ealth and position, should especially
guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially
liable; and if yielded to, their--your--chances of useful service are
at an end.

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that
queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as the
cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to
whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face
it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride
in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the
way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no
more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who
either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering
disbelief towards all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement
or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to
achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to
criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an
intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's
realities--all these are marks, not, as the possessor would fain
think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to
bear their part manfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in
the affectation of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide
from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy;
there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike
at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is
no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive
to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he
fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall
never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor
defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to
develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough