Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Your future, fortunate graduate, like a great block of pure white marble, stands untouched before you. You hold the chisel and mallet—your ability, your education—in your hands. There is something in the block for you, and it lives in your ideal. Shall it be angel or devil? What are your ideals, as you stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life? Will you smite the block and shatter it into an unshapely or hideous piece; or will you call out a statue of usefulness, of grace and beauty, a statue which will tell the unborn generations the story of a noble life?

Great advantages bring great responsibilities. You can not divorce them. A liberal education greatly increases a man's obligations. There is coupled with it a responsibility which you can not shirk without paying the penalty in a shriveled soul, a stunted mentality, a warped conscience, and a narrow field of usefulness. It is more of a disgrace for a college graduate to grovel, to stoop to mean, low practises, than for a man who has not had a liberal education. The educated man has gotten a glimpse of power, of grander things, and he is expected to look up, not down, to aspire, not to grovel.

We cannot help feeling that it is worse for a man to go wrong who has had all the benefits of a liberal education, than it is for one who has not had glimpses of higher things, who has not had similar advantages, because where much is given, much is expected. The world has a right to expect that wherever there is an educated, trained man people should be able to say of him as Lincoln said of Walt Whitman, "There goes a man."

The world has a right to expect that the graduate, having once faced the light and felt its power, will not turn his back on it; that he will not disgrace his alma mater which has given him his superior chance in life and opened wide for him the door of opportunity. It has a right to expect that a man who has learned how to use skilfully the tools of life, will be an artist and not an artisan; that he will not stop growing. Society has a right to look to the collegian to be a refining, uplifting force in his community, an inspiration to those who have not had his priceless chance; it is justified in expecting that he will raise the standard of intelligence in his community; that he will illustrate in his personality, his finer culture, the possible glory of life. It has a right to expect that he will not be a victim of the narrowing, cramping influence of avarice; that he will not be a slave of the dollar or stoop to a greedy, grasping career: that he will be free from the sordidness which often characterizes the rich ignoramus.

If you have the ability and have been given superior opportunities, it simply means that you have a great commission to do something out of the ordinary for your fellows; a special message for humanity.

If the torch of learning has been put in your hand, its significance is that you should light up the way for the less fortunate.

If you have received a message which carries freedom for people enslaved by ignorance and bigotry, you have no right to suppress it. Your education means an increased obligation to live your life up to the level of your gift, your superior opportunity. Your duty is to deliver your message to the world with all the manliness, vigor, and force you possess.

What shall we think of a man who has been endowed with godlike gifts, who has had the inestimable advantage of a liberal education, who has ability to ameliorate the hard conditions of his fellows, to help to emancipate them from ignorance and drudgery; what shall we think of this man, so divinely endowed, so superbly equipped, who, instead of using his education to lift his fellow men, uses it to demoralize, to drag them down; who employs his talents in the book he writes, in the picture he paints, in his business, whatever it may be, to mislead, to demoralize, to debauch; who uses his light as a decoy to lure his fellows on the rocks and reefs, instead of as a beacon to guide them into port?

We imprison the burglar for breaking into our houses and stealing, but what shall we do with the educated rascal who uses his trained mind and all his gifts to ruin the very people who look up to him as a guide?

"The greatest thing you can do is to be what you ought to be."