel in escaping mental stimuli, in avoiding intellectual exercise and in dodging those issues which would tend to develop his neglected,

innate mental forces. There are men wallowing in the obstinacy of ignorance, who boast of their strength of mind, whereas in truth their reasoning faculties are paralyzed. "We all dread a bodily paralysis and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the mind." We speak of men of one idea; generally they are men with one predominating hallucination, with what Crothers describes as "Toomuchness in one direction and not-enoughness in another," but even such men are better than the great majority of mankind who are void of individualistic ideas, have no strictly personal thought and who are incapable of an original conclusion or mental initiative of any kind on any subject.

Man's great task is to subordinate externals to the true inner man, to become free from enslaving, sordid materialism and be emancipated from those enfettering, soulless conventions which are but empty forms void of reason and logical purpose; to exercise and perfect the will and render it conformable to nature noble, free, unrestrained, unhindered, faithful, humble. Thus would a life become a positive dynamic, harmonious force for world service and in such a life there would be no room for lamentation, despair, error and the worship of externals or false gods.

"What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit;
What's genuine, shall posterity inherit."

-Goethe.

The cry of the hour is for thinkers, for men who will exercise reason and logic, be analytical, sincere in self-examination and studious with purpose.

The well developed man who exercises all the compartments of his brain, no matter what his station in life may be, is a man of broad human sympathies, reachable and feelable. Such a man has a heart susceptible of pity and a mind cultured and capable of sober thought. The executive, with part of his brain over-developed and part atrophied through lack of use, cannot be just and humane in all his relations with men, no matter what his inclinations may be. What such a leader of men cannot understand, he cannot weigh, and the same thought is applicable to workmen in every plane of life. "Minds that have nothing to confer, find little to perceive." Restriction of vision with egoism, the fruit which springs from lack of general mental development, is the cause of labor disputes on the part of both employers and employees and in the majority of cases both are equally to blame. It is well to recall the thought expressed by Voltaire that they who are not just are severe and they who are not wise, become sad.

The true education of workers and executiveslearning with thought-is the only channel through which the world will obtain industrial peace and that efficiency which will react to the benefit of all.

"Learning without thought is labor lost;

Thought without learning is perilous."

-Confucius.

Politics and selfish ignorance will continue to unsettle the relation between employer and employee until the mental development of the masses reaches the plane where the majority of men see things in their true proportions. Government will ultimately