There are other groups, the born artists with their responsive minds, the “home children” for whom everything centres in their own home-world, and who have in them the making of another one in the future; the critics, standing aloof, a little peevish and very self-conscious, hardly capable of deep friendship and fastidiously dissatisfied with people and things in general; the cheerful and helpful souls who have no interests of their own but can devote themselves to help anyone; the opposite class whose life is in their own moods and feelings.  Many others might be added, each observer’s experience can supply them, and will probably close the list with the same little group, the very few, that stand a little apart, but not aloof, children of privilege, with heaven in their eyes and a little air of mystery about them, meditative and quiet, friends of God, friends of all, loved and loving, and asking very little from the outer world, because they have more than enough within.  They are classed as the dreamers, but they are really the seers.  They do not ask much and they do not need much beyond a reverent guardianship, and to be let alone and allowed to grow; they will find their way for they are “taught of God.”

It is impossible to do more than to throw out suggestions which any child-naturalist might multiply or improve upon.  The next consideration for all concerned is what to do with the acquired knowledge, and how to “bring up” in the later stages of childhood and early youth.

What do we want to bring up?  Not good nonentities, who are merely good because they are not bad.  There are too many of them already, no trouble to anyone, only disappointing, so good that they ought to be so much better, if only they would.  But who can make them will to be something more, to become, as Montalembert said, “a fact, instead of remaining but a shadow, an echo, or a ruin?” Those who have to educate them to something higher must themselves have an idea of what they want; they must believe in the possibility of every mind and character to be lifted up to something better than it has already attained; they must themselves be striving for some higher excellence, and must believe and care deeply for the things they teach.  For no one can be educated by maxim and precept; it is the life lived, and the things loved and the ideals believed in, by which we tell, one upon another.  If we care for energy we call it out; if we believe in possibilities of development we almost seem to create them.  If we want integrity of character, steadiness, reliability, courage, thoroughness, all the harder qualities that serve as a backbone, we, at least, make others want them also, and strive for them by the power of example that is not set as deliberate good example, for that is as tame as a precept, but the example of the life that is lived, and the truths that are honestly believed in.