s said, grew strong,
Until with ease he bore a bull along."

It is, I believe, unquestionable that, if he ever lived, a man who had
attained to absolute control over his own mind, must have been the
most enviable of mortals. MONTAIGNE illustrates such an ideal being by
a quotation from VIRGIL:

"Velut rupes vastum quae prodit in aequor
Obvia ventorum furiis, exposta que ponto,
Vim cunctum atque minas perfert caelique marisque
Ipsa immota manens."

"He as a rock among vast billows stood,
Scorning loud winds and the wild raging flood,
And firm remaining, all the force defies,
From the grim threatening seas and thundering skies."

And MONTAIGNE also doubted whether such self-control was possible. He
remarks of it:

"Let us never attempt these Examples; we shall never come up to them.
This is too much and too rude for our common souls to undergo. CATO
indeed gave up the noblest Life that ever was upon this account, but
it is for us meaner spirited men to fly from the storm as far as we
can."

Is it? I may have thought so once, but I begin to believe that in this
darkness a new strange light is beginning to show itself. The victory
may be won far more easily than the rather indolent and timid Essayist
ever imagined. MONTAIGNE, and many more, believed that absolute
self-control is only to be obtained by iron effort, heroic and
terrible exertion--a conception based on bygone History, which is all
a record of battles of man against man, or man with the Devil. Now the
world is beginning slowly to make an ideal of peace, and disbelieve in
the Devil. Science is attempting to teach us that from any beginning,
however small, great results are sure to be obtained if resolutely
followed up and fully developed.

It requires thought to realize what a man gifted to some degree with
culture and common sense must enjoy who can review the past without
pain, and regard the present with perfect assurance that come what may
he need have no fear or fluttering of the heart. Spenser has asked in
"The Fate of the Butterfly":

"What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"

To which one may truly reply that all delight is fitful and uncertain
unless bound or blended with the power to be indifferent to
involuntary annoying emotions, and that self-command is in itself the
highest mental pleasure, or one which surpasses all of any kind. He
who does not ov