[1 Jones and Muirhead:  “Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird,” pp. 64, 65.]

Every human being, as we know, inevitably tends to emphasize some aspects of that world, and to ignore others:  to build up for himself a relative universe.  The choices which determine the universe of maturity are often made in youth; then the foundations are laid of that apperceiving mass which is to condition all the man’s contacts with reality.  We ought, therefore, to show the universe to our young people from such an angle and in such a light, that they tend quite simply and without any objectionable intensity to select, emphasize and be interested in its spiritual aspect.  For this purpose we must never try to force our own reading of that universe upon them; but respect on the one hand their often extreme sensitiveness and on the other the infinitely various angles of approach proper to our infinitely various souls.  We should place food before them and leave them to browse.  Only those who have tried this experiment know what such an enlargement of the horizon and enrichment of knowledge means to the eager, adolescent mind:  how prompt is the response to any appeal which we make to its nascent sense of mystery.  Yet whole schools of thought on these subjects are cheerfully ignored by the majority of our educationists; hence the unintelligent and indeed babyish view of religion which is harboured by many adults, even of the intellectual class.

Though the spiritual life has its roots in the heart not in the head, and will never be brought about by merely academic knowledge; yet, its beginnings in adolescence are often lost, because young people are completely ignorant of the meaning of their own experiences, and the universal character of those needs and responses which they dimly feel stirring within them.  They are too shy to ask, and no one ever tells them about it in a business-like and unembarrassing way.  This infant mortality in the spiritual realm ought not to be possible.  Experience of God is the greatest of the rights of man, and should not be left to become the casual discovery of the few.  Therefore prayer ought to be regarded as a universal human activity, and its nature and difficulties should be taught, but always in the sense of intercourse rather than of mere petition:  keeping in mind the doctrine of the mystics that “prayer in itself properly is not else but a devout intent directed unto God."[147] We teach concentration for the purposes of study; but too seldom think of applying it to the purposes of prayer.  Yet real prayer is a difficult art; which, like other ways of approaching Perfect Beauty, only discloses its secrets to those who win them by humble training and hard work.  Shall we not try to find some method of showing our adolescents their way into this world, lying at our doors and offered to us without money and without price?