What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness — John Shaqi
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and HappinessTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life
During the past two or three years two well-known millionaires in the
United States, millionaires many times over, have died. The one started
into life with the idea of acquiring a great name by accumulating great
wealth. These two things he had in mind,--self and great wealth. And, as
he went on, he gradually became so that he could see nothing but these.
The greed for gain soon made him more and more the slave; and he,
knowing nothing other than obedience to his master, piled and
accumulated and hoarded, and after spending all his days thus, he then
lay down and died, taking not so much as one poor little penny with him,
only a soul dwarfed compared to what it otherwise might have been. For
it might have been the soul of a royal master instead of that of an
abject slave.
The papers noted his death with seldom even a single word of praise. It
was regretted by few, and he was mourned by still fewer. And even at his
death he was spoken of by thousands in words far from complimentary, all
uniting in saying what he might have been and done, what a tremendous
power for good, how he might have been loved and honored during his
life, and at death mourned and blessed by the entire nation, the entire
world. A pitiable sight, indeed, to see a human mind, a human soul, thus
voluntarily enslave itself for a few temporary pieces of metal.
The other started into life with the principle that a man's success is
to be measured by his _direct usefulness_ to his fellow-men, to the
world in which he lives, and by this alone; that private wealth is
merely a _private trust_ to be used for the highest good of mankind.
Under the benign influences of this mighty principle of service, we see
him great, influential, wealthy; his whole nature expanding, himself
growing large-hearted, generous, magnanimous, serving his State, his
country, his fellow-men, writing his name on the hearts of all he comes
in contact with, so that his name is never thought of by them without
feelings of gratitude and praise.
Then as the chief service to his fellow-men, next to his own personal
influence and example, he uses his vast fortune, this vast private
trust, for the founding and endowing of a great institution of learning,
using his splendid business capacities in its organization, having
uppermost in mind in its building that young men and young women may
there have every advantage at the least possible expense to fit
themselves in turn for the greatest _direct usefulness_ to their
fellow-men while they live in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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