THE MAKING OF ONE'S SELF.
The wise man will esteem above everything and will cultivate those
sciences which further the perfection of his soul.--PLATO.
It has become customary to call these endings of the scholastic year
commencements; just as the people of the civilized world have agreed to
make themselves absurd by calling the ninth month the seventh, the
tenth the eighth, the eleventh the ninth, and the twelfth the tenth.
And, indeed, the discourses which are delivered on these occasions
would be more appropriate and more effective if made to students who,
having returned from the vacations with renewed physical vigor, feel
also fresh urgency to exercise of mind. But now, so little is man in
love with truth, the approach of the moment when you are to make escape
and find yourselves in what you imagine to be a larger and freer world,
occupies all your thoughts, and thrills you with an excitement which
makes attention difficult; and, like the noise of crowds and brazen
trumpets, prevents the soul from mounting to the serene world where
alone it is free and at home.
Since, however, the invitation with which I have been honored directs
my address to the graduates of Notre Dame in this her year of Golden
Jubilee, I may, without abuse of the phrase, entitle it a commencement
oration; for the day on which a graduate worthy of the name leaves his
college is the commencement day of a new life of study, more earnest
and more effectual than that which is followed within academic walls,
because it is the result of his sense of duty alone and of his
uncontrolled self-activity. And, though I am familiar with the serious
disadvantages with which a reader as compared with a speaker has to
contend, I shall read my address, if for no other reason, because I
shall thus be able to measure my time; and if I am prolix, I shall be
so maliciously, and not become so through the obliviousness which may
result from the illusive enthusiasm that is sometimes produced in the
speaker by his own vociferation, and which he fondly imagines he
communicates to his hearers.
The chief benefit to be derived from the education we receive in
colleges and universities, and from the personal contact into which we
are there thrown with enlightened minds, is the faith it tends to
inspire and confirm in the worth of knowledge and culture, of conduct
and religion; for nothing else we there acquire will abide with us as
an inner impulse to self-activity, a self-renewing urgency to the
pursuit of excellence. If we fail, we fail for lack of faith; but
belief is communicated from person to person,--_fides ex auditu_,--and
to mediate it is the educator's chief function. Through daily
intercourse with one who is learned and wise and noble, the young gain
a sense of the reality of science and culture, of religion and
morality; which thus cease to be for them vague somethings of which
they have heard and read, and become actual things,--realities, like
monuments they have inspected, or countries through which they have
travelled. They have been taken by the hand and led where, left to
themselves, they would never have gone. The true educator inspires not
only faith, but admiration also, and confidence and love,--all
soul-evolving powers. He is a master whose pupils are
disciples,--followers of him and believers in the wisdom he teaches.
He founds a school which, if it does not influence the whole course of
thought and history, like that of Plato or Aristotle, does at least
form a body of men, distinguished by zeal for truth and love of
intellectual and moral excellence. To be able thus, in virtue of one's
intelligence and character, to turn the generous heart and mind of
youth to sympathy with what is intelligible, fair, and good in thought
and life, is to be like God,--is to have power in its noblest and most
human form; and its exercise is the teacher's chief and great reward.
To be a permanent educational force is the highest earthly distinction.
Is not this the glory of the founders of religions, of the discoverers
of new worlds?
In stooping to the mind and heart of youth, to kindle there the divine
flame of truth and love, we ourselves receive new light and warmth. To
listen to the noise made by the little feet of children when at play,
and to the music of their merry laughter, is pleasant; but to come
close to the aspiring soul of youth, and to feel the throbbings of its
deep and ardent yearnings for richer and wider life, is to have our
faith in the good of living revived and intensified. It is the divine
privilege of the young to be able to believe that the world can be
moulded and controlled by thought and spiritual motives; and in
breathing this celestial air, the choice natures among them learn to
become sages and saints; or if it be their lot to be thrown into the
fierce struggles where selfish and cruel passions contend for the
mastery over justice and humanity, they carry into the combat the
serene strength of reason and conscience; for their habitual and real
home is in the unseen world, where what is true and good has the
Omnipotent for its defence. Of this soul of youth we may affirm
without fear of error--
"The soul seeks God; from sphere to sphere it moves,
Immortal pilgrim of the Infinite."
