t so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a
stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter,
who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered
by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel
and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead
of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth
to his work, but is ridden[7] by the routine of his craft, and the
soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a
statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.

In this distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated
intellect. In the right state he is _Man Thinking_. In the degenerate
state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker,
or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the whole theory of his office
is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, all her
monitory pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites.
Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the
student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true
master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles:
Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with
mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and
consider him in reference to the main influences he receives.

* * * * *

I. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon
the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun;[10] and, after sunset,
Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every
day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden.[11] The scholar
must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He
must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never
a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of
this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.[12]
Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he
never can find,--so entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors
shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without
center, without circumference,--in the mass and in the particle, Nature
hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Class