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ments of these lower endowments and receive the 

 rewards of " him that overcometh." 



Thus prosperity and adversity, success and failure, 

 continually test a man. If he can rise superior to 

 these, can subjugate them and make them subserve 

 his moral progress, he survives ; if he is mastered by 

 them, he perishes. Through these does natural se- 

 lection mainly work to find and train great souls. 

 They are the threads of the sieve of destiny. 



In this struggle man must fight against overwhelm- 

 ing odds, and the cost of victory is dear. He must be 

 prepared, like Socrates, to " bid farewell to those 

 things which most men count honors, and look onward 

 to the truth." He appears to the world at large, 

 often to himself, eminently unpractical. The major- 

 ity against his view and vote will usually be over- 

 whelming. Truth is a stern goddess, and she will 

 often bid him draw sword and stand against his near- 

 est and dearest friends. The issue will often appear 

 to him exceeding doubtful. The grander the truth 

 for which he is fighting, the greater the need of its 

 defence and enforcement, the greater the probability 

 that he will never live to see its triumph. The hero 

 must be a man of gigantic faith. But all his ancestors 

 have had to make a similar choice and to fight a 

 similar battle. The upward path was intended to be 

 exceedingly hard. This is a law of biology. 



Why this is so I may not know. I only know that 

 no better and surer way could have been discovered 

 to train a race of heroes. For no man ever becomes a 

 hero who has not learned to battle with the world 

 and himself. Does it not look as if God loved a 

 heroic soul as much as men worship one, and as if he 



