It took many years of working with children, together with the insights provided by those like Emerson, Thoreau, and Harper Lee for me to understand that it took factual knowledge plus wisdom to equal peace. Further, I had to come to an understanding that wisdom derived from love and compassion with an instinctive hatred of evil.

While Emerson and Thoreau pointed out many things about the evils of government, the wisdom of living simply and so many other things, there was something missing. I realized for example Henry through his never marrying and having children was deficient to a great extent by his ignorance of a large dimension of life.

But it would take the melding of Emerson, Thoreau, and Harper Lee to make it work for me. These together are representative of a melding of both halves of humankind for it to all come together and make sense. Neither, separately, could do this. In a very definite way, it takes something of the combination of both Tom Sawyer and little Scout to make it work.

For example, at the same time that Harper Lee can cause little Scout to think humorously of reasons why women are not allowed to serve on a jury, she can have Atticus say, “Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant.” It takes the wisdom of a woman to make this kind of observation through a man the way Harper Lee does.

When little Scout reads Mr. Underwood's editorial about the shooting and killing of Tom Robinson as he attempted to escape, her thoughts turn to the due process of law that led to his conviction, his defense by Atticus and the jury finding Tom guilty in spite of his obvious innocence, and she tries to make sense of it all. Then it comes to her: “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.” And this has been the insane history of humankind.

Facts are often ugly, stubborn things. But all the wishing in the world won't change them. And the ugliest facts the hearts of men have to deal with are that they have never cherished children and they have never considered women and children to be of equal value to men.

But we can either submit to the fatalistic, and nihilistic, truth of little Scout's assessment and Dill's idea of becoming helpless clowns, we can continue to destroy the wisdom of childhood and refuse to declare ourselves thereby assuring our destruction, or we can face the facts, accept them, and do those things necessary for finally attaining wisdom.

Equal rights for all, special privileges for none! is an ideal that has never been realized. And isn't going to be realized without wisdom. And until children are cherished, until women and children become accepted of equal value to men, the wisdom of equality and denial of special privilege will remain unattainable.

Prejudice and bigotry don't make sense to children. As Scout, Jem, and Dill struggle with the insanity of such things, Scout reflects on something that strikes her as very strange. Her third grade teacher is a Miss Gates. During a class discussion, the persecution of the Jews by Hitler comes up. Miss Gates, a Jew herself, waxes eloquent on Hitler's mistreatment of the Jews and uses his abuse of authority to compare it to the democratic government of America, the freedom and equality of American citizens.

But after Tom Robinson's trial, Scout overhears Miss Gates making very derogatory comments about Negroes. It doesn't make sense to Scout. How can Miss Gates talk about Hitler's mistreatment of the Jews square with her obvious dislike of Negroes as though they were the inferiors of Miss Gates?

Children are keen observers of adults. But it isn't possible for them to understand the prejudices and bigotry of adults. Scout couldn't possibly understand the obvious resentment engendered in those like Miss Gates, most particularly Miss Gates, because of a Negro feeling sorry for a white woman! Such an “outrageous” statement by Tom Robinson was not only incomprehensible to those like Miss Gates and to those on the jury, it was inexcusable effrontery! Why, it was almost as much as those people saying they're as good as us! I emphasize by underlining those people because you surely realize that “those people” could be anybody to anybody. Such has been the entire history of the human race. I mention this ugly incident because it so clearly underscores why Scout finally realized Tom Robinson was a dead man as soon as Mayella Ewell screamed. That's a hard thing for a small child to have to come to grips with. And when in history has it ever been any different? It hasn't. Is it any different now? No. Children throughout history have been handed this very same hard thing, and it is just as prevalent today as it has ever been.

However, you cannot possibly fight successfully against prejudice and bigotry while at the same time condoning other kinds of perversion such as the glorification of violence and promiscuous sex. Children are wise enough to know this. But if we, as adults, will confront, do battle and overcome these evils, showing children we are not indifferent, that we do care about them, that we cherish them through guarding and protecting their innocence as it is our obligation to do, we will finally acquire wisdom. And it will be the kind of wisdom that will save humankind, it will be the kind of wisdom that led little Scout to insist on Boo Radley offering his arm rather than her leading him home by the hand like a child.

When Boo pleaded so pitifully to Scout: Will you take me home? she knew he was a frightened child. The man, this madman, who had just killed an evil man in order to save her and Jem, was now only a frightened child pleading for her to take him home.

