this opening, but they never await our coming. They are the "Fore-runners," off again deeper into the vast possibility of being. The boy walks in a dream of to-morrow. Two bushels of hickory-nuts in his bag are no nuts to him, but silver shillings; yet neither are the shillings shillings, but shining skates, into which they will presently be transmuted. Already he is on the great pond by the roaring fire, or ringing away into distant starry darkness with a sparkling brand. Already, before his first skates are bought, before he has seen the coin that buys them, he is dashing and wheeling with his fellows, a leader of the flying train.

That early fore-reaching is a picture of our entire activity. "Care is taken," said Goethe, "that the trees do not grow into the sky"; but man is that tree which must outgrow the sky and lift its top into finer air and sunshine. The essential seed is Growth; not shell and bark, nor kernel, but a germ which pierces the soil and lifts the stone. Spirit is such a germ, and perpetual reinforcement is its quality; so that the great Being is known to us as a becoming Creator, adding himself to himself, and life to life, in perpetual emanation.

The boy's thought never stops short of some personal prowess. It is ability that charms him. To be a man, as he understands manliness, is to have the whole planet for a gymnasium and play-ground. He would like to have been on the other side of Hydaspes when Alexander came to that stream. But he soon discovers that wit is the sword of sharpness,—that he is the ruler who can reach the deepest desire of man and satisfy that. If there is power in him, he becomes a careful student, examines everything, examines his own enthusiasm, examines his last examination, tries every estimate again and again. He distrusts his tools, and then distrusts his own distrust, lifting himself by the very boot-straps in his metaphysics, to get at some foundation which will not move. He will know what he is about and what is great. He puts Cæsar, Milton, and Whitfield into his crucible; but that which went in Cæsar comes out a part of himself. The bold yet modest young chemist is egotistical. He cannot be anybody else but John Smith. Why should he? Who knows yet what it is to be John Smith? Napoleon and Washington are only playing his own game for him, since he so easily understands and accepts their play. A boy reads history as girls cut flowers from old embroidery to sew them on a new foundation. They are interested in the new, and in the old only for what they can make of it. So he sucks the blood of kings and captains to help him fight his own battles. He reads of Bunker's Hill and the Declaration of Independence with constant reference to the part he shall take in the politics of the world. His motto is, Sic semper tyrannis! Benjamin Franklin, and after him John Smith,—perhaps a better man than he. We live on that perhaps. Every great man departed has played out his last card, has taken all his chances. We are glad to see his power limited and scaled up. Shakspeare, we say, did not know everything; and here am I alone with the universe, nothing but a little sleepiness between me and all that Shakspeare and Plato knew or did not know. If I should be jostled out of my drowsiness, who can tell what may be given me to see, to say, or to do? Let us make ready and get upon some high ground from which we may overlook the work of the world; for the secret of all mastery is dormant, yet breathing and stirring in you and me.

Out of such material as we can gather we make a world in which we walk continually up and down. In it we find friends and enemies, we love and are loved, we travel and build. In it we are kings; we ordain and arrange everything, and never come away worsted from any encounter. For this sphere arises in answer to the practical question, What can I be and do? It is an embodiment of the force that is in me. Every dreamer, therefore, goes on to see himself among men and things which he can understand and master, with which he can deal securely. The stable-boy has hid an old volume among the straw, and he walks with Portia and Desdemona while he grooms the horses. Already in his smock-frock he is a companion for princes and queens. But the rich man's son, well born, as we say, in the great house yonder, has one only ambition in life,—to turn stable-boy, to own a fast team and a trotting-wagon, to vie with gamesters upon the road. That is an activity to which he is equal, in which his value will appear. Both boys, and all boys, are looking upward, only from widely different levels and to different heights.

The young blasphemer does not love blasphemy, but to have his head and be let alone by Old Aunty, who combs his hair as if he were a girl. So always there is some ideal aim in the mixed motive. Out of six gay young men who drive and drink together, only one cares for the meat and the bottle. With the rest this feasting gallantly on the best, regardless of expense, is part of a system. It is in good style, is convivial. For these green-horns of society to live together, to be convivæ, is not to think and labor together, as wise men use, but to laugh and be drunken in company.

Into the lowest courses there enters something to keep the filth from overwhelming self-respect. The advocates of slavery have not, as it appears, lost all pretence of honor and honesty. Thieves are sustained by a sense of the injustice of society. They do but right an old wrong, taking bravely what was accumulated by cautious cunning. They cultivate many virtues, and, like the best of us, make much of these, identify themselves with these. If a man is harsh and tyrannical, he regrets that he has too much force of character. And it is not safe to accuse a harlot of stealing and lying. She has her ideal also, and strives to keep the ulcer of sin within bounds,—to save a sweet side from corruption.

Is this stooping very low to look for the Ideal Tendency? The greater gain, if we find it prevailing in these depths. We may doubt whether thieves and harlots are subject to the same law which irresistibly lifts us, for we know that our own sin is not quite like other sin. But I must not offer all the cheerful hope I feel for the worst offenders, because too much faith passes for levity or impiety; and men thank God only for deliverance from great dangers, not for preservation from all danger. For gratitude we must not escape too easily and clean, but with some smell of fire upon us.

Yet in our own experience this planning what we shall do and become is constant, and always we escape from the present into larger air. The boy will not be content with that skill in skating which occupies his mind to-day. That belongs to the day and place, but next year he goes to the academy and fresh exploits engage him. He works gallantly in this new field and harness, because his thought has gone forward again, and he sees through these studies the man of thought. Already as a student he is a philosopher, a poet, a servant of the Muse. Bacon and Milton look kindly on him in invitation, he is walking to their company and in their company. The young hero-worshipper cannot remain satisfied with mere physical or warlike prowess. He soon sees the superiority of mental and moral mastery, of creation of good counsel. He will reverence the valiant reformer who brings justice in his train, the saint in whom goodness is enamored of goodness, the gentleman whose heart-beat is courtesy, the prophet in whom a religion is born, all who have been inspired with liberal, not dragged by sordid aims.

How beautiful to him is the society of poets! He reads with idolatry the letters and anecdotes of Coleridge and Wordsworth, Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven and Raphael. Look at the private thought of these men in familiar intercourse: no plotting for lucre, but a conspiracy to reach the best in life. The saints are even more ardent in aspiration, for