ed which makes the chief difficulty in
tracing the affinities of peoples.

So it is that the world is enriched. Every new form of man establishes
another current in those reciprocations of thought, in those electrical
streams of sympathy,--of wholesome attraction and wholesome
repulsion,--by which the intellectual life is kindled and quickened.
Thought begins not until two men meet. Col. Hamilton Smith makes it
quite clear that civilization has found its first centres there where
two highways of national movement crossed, and dissimilar men looked
each other in the face. They have met, it may be, with the rudest kind
of greetings; but have obtained good thoughts from hard blows, and
beaten ideas _out_ of each other's heads, if not _into_ them, according
to the ancient pedagogic tradition. Higher culture brings higher terms
of meeting; traffic succeeds war, conversation follows upon traffic;
ever the necessity of various men to each other remains. There is no
pure white light until seven colors blend; so to the mental
illumination of humanity many hues of national genius must consent: and
the value of life to all men is greater so soon as a new man has made
his advent.

All this is matter of daily experience with us. We do not, indeed, tire
of old friends. A soul whose wealth we have once recognized must be
ever rich to us. Gold turns not to copper by keeping; and perhaps old
friends are rather like old wine, and can never be too old. Yet who
does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a _new_
rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly
its own? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our
conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the
spectacle of drunken Helots;--though he who makes habitual _talk_ about
his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there be
sermons in stones, no less is there blessing in bores and in bullies.
We found one day in the face of a black bear what could not be so well
found in libraries. The creature regarded us attentively, and with
affection rather than malice,--saw simply certain amounts of savory
flesh, useful for the satisfaction of ursine hungers,--and saw nothing
more. It was an incomparable lesson to teach that the world is an
endless series of levels, and that each eye sees what its own altitude
commands; the rest to it is non-extant. _That_ bear was in his natural
covering of hair; his br