From 'Miscellaneous Works'
It is very certain that no man is fit for everything; but it is almost as certain too that there is scarce any one man who is not fit for something, which something nature plainly points out to him by giving him a tendency and propensity to it. I look upon common-sense to be to the mind what conscience is to the heart,—the faithful and constant monitor of what is right or wrong. And I am convinced that no man commits either a crime or a folly but against the manifest and sensible representations of the one or the other. Every man finds in himself, either from nature or education,—for they are hard to distinguish,—a peculiar bent and disposition to some particular character; and his struggling against it is the fruitless and endless labor of Sisyphus. Let him follow and cultivate that vocation, he will succeed in it, and be considerable in one way at least; whereas if he departs from it he will at best be inconsiderable, probably ridiculous.
THE LITERATURE OF CHINA
BY ROBERT K. DOUGLAS
he distinguishing feature and the crowning glory of the Chinese nation is its literature. It is true that the Chinese can boast of an ancient empire, of a time-honored civilization, of conquests in the fields of science, and, in spite of recent events, in the field of battle; but in the mind of every true Son of Han these titles to fame sink into insignificance before that of the possession of a literature which dates back to a time when the Western world was yet in a state of barbarism, and which as centuries have rolled by has been worthily supplemented in every branch of knowledge.
Confucius
It may now be accepted as beyond dispute that the Chinese migrated into China from southwestern Asia about B.C. 2300, bringing with them a knowledge of writing, and in all probability the beginnings of a literature. In the records of that distant past, history and fable are so closely intermingled that it is difficult to pronounce definitely upon any subject treated in them, and we are compelled to seek in comparative philology for reasonable explanations of many points which Chinese chroniclers are content to leave, not from want of assertion, in the mists of uncertainty.