I would see young men and women go out into the world with a true democratic spirit, with a ready sympathy for all classes of people, and with a helpful attitude toward all problems of state and society. The work of any public institution of higher learning is a failure in so far as its graduates fail to honor the state’s claim on them as citizens. The great principle of evolution is the struggle for life; there is another equally important principle, namely, the struggle for the life of others. Altruism, dimly disclosed away down on the scale of being, finally shines forth in the family and home in all of those social sentiments that make human character beautiful and noble. Society is the mirror in which each one sees himself reflected, by which each attains self-consciousness, and becomes a human being. From coöperation spring industries, commerce, science, literature, art—all that makes life worth living. If the individual owes everything to society, he should be willing in some small ways to repay part of the debt.
The great Bismarck, that man of iron and blood, not given to sentimentality, in fireside conversation repeatedly proclaimed that during his long and arduous struggle for the unification of Germany he was sustained by a sense of duty and faith in God. “If I did not believe in a Divine Providence which has ordained this German nation to something good and great, I would at once give up my trade as a statesman. If I had not the wonderful basis of religion, I should have turned my back to the whole court.” Some one has said that the essence of pessimism is disbelief in God and man. Fear is a kind of atheism. Heine once said: “God was always the beginning and end of my thought. When I hear His existence questioned I feel a ghastly forlornness in a mad world.” The inspiration of labor is faith in God, faith in man, faith in the moral order of the world, faith in progress. The religious man should have a sane view of life, should have convictions, and the courage of his convictions. He should believe that his work all counts toward some great purpose.
The impulse to reverence and prayer is an essential fact, as real as the inborn tendency to physical and mental action. Its development is necessary to the complete man. The religious nature obeys the great law of power through effort, and increases strength by use. He who by scientific analysis comes to doubt the value of his ethical feeling has not learned the essential truth of philosophy, namely, that a thing’s origin must not be mistaken for its character.
Some tendencies of the best scientific thought of to-day, seen here and there, confirm this view of man’s nature. Here are some fragments, expressed, not literally, but in substance: It is the business of science to analyze the entire content of human consciousness into atomic sensations, but there its work ends. The man of history, of freedom and responsibility, whose deeds we approve or disapprove, is the real man, a being of transcendent worth, aspiring toward perfect ideals; and the teacher must carry this conception of the child’s nature into the work of education. It is a scientific fact that prayer is for the health of the soul. It is useless to theorize on the subject—men pray because it is their nature; they can not help it. Even if prayer does not change the will of God, at least it does change the will of man, which may be the object of prayer. The Christian experience shows that prayer is a communion of man’s spirit with God, the Spirit. John Fiske affirms the reality of religion. He argues that the progress of life has been achieved through adjustment to external realities; that the religious idea has played a dominant part in history; that all the analogies of evolution show that man’s religious nature cannot be an adjustment to an external non-reality. He says: “Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the Everlasting Reality of Religion.”
In this message to students we have emphasized a particular ideal, namely, normal activity, because one’s own effort and experience count most for growth and power.
“It was better youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.”