Happy is the man who is able to follow straight on, though often
wearily and painfully, in the tracks of the divine ideal who stood
by his side in his youth, though sadly conscious of weary lengths of
way, of gulfs and chasms, which since those days have come to stretch
between him and his ideal—of the difference between the man God meant
him to be—of the manhood he thought he saw so clearly in those early
days—and the man he and the world together managed to make of him.
I say, happy is that man. I had almost said that no other than he is
happy in any true or noble sense, even in this hard materialistic
nineteenth century, when the faith, that the weak must go to the
wall, that the strong alone are to survive, prevails as it never did
before—which on the surface seems specially to be organized for the
destruction of ideals and the quenching of enthusiasms. I feel deeply
the responsibility of making _any_ assertion on so moot a point;
nevertheless, even in our materialistic age, I must urge you all, as
you would do good work in the world, to take your stand resolutely and
once for all, and all your lives through, on the side of the idealists.