"Yes, that is what some people call an objective life. I call it a _projective_ life. A man who builds men, or things, for the use of men, lives in the things he builds. He has immortality in this world. A man who builds a house leaves his thought in the form of the house he builds. If he make a road, he lives in the road; if he invent a useful thing, he lives in the invention. A man may live in a ship that he has caused to be constructed, or his mind may see the form of a church, a hall, or a temple, and he may so build after what he sees that he makes his thoughts creative, and he lives on in the things that he creates after he dies. It was so with the builders of cities, of the Pyramids. So Romulus--if there were such a man--lives in Rome, and Columbus in the lands that he discovered. The Pilgrim Fathers will always live in New England. Those who do things and make things leave behind them a life outside of themselves. I call such works a man's projected life." Little Ben sat swinging the foot stove. "He lives the longest in this world who invents the most useful things for others," continued Uncle Benjamin. "The thoughts of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton changed the world. Those men can never die." Little Ben swung the stove in his hand. Suddenly he looked up, and we fancy him to have said: "Uncle Benjamin, have _I_ a chance?" Jamie the Scotchman came into the house, jingling the door bell as he shut the door. "Philosophizing?" said he. "Little Ben here is inquiring in regard to his chance of doing something in the world--of living so as to leave his thoughts in creative forms behind. What do you think about it, Jamie?" "Well, I don't know; it is a pretty hard case. Drumsticks will make a noise, so any man may make himself heard if he will. Certain it is Ben has no gifts; at least, I have never discerned any. There are no Attic bees buzzing around him, none that I have seen, unless there be such things up in the attic, which would not be likely in a new house like this." Uncle Ben pitied the little boy, whose feelings he saw were hurt. "Jamie, I have read much, and have made some observation, and life tells me that character, industry, and a determined purpose will do much for a man that has no special gifts. The Scriptures do not say that a man of gifts shall stand before kings, but that the man 'diligent in his business' shall do so. Ben here can rise with the best of the world, and if he has thoughts, he can project them. It is thinking that makes men work. He thinks.--Ben, you can do anything that any one else of your opportunities has ever done. There--I hate to see the boy discouraged." "The fifteenth child among seventeen children would not seem likely to have a very broad outlook," said Jamie, "but it is good to encourage him; it is good to encourage anybody. He is one of the human family, like all the rest of us.--Are you going to the lecture? I will go along with you."