Just as our problems in chemistry or in physics must fail over and over before we have the quiet satisfaction of seeing them work, so must we go through test after test before we can be firmly established in all the laws of human relations. The standard of character and life represented by the idea of the man of the world has been dwarfed by a superficial notion of the meaning of "the world." "The world" means many things to many men, and these different meanings are of various degrees of truth and falsehood; but we shall find that, generally speaking, they are more and more true in proportion as the people who hold them are possessed of vigorous character. In art and literature we know that the greatest truth and the deepest beauty is that which appeals at all times to all men. It appeals to the universal human heart and mind, and thus it is inconceivable that the human race should ever tire of Shakespere, or Dante, or the Bible. Such books, whatever personal opinions or beliefs we may attach to them, are universally acceptable to all men, because they appeal to common human experience and apply the principles of irresistible human logic. They are the books of the world. The world itself is an organism corresponding to that of the individual man, and the particular individual whose heart and mind lives and thinks most nearly in harmony with the best life and thought of the world is its truest citizen. On the other hand, the individual whose motives and interests in life are confined to the narrowest circle of experience represents the extreme type of provincialism. The difference between these two extremes is not a matter of long, varied, or conventional experience, but of experience in those elements of human nature which are at its root and not at its surface. The statesman, the capitalist, the experienced traveller, although they may have intercourse with men in large classes and masses, may be essentially petty in the foundations of their character. These, then, are not men of the world in the true sense; for, if they were, we should have to mean by "the world" numerical or mechanical conceptions of men, purely intellectual conceptions of their thoughts, or geographical ideas regarding the inhabitants of the earth's surface. None of these things has any universal quality, unless it is united to the power of human character and passion, which carries weight with all men at all times and in all places. The inhabitant of a country village may be, according to his quality, either a man of the village or a man of the world. It depends upon his breadth of mind, his largeness of heart, and the depth to which his character will absorb the best results of his experience. Whatever is purely local, without being rooted in a general human need,--whatever is purely personal, without being founded on a universal human principle,--whatever is purely sectarian or national, or pertaining to