Some four years ago a young man of uncommon ability, but lacking the imagination of hope, said to me that it seemed to him as if everything great had already been done.
"Great battles," said he, "have been fought; there will be no more wars of magnitude. The great principles of the law have all been announced and applied to every conceivable form of human rights and controversy. For example, in our own country there will be no more new and great constitutional arguments. Everything, from now on, will be only an application of what has already been said and decided.
"In invention, there may be some improvements on old and present devices, but there will be no more Edisons, no more Marconis. In medicine, we are about at the top of the mountain. In literature, the creative and fundamental things have all been done. There will be no more Shakespeares, no Miltons, no Dantes, no Goethes. Even Hugo is dead. From now on books will be mere second-hand talk.
"In statesmanship, nothing is left except that common housekeeping which we call administering government. In diplomacy, the same old lies will continue to be told, and so on."
This young man's profoundly melancholy view of life is that which I have found crushing theélanout of many young men; and particularly college students. In their hearts they feel that progress is finished, so far as individual effortby themis concerned. They feel thatfor themthere is nothing but to eat, sleep, laugh, grieve and go to their graves. They feel thatfor themthere is no such thing as leaving behind them a monument of their own constructive effort. Talk to most young men in college or school, and you will find this feeling, like a pathetic minor chord, running through their highest and most daring boasts.
Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy negativeness of life? However it happens, the truth is that too few young men come out of our great universities with the greater part of the boldness of youth left in them. Somehow or other those fine, and, if you will, absurd enthusiasms which nobody but young men and geniuses are blessed with, have been educated out of the graduate. How many seniors in our historic American universities would not have sneered John Bunyan out of existence, or have told the young and unripe Bonaparte how presumptuous he was to think of fighting the trained generals of Europe?
"Yes," says a certain type of young man, "all the great things have been done. Nothing is left for me but the commonplaces." This is not true.
The great things have not all been done; scarcely have they been commenced. "There is more before us than there is behind us," said my old forest "guide," wise with the wisdom of the woods and their thoughtful silences. And the purpose of this paper is to point out the infinite number of practical possibilities immediately at hand; to awaken each young man who reads these words to some one of the million voices which from all the fields of human endeavor is calling him; and so, by showing him things to do, make him a doer of things, if he will.
Let us take the law—that entrancing subject which exercises such an empire over the minds of most young men. Our own constitutional law is only a part of that universal body of jurisprudence with which all real lawyers must deal. Very well; we have only begun the discussion and settlement of our great constitutional questions. Marshall and Hamilton, it is true, when they formulated the doctrine of implied powers, seemed to unlock the door of all constitutional difficulties, leaving nothing for future lawyers and jurists to do but to find their way through the channels and passages thus opened.
But it was only one great field to which they laid down the bars. Others equally large—yes, larger—lie beyond it. It is generally admitted now by all thorough students of the Constitution that there is such a thing as constitutional progress—constitutional development. The Constitution does and will grow as the American people grow.
Half a dozen questions are now in the public mind that measure, in importance, up to the level of Marshall's elementary decisions. Beyond these is still the application of institutional law to the interpretation of the Constitution. There is no book so much needed in the present, or that will be so much needed in the future, as a great work on our institutional law—such a work as the world sees once in a century.
Consider this one phase of jurisprudence for only a moment, young man, just to see what a world of thought it opens to the mind. Institutional law is older, deeper, and even more vital than constitutional law. Our Constitution is one of the concrete manifestations of our institutions; our statutes are another; the decisions of our courts are another; our habits, methods, and customs as a people and a race are still another.
Our institutional law is like the atmosphere—impalpable, imperceptible, but all-pervading, and the source of life itself. Most leading decisions of our courts of last resort, involving great constitutional questions, refer to the spirit of our institutions as interpreting our Constitution. It is our institutional law which, flowing like our blood through the written Constitution, gives that instrument vitality and power of development.
Institutional law existed before the Constitution. Our institutions had their beginnings well-nigh with the beginning of time. They have developed through the ages. Magna Charta only marked a period in their growth; the assertion of the rights of the Commonsmarked another; our Revolution marked another; the adoption of our Constitution marked another still.
I have no respect for constitutional learning which deals alone with the written words of the Constitution, or even with the intention of its framers, and ignores the sources and spirit of that great instrument. The Constitution did not give us free institutions; free institutions gave us our Constitution. All our progress toward liberty and popular government, made since the adoption of the Constitution, has been the spirit of our institutions working out its sure results, through the Constitution when possible, modifying it when necessary.
Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence a denunciation of slavery, and called it an "execrable commerce." It was stricken out at the request of Georgia and South Carolina, and years afterward slavery was recognized in our Constitution.
