Chapter 2

The Twentieth Century will find room for pure science as well as for applied science and ingenious invention. Each Helmholtz of the future will give rise to a thousand Edisons. Exact knowledge must precede any form of applications. The reward of pure science will be, in the future as in the past, of its own kind, not fame nor money, but the joy of finding truth. To this joy no favor of fortune can add. The student of nature in all the ages has taken the vow of poverty. To him money, his own or others, means only the power to do more or better work.

The Twentieth Century will have its share in literature and art. Most of the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not trained to make time count, will be forgotten before the century is half over. The books it saves will be books of its own kind, plain, straightforward, clear-cut, marked by that "fanaticism for veracity" which means everything else that is good in the intellectual and moral development of man. The literature of form is giving way already to the literature of power. We care less and less for the surprises and scintillations of clever fellows; we care more and more for the real thoughts of real men. We find that the deepest thoughts can be expressed in the simplest language. "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points" in literature as well as in mechanics. "In simplicity is strength," as Watt said of machinery, and it is true in art as well as in mechanics.

In medicine, the field of action is growing infinitely broader, now that its training is securely based on science, and the divining rod no longer stands first among its implements of precision. Not long ago, it is said, a young medical student in New York committed suicide, leaving behind this touching sentence: "I die because there is room for no more doctors." And this just now, when for the first time it is worth while to be a doctor. Room for no more doctors, no doubt, of the kind to which he belonged--men who know nothing and care nothing for science and its methods, who choose the medical school which will turn them loose most quickly and cheaply, who have no feeling for their patients, and whose prescriptions are given with no more conscience than goes into the fabrication of an electric belt or the compounding of a patent medicine. Room for no more doctors whose highest conception is to look wise, take his chances, and pocket the fee. Room for no more doctors just now, when the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology has shown the way to a thousand uses of preventive surgery. Room for no more doctors, when the knowledge of the microbes and their germs has given the hope of successful warfare against all contagious diseases; room for no more doctors, when antiseptics and anaesthetics have proved their value in a thousand pain-saving ways. Room for no more doctors now, when the doctor must be an honest man, with a sound knowledge of the human body and a mastery of the methods of the sciences on which this knowledge depends. Room for no more doctors of the incompetent class, because the wiser times demand a better service.

What is true in medicine applies also to the profession of law. The pettifogger must give place to the jurist. The law is not a device for getting around the statutes. It is the science and art of equity. The lawyers of the future will not be mere pleaders before juries. They will save their clients from need of judge or jury. In every civilized nation the lawyers must be the law-givers. The sword has given place to the green bag. The demands of the Twentieth Century will be that the statutes coincide with equity. This condition educated lawyers can bring about. To know equity is to be its defender.

In politics the demand for serious service must grow. As we have to do with wise and clean men, statesmen, instead of vote-manipulators, we shall feel more and more the need for them. We shall demand not only men who can lead in action, but men who can prevent unwise action. Often the policy which seems most attractive to the majority is full of danger for the future. We need men who can face popular opinion, and, if need be, to face it down. The best citizen is one not afraid to cast his vote away by voting with the minority.

As we look at it in the rough, the political outlook of democracy often seems discouraging. A great, rich, busy nation cannot stop to see who grabs its pennies. We are plundered by the rich, we are robbed by the poor, and trusts and unions play the tyrant over both. But all these evils are temporary. The men that have solved greater problems in the past will not be balked by these. Whatever is won for the cause of equity and decency is never lost again. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and in this Twentieth Century there are always plenty who are awake. One by one political reforms take their place on our statute books, and each one comes to stay.

In all this, the journalist of the future may find an honorable place. He will learn to temper enterprise with justice, audacity with fidelity, omniscience with truthfulness. When he does this he will become a natural leader of men because he will be their real servant. To mould public opinion, to furnish a truthful picture of the times from day to day, either of these ideals in journalism gives ample room for the play of the highest manly energy.

The need of the teacher will not grow less as the century goes on. The history of the future is written in the schools of to-day, and the reform which gives us better schools is the greatest of reforms. It is said that the teacher's noblest work is to lead the child to his inheritance. This is the inheritance he would win; the truth that men have tested in the past, and the means by which they were led to know that it was truth. "Free should the scholar be--free and brave," and to such as these the Twentieth Century will bring the reward of the scholar.

