I recently found an article written by a noted scientist who observed that “early sea-farers fancied that the animals that built coral reefs instinctively built up the great circles of the Atoll Islands to afford themselves protection in the inner parts.” He has disproved this theory by showing that the insect builders can only live and thrive fronting the open ocean, and in the highly aerated foam of its restless billows. So it has been commonly thought that protected ease is the most favourable condition of life, whereas all the noblest and strongest lives prove on the contrary that the endurance of hardship is the making of the men and women and the single most important factor that distinguishes between mere existence and vigorous vitality. Hardship makes character.
John.