Scout had already shown the depth of her wisdom, that great part of wisdom which only a child understands fully in its depth of love, compassion, and instinctive hatred of evil, in agreeing with Sheriff Tate that to tell the truth about Boo would be in Scout's words and thinking sort of like shootin' a mockingbird.

But now as her wisdom has increased, she faces the plea of this grown man, this adult, mad guardian angel: Will you take me home? “He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark,” as Scout describes it.

She would lead him by the hand through the house and out onto the porch where the Sheriff and Atticus are discussing what to do. But she will not lead him home by the hand like a child. No! She will not!

Let Scout describe it in her own words: I put my foot on the top step and stopped. I would lead him through our house, but I would never lead him home. Mr. Arthur, bend your arm down here, like that. That's right sir. I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. He had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.

And once more, I can feel the sting of tears and a lump in my throat as I write of this. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. For your sake I have to admit it because I don't believe any one of any sensitivity can avoid feeling as I do when this whole scene unfolds. For those that do not feel as I do about this, I have to wonder...?

A madman, a mad guardian angel, their childhood bogeyman, has saved these children's lives. And now, little Scout is walking him home, her hand in his arm, a little lady and her gentleman friend. Let the neighbors stare and wonder! They would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.

That, gentle reader, is the epitome of loving wisdom on the part of a little eight year old girl, it is the loving wisdom adults pound out of children by bowing to the wicked dictum: When they get a little older, they won't cry about it anymore, they will understand they can't do anything about the evil in the world.

And so it is that good people have excused themselves, have attempted to absolve themselves, to call for “Pilate’s laver” if you will for not confronting and overcoming evil. To tell a child: You have to take what life deals you, and then to hypocritically refuse to do your part in doing all that is in your power to make that life all you can by being a responsible adult and doing your duty is damnable!

But this has been the history of the human race. And it cannot, must not, continue! Good people are going to have to confront their prejudices, their sins, and do better!

If it is sin to kill a mockingbird, for example, isn't it a greater sin to allow the predators of children to roam our world, to roam throughout America and to permit the destructive influence of violence called “entertainment” and pornography to invade their lives; to encourage violence and early sexual activity among children as though there were no consequences for their actions? Where, any thinking person must ask themselves, are our priorities? Most certainly the priorities are not directed to the cherishing of our children or consideration for their future.

We must ask ourselves, sensibly, are the present priorities leading to the advancement of civilized peace or Armageddon? And I believe any sensible person knows the fearful and horrifying answer to this question!

It wouldn't have occurred to Harper Lee because of her being a woman, because of her being such a lady. She left it to me as a man to point it out and make something of it: Scout would be the only lady, a little eight year old lady, to ever grace the arm of Mr. Arthur Radley.

And for me as a man, that is one of the deepest of the tragedies in the whole book. Scout would not realize this of course. After all, she is only eight years old and should not realize it. It is one of the great benefits of childhood to not have to realize or even be aware of such things.

Scout never saw Boo again. But I like to believe he died peacefully and content. He had been the guardian angel of the children. In what had to have been the sanest moment of his life, he was there for them. But, then, the children had been his guardian angels in turn. And at no time more than when a little lady graced his arm as she walked with him and he was no longer “Boo,” but the gentleman Mr. Arthur Radley escorting the little lady Miss Jean Louise Finch. I believe I could die alone, peacefully content, with only such a treasured memory to comfort me.

It was only fitting that Scout should be sad thinking that in spite of all Boo's gifts to them, even saving their lives, she and Jem had never given Boo anything in return. But Harper Lee did point out the benefit to Boo in watching the children through the shuttered windows of his dark, decaying tomb of a house.

The joy it must have brought to him in watching them and placing those small gifts in the hole of that tree for them to discover. Even taking part in a kind of game they devised about him that he surely watched through cracks in those shuttered windows, and even enjoying the attempts by the children to get a glimpse of him. And how good he must have felt when, unseen and unknown to anyone but himself, he placed that blanket over little Scout's shivering shoulders.

Boo shared in the children's lives, and they, unknowingly, gave that degree of reason and happiness to a madman. They became “his children.” And in the end they became one another's guardian angels, and Boo became the gentleman Mr. Arthur Radley and Scout became the little lady Miss Jean Louise Finch. As I said, I like to believe Boo died content with that memory to sustain him to and through the end.