The Twentieth Century will need its preachers and leaders in religion. Some say, idly, that religion is losing her hold in these strenuous days. But she is not. She is simply changing her grip. The religion of this century will be more practical, more real. It will deal with the days of the week as well as with the Sabbath. It will be as patent in the marts of trade as in the walls of a cathedral, for a man's religion is his working hypothesis of life, not of life in some future world, but of life right here to-day, the only day we have in which to build a life. It will not look backward exclusively to "a dead fact stranded on the shore of the oblivious years," nor will its rewards be found alone in the life to come. The world of to-day will not be a "vale of tears" through which sinful men are to walk unhappily toward final reward. It will be a world of light and color and joy, a world in which each of us may have a noble though a humble part,--the work of the "holy life of action." It will find religion in love and wisdom and virtue, not in bloodless asceticism, philosophical disputation, the maintenance of withered creeds, the cultivation of fruitless emotion, or the recrudescence of forms from which the life has gone out. It is possible, Thoreau tells us, for us to "walk in hallowed cathedrals," and this in our every-day lives of profession or trade. It is the loyalty to duty, the love of God through the love of men, which may transform the workshop to a cathedral, and the life of to-day may be divine none the less because it is strenuous and complex. It may be all the more so because it is democratic, even the Sabbath and its duties being no longer exalted above the other holy days.

What sort of men does the century need for all this work it has to do? We may be sure that it will choose its own, and those who cannot serve it will be cast aside unpityingly. Those it can use it will pay generously, each after its kind, some with money, some with fame, some with the sense of power, some with the joy of service. Some will work hard in spite of vast wealth, some only after taking the vow of poverty.

Those not needed you can find any day. They lean against lamp-posts in platoons, they crowd the saloons, they stand about railway stations all day long to see trains go by. They dally on the lounges of fashionable clubs. They may be had tied in bundles by the employers of menial labor. Their women work at the wash-tubs, and crowd the sweat shops of great cities; or, idle rich, they may dawdle in the various ways in which men and women dispose of time, yielding nothing in return for it. You, whom the century wants, belong to none of these classes. Yours must be the spirit of the times, strenuous, complex, democratic.

A young man is a mighty reservoir of unused power. "Give me health and a day and I will put the pomp of emperors to shame." If I save my strength and make the most of it, there is scarcely a limit to what I may do. The right kind of men using their strength rightly, far outrun their own ambitions, not as to wealth and fame and position, but as to actual accomplishment. "I never dreamed that I should do so much," is the frequent saying of a successful man; for all men are ready to help him who throws his whole soul into the service.

Men of training the century must demand. It is impossible to drop into greatness. "There is always room at the top." so the Chicago merchant said to his son, "but the elevator is not running." You must walk up the stairs on your own feet. It is as easy to do great things as small, if you only know how. The only way to learn to do great things is to do small things well, patiently, loyally. If your ambitions run high, it will take a long time in preparation. There is no hurry. No wise man begrudges any of the time spent in the preparation for life, so long as it is actually making ready.

"Profligacy," says Emerson, "consists not in spending, but in spending off the line of your career. The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and there."

The value of the college training of to-day cannot be too strongly emphasized. You cannot save time nor money by omitting it, whatever the profession on which you enter. The college is becoming a part of life. For a long time the American college was swayed by the traditions of the English aristocracy. Its purpose was to certify to a man's personal culture. The young man was sent to college that he might be a member of a gentler caste. His degree was his badge that in his youth he had done the proper thing for a gentleman to do. It attested not that he was wise or good or competent to serve, but that he was bred a gentleman among gentlemen.

So long as the title of academic bachelor had this significance, the man of action passed it by. It had no meaning to him, and the fine edge of accuracy in thought and perception, which only the college can give, was wanting in his work. The college education did not seem to disclose the secret of power, and the man of affairs would have none of it.

A higher ideal came from Germany,--that of erudition. The German scholar knows some one thing thoroughly. He may be rude or uncultured, he may not know how to use his knowledge, but whatever this knowledge is, it is sound and genuine. Thoroughness of knowledge gives the scholar self-respect; it makes possible a broad horizon and clear perspective. From these sources, English and German, the American University is developing its own essential idea,--that of personal effectiveness. The American University of to-day seeks neither culture nor erudition as its final end. It values both as means to greater ends. It looks forward to work in life. Its triumphs in these regards the century will see clearly. It will value culture and treasure erudition, but it will use both as helps toward doing things. It will find its inspiration in the needs of the world as it is, and it is through such effort that the world that is to be shall be made a reality. A great work demands full preparation. It takes larger provision for a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope than for a trip to the Isle of Dogs. For this reason the century will ask its men to take a college education.

