should be a narrow one. Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by
unity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its
having manifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on
that account.

If greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to
consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul. These
qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see what
growth there is in them. The education of a man of open mind is
never ended. Then, with openness of soul, a man sees some way into
all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their
experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the universal
solvent. Nothing is understood without it. The capacity of a man,
at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to
his powers of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract
selfishness like sympathy? Selfishness may be hedged in by minute
watchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature
being encouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign
objects.

The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen
in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages
to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has
produced numbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of
self-restraint, pondering over their own merits and demerits,
keeping out, not the world exactly, but their fellow-creatures from
their hearts, and caring only to drive their neighbours before them
on this plank of theirs, or to push them headlong. Thus, with many
virtues, and much hard work at the formation of character, we have
had splendid bigots or censorious small people.