=Freedom a condition precedent.=—­Complete living is impossible outside the domain of freedom.  The prisons show forth no examples of complete living.  But mental thralldom is quite as inimical to complete living as thralldom of the body.  The mind must know in order to move among the things of life in freedom.  Ignorance is slavery.  The mind that is unable to read the inscription on a monument stands baffled and helpless, and no form of slavery can be more abject.  The man who cannot read the bill of fare of life is in no position to revel in the good things that life offers.  The man who cannot read the signboards of life gropes and flounders about in the byways and so misses the charms.  If he knows the way, he has freedom; otherwise he is in thralldom.  The man who cannot interpret life as it shows itself in hill, in valley, in stream and rock and tree, goes through life with bandaged eyes, and that condition affords no freedom.

=Street signs.=—­A man who had been traveling through Europe for several weeks, and had finally reached London, wrote enthusiastically of his pleasure at being able to read the street signs.  All summer he had felt restricted and hampered, but when he reached a country where the street signs were intelligible, he gained his freedom.  Had he been as familiar with Italian, German, and French as he is with English, life would have been for him far more nearly complete during that summer and therefore much more agreeable and fertile.  There is no more exhilarating experience than to be able to read the street signs along the highway of life, and this ability is one of the great objectives of every vitalized school.

=Trained minds.=—­Nature reveals her inmost secrets only to the trained mind.  No power can force her, no wealth can bribe her, to disclose these secrets to others.  Only the mind that is trained can gain admission to her treasure house to revel in its glories.  John Burroughs lives in a world that the ignorant man cannot know.  The trained mind alone has the key that will unlock libraries, art galleries, the treasure houses of science, language, history, and art.  The untrained minds must stand outside and win what comfort they can from their wealth, their social status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training that would admit them.  All these things are parts of life, and those who cannot gain admission to these conservatories of knowledge cannot know life in its completeness.

=Achievements of trained minds.=—­In order to know life in the large, the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the stars; must become intimate with the movements of the tides, the glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils of the poets, the statesmen, the orators, the artists, the scientists, and the historians of all time.  A mind thus trained can enter into the very heart of life and know it by experience.