Points of Friction
personal advantage is concerned." If history be "philosophy teaching by example," we are wise to admit the old historians into our counsels.
To withhold from a child some knowledge—apportioned to his understanding—of the world's sorrows and wrongs is to cheat him of his kinship with humanity. We would not, if we could, bruise his soul as our souls are bruised; but we would save him from a callous content which is alien to his immaturity. The little American, like the little Austrian and the little Serb, is a son of the sorrowing earth. His security—of which no man can forecast the future—is a legacy bequeathed him by predecessors who bought it with sweat and with blood; and with sweat and with blood his descendants may be called on to guard it. Alone among educators, Mr. G. Stanley Hall finds neutrality, a "high and ideal neutrality," to be an attribute of youth. He was so gratified by this
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