or study. These may properly be determined by native or acquired
proclivity, by opportunity, or by considerations of usefulness. Nor, if
the love of truth be formed and cherished, can it of be of any essential
importance whether this or that portion of truth be pursued or neglected
during the brief period of our life in this world; for, at best, what we
leave unattained must immeasurably exceed our attainments, and there is an
eternity before us for what we are compelled to omit here. At the same
time, the unbounded scope and the vast diversity of things knowable and
worthy to be known are adapted to stimulate self-culture, and in that same
proportion to invest human life with a higher dignity, a larger intrinsic
value, and a more enduring influence.

Section III.

Self-Control.

*A man must be either self-governed, or under a worse government than his
own.* God governs men, only by teaching and helping them to govern
themselves. Good men, if also wise, seek not, even for the highest ends,
to control their fellow-men, but, so far as they can, enable and encourage
them to exercise a due self-control. It is only unwise or bad men who
usurp the government of other wills than their own. But the individual
will is oftener made inefficient by passion, than by direct influence from
other minds. Man, in his normal state, wills either what is expedient or
what is right. Passion suspends, as to its objects, all reference to
expediency and right, even when there is the clearest knowledge of the
tendencies of the acts to which it prompts. Thus the sensualist often
knows that he is committing sure and rapid suicide, yet cannot arrest
himself on the declivity of certain ruin. The man in whom avarice has
become a passion is perfectly aware of the comforts and enjoyments which
he is sacrificing, yet is as little capable of procuring them as if he
were a pauper. Anger and revenge not infrequently force men to crimes
which they know will be no less fatal to themselves than to their victims.
Now if a man will not put and keep himself under the government of
conscience, it concerns him at least to remain under the control of
reason, which, if it do not compel him to do right, will restrain him
within the limits of expediency, and thus will insure for him reputation,
a fair position, and a safe course in life, even though it fail of the
highest and most enduring good.

*Self-control is easily los