XI

I write to you, my boy, out of the experience and observation of

thirty years in which I have followed as best I could the careers of

graduates of many of our colleges. The other afternoon I set down the

names of some of these graduates of the two colleges which I know

best. Among them were men who, fifteen or thirty years after their

graduation, are doing first-rate work. They are lawyers, editors,

physicians, judges, clergymen, teachers, merchants, manufacturers,

architects and writers. As I have looked at the list with a mind

somewhat inquisitive I have asked myself what are the qualities or

conditions which have contributed to the winning of the great results

which these men have won.

The answers which I have given myself are manifold. For it is always

difficult in personal matters to differentiate and to determine

causes. In mechanical concerns it is not difficult. But in the

calculation of causes which constitute the value of a person as a

working force one often finds oneself baffled. The result frequently

seems either more or less than an equivalent of the co-operating

forces. The personal factor, the personal equation counts immensely.

These values we cannot measure in scales or figure out by the four

processes of arithmetic.

Be it said that the causes of the success of these men do not lie in

their conditions. No happy combination of circumstances, no windfall

of chance, gave them what they have achieved. If those who graduated

in the eighth decade had graduated in the ninth, or if those who

graduated in the ninth had graduated in the earlier time, it probably

would have made no difference. Neither does the name, with possibly a

single exception, nor wealth prove to be a special aid. Nor have

friends boosted or pushed them. Friends may have opened doors for

them; but friends have not urged them either to see or to embrace

opportunities.

These men seem to me to have for their primary and comprehensive

characteristic a large sanity. They have the broad vision and the long

look. They possess usually a kind of sobriety which may almost be

called Washingtonian. The insane man reasons correctly from false

premises. The fool has no premises from which to reason. These men are

neither insane nor foolish. They have suppositions, presuppositions,

which are true. They also follow logical principles which are sound.

They are in every way well-ordered. They keep their brains where their

brains ought to be--inside their skulls. They keep their hearts where

their hearts ought to be--inside their chests. They keep their

appetites where their appetites ought to be. Too many men keep their

brains inside their chests: the emotions absorb the intellect. Too

many men put their hearts inside their skull: the emotions are dried

up in the clear air of thought. Too many put both brains and heart

where the appetites are: both judgment and action are swallowed up in

the animal.

But these men are whole, wholesome, healthy, healthful. They seem to

represent those qualities which, James Bryce says, Archbishop Tait

embodied: "He had not merely moderation, but what, though often

confounded with moderation, is something rarer and better, a steady

balance of mind. He was carried about by no winds of doctrine. He

seldom yielded to impulses, and was never so seduced by any one theory

as to lose sight of other views and conditions which had to be

regarded. He knew how to be dignified without assumption, firm without

vehemence, prudent without timidity, judicious without coldness." They

are remote from crankiness, eccentricity. They may or may not have

fads; but they are not faddists. Not one of them is a genius in either

the good or the evil side of conspicuous native power. They see and

weigh evidence. They are a happy union of wit and wisdom, of jest and

precept, of work and play, of companionship and solitude, of thinking

and resting, of receptivity and creativeness, of the ideal and the

practical, of individualism and of sympathy. They are living in the

day, but they are not living for the day. They embody the doctrine of

the golden mean.

Each of these men has also in his career usually more than filled the

place he occupied. He has overflowed into the next higher place. The

overflow has raised him into the higher lock. The career has been an

ascending spiral. Each higher curve has sprung out of the preceding

and lower. From the attorneyship of the county to service as attorney

of the State, and to a place on the Supreme Bench of the United

States:--From a pastorate in a small Maine city to a pastorate

suburban, and from the pastorate suburban to a pastorate on Fifth

Avenue:--From a professorship in an humble place to a professorship in

largest relations:--From the building of cottages to the building of

great libraries and museums. This is the order of progression. I will

not say that any of these men did the best he could do at every step

of the way. Some did; some did not, probably. But what is to the

point, each did better than the place demanded. He more than earned

his wages, his salary, his pay. He had a surplus; he was a creditor.

His employers owed him more than they paid him. They found the best

way of paying him and keeping him was to advance him.

Such is the natural evolution of skill and power. The only legitimate

method of advancement is to make advancement necessary, inevitable, by

the simple law of achievement. The simple law of achievement depends

upon the law of increasing force, which is the law that personal force

grows through the use of personal force.

Hiram Stevens Maxim in the sketch of his life tells of his working in

Flynt's carriage factory at Abbot, Maine, when a boy of about fifteen.

From Flynt's at Abbot he went to Dexter, a large town, where he became

a foreman. He presently went to a threshing machine factory in

northern New York; thence to Fitchburg, Mass., where he obtained a

place in the engineering works of his uncle. In this factory he says

he could do more work than any other man save one. Thence he went to a

place in Boston; from Boston to New York, where he received high pay

as a draughtsman. While he was working in New York he conceived the

idea of making a gun which would load and fire itself by the energy

derived from the burning powder. From work in a little place in Maine,

Maxim, by doing each work the best possible, has made himself a larger

power.

Furthermore, these men represent goodfellowship. They embody

friendliness. The late Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke) was at one

time esteemed to be the equal of John Bright and of Gladstone in

oratory, and their superior in intellect. He died in 1892 unknown and

unlamented. He failed by reason of a lack of friendliness. Lowe was

once an examiner at Oxford. Into an oral examination which he was

conducting a friend came and asked how he was getting on.

