HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.

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they fall into this snare, and cease to work, the lineaments of beauty and goodness are exchanged for those of shame and grief. Usually they do not less, but rather more, than others; only under somewhat sorrowful conditions, having spirits prepared for what is more than human, and being obliged to move within limits that are only human. The worth of such a life depends little on its quantity; it is an affair of quality alone. Martineau.

Rank exists in the moral world also Commoner Natures

Pay with what they do; nobler with what they are.

Schiller.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little. Hare.

Every virtue has a passive and an active side - the latter is often the least lovely and lovable.

Instead of asking what people are capable of, I always ask what they are incapable of.

Great thoughts, indeed the greatest, come from the personal being. Literary and scientific works are produced by certain isolated faculties working with a definite and restricted aim. Edinburgh Review.

If you would create something, you must be something.

Goethe.

It is better to create than to be learned. Creating is the true essence of life.

Niebuhr.

Is creative power so superior in its nature to all other powers, that an atom of it which gives the charm of originality, makes a person superior to other men, however widely perceptive and appreciative they may be?

Great perceptive powers are unfavourable to humility. Those who can appreciate every thing, are apt to overlook the immense difference between merely receiving and doing they over-estimate themselves.

Plato has profoundly defined man 'the hunter of truth ;' for in this chase, as in others, the pursuit is all in all, the success comparatively nothing. 'Did the Almighty,' says Lessing, holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search after Truth,' deign to proffer me the one I might prefer; in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request-Search after Truth. We exist only as we energize; pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded energy; energy is the mean by which our faculties are developed ; and a higher energy the end which their development proposes. In action is thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection of our being; and knowledge is only precious as it may afford a stimulus to the exercise of our powers, and the condition of their more complete activity. Sir William Hamilton.

ACTIVE LIFE AND REPOSE.

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Not merely to know, but according to thy knowledge to do, is the destiny of man. "Not for leisurely contemplation of thyself, not to brood over devout sensations, art thou here. Thine action, thine action alone determines thy worth." Fichte.

Toil, feel, think, hope. A man is sure to dream enough before he dies, without making arrangements for the purpose. Sterling.

Life is an outward occupation, an actual work, in all ranks, and all situations. Humboldt.

Bacon says, "In this theatre of man's life God and angels only have a right to be spectators. Contemplation and action ought ever to be united."

Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much : The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were of the noblest. Carlyle.

There is always a counterpoise in great minds between the desire of action the vigorous passion for achievement, on the one part, and that tendency, on the other, to repose, that taste for peace that calm residence of the soul upon its centre, which impels it now to stand forth, and now to recede from the noise and confusion of the world. We might find plenty of great minds, if we could but relinquish, in our definition, this special charac

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teristica tranquil taste, and the capability of repose. In every circle we may meet with men of prodigious energy, and of indefatigable zeal; but they are such as can exist only exteriorly or in action; rest, when it must be taken, is with them an abrupt cessation of their intellectual life; it is not another and a graceful mode of it. Isaac Taylor.

What a wonderful incongruity it is for a man to see the doubtfulness in which things are involved, and yet be impatient out of action, or vehement in it. Butler.

There is in Swedenborg an element which the East has not, a more than European, perhaps a peculiarly Scandinavian activity, which demands a material world as the stern proof-place of thoughts and contemplations. Wilkinson.

The occupations of men are, unfortunately, for the most part, such that they shut out all deep thought while they are going on, and yet make no ennobling claim on the mind. Humboldt.

The men "after God's own heart" time and a mission; every one is "

are only so for a a man after God's

Wilkinson.

own heart" for the functions that he does best.

To fill our places in the world and to love to fill them,

are the best ends of our aspirations to be so organized, or so minded, as to be spontaneously able and cheerful in our labors, at the same time that our labors are not only our own choice but the wants of the time. Ib.

"Do not mistake a 'tendency for a talent;' nor conclude that what you dislike to do is not rightfully demanded of you." Carlyle.

Were success in life (morally or physically) the main object here, it certainly would seem as if a little more faculty in man were sadly needed. Living, as we do, in the midst of stern gigantic Laws which crush every thing down that comes in their way, which know no excuses, admit of no small errors, never send a man back to learn his lesson and try him again, but are as inexorable as Fate,- it does seem as if the faculties of man were hardly as yet adequate to his situation here. Helps.

He who learns not from events, rejects the lessons of experience he who judges from the event, makes fortune an assessor in his judgments. Hare.

Success is highly valued because we painfully learn it takes an infinity of effort to accomplish a mere finite thing. Matter is so energetic and blunting.

Who inquires whether momentum comes from mass or velocity? But velocity has this advantage, it is in our