Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
History
Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
Speeches, addresses, etc.
The truth is there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the
past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of
life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that
to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples
of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember
that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be passed in daily
battles with magical healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may
become the conception that fighting is man's proper business and that
industry is fit only for slaves and people of low degree. That is to
say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars
there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have
changed all that in modern civilized societies, especially in England
and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity and
the growth of industrial activity the occupations once disgraceful have
become honorable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to
fight; and in the one case as in the other the ideal of life has become
so well established that scarcely anybody dreams of questioning it.
Practical business has been substituted for war as the purpose of
existence.
Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future? I think not.
While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossible that
ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate to the
ages of conquest by man over man and spread of the strongest races. The
modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of the earth and
subjection of the powers of Nature to human use is the predominant need.
But hereafter, when both these ends have in the main been achieved, the
ideal formed will probably differ considerably from the present one. May
we not foresee the nature of the difference? I think we may.
Some twenty years ago, a good friend of mine and a good friend of yours,
too, though you never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St.
Andrew's an inaugural address on the occasion of his appointment to the
Lord Rectorship. It contained much to be admired, as did all he wrote;
there ran through it, however, the tacit assumption that life is for
learning and working. I felt at the time that I should have liked to
take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked to contend that life is
not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are
for life. The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct
under all circumstances as shall make living complete--all other uses of
knowledge are secondary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use
of work is that of supplying the materials and aids to living
completely; and that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's
conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped the place of the
primary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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