The Call of the Twentieth Century by David Starr Jordan
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David Starr Jordan >> The Call of the Twentieth Century
In medicine, the field of action is growing infinitely broader, now that
its training is securely based on science, and the divining rod no longer
stands first among its implements of precision. Not long ago, it is said, a
young medical student in New York committed suicide, leaving behind this
touching sentence: "I die because there is room for no more doctors." And
this just now, when for the first time it is worth while to be a doctor.
Room for no more doctors, no doubt, of the kind to which he belonged--men
who know nothing and care nothing for science and its methods, who choose
the medical school which will turn them loose most quickly and cheaply, who
have no feeling for their patients, and whose prescriptions are given with
no more conscience than goes into the fabrication of an electric belt or
the compounding of a patent medicine. Room for no more doctors whose
highest conception is to look wise, take his chances, and pocket the fee.
Room for no more doctors just now, when the knowledge of human anatomy and
physiology has shown the way to a thousand uses of preventive surgery. Room
for no more doctors, when the knowledge of the microbes and their germs has
given the hope of successful warfare against all contagious diseases; room
for no more doctors, when antiseptics and anaesthetics have proved their
value in a thousand pain-saving ways. Room for no more doctors now, when
the doctor must be an honest man, with a sound knowledge of the human body
and a mastery of the methods of the sciences on which this knowledge
depends. Room for no more doctors of the incompetent class, because the
wiser times demand a better service.
What is true in medicine applies also to the profession of law. The
pettifogger must give place to the jurist. The law is not a device for
getting around the statutes. It is the science and art of equity. The
lawyers of the future will not be mere pleaders before juries. They will
save their clients from need of judge or jury. In every civilized nation
the lawyers must be the law-givers. The sword has given place to the green
bag. The demands of the Twentieth Century will be that the statutes
coincide with equity. This condition educated lawyers can bring about. To
know equity is to be its defender.
In politics the demand for serious service must grow. As we have to do with
wise and clean men, statesmen, instead of vote-manipulators, we shall feel
more and more the need for them. We shall demand not only men who can lead
in action, but men who can prevent unwise action. Often the policy which
seems most attractive to the majority is full of danger for the future. We
need men who can face popular opinion, and, if need be, to face it down.
The best citizen is one not afraid to cast his vote away by voting with the
minority.
As we look at it in the rough, the political outlook of democracy often
seems discouraging. A great, rich, busy nation cannot stop to see who grabs
its pennies. We are plundered by the rich, we are robbed by the poor, and
trusts and unions play the tyrant over both. But all these evils are
temporary. The men that have solved greater problems in the past will not
be balked by these. Whatever is won for the cause of equity and decency is
never lost again. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and in this
Twentieth Century there are always plenty who are awake. One by one
political reforms take their place on our statute books, and each one comes
to stay.
In all this, the journalist of the future may find an honorable place. He
will learn to temper enterprise with justice, audacity with fidelity,
omniscience with truthfulness. When he does this he will become a natural
leader of men because he will be their real servant. To mould public
opinion, to furnish a truthful picture of the times from day to day, either
of these ideals in journalism gives ample room for the play of the highest
manly energy.
The need of the teacher will not grow less as the century goes on. The
history of the future is written in the schools of to-day, and the reform
which gives us better schools is the greatest of reforms. It is said that
the teacher's noblest work is to lead the child to his inheritance. This is
the inheritance he would win; the truth that men have tested in the past,
and the means by which they were led to know that it was truth. "Free
should the scholar be--free and brave," and to such as these the Twentieth
Century will bring the reward of the scholar.
