Social sciences; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
¶From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship; but
most of all from those who have received most; most of all from those
who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which comes from
association in and with a great university. From those to whom much has
been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in
return; and the most that can be given to any man is education. I expect
and demand in the name of the nation much more from you who have had
training of the mind than from those of mere wealth. To the man of means
much has been given, too, and much will be expected from him, and ought
to be, but not as much as from you, because your possession is more
valuable than his. If you envy him I think poorly of you. Envy is merely
the meanest form of admiration, and a man who envies another admits
thereby his own inferiority.
¶We have a right to expect from the college-bred man, the college-bred
woman, a proper sense of proportion, a proper sense of perspective,
which will enable him or her to see things in their right relation one
to another, and when thus seen while wealth will have a proper place, a
just place, as an instrument for achieving happiness and power, for
conferring happiness and power, it will not stand as high as much else
in our national life. I ask you to take that not as a conventional
statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of
the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the
qualities which have made you admire them, what are the services they
have rendered. For, as President Wheeler said to-day, it is true now as
it ever has been true that the greatest good fortune, the greatest
honor, that can befall any man is that he shall serve, that he shall
serve the nation, serve his people, serve mankind; and looking back in
history the names that come up before us, the names to which we turn,
the names of the men of our own people which stand as shining honor
marks in our annals, the names of those men typifying qualities which
rightly we should hold in reverence, are the names of the statesmen, of
the soldiers, of the poets, and after them, not abreast of them, the
names of the architects of our material prosperity also.[23]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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