I may add that intellectual men have peculiar and most powerful reasons for avoiding the excesses of immorality, reasons which to any one who has a noble ambition are quite enough to encourage him in self-control. Those excesses are the gradual self-destruction of the intellectual forces, for they weaken the spring of the mind, not leaving it well enough to face the drudgery that is inevitable in every career. Even in cases where they do not immediately lead to visible imbecility, they make the man less efficient and less capable than he might have been; and all experienced wrestlers with fate and fortune know well that success has often, at the critical time, depended upon some very trifling advantage which the slightest diminution of power would have lost to them. No one knows the full immensity of the difference between having power enough to make a little headway against obstacles, and just falling short of the power which is necessary at the time. In every great intellectual career there are situations like that of a steamer with a storm-wind directly against her and an iron-bound coast behind. If the engines are strong enough to gain an inch an hour she is safe, but if they lose there is no hope. Intellectual successes are so rewarding that they are worth any sacrifice of pleasure; the sense of defeat is so humiliating that fair Venus herself could not offer a consolation for it. An ambitious man will govern himself for the sake of his ambition, and withstand the seductions of the senses. Can he be ever strong enough, can his brain ever be lucid enough for the immensity of the task before him? "Le jeune homme," says M. Taine, "ignore qu'il n'y a pas de pire déperdition de forces, que de tels commerces abaissent le coeur, qu'après dix ans d'une vie pareille il aura perdu la moitié de sa volonté, que ses pensées auront un arrière-goût habituel d'amertume et de tristesse, que son ressort intérieur sera amolli ou faussé. Il s'excuse à ses propres yeux, en se disant qu'un homme doit tout toucher pour tout connaître. De fait, il apprend la vie, mais bien souvent aussi il perd l'énergie, la chaleur d'âme, la capacité d'agir, et à trente ans il n'est plus bon qu'à faire un employé, un dilettante, ou un rentier." PART III. _OF EDUCATION._ LETTER I. TO A FRIEND WHO RECOMMENDED THE AUTHOR TO LEARN THIS THING AND THAT. Lesson learned from a cook--The ingredients of knowledge--Importance of proportion in the ingredients--Case of an English author--Two landscape painters--The unity and charm of character often dependent upon the limitations of culture--The burden of knowledge may diminish the energy of action--Difficulty of suggesting a safe rule for the selection of our knowledge--Men qualified for their work by ignorance as well as by knowledge--Men remarkable for the extent of their studies--Franz Woepke--Goethe--Hebrew proverb.