ar greater portion is
due to the lack of a nice direction of forces. The human mechanism is
complicated, and a very slight flaw sets it all wrong. There may be too
much steam or too much friction, or too little power or too little
balance. But clearly the first step is to strengthen the weak points, to
gauge its capabilities, to set it running smoothly, and to give it a
definite aim. If existence were simply passive and the mission of man
was to _be_ instead of to _do_, he might perhaps be left to develop as
the trees do, according to his own will or fancy or according to certain
natural laws. But as it is the universal wish wherever one is, to be
somewhere else, a little higher in the scale, it seems to be a part of
wisdom, as well as humanity, to fit one for climbing. But many an
aspirant finds his wings clipped in the beginning of his career, through
the ignorance or carelessness of his friends, who never took the trouble
of measuring his capabilities. He is treated as a receptacle into which
a certain amount of ideas are to be poured, no matter whether they may
answer to anything within him or not. He is turned out of an educational
mill with five hundred others, and with plenty of loose knowledge, but
without the remotest idea of what to do with it, or what nature intended
him for, and with no especial fitness for any one thing. He can _think_,
probably, if he has the requisite amount of brains, but how to establish
a relation between thought and bread and butter is the problem. He has
the requisite motive power, but it is not attached to anything. _He_
does not know how to attach it, so he revolves in a circle, or makes a
series of floundering experiments, that bear meagre fruit, perhaps when
the better part of his life is gone. He knows _books_, but he does _not_
know men. He is a master of theories, but cannot apply them. If he has a
small amount of brains, his case is still more hopeless. To be sure, a
proper amount of knowledge has been poured in, but it has all slipped
through. He might have assimilated some other kind of knowledge, but
that particular kind has left him with mental dyspepsia, and a vague
feeling of hopelessness which is likely to prove fatal to all useful
effort. Or perhaps he has talent, but is destitute of the requisite tact
to make it tell upon the world. His success depends largely on his power
to move others, but he has no lever and is forced to rely upon main
strength, which involves a se