But slavery was opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and while legalized by our Constitution and defended by armies as brave as ever marched to battle, constitutional slavery went down before institutional liberty; and Appomattox was the capitulation of the word of death in our Constitution to the spirit oflife in our institutions. Every amendment of our Constitution marks the progress of our institutions.
The Constitution contemplated and provided for the election of Presidents by electors, who should select the best man to preside over the Republic, irrespective of the people's choice. That was the intention of the fathers. But in that they did not correctly interpret the spirit and tendency of our institutions, which is toward getting the Government as close to the people as possible.
And so, in spite of the Constitution, in spite of the intention of the fathers, in spite of the fact that this plan was pursued for several elections, the spirit of our institutions prevailed over our Constitution, and no presidential elector now dare cast his ballot against the candidate for whom the people instruct him to vote.
Even outside of the doctrine of implied powers by which our written Constitution has been made to meet many of the emergencies of our history, there are important things in our National life that have all the force of organic law which are unprovided for by the Constitution. For example, the Constitution does not say that a congressman must live in thedistrict which he represents. So far as constitutional law is concerned, he might live anywhere. But no matter—our institutional law settles that. The theory of local self-government requires the representative of a locality to live in that locality.
Wherever our Constitution has been weak and insufficient in its apparent expressed powers, the spirit of our institutions has given it life. Read Marshall's opinions; read most of our great constitutional decisions; read the whole history of American constitutional progress, if you would know the beneficent influence of our institutions on our Constitution.
Thus we see that our institutions are the preservers of our Constitution. The doctrine of implied powers, which has saved the country and the Constitution too, has been made possible only by reading our Constitution by the light of our institutions, as Hamilton and Marshall did.
And so our security is not in the written word of the Constitution alone; it is there, of course, but it is in our institutions also which are the spirit of the Constitution, which illumine and emphasize the meaning of that noble instrument. England has no writtenconstitution; certain other countries have had and have now ideal written constitutions.
And yet England has steady and continuous liberty and law, while those others, even with written constitutions, frequently have had bureaucracy and military absolutism. They had theformsof liberty and popular government in these written constitutions, but they did not have free institutions, which alone make formal constitutions living and vital things.
England, without a written constitution, is almost as free a government as ours. Law reigns supreme. The poorest gatherer of rags has equal rights before the bar of justice with belted earl or millionaire, and those equal rights are impartially enforced. Neither wealth nor title are favored more than poverty or humble rank in the courts of England; and even royalty appears as witness, the same as his meanest subject.
The Government itself is subject to the will of the people; and no ministry remains in power in face of an adverse majority, or forces into law an act of which the people disapprove. The English Parliament goes to the people as often as the Government, in any of its proposed measures, fails of a majority. The suffrage is constantly enlarging, and the rightsof labor are almost as carefully guarded by the laws of England as by ours.
England's treatment of Ireland has been harsh, severe, unjust; and yet even there the spirit of a larger liberty in the interest of the Irish tenant, approaching state socialism, compels the landlord to sell his land whether he wants to or not, at a price fixed by others than himself, and enables the tenant to buy the land by the payment of his rent. Tolerance, justice, and individual liberty are daily developing throughout the British Empire, instead of diminishing.
And yet England has no written constitution. But she has institutions, free institutions, institutions similar to those we have here in America. It is the free institutions of England that preserve and increase the liberty of Englishmen, and diminish and destroy the authority of the monarch, who is now only the personification of the nation, the emblem of the Empire.
It is England's free institutions that, in Egypt, in Hongkong, in Ceylon, in the Malay states, in India, have given the people of those dark places some of the fruits of liberty to eat for the first time in all the strange history of the oppressed and wasted Orient. Andit is our free institutions, as well as our Constitution, that in America make kings impossible, and have, for a hundred years, wrought for a larger liberty and a more popular government.
And it is the spirit of our institutions, as well as our Constitution, that will prevent the abuse of power by American authority in Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, or any other spot blessed by the protection of our flag. It is our free institutions, working now by one method and now by another, after the fashion of our practical race, that are establishing order, equal laws, free speech, unpurchasable justice, and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" throughout our ocean possessions.
It is our institutional law, therefore, of which men should inquire who would know the meaning and the life of our constitutional law. We have heard from lawyer and orator of "the Constitution," "the letter of the Constitution," etc.; we have listened for "our institutions," and in vain. And yet, is it not written that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"?
Is it not written that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word thatproceedeth out of the mouth of God"? I respect not the expounders of constitutional law who have not learned the history of our institutions, of which the Constitution is the richest fruit, until that history is a part of their being.
I respect not that constitutional charlatanism that fastens its eye on the printed page alone, disdains our institutions as interpreting it, and refuses to consider the sources of that Constitution—the development of our present form of government for a century and a half from the old crown charters; the English struggle for the rights of man, regulated by equal laws which preceded that; the spirit of Dutch independence, Dutch federation, and Dutch institutions working upon that, and still back to the counsels of our Teuton fathers in the German forests in the dim light of a far distant time.
