YOUR OPPORTUNITY CONFRONTS YOU--WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT?
Never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as
to-day. Never before was there such a demand for the trained man, _the
man who can do a thing superbly well_. At the door of every vocation
is a sign out, "Wanted--a man." No matter how many millions are out of
employment, the whole world is hunting for a man who can do things; a
trained thinker who can do whatever he undertakes a little better than
it has ever before been done. Everywhere it is the educated, the
trained man, the man whose natural ability has been enlarged, enhanced
one hundredfold by superior training, that is wanted.
On all sides we see men with small minds, but who are well educated,
pushing ahead of those who have greater capabilities, but who are only
half educated. A one-talent man, superbly trained, often gets the
place when a man with many untrained or half-trained talents loses it.
Never was ignorance placed at such a disadvantage as to-day.
While the opportunities awaiting the educated man, the college
graduate, on his entrance into practical life were never before so
great and so numerous as to-day, so also the dangers and temptations
which beset him were never before so great, so numerous, so insidious.
All education which does not elevate, refine, and ennoble its recipient
is a curse instead of a blessing. A liberal education only renders a
rascal more dishonest, more dangerous. _Educated rascality is
infinitely more of a menace to society than ignorant rascality_.
Every year, thousands of young men and young women graduate full of
ambition and hope, full of expectancy, go out from the schools, the
colleges, and the universities, with their diplomas, to face for the
first time the practical world.
There is nothing else, perhaps, which the graduate needs to be
cautioned against more than the money madness which has seized the
American people, for nothing else is more fatal to the development of
the higher, finer instincts and nobler desires.
Wealth with us multiplies a man's power so tremendously that everything
gravitates toward it. A man's genius, art, what he stands for, is
measured largely by how many dollars it will bring. "How much can I
get for my picture?" "How much royalty for my book?" "How much can I
get out of my specialty, my profession, my business?" "How can I make
the most money?" or "How can I get rich?" is the great interrogation of
the century. How will the graduate, the trained young man or woman
answer it?
The dollar stands out so strongly in all the undertakings of life that
the ideal is often lowered or lost, the artistic suffers, the soul's
wings are weighted down with gold. The commercial spirit tends to drag
everything down to its dead, sordid level. It is the subtle menace
which threatens to poison the graduate's ambition. _Whichever way you
turn, the dollar-mark will swing info your vision_. The money-god,
which nearly everybody worships in some form or other, will tempt you
on every hand.
Never before was such pressure brought to bear on the trained youth to
sell his brains, to coin his ability into dollars, to prostitute his
education, as to-day. The commercial prizes held up to him are so
dazzling, so astounding, that it takes a strong, vigorous character to
resist their temptation, even when the call in one to do something
which bears little relation to money-making speaks very loudly.
The song of the money-siren to-day is so persistent, so entrancing, so
overwhelming that it often drowns the still small voice which bids one
follow the call that runs in his blood, that is indicated in the very
structure in his brain.
Tens of thousands of young people just out of school and college stand
tiptoe on the threshold of active life, with high ideals and glorious
visions, full of hope and big with promise, but many of them will very
quickly catch the money contagion; the fatal germ will spread through
their whole natures, inoculating their ambition with its vicious virus,
and, after a few years, their fair college vision will fade, their
yearnings for something higher will gradually die and be replaced by
material, sordid, selfish ideals.
The most unfortunate day in a youth's career is that one on which his
ideals begin to grow dim and his high standards begin to drop; that day
on which is born in him the selfish, money-making germ, which so often
warps and wrenches the whole nature out of its legitimate orbit.
You will need to be constantly on your guard to resist the attack of
this germ. After you graduate and go out into the world, powerful
influences will be operative in your life, tending to deteriorate your
standards, lower your ideals, and encoarsen you generally.
When you plunge into the swim of things, you will be constantly thrown
into contact with those of lower ideals, who are actuated only by
sordid, selfish aims. Then dies the man, the woman in you, unless you
are made of superior stuff.
What a contrast that high and noble thing which the college diploma
stands for presents to that which many owners of the diploma stand for
a quarter of a century later! It is often difficult to recognize any
relationship between the two.
