sh between the intellect and the conscience, between the power
of thought and virtue, and to say that virtuous action is worth more than
strong thinking. But we mutilate our nature by thus drawing lines
between actions or energies of the soul, which are intimately,
indissolubly bound together. The head and the heart are not more vitally
connected than thought and virtue. Does not conscience include, as a
part of itself, the noblest action of the intellect or reason? Do we not
degrade it by making it a mere feeling? Is it not something more? Is it
not a wise discernment of the right, the holy, the good? Take away
thought from virtue, and what remains worthy of a man? Is not high
virtue more than blind instinct? Is it not founded on, and does it not
include clear, bright perceptions of what is lovely and grand in
character and action? Without power of thought, what we call
conscientiousness, or a desire to do right, shoots out into illusion,
exaggeration, pernicious excess. The most cruel deeds on earth have been
perpetrated in the name of conscience. Men have hated and murdered one
another from a sense of duty. The worst frauds have taken the name of
pious. Thought, intelligence, is the dignity of a man, and no man is
rising but in proportion as he is learning to think clearly and forcibly,
or directing the energy of his mind to the acquisition of truth. Every
man, in whatsoever condition, is to be a student. No matter what other
vocation he may have, his chief vocation is to Think.

I say every man is to be a student, a thinker. This does not mean that
he is to shut himself within four walls, and bend his body and mind over
books. Men thought before books were written, and some of the greatest
thinkers never entered what we call a study. Nature, Scripture, society,
and life, present perpetual subjects for thought; and the man who
collects, concentrates, employs his faculties on any of these subjects
for the purpose of getting the truth, is so far a student, a thinker, a
philosopher, and is rising to the dignity of a man. It is time that we
should cease to limit to professed scholars the titles of thinkers,
philosophers. Whoever seeks truth with an earnest mind, no matter when
or how, belongs to the school of intellectual men.

In a loose sense of the word, all men may be said to think; that is, a
succession of ideas, notions, passes through their minds from morning to
night; but in as far as this su