--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Woolf, De Voe collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 21 number: 9 published: 1918-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Woolf, De Voe, "Prohibition in Canada," *Improvement Era* 21, no. 9 (July 1918): 806–807.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2109unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2109unse start_page: 806 end_page: 807 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2109unse publication_year: 1918 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Prohibition in Canada The Meaning of Education By E. G. Peterson, A. M., Ph. D., President Utah Agricultural College X— The Road to Spiritual Power We are strong in proportion to our ability to realize and take advantage of the opportunity to grow and develop. In things physical, change is always taking place; in things chemical, change is always taking place. Likewise in our conceptions and our ideals we are constantly changing for good or bad. As our understanding deepens, our motives and our hopes readjust themselves to suit the new vision which we have. It is a great achievement in our lives when this truth becomes part of our being. It induces charity and tolerance and broadmindeness as few other things do. We cease to condemn and we learn to respect and to forgive, because when this law of growth and improvement opens to our view we see life as a much bigger and nobler thing than we conceived it to be when we thought that our thoughts were final, our deductions complete, and our — actions undeniably as all should act when we thought, in a word, that things were fixed. Our ideals change. Especially is this true of students, and we are all students whether we are in school or not. Indeed, I believe this life to be only a training camp, as it were, in preparation for an existence of much higher order but, I believe, subject to like laws and principles as this. Our first ideal is physical. We glory in strength of muscle, in soundness of heart, in power of lung, we watch anxiously the contour of body which denotes physical vigor. We are roused to enthusiam by athletic competition and envy the fleetness of limb or tenacity of body which produces the athletic hero. The pictures on our walls are likely physical in character of the bodies of men and women. Profiles attract us. Sensuality charms us to the exclusion of many other strong considerations. Experiences accumulate, and almost unconsciously we see the vision of the mental. We strive for mental power. We long to be able to debate with effectiveness, to master complexities of mathematics and the like. We long to be solvers of problems. We scorn those suggestions, of older and wiser friends, that bear upon religion and the other questions of the spirit of man. We believe what can be demonstrated or thought out. We deny — THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 809 the necessity of any other belief. We revel in the satisfactions of Darwinism, and materialistic explanations of life. Our mind riots in controversy. In this stage of development, where many stop, we experience the exuberance of full blooded youth and early maturity. We have not experienced much of pain or great satisfaction or worry. When these come, accompanied by other changes, we shift into the phase of the moral. We see the meaning of self sacrifice. We see our soul strengthened by good deeds and weakened by evil. We conquer and assume place by virtue of the degree of righteousness which we represent, aided, of course, by our mental, and indeed physical, fitness. We welcome hardship for the sake of strengthening our moral powers. We devote ourselves to the principles of honor, of personal purity, of generosity, of charity. We vote for upright men, we struggle for the elimination of graft and for the return, to those who deserve, of the legitimate profits of life. We do, in measure, unto others as we would that others would do unto us. Beyond here many do not go. They have achieved much to — have rendered themselves moral to have gained moral power and pass away unconscious, in large measure, of the crowning privilege of man which is built upon, and supplementary to, a degree of moral and mental vigor and clarity. I mean the privilege of spiritual strength.To those who pass beyond the mere moral there is opened up a vision that satisfies beyond all else. Christ becomes a moving principle. Faith succeeds belief. An invincible will succeeds a mere determination. We stand on the summit and survey a whole world which is ours, in humility and in righteousness. We forgive those who trespass against us. We are above the petty bickerings of life because we have seen something of the great purposes of God. We have seen and believe in the harmony of the universe. The wind blows for us and all the world under the guidance of a will and a purpose. The mountains comfort us because they are of God. Mankind in their vast intermingling, in their vast crime, and in their beauty, alone and together, are all eternal souls who are stumb- ling on toward the goal which God has set. Privation, hardship, suffering become incidents. We reread the world historv and see the flame of spirituality lighting from the beginning. The earth is ours to command. The vast hidden— they are ours to use to the ends forces that we say are of righteousness. Logan, Utah