The Call of the Twentieth Century, an Address to Young Men

by David Starr Jordan

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."

Whatever feeling is worthy and real will express itself in action, and the glow that surrounds worthy action we call happiness.

He will be a loyal man, considering always the best interests of him he serves, ready to lay down his life, if need be, for duty, ready to abandon whatever conflicts with higher loyalty, with higher duty.

In the economic struggles of to-day, well-meaning men are making two huge mistakes, which in time will undo whatever of good their efforts may accomplish. One of these is the struggle against education, the effort to limit the number of skilled laborers, and this in a free country where each man's birthright is the development of his skill. The other is the effort to destroy the feeling of personal loyalty on the part of the laborer. Half the value of any man's service lies in his willingness, his devotion to the man or the work. This old-fashioned virtue of loyalty must not be cheapened. The man whose service is worth paying for, gives more than his labor. He believes that what he does is right, and when anything goes wrong he will turn in and make it right. In the long run the laborer can get no more than he deserves, and disloyal labor is paving the way for its own subjugation. Unwilling service is a form of slavery, and unwilling employment is a slavery of the employer.

More than all this, the man in the Twentieth Century needs must be a man of character. It was said of Abraham Lincoln that he was a man "too simply great to scheme for his proper self." The man who schemes for his own advancement soon forfeits the support of others. He may lay pipes and pull wires, seeming for a little to succeed. "God consents, but only for a time." Sooner or later, if he lives to meet his fate, he finds his end in utter failure. And this failure is final: for those who have suffered will not help him again. Even rats desert a sinking ship. To be successful a man need take no heed for his own particular future. He will find his place in the future of his work.

In the ordinary business of life the smart man has had his day. He gives place to the man who can bring about results. Whatever the present menace of trust and monopoly, the business of the future must be conducted on large lines. The profits of the future will be the legitimate reward of economy, organization, and boldness of conception. To this end absolute honesty is essential to success. The merchant selling poor goods at high prices, an article which looks as good as the real thing but is something else, must give place to a larger system, with specialized service on a basis of absolute truthfulness. Business of a large scale must finally demand publicity and equity. Sooner or later even monopolies must grant this, whether we insist on it by statute or not. It is necessary for their own protection; for large structures cannot long stand on insecure foundations. In the long run trade is honest; for dishonest trade cuts its own throat.

Above all, because including all, the century will ask for men of sober mind. The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man and the mind which is its manifestation. What mind is, or how it is related to brain cells, we cannot say, but this we know, that as the brain is, so is the mind; whatever injury comes to the one is shown in the other. In this complex structure, with its millions of connecting cells, we are able to form images of the external world, truthful so far as they go, to retain these images, to compare them, to infer relations of cause and effect, to induce thought from sensation, and to translate thought into action. In proportion to the exactness of these operations is the soundness, the effectiveness of the man. The man is the mind, and everything else is accessory. The sober man is the one who protects his brain from all that would do it harm. Vice is our name for self-inflicted injury, and the purpose of vice is to secure a temporary feeling of pleasure through injury to the brain. Real happiness does not come through vice. You will know that which is genuine because it makes room for more happiness. The pleasures of vice are mere illusions, tricks of the nervous system, and each time these tricks are played it is more and more difficult for the mind to tell the truth. Such deceptions come through drunkenness and narcotism. In greater or less degree all nerve-affecting drugs produce it; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opium, cocaine, and the rest, strong or weak. Habitual use of any of these is a physical vice. A physical vice becomes a moral vice, and all vice leaves its record on the nervous system. To cultivate vice is to render the actual machinery of our mind incapable of normal action.

It is the brain's business to perceive, to think, to will, to act. All these functions taken together we call the mind. The brain is hidden in darkness, sheltered within a box of bone. All that it knows comes to it from the nerves of sense. All that it can do in this world is to act on the muscles it controls through its nerves of motion. The final purpose of knowledge is action. Our senses tell us what lies about us, that we may move and act, and do this wisely and safely. The sense-organs are the brain's only teachers so far as we know, the muscles are its only servants. But there are many orders which may be issued to these servants. Out of the many sensations, memories, imaginations, how shall the brain choose?

The power of attention fixes the mind on those sensations or impressions of most worth, pushing the others into the background. Past impressions, memory-pictures, linger in the brain, and these, bidden or unbidden, crowd with the others. To know the relation of all these, to distinguish present impressions from memories, realities from dreams,—this is mental sanity. The sane brain performs its appointed task. The mind is clear, the will is strong, the attention persistent, and all is well in the world. But the machinery of the brain may fail. The mind grows confused. It mistakes memories for realities. It loses the power of attention. A fixed idea may take possession of it, or it may be filled by a thousand vagrant impressions, wandering memories, in as many seconds. In this case the response of the muscles becomes uncertain. The acts are governed not by the demands of external conditions but by internal whims. This is a condition of mania or mental irresponsibility. Some phase of mental unsoundness is produced by any of the drugs which affect the nerves, whether stimulants or narcotics. They may help to borrow from our future store of energy, but they borrow at compound interest and never repay the loan. They give an impression of joy, of rest, of activity, without giving the fact; one and all, their function is to force the nervous system to lie. Each indulgence in any of them makes it harder to tell the truth. One and all, their supposed pleasures are followed by reactions, subjective pains as unreal as the joys which they follow. Each of them, if used persistently, brings incapacity, insanity, and death. With each of them use creates appetite. To yield once it is easier to yield again. The harm of some of them is slight. Tea, coffee, beer, claret, in moderate quantities, do but moderate harm, but all of them are without other effect on the nerves save to work them injury. White lies at the best are falsehoods. These are the white lies of physiology. In regard to each of these, the young man must count the cost. Count all the cost and be prepared to pay. The song of Ulrich von Hütten, when he gave his life for religious freedom, is worth applying to all other costly things. He sang:—