Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Marvin A. Hodges, and Project Gutenbert Distributed Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines. THE CALL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY An Address to Young Men By DAVID STARR JORDAN Chancellor of Leland Stanford Junior University 1903 To Vernon Lyman Kellogg _So live that your afterself-- the man you ought to be--may in his time be possible and actual. Far away in the twenties, the thirties of the Twentieth Century, he is awaiting his turn. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will you leave for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you? Will you, boy of the Twentieth Century, let him come as a man among men in his time, or will you throw away his inheritance before he has had the chance to touch it? Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining through your experiences, hallowed through your joys, building on them his own, or will you fling his hope away, decreeing, wanton-like, that the man you might have been shall never be?_ The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no century has shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may see what kind of a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and what manner of men it will demand to do it.