Life is the unfolding of a mysterious power, which in man rises to
self-consciousness, and through self-consciousness to the knowledge of
a world of truth and order and love, where action may no longer be left
wholly to the sway of matter or to the impulse of instinct, but may and
should be controlled by reason and conscience. To further this process
by deliberate and intelligent effort is to educate. Hence education is
man's conscious co-operation with the Infinite Being in promoting the
development of life; it is the bringing of life in its highest form to
bear upon life, individual and social, that it may raise it to greater
perfection, to ever-increasing potency. To educate, then, is to work
with the Power who makes progress a law of living things, becoming more
and more active and manifest as we ascend in the scale of being. The
motive from which education springs is belief in the goodness of life
and the consequent desire for richer, freer, and higher life. It is
the point of union of all man's various and manifold activity; for
whether he seeks to nourish and preserve his life, or to prolong and
perpetuate it in his descendants, or to enrich and widen it in domestic
and civil society, or to grow more conscious of it through science and
art, or to strike its roots into the eternal world through faith and
love, or in whatever other way he may exert himself, the end and aim of
his aspiring and striving is educational,--is the unfolding and
uplifting of his being.
The radical craving is for life,--for the power to feel, to think, to
love, to enjoy. And as it is impossible to reach a state in which we
are not conscious that this power may be increased, we can find
happiness only in continuous progress, in ceaseless self-development.
This craving for fulness of life is essentially intellectual and moral,
and its proper sphere of action is the world of thought and conduct.
He who has a healthy appetite does not long for greater power to eat
and drink. A sensible man who has sufficient wealth for independence
and comfort does not wish for more money; but he who thinks and loves
and acts in obedience to conscience feels that he is never able to do
so well enough, and hence an inner impulse urges him to strive for
greater power of life, for perfection. He is akin to all that is
intelligible and good, and is drawn to bring himself into
ever-increasing harmony with this high world. Hence attention is for
him like a second nature, for attention springs from interest; and
since he feels an affinity with all things, all things interest him.
And what is thus impressed upon his mind and heart he is impelled to
utter in deed or speech or gesture or song, or in whatever way thought
and sentiment may manifest themselves. Attention and expression are
thus the fundamental forms of self-activity, the primary and essential
means of education, of developing intellectual and moral power.
Interest is aroused and held by need, which creates desire. If we are
hungry, whatever may help us to food interests us. Our first and
indispensable interests relate to the things we need for
self-preservation and the perpetuation of the race; and to awaken
desire and stimulate effort to obtain them, instinct is sufficient, as
we may see in the case of mere animals. But as progress is made,
higher and more subtle wants are developed. We crave for more than
food and wife and children. The social organism evolves itself; and as
its complexity increases, the relations of the individual to the body
of which he is a member are multiplied, and become more intricate. As
we pass from the savage to the barbarous, and from the barbarous to the
civilized state, intellect and conscience are brought more and more
into play. Mental power gains the mastery over brute force, and little
by little subdues the energies of inorganic nature, and makes them
serve human ends. Iron is forced to become soft and malleable, and to
assume every shape; the winds bear man across the seas; the sweet and
gentle water is imprisoned and tortured until with its fierce breath it
does work in comparison with which the mythical exploits of gods and
demi-gods are as the play of children. Strength of mind and character
takes precedence of strength of body. Hercules and Samson are but
helpless infants in the presence of the thinker who reads Nature's
secret and can compel her to do his bidding. If we bend our thoughts
to this subject, we shall gain insight into the meaning and purpose of
education, which is nothing else than the urging of intellect and
conscience to the conquest of the world, and to the clear perception
and practical acknowledgment of the primal and fundamental truth that
man is man in virtue of his thought and love.
Instruction, which is but part of education, has for its object the
development of the intellect and the transmission of knowledge. This,
whether we consider the individual or society, is indispensable. It is
good to know. Knowledge is not only the source of many of our highest
and purest joys, but without it we can attain neither moral nor
material good in the nobler forms. Virtue when it is enlightened gains
a higher quality. And if we hold that action and not thought is the
end of life, we cannot deny that action is, in some degree at least,
controlled and modified by thought. Nevertheless, instruction is not
the principal part of education; for human worth is more essentially
and more intimately identified with character and heart than with
knowledge and intellect. What we will is more important than what we
know; and the importance of what we know is derived largely from its
influence on the will or conduct.
A nation, like an individual, receives rank from character more than
from knowledge; since the true measure of human worth is moral rather
than intellectual. The teaching of the school becomes a subject of
passionate interest, through our belief in its power to educate
sentiment, stimulate will, and mould character. For in the school we
do more than learn the lessons given us: we live in an intellectual and
moral atmosphere, acquire habits of thought and behavior; and this,
rather than what we learn, is the important thing. To imagine that
youths who have passed through colleges and universities, and have
acquired a certain knowledge of languages and sciences, but have not
formed strongly marked characters, should forge to the front in the
world and become leaders in the army of religion and civilization, is
to cherish a delusion. The man comes first; and scholarship without
manhood will be found to be ineffectual. The semi-culture of the
intellect, which is all a mere graduate can lay claim to, will but help
to lead astray those who lack the strength of moral purpose; and they
whom experience has made wise expect little from young men who have
bright minds and have passed brilliant examinations, but who go out
into the world without having trained themselves to habits of patient
industry and tireless self-activity.
Man is essentially a moral being; and he who fails to become so, fails
to become truly human. Individuals and nations are brought to ruin not
by lack of knowledge, but by lack of conduct. "Now that the world is
filled with learned men," said Seneca, "good men are wanting." He was
Nero's preceptor, and saw plainly how powerless intellectual culture
was to save Rome from the degeneracy which undermined its civilization
and finally brought on its downfall. If in college the youth does not
learn to govern and control himself,--to obey and do right in all
things, not because he has not the power to disobey and do wrong, but
because he has not the will,--nothing else he may learn will be of
great service. It seems to me I perceive in our young men a lack of
moral purpose, of sturdiness, of downright obstinate earnestness, in
everything--except perhaps in money-getting pursuits; for even in these
they are tempted to trust to speculation and cunning devices rather
than to persistent work and honesty, which become a man more than
crowns and all the gifts of fortune. Without truthfulness, honesty,
honor, fidelity, courage, integrity, reverence, purity, and
self-respect no worthy or noble life can be led. And unless we can get
into our colleges youths who can be made to drink into their inmost
being this vital truth, little good can be accomplished there. Now, it
often happens that these institutions are, in no small measure, refuges
into which the badly organized families of the wealthy send their sons
in the vain expectation that the fatal faults of inheritance and
domestic training will be repaired. In college, as wherever there are
men, quality is more precious than quantity. The number of students is
great enough when they are of the right kind; and the work which now
lies at our hand is to make it possible that those who have talent and
the will to improve themselves may enter our institutions of learning.
But those who are shown to be insusceptible of education should be
eliminated; for they profit not themselves, and are a hindrance to the
others.
Gladly I turn from them to you, young gentlemen, who have persevered in
the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, and to-day are declared worthy to
receive the highest honor Notre Dame can confer. The deepest and the
best thing in us is faith in reason; for when we look closely, we
perceive that faith in God, in the soul, in good, in freedom, in truth,
is faith in reason. Individuals, nations, the whole race, wander in a
maze of errors. The world of the senses is apparent and illusive, that
of pure thought vague and shadowy. Science touches but the form and
surface; speculation is swallowed in abysses and disperses itself;
ignorance darkens, passion blinds the mind; the truth of one age
becomes the error of a succeeding; opinions change from continent to
continent and from century to century. The more we learn, the less we
know; and what we most of all desire to know eludes our grasp. But,
nevertheless, our faith in reason is unshaken; and holding to this
faith, we hold to God, to good, to freedom, and to truth.
Goodness is the radical principle; the good, the primal aim and final
end of life; for the good is whatever is helpful to life. Hence what
is true is good, what is useful is good, what is fair is good, what is
right is good; and the true, the useful, the fair, and the right are
intertwined and circle about man like a noble sisterhood, to waken him
to life, and to urge him toward God, the supreme good, whose being is
power, wisdom, love without limit. The degree of goodness in all
things is measured by their approach to this absolute Being. Hence the
greater our strength, wisdom, and love, the greater our good, the
richer and more perfect our life. There is no soul which does not bow
with delight and reverence before Beauty and Power; and when we come to
true insight, we perceive that holiness is Beauty and goodness Power.
Genuine spiritual power is from God, and compels the whole mechanic
world to acknowledge its absoluteness. The truths of religion and
morality are of the essence of our life; they cannot be learned from
another, but must be wrought into self-consciousness by our own
thinking and doing,--by habitual meditation, and constant obedience to
conscience. Virtue, knowledge, goodness, and greatness are their own
reward: they are primarily and essentially ends, and only incidentally
means. Hence those who strive for perfection with the view thereby to
gain recognition, money, or place, do not really strive for perfection
at all. They are also unwise; for virtue, knowledge, goodness, and
greatness are not the surest means to such ends, and they can be
acquired only with infinite pains. The highest human qualities cease
to be the highest when they are made subordinate to the externalities
of office and wealth. The one aim of a mind smitten with the love of
excellence is to live consciously and lovingly with whatever is true or
good or fair. And such a one cannot be disturbed whether by the
general indifference of men or by their praise or blame. The
standpoint of the soul is: What thou art, not what others think thee.
If thou art at one with thy true self, God and the eternal laws bear
thee up and onward. The moral and the religious life interpenetrate
each other. To sunder them is to enfeeble both. To weaken faith is to
undermine character; to fail in conduct is to deprive faith of
inspiration and vigor. Learn to live thy religion, and thou shalt have
little need or desire to argue and dispute about it. Truth is mightier
than its witnesses, religion greater than its saints and martyrs.
Learn to think, and thou shalt easily learn to live.
In the presence of the highest manifestations of thought and love, of
truth and beauty, nothing perfect or divine is incredible. Men of
genius, philosophers, poets, and saints, who by thinking and doing make
this ethereal but most real world rise before us in concrete form and
substance, are heavenly messengers and illuminators of the soul. Had
none of them lived, how should we see and understand that man is
Godlike and that God is truth and love? We cannot make this high world
plain by telling about it. It is not a land which may be described.
It is a state of soul which they alone comprehend who have been
transformed by patient meditation and faithful striving. But once it
is revealed, a thousand errors and obscurities fall away from us. If
not educated, strive at least to be educable,--a believer in wisdom,
and sensitive to all high influence, and eager to be quit of thy
ignorance and hardness. As the dead cannot produce the live, so
mechanical minds, however much they may be able to drill, train, and
instruct, cannot educate. The secret of the mother's specific
educational power lies in the fact that she is a spiritual not a
mechanical force, loves and is loved by her pupils. The most ennobling
and the most thoroughly satisfying sentiment of which we are capable is
love. Until we love we are strangers to ourselves. We are like beings
asleep or lost to the knowledge of themselves and all things, till,
awakening to the appeal of the pure light and the balmy air, they look
upon what is not themselves; and, finding it fair and beautiful, learn
in loving it to feel and know themselves.
Increase of the power to love is increase of life. But love needs
guidance. We first awaken in the world of the senses, and are
attracted by what we see and touch and taste. The aim of education is
to help the soul to rise above this world, in which, if we remain, we
are little better than brutes. Hence the teacher seeks in many ways to
reveal to the young the fact that the perfect, the best, cannot be seen
or touched, cannot be grasped even by the mind; but that it is,
nevertheless, that which they should strive to make themselves capable
of loving above all things. And thus he prepares them to understand
what is meant by the love of truth and righteousness, by the love of
God. In the training of animals even, patience and gentleness are more
effective than violence. How, then, shall we hope by physical
constraint and harsh methods to educate human beings, who are human
precisely because they are capable of love and are swayed by rational
motives? There is no soul so gross, so deeply buried in matter, but it
shall from some point or other make a sally to show it still bears the
impress of God's image. At such points the educator will keep watch,
studying how he may make this single ray of light interfuse itself with
his pupil's whole being.
It is not possible to know there is no God, no soul, no free will, no
right or wrong; at the worst, it is only possible to doubt all this.
The universe is as inconceivable as God, and theories of matter as full
of difficulties as theories of spirit. It is a question of belief or
unbelief; ultimately a question of health or disease, of life or death.
They who have no faith in God can have little faith in the worth of
life, which can be for them but an efflorescence of death, a sort of
inexplicable malady of atoms dreaming they are conscious. If the age
tends irresistibly to destroy belief in God, the end will be the ruin
of belief in the good of life. In the mean while the doubt which
weakens the springs of hope and love is not a symptom of health but of
disease, pregnant with suffering and misery for all, but most of all
for the young. He who is loved in a true and noble way is surrounded
by an element of spiritual light in which his worth is revealed to him.
In perceiving what he is to another, he comes to understand what he is
or may be in himself.
Our self respect even is largely due to the love we receive in
childhood and youth. Enthusiasm springs from faith in God and in the
soul, which begets in us a high and heroic belief in the divine good of
life. It is thus an educational force of highest value. It calms and
exalts the soul like the view of the starlit heavens and the
everlasting mountains. It is, in every good and noble cause, a
fountain head of endurance and perseverance. It bears us on with a
sense of joy and vigor, such as is felt when, mounted on a high-mettled
steed, we ride in the pleasant air of a spring morning, amid the
beauties and grandeurs of nature. In the front of battle and in the
presence of death it throws around the soul the light of immortal
things. It gives us the plenitude of existence, the full and high
enjoyment of living. On its wings the poet, the lover, the orator, the
hero, and the saint are borne in rapture through worlds whose celestial
glory and delightfulness cold and unmoved minds do not suspect. It is
not a flame from the dry wood and withered grass, but a heat and glow
from the abysmal depths of being. It makes us content to follow after
truth and love in dark and narrow ways, as the miner, in central deeps
where sunlight has never fallen, seeks his treasure. It keeps us fresh
and young; and, like the warmer sun, reclothes the world day by day
with new beauty. It teaches patience, the love of work without haste
and without worry. It gives strength to hear and speak truth, and to
walk in the sacred way of truth, as though we but idly strolled with
pleasant friends amid fragrant flowers. It gives us deeper
consciousness of our own liberty, faith in human perfectibility, which
lies at the root of our noblest efforts; to which the more we yield
ourselves the more we feel that we are free. It knows a thousand words
of truth and might, which it whispers in gentlest tones to rightly
attuned ears: Since the universe is a harmony whose diapason is God,
why should thy life strike a discordant note? Yield not to
discouragement; thou art alive, and God is in His world. The combat
and not the victory proclaims the hero. If thy success had been
greater, thou hadst been less. The noisy participants in great
conflicts, of whatever kind, exercise less influence upon the outcome
than choice spirits, who, turning aside from the thunder and smoke of
battle, gain in lonely striving and meditation view of new truth by
which the world is transformed.
We owe more to Columbus than to Isabella; to Descartes than to Louis
XIV.; to Bacon than to Elizabeth; to Pestalozzi than to Napoleon; to
Goethe than to Bluecher; to Pasteur than to Bismarck. If thou wouldst
be persuaded and convinced, persuade and convince thyself. Be thy aim
not increase of happiness, but of knowledge, wisdom, power, and virtue;
and thou shalt, without thinking of it, find thyself also happy.
Character is formed by effort, resistance, and patience. If necessity
is the mother of invention, suffering is the mother of high moods and
great thoughts. Poets have sung to ease their sorrow-burdened or
love-tortured hearts; and the travail of souls yearning with ineffable
pain for truth has led to the nearest view of God. Wisdom is the child
of suffering, as beauty is the child of love. If a truth discourages
thee, thou art not yet ripe for it; for thee it is not yet wholly true.
Work not like an ox at the plough, but like a setter afield; not
because thou must, but because thou takest delight in thy task. Only
they have come of age who have learned how to educate themselves.
Education, like life, works from within outward: the teacher loosens
the soil and removes the obstacles to light and warmth and moisture;
but growth comes of the activity of the soul itself.
A new century will not make new men; but if, in truth, it be a new
century, it will be made so by the deeper thought and diviner love of
men and women. Let the old tell what they have done, the young what
they are doing, and fools what they intend to do.
The power to control attention, as a good rider holds his horse to the
road and to his gait, is a result of education; and when it is acquired
other things become easy.
Let not poverty or misfortune or insult or flattery or success, O
seeker after truth and beauty! turn thee from thy divine task and
purpose. Pardon every one except thyself, and put thy trust in God and
in thyself. "If I buy thee," asked one of a Spartan captive, "and
treat thee well, wilt thou be good?"--"I will," he replied, "if thou
buy me or not; or if, having bought me, thou treat me ill."
If there be anything of worth in thee, it will make thee strong and
contented; it is so good for thee to have it that thou canst easily
forget it is unrecognized by others.
If all sufferings, sorrows, and disappointments had been left out of
thy life, wouldst thou be more or less than thou art? Less worthy,
doubtless, and less wise. In these evils, then, there is something
good. If thou couldst but bear this always in mind, thou shouldst be
better able to suffer pain, whether of body or soul. There are things
thou hast greatly desired which, had they been given thee, would make
thee wretched. The wiser thou growest, the better shalt thou
understand how little we know what is for the best.
"Had I but lived!" cried Obermann. And a woman of genius replied: "Be
consoled, O Obermann! Hadst thou lived, thou hadst lived in vain." So
it is. In the end we neither regret that pleasures have been denied
us, nor feel that those we have enjoyed were a gain unless they are
associated with the memory of high faith and thought and virtuous
action. He who is careful to fill his mind with truth and his heart
with love will not lack for retreats in which he may take refuge from
the stress and storms of life. Noise, popularity, and buncombe:
onions, smoke, and bedbugs.
Be thy own rival, comparing thyself with thyself, and striving day by
day to be self-surpassed. If thy own little room is well lighted the
whole world is less dark. If thou art busy seeking intellectual and
moral illumination and strength, thou shalt easily be contented.
Higher place would mean for thee less liberty, less opportunity to
become thyself. The secret of progress lies in knowing how to make
use, not of what we have chosen, but of what is forced upon us. To
occupy one's self with trifles weans from the habit of work more
effectually than idleness. Perfect skill comes of talent, study, and
exercise; and the study and exercise must continue through the whole
course of life. To cease to learn is to lose freshness and the power
to interest. We lack will rather than strength; are able to do more
and better than we are inclined to do; and say we can not because we
have not the courage to say we will not. The law of unstable
equilibrium applies to thee, as to whatever has life. Thou canst not
remain what thou art, but must rise or fall. The body is under the
sway of physical law, but the progress of the mind is left in a large
measure to the play of free will. If thou willest what thou oughtest,
thou canst do what thou willest; for obligation cannot transcend
ability. Happy are they who from earliest youth understand the meaning
of duty, and hearken to the stern but all-reasonable voice of this
daughter of God, the smile upon whose face is the fairest thing we know.
He who willingly accepts the law of moral necessity is free; for in
thus accepting it he transcends it, and is self-determined; while he
who rebels against this law sinks to a lower plane of being than the
properly human, and becomes the slave of appetite and passion. Duty
means sacrifice; it is a turning from the animal to the spiritual self;
from the allurements of the world of manifold sensation--from ease,
idleness, gain, and pleasure--to the high and lonely regions, where the
command of conscience speaks in the name of God and of the nature of
things. Forget thyself and do thy best, as unconscious of
vain-glorious thoughts as though thou wert a wind or a stream, an
impersonal force in the service of God and man. Obey conscience, and
laugh in the face of death. Convince thyself that the best thing for
thee is to know truth and to make truth the law of thy life. Let this
faith subordinate all else, as it is, indeed, faith in reason and in
God. Abhorrence of lies is the test of character. Hold fast by what
thou knowest to be true, not doubting for a moment because thou canst
not reconcile it with other truth. Somewhere, somehow, truth will be
matched with truth, as love mates heart with heart.
A man's word is himself, his reason, his conscience, his faith, his
love, his aspiration. If it is false or vain or vile, he is so. It is
the expression of life as it has come to consciousness within him. It
is the revelation of quality of being; it is of the man himself, his
sign and symbol, the form and mould and mirror of his soul.
Thou thinkest to serve God with lies,
Thou devil-worshipper and fool!
The moral value of the study of science lies in the love of truth it
inspires and inculcates. He who knows science knows that liars are
imbeciles. From the educator's point of view, truthfulness is the
essential thing. His aim and end is to teach truth, and the love of
truth, which leavens the whole mass and makes it life-giving. But the
liar has no proper virtue of any kind.
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient, and laborious mind is
worthy of respect. In such doubt there may be found indeed more faith
than in half the creeds. But the scepticism of sciolists lacks the
depth and genuineness of truth. To be frivolous where there is
question of all that gives life meaning and value is want of sense.
The sciolist is one who has a superficial knowledge of various things,
which for lack of deep views and coherent thought, for lack of the
understanding of the principles of knowledge itself, he is unable to
bring into organic unity. The things he knows are confused and
intermingled, and thus fail either to enlighten his mind or to impel
him to healthful activity. He forms opinions lightly and pronounces
judgment rashly. Knowing nothing thoroughly, he has no suspicion of
the infinite complexity of the world of life and thought. The evil
effects of this semi-culture are most disagreeable and most harmful in
those whose being has been developed only on its temporal and earthly
side. Their spiritual and moral nature has no centre about which it
may move, and they wander on the surface of things in self-satisfied
conceit, proclaiming that what is beyond the senses is beyond the reach
of the mind, as though our innermost consciousness were not of what is
intangible and invisible.
All divine things are within and about us, here and now; but we are too
gross to see the celestial light, or to catch the whisperings of the
heavenly voices. God is here; but we, like plants and mollusks, live
in worlds of which we do not dream, upheld and nourished and borne
onward by a Power of whom we are but dimly conscious,--nay, of whom,
for the most part, we are unconscious.
There is a truth above the reach of logic, an impulse of the mind and
heart which urges beyond the realms of sense, beyond the ken of the
dialectician, to the Infinite and Eternal, before whom the material
universe is but a force at whose finest touch souls awaken to the
thrill of thought and love.
When we are made conscious of the fact that the Divine Word is the
light of men, we readily understand that our every true thought, our
every good deed, our every deeper view of nature and of life, comes
from God, who is always urging us into the glorious liberty of His
children, until we become a heavenly republic in which righteousness,
peace, and joy shall reign. "The restless desire of every man to
improve his position in the world is the motive power of all social
development, of all progress," says Scherr, unable to perceive that the
mightiest impulses to nobler and wider life have been given by those
who were not thinking at all of improving their position, but were
wholly bent upon improving themselves. Make choice, O youth! between
having and being. If having is thy aim, consent to be inferior; if
being is thy aim, be content with having little. Real students,
cultivators of themselves, are not inspired by the love of fame or
wealth or position, but they are driven by an inner impulse to which
they cannot but yield. Their enthusiasm is not a fire that blazes for
an hour and then dies out; it is a heat from central depths of life,
self-fed and inextinguishable.
The impulse to nobler and freer life springs, never from masses of men,
but always from single luminous minds and glowing hearts. The
lightning of great thoughts shows the way to heroic deeds. It is
better to know than to be known, to love than to be loved, to help than
to be helped; for since life is action, it is better to act than to be
acted upon. Whosoever makes himself purer, worthier, wiser, works for
his country, works for God. The belief that the might of truth is so
great that it must prevail in spite of whatever opposition, needs, to
say the least, interpretation; for it has often happened that truth has
been overcome for whole generations and races; and the important
consideration is not whether it shall finally prevail, but whether it
shall prevail for us, for our own age and people. It is of the nature
of spiritual gifts to work in every direction; they enrich the
individual and the nation; they develop, purify, and refine the
intellectual, moral, and physical worlds in which men live and strive.
The State and the Church are organisms; the body, the social and
religious soul, under the guidance of God, creates for itself. And not
only should there be no conflict between them, but there should be none
between them and the free and full development of the individual. A
peasant whose mental state is what it might have been a thousand years
ago is for us, however moral and religious, an altogether
unsatisfactory kind of man. All knowledge is pure, and all speech is
so if it spring from the simple desire to utter what is seen and
recognized as truth. The love of liberty is rare. It is not found in
those whose life-aim is money, pleasure, and place, which enslave; but
in those who love truth, which is the only liberating power. Knowledge
is the correlative of being, and only a high and loving soul can know
what truth is or understand what Christ meant when He said: "Ye shall
know truth, and truth shall make you free." High thinking and right
loving may make enemies of those around us, but they make us Godlike.
How seldom in our daily experience of men do we find one who wishes to
be enlightened, reformed, and made virtuous! How easy it is to find
those who wish to be pleased and flattered!
At no period in history has civilization been so widespread or so
complex as to-day. Never have the organs of the social body been so
perfect. Never has it been possible for so many to co-operate
intelligently in the work of progress. You, gentlemen, have youth and
faith and the elements of intellectual and moral culture. In the
freshness and vigor of early manhood, you stand upon the threshold of
the new century. You speak Shakspeare's and Milton's tongue; in your
veins is the blood which in other lands and centuries has nourished the
spirit which makes martyrs, heroes, and saints. Your religion strikes
its roots into the historic past of man's noblest achievements, and
looks to the future with the serene confidence with which it looks to
God. Your country, if not old, is not without glory. Its soil is as
fertile, its climate as salubrious as its domain is vast. It is
peopled by that Aryan race, which, from most ancient days, has been the
creator and invincible defender of art and science and philosophy and
liberty; and with all this the divine spirit and doctrine of the Son of
Man have been interfused.
We are here in America constituted on the wide basis of universal
freedom, universal opportunity, universal intelligence, universal
good-will. Our government is the rule of all for the welfare of all;
it has stood the test of civil war, and in many ways proved itself both
beneficent and strong. Already we have subdued this continent to the
service of man. Within a hundred years we have grown to be one of the
most populous and wealthy and also one of the most civilized and
progressive nations of the earth. Your opportunities are equal to the
fullest measure of human worth and genius. In the midst of a high and
noble environment it were doubly a disgrace to be low and base. In
intellectual and moral processes and results the important
consideration is not how much, but what and how. How much, for
instance, one has read or written gives us little insight into his
worth and character; but when we know what and how he has read and
written, we know something of his life. When I am told that America
has more schools, churches, and newspapers than any other land, I think
of their kind, and am tempted to doubt whether it were not better if we
had fewer.
The more general and the higher the average education of the people,
the more urgent is the need of thoroughly cultivated and enlightened
minds to lead them wisely. The standard of our intellectual and
professional education is still low; and neither from the press nor the
pulpit nor legislative halls do we hear highest wisdom rightly uttered.
To be an intellectual force in this age one must know--must know much
and know thoroughly; for now in many places there are a few, at least,
who are acquainted with the whole history of thought and discovery, who
are familiar with the best thinking of the noblest minds that have ever
lived; and to imagine that a sciolist, a half-educated person, can have
anything new or important to impart is to delude one's self.
But if you fail, you will fail like all who fail,--not from lack of
knowledge, but from lack of conduct; for the burden which in the end
bears us down is that of our moral delinquencies. All else we may
endure, but that is a sinking and giving way of the source of life
itself. It is better, in every way, that you should be true Christian
men than that you should do deeds which will make your names famous.
And if you could believe this with all your heart, you would find peace
and freedom of spirit, even though your labors should seem vain and
your lives of little moment. The more reason and conscience are
brought to bear upon you, the more will you be lifted into the high and
abiding world, where truth and love and holiness are recognized to be
man's proper and imperishable good. Become all it is possible for you
to become. What this is you can know only by striving day by day, from
youth to age, even unto the end; leaving the issue with God and His
master-workman, Time.