games and sports, the fun and frolic, are shared by all. The work, if
not the same, is done under the same conditions. All inherit the common
school traditions and the same ideals of life are put before all. These
things tend to eliminate distinctions and to make for democracy. In
short, they foster school spirit.
The life of a corporate group is something different from the lives of
the individuals who compose it. The members of such a group act and
react upon one another. Their impulses and emotions, their words and
even their deeds take different tone and shape when in the midst of
numbers of others similarly circumstanced. There is a latent fire in the
soul which is fanned to flame by the contact of life with life. This
infection of nature by nature operates for evil as well as for good. Its
harmful influence is seen at its worst in what is called mob spirit or
mob rule. The mob may be guilty of deeds which not a single individual
in it would countenance if left to himself.
By the mere fact of your coming together, then, surrounded by the same
influences, under the spell of the same traditions and ideals, you
create an element of life which did not exist before and which reacts
powerfully upon every one of you. This is of the greatest importance in
the growth of character, especially in these formative years. If you are
ever to come to complete self-realization, you must breathe the
atmosphere of pure and wholesome social influences. You should ask
yourself, then, concerning the joint social life which you are living
from day to day, what you are gathering from it and what you are
contributing to it.
As I stood once in the chapel of Eton College, England, I noticed upon
the walls certain scrolls and tablets containing hundreds of names in
letters of gold. These were the names of graduates of Eton who had in
after years brought distinction to their college. I noticed the same
family names, recurring over and over again, and I was told that these
same names are still upon the school rolls. I could not help asking
myself, How can any young man who enters Eton, bearing one of these
honored names, be anything but his best self? His family, his school,
his country expect it. Perhaps that is one reason he so often _is_ his
best and that the same families generation after generation have so
large a share of good and great men. And I thought, too, what a
stimulus there must be in the very atmosphere of that splendid,
five-hundred-year-old school, to spur these young men on to their
highest endeavor! They were honored in being members of Eton and they in
turn must honor Eton.
In this country we have no schools as old as Eton; yet all good schools
have their fine traditions. The true-hearted service of noble lives has
gone into the making of them. Of all such schools it may be said that
among their sons or daughters are those who have loved their _Alma
Mater_ so well that being a credit to her they have counted among their
chief aims in life. Only the student who is moved by such motives as
these has the true school spirit. Such a student longs that his school
shall be stamped with the stamp of true worthiness.
I suppose the most evident, certainly the most picturesque, exhibition
of school spirit is to be seen in connection with athletics, and it
reaches its climax in an inter-school game. The authorities of some
schools say frankly that they permit such games, with their interruption
of serious work and other disadvantages, chiefly because they tend to
develop school spirit and school loyalty. Athletic contests are good,
for they give training in self-subordination, self-control, alertness,
and dogged perseverance. The individual loses himself in the good of the
whole. This makes for character and good citizenship. We must not
underestimate the value of the enthusiasm which comes from rallying
against a common antagonist. When the rivalry is good-natured and every
rule of fair play is observed, the effect is wholesome.
Yet it is not always the student who cheers most loudly for the team and
who is most carried away by school spirit on public occasions who is at
heart most loyal to the school. There is a greater loyalty even than
that generous spirit which prompts one to rejoice in victory. It is the
desire that one's school shall stand only for that which is right. It is
the determination that it shall be respected, and still more, that it
shall be worthy of respect.
Now, the first and most obvious thing about any school is that it is an
educational institution, and as such it must stand or fall. If a school
is an educational failure, what avails its success in some subordinate
thing? No one can take pride in an easy-going school to which any one
can gain admission, and in which any one can remain, regardless of
attainment. Students are not likely to think of this aspect of the case
when they neglect their studies. They think the matter wholly personal
and believe that only they are the sufferers. It is not so. By slack,
indifferent work you are lowering the standard of your school, and you
are thus disloyal. By your act you say that you do not care to have your
school respected. This shows a lack of a sense of indebtedness on your
part to the corporate group of which you are a member. It means a
failure to apply school spirit where it was most needed. It is easier to
sing and cheer on some moving occasion, but which does your school need
more at your hands?
What I have said about upholding the intellectual standards of the
school applies equally to its standards in other matters. By your dress,
by your manners, by your behavior you indicate, wherever you go, the
character of your school. You are its product. The world does not stop
to ask what is going on inside of a school or what its influences are.
The world judges a school by its results. If you want your school to be
respected you cannot be too careful to represent it worthily at all
times and in all places.
You come to school to get knowledge, but it would be a pity if that were
all you were to get. A young man and a young woman, each of whom had
been out of college several years, were discussing the advantages of a
college education. One said to the other, "Looking back over your
college days, what do you now regard as the most valuable thing you got
out of college?" "Inspiration," promptly came the answer; and both were
agreed upon this.
