I was talking to a young man and woman the other day, both thoroughbred Americans, who had resolved to enter upon the adventure of matrimony together. The question was whether he should accept an opening in business with a fair outlook for making a fortune, or take a position as teacher in a school with a possible chance at best of earning a comfortable living. They asked my advice. I put the alternative as clearly as I could. On the one hand, a lot of money for doing work that was perfectly honest, but not at all congenial. On the other hand, small pay in the beginning, and no chance of ever receiving more than a modest competence for doing work that was rather hard but entirely congenial. They did not hesitate a moment. "We shall get more out of life," they said with one accord, "if our work makes us happy, than if we get big pay for doing what we do not love to do." They were not exceptional. They were typical of the best young Americans. The noteworthy thing is that both of them took for granted the necessity of _doing something_ as long as they lived. The notion of a state of idleness, either as a right or as a reward, never entered their blessed young minds. In later lectures I shall speak of some of the larger evidences in education, in social effort, and in literature, which encourage the hope that the emotional life of America is not altogether a "conventional sentimentality," nor her spiritual life a complete "feebleness," nor her intelligence entirely "slovenly." But just now we have to consider the real reason and significance of the greater strength, the fuller development of the industrial life. Let us try to look at it clearly and logically. My wish is not to accuse, nor to defend, but first of all to understand. The astonishing industrial advance of the United States, and the predominance of this motive in the national life, come from the third element in the spirit of America, _will-power_, that vital energy of nature which makes an ideal of activity and efficiency. "The man who does things" is the man whom the average American admires. No doubt the original conditions of the nation's birth and growth were potent in directing this will-power, in transforming this energy into forces of a practical and material kind. A new land offered the opportunity, a wild land presented the necessity, a rich land held out the reward, to men who were eager to do something. But though the outward circumstances may have moulded and developed the energy, they did not create it.