with mother earth is to secure health of body and of mind; and with health
comes clarity of vision. To touch the soil as a worker is to set all the
confined energies of the body free, to incite all its functions to normal
activity, to secure that physical harmony which results from a full and
normal play of all the physical forces on an adequate object.

In like manner, true work of mind or technical skill brings peace,
composure, sanity, to one to whom the proper outlet of his energy has been
denied. To youth, possessed by an almost riotous vitality, with great but
unused powers of endurance and of positive action, the finding of its task
means concentration of energy instead of dissipations directness of action
instead of indecision, conscious increase of power instead of deepened
sense of inefficiency, and the happiness which rises like a pure spring
from the depths of the soul when the whole nature is poised and
harmonised. The torments of uncertainty, the waste and disorder of the
period of ferment, give place to clear vision, free action, natural
growth. There are few moments in life so intoxicating as those which
follow the final discovery of the task one is appointed to perform. It is
a true home-coming after weary and anxious wandering; it is the lifting of
the fog off a perilous coast; it is the shining of the sun after days of
shrouded sky.

The "storm and stress" period is always interesting because it predicts
the appearance of a new power; and men instinctively love every evidence
of the greatness of the race, as they instinctively crave the disclosure
of new truth. In the reaction against the monotony of formalism and of
that deadly conventionalism which is the peril of every accepted method in
religion, art, education, or politics, men are ready to welcome any
revolt, however extravagant. Too much life is always better than too
little, and the absurdities of young genius are nobler than the selfish