It will ask much more than that,--a college education where the work is done in earnest, students and teachers realizing its serious value, and besides all this, it will demand the best special training which its best universities can give. For the Twentieth Century will not be satisfied with the universities of the fifteenth or seventeenth centuries. It will create its own, and the young man who does the century's work will be a product of its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training for strenuous life is not in academic idleness. The development of living ideals is not in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blasé, lukewarm, fin-de-siècle young man of the clubs will not represent university culture, nor, on the other hand, will culture be dominated by a cheap utilitarianism.

"You will hear every day around you," said Emerson to the divinity students of Harvard, "the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that your first duty is to get land and money, place and fame. 'What is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask in derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explain truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I; I renounce, I am sorry for it--my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic speculations go until some more favorable season,' then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art and poetry and science, as they have died already in a hundred thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis in your history."

The age will demand steady headed men, men whose feet stand on the ground, men who can see things as they really are, and act accordingly. "The resolute facing of the world as it is, with all the garments of make-believe thrown off,"--this, according to Huxley, is the sole cure for the evils which beset men and nations. The only philosophy of life is that derived from its science. We know right from wrong because the destruction is plain in human experience. Right action brings abundance of life. Wrong action brings narrowness, decay, and degeneration. A man must have principles of life above all questions of the mere opportunities of to-day, but these principles are themselves derived from experience. They belong to the higher opportunism, the consideration of what is best in the long run. The man who is controlled by an arbitrary system without reference to conditions, is ineffective. He becomes a crank, a fanatic, a man whose aims are out of all proportion to results. This is because he is dealing with an imaginary world, not with the world as it is. We may admire the valiant knight who displays a noble chivalry in fighting wind-mills, but we do not call on a wind-mill warrior when we have some plain, real work to accomplish. All progress, large or small, is the resultant of many forces. We cannot single out any one of these as of dominant value, and ignore or despise the others. In moving through the solar system, the earth is falling toward the sun as well as flying away from it. In human society, egoism is coexistent with altruism, competition with co-operation, mutual struggle with mutual aid. Each is as old as the other and each as important; for the one could not exist without the other. Not in air-built Utopias, but in flesh and blood, wood and stone and iron, will the movement of humanity find its realization.

Don't count on gambling as a means of success. Gambling rests on the desire to get something for nothing. So does burglary and larceny. "The love of money is the root of all evil." This was said long ago, and it is not exactly what the wise man meant. He was speaking of unearned money. Money is power, and to save up power is thrift. On thrift civilization is builded. The root of all evil is the desire to get money without earning it. To get something for nothing demoralizes all effort. The man who gets a windfall spends his days watching the wind. The man who wins in a lottery buys more lottery tickets. Whoever receives bad money, soon throws good money after bad. He will throw that of others when his own is gone. No firm or corporation is rich enough to afford to keep gamblers as clerks.

The age will demand men of good taste who care for the best they know. Vulgarity is satisfaction with mean things. That is vulgar which is poor of its kind. There is a kind of music called rag-time,--vulgar music, with catchy tunes--catchy to those who do not know nor care for things better. There are men satisfied with rag-time music, with rag-time theatres, with rag-time politics, rag-time knowledge, rag-time religion. "It was my duty to have loved the highest." The highest of one man may be low for another, but no one can afford to look downward for his enjoyments. The corrosion of vulgarity spreads everywhere. Its poison enters every home. The billboards of our cities bear evidence to it; our newspapers reek with it, our story books are filled with it; we cannot keep it out of our churches or our colleges. The man who succeeds must shun, vulgarity. To be satisfied with poor things in one line will tarnish his ideals in the direction of his best efforts. One great source of failure in life is satisfaction with mean things. It is easier to be almost right than to be right. It is less trying to wish than to do. There are many things that glitter as well as gold and which can be had more cheaply. Illusion is always in the market and can be had on easy terms. Realities do not lie on the bargain counters. Happiness is based on reality. It must be earned before we can come into its possession. Happiness is not a state. It is the accompaniment of action. It comes from the exercise of natural functions, from doing, thinking, planning, fighting, overcoming, loving. It is positive and strengthening. It is the signal "all is well," passed from one nerve cell to another. It does not burn out as it glows. It makes room for more happiness. Loving, too, is a positive word. It is related to happiness as an impulse to action. The love that does not work itself out in helping acts as mere torture of the mind. The primal impulse of vice and sin is a short cut to happiness. It promises pleasure without earning it. And this pleasure is always an illusion. Its final legacy is weakness and pain. Pain is not a punishment, but a warning of harm done to the body. The unearned pleasures provoke this warning. They leave a "dark brown taste in the mouth." Their recollection is "different in the morning." Such pleasures, Robert Burns who had tried many of them says, are "like poppies spread," or "like the snow-falls on the river." But it is not true that they pass and leave no trace. Their touch is blasting. But true happiness leaves no reaction. To do strengthens a man for more doing; to love makes room for more loving.