If a people adopt a written instrument, you must understand thatpeopleand theirinstitutionsbefore you understand the writing. You cannot separate a people and their history from a written constitution which is only a part of that history. The same words by one people may have a different meaning used by another people. Any writing can only be an index to the institutions of a people.
A people'sinstitutionsare the soul of the written and unwritten law. You must understand the French people, their history, and their institutions, before you can understand their written constitution. You must understand the American people, our history, and our institutions, before you can understand our Constitution.
I have thus enlarged upon our institutional law to give young men a hint of its possibilities. Before this century closes, the greatest law book in all the literature of jurisprudence will be produced upon the subject of our institutional law. The materials are as plentiful as the history of our race, the demand as insistent as our daily life.
Great law books all written! Nonsense. As yet we have had only the turgid descriptions of the toilsome and halting progress of justice through the ages—that is all we have had, compared with the noble volume that will be written, giving mankind the high, clear, and simple thinking of a greater Blackstone and a wiser Kent. It may be that this generation will produce this immortal judicial author; it may be that you, young man, are he. At least one thing is sure—the work is there waiting for the workman.
But if you do not feel equipped for this monumental effort, there are other phases of the law more imminent, if not so comprehensive, in each of which there is opportunity and demand for original work.
For example, it is clear to all that the laws of marriage and divorce must be made rational and uniform throughout the Nation; that the laws respecting corporations are inappropriate, inadequate, and unjust, both to corporations and to the public—that they do not measure up to the present complex conditions; that the laws respecting commercial paper need to be systematized.
It is absurd, too, that a farmer living on one side of an imaginary state line which separates his farm and the state in which it is located from that of his neighbor living on the other side of the imaginary line in another state, should have to deal with his neighbor as if he were a foreigner in a foreign land and under foreign laws.
Again, the multiplication of decisions on all subjects has reached a point where practise by precedent, to be exhaustive and thorough, has become practically impossible; and so the problem that confronted the Roman emperors, and terminated in the Pandects ofJustinian, is now demanding immediate solution at the hands of American legislators, lawyers, and jurists.
So, you see, my ambitious young friend, that by no means all has been done in the law, and that what has been done is so bulky, unorganized, and confused, that even to reduce, rationalize, and systematize it is the greatest task of all. The trouble will therefore be with yourself, and not with conditions, if you remain an underling in this great profession.
Take literature—take imaginative literature. More can be said on its possibilities than on those of the law—and I enlarged upon the unexplored fields of the law merely to outline the immensity of the great things yet to be done in the law's domain. Is it not plain that the great novel of modern society is yet to be written? The contest between human nature and the complex machinery of our industrial system, and the mastery of human nature over the latter, present a theme such as Homer, or Vergil, or Dante never had.
The world awaits this genius! If you are not he, but talented in that direction, there are a thousand phases of American life that are of permanent historic value, which arerapidly passing away forever, and need to be perpetuated by literature and art.
In poetry, the master singer of modern days has not yet appeared. There have been faint signs of him, a suggestion of him, an indistinct prophecy of him, in nearly all of the world's singers for a hundred years. Some day he will come. It may be soon, and then he will sound that note which shall again thrill the hearts and again turn heavenward the eyes of men all round the world.
The point I am making is that the great things in poetry have not all been done. On the contrary, it is the same old cry the world has heard since Homer. Until Shakespeare wrote, it appeared, to those who had no vision, that the immortal things in literature had all been done. But these immortal things and things not immortal, things permanent and things temporary, were only food and material for Shakespeare.
Literature, then, has only been furnishing the materials—the timber—for the structure that is yet to be built. But the timber is noble in dimension, and they must be giants who use it. If you are a giant, your task awaits you.
"It is nonsense to talk of any great warin which this country will ever be engaged," said a wise and experienced public man to me one day, in discussing our future. "There is no place in the world for distinguished service by an American soldier. He can wear his uniform; he can study his tactics; he can be a warrior of the ball-room; but, after all, he is only a kind of policeman."
This conversation occurred some years ago. The fallacy of this conservative (shall we not say short-sighted, for sometimes they are mistaken for one another) man's conclusion has been revealed by recent events. And these events are only an index of similar possibilities. Not that we want war; not that it is desirable; not that it should not be avoided, if possible; but that the movement of the pawns by Events on the great chess-board of the world and history may force us to war, no matter how unwillingly.
It may be that in the ultimate outcome, to use a double superlative, "a parliament of man and federation of the world" will be established which shall divide and distribute commerce as railroads are now said to agree on division of business and equality of rates.
