for the sake of conformity and
reject no opinion for the sake of originality; which is free,
therefore--free to gather its own convictions, a slave neither to any
compulsion nor to any antagonism. Tell me, have you never seen two
teachers, one of them slavishly adopting old methods because he feared
to be called "imitator," the other crudely devising new plans because he
was afraid of seeming conservative, both of them really cowards, neither
of them really thinking out his work? ...

The great vice of our people in their relation to the politics of the
land is cowardice. It is not lack of intelligence: our people know the
meaning of political conditions with wonderful sagacity. It is not low
morality: the great mass of our people apply high standards to the acts
of public men. But it is cowardice. It is the disposition of one part of
our people to fall in with current ways of working, to run with the
mass; and of another part to rush headlong into this or that new scheme
or policy of opposition, merely to escape the stigma of conservatism.

LITERATURE AND LIFE

From 'Essays and Addresses'

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the
work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
The forests are full of trees before the sea is thick with ships. So the
world abounds in life before men begin to reason and describe and
analyze and sing, and literature is born. The fact and the action must
come first. This is true in every kind of literature. The mind and its
workings are before the metaphysician. Beauty and romance antedate the
poet. The nations rise and fall before the historian tells their story.
Nature's profusion exists before the first scientific book is written.
Even the facts of mathematics must be true before the first diagram is
drawn for their demonstration.

To own and recognize this priority of life is the first need of
literature. Literature which does not utter a life already existent,
more fundamental than itself, is shallow and unreal. I had a schoolmate
who at the age of twenty published a volume of poems called
'Life-Memories.' The book died before it was born. There were no real
memories, because there had been no life. So every science which does
not utter investigated fact, every history which does not tell of
experience, every poetry which is not based upon the truth of things,
has no real life. It does not perish; it is never born. Therefor