ested in religion, philosophy, and literature, but I cannot comprehend why I do not get into enthusiastic enough to obtain from either religious belief or philosophical reason the sound composure of my own mind. . . . Engineer as I am, cannot entirely be managed away from the material environment: there is always certain contradiction between the ideal and material views, which means the fighting or uneasiness in the soul."
I said to this Japanese boy, so anxious to live for others yet so poor that he could hardly help himself, and so torn by the "fighting in his own soul" that he was losing even the capacity for self-help: "The remedy is very simple. You wish to serve the world. Well, you know one way to serve it. Japan needs electric lights. You know how to make them. Throw the full strength of your soul and body into making good electric lights, and you will have performed your best service to the world. In this material environment in which we all must work, there is no more shining avenue of 'service' open to you than to become a good engineer and to work manfully at that." Advice of this sort, I know well enough, will bring no immediate comfort to the romantic mind which yearns for "the land where I am not," and which has established no working terms with the material environment;
