The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-06-29

talent and his learning in the highly
remunerative task of enabling a very
wealthy client to override or circum-
vent the law is doing all that in him
lies to encourage the growth in this
country of a spirit of dumb anger
against all laws and of disbelief in
their efficacy. Such spirit may
breed the demand that laws shall be
made even more drastic against the
rich, or else it may manifest itself IN
hostility to all laws Surely Harvard
has the right to expect from her sons
a high standard of applied morality,
whether their paths lead them into
public life, into business, or into the
great profession of the law, whose
members are SO potent in shaping the
growth of the national soul.
but in addition to having high
ideals it can not too often be said
to a body such as is gathered here to-
day. that together with devotion to
what is right must go practical eff
cheney in striving for what is right
This is a rough, workaday, practical
world, and if III it we are to do the
work best worth doing, we must APP
proach that work in a spirit remote
from that of the mere visionary, and
above all remote from that of the
visionary whose aspirations after good
find expression only in the shape of
scolding and complaining. 1T shall
not help us if we avoid the Scylla Of
baSenesS of motive. only to be wreck
ed on the Charybdis of wrong
headedness, of feebeness and in
efficiency. There can be nothing
worse for the community than to have
the men who profess lofty ideals show
themselves so foolish, so narrow, so
impraCticable, us to cut themselves
off from communion with the men
who are actually able to do the work
of governing, the work of business,
the work of the professions 1T is a
sad and evil thing if the men with a
moral sense group themselves as i'm
practical zealots, while the men of
action gradually grow to discard and
laugh at all moral sense as an evil
dence of impractical weakness.
Macaulay, whose eminently sane and
wholesome spirit revOlted, not only AT
weakness but at the censorious folly
which masqueradcS as virtue, de-
ScribcS the condition of Scotland at
the end of the seventeenth century in
passage which every sincere re-
former should keep constantly before
him.
1t is a remarkable circumstance
that the same country should have
produced in the same age the mos,
wonderful specimens of both ex-
tremes Of human nature. Even in
things Indifferent the Scotch Puritan
would hear of no compromise: and he
was but too ready to consider all who
recommended prudence and charity
as traitors to the cause of truth. on
the other hand. the Scotchmen of that
generation who made figure in Par
lament were the most dishonest and
unblushlng time-ScrVers that the
world has ever seen Perhaps ii is
hatura! that the most calIous and
impudent vice should be found in the
hea" nc'~hborhOod Of unreasonable
ana lmpracticable virtue. Where en-
thusiaSts are ready to destroy or be
destroyed for triiles magnified into i'm
portance by a SqucamiSil conscience. if
is not strange that the very name OF
conscience should become a byword
OF contempt to cool and shrewd men
of business
The men who 20 out from Har-
ward into the great world of American
NE bear heavy burden of RESPONSE
plllty. The only way they can show
their gratitude to their alma mater
is by doing their full duty to the ma
tlon as whole; and they can do
TINS fun duty only if they combine the
hlgh resolve to work for what is best
and most ennobling with the no less
resoIute purpose to do their work in
such fashion that when the end of
thelf days comes they shall feel that
they have actually achieved results
ana not merely talked of achieving
than"