But before such a noble condition arises there will surely be vast and destructiveconflicts, unless the temper, nature, and attitude of men and nations change; and, if they do occur, no one but a fanatic of reaction imagines for one instant that we shall be able to keep out of them.
So that not all the battles have been fought, not all the strategy thought out. And if you are a soldier and mean business, you need not despair of the possibility of winning one of the highest of honors given man to win—the honor of fighting for your country and of dying for your flag.
The Russo-Japanese War has demonstrated that military science is as much more complex and difficult to-day than during our Civil War, as it was then more complicated than in the time of battle-ax and lance. The recent conflict in Asia shows that it is as important to get wounded men cured and back on the firing line as it is to punish the other side. A nation that would now enter into armed conflict without a general staff or some similar body of men would be hurling its soldiers, however brave, to certain death.
And yet Von Moltke, Germany's greatest captain, originated the modern general staff; and the United States, with all of our American progressiveness, had no general staff at alluntil Secretary Root prevailed upon Congress to provide one. These general staffs plan, during the long years of peace, every possible conflict. They map out with absolute accuracy every imaginable field of operations in the country of every possible enemy; they equip the general in the field with information on all subjects, perfect to the smallest detail.
Japan's general staff has been preparing day and night for the present war for every month of every year of an entire decade. Oyama's victories were ripening in the brain of this modern Attila for ten long years. Von Moltke had thought out the conquest of France years before fate blew the trumpet that set the tremendous enginery of his plans in motion. Yes, but these men kept thinking, thinking.
Nobody heardthemsaying that all great wars had been fought. Perhaps they did not know whether all wars had been fought or not; but they knew this: That if any future wars were to be fought, those wars would be bigger than any conflict that had gone before, and that their armies would have to be handled with greater precision, and their tactics would have to be more daring than even those of Napoleon, or Hannibal, or Cæsar.
Very well, the Franco-Prussian War did come. The Russo-Japanese War did come. And when the time for these dread duels between peoples arrived, those men were in the saddle. Battles whose red desperation have made the world's historic combats look small, have within a year taught all men that the art of war requires as much original thinking as it did when the Corsican overwhelmed the muddled military minds of Europe, weakened and palsied by the belief that nothing more was to be learned in warfare.
Manchuria's awful lesson teaches you, young man, that the profession of arms, dreadful as it is honorable, holds out to you all the possibilities by which every great captain of history made his name immortal.
"I think the statesmanship of Joseph Chamberlain is the most comprehensive and instructive since that of Bismarck," said a passenger on an ocean steamer to an Englishman of considerable distinction in the world of letters.
"I fail to see the statesmanship," said the latter; "will you kindly point it out?"
"Why," said the admirer of Chamberlain, "the British Empire needed unifying; it needed to be bound together by ties of sentiment, by all those means which consolidatea nation. Its connections were too loose. Chamberlain has, by the Boer War, begun its unification. Canadians have fallen on the same field with England's soldiers.
"Australians have poured out their blood as a common sacrifice for England's flag. The empire has been knit together by a common heroism, a common sacrifice, a common glory, and a common cause. It should not be hard to induce all portions of the empire to unite on a great scheme of parliamentary representation. I call that great statesmanship."
"Yes, indeed it is," said the English litterateur, "but Joseph Chamberlain never had such a thought."
The point of the conversation is that, whether Mr. Chamberlain had this thought or not, thematerials for the thought existed. The conditions for this really constructive statesmanship were there. They awaited the hand of the master. Conditions of equal magnitude exist in half-a-dozen places in the world. Russian development of Siberia and seizure of Manchuria are one.
It had for several years appeared to me that Manchuria was the point about which the international politics of the world would swirl for the next quarter of a century. So certaindid this seem, that I hastened to this great future battle-field in the year 1901; and while the diplomats of all the nations, including our own, scoffed at the possibilities of war between Russia and Japan, the certainty of that mighty contest could be read in the very stars that shone above Manchuria, in the very Japanese barracks, on every Japanese drill-ground.
Settlement of this tremendous dispute will call for larger statesmanship than the world has seen for half a century. The movements of all the powers at the present crisis, and, indeed, their entire Oriental policy, are of the most solemn concern to the Republic not only for the immediate moment, but even more for the future.
This is especially true of Japan; for, with cheap labor, rare aptitude for manufacture, and propinquity of position, the Island Empire now becomes the most formidable competitor for the trade of China.
And China is the only—or at least the richest—unexploited market where American factories and farms can, in the future, dispose of their accumulating surplus. England almost monopolized China's coast markets until, recently, Germany began rapidly to overhaul her. But Japan will, in the near future,distance both. American interests in the Far East are vital even now; and they are only in their beginning. We cannot longer be indifferent to any statesmanship that involves the commercial development of Asia. Solution of the great problems which the Russo-Japanese war has stated, and the resultant steps thereafter taken, are of keenest interest, and may be of most serious import, to the American people.
