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Even to-day, when a greater body of valuable results are being secured, the main danger to the proper study of the child's mind comes from the over-enthusiasm and uninstructed assurance of some of its friends.
In the excessive keenness of his search, he forgets that "being true to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest thought of immortality IS God, and that God is "miracle." Over-enthusiasm keeps one from letting a common experience of a day translate what is stirring the soul.
To give a plausible excuse for this search, a ball was to be tossed up and down the street till it lighted in the Moore house inclosure. It was a scheme to fire the street boy's soul, and I was only afraid of failure from the over-enthusiasm it aroused.
In most respects a capable, nay, an admirable performer, some strange fatality ran him a-ground upon this reef of over-enthusiasm. He was acting the madness of Ajax, just after he has been worsted by Odysseus; and so lost control of himself, that one might have been excused for thinking his madness was something more than feigned.
But this was all that the German cause in Great Britain did receive. His administration of the German Embassy was faultless in its technique, but it did not err on the side of over-enthusiasm. His behaviour throughout the three succeeding years was entirely consistent with his conception of "neutrality."
Furthermore, he undoubtedly fell into the error common to "specialists," or persons working for long periods of time on one subject the error of over-enthusiasm in his subject. He had discovered so many remarkable qualities in the air that it is not surprising to find that he attributed to it many more that he could not demonstrate.
And yet, while I acknowledge all this; while I am forced to admit the many wonderful cures and much mental relief on account of these newer methods of healing, I still believe that a vast amount of harm is also brought about by the incautious application of the doctrines taught; by over-enthusiasm for the ideals which are ever before us, luring us on and on.
But after all it is not the author who is attacked in what goes before, and if, in the fray with the critics, he is, incidentally, as it were, somewhat roughly handled, the over-enthusiasm of his professional admirers must bear the blame.
He had no wish to obtrude his musical and artistic doings upon his father until a more definite modus vivendi had been brought about; but he could no longer lend himself passively to being made an absurdity by the over-enthusiasm of his sister. Fencing, now, was a manly art of which his father might not disapprove. "On guard!" he cried.
Some to whom he had made furtive confidences called him "spooky," a spiritualist; but he was merely an investigator, trying to be fair. It was an alluring study; perhaps he ran the risk of over-enthusiasm he had known people who had spiritualized the palpably material but he was guarding against this danger; it would take an exceptional impulse ever to get him to that point.
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