s the power that turns a clod into a
rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet
neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder
of time when, by slow processes, God develops man out of rude and low
conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness
gives place to self-sacrifice, coarseness to sweetness, hardness to
gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in
fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.

The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to
fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one
long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet,
rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton,
"what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know--that
if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of
any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued
not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and
night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence,
the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in
purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and
neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial
palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these
conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to
summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.

Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his
fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire
is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is
inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from
Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty--and must be united
in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face--so the
poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal
manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a
fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the
conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in
drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said
the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of
the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret
their loss. Those who have no experience ar