The Western Journal of Education

JANUARY, 1905

The

New Year

EDITORIAL

Christmas is always a joyous season, but the end of the year, which follows it so closely, is apt to bring some measure of regret, for no matter how thoughtless one may be he is sure to be a little startled to find that another year has run away and that he has so much less to show for it than at first he planned. But this annual sobering is not without its uses. The division of time into portions is not merely a social device to help one to regulate his meals, meet his engagements and make trains. It has also an individual reference. It is a foot-rule with which to niessure personal accomplishment. The approach of the New Year reminds the merchant to balance his books and the reflective man to take account of his gains. The years are mile-posts to tell us how far we have gone. "Seize the end, and you will hold the middles,' says a Greek proverb. The past cannot be the object of action. One cannot hold time except by seizing it in advance. Those who would make sure of their object must have high aspirations. Weak aspirations will not do. They amuse the paragraphers and humiliate those who boast of them. And because weak aspirations are so generally confessed at this season, aspiring of any sort seems in danger of going out of fashion. Perhaps a million people will resolve to keep diaries on New Year's Day and hardly more than ten thousand persist in keeping them, and perhaps, the same number will resolve in a faint way to leave off some vice or take on some virtue, with even less success. It is not the making of resolutions but the people who make them so indifferently, that must be condemned. Nothing is accomplished without a resolution. The sobering influence of the New Year makes it the best of all

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