they have found themselves, spent in training
them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to
understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and
develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been
developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the
disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how
much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the
animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our
feet!

Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so
many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money,
their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?

Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human
life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet
for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be
wrought out as the result of our attempt.

The philosopher Kant has somewhere said that there are three things
needed to the success of a human life, "something to do, some one to
love, something to hope for." The old Catechism says that the chief end
of man is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I indorse the words
of Kant; I agree most heartily and thoroughly with the Catechism.
Philip James Bailey, the author of that once famous poem "Festus," has
said,

"Life's but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to
all things, God."

This also I indorse. I believe that life is something inner, something
deeper than that which we ordinarily think of as constituting the
matters of chief concern regarding it. Let me quote two or three lines
again from Bailey's "Festus," familiar to you because so fine.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not
in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. "He most lives Who thinks most,
feels the noblest, acts the best."

What is human life, then? What is it for? The object of life is living.
But what does living mean? Most people cannot answer that question,
because they have never more than half lived, and consequently have
never appreciated its depth and significance. As I have had occasion
over and over and over again, to say to business men, and I like to say
it on every opportunity, it seems to me, as I look over the face of
society, that most people live only in some little fragmentary way