The first requisite in life is that we shall be able to earn a living.
For our own good we must be able to produce as much or more than we
consume, and to make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.
And we can help ourselves only by helping others. A transaction where
only one side makes money is immoral. ¶ Reciprocity, Co-operation,
Mutuality, are the three big words. To be of genuine advantage, all
human effort must be reciprocal. The worker who works merely with his
own benefit in mind doesn’t get much benefit ❦ Personal good comes
incidentally, and to go after a gain direct is to have it elude you.
The very effort you put forth to secure the thing sets in motion an
opposition that makes it slip away beyond your reach. The man who seizes
culture by the cosmic scruff will never secure her tender confidences.
¶ If you want to study the birds you do not go in wild search for them;
you simply seat yourself on a log in the woods and, lo! soon the branches
are vibrant with song. To clutch for love and demand it makes you both
unlovely and unlovable. If you would have friends, be one. ¶ This
great spiritual law which provides that we lose the thing for which we
selfishly strive has seemingly been overlooked in our universities and
institutions that foster the so-called Higher Culture. Fond parents send
their sons to college for but one reason—not to earn a living, not to
render the world a service, not to perform some necessary task—they send
them to college in order to absorb and appropriate a certain imaginary
good. The idea of reciprocity in a college is a barren ideality. The
“work” is non-productive, futile, fictive, fallacious and imaginary. In
all Nature there is no analogy to this thing of making an animal as big
as his father exempt from securing his own living ❦ The birds in the nest
are fed, and the young are suckled; but a weaning-time that does not
take place until long after adolescence is fraught with danger. The plan
is medieval and dates to a time when conspicuous waste and conspicuous
leisure were the badge of respectability. The college is really a
mendicant institution: its teachers and students belong to the parasitic
class. ¶ The fact that a thing has to be endowed proves there is
something wrong with it. It is not self-sufficient and in itself supplies
no excuse for being. It requires an explanation. No explanation ever
explains the necessity of making one. ¶ Our system of teaching will never
approximate the perfect until we devise an Industrial College where the
students will produce as well as consume. The school then will not be an
imitation of life—it will be life ❦ The fact that many college graduates
are highly successful men does not answer the argument—that very many
college graduates are wholly incompetent is the thing that forms the
damning count. The man who gets his education out of his work, at his
work, is the type that has always ruled and yet rules the world. We are
safe only as we move with Nature; and any system of teaching that seeks
to improve on Nature is founded on fallacy. ¶ There is only one valid
reason for sending a boy to college, and that is, so he can discover for
himself that there is nothing in it. A college degree, as matters now
stand, is like a certificate of character—useful only to those who need
it. However, there must surely come a time when degrees will be given
only to those who can earn a living—and this degree will be signed by the
young man’s employer. ¶ All this for the simple reason that no man is a
safe person whose time is not employed in some useful daily occupation
where others as well as himself are the gainers. Time and energy not
used, or misused, form a dangerous dynamite; while time and human effort
fused with reciprocity produce radium. Can you earn a living? Also, do
you? ❦
[Illustration]
[Illustration]