when he attempts himself to master a subject of importance, when he would rise into the higher region of mathematics, philosophy, history, poetry, religion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory, comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success?  The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of a steamship on an ocean voyage.  Day by day the fire must burn, and the revolve in the calm and in the gale—­in the sunshine and the storm.  The innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its possessor from this law of mental growth.  An educated mind is neither an aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow, nor a substance, which, placed in a turner’s lathe, comes forth an exquisitely wrought instrument.  The mere passing through an academy or college, is not education.  The enjoyment of the largest educational advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart thoroughly educated; since there is an inner work to be performed by the subject of those advantages before he can lay claim to the possession of a well-disciplined and richly-stored intellect and affections.  The phrase, “self-made men” is often so used as to convey the idea that the persons who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, are rather made by their instructors.  The supposition is in part unjust.

The outward means of education stimulate the mind, and thus assist the process of development; but it is absolutely essential to all growth in mental or moral excellence, that the person himself should be enlisted vigorously in the work.  He must work as earnestly as the man destitute of his faculties.  The difference between the two consists not in the fact that one walks and the other rides, but that the one is obliged to take a longer road to reach the same point.  Teachers, books, recitations and lectures facilitate our course, direct us how most advantageously to study, point out the shortest path to the end we seek, and tend to rouse the soul to the putting forth of its powers; but neither of these can take the place of, or forestall intense personal application.  The man without instructors, like a traveler without guide-boards, must take many a useless step, and often retrace his way.  He may, after this experimental traveling, at length reach the same point with the person who has enjoyed superior literary aids, but it will cost the waste of many a precious hour, which might have been spent in enlarging the sphere of his vision and perfecting the symmetry of his intellectual powers.  In cases of large attainments and ripe character, in either sex, the process of growth is laborious.  Thinking is hard work.  All things most excellent are the fruits