Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/141

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MY SCHOOL
121

path without the least discomfort. I know that in the practical world shoes will be worn, roads will be metalled, cars will be used. But during their period of education should children not be given to know that the world is not all drawing-room, that there is such a thing as nature to which their limbs are made beautifully to respond?

There are men who think that by the simplicity of living, introduced in my school, I preach the idealization of poverty which prevailed in the mediæval age. The full discussion of this subject is outside the scope of my paper, but seen from the point of view of education, should we not admit that poverty is the school in which man had his first lessons and his best training? Even a millionaire's son has to be born helplessly poor and to begin his lesson of life from the beginning. He has to learn to walk like the poorest of children, though he has means to afford to be without the appendage of legs. Poverty brings us into complete touch with life and the world, for living richly is living mostly by proxy, and thus living in a world of lesser reality. This may be good for one's pleasure and pride, but not for one's education. Wealth is a golden cage in which the children of the