I write to you, my boy, out of the experience and observation of thirty years in which I have followed as best I could the careers of graduates of many of our colleges. The other afternoon I set down the names of some of these graduates of the two colleges which I know best. Among them were men who, fifteen or thirty years after their graduation, are doing first-rate work. They are lawyers, editors, physicians, judges, clergymen, teachers, merchants, manufacturers, architects and writers. As I have looked at the list with a mind somewhat inquisitive I have asked myself what are the qualities or conditions which have contributed to the winning of the great results which these men have won.
The answers which I have given myself are manifold. For it is always difficult in personal matters to differentiate and to determine causes. In mechanical concerns it is not difficult. But in the calculation of causes which constitute the value of a person as a working force one often finds oneself baffled. The result frequently seems either more or less than an equivalent of the co-operating forces. The personal factor, the personal equation counts immensely. These values we cannot measure in scales or figure out by the four processes of arithmetic.
Be it said that the causes of the success of these men do not lie in their conditions. No happy combination of circumstances, no windfall of chance, gave them what they have achieved. If those who graduated in the eighth decade had graduated in the ninth, or if those who graduated in the ninth had graduated in the earlier time, it probably would have made no difference. Neither does the name, with possibly a single exception, nor wealth prove to be a special aid. Nor have friends boosted or pushed them. Friends may have opened doors for them; but friends have not urged them either to see or to embrace opportunities.
These men seem to me to have for their primary and comprehensive characteristic a large sanity. They have the broad vision and the long look. They possess usually a kind of sobriety which may almost be called Washingtonian. The insane man reasons correctly from false premises. The fool has no premises from which to reason. These men are neither insane nor foolish. They have suppositions, presuppositions, which are true. They also follow logical principles which are sound. They are in every way well-ordered. They keep their brains where their brains ought to be—inside their skulls. They keep their hearts where their hearts ought to be—inside their chests. They keep their appetites where their appetites ought to be. Too many men keep their brains inside their chests: the emotions absorb the intellect. Too many men put their hearts inside their skull: the emotions are dried up in the clear air of thought. Too many put both brains and heart where the appetites are: both judgment and action are swallowed up in the animal.
But these men are whole, wholesome, healthy, healthful. They seem to represent those qualities which, James Bryce says, Archbishop Tait embodied: "He had not merely moderation, but what, though often confounded with moderation, is something rarer and better, a steady balance of mind. He was carried about by no winds of doctrine. He seldom yielded to impulses, and was never so seduced by any one theory as to lose sight of other views and conditions which had to be regarded. He knew how to be dignified without assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent without timidity, judicious without coldness." They are remote from crankiness, eccentricity. They may or may not have fads; but they are not faddists. Not one of them is a genius in either the good or the evil side of conspicuous native power. They see and weigh evidence. They are a happy union of wit and wisdom, of jest and precept, of work and play, of companionship and solitude, of thinking and resting, of receptivity and creativeness, of the ideal and the practical, of individualism and of sympathy. They are living in the day, but they are not living for the day. They embody the doctrine of the golden mean.
Each of these men has also in his career usually more than filled the place he occupied. He has overflowed into the next higher place. The overflow has raised him into the higher lock. The career has been an ascending spiral. Each higher curve has sprung out of the preceding and lower. From the attorneyship of the county to service as attorney of the State, and to a place on the Supreme Bench of the United States:—From a pastorate in a small Maine city to a pastorate suburban, and from the pastorate suburban to a pastorate on Fifth Avenue:—From a professorship in an humble place to a professorship in largest relations:—From the building of cottages to the building of great libraries and museums. This is the order of progression. I will not say that any of these men did the best he could do at every step of the way. Some did; some did not, probably. But what is to the point, each did better than the place demanded. He more than earned his wages, his salary, his pay. He had a surplus; he was a creditor. His employers owed him more than they paid him. They found the best way of paying him and keeping him was to advance him.
Such is the natural evolution of skill and power. The only legitimate method of advancement is to make advancement necessary, inevitable, by the simple law of achievement. The simple law of achievement depends upon the law of increasing force, which is the law that personal force grows through the use of personal force.
Hiram Stevens Maxim in the sketch of his life tells of his working in Flynt's carriage factory at Abbot, Maine, when a boy of about fifteen. From Flynt's at Abbot he went to Dexter, a large town, where he became a foreman. He presently went to a threshing machine factory in northern New York; thence to Fitchburg, Mass., where he obtained a place in the engineering works of his uncle. In this factory he says he could do more work than any other man save one. Thence he went to a place in Boston; from Boston to New York, where he received high pay as a draughtsman. While he was working in New York he conceived the idea of making a gun which would load and fire itself by the energy derived from the burning powder. From work in a little place in Maine, Maxim, by doing each work the best possible, has made himself a larger power.
Furthermore, these men represent goodfellowship. They embody friendliness. The late Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke) was at one time esteemed to be the equal of John Bright and of Gladstone in oratory, and their superior in intellect. He died in 1892 unknown and unlamented. He failed by reason of a lack of friendliness. Lowe was once an examiner at Oxford. Into an oral examination which he was conducting a friend came and asked how he was getting on. "Excellently," replied Lowe, "five men flunked already and the sixth is shaky." Ability without goodfellowship is usually ineffective; good ability plus good fellowship makes for great results.
In this atmosphere of friendliness, these men are practising the Golden Rule. They are not advertising the fact. They do much in this atmosphere of friendliness for large bodies of people. They follow the sentiment which Pasteur expressed near the close of his great career: "Say to yourselves first: 'What have I done for my instruction?' and, as you gradually advance, 'What have I done for my country?' until the time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the progress and to the good of humanity. But whether our efforts are or are not favored by life, let us be able to say when we come near the great goal: 'I have done what I could.'" They have done much for the individual, for the local neighborhood. They have given themselves in numberless services, boards, committees, commissions—works which count much in time and strength. These services constitute no small share of the worth of a commonwealth, of a community.
To one relation of these men I wish especially to refer. This is their relation to wealth. Some of these men are business men. Wealth is one of the normal results of business. Some of these men are professional men. Wealth is not the normal result of professional service. But the seeking of wealth has not in the life and endeavor of these men played a conspicuous part. If wealth is the primary purpose, they keep the purpose to themselves. They do not talk much about it. But most of them do not hold wealth as a primary purpose. Rather their primary and atmospheric aim is to serve the community through their business. The same purpose moves them which also moves the lawyer, the minister, the doctor. Life, not living, is their principle.
To one further element I must refer. It comprehends, perhaps, much that I have been trying to say to you, my son. These men kept, and are keeping themselves to their work. They do not waste themselves. They are economical of time and strength. The late Provost Pepper of the University of Pennsylvania said (in a manuscript not formally published): "Many can do with less than eight or even seven hours of sleep while working hard, provided they recognize the increased risk; that while running their engine they take more scrupulous care with every part of the machinery. Machine must be perfect, fuel ditto; everything must be sacrificed to the one point of keeping the machinery running thus: Subjection of carnal, emotional excesses; certainty that no weak spots exist; diet, especially too much eating, too fast eating; stimulants, tobacco, open-air exercise; cool-headed, almost callous, critical analysis of oneself, one's sensations and effect of work on the system; clear knowledge of danger lines; result, avoidance of transgressing, and immediate summons at right time."
These men are men of self-restraint. They are like rivers having dams, keeping their waters back in order that the water may be used more effectively. They are free from entangling alliances. They are not men of one thing; they are often men of two, three, a dozen things. But one thing is primary, the others secondary. They may have avocations; but they have only one vocation. "This one thing I do." I have already quoted from Pasteur. Of him it is said by his biographer: "In the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor of his rooms at the École Normale, cogitating over various details of his work. At ten o'clock he went to bed, and at eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his work in the laboratory." His wife wrote to their children: "Your father is absorbed in his thoughts, talks little, sleeps little, rises at dawn, and in one word, continues the life I began with him this day thirty-five years ago." Learn from the Frenchman, my boy!
Keeping themselves at their one work these men embody a sense of duty. I find they have a conscience. Their conscience is not worn outside, but inside, their bosom. They make no show of doing what they ought. They simply do what they are called upon to do—and that is all there is to it. It was said of a first scholar in an historic college that he was never caught working. These same men may, or may not be caught working, but they do work, and their work is a normal and moral part of their being.
But your face, my son, is rather toward your own future than toward the past of other men. But your own future is as nothing save as it touches other men. Therefore, do have an enthusiasm for man as man. Enthusiasm for humanity has its basis in love for man as man, in a belief in the indefinite progress of man and in a determination to promote that progress. In a posthumous romance of Hawthorne the heroine points out to her lover the service which they will give to mankind in successive endless generations. In one age, poverty shall be wiped out; in another, passion and hatred and jealousy shall cease; in a third, beauty shall take the place of ugliness, happiness of pain, and generosity of niggardliness. In reality, not in romance, every student is to feel a passion for human service. These toiling and tired brothers and sisters are to be loved, not with a mere emotional affection, but with a mighty will. One is to adopt the principle of Gladstone and not of the Marquis of Salisbury in relation to humanity.
The student also is to believe that the human brotherhood is capable of indefinite progress. The law of evolution makes the belief in human perfectibility easy; the principles of religion make the belief glorious. Slow is the progress. One generation turns the jack-screw of uplifting one thread; but it is a thread. Humanity does rise. Linked with this love for man and the assurance of his progress the college man is to determine himself to advance this progress. Whatever his condition, whatever his ability, he is to do his part. As is said in that noble epitaph to Wordsworth, placed in the little church at Grasmere, each is to be "a minister of high and sacred truth."
I want you to come out from the college with a determination to do something worth while. It is rather singular how political ambitions have ceased among graduates. Some say all ambition has ceased among college men. I do not believe it. The softer times may not nurse the sturdier virtues; but men are still men. The words which Stevenson wanted put on his tombstone: "He clung to his paddle," and the words of George Eliot: "Don't take opium," and the words of Carlyle: "Burn your own smoke," are still characteristic of college men. Men are still moved by the great things, and by such inspiration they are inspired great things to do.