quired to work out our
destiny. It is not a superficial resemblance that the lighthouse
tender and the scientific man both seek to keep and to spread light
for the guidance of men.

The lighthouse tender, the mother, the warrior, the patriot, the
martyr, the true lover, the scientific investigator--they all may
show, I insist, this same essential spirit,

"Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see;"

{196} superior to fortune because something that is worthier than any
fortune seems to call them to their task. Such are undismayed in
defeat. So Newton was undismayed when he looked for the needed
confirmation of his theory in the motion of the moon and for the time
failed. He worked on steadily, without any effort to win renown by
hasty publication of possible explanations, until new advances of
science showed why confirmation had so far been lacking and brought
him what he needed. So Lee turned to the new life after the war. So
the widow climbed the lonely stairway, despite her lost one, and
because of her lost one. So the martyrs faced the lions. These all
were sustained through long toil, or bewildering grief, by a spirit
that tended to make them masters of their own lives and to bring them
into unity with the master of all life.

We have illustrated the spirit. We now ask: What is the principle
which dominates such lives? Is it or is it not a principle such, that
one at any time wholly devoted to it could thereafter, upon a
reasonable review of life, wisely regret having chosen to live thus?
If it is not such a principle, if on the contrary it is a principle
such that any reasonable view of life approves it, let us know what it
is, let us detach it from the accidental conditions which at once
adorn and disguise it for our imagination, let us read it so as to see
how it applies to every sort of reasonable life--and then we shall be
in possession {197} of the solution of our moral problem. Then we
shall know what it is that, if we are indeed rational, we really
choose to do so soon as we learn how to live.

VI

If we consider carefully any such faithful lives as I have just
exemplified, we see that, however simple-minded and unreflective some
of the people may be who learn to live in this way, the motives that
guide them are such as will bear a great deal of thoughtful
reflection.

The people whom I have in mind, and of whom such instances teach us
some