s to be. Descartes, who is a typical lover of the
intellectual life, looked upon himself simply as a thinking being, and
gave all his thought to the cultivation of his higher faculties in the
hope that he might finally discover some truth which would bring
blessings to men. He had no thought of literary fame, published little,
and sedulously avoided whatever might bring him into notoriety. "Those,"
he says, "who wish to know how to speak of everything and to acquire a
reputation for learning, will succeed most easily if they content
themselves with the semblance of truth, which may readily be found." The
love of truth is the mark of the real student. What is, is; it is man's
business to know it. He is the foe of pretense; sham for him means
shame. He will have sound knowledge; he will do his work well; whether
men shall applaud or reward him for it, is a foreign consideration. He
obeys an inward law, and the praise of those who cannot understand him
sounds to him like mockery. True thought, like right conduct, is its own
reward. To see truth and to love it is enough,--is more than to have the
worship of the world. The important thing is to be a man, to have a
serious purpose, to be in earnest, to yearn for what is good and holy;
and without this the culture of the intellect will not avail.

We must build upon the broad foundation of man's life, and not upon any
special faculty. The merely literary man is often the most pitiful of
men,--able, it may be, to do little else than complain that his merits
are not recognized. Let it not be imagined then that the lover of
wisdom, the follower of intellectual good, should propose to himself a
literary career. He may of course be or become a man of letters, but
this is incidental to his life-purpose, which is to develop within
himself the power of knowing and loving. He will learn to think rightly
and to act well, first of all; for he knows that a man's writing cannot
be worth more than he himself is worth. He is a seeker after truth and
perfection; and understanding at the price of what countless labors
these may be hoped for, he is slow to imagine that words of his may be
of help to others.

Observation, reading, and writing are the chief means by which thought
is stimulated, the mind developed, and the intellect cultivated. The
habit of looking and the habit of thinking are closely related. A man
thinks as he sees; and for a mind like Shakespeare's, for instance,
observation