The Twentieth Century will need its preachers and leaders in religion. Some
say, idly, that religion is losing her hold in these strenuous days. But
she is not. She is simply changing her grip. The religion of this century
will be more practical, more real. It will deal with the days of the week
as well as with the Sabbath. It will be as patent in the marts of trade as
in the walls of a cathedral, for a man's religion is his working hypothesis
of life, not of life in some future world, but of life right here to-day,
the only day we have in which to build a life. It will not look backward
exclusively to "a dead fact stranded on the shore of the oblivious years,"
nor will its rewards be found alone in the life to come. The world of to-
day will not be a "vale of tears" through which sinful men are to walk
unhappily toward final reward. It will be a world of light and color and
joy, a world in which each of us may have a noble though a humble
part,--the work of the "holy life of action." It will find religion in love
and wisdom and virtue, not in bloodless asceticism, philosophical
disputation, the maintenance of withered creeds, the cultivation of
fruitless emotion, or the recrudescence of forms from which the life has
gone out. It is possible, Thoreau tells us, for us to "walk in hallowed
cathedrals," and this in our every-day lives of profession or trade. It is
the loyalty to duty, the love of God through the love of men, which may
transform the workshop to a cathedral, and the life of to-day may be divine
none the less because it is strenuous and complex. It may be all the more
so because it is democratic, even the Sabbath and its duties being no
longer exalted above the other holy days.
What sort of men does the century need for all this work it has to do? We
may be sure that it will choose its own, and those who cannot serve it will
be cast aside unpityingly. Those it can use it will pay generously, each
after its kind, some with money, some with fame, some with the sense of
power, some with the joy of service. Some will work hard in spite of vast
wealth, some only after taking the vow of poverty.
Those not needed you can find any day. They lean against lamp-posts in
platoons, they crowd the saloons, they stand about railway stations all day
long to see trains go by. They dally on the lounges of fashionable clubs.
They may be had tied in bundles by the employers of menial labor. Their
women work at the wash-tubs, and crowd the sweat shops of great cities; or,
idle rich, they may dawdle in the various ways in which men and women
dispose of time, yielding nothing in return for it. You, whom the century
wants, belong to none of these classes. Yours must be the spirit of the
times, strenuous, complex, democratic.
A young man is a mighty reservoir of unused power. "Give me health and a
day and I will put the pomp of emperors to shame." If I save my strength
and make the most of it, there is scarcely a limit to what I may do. The
right kind of men using their strength rightly, far outrun their own
ambitions, not as to wealth and fame and position, but as to actual
accomplishment. "I never dreamed that I should do so much," is the frequent
saying of a successful man; for all men are ready to help him who throws
his whole soul into the service.
Men of training the century must demand. It is impossible to drop into
greatness. "There is always room at the top." so the Chicago merchant said
to his son, "but the elevator is not running." You must walk up the stairs
on your own feet. It is as easy to do great things as small, if you only
know how. The only way to learn to do great things is to do small things
well, patiently, loyally. If your ambitions run high, it will take a long
time in preparation. There is no hurry. No wise man begrudges any of the
time spent in the preparation for life, so long as it is actually making
ready.
"Profligacy," says Emerson, "consists not in spending, but in spending off
the line of your career. The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that
of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and there."
The value of the college training of to-day cannot be too strongly
emphasized. You cannot save time nor money by omitting it, whatever the
profession on which you enter. The college is becoming a part of life. For
a long time the American college was swayed by the traditions of the
English aristocracy. Its purpose was to certify to a man's personal
culture. The young man was sent to college that he might be a member of a
gentler caste. His degree was his badge that in his youth he had done the
proper thing for a gentleman to do. It attested not that he was wise or
good or competent to serve, but that he was bred a gentleman among
gentlemen.
So long as the title of academic bachelor had this significance, the man of
action passed it by. It had no meaning to him, and the fine edge of
accuracy in thought and perception, which only the college can give, was
wanting in his work. The college education did not seem to disclose the
secret of power, and the man of affairs would have none of it.
A higher ideal came from Germany,--that of erudition. The German scholar
knows some one thing thoroughly. He may be rude or uncultured, he may not
know how to use his knowledge, but whatever this knowledge is, it is sound
and genuine. Thoroughness of knowledge gives the scholar self-respect; it
makes possible a broad horizon and clear perspective. From these sources,
English and German, the American University is developing its own essential
idea,--that of personal effectiveness. The American University of to-day
seeks neither culture nor erudition as its final end. It values both as
means to greater ends. It looks forward to work in life. Its triumphs in
these regards the century will see clearly. It will value culture and
treasure erudition, but it will use both as helps toward doing things. It
will find its inspiration in the needs of the world as it is, and it is
through such effort that the world that is to be shall be made a reality. A
great work demands full preparation. It takes larger provision for a cruise
to the Cape of Good Hope than for a trip to the Isle of Dogs. For this
reason the century will ask its men to take a college education.