School days deal with an earlier period of life than the college age,
when the student is usually more susceptible to strong influences. The
school that first gave you the determination to do something worth while
in the world, the school that called forth your best self and set your
heart on fire with a noble purpose, has a claim upon you that you can
never forget.
Every school that has this transforming power is what it is by virtue of
the personalities that have been connected with it. Ask yourself what
you are doing to make your school in the future as inspiring a place for
others as others have made it for you. Ask yourself what you can
contribute to the enrichment of the life of your school. Be not
over-anxious about what you shall receive.
Students rarely realize how much they leave behind them when they depart
from a school. Something of you remains, mysteriously interwoven in the
life of the school. "I am a part of all that I have met," says
Tennyson's Ulysses. Just as you embody in yourself the influences that
hundreds of other lives have exerted upon you, so others are bearing and
will always bear the marks of your influence.
To be a worthy member of a good school is a great privilege, furnishing
as it does a stimulus to high endeavor which rarely comes in any other
way. It is a distinct honor to sustain and enhance a worthy name. If you
have the right school spirit, you can do nothing less than throw all the
power of your influence into the task of making your school a place
where future students may learn how to meet and be true to the
responsibilities and obligations of life. The atmosphere which makes
easy this kind of growth is created only by living personalities, by the
touch of life upon life.
VIII
MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS
I have noticed that many people who seem to the casual observer to be
favorites of fortune, having no large and serious troubles to worry
about, so magnify their small ones that life loses much of its joy. Most
men and women who rebel at their lot in life fancy that their discontent
lies in the deprivation of some definite thing. Had it not been for this
or that unfavorable condition, their lives would have been happy and
successful. One possesses too small a share of this world's goods and
continually allows his thoughts to dwell upon what he might have had or
might have done if he had been blessed with wealth. He forgets to
appreciate and to be grateful for health, family, friends, and a host of
other blessings. He has the lurking feeling that wealth is the one thing
which would have made his life happy, in spite of the fact that he knows
that it has not brought happiness to many who possess it. So he settles
down to a discontented, second-rate life.
With another, it is a lack of robust health that causes discontent. Such
a person forgets that much of the best work of the world has been
accomplished by men of frail health, as, for instance, Darwin and
Herbert Spencer. Another finds a source of unhappiness in his
environment in life, or in a lack of particular advantages and
opportunities. He is sure that he might have become an artist or a
musician or a scholar had not Fate been so unkind as to deprive him of
opportunity. Yet we have but to point to scores of persons who have won
the highest success in these fields in spite of seemingly insurmountable
obstacles.
Some women are unhappy because they cannot obtain the position in
society for which they believe themselves fitted; others crave luxury
and ease denied them. Many women long to exchange their idleness for a
work in life. As to work, it sometimes seems as if half the workers of
the world are envying the other half their particular field of labor.
Each sees the advantages of the other's task, but not its disadvantages.
The laboring man envies the business or professional man the supposed
ease of his work and its larger returns. The business or professional
man often looks with envy upon the day laborer, because of his freedom
from care and the simplicity of his life. And so each looks over the
edge of his work, discontented, to that of his neighbor. How seldom are
we willing to admit that the cause of our discontent lies within
ourselves!
It is true that there is a discontent which is right. It is discontent
with what we _are_ and it is born of aspiration. One who feels this
divine discontent well knows that his life has not been as fruitful as
it should have been, and he is determined that the future shall redeem,
as far as possible, the inadequacy of the past. He says with Whittier:--
"I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained!"
If ever we find ourselves satisfied with our attainments it simply means
that we have a very low standard of success. Some one has said, "One
should never believe that he has succeeded, but always that he is going
to succeed."
To be discontented with what we have, that is, with our possessions and
our circumstances, is a very different matter. Either we can change them
or we cannot. If we can and do not, we have only ourselves to blame. But
what shall be said regarding those unfavorable outward circumstances of
your life to which you must submit? Simply this: If you cannot have what
you like, _learn to like what you have_. Resolve that no unfavorable
conditions shall be powerful enough to defeat you and spoil your life.
Master your circumstances instead of letting them master you. To master
circumstances does not necessarily mean to change them. Sometimes it
means merely to change our attitude toward them, so that they may become
a source of strength instead of weakness. There is always much that a
wise and energetic person can do to change the conditions of his life,
yet there will be left in every life certain things that cannot be
altered. The real test of our character is our attitude toward these
things.
