It noway suffices to be always talking of the “elevation of the lower classes,” who are often superior now to the upper in particular elements of true culture. The chief need of our present day is much rather the vigorous rehabilitation of this upper class, which is deeply sunk in pleasure-seeking and the materialistic conception of things, and has turned aside from the higher ends of life. III Now if you should resolve to try in this manner to attain to true culture, you must have great patience with yourself. It is not the matter of a single day or of a single resolution, although a great part is played by making, once for all, a firm and binding resolve, to which one always comes back again as often as one has in some particular departed from it. True culture, like true virtue in the main, is a matter of growth. By degrees it grows in strength and insight, but can not be suddenly and forcibly won by any kind of magic process; one must make some definite beginning and then persevere in it for life. But this is the only true purpose of living, never to be laid aside, and the only outcome of life wholly to be wished. A beginning can be made in different ways: in a purely practical way by the acquisition of good habits; or philosophically, by meditating upon, and coming to know, and discriminating between, the true and the untrue in the conduct of life; or, through religion, at once seeking the infinite and the power that thence springs. The easiest way is undoubtedly the last, and to this, even though one takes the other ways, one is finally led. For the secret of true culture, its beginning and its real key, lies in the conquering of selfishness and especially of the inordinate desire for pleasure. Thus it comes about that often a very simple man, who possesses little knowledge and has had little contact with so-called good society, is nevertheless more truly cultured than some aristocratic or learned gentleman. He has the real essentials of culture before they have, and has taken the easiest way to acquire it. Only when a man is no longer constantly busied about himself and no longer thinks of himself alone does he receive his freedom of spirit and the full use of the forces that lie in his mental and spiritual power. The spirit, then for the first, becomes in some sort free from an occupation not worthy of itself, and becomes capable of taking up and quietly working at things which otherwise had remained forever concealed under personal cares and pleasures.