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-G.o.d, 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 prost.i.tute 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 encoa.r.s.en 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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tle will ever mean quite so much, will ever be quite so n.o.ble, 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 G.o.dlike 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 emanc.i.p.ate 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, prost.i.tute 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 inst.i.tution 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 trans.m.u.te 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, const.i.tutes 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 trans.m.u.ting every bit of knowledge into power, into working capital.
As the silkworm trans.m.u.tes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should trans.m.u.te your knowledge into practical wisdom.
There is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a well-a.s.similated 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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.sociations; 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 h.o.a.rd 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 inst.i.tution that gave him his chance.