It is very possible, as I pointed out in "The Russian Advance," that Japan will attempt the reorganization of China. Indeed, that development is quite probable. That is certainly Japan's plan and ideal. Any one of a half dozen courses may be adopted. And, I repeat it, any one of them may present the gravest of situations to American statesmanship. As I write it is quite sure that Russia is beaten on the field. Think now, young man, of the immensity of the statesmanship required right now,which five years ago everybody would have declared impossible and absurd.
Especially will Japanese dominance of the Orient, military and commercial, upon which Japan is determined, bring us Americans face to face with a new set of conditions, requiring the highest order of careful thought, theclearest, firmest announcement of national policy. Do not fear, young man, lest all of this be over before the time has come for you to play your part on the stage of human affairs. The new problems which the whole Orient will propose to the entire world, and particularly to America, will last for a century at least.
Indeed, it is probable that our relations with the East will become and remain one of the leading subjects of American statesmanship as long as the Republic endures. For that matter, you may go further, and say that the great human question of modern times is the meeting face to face of Oriental and Occidental ideals, of the white and yellow theory of life and morals, and the gradual destruction of one by the other, or their mutual modification and adjustment.
But we are getting into deep waters now. That is the point I am making. They show that, dive you ever so deep, young man, present-day statesmanship has depths which not even the plummet of imagination has yet been able to sound. And can we doubt that to-morrow's national and world problems will be deeper still?
There are three or four great international questions for this Republic to solve on thisWestern hemisphere, the working out of any one of which means immortality for the statesman who does it.
Of course, the great industrial and sociological questions are the profoundest of all. The world has been at work on these since men arranged themselves into organized society. But the incredibly swift evolution of modern business itself seems to be hastening the time when some satisfactory solution of these master problems must at least be begun.
So that, if you really have the material of a statesman in you—the stuff that thinks out the answer to great questions—there is a field before you compared with which the opportunities of Hamilton and Washington and Jefferson almost seem small, leviathan as those opportunities were and masterfully as those great men improved them.
The editor of one of our big modern newspapers gave it to me as his opinion that the art of producing a newspaper is as much in its infancy as is the science of electricity. "The yellow journal," said he, "is an evolution, just as trusts in their deeper significance are an evolution. We have had the didactic editor; he did his work and has passed away. We are now having the editor who deals withfacts—'cold facts,' as Dickens would say—but, in his turn, he is only a part of the general evolution. There is not an editor in this country, no matter what his own views may be as to his own paper, who does not know, and in his heart admit, that the ideal paper is yet to be produced."
Excellent and even wonderful as the public press of to-day is, the above is the opinion held by the great mass of men; and it is the correct opinion. I mean what I say when I use the words "excellent and wonderful" as applied to newspapers. To me the newspaper is a daily astonishment. What we are all in search of is fresh and vital thought and suggestion; and no one can acquire theartof newspaper reading without getting, each day, one or many new points of view on the world and its great human currents.
Each one of our metropolitan papers is at enormous outlay to get strong, capable men—young men with new minds and old men with wise minds. It is simply out of the question for these men, working together, to bring forth a product that does not have in it some remarkable thing—some new point of view, some fact which your most careful research has not disclosed to you.
I remember an instance in my own experience. There was a subject to which I had given some years of off-and-on study. I felt that at least the facts had been accumulated. All that remained was to deduce the truth from these facts. But an editorial on this subject in a notable daily paper brought out a salient fact which none of the books had mentioned, and yet which, when one's attention was called to it, was so apparent that it really ought to have suggested itself. Yet all the speeches of the specialists on this subject, and all of the volumes, had failed to note it.
Some vigorous young mind on that paper had discovered it in studying the elementary factors of the problem itself. But this is digression. I am simply calling your attention to the fact that there are opportunities for you to be greater in the world of journalism than Greeley, or Raymond, or Bennett, or Bowles, or Dana, or any of the extraordinary men that have illumined the whole science of journalism by their intellect, accomplishments, and character.
Electricity is a mysterious force which excites not only all the speculation but all the mysticism in man. I contemplate its manifestations—equally deadly and vital—withfeelings of wonder and awe. I always search for an electrician and listen to his stories of the mysterious power with which he deals. One of the greatest of them said to me last year:
"No, we really know nothing about it, after all. We have managed to do a great many things with it. We have learned some of its properties, but it holds fast its inner secrets. The great universe of electrical discovery has hardly been entered." But electricity is not the only modern mystery.