"Excellently," replied Lowe, "five men flunked already and the sixth

is shaky." Ability without goodfellowship is usually ineffective; good

ability _plus_ good fellowship makes for great results.

In this atmosphere of friendliness, these men are practising the

Golden Rule. They are not advertising the fact. They do much in this

atmosphere of friendliness for large bodies of people. They follow the

sentiment which Pasteur expressed near the close of his great career:

"Say to yourselves first: 'What have I done for my instruction?' and,

as you gradually advance, 'What have I done for my country?' until the

time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that

you have contributed in some way to the progress and to the good of

humanity. But whether our efforts are or are not favored by life, let

us be able to say when we come near the great goal: 'I have done what

I could.'" They have done much for the individual, for the local

neighborhood. They have given themselves in numberless services,

boards, committees, commissions--works which count much in time and

strength. These services constitute no small share of the worth of a

commonwealth, of a community.

To one relation of these men I wish especially to refer. This is their

relation to wealth. Some of these men are business men. Wealth is one

of the normal results of business. Some of these men are professional

men. Wealth is not the normal result of professional service. But the

seeking of wealth has not in the life and endeavor of these men played

a conspicuous part. If wealth is the primary purpose, they keep the

purpose to themselves. They do not talk much about it. But most of

them do not hold wealth as a primary purpose. Rather their primary and

atmospheric aim is to serve the community through their business. The

same purpose moves them which also moves the lawyer, the minister, the

doctor. Life, not living, is their principle.

To one further element I must refer. It comprehends, perhaps, much

that I have been trying to say to you, my son. These men kept, and are

keeping themselves to their work. They do not waste themselves. They

are economical of time and strength. The late Provost Pepper of the

University of Pennsylvania said (in a manuscript not formally

published): "Many can do with less than eight or even seven hours of

sleep while working hard, provided they recognize the increased risk;

that while running their engine they take more scrupulous care with

every part of the machinery. Machine must be perfect, fuel ditto;

everything must be sacrificed to the one point of keeping the

machinery running thus: Subjection of carnal, emotional excesses;

certainty that no weak spots exist; diet, especially too much eating,

too fast eating; stimulants, tobacco, open-air exercise; cool-headed,

almost callous, critical analysis of oneself, one's sensations and

effect of work on the system; clear knowledge of danger lines; result,

avoidance of transgressing, and immediate summons at right time."

These men are men of self-restraint. They are like rivers having dams,

keeping their waters back in order that the water may be used more

effectively. They are free from entangling alliances. They are not men

of one thing; they are often men of two, three, a dozen things. But

one thing is primary, the others secondary. They may have avocations;

but they have only one vocation. "This one thing I do." I have already

quoted from Pasteur. Of him it is said by his biographer: "In the

evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor

of his rooms at the Ecole Normale, cogitating over various details of

his work. At ten o'clock he went to bed, and at eight the next

morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his

work in the laboratory." His wife wrote to their children: "Your

father is absorbed in his thoughts, talks little, sleeps little, rises

at dawn, and in one word, continues the life I began with him this day

thirty-five years ago." Learn from the Frenchman, my boy!

Keeping themselves at their one work these men embody a sense of duty.

I find they have a conscience. Their conscience is not worn outside,

but inside, their bosom. They make no show of doing what they ought.

They simply do what they are called upon to do--and that is all there

is to it. It was said of a first scholar in an historic college that

he was never caught working. These same men may, or may not be caught

working, but they do work, and their work is a normal and moral part

of their being.

But your face, my son, is rather toward your own future than toward

the past of other men. But your own future is as nothing save as it

touches other men. Therefore, do have an enthusiasm for man as man.

Enthusiasm for humanity has its basis in love for man as man, in a

belief in the indefinite progress of man and in a determination to

promote that progress. In a posthumous romance of Hawthorne the

heroine points out to her lover the service which they will give to

mankind in successive endless generations. In one age, poverty shall

be wiped out; in another, passion and hatred and jealousy shall cease;

in a third, beauty shall take the place of ugliness, happiness of

pain, and generosity of niggardliness. In reality, not in romance,

every student is to feel a passion for human service. These toiling

and tired brothers and sisters are to be loved, not with a mere

emotional affection, but with a mighty will. One is to adopt the

principle of Gladstone and not of the Marquis of Salisbury in relation

to humanity.

The student also is to believe that the human brotherhood is capable

of indefinite progress. The law of evolution makes the belief in human

perfectibility easy; the principles of religion make the belief

glorious. Slow is the progress. One generation turns the jack-screw of

uplifting one thread; but it is a thread. Humanity does rise. Linked

with this love for man and the assurance of his progress the college

man is to determine himself to advance this progress. Whatever his

condition, whatever his ability, he is to do his part. As is said in

that noble epitaph to Wordsworth, placed in the little church at

Grasmere, each is to be "a minister of high and sacred truth."

I want you to come out from the college with a determination to do

something worth while. It is rather singular how political ambitions

have ceased among graduates. Some say all ambition has ceased among

college men. I do not believe it. The softer times may not nurse the

sturdier virtues; but men are still men. The words which Stevenson

wanted put on his tombstone: "He clung to his paddle," and the words

of George Eliot: "Don't take opium," and the words of Carlyle: "Burn

your own smoke," are still characteristic of college men. Men are

still moved by the great things, and by such inspiration they are

inspired great things to do.