a soldier. If that principle be allowed anywhere, it must be a universal principle. If we really believe this, there would be no very tender sympathy in our hearts towards those who fail. We should feel that people had got all they were capable of getting, that they receive all that belongs to them. But I do not believe that this is true. I do not believe that people, in spite of conditions and circumstances, find their places, that they always have opportunities or are capable of making opportunities to show all that is in them. I rather believe that it is a common and melancholy truth which Gray has given poetic expression to in his great "Elegy." He tells us, as he looks over the graves of the weary peasants, the people in the main unknown who are buried in the churchyard, that probably "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest." He talks about hands now turned to dust,— "Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, I believe that this is one of the saddest truths of the world. And right here is one of the things I hope to see in some other life. I hope to see the out-blossoming, the out-flowering, of thousands and millions of souls into greatness and beauty and glory in this direction or that, who had no opportunity here even to put forth a bud. Take, for example, a life like Keats. Keats died at an age when a good many men who have become famous had not begun their life-work. What might he not have accomplished, had he not inherited the seeds of disease which took him prematurely away? Take, again, a case like Arthur Henry Hallam. You are familiar with "In Memoriam," and know those three initials A. H. H., which head the great poem which was written by Tennyson in memory of Hallam, his schoolmate and friend, who died when he was about twenty-three, leaving the promise behind him of a power and a fame equal to that of his master and friend who has sung of him. Take other illustrations, one or two that have been used in this way before, but that are so striking as to determine the answer to our question. I have a personal friend who in the years before the war had occasion to visit St. Louis on a matter of business. He wished to find out some facts concerning a certain piece of real estate, and he visited a real estate office. The man in the office did not seem in any way striking or remarkable. He did not seem especially interested in the matter of the real estate about which they were to speak. My friend got very little satisfaction in his conference with him, and soon left. Some years afterwards he met him again as the great general of the modern world and as president of the United States. Now, suppose there had been no war, where would the manifest greatness of Grant have been? And yet if he had lived through a time of profound peace, and wasted the magnificent energy of his brain in the real estate office, yet in potency, in possibility, he would have been as great as the world acknowledges him to be. So take Lincoln. Suppose, again, there had been no war, suppose there had been no slavery agitation: it is probably true that Lincoln would never have been President. He might have distinguished himself locally as a lawyer; but the chances are that in popular estimation all over the country Douglas, who was the incarnation of smartness, would have been regarded as the greater man of the two. And yet, with no opportunity to manifest what was in him, he still would have had the possibility in brain and heart and soul of reaching that towering position of the highest and grandest American who has ever lived. I do not believe, then, that all men find their places, find their level, or show what is best in them, or that they get the best opportunities of showing what they are capable of doing. I believe there have been thousands of poets who have never sung, thousands of musicians who have never written, thousands of generals who never handled a sword, thousands of statesmen who have never taken part in a debate or framed a resolution, thousands of men in every department of life capable of the highest and the finest and best, had there been a fitting stage and a stimulus to call them forth. Let us note a few of the difficulties that stand in the way of people finding their places. I was asked only this last week to give my opinion concerning the question of human freedom and of responsibility in the kind of lives we lead. If you look over the matter carefully and candidly, I think you will agree with me that we must limit this responsibility in the most serious way. Apply it this morning to this matter of finding one's place in the world. We are born without any consultation as to where we shall be born, whether in Africa or Boston; whether white or black; whether our parents shall be ignorant or educated, vicious or virtuous. We are born; and that, in the main, determines all that follows. Then during our youth the question as to whether we shall be properly educated or not, whether we shall be trained into fitness for this thing or that or have a bias implanted in some direction,- all these things are determined before the question of the freedom of our own wills has any chance to assert itself. Here, then, is one of the great difficulties that stand in the way of finding one's place. Then, to note another thing, there is the prejudice, the persistent bias, of parents and friends. I have known many cases where the unwise determination of the father that a boy or a girl should be this or that has practically stunted or ruined the life. As personal illustrations perhaps carry more force than general statements, let me give you one or two. When I was a young man, I had a friend with whom for a time I was quite intimate. His father was a clergyman, a doctor of divinity; and he was determined that his son should be a clergyman. Nothing else would satisfy him, nothing else would he even for a moment consider. But his boy was a born mechanic, having a perfect genius for mechanism. When still a boy, he had whittled out a pianoforte with his jack-knife, complete in almost every part. The one thing he longed for with his whole soul was to go to some place where he could study machinery, and devote himself to it as his great life-work. So strong was this impulse that he broke away from his father for a while to study it; but the father at last prevailed. I do not know what great service this young man could have rendered to the world if he had been permitted to be a machinist: he might have given us inventions that would have enriched civilization. I only know that at last his father had his way, and crowded him into the ministry, and that he has never been heard of from that day to this. Whether he has rendered anybody any ser vice I do not know. I had another friend, when I was a young man, whose father was equally determined that he should be a minister. But the boy in this case was too strong for his father; and so he broke away, and resisted in spite of bitterness, and became the one thing he had dreamed of ever since he was a boy. He followed his bent, went to Europe, became wealthy, and is one of the most marked successes in his particular line that I have ever known. Here, then, are these things that stand in the way of people finding their place. There is one other thing that I wish to speak of in this particular; and that is one which the most of you will be surprised to have me class under this head. I think one of the most serious things in our modern world that stands in the way of any man's finding his place is being born of parents who happen to possess too much money. I believe that this is as serious, and sometimes more serious, than any of the causes that I have had occasion to refer to. I know young men by the score in the great cities of this country,- in New York, in Boston, in Washington, in Baltimore, in New Orleans, in Chicago, in St. Louis, in San Francisco,- young men who will never find any place that is worthy of a manly man's ambition, who have not waked up to the idea that it is important that they should find any place, simply because they can say as they are growing up, Father has money enough; and it does not make any difference whether I become anything or not. I think that is a very serious danger that men with money specially need to guard. For the young man who thinks that there is nothing more for him to do in this world except to get rid of the money that his father has earned is one of those that we can spare with the least conceivable amount of loss. He is worth nothing to the world. I have had to watch and guard many a time in dealing with young fellows, when I have seen that they were looking to such young men as examples, who were considering that the position which they occupied was one to be envied. They have thought that it was fine to be thus set free from any responsibility, from any necessity of doing or caring for anything or any one but themselves. When a man reaches this position, there is very little chance of saving him in this life; and there is very little in him that is worth saving. And yet in them, as in all others, there is the germ, the possibility, of the highest, the noblest, the truest manhood; and the one blessing that could come to them would be to have these artificial supports rudely torn away from them, bringing them face to face with the absolute necessity of creating for themselves a place to stand, in which they can be compelled to render some service to their fellow-men. In this way only is there any hope of developing the possibilities of manliness which may be hidden within their loose and irresponsible lives. Let us turn to one other phase of this matter of finding one's place. I wish to consider a few of the motives which govern people in this seeking for a position. What is it that men desire most? What is it that they are looking for, as they are looking for some position that they may occupy in the world? Of course, this matter is determined in different ages of the world by what is the dominant tendency and trend of the world's civilization. There have |