American-Indian graduates, who are so transformed by the inspiring,
uplifting influences of the schools and colleges which are educating
them that they are scarcely recognizable by their own tribes when they
return home, very quickly begin to change under the deteriorating
influences operating upon them when they leave college. They soon
begin to shed their polish, their fine manners, their improved
language, and general culture; the Indian blanket replaces their modern
dress, and they gradually drift back into their former barbarism. They
become Indians again.
The influences that will surround you when you leave college or your
special training school will be as potent to drag you down as those
that cause the young Indian to revert to barbarism. The shock you will
receive in dropping from the atmosphere of high ideals and beautiful
promise in which you have lived for four years to that of a very
practical, cold, sordid materiality will be a severe test to your
character, your manhood.
But the graduate whose training, whose education counts for anything
ought to be able to resist the shock, to withstand all temptations.
The educated man ought to be able to do something better, something
higher than merely to put money in his purse. Money-making can not
compare with man-making. There is something infinitely better than to
be a millionaire of money, and that is to be a millionaire of brains,
of culture, of helpfulness to one's fellows, a millionaire of
character--a gentleman.
Whatever degrees you carry from school or college, whatever distinction
you may acquire in your career, no title will ever mean quite so much,
will ever be quite so noble, as that of gentleman.
"A keen and sure sense of honor," says Ex-President Eliot, of Harvard
University, "is the finest result of college life." The graduate who
has not acquired this keen and sure sense of honor, this thing that
stamps the gentleman, misses the best thing that a college education
can impart.
Your future, fortunate graduate, like a great block of pure white
marble, stands untouched before you. You hold the chisel and
mallet--your ability, your education--in your hands. There is
something in the block for you, and it lives in your ideal. Shall it
be angel or devil? What are your ideals, as you stand tiptoe on the
threshold of active life? Will you smite the block and shatter it into
an unshapely or hideous piece; or will you call out a statue of
usefulness, of grace and beauty, a statue which will tell the unborn
generations the story of a noble life?
Great advantages bring great responsibilities. You can not divorce
them. A liberal education greatly increases a man's obligations.
There is coupled with it a responsibility which you can not shirk
without paying the penalty in a shriveled soul, a stunted mentality, a
warped conscience, and a narrow field of usefulness. It is more of a
disgrace for a college graduate to grovel, to stoop to mean, low
practises, than for a man who has not had a liberal education. The
educated man has gotten a glimpse of power, of grander things, and he
is expected to look up, not down, to aspire, not to grovel.
We cannot help feeling that it is worse for a man to go wrong who has
had all the benefits of a liberal education, than it is for one who has
not had glimpses of higher things, who has not had similar advantages,
because where much is given, much is expected. The world has a right
to expect that wherever there is an educated, trained man people should
be able to say of him as Lincoln said of Walt Whitman, "There goes a
man."
The world has a right to expect that the graduate, having once faced
the light and felt its power, will not turn his back on it; that he
will not disgrace his _alma mater_ which has given him his superior
chance in life and opened wide for him the door of opportunity. It has
a right to expect that a man who has learned how to use skilfully the
tools of life, will be an artist and not an artisan; that he will not
stop growing. Society has a right to look to the collegian to be a
refining, uplifting force in his community, an inspiration to those who
have not had his priceless chance; it is justified in expecting that he
will raise the standard of intelligence in his community; that he will
illustrate in his personality, his finer culture, the possible glory of
life. It has a right to expect that he will not be a victim of the
narrowing, cramping influence of avarice; that he will not be a slave
of the dollar or stoop to a greedy, grasping career: that he will be
free from the sordidness which often characterizes the rich ignoramus.
If you have the ability and have been given superior opportunities, it
simply means that you have a great commission to do something out of
the ordinary for your fellows; a special message for humanity.
If the torch of learning has been put in your hand, its significance is
that you should light up the way for the less fortunate.
If you have received a message which carries freedom for people
enslaved by ignorance and bigotry, you have no right to suppress it.
Your education means an increased obligation to live your life up to
the level of your gift, your superior opportunity. Your duty is to
deliver your message to the world with all the manliness, vigor, and
force you possess.
