iscipline, but can also go forth alone in the
solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to Society, to have our
place in it, and yet to be capable of a complete individual existence
outside of it.

Which of the two is the grander, the ship in the disciplined fleet,
arranged in order of battle, or the ship alone in the tempest, a
thousand miles from land? The truest grandeur of the ship is neither in
one nor the other, but in the capacity for both. What would that captain
merit who either had not seamanship enough to work under the eye of the
admiral, or else had not sufficient knowledge of navigation to be
trusted out of the range of signals?

I value society for the abundance of ideas that it brings before us,
like carriages in a frequented street; but I value solitude for
sincerity and peace, and for the better understanding of the thoughts
that are truly ours. Only in solitude do we learn our inmost nature and
its needs. He who has lived for some great space of existence apart from
the tumult of the world, has discovered the vanity of the things for
which he has no natural aptitude or gift--their _relative_ vanity, I
mean, their uselessness to himself, personally; and at the same time he
has learned what is truly precious and good for him. Surely this is
knowledge of inestimable value to a man: surely it is a great thing for
any one in the bewildering confusion of distracting toils and pleasures
to have found out the labor that he is most fit for and the pleasures
that satisfy him best. Society so encourages us in affectations that it
scarcely leaves us a chance of knowing our own minds; but in solitude
this knowledge comes of itself, and delivers us from innumerable
vanities.

Montaigne tells us that at one time he bought books from ostentation,
but that afterwards he bought only such books as he wanted for his
private reading. In the first of these conditions of mind we may observe
the influence of society; in the second the effect of solitude. The man
of the world does not consult his own intellectual needs, but considers
the eyes of his visitors; the solitary student takes his literature as a
lonely traveller takes food when he is hungry, without reference to the
ordered courses of public hospitality.

It is a traditional habit of mankind to see only the disadvantages of
solitude, without considering its compensations; but there are great
compensations, some of the greatest being negative. The lonely m