4. At every stage of his progress, he followed the ideal of personal independence, the honest acquisition of property, the establishment of a home, and the rearing of a family. These were the first duties and the dearest wishes--no matter what greater things might lie beyond. And he profoundly realized that temperance, industry, frugality, and patience were the necessary preliminaries to any longed-for achievement. As he says, he had first to spend thirty years in getting a start; then to spend another thirty years in accumulating the means for further advance into the wider sphere of his aspirations. And during each stage of this process, he was patient, as well as hopeful, neither wasting his energies in visionary schemes nor allowing the eddies of daily toil to divert the current of his deeper purposes. 5. At every stage, however, he found himself hindered by lack of thorough knowledge. He invented perpetually and profusely; but some of his most cherished inventions did not find practical recognition, because he had attempted the premature or the impossible. His guiding principle, of trying to do something that had never been done before, is not an adequate substitute for a scientific knowledge of what can be, and now needs to be, done. He found himself often too far in advance of his generation. Moreover, he found that the lack of education crippled him in the attempt to make other men understand and appreciate his fruitful ideas. This is true of all really great "self-made men." They may have achieved success and fame in spite of early disadvantages; they may, perhaps, recognize the fact that such disadvantages, necessitating a stern struggle, have sifted out, by natural selection, the possessors of genius and sterling character; but not one of them fails to lament the lack of that early training which would have made him still more successful than he is; and not one of them fails to desire, for his children and the coming generation of his fellows, the early advantages which were denied to himself. 6. This experience it was which gave form to the aspirations and purposes of Peter Cooper. As an apprentice, he resolved to do something for the benefit of apprentices--to found some institution which should supplement the deficiencies of early education, furnishing to virtuous, industrious, and ambitious youths the means of progress, and attracting the thoughtless or indolent into the same ascending road. How this conception came to be both modified and realized will be seen in later pages. At this point it is sufficient to note that the plan was originally not only philanthropic, but patriotic and practical. It contemplated the benefit, through means adapted to their special condition, of Americans of that class to which Peter Cooper himself belonged. Some further observations concerning the secret of the universal esteem and affection enjoyed by Mr. Cooper will be reserved for the closing chapter. PETER COOPER I ANCESTRY