What shall we think of a man who has been endowed with godlike gifts,
who has had the inestimable advantage of a liberal education, who has
ability to ameliorate the hard conditions of his fellows, to help to
emancipate them from ignorance and drudgery; what shall we think of
this man, so divinely endowed, so superbly equipped, who, instead of
using his education to lift his fellow men, uses it to demoralize, to
drag them down; who employs his talents in the book he writes, in the
picture he paints, in his business, whatever it may be, to mislead, to
demoralize, to debauch; who uses his light as a decoy to lure his
fellows on the rocks and reefs, instead of as a beacon to guide them
into port?
We imprison the burglar for breaking into our houses and stealing, but
what shall we do with the educated rascal who uses his trained mind and
all his gifts to ruin the very people who look up to him as a guide?
"The greatest thing you can do is to be what you ought to be."
A great man has said that no man will be content to live a half life
when he has once discovered it is a half life, because the other half,
the higher half, will haunt him. Your superior training has given you
a glimpse of the higher life. Never lose sight of your college vision.
Do not permit yourself to be influenced by the maxims of a low, sordid
prudence, which will be dinned into your ears wherever you go. Regard
the very suggestion that you shall coin your education, your high
ideals into dollars; that you lower your standards, prostitute your
education by the practise of low-down, sordid methods, as an insult.
Say to yourself, "_If the highest thing in me will not bring success,
surely the lowest, the worst, cannot._"
The mission of the trained man is to show the world a higher, finer
type of manhood.
The world has a right to expect better results from the work of the
educated man; something finer, of a higher grade, and better quality,
than from the man who lacks early training, the man who has discovered
only a small part of himself. "Pretty good," "Fairly good," applied
either to character or to work are bad mottoes for an educated man.
You should be able to demonstrate that the man with a diploma has
learned to use the tools of life skilfully; has learned how to focus
his faculties so that he can bring the whole man to his task, and not a
part of himself. Low ideals, slipshod work, aimless, systemless,
half-hearted endeavors, should have no place in your program.
It is a disgrace for a man with a liberal education to botch his work,
demoralize his ideals, discredit his teachers, dishonor the institution
which has given him his chance to be a superior man.
"Keep your eye on the model, don't watch your hands," is the injunction
of a great master as he walks up and down among his pupils, criticizing
their work. The trouble with most of us is that we do not keep our
eyes on the model; we lose our earlier vision. A liberal education
ought to broaden a man's mind so that he will be able to keep his eye
always on the model, the perfect ideal of his work, uninfluenced by the
thousand and one petty annoyances, bickerings, misunderstandings, and
discords which destroy much of the efficiency of narrower, less
cultivated minds.
The graduate ought to be able to rise above these things so that he can
use all his brain power and energy and fling the weight of his entire
being into work that is worth while.
After the withdrawal of a play that has been only a short time on the
stage, we often read this comment, "An artistic success, but a
financial failure." While an education should develop all that is
highest and best in a man, it should also make him a practical man, not
a financial failure. Be sure that you possess your knowledge, that
your knowledge does not possess you.
The mere possession of a diploma will only hold you up to ridicule,
will only make you more conspicuous as a failure, if you cannot bring
your education to a focus and utilize it in a practical way.
_Knowledge is power only when it can be made available, practical_.
Only what you can use of your education will benefit you or the world.
The great question which confronts you in the practical world is "What
can you do with what you know?" Can you transmute your knowledge into
power? Your ability to read your Latin diploma is not a test of true
education; a stuffed memory does not make an educated man. The
knowledge that can be utilized, that can be translated into power,
constitutes the only education worthy of the name. There are thousands
of college-bred men in this country, who are loaded down with knowledge
that they have never been able to utilize, to make available for
working purposes. There is a great difference between absorbing
knowledge, making a sponge of one's brain, and transmuting every bit of
knowledge into power, into working capital.
As the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should
transmute your knowledge into practical wisdom.
There is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a
well-assimilated education will not make itself felt.
The college man _ought_ to be a superb figure anywhere. The
consciousness of being well educated should put one at ease in any
society. The knowledge that one's mentality has been broadened out by
college training, that one has discovered his possibilities, not only
adds wonderfully to one's happiness, but also increases one's
self-confidence immeasurably, and _self-confidence is the lever that
moves the world_. On every hand we see men of good ability who feel
crippled all their lives and are often mortified, by having to confess,
by the poverty of their language, their sordid ideals, their narrow
outlook on life, that they are not educated. The superbly trained man
can go through the world with his head up and feel conscious that he is
not likely to play the ignoramus in any company, or be mortified or
pained by ignorance of matters which every well-informed person is
supposed to know. This assurance of knowledge multiplies
self-confidence and gives infinite satisfaction.
