Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Only what you can use of your education will benefit you or the world.

The great question which confronts you in the practical world is "What can you do with what you know?" Can you transmute your knowledge into power? Your ability to read your Latin diploma is not a test of true education; a stuffed memory does not make an educated man. The knowledge that can be utilized, that can be translated into power, constitutes the only education worthy of the name. There are thousands of college-bred men in this country, who are loaded down with knowledge that they have never been able to utilize, to make available for working purposes. There is a great difference between absorbing knowledge, making a sponge of one's brain, and transmuting every bit of knowledge into power, into working capital.

As the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should transmute your knowledge into practical wisdom.

There is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a well-assimilated education will not make itself felt.

The college man ought to be a superb figure anywhere. The consciousness of being well educated should put one at ease in any society. The knowledge that one's mentality has been broadened out by college training, that one has discovered his possibilities, not only adds wonderfully to one's happiness, but also increases one's self-confidence immeasurably, and self-confidence is the lever that moves the world. On every hand we see men of good ability who feel crippled all their lives and are often mortified, by having to confess, by the poverty of their language, their sordid ideals, their narrow outlook on life, that they are not educated. The superbly trained man can go through the world with his head up and feel conscious that he is not likely to play the ignoramus in any company, or be mortified or pained by ignorance of matters which every well-informed person is supposed to know. This assurance of knowledge multiplies self-confidence and gives infinite satisfaction.

In other words, a liberal education makes a man think a little more of himself, feel a little surer of himself, have more faith in himself, because he has discovered himself. There is also great satisfaction in the knowledge that one has not neglected the unfoldment and expansion of his mind, that he has not let the impressionable years of youth go by unimproved.

But the best thing you carry from your alma mater is not what you there prized most, not your knowledge of the sciences, languages, literature, art; it is something infinitely more sacred, of greater value than all these, and that is your aroused ambition, your discovery of yourself, of your powers, of your possibilities; your resolution to be a little more of a man, to play a manly part in life, to do the greatest, grandest thing possible to you. This will mean infinitely more to you than all you have learned from books or lectures.

The most precious thing of all, however, if you have made the most of your chance, is the uplift, encouragement, inspiration, which you have absorbed from your teachers, from your associations; this is the embodiment of the college spirit, the spirit of your alma mater; it is that which should make you reach up as well as on, which should make you aspire instead of grovel—look up, instead of down.

The graduate should regard his education as a sacred trust. He should look upon it as a power to be used, not alone for his advancement, or for his own selfish ends, but for the betterment of all mankind. As a matter of fact, things are so arranged in this world that no one can use his divine gift for himself alone and get the best out of it. To try to keep it would be as foolish as for the farmer to hoard his seed corn in a bin instead of giving it to the earth, for fear he would never get it back.

The man who withholds the giving of himself to the world, does it at his peril, at the cost of mental and moral penury.