To this one may answer, in the first place, that nearly all of us have, or ought to have, some responsibility for the education of children; and, in the second, that we deal with the minds of others every day in every walk in life, and it can certainly do no harm to have our attention called to the way in which minds function.  To be sure, some men are by nature tactful, and instinctively conscious of how things strike the minds of those about them.  But even such persons may gain helpful suggestions, and, at least, have the habit of attention to the mental processes of others confirmed in them.  How often we are impressed at church, at the public lecture, and in private conversations, with the fact that the speaker lives in blissful unconsciousness of what can be understood by or can possibly interest his hearers!  For the confirmed bore, there is, perhaps, no cure; but it seems as though something might be done for those who are afflicted to a minor degree.

And this brings me to another consideration, which is that a proper study of psychology ought to be of service in revealing to a man his own nature.  It should show him what he is, and this is surely a first step toward becoming something better.  It is wonderful how blind men may be with regard to what passes in their own minds and with regard to their own peculiarities.  When they learn to reflect, they come to a clearer consciousness of themselves—­it is as though a lamp were lighted within them.  One may, it is true, study psychology without attaining to any of the good results suggested above; but, for that matter, there is no study which may not be pursued in a profitless way, if the teacher be sufficiently unskilled and the pupil sufficiently thoughtless.

82.  METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.—­Perhaps it will be said:  For such philosophical studies as the above a good defense may perhaps be made, but can one defend in the same way the plunge into the obscurities of metaphysics?  In this field no two men seem to be wholly agreed, and if they were, what would it signify?  Whether we call ourselves monists or dualists, idealists or realists, Lockians or Kantians, must we not live and deal with the things about us in much the same way?

Those who have dipped into metaphysical studies deeply enough to see what the problems discussed really are; who have been able to reach the ideas concealed, too often, under a rather forbidding terminology; who are not of the dogmatic turn of mind which insists upon unquestioned authority and is repelled by the uncertainties which must confront those who give themselves to reflective thought,—­these will hardly need to be persuaded that it is desirable to give some attention to the question:  What sort of a world, after all, is this world in which we live?  What is its meaning?