Take photography, that wizard-like science. The man who, fifty years ago, would have predicted the moving picture which has already become commonplace to us, would have been rejected as a madman. Tele-photography is almost as remarkable as the moving picture. Color-photography will yet be reduced to perfection. The chemists are constantly astounding us with suggestions so remarkable that they are weird.
Luther Burbank creating new species of plant life, Max Standfuss doing the like with insects, make the Arabian Nights commonplace and dull. Think of the Roentgen rays! Think of the achievement of the wonderful young Italian! Marconi's invention seemsuncanny, so impossible does it appear even when you watch his magic instrument at work.
In the laboratories of Europe and America investigations are this very moment being made into Nature's securest secrets. The mystery of to-day will be to-morrow's accepted and commonplace truth. One seizes one's head and closes one's eyes in bewilderment at the possibilities of science in every direction.
All the great inventions, all the great discoveries, made! How like the egotism of the infinitesimal mind of the human race that thought this!
If all the great inventions and discoveries have been made, man has already mastered all of the laws of God's universe, and applied them practically to all conditions and substances in existence. How absurd!
The field of invention and scientific discovery is like that strange and awful manifestation known as the "Milky Way." We see it with our naked eye—numberless stars and a pale, growing blur around and behind them, and we childishly call it the "Milky Way."
That miracle called the telescope is invented; we look again, and there are more and new stars—but, still farther on in the infinite depths, the blur of light. Higher andhigher goes the power of telescope after telescope, but all that they reveal is a bewildering infinitude of more new stars—and beyond that again the "Milky Way."
This is an old and commonplace illustration, I know very well; but it exactly represents the possibilities of new and vast inventions, of strange and priceless discoveries, wherever you turn your eye.
The only question is whether you have theeye. The conditions are there to be discovered—beggingfor discovery. If you have vision and do not produce a great invention, the fault is not in the universe about you. Of course, if you haven't vision, do not attempt it. Darius Green and his flying machine are ridiculous always.
What I have said of invention, war, statesmanship, literature, journalism, and the law, may be applied to every conceivable field of human thought. I merely wish to impress upon the great mass of young Americans that not only have all the great things not been done, but that the greatest of great things are yet to come.
If you have greatness in you, do not be discouraged. "It is up toyou."
Do not be discouraged, either, at failure andrebuke and defeat. If you are going to attempt great things, remember you are starting on a trunk-line. Very well; all continental trunk-lines have tunnels here and there. But these tunnels are black with only temporary gloom.
It is only the short roads that do not run through the mountains. Tunnels—flashes of darkness—are certain to those who travel far. Think of this—you who have troubles, difficulties, discouragements.
But if on finding your limitations, as suggested in the first chapter of this book, you discover neither inclination nor talent for these great ventures in thought or action, do not, as you value happiness, and even life, attempt great things; for your failure has been written before you were born.
Do the thing which is in proportion to yourself; and if that thing is not great, still you have served yourself, your family, your country, and the world, just as much as he who has done a larger thing, and you deserve just as much credit for doing it.
None of us controlled the color of our eyes or the texture of our brain. If we could have done so, perhaps we should have been different from what we are. And we cannot changethe nature and relations of things now; for "which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature"?
But be your deeds little or big, one thing youcando and be:You can be a manand do a man's work, heart gentle, and fearless feet on the earth, but eyes on the stars. And to be aMAN, in our American meaning of that word, is glory enough for this earthly life.Be a man, be you street-sweeper or the Republic's President, and know that emperor on throne of gold can be no more, and is lucky if he is as much.
At one of the great official receptions at the White House one night some years ago, a group of two or three gentlemen were observing the swirling throng, with its ambitions, its jealousies, its brief flashes of happiness, its numberless and infinitesimal intrigues, its atmosphere of jaded, blasé, and defeated expectations.
One of the group was perhaps the greatest master of that mere political craft and that management of men for the ordinary uses of politics, as we employ the word, that the country has yet produced. He was a sage of human nature. It was this quality, combined with many other qualities, and the existence of certain conditions, that made him the power that he was. From a practical point of view, what he said about men was always worth while.
"No, I don't consider him effective," said this great politician when asked his opinion ofa certain very prominent man in public life, who had just entered, and who was chatting and occasionally laughing with some boisterousness. "Really, he talks too much. Not that he betrays his confidences; not even that he annoys, for what he says is always bright; but—he talks too much; that is all."
"It's a pity," said one of the group, who was a famous Washington newspaper correspondent, "thatthatman has never married."
He was talking of another very strong professional and political man who had reached more than forty years of age and was still a bachelor. "He needs the finer sense and restraining influence of woman in his life."
The remark of the first speaker instantly recalled an observation made several years ago by another very astute—even great—politician in the minor and narrow sense of that word. He was at that time a candidate for the nomination for President, and, according to all the tricks of the game of politics, should have won it; but he failed, as, it seems, with two exceptions, all mere politicians have failed in securing that most exalted office in the world.
