The machine that is run to the extreme limit of its capacity splutters,
sizzles, hisses, and quivers, and finally shakes itself into a condition
of ineffectiveness. But the machine that is run well within the limits of
its capacity is steady, noiseless, serene, effective, and durable. So with
people. The person who essays a task that is beyond his capacity is
certain to come to grief and to create no end of disturbance to himself
and others before the final catastrophe. If the steam-chest or boiler is
not equal to the task, wisdom and safety would counsel the installation of
a larger one. Here is one of the tragedies of our scheme of education. The
spirit is the power-plant of all life's operations and in this plant are
many boilers. Instead of calling more and more of these into action, we
seem intent upon repressing them and thus we reduce the capacity of the
plant as a whole. When we should be lighting or replenishing the fires
under the boilers of imagination, initiative, aspiration, and reverence,
we spend our time striving to bank or quench these fires and in playing
and dawdling with the torches of arithmetic, grammar, and history with
which we should be kindling the fires. Thus we diminish the power of the
plant while life's activities are calling for extension and enlargement.
We seem to be trying to train our pupils to work with one or but few
boilers when there are scores of them available if only we knew how to
utilize them.
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