Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-02-25


have been educated at all. The weak
ling and the coward are out of place
! in strong and free community. In
republic like ours the governing class
Is composed of the strong men who
take the trouble to do the work of gov
eminent; and if you are too timid or
too fastidious or too careless to do your
part in this work, then you forfeit your
right to be considered one of the gov
erning and you become one Of the gov
erned i1stead-One of the driven cattle
of the political arena. l want you to
feel that 1t is not merely your right
to take part in politics, not merely
your duty TO the State, but that it is
demanded by your own self-respect.
unless you are content to acknowledge
that you are unfit to govern pOurseIf
and have 10 submit to the rule Of some-
body else rs a master-and this is
what it means if you do not do your
own part in government.
Like most other things of value,
education is good only in so far as 1t IS
used Alright, and if it is misused or If it
causes the owner to be so puffed up
with pride as to make him misestimate
the relative values Of things it becomes
harm and not a benefit. There are
few things less desirable than the arid
cultivation, the learning and refine
ment which lead merely to that in
tellectual conceit which makes a man
in a democratic community like ours
hold himself aloof from his fellows and
pride himself upon the weakness
which he mistakes for SuperclliouS
strength. Small is the use of those
educated men who in after life meet no
one but themselves, and gather in
parlors to discuss wrong conditions
which they do not understand and to
advocate remedies which have the
prime defect of being unavoidable.
The judgment on practical affairs,
political and social, Of educated men
who keep aloof from the conditions of
practical life. is apt to be valueless to
those other men who do really wage
effective war against the forces of
baseness and of evil From the
political standpoint education is
harm and not a benefit to the men
whom it serves as an excuse for refus-
ing to mingle with their fellows and
for standing aloof from the broad
curiously impotent spirit of fancied
superiority. The political wronghead-
edness of such men is quite as great as
that of wholly uneducated men; and
no people could be less trustworthy as
critics and advisors The educated
man who seeks to console himself for
his own lack of the robust qualities
necessary to bring success in Ameri-
can politics by moaning over the
degereracy of the times instead of try
ing to better them, by railing at the
men who do the actual work of politi-
cal life instead of trying himself to do
the work, is a poor creature, and, so
far as his feeble powers avail, is a
damage and not a help to the country.
You may come far short of this dis
agreeable standard and still be
rather useless member of society.
Your education, your cultivation. Will
not help you if you make the mistake
of thinking that it is a substitute for
instead of an addition to those quail
ties which in the struggle of life bring
success to the ordinary man without
your advantages. Your college train
ing confers no privilege upon you save
as tested by the use you make of 1t.
1t puts upon you the obligation to
show yourselves better able to do
certain things than your fellows who
have not had your advantages. II IT
has served merely to make you believe
that you are to be excused from effort
in after life, that you are to be ex-
cused from contact with the actual
world of men and events, then it will
prove a curse and not 4 blessing. If
on the other hand you treat your
education as q weapon the more in
your hands, a weapon to fit you to DO
better in the hard struggle of effort.
and not as eXcusing you in any way
from taking part in practical fashion
in that struggle, then it Will be
benefit to you.
Let each of you college men remem-
Der in after life that in the fundamen-
tails he is very much like his fellows
who have not been to college. and that
if he is to achieve results, instead of
confirming himself exclusively to dis
arrangement of other men who have
achieved them, he must manage to
come to some kind of working agree
mpOt with THESE fellows Ol HIS. IHtit
are times of course when it may be the
highest duty of citizen to stand alone
or practically alone. But if this is
mans normal attitude-if normally he
is unable to work in combination with
a considerable body of his fellows-it
is safe to set him down as unfit for
useful service in a democracy. In
popular government results worth hav-
| ing can only be achieved by men who
combine worthy ideals with practical
| good sense; who are resolute to ac-
complish good purposes. but who can
accommodate themselves to the give
and take necessary where work has to
be DONE as almost all important work
must necessarily be done, by combina-
| ton. Moreover, remember that
normally the prime object of political
| life should be to achieve results and
not merely to issue manifestoes-save
| of course where the issuance of such
manifestoes helps to achieve the re-
suits. 1t is very bad thing to be