In the Easterner's nature there is an inclination toward indirection, toward not declaring his true feelings outright. And in the Westerner's nature — especially the American's — there is an incli-nation toward complete frankness, toward showing the contents of the soul in their true form. Only a person of discernment, familiar with both, perceives the vast difference between the two natures — the Eastern and the Western.

I do not deny that heredity, rooted deep in the generations, and the state of the intellectual envi-ronment, among other things, have a great influence on the formation of people's characters and habits. But the most important factor in establishing this habit is education — the education of the home surroundings and the education of the school. The proof of this is that the institutions which succeed in following a modern course of education, in accord with the principles of psychology, send out into the world young people sound of soul, who think in a way distin-guished by frankness, balance, and precise analysis; who present their talents and their capacities as they are; and who have moral courage enough to examine their own points of weakness just as they would examine any other subject bearing on their success and advancement. They are natural in every aspect of their bearing, and you cannot but meet them with esteem and admiration, wishing in your heart of hearts that you had had their upbringing; but how are you to free yourself from certain fetters that have bound your hands and encircled your neck since you were a child?

That requires strength and resolve — a strength that over-

comes by its conquering will and triumphs over the manifestations of weakness within us. But the sad truth is that the great majority of us incline to weakness more than to strength, and so remain prey to their psychological ailments.

Anyone acquainted with the inner conditions of our schools has his attention drawn, every day, to many an educational lapse commit-ted by educators, whether out of ignorance or out of good intention, and the results come in the form of many of the psychological ailments to which our children fall prey and whose effect remains with them for life. Here are a few of the many examples I have chosen from my own personal observations.

In one of the kindergartens of the capital, I stood with the teacher listening to the results of her experiment in applying a modern method of teaching the Arabic language. Presently she called four children by name, and they stood up straight, obeying orders. She named one of them, six years old, and opened a book for him to read, and he won the admiration of us all. She moved on to the second, then to the third, the ability to read growing less, until she pointed to the fourth and said in a voice all could hear: “This child is older than the rest, and yet he is still backward despite our attempts, and the reason for that goes back to a weakness in his mind!”

I stole a glance at the child and saw that he had hung his head and fixed his eyes upon the floor. He had heard with his own ears his teacher's opinion of him — and how often had he heard her repeat this phrase about the dullness of his mind and his backwardness... So he is lower than his comrades in

mind and understanding — then let the earth swallow him up!

I marveled at this teacher, who considers herself a specialist and yet overlooks the most important of the laws of child education. How can she hope for this child to advance a single step when she never ceases exposing him to situations like this, lowering his morale thereby and weakening his confidence in himself, so that his success and his progress become past hoping for, and he falls into the sickness of resentment born of the inferiority complex, or the feeling of worthlessness, and a lethargy takes hold of him that may be the cause of his dismissal, not from his school alone, but in all the stages of his life?

Setting the situation right in a case like this cannot come to com-pletion unless he is removed from the surroundings that witnessed his failure and his humiliation, in which he heard the phrases that lowered his worth. However hard the teacher may strive to improve her conduct toward him, a veil of hateful doubt will remain forever, holding the child back from her and preventing him from enjoying his full freedom in her presence. We cannot assure this child of success in school unless we endeavor to move him to another atmosphere, in which the child may begin to establish his personality anew and recover his lost morale; and then he may show conduct that would astonish those who knew him in his first school.

I have known Salma for years — a sensitive girl, affected by the most trivial of incidents; rarely have I heard her join in the talk of her companions or object to a decision or an opinion. She usually pretends to listen, but it is hard to be certain whether Salma takes in the conversation going on around her or not — unlike

her younger sister, who was always the axis of activity and the focus of every eye, at home and at school. I visited them once and made the acquaintance of their