It will ask much more than that,--a college education where the work is
done in earnest, students and teachers realizing its serious value, and
besides all this, it will demand the best special training which its best
universities can give. For the Twentieth Century will not be satisfied with
the universities of the fifteenth or seventeenth centuries. It will create
its own, and the young man who does the century's work will be a product of
its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training for strenuous
life is not in academic idleness. The development of living ideals is not
in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blasé, lukewarm, fin-de-siècle young man
of the clubs will not represent university culture, nor, on the other hand,
will culture be dominated by a cheap utilitarianism.
"You will hear every day around you," said Emerson to the divinity students
of Harvard, "the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that your first
duty is to get land and money, place and fame. 'What is this truth you
seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask in derision. If, nevertheless, God
have called any of you to explain truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be
true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I; I renounce, I am sorry
for it--my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning
and romantic speculations go until some more favorable season,' then dies
the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art and poetry and
science, as they have died already in a hundred thousand men. The hour of
that choice is the crisis in your history."
The age will demand steady headed men, men whose feet stand on the ground,
men who can see things as they really are, and act accordingly. "The
resolute facing of the world as it is, with all the garments of
make-believe thrown off,"--this, according to Huxley, is the sole cure for
the evils which beset men and nations. The only philosophy of life is that
derived from its science. We know right from wrong because the destruction
is plain in human experience. Right action brings abundance of life. Wrong
action brings narrowness, decay, and degeneration. A man must have
principles of life above all questions of the mere opportunities of to-day,
but these principles are themselves derived from experience. They belong to
the higher opportunism, the consideration of what is best in the long run.
The man who is controlled by an arbitrary system without reference to
conditions, is ineffective. He becomes a crank, a fanatic, a man whose aims
are out of all proportion to results. This is because he is dealing with an
imaginary world, not with the world as it is. We may admire the valiant
knight who displays a noble chivalry in fighting wind-mills, but we do not
call on a wind-mill warrior when we have some plain, real work to
accomplish. All progress, large or small, is the resultant of many forces.
We cannot single out any one of these as of dominant value, and ignore or
despise the others. In moving through the solar system, the earth is
falling toward the sun as well as flying away from it. In human society,
egoism is coexistent with altruism, competition with co-operation, mutual
struggle with mutual aid. Each is as old as the other and each as
important; for the one could not exist without the other. Not in air-built
Utopias, but in flesh and blood, wood and stone and iron, will the movement
of humanity find its realization.
Don't count on gambling as a means of success. Gambling rests on the desire
to get something for nothing. So does burglary and larceny. "The love of
money is the root of all evil." This was said long ago, and it is not
exactly what the wise man meant. He was speaking of unearned money. Money
is power, and to save up power is thrift. On thrift civilization is
builded. The root of all evil is the desire to get money without earning
it. To get something for nothing demoralizes all effort. The man who gets a
windfall spends his days watching the wind. The man who wins in a lottery
buys more lottery tickets. Whoever receives bad money, soon throws good
money after bad. He will throw that of others when his own is gone. No firm
or corporation is rich enough to afford to keep gamblers as clerks.
The age will demand men of good taste who care for the best they know.
Vulgarity is satisfaction with mean things. That is vulgar which is poor of
its kind. There is a kind of music called rag-time,--vulgar music, with
catchy tunes--catchy to those who do not know nor care for things better.
There are men satisfied with rag-time music, with rag-time theatres, with
rag-time politics, rag-time knowledge, rag-time religion. "It was my duty
to have loved the highest." The highest of one man may be low for another,
but no one can afford to look downward for his enjoyments. The corrosion of
vulgarity spreads everywhere. Its poison enters every home. The billboards
of our cities bear evidence to it; our newspapers reek with it, our story
books are filled with it; we cannot keep it out of our churches or our
colleges. The man who succeeds must shun, vulgarity. To be satisfied with
poor things in one line will tarnish his ideals in the direction of his
best efforts. One great source of failure in life is satisfaction with mean
things. It is easier to be almost right than to be right. It is less trying
to wish than to do. There are many things that glitter as well as gold and
which can be had more cheaply. Illusion is always in the market and can be
had on easy terms. Realities do not lie on the bargain counters. Happiness
is based on reality. It must be earned before we can come into its
possession. Happiness is not a state. It is the accompaniment of action. It
comes from the exercise of natural functions, from doing, thinking,
planning, fighting, overcoming, loving. It is positive and strengthening.
It is the signal "all is well," passed from one nerve cell to another. It
does not burn out as it glows. It makes room for more happiness. Loving,
too, is a positive word. It is related to happiness as an impulse to
action. The love that does not work itself out in helping acts as mere
torture of the mind. The primal impulse of vice and sin is a short cut to
happiness. It promises pleasure without earning it. And this pleasure is
always an illusion. Its final legacy is weakness and pain. Pain is not a
punishment, but a warning of harm done to the body. The unearned pleasures
provoke this warning. They leave a "dark brown taste in the mouth." Their
recollection is "different in the morning." Such pleasures, Robert Burns
who had tried many of them says, are "like poppies spread," or "like the
snow-falls on the river." But it is not true that they pass and leave no
trace. Their touch is blasting. But true happiness leaves no reaction. To
do strengthens a man for more doing; to love makes room for more loving.
The second power of vulgarity is obscenity, and this vice is like the
pestilence. All inane vulgarity tends to become obscene. From obscenity
rather than drink comes the helplessness of the ordinary tramp.
Another form of vulgarity is profanity. The habit of swearing is not a mark
of manliness. It is the sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature, a lack of
verbal initiative. Sometimes, perhaps, profanity seems picturesque and
effective. I have known it so in Arizona once or twice, in old Mexico and
perhaps in Wyoming, but never in the home, or the street, or the ordinary
affairs of life. It is not that blasphemy is offensive to God. He is used
to it, perhaps, for he has met it under many conditions. But it is
offensive to man, insulting to the atmosphere, and destructive of him who
uses it. Profanity and bluster are not signs of courage. The bravest men
are quiet of speech and modest in demeanor.
The man who is successful will not be a dreamer. He will have but one dream
and that will work itself out as a purpose. Dreaming wanes into
sentimentalism, and sentimentalism is fatal to action. The man of purpose
says no to all lesser calls, all minor opportunities. He does not abandon
his college education because a hundred dollar position is offered him
outside. He does not turn from one profession because there is money in
another. He has his claim staked out, and with time he will only fill in
the detail of its boundaries.
"Now that you are through college, what are you going to do?" asked a
friend of a wise young man.
"I shall study medicine," was the grave reply.
"But isn't that profession already overcrowded?" asked the friend.
"Possibly it is," said the youth, "but I purpose to study medicine all the
same. Those who are already in the profession must take their chances."
In this joke of the newspapers there is a sound philosophy. Men of purpose
never overcrowd. The crowd is around the foot of the staircase waiting for
the elevator.
The old traveller, Rafinesque, tells us that when he was a boy he read the
voyages of Captain Cook, Le Vaillant, Pallas, and Bougainville, and "my
soul was fired to be a great traveller like them, and so I became such," he
adds shortly.
If you say to yourself: "I will be a traveller, a statesman, an engineer;"
if you never unsay it; if you bend all your powers in that direction; if
you take advantage of all helps that come in your way and reject all that
do not, you will sometime reach your goal. For the world turns aside to let
any man pass who knows whither he is going.
"Why should we call ourselves men," said Mirabeau, "unless it be to succeed
in everything, everywhere. Say of nothing: 'This is beneath me,' nor feel
that anything is beyond your power, for nothing is impossible to the man
who can will."
Do not say that I am expecting too much of the effects of a firm
resolution, that I give advice which would lead to failure. For the man who
will fail will never take a resolution. Those among you whom fate has cut
out to be nobodies are the ones who will never try!
Even harmless pleasures hurt if they win you from your purpose. Lorimer's
old merchant writes to his son at Harvard: "You will meet fools enough in
the day without hunting up the main herd at night." This plain business
man's advice is worth every young man's attention.
The Twentieth Century will ask for men of instant decision, men whose
mental equipment is all in order, ready to be used on the instant. Yes and
no, right and wrong, we must have them labelled and ready to pack to go
anywhere, to do anything at any time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if
it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a
thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous
century will grant them but short shrift.
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.