But with all these sources of value, its highest and most beautiful use is the means which it gives us to create ideals or standards. If we lacked these two elements, we should have nothing to strive for or judge our actions, and life would soon lose all its charms. To the general on the field of battle it pictures the personality of some famous leader; and to the boy or girl who leaves the shelter of home it brings to view the father or mother whose life shines forth as a living incentive to nobler and higher aspiration. Scarcely less valuable, is its relation to man as a means of broadening his intellectual horizon. That this was rec ognized long ago, we need only refer to Plato who recom mended that literature both “true and false” should be taught the youth at an early age, meaning by “false,” stor ies, myths and moral poems which would stimulate the ima ginative activity. It gives a breadth of culture that could not be otherwise reached, and it opens up history, geogra phy, and reading by bringing before the mind’s eye, im ages, that perhaps might never be realized in any other way. Outside of its educational qualities, it is a mental ac tivity that is peculiarly fitting to the younger members of the race. Banish this element out of their lives and what have you? Why nothing but a premature and only partially de veloped people. The feelings are now at their highest ebb and must have some means of giving vent to themselves. It may be in some physicial manifestation, but just as often they free themselves in lofty flights of imagination where the unseen seems to give as much pleasure and profit as the objects of these images do themselves. If youth knew no mental activity but reason and cold intellect, it would lose all its charms and the flower of the race would be no more attractive and inspiring than the adult’s seriousness of later life. When we consider the field of literature, especially poetry and the drama, and see what elements are funda-
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers