as means to ends. Character should, as a recent writer says, be "carefully distinguished from disposition, for which it is often mistaken. Disposition or temperament is the individual constitution which comes to one through inheritance. It is the racial-ancestral-parental bequest to the individual. It is his capital or insolvency, as the case may be. He may weld it into character; but as yet it is not... character. " ¹

Successful mental life begins with the selection of means that promise well for the expression and development of character, within or without the institutions, the usual vocations and professions. For it involves initiative and a measure of independence, hence is free to choose one of several roads, adopting original methods, departing from custom or making full use of it, as the case may be. It puts an objective before the mind, a goal to be won. The mere ideal, steadily and persistently pursued, is a sufficient incentive at times. At other times, downright effort to overcome the obstacle directly in the way is demanded. Thus the youth who long dreams of becoming a legislator, physician, artist, or author, may reach a point as a young man when he must break with the entire family tradition. Another crisis may come when the intellectual life has done its best for him, and everything depends upon his passion

¹ Buckham, Personality and the Christian Ideal.