Now, optimism was the foundation on which McGraw strove to build up character. Optimism permeated every part of our life there. From a narrow environment we looked out hopefully into broadening distances. Every year some confident youth told us from the college rostrum in rounded sentences that life was worth living; that sickness, poverty, disappointment, the countless evils which dog our footsteps, were nothing in the scale against the boon of opportunity. Every morning in chapel the doctor voiced our gratitude for the privilege of living and working. And now over heads that moved in such charged airs the Professor cast his pall of pessimism. He took his text from Solomon, and found that all was vanity. It mattered little whether or not what he said was true. He believed it to be true, and for the moment at least his incisive voice and long forefinger carried with them conviction. He railed at the old dictum that man was God's noblest work. The ordinary dog, he declared, was more pleasing to the eye than the ordinary man, and the life of the ordinary dog more to be envied than that of the ordinary man. Knowledge only lifted us above the animal to be more buffeted by a complexity of desires. The greatest thing in the world was self, and even the roots of our goodness burrowed down into the depths where the ego was considering its own comfort either in this world or the next. The proud man for whom the universe was made was nothing but a fragile thread of memories wrapped in soft tissue, packed away in a casket of bone, and made easily portable by a pair of levers called legs. After countless ages spent on earth seeking the true source of happiness men were still countless ages from agreement. One half sought by goodness to attain happiness in immortality; the other in Nirvana. One half found the shadow of happiness in inertia, in stupefaction, a mere satisfying of physical needs; the other in motion, joining in the mad procession which we call so boastfully Progress. By accident of birth we were of the progressive half and we paraded around and around, puffed up with pride of our little accomplishment, until we fell exhausted and another took our place.