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Show mind produced by education, by the discipline, of study, and by conversation vrita noble natures rise and swell into a passionate, longing. In tho domain of politics that is to say, when this impulse acts 'upon men aggregated in society it is called the revolutionary revolu-tionary or reforming spirit. In domain of ethics, when - it acts upon men severally, it is callod tho spirit of self-improvement. And in either case, it is one of the most valuable stimulants and restoratives that human nature exhibits. It in to the spiritual and intellectual intel-lectual life pretty must what chloride of sodium is to tha physical life. It is the salt of the social rind moral world. The nation or the man that does not feel that desire much either be in a morbid state of self-satisfaction, or in the exhaustion of despair. So long as there is a health euI energy, whether of conscience con-science or of hope, there must be a desire to begin again. And however often we begin ami3s, hope is ever whisporing to us that it is never too late to mend; that if the past is irreparable the present is our own; and that a remedy for all our ills is a fresh start. It was this aspiration that induced Poly crates to throw his ring into the sea; that made Ahab go softly; that drove Buddha to Icav hip father's house that made Augustine abandon his work among the Manichees of Carthage. Indeed, tho whole lifo of the human race has been, liko the lives of its most conspicuous members one continuous series of struggles after better beginnings. And the popularity of such, doctrines as that of metempsychosis and of purgatory shows the natural unwillingness of mankind to contemplate ' the impossibility of a recommencement, and its feverish fever-ish desire to regard even death itself it-self as nothing more than a fresh start. Prosli Starts. The wish to begin again is one of those longings that aro so universally common to the human race, and are felt so very early in the course of each man's exper-. exper-. ienca, that wo call them native impulses, or instincts. As it is human to err, or to think that we have erred, so is it human to wish to repair real or fancied errors. And, like all natural impulses, the desire to start afresh may, under certain circumstances such as the suffering produced by misconduct, or the higher tone of |
