on our own, much less on our moods.  If we would but take half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a science or art—­if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own thoughts as an engineer can on the sequence of movements in his steam engine—­if we could dig, and penetrate into the depths of our own being, as a miner penetrates into a seam of coal—­we might then cultivate with some profit our own special lines of thought, our own gifts, that portion of individuality, which we each possess.  But it is so difficult to get to know it—­we are always on the surface of ourselves.  What power will unearth our self and make us really know what we are and what we can do?  It is because we do not know ourselves, that we fail so hopelessly to give the things which are of incalculably real worth to the world, such as fresh individuality, and reality of character.  Among millions of beings how few exist who possess strong original minds!  We are not individual for the most part, and we are not real.  Our lives are buried lives; we are unconscious absorbers, and reproducers, under other words of that which we have imbibed elsewhere.  We need not only fresh expressions of old statements, but actually new ideas, and new conceptions. (The fresh subjects people talk about, are really fresh conceptions of subjects.) We shall never get this bloom of freshness, and this sense of reality and individuality of view unless we cultivate their soil—­to have fresh ideas, we must encourage the right atmosphere in which alone they can live.  We must not let our own personality, however slight, be suppressed, or be discouraged, or interfered with by a more powerful, or a more excellent personality.

Individuality is so weak and pliable a thing in most of us that it is very easily checked—­it requires watchfulness and care, and not to be overborne, for the smallest individual thought of a mind of any originality, is more worth to the world than any re-expression of the thought of some other mind, however great.

Even the “best hundred books” may have a disastrous effect upon us.  They may kill some aspirations, if they kindle others.  Persons of mature age may surely at some time have made the discovery that much has been lost through the dominating influence of a superior mind.  Many persons, for instance, have felt the great influence of Carlyle, and Ruskin, in their youth.  Carlyle could do incalculable good to some minds by his ethics of work, but irremediable harm to others; minds have actually become stunted and sterile through that part of his teaching, which was unsuited to them.  Carlyle’s temperament checked their proper development.  Youth has a beautiful capacity for trust and belief, and it accepts everything as equal in goodness and truth from an author it reverences.  The young do not know enough of themselves, and they do not trust enough to their own instincts to discriminate.  They are dominated