We have the same interest in condition and character.
We honor the rich because they have externally the
freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper
to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise
man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes
to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained
but attainable self. All literature writes the character
of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, conversation,
are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is
forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost
him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A true aspirant therefore never needs look for
allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, more sweet, of that
character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character, yea further in every fact and circumstance,--in
the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked,
homage tendered, love flows, from mute nature, from the
mountains and the lights of the firmament.

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night,
let us use in broad day. The student is to read
history actively and not passively; to esteem his own
life the text, and books the commentary. Thus
compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as
never to those who do not respect themselves. I have
no expectation that any man will read history aright
who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men
whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense
than what he is doing to-day.

The world exists for the education of each man. There