our heroes come to us at our bidding, and
no one can shut the gates against them. Whom shall we admire? Let them
be men of the spirit, who have sought truth and hated lies, "who have
fought their doubts and gathered strength," who would rather suffer
wrong than do wrong. The perfection of being is the end of effort,
therefore we will read what will best help our growth in vision, in
moral earnestness, in spiritual sensibility; therefore our books shall
treat of subjects which will ennoble; our amusements shall be pure and
clean; and our chief companionships shall be with the prophets and
masters, the noble and the good, because by associating with them we
shall become like them.

Intellectual acuteness, mastery of faculty, elegance of expression, are
something very different from insight into the meaning of life. The
cultured man is he who has learned his relations to his fellow-men, who
recognizes his obligations toward them; and his relations to the unseen
and his duty toward it.

Discipline which will produce such results will ever be sought by the
awakened soul. It will be satisfied with nothing less.

The relation of nurture and culture to the ascent of the soul is now
evident. Both are the agencies by which all impediment and bias are to
be removed, and by which the soul is to come to the realization of pure
power. They are the means by which complete self-realization is to be
attained; they are the study of perfection. Nurture is what is done for
the soul by parents and friends in its plastic years; culture is the
means which the soul chooses in order that its growth may be hastened.
Nurture is chiefly promoted by lofty examples, noble ideals,--in short,
by beneficent environment; but culture is attained by the conscious
effort of the individual, by his own choice of healthful environment,
worthy example, inspiring companionships, and, perhaps still more, by
long and patient study of the facts of our mortal life, of the
revelations which have come from the unseen, and of the prophecies of
the future which are within the soul. There is a deep and almost
terrible significance in the text, "No man liveth to himself." Every
person is independent and free and yet is bound to every other. Most
delicate and vital of all human relations is that of parent and child.
How far one may be responsible for the other may be difficult to decide,
but that the one influences the other, inevitably and forever, is beyond
question