means of success. HE word of ambition at the present day is Culture. Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a power, culture corrects the theory of A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. For performance, Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the performer to get it done; makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some defect in a contigu ous part. "The Our efficiency depends so much on our con centration, that Nature usually, in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing his sym metry to his working power. It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression. on all his performances. If she creates a policeman like Fouché, he is made up of suspicions and of plots to circumvent them. air," said Fouché, "is full of poniards." The physician Sanctorius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the Canon Yeman's Tale illustrates the statute Hen. V. Chap. 4, against alchemy. I saw a man who believed the principal mischiefs in the English state were derived from the devotion to musical concerts. A freemason, not long since, set out to explain to this country, that the principal cause of the success of General Washington was, the aid he derived from the free masons. But worse than the harping on one string, Nature has secured individualism, by giving the private person a high conceit of his weight in the system. The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady? The man runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity them. They like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of interest from the by-standers, as we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. This distemper is the scourge of talent, of artists, inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the eve of a revelation." It is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it, and by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower selfism, and exclude him from the great world of God's cheerful fallible men and women. Let us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable. Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped. This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it subserves; such as we see in the sexual attraction. The preservation of the species was a point of such necessity, that Nature has secured it at all hazards by immensely overloading the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which each individual persists to be what he is. This individuality is not only not inconsistent with culture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature is there in its own right, and the student we speak to must a mesu wit invincible by his eit in wum w d books, arts, facilities, and neguena V course, but is never set and s niza He only is a well-a na vita a gent determination. And the end of CLLP A NE to destroy this, God forbud in an ATE all impediment and at avg. but pure power. Our mu se z style and determination, aut te a neter a his own specialty. Bit, ang L 1 BA put it behind him. He mustave a wid licity, a power to see wizi aing aut teszed look every object. Taste a HATT and self so overcharged, nati a na oras a companion who to a wet is ver own sake, and wition ale w wizz ence, he will find the feves vis vi gra him that satisfaction; viis me ne afflicted with a cute, a Herrar soon as any object does it contest via ber self-love. Though they talk of the over fore them, they are thinking of them their vanity is laying the tram for your miration. But after a man has door fat are limits to the interest wica |