--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - MacEwan, E. J. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 18 number: 11 published: 1915-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'MacEwan, E. J., "The Solid and Enduring Satisfactions of Life," *Improvement Era* 18, no. 11 (September 1915): 990–997.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera18011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera18011unse start_page: 990 end_page: 997 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1915-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera18011unse publication_year: 1915 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1915, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Solid and Enduring Satisfactions of Life The Solid and Enduring Satisfactions of Life BY DR. E. J. MAC EWAN, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, KALAMAZOO COLLEGE, MICHIGAN [The principal speaker to the June 8, 1915, graduating class of the State Agricultural College of Utah, on the occasion of the twenty- fifth anniversary of the opening of the college for service, was Dr. E. J. MacEwan, of Kalamazoo, Michigan. His address is a strong appeal to the youth of our land to seek the solid satisfactions of life. What to do to obtain these, and what to avoid, are clearly set forth in the address. — Editors.] Friends and Members of the Graduating Class: When, four years ago, you entered upon your college career, you began a search for the sources of the solid and enduring sat- isfactions of life. These are still your objective — not the gratifi- cations of this hour, or of tomorrow, but those satisfactions which will last and increase. Of these the one indispensable, the basis of all others, is physical health. The educated young person ought to be a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal. This is the foundation for everything else. Upon this is built everything in this world of domestic joy and professional success, everything of a useful and honorable career. This being clean, vigorous animals, full of vitality, involves much more than you are likely to suppose. It imolies not condescending to the common barbaric vices. It in- volves avoiding gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality and unclean- ness of every kind. It involves having a body, a fit habitation for God Almighty. It is a splendid, thing for youth to have animal spirits — a finely descriptive phrase. It is a healthy thing to enjoy each day of college life and of after life, sports and active sportive bodily exercise. Athletics and calisthenics have always been as- sociated with the achievements of mind in every successful civil- ization. Vigor of body assists mental accomplishment. But play must be an incidental in a satisfactory life. Next, to make sure of durable satisfactions in life, you ought to develop a faculty of strong mental grip, a wholesome talent for hard intellectual exertion. You aimed at intellectual power and purpose. In all the occupations — learned, scientific, commercial, industrial — large mental enjoyments should come to the educated man or woman. The great distinction between you who have had opportunity for prolonged education and the larger class lacking this opportunity is that you will live largely by the exercise of in- tellectual powers, and therefore get greater enjoyment from life than those who live largely by the exercise of bodily power. You ought, therefore, to have obtained here trained capacity for men- tal labor, rapid, intense, sustained, the power of keen observation, just influence, and unfailing foresight. Mr. Wilson has said that college graduates of this country have no right to a distinctive place in any community unless they can show it by intellectual achievement; and that if a college is a place for distinction at all, it must be distinguished by the conquest of the mind. So firmly does Mr. Wilson believe in the intellectual side of college life that he has said if the Angel Gabriel should apply for admission to Princeton, and fail to pass a rigid entrance examination, he would be told to go about his business and not waste his time in that col- lege. He indicated another side when he said that if Satan should apply, bringing a dozen extra credits from the most famous sec- ondary school in America, all rated A, he, for other reasons, would not be admitted — and not encouraged to go about his business. But there is something beyond vigorous phvsical health and acquired power of intellectual labor. The objective of all worthy higher education is intelligent, wholesome, earnest manhood and womanhood : the means to this objective, the use of all phases of college life — class-room exercise, library, laboratory, including the farm and the shop, social life and the various organized stu- dent actitvities ; and along with these intimate relations with in- structors of large ability, unquestionable equipment, lofty charac- ter, and strong and sympathetic personality. Is not this sound ed- ucational theory? Higher education should help in the formation of right ideals, not only of thinking, but of doing and living. It must not only train the mind to think, but the imagination to see and create, the heart to feel and desire, and the will to determine to have, to be, and to do that which is noblest and best. Never in the history of America has the college had more need than today to hold clearlv before itself the great intellectual and spiritual purpose of its work, — to stimulate, to awaken, to quicken, to feel ; never has the nation had more need of the help of educational institutions. We are a country of wonderful material advancement and wealth, but we cannot remain truly great without spiritual development. No people can succeed permanently without high aims and ideals. Peach must exceed grasp. It is the business of college men and women, consciously to strive to develop the reach. Your State is the gem of the Rockies. As rich as California in gold, and as Colorado in silver and lead, it excels