EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.

Nearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds of their children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence, with a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or have been taught.  Then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven into accepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turned out into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way or another, must fight all along the way of human life—­to begin to test the value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been furnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from birth to the final exit from this state of being.  It has taken uncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we see on earth today.  Here Nature calls a halt, saying:  “As the handmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along to the point where you look and seem almost as gods.  There is in each of you a divine ego—­a thought of your Creator—­a sure guide to perfection.  To reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor.  There is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical.”

Thousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being fettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds and vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe.  There are numbers of Spiritualists and “liberal” men and women who expose the tender minds of their children to these same influences for society’s sake, knowing though they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free the mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright.

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The noblest teaching is that which puts us en rapport with our own inner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions.  No truth, however manifested, can adjust itself to our soul’s needs, save as it finds in us a response through that preparation which comes from a certain degree of previous knowledge.

EGOTISM.

Egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights and the possibilities of their real selves, their ego.  Without it human beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl.  It is at the same time a necessity and a danger.  It has never been settled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the awful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces insanity.  “Keep us sane” is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest demand one can make upon his consciousness.