River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-05-04
MOTIVES
By HENRY F. COPE

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thine hearth. Kings. Sis.
BY their motives men are both
measured and made. These are the
motors, the engines of our humanity.
Fortune may offer many allurements
and fate may seem to lay many lash
on our shoulders, but when and how
we shall reach the goal and whether
that goal be worth the race depends
on the character and power OF the
ideals and desires within us.
Many life lies by the wayside, on
the junk heap that on superficial ex-
animation seems to be an admirable
piece of mechanism. 1t lies there be-
cause it is just that and no more, only
mechanism, intricate, adjusted, pol
1shed, but powerless, valueless for
lack OF a sufficient dynamic force. q
power and motion of its own.
Efficiency is a plendid thing, wholly
desirable and essential, but life de-
mands also sufficiency, motive as well
as mechanism. Schools and daily ex-
perienCe give us the training in eff
cheney, but from within must arise the
dynamic forces, the motives, passions,
aspirations, and real powers of the
personality.
The sun of our motives makes the
purposes of our lives and this deter
mines the course we go. the work we
do, the character we have, and the
destiny that is ours. The deepest need
of every life is a passionate purpose
in living, an end and goal that calls
forth all the possibilities and enlists
all the powers.
LIES purpose depends on its
philosophy; that, is your aim and goal
will depend on your Interpretation of
the meaning of life, on the answer
which you make to life's significance.
What is the meaning of it all to you?
Is it but accident or chance? Then
you will drift without purpose. Is is
bloody fight? Then you will wage
war for yourself and against all 9th
ers. Are there yet higher purposes
running through all? Then you will
seek them.
In a most important sense this an
swer which a man makes to the enig-
ma Of living constitutes his religion
and religion becomes the dominating
motive in life. For religion surely for
us all, as for all people and in all
time, is our conception of that which,
for us, is highest and best, that which,
because it seems to us to give mean
ing to existence, furnishes the motives
60, hot hA II in hcA
world.
This has been at the root of all
high endeavOr; this spirit accounts for
all great and worthy work the world
has seen. Because they have believed
that existence has meaning only as it
contributes to progress, only as it
finds fruitage in larger, nobler being,
they have rejoiced to lay down life if
need be that the race might find
larger life.
Faith in the future, hope for our fell
lows, love of that which is highest and
best fuse together and make a suffi-
cient motive for living and toiling.
And life is tedious business, without
such motives. A man becomes merely
a part of the bread winning machine,
a slave bound to the wheel, unless he
has some sense of his own life as be-
ing worth while for the contribution
it makes to all life.
Youth abounds with high motives
normally: the years often blast them
with the curse of cynicism. We des-
poll our own hearts and steal our own
happiness whenever we allow the en-
differing experiences of daily living to
take from us the faith that it is pos
sible to do good, to increase the
worlds store of joy and strength and
hope, and to make our lives worth
something to our times.
When all has been said and all
other ways tried we find that the only
motives that give perennial sat1sfac-
ton and constantly strengthen the
heart are the unselfish ones. One gets
weary Of gaining, but never OF giving.
Ambition falters on its wings. But
the aspiration to serve, to help, 10
bless, to cheer, to love never dies
down.
You may measure any mans re-
ligion by the extent to which 1T acts
as a constant motive in his life,
whether 1t gives him vision OF the
life that awakens an enthusiasm for
living, of world that is worth liv-
ing In and dying for and race that
has such promise in itself as to call
for the investment of all that 10
--.o-+hxy In