“I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future to redouble my exertions.. to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.”
—Diary of Meriwether Lewis on his 31st birthday, just after the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the headwaters of the Missouri River
Parenthetically Abraham Lincoln often expressed an almost identical view of life—to live in such a way that it would redound to the benefit of mankind.