Since this is true, personality can be developed and its latent powers brought out by careful cultivation.  We have long since ceased to believe that we are living in a realm of chance.  So clear and exact are nature’s laws that we forecast, scores of years in advance, the appearance of a certain comet and foretell to the minute an eclipse of the Sun.  And we understand this law of cause and effect in all our material realms.  We do not plant potatoes and expect to pluck hyacinths.  The law is universal:  it applies to our mental powers, to morality, to personality, quite as much as to the heavenly bodies and the grain of the fields.  “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,” and nothing else.

Character has always been regarded as one of the chief factors of the speaker’s power.  Cato defined the orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus—­a good man skilled in speaking.  Phillips Brooks says:  “Nobody can truly stand as a utterer before the world, unless he be profoundly living and earnestly thinking.”  “Character,” says Emerson, “is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates with it.  The reason why we feel one man’s presence, and do not feel another’s is as simple as gravity.  Truth is the summit of being:  justice is the application of it to affairs.  All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them.  The will of the pure runs down into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel.  This natural force is no more to be withstood than any other natural force....  Character is nature in the highest form.”

It is absolutely impossible for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to blossom into loving and altruistic habits.  Thistle seeds bring forth only the thistle.  Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low and vicious character.  Either thoughts or feelings precede and determine all our actions.  Actions develop into habits, habits constitute character, and character determines destiny.  Therefore to guard our thoughts and control our feelings is to shape our destinies.  The syllogism is complete, and old as it is it is still true.

Since “character is nature in the highest form,” the development of character must proceed on natural lines.  The garden left to itself will bring forth weeds and scrawny plants, but the flower-beds nurtured carefully will blossom into fragrance and beauty.

As the student entering college largely determines his vocation by choosing from the different courses of the curriculum, so do we choose our characters by choosing our thoughts.  We are steadily going up toward that which we most wish for, or steadily sinking to the level of our low desires.  What we secretly cherish in our hearts is a symbol of what we shall receive.  Our trains of thoughts are hurrying us on to our destiny.  When you see the flag fluttering to the South, you know the wind is coming from the North.  When you see the straws and papers being carried to the Northward you realize the wind is blowing out of the South.  It is just as easy to ascertain a man’s thoughts by observing the tendency of his character.