However distinguished and gifted, mentally and morally, we find that in conduct and in our external relations with, society there is ever a levelling influence at work. Seldom in our relations with the world, and in the ordinary commerce of life, are the best and highest within us brought forth; for the whole system of social intercourse is levelling. As it is said that law knows no distinction of persons but that which it has itself instituted; so of society it may be said, that it allows of no distinction but those which it can recognise—external distinctions. We hear it said that general society—the _world_, as it is called—and a public school, are excellent educators; because in one the man, in the other the boy, “finds, as the phrase is, his own level.” He does not; he finds the level of others. _That_ may be good for those below mediocrity, but for those above it _bad_: and it is for those we should most care, for if once brought down in early life by the levelling influence of numbers, they seldom rise again, or only partially. Nothing so dangerous as to be perpetually measuring ourselves against what is beneath us, feeling our superiority to that which we force ourselves to assimilate to. This has been the perdition of many a schoolboy and many a man. [Illustration] 124. “Il me semble que le plus noble rapport entre le ciel et la terre, le plus beau don que Dieu ait fait à l’homme, la pensée, l’inspiration, se décompose en quelque sorte dès qu’elle est descendue dans son âme. Elle y vient simple et désintéressée; il la reproduit corrompue par tous les intérêts auxquels il l’associe; elle lui a été confiée pour la multiplier à l’avantage de tous; il la publie au profit de son amour-propre.”—_Madame de Saint-Aulaire._ There would be much to say about this, for it is not always, nor generally, _amour-propre_ or interest; it is the desire of sympathy, which impels the artist mind to the utterance in words, or the expression in form, of that thought or inspiration which God has sent into his soul. [Illustration] 125. Milton’s Eve is the type of the masculine standard of perfection in woman; a graceful figure, an abundance of fine hair, much “coy submission,” and such a degree of unreasoning wilfulness as shall risk perdition. And the woman’s standard for the man is Adam, who rules and demands subjection, and is so indulgent that he gives up to blandishment what he would refuse to reason, and what his own reason condemns. [Illustration] 126. Every subject which excites discussion impels to thought. Every expression of a mind humbly seeking truth, not assuming to have found it, helps the seeker after truth. [Illustration] 128.