possession we can have. It is in fact our spiritual body. All other
mental possessions are to the spiritual body only what clothing is to
the natural body,--something put on and taken off as circumstances vary.
Character changes from year to year as we cultivate or neglect it, and
so does the natural body; but these changes of the body are something
very different from the changes of our garments.

There is a transient and a permanent side to all our mental attributes.
Take, for instance, manners, which are the most external of them all. So
far as we habituate ourselves to courtesy and good-breeding because we
shall stand better with the world if we are polite than if we are rude,
we are cultivating a merely external habit, which we shall be likely to
throw off as often as we think it safe to go without it, as we should
an uncomfortably fitting dress; and our manners do not belong to our
Characters any more than our coats belong to our persons. This is the
transient side of manners. If, on the contrary, we are polite from an
inward conviction that politeness is one of the forms of love to the
neighbor, and because we believe that in being polite we are performing
a duty that our neighbor has a right to claim from us, and because
politeness is a trait that we love for its own inherent beauty, our
manners belong to the substance of our Character,--they are not its
garment, but its skin; and this is the permanent side of manners. Such
manners will be ours in death, and afterwards, no less than in life.

In the same way, every personal accomplishment and every mental
acquisition has its transient and its permanent side. So far as we
cultivate them to enrich and to ennoble our natures, to enlarge and to
elevate our understandings, to become wiser, better, and more useful to
our fellow-beings, we are cultivating our Characters,--the spiritual
essence of our being; but these very same acquisitions, when sought from