The number of men is comparatively small who appreciate the necessity of resting on the real, of speaking their own thoughts and living their own lives. A man's surroundings and furnishings should bespeak in every detail his individuality, and if he be true to himself they will; even his expenditure should be his own, and for things which appertain to his own thoughts, tastes and individuality. An artist surrounds himself with works of art which serve as studies and contemplations to him. It is these on which his thoughts love to dwell. A literary man's great delight is in his books, and an ample library is his greatest satisfaction; the musician expends his means on opportunities for listening to good music. Every man's purchases should represent the real proprietor, else they are a sham and a delusion.

There are also men who misinterpret their natures, who excuse every weakness and defect by asserting "that they cannot help it, that it is their nature." They mean their untrained instinct; it is their higher nature and not their lower selves which they should nominate "their nature." Man's higher nature is the sum of his natural tendencies redeemed by his best thought, and his best spiritual insight, and when he practices these, it will not be in extenuation of uncontrolled weakness.

The new education gives much more atten

tion than did the old to the individual traits of character, but still not enough. In consequence of levelling educational systems, the present generation is still cast too nearly in one mental mould. Independent, individual thought and action are not sufficiently encouraged. We follow the fashion in everything; the child is not educated according to his individuality, but according to a prescribed course, or because other children are being educated on those lines. But despite the levelling process of the present educational system, every community produces a few who rule their fellows because of their superior powers. The control is made. easier for these leaders by the fact that the majority have suffered from the levelling of their powers. So the strong minded, the strongly individualized men become the leaders of communities, states and nations. Monopolies and combinations, the great modern financial successes are made easy under systems which suppress individuality. The large majority is ruled by a small minority of master minds.

Who are the men who succeed in the financial world? They are not always good men, nor educated men, nor brilliant, nor even skilled men. What then is the essential of all suscess? Is it not the force of individualism, of certain elements of character? It is therefore clear that the greater number of strong, well

developed individuals there are in the world the more widely will the wealth of the world be dispensed, the more will that power, otherwise centralized, be diffused among the many. Education must therefore give each individual an opportunity to develop all his latent power. This is the trend of modern social ethics. The mental and moral faculties and the physical powers must have an harmonious development, no one being developed to excess, or at the expense of the other. Inharmonious development arises either from a false view of life, or from lack of sympathy with one's environment. By training the perceptions to individual investigation of the world of nature, by teaching the child to think for himself and to live from within, by giving him all facility for expressing his real, individual self, much is done in the right direction. Some one has said the essential of great financial achievement is to combine a great caution with a great venture; so in the development of individuality, great conservation of all that is good in existing conditions should combine with a fearlessness to cast off all that is found to be prejudice, empty form, and inane tradition.

IX

CHARACTER

CHARACTER is the resultant of every force from within or without which has operated on a man since the first moment of his existence. Nowhere in life is he called upon to bear testimony when character is not a dominant force.

The basis of great character is love of truth and its application, perfect justice. There have been men, who, though nominated "great," possessed not this power, and "greatness" is by no means synonymous with "great character." Napoleon was intellectual and had a penetrating insight; we admire him for his enormous self-trust, but he was not just, and lacked other elements of a great character. Numberless heroes have won fame by sublime daring and large adventures, possessing great courage, one feature of strong character,lacking some of its other essentials. morals and the intellect must combine to produce the true quality, and the great intellect is less indispensable than the virtuous principles. Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau and Byron were brilliant men, possessing in an eminent degree the intellectual quality, but they were not

The

really great as men. The man of character is always superior to his achievements, is himself greater than anything he has said or done, for his power is never exhausted. He has profound convictions, faces the reality, and is persuaded through his own perceptions. Character is the moral order incorporate in the individual, and truth and justice are the chief mediums of its manifestation. It is difficult to enumerate the merits of the man of character; he is too great to be measured, and no praise that is bestowed seems sufficient to depict him.

The greatest intellectual gifts are denied to a man after his birth, but anyone can, by force of will and perseverance, improve the bias of his character to a degree that almost constitutes regeneration. He need only appreciate the grandeur and beauty of this highest form of nature, and his desire and determination to achieve indicate his ability thereto. A man's antagonisms create his power, and that which he fights for and against reveals the quality of his nature, and the degree of his development. As long as his obstruction is material, just so material is he; as he refines, his checks become finer; as he rises in the spiritual scale, his antagonisms take a spiritual form; his battles are always in the line of his development, and the great results of all his struggles are the additions they have made to his character. The