CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LIFE


Finally, we come to the chief among the goals, which is life itself. In
fact, life is the super-goal. We study manual arts, science, and language
that we may achieve the goals of integrity, imagination, aspiration, and
serenity, and these qualities we weave into the fabric of life. Upon the
spiritual qualities we weave into it, depend the texture and pattern of
this fabric and the generating and developing of these qualities and the
weaving of them into this fabric--this we call life. When we look upon a
person who is well-conditioned and whose life is well-ordered, in body, in
mind, and in spirit, we know, at once, that he possesses integrity,
initiative, a sense of responsibility, reverence, and other high qualities
that compose the person as we see him. We do not reflect upon what he
knows of history, of geography, or of music, for we are taking note of an
exemplification of life. Indeed, the presence or absence of these
qualities determines the character of the person's life. Hence it is that
life is the supreme goal of endeavor. Life is a composite and the
crown-piece of all the qualities toward which we strive by means of
arithmetic and grammar--in short, of all our activities both in school and
out.

One of our mistakes is that we confuse life and lifetime, and construe
life to mean the span of life. In this conception the unit of measurement
is so large that our concept of life evaporates into a vague
generalization. Life is too specific, too definite for that. The quality