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The Museum Gazette 



portant lesson that if death must come it need not, at least, 

 be feared." — " Haldane's Life," p. 296. 



Goethe may be regarded as the Apostle of self-culture. 



In an expression, for which his translators have found no 

 more elegant equivalent than " to cheerfulise existence," 

 Goethe summed up his interest in secular life and its objects. 

 The phrase reminds one of the little boy who was reproved 

 by his mother for wasting his time with playthings : " I'm not 

 wasting time, mamma; I'm making myself cheerful." 



Goethe gave to us all a not unimportant warning when he 

 said : " The phrases men are accustomed to .repeat inces- 

 santly, end by becoming convictions, and ossify the organs 

 of intelligence." 



In reference to the formation of a man's character there 

 are two schools of belief. The one attributes almost the 

 whole to the influences under which he has been brought up — 

 his environment as it is called — and very little to inheritance. 

 The other regards the inborn and inherited qualities as by 

 very far the most important. The truth, of course, lies mid- 

 way. The beautiful parable of the Sower is strictly applic- 

 able. It is for heredity to supply the ground and for environ- 

 ment to sow the seed. There are vast tracts growing only 

 luxuriant forest or prairie grass, which would produce wheat 

 if it had been sown, and an endless amount of labour in 

 wheat sowing has proved unproductive on account of the 

 nature of the soil. 



We many of us look back upon some friendship or the 

 perusal of some book, or the hearing of some discourse, as 

 having been a turning point in a mental or moral career. 

 Such gratitude is often appropriate and well deserved. It 

 ought not, however, to shut our minds to the full recognition 

 that it was to the faculties derived from some parent or grand- 

 parent, or, yet more correctly, from our ancestors taken col- 

 lectively, that it was made- possible for the poem, or the 

 sermon, or the friend's conversation, to affect our final and 

 personal conversion. 



