It is neither in the beginning nor in the end. Its enormous complexity and codes of decorum have their uses. But when it takes these to be final, and makes it a rule that no green spot should be left in man's life away from its reign of smoke and noise, of draped and decorated propriety, then children suffer, and in the young men is produced world-weariness, while old men forget to grow old in peace and beauty, merely becoming dilapidated youths, ashamed of their shabbiness of age, full of holes and patchwork.
However, it is certain that children did not bargain for this muffled and screened world of decency when they were ready to be born upon this earth. If they had any idea that they were about to open their eyes to the sunlight, only to find themselves in the hands of the education department till they should lose their freshness of mind and keenness of sense, they would think twice before venturing upon their career of humanity. God's arrangements are never insolently special arrangements. They always have the harmony of wholeness and unbroken continuity with all things. Therefore what tortured me in my school-days was the fact that the school had not the completeness of the world. It was a special arrangement for giving lessons.
