His next teacher, however, was different.  She sensed his unlikeness to other boys and knew, instinctively, that his case demanded and deserved special treatment.  She consulted his aspirations and appraised his native tendencies.  In doing so, she discovered an embryo naturalist and thus became aware of the task to which she must address herself.  So she spread her nets for all living and creeping things, for the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, for plants, and flowers, and stones,—­in short, for all the works of nature.  In name she was his teacher, but in reality she was his pupil, and his other four teachers might have become members of the class with rich profit to themselves.  In his examination for graduation the boy utterly confounded and routed the members of the examining committee by the profundity and breadth of his knowledge and they were glad to check his onslaught upon the ramparts of their ignorance by awarding him a diploma.

It devolves upon the superintendent and teachers, therefore, to determine what studies already in the schools or what others that may be introduced will best serve the purpose of fostering aspiration.  They cannot deny that this quality is an essential element in the spiritual composition of every well-conditioned child as well as of every rightly constituted man and woman.  For aspiration means life, and the lack of aspiration means death.  The man who lacks aspiration is static, dormant, lifeless, inert; the man who has aspiration is dynamic, forceful, potent, regnant.  Aspiration is the animating power that gives wings to the forces of life.  It is the motive power that induces the currents of life.  The man who has aspiration yearns to climb to higher levels, to make excursions into the realms that lie beyond his present horizon, and to traverse the region that lies between what he now is and what he may become.  It is the dove that goes forth from the ark to make discovery of the new lands that beckon.

In a former book the author tried to set forth the influence of the poet in generating aspiration, and in this attempt used the following words:  “When he would teach men to aspire he writes Excelsior and so causes them to know that only he who aspires really lives.  They see the groundling, the boor, the drudge, and the clown content to dwell in the valley amid the loaves and fishes of animal desires, while the man who aspires is struggling toward the heights whence he may gain an outlook upon the glories that are, know the throb and thrill of new life, and experience the swing and sweep of spiritual impulses.  He makes them to know that the man who aspires recks not of cold, of storm, or of snow, if only he may reach the summit and lave his soul in the glory that crowns the marriage of earth and sky.  They feel that the aspirant is but yielding obedience to the behests of his better self to scale the heights where sublimity dwells.”