This political candidate actually knew the leading men in each state, and in each partof each state—so careful and thorough had been his purely personal preparation. "How is Mr. ——, of ——, in your state? I hope he is well. He is a keen and persistent man," was his inquiry of and comment on a certain man. And he asked questions concerning three or four. Among them he said: "And Mr. ——, of your state; how is his health? He is very brilliant, yes, even able, but—he drinks too much."
Three generalizations may justly be deducted from the above discursive talk. They are practically the ones with which for many years I have been impressed—namely, that that man will be of very little present use, and of no permanent and ultimate value to the world or to himself, who drinks too much, who talks too much, or who thinks he can get along without the ennobling influence of women.
Let us take them one at a time. A young man could hardly do a more fatal thing than to fall into the habit of taking stimulants. This is no temperance lecture. It is merely a summary of suggestions, by observing which the young man may avoid a few of the rocks in his necessarily rugged pathway to success. I emphasized this in two preceding chapters and shall reiterate it again and again; for Iam trying to say a helpful word toyou; and all your talents will be folly and all your toil the labor of Sisyphus if you companion with the bottle.
The belief sometimes entertained, that it is necessary to drink in order to impress your sociability upon companions who also drink, is utterly erroneous. One day a dinner was given by one of the great lawyers of this country in honor of another lawyer of distinction, and among those present was a young man of promise who at that time was considerably in the public eye.
The dinner began with a cocktail, and the young man was the only one of the brilliant company who did not drink it. He was not ostentatious in his refusal, but merely lifted the glass to his lips and then set it down with the others. Nor did he take any wine throughout the dinner. The incident was noticed by only a few, and those few chanced to meet at a club the next day. The young man was the topic of their conversation.
"Well," said the great lawyer, "a young man who has enough self-restraint to deny himself as that young man did, and who at the same time is so scintillating in speech, so genuine and original in thought, and socharming in manner, has in him simply tremendous possibilities. I have not been so impressed in a long time as I was by his refraining from drinking."
This incident is related simply to show that a young man loses nothing in the esteem of those who themselves drink by declining to join them.
I repeat, this is no temperance lecture. I know perfectly well that some of the strongest men in business and politics and literary life in this country take wine occasionally at the dinner-table and elsewhere. Nor are they to be condemned for it. But this paper is meant to contain vital suggestions toyoung menwith life's possibilities and difficulties before them.
It is so entirely uncertain whether you have the will in you to keep your hands very firmly on the reins of the wild horses of habit. It is so utterly unknown to you whether you may not have inherited from an ancestor, even very remote, an inflammable blood which, once touched by stimulant, is ever after on fire.
You risk too much, and you risk it needlessly. My earnest advice is not to try it. I will leave to the doctors the description of its effect on nerve and brain, and to common observation the universal testimony to thepeculiar blurring of judgment which stimulant of any kind usually produces. Besides, it is a very bad thing for a young man to get a reputation for.
I have concluded, after very careful observation, that there is a mighty change being wrought in this habit, and that a great majority of the young men who are now the masters of affairs are abstainers. In short, drinking will soon be out of style, and very bad form.
Consider these illustrations: I know a young man who is just forty years of age and who is practically the head of one of the greatest business institutions in the world. He has worked his way to that position by ability, character, and untiring industry, from the very humblest position in his company's service. He is a total abstainer.
I know another, also just forty, who is president of one of the largest banks in America. When I first knew him, very many years ago, he occupied the position of cashier in a comparatively obscure financial house. Merit alone has placed him where he is now. He had no friends when he began, no "influence," hardly an acquaintance. But he hadhimself, clear brained and steady pulsed—and that wasenough. He, too, does not touch stimulants of any kind.
Or, to get out of that class of occupations—one of the most successful political "bosses" in this country, a man who makes politics his profession, and who, just past forty, is in control of the political machine of one of our great cities, rose to that position, by ability alone, from the occupation of a street-car driver. He also is a total abstainer.
Not only do any of these three young men not drink—also they neither smoke nor swear. And they are types of twentieth century success. The "stein-on-the-table-and-a-good-song-ringing-clear" kind of man is out of date.
You see, so nerve-consuming are all the activities of modern life that only the very highest types of effectiveness succeed. Brain of ice, hand of steel, heart of fire, clear vision, and cold, steady grasp of the lever and masterful, and yet a passionate relentlessness—these are necessary. Stimulants destroy effectiveness; that is the trouble with them. And you need every ounce of your power. Do not let the people who talk "moderation" to you persuade you otherwise. We find many such in what is called "society," where the taking of wine moderately is universal.
