igion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with
the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what
patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory,
comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success?
The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of
excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of
a steamship on an ocean voyage. Day by day the fire must burn, and the
revolve in the calm and in the gale--in the sunshine and the storm. The
innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its
possessor from this law of mental growth. An educated mind is neither an
aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow,
nor a substance, which, placed in a turner's lathe, comes forth an
exquisitely wrought instrument. The mere passing through an academy or
college, is not education. The enjoyment of the largest educational
advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart
thoroughly educated; since there is an inner work to be performed by the
subject of those advantages before he can lay claim to the possession of
a well-disciplined and richly-stored intellect and affections. The
phrase, "self-made men" is often so used as to convey the idea that the
persons who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, are
rather made by their instructors. The supposition is in part unjust.

The outward means of education stimulate the mind, and thus assist the
process of development; but it is absolutely essential to all growth in
mental or moral excellence, that the person himself should be enlisted
vigorously in the work. He must work as earnestly as the man destitute
of his faculties. The difference between the two consists not in the
fact that one walks and the other rides, but that the one is obliged to
take a longer road to reach the same point. Teachers, books, recitations
and lectures facilitate our course, direct us how most advantageously to
study, point out the shortest path to the end we seek, and tend to rouse
the soul to the putting forth of its powers; but neither of these can
take the place of, or forestall intense personal application. The man
without instructors, like a traveler without guide-boards, must take
many a useless step, and often retrace his way. He may, after this
experimental traveling, at length reach the same point with the person
who has enjo