'Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it,' he wrote. 'That is the
device upon the seal of this document, and the starting point of all
we have to do. It is a mistake to regard it as anything but a plain
statement of fact. It is the basis for your work. You have to teach
self-forgetfulness, and everything else that you have to teach is
contributory and subordinate to that end. Education is the release
of man from self. You have to widen the horizons of your children,
encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses, and
cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. Under
your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, they
have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities,
and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the
universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out
until they become arcs in the sweep of the racial purpose. And this
that you teach to others you must learn also sedulously yourselves.
Philosophy, discovery, art, every sort of skill, every sort of service,
love: these are the means of salvation from that narrow loneliness
of desire, that brooding preoccupation with self and egotistical
relationships, which is hell for the individual, treason to the race,
and exile from God.
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