I repeat that you cannot tell what your powers of resistance are. Unfortunately, many of the world's noblest characters have had nerves so finely wrought and brain so vivid that a single drop of stimulant started a perfect conflagration within them. One of the ablest men this country has ever known, when questioned by a friend as to what had been the greatest pleasure of his life, said: "The greatest 'pleasure' of my life is the delirium of intoxication"; and then he went on to say how sure he was that if the fires of desire had never been lighted in his blood he would have done better work.
All of us can recall such examples in our own experience. Don't risk it, therefore, young man. Why take the chance? for even if you discover no taste for it, you will find that there is nothing in it, after all. Why this hazard of your powers, just to find out whether you can resist? It is a one-sided gamble, is it not? Even fools refuse to play when they know that the dice may be loaded.
Don't think that you have got to be a great public man, or a big politician, or a celebrated scientist, or distinguished in any line, before these practical truths apply to you. You must build your whole life upon them from the verybeginning. For example, I know a man who for several years has been exercising ever-increasing power in his State. He selects his lieutenants with greatest possible care, consulting with trained advisers about the qualifications of each man to whom any political work is to be trusted.
Very well. The first question asked always is, "Does he drink?" If he does, that fact strikes a black line through his name. He is no longer considered, no matter how capable and energetic he may be otherwise. For, ordinarily, another man just as effective can be found who does not have this defect.
This entire chapter could be taken up with these instances; and the increasing number of them, the remarks I have quoted of that master of worldly wisdom at the White House reception, the observation of the great politician about the strong man of his party in another state, fairly justify, I think, a suggestion to young men that as a practical, worldly, and business matter they had better use no stimulants, either alcoholic or others, for others are just as bad, or worse, than the former. Indeed, alcohol and other various forms of wines and other like stimulants have had a disproportionate amount of abuseheaped upon them. Let the young man look out for all kinds of stimulants.
Weariness, exhaustion even, is no excuse. If you are tired, take a rest. If your natural energy is not equal to your task, take a lesser task. There is nothing more melancholy than the spectacle of men, young or old, attempting things out of proportion to themselves. It is hard to gage what is beyond one's natural powers, it is true. But if you feel the need of stimulants to keep you up to the level of your work, that is at least one unfailing test of your limitations. I must repeat, for the third time, that all of this advice—no, let us say suggestion—is made only as a matter of practical help toyoungmen trying to get on in the world.
It is the mere business side of the question at which we are looking now, for it is business itself that is working this change. People do not want a lawyer whose brain is not clear, a doctor, dealing with life and death, whose perceptions are not steady and natural. People refuse to ride on trains hauled by engineers who may be drinking, and so on. It is all a matter of cold-blooded business.
The conditions and requirements of modern society are coming to demand greater and greater sobriety from those in responsibleplaces, no matter whether at the head of a party or a railway train. The spiritual phase, the medical view, the moral, social, and economic sides of the question I would not, under any circumstances, assume to deal with. On all these there are various views, none of which would I undertake to weigh or judge.
And excessive talking! Don't indulge in that either. Politicians are not the only ones who think interminable talk an indication of weakness. I knew a liveryman who was also a great horse-trader. Said he: "I shy clear across the road when a tonguey man tries to deal with me."
Of course, reserve in speech, particularly in conversation, is so ancient and favorite a subject of the giver of advice that it is now commonplace. Literature is full of it. Shakespeare nearly reaches the crest of it in the advice Polonius gave to his son. But here, as always, the very climax is the Bible.
"Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
This is not advice to taciturnity. It is not a suggestion that you should be stolid and wooden in manner and speech. The reason of it is to prevent you from making mistakes orbetraying yourself by foolish and unnecessary utterance. My suggestion to young men that they practise reserve in speech is merely a practical and almost a commercial matter. Do not be "a man full of talk," as Zophar cuttingly puts it.
There is a loss of authority that comes from incessant talking. There is a surrender of dignity, which is one of the most influential things in man's attitude toward and in connection with his fellows. Silence, or rather reserve, gives a kind of emphasis to what you do. To a great many, also, there is an index of your character in the quantity of your speech. It is so refreshing to meet a man from whom you draw the feeling that he is as deep and as full as the seven seas.
This will never be drawn from any man whose talk is continuous, no matter if he is an encyclopedia of information and a battery of brilliancy. A man may be as comprehensive and profound as the oceans; the point is, that other men will not easily be made to believe it. His continued sparkle suggests a champagne bottle with its limitations, rather than the illimitable deep. A good deal of this is unjust, and comes from the universal egotism of mankind. Most men like to feelthemselves both brilliant and copious; and they wantyouto listen tothem. Very well—youdo it;youlisten to them.
There is a suggestion of wisdom in reserve of speech which may be altogether out of proportion to the facts. Are we not all continually quoting with approval Sir Walter Raleigh's line: