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vii charges him with doing little beyond writing a few books, as if that might not be a great thing; but a life so steadily directed from the first toward the highest ends, gaining as the fruits of its fidelity such a harvest of sanity, strength, and tranquillity, and that wealth of thought which has been well called "the only conceivable prosperity," accompanied, too, as it naturally was, with the earnest and effective desire to communicate itself to others,—such a life is the worthiest deed a man can perform, the purest benefit he can confer upon his fellows, compared with which all special acts of service or philanthropy are trivial.

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