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190
THE DAWN OF DAY

lies concealed some sensation which must necessarily be strange, unintelligible and painful to modern sensation. Are these intellectual hunting-grounds for boys? To be brief, we hunted in them in our boyhood and there became imbued with an almost inextinguishable dislike for antiquity, the dislike born of an apparently too great intimacy. For the conceit of our classical educators, who fancy that they have gained full possession of the ancients, goes so far as to transfer this conceit on their former pupils, together with a suspicion that suchi a possession is not fit to make people happy, but is good enough for honest, poor, foolish old bookworms: “May these brood over their treasure; it will be worthy of them!” with this mental reservation we complete our classical education. This cannot be redressed—in us! But let us think of others as well as of ourselves.

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The most personal questions of truth.—What really is that which I am doing? And what do I want to do with it? This is the question of truth which is excluded from our present syllabus of education and is consequently not asked; we have no time for it. But we have always leisure for playing with children instead of discussing the truth; for complimenting women, who one day will have to be mothers, instead of discussing the truth; for speaking with youths about their future and pleasure, instead of discussing the truth. But what are seventy