The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

But to speak more closely of the matter in hand, let me name some of the considerations which must enter into the choice of a life-work. I can only speak in the most general way, addressing as I do young men of varying abilities and temperaments. If one should discuss the value or attractiveness of any particular vocation, the personal element and the question of individual fitness would instantly come in. Some general considerations however may prove suggestive.

It is best not to make one’s decision too early or too rigidly. The average young man is not sufficiently acquainted either with himself or with the vocations to make his final decision during his last year in high school, or during his first year in college. One of the chief values of college training is that it discovers the man to himself. You have scarcely a bowing acquaintance with yourself when you only know yourself as a freshman—wait and meet this same fellow within, as a sophomore, as a junior, as a senior. There are unsuspected capabilities in him which training and experience will bring out.

Wait also until you learn more about the vocations themselves. In making choice of a wife it is well to become acquainted with a number of young ladies before you settle down to an exclusive intimacy with one. There are other girls who can look sweet and say pleasant things too; it is not wise to fall so completely in love with the first dainty bit of white muslin you see as to exclude other delightful associations. The law has its attractions, so has medicine, so has the ministry, so has the work of education, or the business career, or the work of an architect, a chemist, or a forester. It is wise not to conclude too early in life that the attractions of this particular vocation shut out all the rest from consideration. Look yourself over and look the field over with great care at least a hundred times before making a final choice. It will be a sorry thing if you start out to unlock the door of your future with the wrong key.

Consider the whole man in your choice. It is not simply what you carry home in your pocket, as a result of your day’s work and of all the days of work, but what you carry away in mind and heart as well; what you carry away in the gratitude and appreciation of your fellow men; what you gain in the beneficent influence you may exert upon the community through your calling. Ten thousand a year is a splendid return from the investment of one’s personal ability, but there are other returns which may be added to the figures named in your contract in such a way as to make the money consideration seem the small end of it. And there are other returns which may make it seem as if the man who received the ten thousand a year had worked all his life for meager pay. Many a saloon-keeper has made ten times as much money out of his calling as the college professor or the clergyman makes out of his, but when the books are opened, other books as well as the cash book, the comparative values of the vocations will stand revealed.

The young man may be doing some honest and useful work, but without the sense of joy or pride in it. In such event it fails to render him back a full return. The culture of one’s own best life must come with his ordinary work or else the man is sacrificed to the profession. We are not here to be effective machines for grinding out sermons or briefs, operations or lectures, bargains or manufactured products: we are here to be men, strong, fine, aspiring, and useful men. The whole man therefore must be considered, his body, his brain, his heart, and his soul, as well as his purse when you make selection of his life-work. What you make out of your vocation is an important question, but what it makes out of you is tenfold more important!

Make up your mind that in the long run your work will be estimated by its genuine utility. Success comes not by luck, but by law. The apparent exceptions, like four-leaf clovers, are not sufficiently numerous to disturb the principle. It is three-leaf clover that feeds the cows and fills the haymows. It is ordinary industry, fidelity, persistence, and efficiency that bring the largest measure of abiding success. Your work will be estimated by its utility in satisfying human need.

This principle well understood, thoroughly believed, and constantly acted upon, will be of untold value to you. Canfield says to the young men at Columbia, “Measure your daily work by the efficiency and completeness with which it meets the needs of your fellow men.” You must measure it thus, for that is the way the world will estimate it. You will not be able to live by your wits; you must live by your work and your worth. Therefore, in making selection, consider carefully the usefulness of the work you choose, for men are like medicines, when they show themselves useful, they will be used.

The idea that success comes by luck or pull, or chance, is a fool’s idea. Some such instances occur, but they are not even so common as four-leaf clover—the man who starts out in life depending upon them is more foolish than the farmer who would rely upon four-leaf clover for his hay crop. And you will find as you come to live with him on close terms that the world is a very sagacious old fellow in his estimate of values. He has wonderful ability in discerning the real thing and in putting away shoddy. You cannot sell him gold bricks straight along—if now and then one is palmed off on the unwary, still they never become a staple quoted in the market reports. Good clay bricks in the long run are more profitable. Your work will be estimated, and estimated accurately, by its utility in satisfying genuine human need. The intelligent observance of this principle in making your selection will introduce that spirit of service which ennobles the whole effort.

May your choice of vocation be so wise and right that you will be content to have it dominate all minor matters in your life! Horace Bushnell used to speak to Yale men about “the expulsive power of a new affection.” The love for a pure woman making all impurity hateful and disgusting; the love for some man of integrity making all lying and dishonesty seem foul and mean; the love for God making all wrong-doing repulsive! So there comes into the life, by the right choice of vocation, a supreme interest and delight in one’s work, which drives out all the low, cheap, mean things that would hinder it. “I am doing a great work,” the man cries; “I am content to be absorbed in it and it is morally impossible for me to come down to the trivial or the base.”

The famous Vienna surgeon, Dr. Lorenz, at a banquet during his visit to this country, drank nothing but water. The man who sat next him at table, knowing the love which so many Germans have for wine and beer, asked the doctor if he were a teetotaler. The reply was: “I do not know that I could be called that; I am not in any sense a temperance agitator. But I am a surgeon and must keep my brain clear, my nerves steady, my muscles tense.” Here spoke the voice of science on one of its higher levels as to the effect of stimulants! Here spoke also the voice of one who finds splendid moral culture in his devotion to his life-work. “I am doing a great work, known on two continents and beyond,” he seemed to say; “therefore I cannot, for the sake of an abnormal sensation, come down to tickle my stomach, or tamper with my nerves or drug my brain by the use of stimulants.”