and the indifference of the
men of prominence who had refused to notice him. And yet the fine
courage that dared take part in the great struggle just beginning was
a quality which was more valuable to his party and to the world and to
humanity, than all of the schemes of the men who rejected him.
It is this courage constantly injected into the veins of the world
which, little by little, is lifting mankind up to a more and still
more endurable estate. I shall never be able to perform a higher
service than to light again, as I did, the fires of his confidence and
young daring.
Let the world not suppose that by encouraging these great qualities of
youth which it now heedlessly represses, and only too often kills, it
will spoil the young man. The intrinsic difficulties of life are great
enough to keep him within bounds, no matter how much encouragement he
receives. The very nature of things, and the constitution of society
as he comes to examine it in its concrete manifestations, will chasten
his illusions.
The rarity of the air as he mounts upward in life will weight his
wings at last. The limitations of Nature and of affairs will in
themselves be all the chastisement he needs to correct abnormal hope,
courage, faith, or honor--yes, even more than enough. Let the world,
then--the men and women who have won their places in life--let them
nourish the enthusiasms and the elemental "illusions" of youth
wherever they see them.
After all, they are not illusions; they are the only true things in
this universe. The houses that men construct will in time decay. The
remorseless elements will rot the noblest trees down to the earth from
which they grew. The laws that men make will lose their force and be
succeeded by other statutes, equally temporary and futile. Reputations
men build will vanish almost before they are made. Civilizations they
erect will pass from their flowering into the seeds of future
civilizations and be forgotten, too.
But the "illusions" with which the young man confronts the world at
the beginning of his career are as everlasting as God's word: "Till
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one little shall in no wise pass
from the law, till all be fulfilled." The "illusions" of the young
man--of the young American particularly--are the manifestations of
that law, the eternal law of the eternal verities.
"The lyrical dream of the boy is the kingly truth.
The world is a vapor and only the Vision i
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