The second power of vulgarity is obscenity, and this vice is like the pestilence. All inane vulgarity tends to become obscene. From obscenity rather than drink comes the helplessness of the ordinary tramp.

Another form of vulgarity is profanity. The habit of swearing is not a mark of manliness. It is the sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature, a lack of verbal initiative. Sometimes, perhaps, profanity seems picturesque and effective. I have known it so in Arizona once or twice, in old Mexico and perhaps in Wyoming, but never in the home, or the street, or the ordinary affairs of life. It is not that blasphemy is offensive to God. He is used to it, perhaps, for he has met it under many conditions. But it is offensive to man, insulting to the atmosphere, and destructive of him who uses it. Profanity and bluster are not signs of courage. The bravest men are quiet of speech and modest in demeanor.

The man who is successful will not be a dreamer. He will have but one dream and that will work itself out as a purpose. Dreaming wanes into sentimentalism, and sentimentalism is fatal to action. The man of purpose says no to all lesser calls, all minor opportunities. He does not abandon his college education because a hundred dollar position is offered him outside. He does not turn from one profession because there is money in another. He has his claim staked out, and with time he will only fill in the detail of its boundaries.

"Now that you are through college, what are you going to do?" asked a friend of a wise young man.

"I shall study medicine," was the grave reply.

"But isn't that profession already overcrowded?" asked the friend.

"Possibly it is," said the youth, "but I purpose to study medicine all the same. Those who are already in the profession must take their chances."

In this joke of the newspapers there is a sound philosophy. Men of purpose never overcrowd. The crowd is around the foot of the staircase waiting for the elevator.

The old traveller, Rafinesque, tells us that when he was a boy he read the voyages of Captain Cook, Le Vaillant, Pallas, and Bougainville, and "my soul was fired to be a great traveller like them, and so I became such," he adds shortly.

If you say to yourself: "I will be a traveller, a statesman, an engineer;" if you never unsay it; if you bend all your powers in that direction; if you take advantage of all helps that come in your way and reject all that do not, you will sometime reach your goal. For the world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going.

"Why should we call ourselves men," said Mirabeau, "unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. Say of nothing: 'This is beneath me,' nor feel that anything is beyond your power, for nothing is impossible to the man who can will."

Do not say that I am expecting too much of the effects of a firm resolution, that I give advice which would lead to failure. For the man who will fail will never take a resolution. Those among you whom fate has cut out to be nobodies are the ones who will never try!

Even harmless pleasures hurt if they win you from your purpose. Lorimer's old merchant writes to his son at Harvard: "You will meet fools enough in the day without hunting up the main herd at night." This plain business man's advice is worth every young man's attention.

The Twentieth Century will ask for men of instant decision, men whose mental equipment is all in order, ready to be used on the instant. Yes and no, right and wrong, we must have them labelled and ready to pack to go anywhere, to do anything at any time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous century will grant them but short shrift.

The man of the Twentieth Century will be a hopeful man. He will love the world and the world will love him. "There is no hope for you," Thoreau once said, "unless this bit of sod under your feet is the sweetest for you in the world--in any world." The effective man takes his reward as he goes along. Nowhere is the sky so blue, the grass so green, the opportunities so choice as now, here, to-day, the time, the place where his work must be done.

"To-day is your day and mine," I have said on another occasion; "the only day we have, the day in which we play our part; what our part may signify in the great whole we may not understand, but we are here to play it, and now is the time. This we know: it is a part of action, not of whining. It is a part of love, not cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of human helpfulness."