When we read Carlyle, we are apt to think such words merely exaggerated rhetoric. Now Aristotle says the same thing in the cold, calculated terms of precise philosophy. A man is what he does. He can do nothing except what he first sees as an unaccomplished idea, and then bends all his energies to accomplish. In working out his ideas and making them real, he at the same time works out his own powers, and becomes a living force, a working will in the world. And since the soul is just this working will, the man has so much soul, no more, no less, than he registers in manual or mental work performed. To be able to point to some sphere of external reality, a bushel of corn, a web of cloth, a printed page, a healthful tenement, an educated youth, a moral community, and say that these things would not have been there in the outward world, if they had not first been in your mind as an idea controlling your thought and action;--this is to point to the external and visible counterpart and measure of the invisible and internal energy which is your life, your soul, your self, your personality. IV THE NEED OF INSTRUMENTS Aristotle's first doctrine, then, is that we must work for worthy ends. The second follows directly from it. We must have tools to work with; means by which to gain our ends. General Gordon, who was something of a Platonist, remarked to Cecil Rhodes, who was a good deal of an Aristotelian, that he once had a whole room full of gold offered him, and declined to take it. "I should have taken it," replied Mr. Rhodes. "What is the use of having great schemes if you haven't the means to carry them out?" As Aristotle says: "Happiness plainly requires external goods; for it is impossible, or at least not easy, to act nobly without some furniture of fortune. There are many things that can be done only through instruments, so to speak, such as friends and wealth and political influence; and there are some things whose absence takes the bloom off our happiness, as good birth, the blessing of children, personal beauty. Happiness, then, seems to stand in need of this kind of prosperity." How different this from all our previous teachings! The Epicurean wants little wealth, no family, no official station; because all these things involve so much care and bother. The Stoic barely tolerates them as indifferent. Plato took especial pains to deprive his guardians of most of these very things. Aristotle on this point is perfectly sane. He says you want them; because, to the fullest life and the largest work, they are well-nigh indispensable. The editor of a metropolitan newspaper, the president of a railroad, the corporation attorney cannot live their lives and do their work effectively without comfortable homes, enjoyable vacations, social connections, educational opportunities, which cost a great deal of money. For them to despise money would be to despise the conditions of their own effective living, to pour contempt on their own souls.