When she is no longer to be believed no on will take the trouble to listen to her...no one can depend on her, no on rests any hope on her, the words of which she makes use have no meaning." -- Madame Necker de Saussure, "Progressive Education."] It sometimes happens that the realization of this truth comes comparatively late in life to those who ought to have recognized it years before.

Thinking along the surface of things, and in particular repeating catchwords and platitudes and trite maxims on the subject of sincerity, is apt to make us believe that we possess the quality we talk about, and as it is impossible to have anything to do with the education of children without treating of sincerity and truthfulness, it is comparatively easy to slip into the happy assumption that one is truthful, because one would not deliberately be otherwise.

But it takes far more than this to acquire real sincerity of life in the complexity and artificiality of the conditions in which we live.
"And we have been on many thousand lines, And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves.
* * * * "Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!" MATTHEW ARNOLD, "The Buried Life." Sincerity requires the recognition that to be honestly oneself is more impressive for good than to be a very superior person by imitation.

It requires the renunciation of some claims to consideration and esteem, and the acceptance of limitations (a different thing from acquiescence in them, for it means the acceptance of a lifelong effort to be what we aspire to be, with a knowledge that we shall never fully attain it).

It requires that we should bear the confusion of defeat without desisting from the struggle, that we should accept the progressive illumination of what is still unaccomplished, and keep the habitual lowliness of a beginner with the unconquerable hopefulness which comes of a fixed resolution to win what is worth winning.