Life is the business of learning to use things as tools, the real as
the servant of the ideal, to make conditions even better that character
may grow the more, to serve in the making of things and the enduring of
things under the inspiration of the full and glorious purpose of life,
the realizing of the best for ourselves, the rendering of our best to
others.
Only an age that has lost both heart and intellect--the divinely given
measuring rods of life--will think of estimating a life by the money
measure. It is a shallow world that knows a man as soon as and only
when it has scheduled his marketable assets; nor is it a happy augury
for a nation when it acquires the habit of estimating its men by the
length of the catalogues of their possessions.
A period of outer prosperity is always in danger of being one of inner
paralysis. Luxury is a foe to life. Character does not develop
freely, largely, beautifully in an atmosphere of commercialism. A
moral decline that but presages enduring disaster is sure to succeed
the supremacy of the market.
The great danger is that we shall set the tools of life before its
work, that we shall make life serve our business or our ambitions
instead of causing ambitions, activities, and opportunities all to
contribute to the deepening, enriching, and strengthening of the life
itself. In the details of making a living it is easy to lose sight of
the prime thing, the life; it is easy to forget that the great question
is not, what have you? but, what are you?
Life cannot consist in things any more than silk can consist of
shuttles, or pictures of brushes and palettes. Life is both process
and product; but things and fame and power are no more than the tools
and machinery serving to perfect the product. Life must consist in
thoughts, experiences, motives, ideals--in a word, in character. A
man's life is what he is.
But what a man is will depend on what he does with the things he has or
may have. Let him once set the possession of things as his loftiest
ideal, let this avarice of things enter the heart and speedily the love
of the good will leave. To that god all honour, all truth loving, all
gentleness and humanity are sacrificed. When possession becomes life's
ruling passion it doesn't take long for principle to be forgotten.
The danger to-day is not that our people will fail in the world's
contests because they lack either money, mind, or muscle. We are in
little danger from illiteracy or from business incompetency; but we are
in danger from moral paralysis, due to undue pressure on the money
nerve. We have talked before the youth in the home and amongst
ourselves on the street as though the only thing worth living for was
money, as though they alone were great who had it and they only to be
despised who had it not.
The danger is neither in our market, our commerce, nor our laws; the
danger is in our own hearts. No matter how world-potent our
merchandise, how marvellous our mechanical and material powers, how
brilliant our business strategy, all will not avail to silence the
voice, "Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of thee." Then
whose shall these things be?
We need, not fewer things, not the return to an age of poverty or
dreary destitution; we need more power over things; to let the man, so
long buried beneath the money and the lands and houses, come to the
top; to set ourselves over our things; to make them serve us, minister
to our lives and our purposes in living.
There must be an elevation of standards, the institution of new
valuations, clearer, nobler conceptions of what living means. Boys and
girls must be taught from the beginning that life is more than
self-serving, more than fame or glory; it is the service of humanity.
A passion for humanity will cure the passion for gold, will teach the
true value of life as something that only the infinite can estimate and
will give to the heart those true riches that do not tarnish and that
cannot be stolen.