lily to differ from the rose, that proclaims that the oak is an oak, and not a pine. Surely we are not so enamored of the commonplace that we want to inhibit the charm of individuality, and the mode of expression that conveys it.

It is common for the unsuccessful man to wish himself somewhere else. He blames circumstances for his failure and thinks that could he but journey to another country his success would be assured. Often obstacles rise like a wall before us and seem insurmountable. Suddenly there are no obstacles! We see our way clear to adopt a certain course that brings us the fulfillment of our desires. What has happened? Nothing has changed in our environment. The change is in brain tissue. A current of energy has found its way from active centres through some permeable part of the brain, making active some portion that was hitherto inactive. This concurring activity is what illuminates the situation for us. We have not travelled into another country, as we thought of doing, we have merely travelled into another brain cell, so to speak. The beggar wishes that he might jump over the high wall into the rich man's garden and take possession of his estate. But if the beggar could only jump over into the brain cell, next to the one which lights up the present consciousness of his brain, he might very

soon have for himself houses and lands. Let us thank God that with the quickening of democracy has come the educational ideal that will support our great plan, that will make a true democracy possible. How shall we prevent power and privilege from concentrating in the hands of a few? By allowing every child to grow strong and capable, mentally alert and morally square.

A recent gift of funds makes possible the establishment of a new elementary and high school to be maintained under the direction of the Teachers' College of Columbia University. It is food for speculation upon the ways of destiny, that these funds are part of a great fortune that has come under the designation "predatory wealth." This same fortune, which has been subjected to the whole range of the fire of criticism, implied in that distasteful term, is being used to help agencies whose broad intent is to "equalize opportunity" by making men equal to opportunity.

Mothers, if you think the death angel is abroad in your community in the form of infantile paralysis, no sacrifice is too great for you to make in order that you may secure conditions for the child that will be favorable to the warding off of disease. It is high time that you were made aware of the danger that threatens your child from the repression that may result in mental paralysis. A

little child's brain resembles that of an idiot. The difference is that the normal child's brain is plastic and permeable while the idiot's (if he is the genuine article) is not. He has stumbled, fallen down on the road of his mental development and his body has gone on without his mind. He cannot go back. Nothing can swing open the gates of opportunity for him. He has missed the splendor of the abundant life. For him the lights were never lighted that enable men to see the works of their Creator. Only a poor glimmer of mentality attends him while his body wears itself out on the animal plan. The child may not be caused to stumble at the very rudimentary stages of his growth. Mentality is too strong in the average child to kill easily. Whenever one sees a green vine struggling up through a pile of stones, fairly pushing them out of place, one is reminded of the tenacity and persistence of life. There are degrees of failure for the plant and the man. Much has been made of the survival of the fittest as a law of life, but we no longer believe in leaving our fruits and vegetables to the mercy of that law. Why should we leave our children to its mercy? Why not give the fit every chance to survive? As we let our plants luxuriate in rich soil, why not give our children the chance to taste the fullness of life? The constant movements of

the little body due to an unfailing inner impulse tends to symmetry beyond the power of gymnastics to produce. The shifting attention of the child, keeping his mind active in various and multitudinous directions, indicates the vibrating, pulsating currents of energy that flash and scintillate back and forth through inherited nervous structures. It is like stringing modern cities with electric wires. The more electric wires there are, the more compact and powerful is the thing we call civilization. The more neural connections that are made while the brain is plastic, at the behest of the child's natural impulse to react upon his environment, the richer and fuller will be the abundant life of the child's future.

In the past it has been thought that to bring the child in contact with the materials of growth was to insure growth. One may bring food in contact with the child's stomach by means of a stomach pump and temporarily sustain life, but no one would expect the child to grow until a healthy appetite had been restored. To compel him to read out of books, that which he has no appetite for, and to commit it to memory even, is not to make him assimilate this knowledge. We may go to a bargain counter and buy things just because they are cheap that afterwards prove to be of no use, merely a clutter in the house. Be

cause verbal memory has offered the cheap and easy appearance of learning, we have cluttered up children's minds with that which in the absence of assimilative power has proved to be a clutter of mental junk. This is what happens to children bundled off to the public school when they should have been playing with their mother's pie tins, or children shut up to complicated and expensive toys when they prefer a stick and a mud puddle. To deny a child the objects of his spontaneous interest may not make an idiot of him. Determination of brain tissue is a matter of more or less. He may stand some day beating with helpless hands against a door of opportunity that can never open for him. There may be despair at that and weeping and failure will inhere in nothing more or less than his own neural inactivity. Inexorable fate is not in outward circumstances. But in the closed neural tracts, are the closed doors of opportunity. If the doors of contact between the mind and its environment are not opened in childhood the hinges rust. Self activity is the opening of the doors. The number of neural doors that are opened constitute the avenues of abundant life, the opening into rich and satisfying opportunity and success. Please bear in mind that there are more than a million of neural doors to be opened

gnashing of teeth, but