the
greatness of his country or his age. The untaught optimism which leads
the crowd to exaggerate the worth of whatever they in any way identify
with themselves, he looks upon with suspicion, if not with aversion.
Self-complacency is pleasant; but truth alone is good, and they who
think least are best content with themselves and with their world. He
who seeks to improve his mind, neither boasts of his age and country,
nor rails at them; but tries to understand them as he tries to know
himself. The important knowledge here is of obstacles and defects; for
when these are removed, to advance is easy. The first lesson which we
must learn is that in the work of mental culture, time and patience are
necessary elements. The young, who are eager and restless, find it
difficult to work with patience and perseverance, especially when the
reward of labor is remote, and in the excitement and hurry of American
life, such work often seems to be impossible. But by this kind of work
alone can true culture be acquired. It is this Buffoon means when he
calls genius a great capacity for taking pains. When Albert Duerer said,
"Sir, it cannot be better done;" he simply meant that he had bestowed
infinite pains upon his work. Now, they who are in a hurry cannot take
pains; and they who work for money will take pains only in so far as it
is profitable to do so. We must live in our work and love it for its own
sake. To do work we love makes us happy, makes us free, and according to
its kind educates us; and whatever its kind, it will at least teach us
the sovereign virtue of patience, and give us something of the spirit of
the old masters who in dingy shops ceased not from labor, and kept their
cheerful serenity to the end, though the outcome was only the most
perfect fiddle, or a deathless head. But they themselves had the souls
of artists, and were honest men, who in their work found joy and
freedom, and therefore what they did remains as a source of delight and
inspiration. If we find it impossible to put our hearts into our work
and consequently impossible to take infinite pains with it, then this is
work for which we were not born. The impatient cannot love the labor by
which the mind is cultivated, because impatience implies a sense of
restraint, a lack of freedom. They are restless, easily grow weary or
despondent, find fault with themselves and their task, and either throw
off the yoke or bear it in a spirit of disappointment and bitter