The Watertown news. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1917-1919, 1917-06-15

mans The world has produced men
like Shakespeare, Milton, Longfellow
Keats, Kipling, Homer, Cicero, and
many others, all of whom have con-
tributed to the worlds store of litera-
ture. Thus we find that men have spe-
cialized in the various branches of hu-
man knowledge and have added the
results of the research in their realm
of thought to those already produced
by men who came before them. Thus
the world today is the possessor of
those treasures of culture and learn
ing, the understanding of which we
term education.
Those men who have helped to adj
vance education, and have helped to
make history, or who have scored high
in the business world, we call success
full. Millions of others whose names
are not recorded to us in the annals of
fame have also been successful, be-
cause they have struggled and con-
quered and have gained a just pur-
pose in their existence. Although they
are not disclosed to us in the records
of history, they have been successful
in that they have helped to raise the
worlds standard of civilization.
But what Of the countless millions,
who have lived, who today live, and
live only. Their existence is like the
grass and flowers Of the field, for the
wind passeth over it and it is gone,
and the place thereof shall know it no
more" They accomplish nothing,
and do not mean to accomplish any
thing. They have "sunken into an en-
virOnment of a low standard and do
not attempt to pull themselves out"
Our daily associations with people
bring us into contact with just such
people whom we deem utter failures
yet, who by speech and action, mani
fest nevertheless some latent ability.
Yet they have failed and many of these
may even have attempted to succeed
but have failed nevertheless. Why?
This is a problem with which many
thinkers have concerned themselves,
and which comes out to us most
strongly this evening since we have
now completed one epoch in life and
are now looking forward to another.
are we also soon to join the ranks of
j those with a shattered hope of sue
cess or shall we learn to live the life
that BELTS a man?
The basic principle of all ones sue
cess in attaining proposed object is
that OF right thinking. The faculty OF
| right thinking is a common endow-
ment Of which everyone may avail
himself, and if that principle were ap-
piled In the premise of ones career
the intended result would appear in
the conclusion. The faculty of right
thinking, however, in this age, an age
| of the highest intellectual develop
ment the world has ever known, is an
education, the higher knowledge and
| significance one just learn to know
But how and where? Fifty years age
that knowledge had to be wrought out
by the young person in the school oil
experience almost entirely. In this
age, however, the rising generation
has the advantage of the schools, par
tlcularly the high school. The real sig
nifcance Of a high school is not that
person acquire therein a knowledge
of which to make practical use wher
he leaves the school, but to be en-
abled there to acquire a knowledge
of his true self, to learn to know
what his life work is, and above all tt
learn to think, and to think correctly
1t is here where the individual is giver
the opportunity to try himself out, t