I would that all adults throughout the world believing themselves sane were as insane as Boo Radley in respect to children. The genius of Harper Lee was in using a madman to balance the scales of justice. Civilized people, because of the perversion of law, could not protect the children against determined evil.

But it was the patently insane prejudice of civilized good people that loosed this evil against the children by condemning an innocent man on the sole basis of the color of his skin and freed the guilty because of the color of their skins! And it is the children who pay the highest price for such ugly prejudice and perversion of law on the part of adults.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is not the daily reading of Americans. But real scholars still turn to him. And one of the reasons they do so is because, with a keen and incisive mind, he, like Thoreau, cut through the religious and political cant of his day in an extraordinary way. In respect to religion, he said after attending a church service:

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth ... and summoning the dead to its present tribunal.

If the dead, especially the children, could be brought to such a tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say about “good people” refusing to confront evil and giving the Devil success by their default?

But Emerson exposes the excuse good people use for not doing their duty to confront and overcome evil. This leads to his most rational conclusion of the fallacy that lies in the immense concession to evil by those supposing themselves to be good: That the bad are expected to be successful and justice is not expected to be done now! The excuse on the part of good people as Emerson makes clear is to refuse to pay the price for justice now, to blame God and others and not take personal responsibility for confronting evil; the excuse derived from religion by good people from time immemorial.

Any reasonable person is able to understand and accept Emerson's remarks in the light of knowledge. The application of such knowledge to wisdom is another matter. And it is at this point good people fail to gain wisdom from such knowledge, for even Emerson and Thoreau failed in wisdom by not realizing or accepting the fact that ultimate wisdom is unattainable unless that other half of humankind, women, is accepted in fact and in practice as of equal value to men.

How is it, though, that such obvious knowledge as Emerson exemplifies is rejected by good people? Because of the prejudices of good people who choose what they want to believe, in flagrant disregard of reason and factual knowledge!

Good people holding onto their prejudices thus assure a self-fulfilling prophecy of harming themselves and children by disputing and refusing facts. The failure of the good finally triumphing over evil is the fault of the prejudices of good people who will not confront their prejudices for the ugly, destructive things they are! Or are simply too busy to be involved, too busy to be free!

Only when differences based on such prejudices are set aside and children are made the priority of nations will good people come together in common cause to confront and overcome evil; which is the job of good people, not that of God, angels, or institutions. Only then will there be something new under the sun that will lead to wisdom and peace.

There is most certainly nothing new in Emerson's remarks; people have expressed the same thoughts many times and in many ways; they continue to be expressed now, and, in fact, I have just done so. But I do so to call attention to the need of going beyond such knowledge, which Emerson expresses so succinctly, and to put this knowledge into practice, setting aside all prejudices of beliefs and acting according to factual knowledge. It is the right and wise thing to do, but can only be done by the setting aside of personal prejudices and coming together on the sole basis of making children the priority they have never been. And by doing so, to take that first step toward the kind of wisdom humankind has failed to acquire which will lead to our accepting personal responsibility for the kind of world we want children to inherit.

Once more: If, as Emerson stated, we were able to summon the dead to our own tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say? More importantly, let us suppose we were able to summon the murdered children to such a tribunal, what do you suppose they would have to say?

Can you even suppose the children would accept our feeble excuses, those excuses based on personal beliefs in God, angels, and Last Judgments of the wicked whether you are a Democrat or Republican, White, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, whether you are Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist or without any particular or no religious belief, in lieu of our failure to do all that was our responsibility and in our power to protect them? I think not.

The challenge the message of the children presents, and one Harper Lees makes so very clear, is that of awakening the consciences of adults to the all-too-often silent cry of children who cannot be heard, who have no other voice but that of adults. And to repeat once more: What happened to a little girl that produced a woman like Mayella as opposed to a little girl like Scout and her so very different prospects as a woman? We know the answer to this question. But we do not want to act according to this knowledge. And by refusing to do so, we condemn ourselves to continue, as humankind has ever done, without wisdom.

It can't be a better world for my children until it is a better world for all the little Scouts, all the Jems, Dills, and Mayellas as well. And this isn't going to be the case until there is no further need of the little Scouts to confront lynch mobs, until there are no more juries that will convict Tom Robinson while freeing the guilty, until there is no further need of Boo Radley to do the job supposedly sane and civilized people refuse and fail to do. And without wisdom, this will never come to pass.