“_The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die._” It is therefore, in the judgment of the best even of our own day, fully worth the trouble to strive for true culture, and all attain who really desire--rich or poor, learned or unlearned. Indeed, what Christ first said for his own generation is also very appropriate for ours, that simple souls and modest lives stand much more intimately near to true culture, and on the way to it do not meet so many and so great hindrances as do the wise and the prudent, and especially the rich, who must first strip off infinitely many prejudices and attachments to outward things, all of which are irreconcilable with true culture. It is therefore harder for some and easier for others to attain to culture, but for none impossible, save those whose mind is wholly bound up with material things, and are satisfied besides with a merely external culture that is rather form and show than reality, however much it may claim to be real. An ancient Chinese philosopher has already expressed this very well in the following verses, somewhat naïvely translated: “_Men who win the highest prize Are quick to learn and quickly wise; Men in the second rank belong Who’re wise, but in the learning long; Those people must be classed as thirds Who stupid stay, and learn--but words._” It scarcely lies within the will of every one of us whether his lot shall assign him to the first of these classes, and happily it is not a matter of very much concern. They are the great exceptions, the moral geniuses of humanity. But to the second rank every one of us is called, yes, emphatically challenged, when once the way has been shown. And the saddest thing that can happen to him in life is, if he nevertheless remains among the third sort of men, whose existence, at the end, has had no real worth, either for themselves, or for others. “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. “Wisdom is more precious than rubies: and none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her. “Length of days is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” V. NOBLE SOULS V. NOBLE SOULS Kant somewhere suggests that all the natural capacities of a being were intended completely to unfold, at some time, along the line of some definite purpose, but that in man (the only reasonable being on earth) the capacities intended for the use of the reason can be unfolded completely only in the race, and not in every particular individual.