If these instances are rejected as fables, we must in consistency reject many supposed scientific facts which we have accepted on no better evidence. Yet what sense or faculty possessed by the majority can account for them? The man whose measure of the universe is largest, whose development is the widest and most symmetrical, is the man who, having once reached maturity, is the least liable to fall a victim to neurasthenia; not only because his knowledge of quicksands is greatest, but because he has proved his adaptability. The success or failure of the large nature to reach maturity depends quite as much upon circumstance as upon the rate and method of his development. One great poet may survive detraction, but a Chatterton destroys himself. If the detraction be equal in both cases, other circumstances are very different. Coleridge survived a mistaken and injurious mode of education, but he survived it--an opium-eater. Observation and experience teach us that human beings may be divided into two classes. (1.) Those who act; (2.) Those who are acted upon.[11] The first class, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially sane. The second, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially insane. The first have a will; the second have none--to speak of. The first are responsible; the second are irresponsible. The first, through self-sacrifice, develop and progress; the second, through self-seeking, fail and deteriorate. Accidental illness may cause members of the first to drop to the second; helpful influence may enable members of the second to climb to the first. The second class may be subdivided into those who drift helplessly before circumstance, and those who break themselves in pieces before the circumstances that are too strong for them. These latter cannot be persuaded to leave off trying to accommodate the whole universe in their own little measure. Strange to say, they are often credited with possessing strength of will, whereas they merely possess its hostile counterfeit, self-will. Conquest where conquest is possible, and submission without exhausting struggle where conquest is impossible, are doubtless true wisdom. But wisdom implies knowledge; and knowledge, right education; and education, the divinely imparted faculty for receiving instruction. To gain the victory over self on the one hand, and to yield submission to God’s eternal laws on the other hand, this is liberty--the glorious liberty of the children of God. It is surely our capacity for development, our power to rise, even at the cost of much suffering, to a knowledge of God, to the likeness of God, that constitutes the great hope of the universe. The idea is admirably expressed in an exquisite chant, entitled “Song of the Universal,” by the well-known American poet-philosopher, Walt Whitman:-- “Over the mountain-growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.