them in its great, gleaming beds of precious stones. The cattle on a thou- sand hills are yours. Billowy herds of sheep surge on the moun- tain sides. Viewed from the foot-hills, rich, well-tilled fields checker the broad valleys with green and gold, and are dotted with neat and delightful farm hamlets. So fertile and diversified is your soil and so varied the climate that the cereals and roots of the temperate zone flourish in some parts while the fruits and other productions of a warmer clime abound in others. Miners' cabins cluster in gulches and canyons. Every source of industry that goes to the making of a great, independent commonwealth is here, and is being rapidly and thoroughly developed. A gener- ous government is placing in your hands vast means, supple- mented by the appropriations of a far-sighted legislature, to per- fect your agriculture and allied industries, to conserve your ma- terial resources, and to render your homes sanitary, convenient, attractive and even luxurious. You have been trained here, young gentlemen and ladies, to do your part in this material de- velopment, and you will do it well. And here is a source of solid enduring satisfaction in life. But you have a still higher work to do, if along with this you would still further secure solid, enduring satisfaction. Many of the old forces for good that furnished past genera- tions a present helo in time of trouble have ceased to be operative or are fast losing their efficiencv. We are no longer a Bible-reading people ; the church and the Sunday school are losing their hold ; family life is fast becoming less intimate and watchful ; respect for law and authority is decreasing, while forces for evil are steadily multiplying. The moving picture shows, in spite of the censors, and the vaudevilles, cheap and commonplace, if not vulgar, the trashy magazine, the scandalous reports and the vul- gar comic Sunday supplement of the newspaper are but a few of the agencies at work, which have already helped to bring about a cheapening of ideals, a lowering of standards, a blunting of the finer sensibilities and distinctions, ominiously perceptible in the American people, both adult and youth. The lust for material, commercial and political power blinds ""en to their public duties and most solid personal satisfactions. There is too much passion for gain, and pessimism toward national institutions. If we are to avoid the paralyzing curse of class and caste and secure social satisfaction we must remember that equal- ity, personal liberty, and all our free institutions are the offspring of religion, and so hold fast to the moral, the ethical, the religious, in our search for the solid and enduring satisfactions in life. Don't be afraid of religion. It's a good companion. Religion is just the art of living — and nothing else, — living with head, and heart, and hand ; with eye, ear, palate, with conscience and rever- ence. It .is the life of the whole man. Living less than this is not religion : living more is impossible. Religion is reverence for God, and loyalty to God, regard for the rights and feelings of fel- low men. It is doing justly, loving mercy, having pity for the sin- ful and compassion for the unfortunate. It is walking humbly with God, and doing unto others as you would that they should do unto you. The chief end of education is the making of men and women, — the process of developing a power within which enables the human being to dominate the instincts and habits of the animal, and direct his life by the light of reason. Man is a part of the ma- terial world ; but he belongs also to the world of mind and spirit. Education should give him the power of intellectual freedom, and make him sensible of the duties and worthy of the privileges of a person in the midst of a universe of things. College education should transform the school-boy and school-girl into the man air' woman of the world, into personalities who can move more freely and familiarly in the midst of the world's activities, who can speak its language, who are conversant with its thought and manners, who can interpret its life. It should develop not only power but spiritual responsibility for the use of that power. It should fit the student to take his place, to do his work, to play his part in the great community of his fellows. It should be a training under- gone for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the State as well as for the individual. Your peculiar education should fit you for citizenship and public leadership, as well as equip you for a trade. It should develop spiritual responsibility for the service of humanity and a broad preparation for living, as well as for the quest of a liveli- hood. Your vocational education and technical training are abso- lutely essential, but so is that part of your education which fits you to respond intelligently and with free connection to the voca- tion of being men and women. You have had some training in the humanities and in science ; in the humanities, — in some of the great world-languages and literature, history and philosophy, — because they are the con- servators of those great human forces which make for the ad- vancement of knowledge and the civilization of the world; be- cause they develop both capability and resource ; because they give you a knowledge of man as he has been, and as he is, and of the intellectual and moral world ; because they put you in possession of the race experience, so that in your own minds you hold the treasures, not only of the world in which you live, but of the world of the past, with Its art, its customs, its manners, its morals, its institutions and its achievements. But your training has been especially in the sciences, because they give you indispensable knowledge of the multitudinous phe- nomena of the external world, because they are liberal and liberal- izing studies, because their pursuit is a training in habits of pre- cision, of accurate observation, of closely articulated reasoning, of devices for experimentation and of appreciation