o strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

You will not question that the sentiment is manly. Is there not then
something that is unmanly in the opposite sentiment? Or, to be plain,
my friend, is it not lack of courage which has driven you from us, lack
of heroic temper, lack of that divine and primitive instinct which
takes a "frolic welcome" in the "thunder and the sunshine," in the
conflict and the stress of life?

'I believe that we are bound to be the losers by any wilful separation
from our kind. This was the case with the mediaeval monks and
ascetics; they lost far more than they gained from their separation
from the common life of the people. It is the same still with very
rich folk who are able to evade the harsh conscription of life; in
evading the conscription of life they invariably deteriorate in
physical and mental fibre. I can conceive nothing more ruinous to a
young man than that he should have just enough money to make the toil
for bread unnecessary. More lives have been spoiled by competence than
by poverty; indeed, I doubt whether poverty has any effect at all upon
a strong character, except as a stimulus to exertion. Life being what
it is, we should take it as we find it: we gain nothing by going out of
our way to find an easier path. The beaten road is safest. The man
who boldly says, "Let me know the fulness of life; let me taste all
that it has to present of vicissitude, joy, sorrow, labour, struggle;
let me know all that common people endure, and endure with them; let me
be no exception to the common rule, enjoy no special privilege, ask for
no immunity from things harsh and disagreeable"--the man who thinks and
acts thus is the man who gets the best and most out of life. But you,
my friend, have simply copied the old monks in the arrangement of your
life. There is nothing novel in your action, though just now your
egoism is gratified by the sense of novelty and originality. You have
simply gone out of the world to escape the evil of the world. You have
bought yourself out of the conscription of life. You have yet to
answer me one question: are you the better for it? That question
cannot be answered in a day. Ten years hence you will be able to tell
me something about it, and I shall be much surprised if you do not then
report more of loss than gain. No man ever yet held aloof from his
kind without paying the price in narrower sympathies, a narrower brain,
and a narrower h