We can provide against the evil day.
We can read good books, listen to wise teachers, and place ourselves
under the divinest influences on earth. We can live for the highest
purposes, and with the highest aims in view.
"Self-love and social are the same," says one of our poets. The man who
improves himself, improves the world. He adds one more true man to the
mass. And the mass being made up of individuals, it is clear that were
each to improve himself, the result would be the improvement of the
whole. Social advancement is the consequence of individual advancement.
The whole cannot be pure, unless the individuals composing it are pure.
Society at large is but the reflex of individual conditions. All this is
but the repetition of a truism, but truisms have often to be repeated to
make their full impression.
Then again, a man, when he has improved himself, is better able to
improve those who are brought into contact with him. He has more power.
His sphere of vision is enlarged. He sees more clearly the defects in
the condition of others that might be remedied. He can lend a more
active helping hand to raise them. He has done his duty by himself, and
can with more authority urge upon others the necessity of doing the like
duty to themselves. How can a man be a social elevator, who is himself
walking in the mire of self-indulgence? How can he teach sobriety or
cleanliness, if he be himself drunken or foul? "Physician, heal
thyself," is the answer of his neighbours.
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