Look, then, at the neglected ignorant class in their childhood and youth. One of the most obvious circumstances is the _perfect non-existence in their minds of any notion or question what their life is for, taken as a whole._ Among a crowd of trifling and corrupting ideas that soon find a place in them, there is never the reflective thought,--For what purpose am I alive? What is it that I should be, more than the animal that I am? Does it signify _what_ I may be?--But surely, it is with ill omen that the human creature advances into life without such a thought. He should in the opening of his faculties receive intimations, that something more belongs to his existence than what he is about to-day, and what he may be about to-morrow. He should be made aware that the course of activity he is beginning ought to have a leading principle of direction, some predominant aim, a general and comprehensive purpose, paramount to the divers particular objects he may pursue. It is not more necessary for him to understand that he must in some way be employed in order to live, than to be apprized that life itself, that existence itself, is of no value but as a mere capacity of something which he should realize, and of which he may fail. He should be brought to apprehend that there is a something essential for him to _be_, which he will not _become_ merely by passing from one day into another, by eating and sleeping, by growing taller and stronger, seizing what share he can of noisy sport, and performing appointed portions of work; and that if he do _not_ become that which, he _cannot_ become without a general and leading purpose, he will be worthless and unhappy.