ay call the
everyday plane. We desire to know more, and when we know a good deal
about one subject, we want to know something about kindred subjects, so
we extend the latitude of our knowledge. It is marvelous how the habit
grows. It is not work, it is pleasure. We long for spare moments to
renew the study, and as we experience the pleasure the growth of our
mind affords, we improve in all directions. Every cell in the brain
sends out vibrant impulses, new life, new hope. Health means more, life
has a meaning. We find happiness in the company of those who are
striving for higher ideals. We perform even our menial tasks with more
care and with more interest, because we grasp their true meaning, and
we know that we cannot aspire to higher ideals if we are dishonest in
little things. So the study habit makes better men and better women of
us, and it adds to the pleasure of life all the real pleasure there is
in living. The power to analyze, to conceive, and to create are the
highest pleasures mankind possesses, and they can only be attained in
any degree by education and cultivation.

It is not easy to explain to the average superficially educated person
the satisfaction to be derived from original or creative thinking. One
must progress far enough in mental self-culture before it becomes a
pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement
of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that
point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude,
discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical
education, very convincingly illustrates the condition of mind of the
beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not
stimulate further spontaneous effort. The same child, however, may
successfully pass through the various gradations of a musical career and
arrive at a time when effort will submerge itself; when the result of
the knowledge acquired will be so gratifying that it will no longer be a
toil; when the study will be pursued because of the actual pleasure it
affords.

The only worthwhile thing in life is mind. If one does not develop the
mind, it is possible to live an entire lifetime and not really live at
all. To exist is not to live. All the amenities of life contribute to
existence, not to life itself. To live is to create, to give, to endow.

If a book contains one original thought, it will live. Few books contain
more