that we can afford to be wasteful. Failure, in the sense of opportunities missed, lays its blighting hand upon wellnigh every human life.

Obviously, these facts carry the same warning to the woman that they do to the man. Almost every American woman nowadays has her vocation, whether in the business world, the field of social service, or the home. in any event she must live, and wish to make her life worth while. There is no reason to suppose that the qualifications for success are any more widely distributed among women than among men.

And

Failure, then, in one sense or another, is the great shadow upon life. And the causes lie chiefly-though of course far from exclusively within the individual himself. This does not mean necessarily that they are removable. Some of them are not. On the other hand-and here is the door of hope--many of them are. Since all these facts are, at least in a general way, well known, one might suppose he would find everyone devoting a certain amount of time and energy to serious reflection upon life, its opportunities, its duties, and its dangers, and upon the problem of his own adjustment to its demands. As a matter of fact, it is the smallest minority that ever give such questions serious thought. Most of us live predominantly for the day. We are not far removed, in this respect, from the Australian savages, who, in the words of the two men that know them best, "obey literally the command of the Gospel: 'Take no thought for the morrow." we do plan for to-morrow or next week it is usually how we may snatch some petty advantage or dodge some passing disagreeable experience. To deal with life with the same seriousness and with the same prevision with which a chess player plans his moves the very idea that such a thing is possible seldom occurs to us, except in business matters. "Few men know how to live," writes Henry Drummond in Pax Vobiscum, (p. 31). "We grow up at random, carrying

When into mature life the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little children. And it does not occur to us that all this must be changed; that much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest of the fine arts; that it has to be learned with life-long patience, and that the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it triumphantly."

It is the purpose of the course here presented to lead the pupil to serious and systematic reflection about success and failure. What are the intellectual faculties which he must train, at first in school, and later, in life (for life ought to be a place of continuous education)? How is he to go about not to have them trained for him by someone else, for that can not be done, but to train them himself? What is the relation between the effective management of the body and success in life? What traits of character must one possess in order to become successful?these questions form the subject-matter of Part I. In Part II they give way to the more fundamental problem: Wherein does real success consist? What are the elements of life that are genuinely worth while, and how may one attain them? If it seems at first glance that Part II should have preceded Part I, I can only reply: Logically it should have. But the logical order is the opposite of the pedagogical four times out of five, and this is one of the four.

Unless your town or city has sunk deeper than Sodom there will be some in the class who will inquire whether we ought to look at life solely from the point of view of personal success, as it would seem we are about to do. If we are to make out a program of life ought we notthey will ask to include the lives of others in our calculations? To such I would reply that in the first place one of the most important and ever pressing duties of every human being is to attempt to make his own life a genuinely successful one, in so far as he does not thereby infringe upon the rights of others; secondly, that the knowledge of the laws of success and the ability to distinguish between genuine success and mere glitter may be used for the advantage of our family and friends and indeed of the community in which we live, as well as for ourselves; and finally that, in my opinion, for the most part, the path of the most deeply and permanently satisfying individual success and of the strictest duty turn out, upon careful scrutiny, to be identical. I am not of those who believe that the identity can be shown to be absolutely complete. And I believe that there are times when it is our duty to sacrifice our own welfare for the welfare of others, and that the good man does it. But I also believe that we discover as we penetrate beneath the surface of life an amount of harmony which perhaps a few people instinctively" feel, but which most of us never suspect. I do not for a moment suppose that the discovery of this fact will make a thoroughly selfish person turn unselfish-the leopard does not so easily change his spots. But the completely selfish are comparatively few in number. Indeed our authorities on criminology are at present inclined to believe that this type is confined to those who are also intellectually defective, the feeble-minded and the idiotic. For those whose natures are built on more generous lines the realization that the claims of self and the claims of others are in the main compatible with each other, will serve to remove some of the strain upon their unselfish desires, and thus conduce to consistency of purpose and vigor of pursuit. In addition it may lead unselfish and selfish alike to pursue their interests more intelligently, which, as far as it goes, will certainly be a great gain.

The methods by which it is planned this course shall be conducted are based upon the conviction, the result of many years of teaching, that in the studies dealing with human life, just as in the sciences of nature, only those results have permanent value which are obtained by the pupil through his own activity. Pour information into him by textbook and lecture, and in the first place much of it he will not understand (though he and you may think he does), and a good deal of what he does understand he will not really believe, and a good deal of what he understands and believes he will not realize. The members of the class, accordingly, will be expected to work things out for themselves, as far as possible, and the amount of real knowledge they obtain from the course will be in direct proportion to the extent to which they do this.

But the end which I have in mind is something far more valuable and significant than obtaining a certain amount of information. No book, were it ten times the size of this, could discuss in adequate detail a tithe of the situations which will have to be faced by each of the members of this class. To attempt to prepare any one of you for them by teaching him about them would be a hopeless task. You must be prepared by having your mental faculties trained so that when the situations arise you can "size them up," see them in their entirety, analyze out the essentials, trace the effects, direct and indirect, of following each of the alternatives that are open to you, and weigh their value so as to know which to choose. What you need most is not information but power. The information may be gold (perhaps), but if you have the power you have the goose that lays the golden egg. Now, power can be obtained in only one way, by exercise. Accordingly, the methods by which it is proposed to conduct this course are shaped primarily with a view to exercising your powers of observing and reflecting about life.

If this can be accomplished, another end will have been gained. You will have acquired the habit of observing and reflecting. It is a truism that man is a bundle of habits. This holds of his intellectual faculties as of everything else within him. Get yourself started thinking about life and there is a good chance that you will not grow up to be a child; otherwise there is a very good chance that you will.

The methods recommended for conducting this course follow from what has just been said. The teacher will assign in advance a certain number of questions in Division I. Before coming to class the pupil is to work out the answers as well as he can for himself, consulting freely, however, before he formulates them, with his fellow-pupils, and, best of all, with his parents. The answers must always be accompanied by the reasons upon which they are based. It may be well if he brings this material to class in written form. This will tend to make it more definite and perhaps more complete. The class period will be devoted to the discussion of the assigned questions, a discussion which will be led but not dominated by the teacher. The material contained in Division II is intended to help the teacher in preparing for his part of the classroom work. It is placed within the same covers as Division I in order that when the discussion is over it may be at the disposal of the pupil also. Whether any of it should be memorized is a question which the teacher must determine for himself, as this is a matter concerning which it does not seem possible to lay down general rules.

The use of the method where both problem and key are printed between the same covers presupposes a spirit of honor and loyalty on the part of the pupils, and of co-operation and harmony between teacher and taught. This spirit is more likely to permeate the entire class if the course is made elective, and if no other grades are given at its close than Passed and Not Passed. But the most effective means of developing the desired attitude will be the awakening of the class to a realizing sense of the significance of the problems under discussion and a recognition of the fact that while we may, indeed, cheat our teachers, we can never cheat life. We must be able to answer the riddles of the Sphinx or we shall not die, perhaps, but lose everything that makes life better than death. To meet this test every one of us needs every ounce of training he can get.