ment and stimulation by exercise and by suggestion until they become stronger. If these weak links are neglected they will seriously mar the strength of the whole mental chain. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But a weakness or deficiency in any moral quality, courage, for example, will prove infinitely more harmful than a weakness in mathematical, or in constructive ability.

The education of the future will have reference to the normal development of every moral and spiritual, as well as of every physical and mental, faculty and quality. To-day our educational systems bring into play a certain number of physical and mental faculties, and leave the others almost wholly untouched. The result is that the average college graduate has some superbly developed qualities while others are just where they were when he entered college, or wherever they may have drifted, for lack of use, during the years spent in going through his academic course. Before a boy begins to fit for college, for instance, before he shuts himself away from the practical world to prepare for life, he may be comparatively strong in self-reliance, in initiative, will-power, etc. His college studies, however, made little, if any, demand on these splendid qualities and so they really go backward when they should be brought forward toward the goal of personal power. The aim of all education from kindergarten to

university should be the formation of a symmetrical brain, a well-rounded, well-balanced, wellpoised mind. The child should be watched from the start, studied carefully, with a view to encourage and develop its weaker faculties and to restrain, if need be, rather than to stimulate any faculty, such as self-will, that happens to be abnormally strong and out of proportion to the balancing faculties.

Strengthening weak qualities may have much more to do with success and happiness in manhood and womanhood than any other feature of a child's training. There are thousands of people in the great army of failures to-day who, but for some little defect or weakness, some undeveloped portion of the brain or some faculty which happened to be deficient, might have made a great success of life. If their parents or teachers had helped them to correct these defects, or if they had only known themselves in later years how to strengthen the particular weakness which handicapped them, how to build up that defective portion of their brain so that their minds would have been more symmetrical, how different their career might have been!

The trouble with most of us in measuring ourselves up or guaging our possibilities is that we seem to think our ability is something which is born in us, ready made, something all ready for use which we cannot very materially change. We

look on it as some one whole, complete, fixed thing. As a matter of fact, it is made up of a number of different faculties and qualities; and these separate parts or strands form the cable which we call ability. If the cable is weak, if it won't stand the strain of life, one should go to work to strengthen it, just as an engineer would go to work to strengthen the cable which supports a suspension bridge that is in danger of collapsing. The engineer finds the weak strands, and by strengthening these makes the cable so solid that it will be more than equal to any strain put upon it. He gives it a reserve of strength that will enable it, if need be, to stand extra strain.

You should go to work in a scientific way to find your weak strands, and then concentrate on these, strengthen, build up, each one that is defective, and twist them all into one mighty cable that will enable you not only to achieve your ambition and to bring out every latent power, but also make you so strong and poised that you will have sufficient reserve to stand up against all the jars and jolts, all the unforeseen accidents of life.

First of all, make a chart of the various faculties which enter into the making of a first-class man, an all-round successful life. To begin with, good, sound judgment is the basis of all success in life. No matter how brilliant or how talented you may be in certain lines, if you do not have good sense, if your judgment isn't sound, your talents

are always in jeopardy. On every hand we see men of brilliant parts, who make strenuous efforts to succeed, but who before very long go to pieces because they are not level-headed; their judgment is not sound. They leave all sorts of loopholes in their plans which invite disaster, whereas levelheaded men, men with good judgment, protect the results of their efforts as they go along. They are not all the time breaking out and doing foolish things which neutralize the work of years, perhaps, as is so often true of men of one-sided or uneven strength.

Are you deficient in this quality of level-headedness, on which so much depends, while some other is strong enough to take care of itself? For example, your ambition may rank ninety, on a scale of a hundred. You may have a tremendous enthusiasm and zest, an overwhelming desire to get on. Now that quality ranks so high you will not need to give it any special attention. You may rank up pretty near a hundred in many other qualities, in industry, in persistence, hang-dog stickto-it-ive-ness, in concentration, etc. You may not have a lazy drop of blood in you and yet you are falling way below what you know you ought to be. Go down the whole line, rating yourself according to your strength or weakness, and see if you can't find out where the trouble is.

Over-cautiousness, timidity, for example, which could very easily be corrected in youth, is respon

sible, perhaps, for more mediocre lives than any other character defect. It is one of the most common weaknesses of New England people. Cautiousness is ingrained in the New England character. Youths are continually warned to be careful, to play for safety, not to take great chances with anything. The result is, there are a great many New Englanders of superb ability, men capable of doing great things, who are plodding along in mediocrity, getting a very ordinary living. If these same men had been reared in the Western spirit, inoculated in youth with some of the daring and courage of Western business enterprise, they would have been men of large achievement and of great influence.

I know a number of such over-cautious characters, men of exceptional ability, who in middle life are working for a comparatively small salary. They never dared to branch out for themselves, because the risk, in their judgment, seemed too great. They are afraid of taking chances.

What a pity to see so many human beings accomplish but a fraction of what they are capable of doing just because some little part of their brain is either over or under developed!

It is not only in encouraging and strengthening the "weak qualities," but also in curbing and repressing the ultra strong ones that we must shape and mold our intellects. For instance, some of us may have too much self-confidence, so that we "rush