their rich treasure upon society.

Moreover, it is the number and kind of his aspirations that determine
a man's place in the scale of manhood. Lowest of all is that great
under class of pulseless men, content to creep, and without thought of
wings for rising. Mere drifters are they, creatures of circumstance,
indifferently remaining where birth or events have started them.
Having food and raiment, therewith they are content. No inspirations
fire them, no ideals rebuke them, no visions of possible excellence or
advancement smite their vulgar contentment. Like dead leaves swept
forward upon the current, these men drift through life. Not really
bad, they are but indifferently good, and therefore are the material
out of which vicious men are made. In malarial regions, physicians
say, men of overflowing health are safe because the abounding vitality
within crowds back the poison in the outer air, while men who live on
the border line between good health and ill, furnish the conditions
for fevers that consume away the life. Similarly, men who live an
indifferent, supine life, with no impulses upward, are exposed to evil
and become a constant menace to society.

Higher in the scale of manhood are the men of intermittent
aspirations. A traveler may journey forward guided by the light of the
perpetual sun, or he may travel by night midst a thunder-storm, when
the sole light is an occasional flash of lightning, revealing the path
here and the chasm there. But once the lightning has passed the
darkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours,
rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evil
thought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, for
honor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finer
convictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes are
these--in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bear
up under blows--when the battle is still in the future! But once the
conflict comes, their courage goes! On a winter's morning the frost
upon the window pane shapes forth trees, houses, thrones, castles,
cities, but these are only frost. So before the mind the imagination
hangs pictures of the glory and grandeur and God-likeness of the
higher life, but one breath of temptation proves their evanescence.
Better, however, these intermittent ideals than uninterrupted
supineness and contentment. But, best of all, that third type of men
who re