nd indolence; of the remaining
fifty, forty, let us say, will manage to get on without loss of
respectability, while the ten (who are still left) will win a sort of
notoriety by getting rich or by getting elected to office. Of the
hundred will one become a saint, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, or
even a man of superior ability in natural knowledge or literature? And
if this estimate is rightly made they all fail; and the emergence of a
high and noble mind is so improbable that it may almost be looked upon,
like the birth of a genius, as an accident, so impossible is it, with
our limited view, to bring such cases within the domain of law. These
hundred college boys have been taken from a thousand youths. The nine
hundred have remained outside the doors which open into the halls of
culture, away from the special influences which thought and ingenuity
have created to develop and perfect man's endowments. As they are less
favored, we demand less of them, and are content to have them reinforce
the unenlightened army of laborers and money-getters. But when we come
among those to whom leisure and opportunity are given that they may
learn to think truly and to act nobly, and find that they fail in this,
as nearly all of them do fail, we are disappointed and saddened. The
thoughtless imagine that those who provide food and shelter do the most
important work; but such work is the most important only where there is
no intellectual, moral, or religious life. That is most necessary which
nourishes the highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists,
enlightened minds and great characters are indispensable. The animal and
the savage, without much difficulty, find what satisfies appetite; but
God appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls
alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in
conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above
every other kind of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute,
the godlike side of our being, which, under penalty of sinking to lower
worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The plant is alive. By its own
energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its green leaves
beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless,
dead to the world of sight and sound, of taste and smell. The animal too
is alive, and in a higher way: for all the glories of Nature are painted
upon its eye; all sounds strike upon its ear; it m