e, which calls on us to know, and to know that we may do. Out upon
this apotheosis of doubt. It is the sick man glorying in his
infirmity, the beggar boasting of his intellectual rags.

"The comprehensive and decisive tend naturally to the incisive. The
power to take a subject by its handle and poise it on its centre is
perhaps the consummation of merely intellectual culture. When all its
nutriment has been converted into bone and muscle and sinew and nerve,
then the mind bounds to its work, lithe and strong, like a hunting
leopard on its game. It was exactly the power with which our Webster
handled his case, till it seemed to the farmer too simple to require a
great man to argue. It was the quality that Lincoln so toiled at
through his early manhood, and so admirably gained,--the power of
presenting things clearly to 'plain people.' You may call it 'the art
of putting things,' but it is the art of conceiving things. It is no
trick of style, but a character of thinking, and it marks the
harvest-time of a manly culture.

"I will add to this enumeration one other quality, one without which
this harvest will not ripen. I speak of mental docility and reverence.
A man will have looked forth to little purpose on the universe if he
does not see that, even with his expanding circle of light, there is
an ever-enlarging circle of darkness around it. He will have compared
his achievements with those of the race to little profit, if he does
not recognize his relative insignificance, gathering sands on the
ocean shore.

"The wide range and rapid outburst of modern learning tend undoubtedly
to arrogance and conceit. We gleefully traverse our new strip of
domain, and ask, Were there ever such beings as we? Yes, doubtless
there were,--clearer, greater, and nobler. Wisdom, skill, and strength
were not born with us. All the qualities of manly thought, though with
ruder implements and cruder materials, have been as conspicuously
exhibited down through the ages past as in our day. The power of
governing, ability in war, diplomacy in peace, subtle dialectics,
clear insight, the art of conversation, persuasive and impressive
speech, high art in every form, whatever constitutes the test of good
manhood, has been here in full force. It would puzzle us yet to lay
the stones of Baalbec, or to carve, move, and set up the great statue
of Rameses. Within a generation, Euclid of Alexandria was teaching
geometry in Dartmouth College, and Heraclide