There is nothing more certain than that if you are going to accomplish
anything in life you must use the vantage-ground you have, not the
better vantage-ground of another, which is not yours. Do not explain
what you would have done if you had had this one's or that one's
opportunity. You will be tested by the use you make of the opportunities
that have been given to _you_.
It is sometimes pointed out that too many college girls, returning to
their homes after graduation, lead restless, discontented lives. The
college is often blamed for this, but most unjustly. The difficulty may
be with the girl herself, but I believe it is just as often with her
family and friends, who expect impossible things of her. Too often an
active, ambitious girl is forced to settle down into a life of
comparative uselessness. The inspiration of her college years is still
strong upon her. All the powers of heart, mind, and soul have been
awakened. She has gained a wide outlook, and the needs of this very
needy world have been brought home to her sympathetic heart. She feels
within her the power to do something which will count in making the
world a better place. To be a mere household ornament does not seem to
her adequate. Too frequently there is the strongest objection to her
taking up any definite work. She is expected to be happy in comparative
idleness and without the stimulus that always comes from feeling that
one's life is counting for something. Some of the discontent of the
educated young woman who has not yet found her place in life may be
traced to these causes.
Yet sometimes her discontent has its root in herself, and is due to a
lack of adaptation. Many a young woman who leaves school or college with
dreams of an inspiring and useful work in the world finds herself
obliged to remain at home because of family necessity. She may even have
to live in a place apparently devoid of interest, amid surroundings that
seem commonplace, with no stimulating or congenial companionship.
Sometime you may find yourself in exactly that position. What will you
do about it? Will you adopt a course that will not only make those about
you miserable, but will dwarf and narrow your own life? Or can you be
brave and strong enough to follow the path that will enlarge and
beautify your life as well as bring good to others? If you are in doubt
what to do, ask yourself what an Alice Freeman Palmer would have done
with those meager surroundings, those narrow opportunities and
uninspiring duties. You know the answer. A great soul like hers would
have created its own atmosphere and soon the desert would have blossomed
as the rose. She would have seen possibilities in the dreariest
situation. She would have found work to do in the smallest and most
uninteresting community. Wherever there is a community there is work to
be done--little children to be guided into right ways, the sick to be
visited, the discouraged to be cheered. Wherever you find a church,
there is an opportunity for service. Who ever heard of a church that had
workers enough? Wherever there is a city, town, or village, there is
work to be done in the direction of civic betterment.
Is your life restricted by certain responsibilities not of your own
choosing, yet from which you cannot honorably escape--nay, would not
escape? Do you long for freedom, for the power to carve out your own
destiny in your own way? How swiftly you would move forward if you could
tread the path of your own choosing! Do not think that you are unusual
in this longing. It is difficult to be reconciled to the limitations
placed upon us. Those of whom you are most envious are probably in their
turn envying others who have not their particular limitations. Some of
them may be envying you. A lesson which we should all learn as early as
possible is that the restrictions of our lives often point the way to
largeness. Whenever we find ourselves indulging in self-pity because of
the limitations under which we labor, it will be well to call to mind
some of the many splendid and fruitful lives that have attained to
strength and power in spite of restrictions far more severe, or rather
partly because of them: Lincoln, gaining a meager knowledge of books by
the light of a pine knot; Darwin, doing his life-work in the face of
physical disabilities that would have made useless invalids of most of
us; Helen Keller, denied all the most important avenues of communication
with the outside world, yet achieving results that would put most of us
to shame; Louisa M. Alcott, writing her charming stories in the midst of
arduous toil and pathetic privations endured for the sake of her loved
ones; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, learning from suffering what she
told the world in song. History is full of these examples, and the
future will be just as rich in such lives as the past has been. Those
who are to be the leaders of the next generation are even now, many of
them, having a severe struggle with adverse circumstances.
Just as we should make the best of the things about us and of the
circumstances of our lives, so we should make the best of the people
about us. Must you live apart from the friends whose society is most
congenial to you? Again, if you cannot have about you the people you
like, then like the people you have about you. It is astonishing how
much progress can be made when one starts out with resolution in this
direction. Try it and you will be amazed at discovering likable
qualities in those with whom you supposed you had little in common.
And just as you are to make the best of other people, so you should
learn to make the best of yourself. By this I do not mean make the
_most_ of yourself. It goes without saying that one should do that. Many
a person who is successful in matching himself against outward obstacles
feels discouraged when he faces his own nature and recognizes the return
of faults which he hoped he had overcome. No struggle is so severe as
that which one wages with himself. Sometimes we become disheartened at
our failure to conquer faults and to overcome wrong tendencies. When it
is a question of right and wrong, there is no course open to us but to
continue to wage the battle. No compromise with wrong is possible.
