t has fallen when their
hands have ceased to hold it up. The names history cherishes are those
of men of another type. Only "a man too simply great to scheme for his
proper self" is great enough to become a pillar of the ages.

It is part of the duty of higher education to build up ideals of noble
freedom. It is not for help in the vegetative work of life that you go
to college. You are just as good a slave without it. You can earn
your board and lodging without the formality of culture. The training
of the college will make your power for action greater, no doubt; but
it will also magnify your needs. The debt of life a scholar has to pay
is greater than that paid by the clown. And the higher sacrifice the
scholar may be called upon to make grows with the increased fullness of
his life. Greater needs go with greater power, and both mean greater
opportunity for sacrifice.

In the days you have been with us you should have formed some ideals.
You should have bound these ideals together with the chain of
"well-spent yesterdays," the higher heredity which comes not from your
ancestors, but which each man must build up for himself. You should
have done something in the direction of the life of higher sacrifice,
the life that from the fullness of its resources can have something to
give.

Such sacrifice is not waste, but service; not spending, but
accomplishing. Many men, and more women, spend their lives for others
when others would have been better served if they had saved themselves.
Mere giving is not service. "Charity that is irrational and impulsive
giving, is a waste, whether of money or of life." "Charity creates
half the misery she relieves; she cannot relieve half the misery she
creates."

The men you meet as you leave these halls will not understand your
ideals. They will not know that your life is not bound up in the
present, but has something to ask or to give for the future. Till they
understand you they will not yield you their sympathies. They may jeer
at you because the whip they respond to leaves no mark upon you. They
will try to buy you, because the Devil has always bid high for the
lives of young men with ideals. A man in his market stands always
above par. Slaves are his stock in trade. If a man of power can be
had for base purposes, he can be sure of an immediate reward. You can
sell your blood for its weight in milk, or for its weight in
gold--whatever you choose,--if you are