Self-culture rather than the fulfilment of public or social duty, as in the moral teaching of Cicero, is the aim of his teaching; and in this we recognize the influence of the empire in throwing the individual back on himself.
His parents were poor, and he received a meagre education, but made up for it by careful self-culture.
The letters written to his friend Benjamin Abbott at this time give a lucid account of his aims in life, and of his methods of self-culture, when his mind was beginning to turn to the experimental study of nature.
Where the stanzas are full of the technical terms of the Buddhist system of self-culture and self-control, it is often impossible, without expansions that spoil the poetry, or learned notes that distract the attention, to convey the full sense of the original.
Moreover, the temper of these more enlightened men was itself opposed to Italian indifference and immorality; it was pugnacious and polemical, eager to beat down the arrogance of monks and theologians rather than to pursue an ideal of aesthetical self-culture.