Yet there are other limitations which should be regarded in a different
light. Perhaps we have overestimated our capacity and have expected the
impossible of ourselves. Paris is full of discouraged artists who had
looked forward to a noteworthy career that never can be realized. Every
publisher of books has some comprehension of the enormous number of
would-be authors there are of whom the world will never hear. Ambition
is good, but disappointed ambition too often embitters life. Most of us
have some limitations which cannot be removed. Certain of these
limitations it is well to accept and not beat one's wings forever
against the bars.
Others may surpass you because of greater natural endowments or larger
opportunity, or both, but this should not move you from the even tenor
of your way. No less faulty than the complacent, self-satisfied life is
the life spoiled because of unfulfilled ambitions. We should accept
ourselves, with the limitations that cannot be removed, and go about it
to make, with the material at hand, the most successful life possible.
The highest of all attainments, the living of a successful life, depends
not upon outward circumstances, not upon opportunities, not upon freedom
from annoyances or even from trials and sorrows. In the last analysis it
depends upon one's power to make the best and the most of those things
which belong to his portion. If one can do that, life has no terrors for
him. No misfortune or disappointment can prevail against him or disturb
the serenity of his soul. He can say with Henley:--
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
IX
CONFLICTING LOYALTIES
Some of the saddest yet most common tragedies enacted in life about us
have their source in the conflict between duty to self and duty to
others. Is it because of our innate selfishness that so many sermons
need to be preached to us about our duty to others? Perhaps it is
thought that duty to self is so natural that we do not need a great deal
of urging or warning in that direction. At any rate, we hear much less
about our duty to ourselves than about our duty to others. It is
therefore not strange that some generous and over-conscientious souls
should come to feel that when a conflict arises between these two kinds
of duties, self should always sink out of sight. This, however, is not a
reasonable view. While the words, "He who saveth his life shall lose
it," are among the greatest ever uttered, yet we must remember that He
who spake them gave us also the Parable of the Talents, and was wroth
with the man who took his one talent and hid it in the earth.
Many an earnest seeker after right is led to protest against a view of
duty so one-sided. When one is urged to surrender self, to lose self, to
care naught what becomes of self, one is led to cry, "But am _I_ of no
worth? Has God not given me certain responsibilities with regard to my
own life, and have I not the solemn duty of rendering back the talent
given me, increased as many-fold as possible?"
The answer to these questions is unmistakable. My responsibility for
myself is one that no other can assume. St. Paul states clearly one of
the best reasons why we have no right to ignore self. "For every man
must bear his own burden." If we cannot bear our own burdens, others
must bear them for us. But it is expected that we shall do more than
carry our own load; for in the same chapter we are commanded, "Bear ye
one another's burdens." The inconsistency is only apparent, not real.
That self is not something to be effaced and trodden under whenever
possible seems to be proved by the testimony of language. Let us examine
a few of the derivatives of the word "self." While some of these words
suggest self-effacement, others speak in no uncertain tones of the
dignity and worth of self.
_Self-centered_ is a term of reproach, but _self-reliance_ is a duty.
_Self-seeking_ is base, but _self-possession_ is commendable.
_Self-complacency_ and _self-esteem_ we despise, but _self-control_ and
_self-confidence_ are admired. Who can respect any one who is lacking in
_self-respect_? _Self-sacrifice_ is a word that brings a glow or a
thrill to the heart perhaps beyond any other; yet _self-preservation_ is
sometimes one's highest duty.
Evidently, then, it is your duty to efface yourself and to assert
yourself; to humble yourself and to respect yourself; to sacrifice
yourself and to preserve yourself. At any rate, it seems clear that self
is of importance and that we cannot be complete persons without somehow
regarding self.
For centuries philosophers have puzzled or disputed over the definition
of selfishness. Where shall we draw the line between obligation to self
and obligation to others? Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, went
so far as to say, "Dream not that man will lift his little finger except
for his own advantage." If he means that every one always seeks his own
personal advantage, as he seems to, he is absurdly wrong. For proof of
it you need look no further than the first mother you meet who is
spending herself lavishly for her child. If he means that each one
really does what he most wants to do, he is right. I once knew a girl
who had a delightful habit of spending most of her allowance on others
rather than on herself. No good cause that needed help ever appealed to
her in vain. She was continually seeking out individual needs which she
could remedy. When praise was bestowed upon one of her unselfish acts, a
schoolmate remarked, "Oh, that isn't unselfishness. She really _likes_
to use her money that way." Yes, she does, but it is unselfishness none
the less. Her strongest inclinations lead her in a direction not easily
understood by those who have had little practice in unselfish acts. But
to call her conduct selfish is like calling white black, or light
darkness.