FOURTEENTH MEETING
Loyalty, and Conscious Allegiance to our Individual Aspiration
I. Patriotism; its Meaning:
a. We are children of all we can love and serve:
1. The growth of loyalty, from the family to the world:
α. War as a fighting for peace.
b. Patriotism in its growth, like all progress, must include the small in the large, though in seeming disloyalty:
1. Disloyalty to one’s country cannot be loyalty to the world.
2. But wholesome criticism often seems disloyal:
α. The loyalty of revolutionists.
II. Conscious Choice in Self-development:
a. Know what you want most to be.
b. Eliminate whatever interferes with your choice; make life a work of art, not a haphazard photograph.
1. Concentration.
2. Choose and subordinate your studies for their worth to you.
3. Prefer friends to acquaintances.
4. Do the work at hand (charity at home), and be sure your service harmonizes with your knowledge and your whole life.
5. Never degrade the end by making an end out of the means. (Business, athletics, study, must always be means.)
c. Dare to desire the utmost, unflinchingly:
1. Greatness comes from persistent desire rather than from inborn skill.
d. Youth and old age:
1. Desire and service can continue throughout life.
III. Variety and Rhythm:
a. Varied life with single Aim:
1. Concentrate on one thing at a time, but not on one thing all the time.
2. The meaning and worth of Knowledge.
3. Never be bored, or bore:
α. Sense of humor; and use of silence.
4. Work and play, exertion and rest, must harmonize:
α. Even your pleasures will reflect your character, or taste.
b. Be a rhythm, a measure, a force like music in the life all about you.
[Note.—The fifteenth meeting was spent on Christian Science, and is therefore omitted from the notes.]