In other words, a liberal education makes a man think a little more of
himself, feel a little surer of himself, have more faith in himself,
because he has discovered himself. There is also great satisfaction in
the knowledge that one has not neglected the unfoldment and expansion
of his mind, that he has not let the impressionable years of youth go
by unimproved.
But the best thing you carry from your _alma mater_ is not what you
there prized most, not your knowledge of the sciences, languages,
literature, art; it is something infinitely more sacred, of greater
value than all these, and that is _your aroused ambition, your
discovery of yourself, of your powers, of your possibilities; your
resolution to be a little more of a man, to play a manly part in life,
to do the greatest, grandest thing possible to you_. This will mean
infinitely more to you than all you have learned from books or lectures.
The most precious thing of all, however, if you have made the most of
your chance, is the uplift, encouragement, inspiration, which you have
absorbed from your teachers, from your associations; this is the
embodiment of the college spirit, the spirit of your _alma mater_; it
is that which should make you reach up as well as on, which should make
you aspire instead of grovel--look up, instead of down.
The graduate should regard his education as a sacred trust. He should
look upon it as a power to be used, not alone for his advancement, or
for his own selfish ends, but for the betterment of all mankind. As a
matter of fact, things are so arranged in this world that no one can
use his divine gift for himself alone and get the best out of it. To
try to keep it would be as foolish as for the farmer to hoard his seed
corn in a bin instead of giving it to the earth, for fear he would
never get it back.
The man who withholds the giving of himself to the world, does it at
his peril, at the cost of mental and moral penury.
The way to get the most out of ourselves, or out of life, is not to try
to _sell_ ourselves for the highest possible price but to _give_
ourselves, not stingily, meanly, but _royally, magnanimously, to our
fellows_. If the rosebud should try to retain all of its sweetness and
beauty locked within its petals and refuse to give it out, it would be
lost. It is only by flinging them out to the world that their fullest
development is possible. The man who tries to keep his education, his
superior advantages for himself, who is always looking out for the main
chance, only shrivels, and strangles the very faculties he would
develop.
The trouble with most of us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves
for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives,
stifle our better natures.
The graduate should show the world that he has something in him too
sacred to be tampered with, something marked "not for sale," a sacred
something that bribery cannot touch, that influence cannot buy. You
should so conduct yourself that every one will see that there is
something in you that would repel as an insult the very suggestion that
you could be bought or bribed, or influenced to stoop to anything low
or questionable.
The college man who is cursed with commonness, who gropes along in
mediocrity, who lives a shiftless, selfish life, and does not lift up
his head and show that he has made the most of his great privileges
disgraces the institution that gave him his chance.
You have not learned the best lesson from your school or college if you
have not discovered the secret of making life a glory instead of a
sordid grind. When you leave your _alma mater_, my young friend,
whatever your vocation, do not allow all that is finest within you,
your high ideals and noble purposes to be suffocated, strangled, in the
everlasting scramble for the dollar. Put beauty into your life, do not
let your esthetic faculties, your aspiring instincts, be atrophied in
your efforts to make a living. Do not, as thousands of graduates do,
sacrifice your social instincts, your friendships, your good name, for
power or position.
Whether you make money or lose it, never sell your divine heritage,
your good name, for a mess of pottage. Whatever you do, be larger than
your vocation; never let it be said of you that you succeeded in your
vocation, but failed as a man.
When William Story, the sculptor, was asked to make a speech at the
unveiling of his great statue of George Peabody, in London, he simply
pointed to the statue and said, "_That is my speech._"
So conduct yourself that your life shall need no eulogy in words. Let
it be its own eulogy, let your success tell to the world the story of a
noble career. However much money you may accumulate, carry your
greatest wealth with you, in _a clean record, an unsullied reputation_.
Then you will not need houses or lands or stocks or bonds to testify to
a rich life.
Never before did an opportunity to render such great service to mankind
confront the educated youth as confronts you to-day. WHAT WILL YOU DO
WITH IT?