s round a ring formed by his own
talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world.
It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms is a craving
for sympathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from
their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity them.
They like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of
interest from the bystanders; as we have seen children, who, finding
themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they
choke, to draw attention.

This distemper is the scourge of talent,--of artists, inventors, and
philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting
their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing
it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the eve of a revelation!" It
is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it,
and, by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower
selfism, and exclude him from the great world of God's cheerful fallible
men and women. Let us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable.
Religious literature has eminent examples; and if we run over our
private list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we
shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we
ought to have tapped.

This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we
must infer some strong necessity in Nature which it subserves,--such as
we see in the sexual attraction. The preservation of the species was a
point of such necessity, that Nature has secured it at all hazards by
immensely overloading the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and
disorder. So egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which
each individual persists to be what he is.

This individuality is not only not inconsistent with culture, but is the
basis of it. Every valuable nature is there in its own right; and the
student we speak to must have a mother-wit invincible by his culture,
which uses all books, arts, facilities, and elegancies of intercourse,
but is never subdued and lost in them. He only is a well-made man who
has a good determination. And the end of culture is, not to destroy
this,--God forbid!--but to train away all impediment and mixture,
and leave nothing but pure power. Our student must have a style and
determination, and be a master in his own specialty. But, having this,
he must put it behin