of the valid ground of proof ; and because in their application lies the perfect- ing of all those interests, industries, and occupations which your college was founded to foster. You have not neglected economics, and political and social science. You have been trained in the facile and accurate expression of knowledge. You have learned that the ability to put thought into adequate and accurate expression essentially characterizes a free spirit in the world of mind. To see, to think, to feel, and then to remain dumb is intolerable bondage. Every educated person should certainly understand his own tongue, and have some appreciation of its power and beauty, and of the glory of its literature. The college graduate should not only be able to speak his vernacular, but speak it as to the manner born, and not as a barbarian. He alone can give vitality to knowledge who has acquired the power of communicating it to others with grace, sim- plicity and convincingness. In our use of this varied knowledge and this accumulated power and its application to the problems of material prosperity, individual and public, you have a source of solid and enduring satisfaction. There is, however, something beyond this acquired power of strenuous intellectual labor applied to material prosperity. Shake- speare says : "The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation." This spotless treasure is won by living with honor. There are things an honorable man does not do. He never wrongs or degrades a woman. He never cheats or oppresses the weaker power. He never betrays a friend or truth. He is honest, sincere, candid, generous — generous not only with his money, but in his judgments of men and women, and of nature and the prospects of mankind. Generosity is a beautiful attribute. He obeys the great command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself." What is the tribunal which declares at last, "This is an honorable man"? You have been looking for this favorable judgment from your elders — parents, instructors, elder students, and very likely you have had it. But these are not the ultimate tribunal. That will be your contemporaries and the younger generation: and their judgment will be formidable and unavoidable. Live in fear of that tribunal — not in abject fear, for independence is an indispensable quality in an honorable person. An admirable phrase in our Declaration of Independ- ence is "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Cherish a decent respect for the opinions of your contemporaries, for much of your usefulness and influence will depend upon it; but let it not interfere with your personal declaration of independence. Look forward to the important crises of your lives, which may be much nearer than you suppose. Perpare for the judgment of the ultimate human tribunal. Young men, live as if next week you were to marry the purest woman on earth. Young women, live as if next month you were going to be queens Has your educa- tion prepared for you the solid enduring satisfaction of this kind of life? Your training has developed your intelligence, strengthened your faculties, refined your taste, advanced your efficiency and en- larged your purposes. Has it increased your self-respect, strength- ened your moral faculties, refined your moral sensibilities, and enlarged your sympathies ? It has helped you toward becom- ing independent, self-supporting men and women. Has it helped to develop in you that lofty manhood and womanhood which is the very core of patriotic citizenship, and the firm foundation of solid, enduring satisfaction in life? A bright, strong, well-trained mind, stocked with the treas- ures of knowledge, but not animated with high ideals, not stead- fast with a fixed moral purpose, is a sad and sorry spectacle. All education is supposed to lift men above the common, baser crimes. Petty theft, burglary, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, licentious- ness are impossible to any one with the least pretension to schol- arship. But mere intellectual education has not always lifted men above forgery, bribery, perjury, counterfeiting, and gigantic fraud and peculation. Two well educated young men in my home city have just been convicted of grand larceny and embezzlement, occasioning a failure of $3,500,000; and their father, a graduate of the State University, is indicted for the same offense and will be convicted by the same evidence. A former treasurer of the State of Michigan is serving a long term in the state prison for appropriating to his own use several hundred thousand dollars from state funds. A former president of the National Education Association is still in the penitentiary of Illinois for fraud, for- gery and embezzlement. A former president of the United States, whose acquaintance I made on this College Hill, A.B., A.M., LL.D., Harvard, made the public declaration when nominated for a second term, that he would in no circumstances be a candidate* for a third term, but his intellectual education did not keep him from changing his mind when there was again a contest for the great prize. His peculiar interpretation of that famous declara- tion, it cannot be doubted, has failed to give him or his political party a great measure of solid, enduring satisfaction. Those acquainted with the administration by educated gentle- r-en, of the federal appropriations for agricultural colleges a~J experiment stations, will recall that many ugly rumors of the di- version of these funds to personal or other not altogether patriotic uses have been verified by remorseless investigation. Enlightened intellect must be domniated by great-souled, holy enthusiasm for righteousness, before it can give the solid, endur- ing satisfaction of life. Intellectual education may quicken and stimulate the mental powers, but it cannot strongly touch those inner motives of the soul which impel toward righteous conduct, and individual or national justice. Cultivation of the intellect alone, then, will not fully answer the purposes of a wise education. Crimes of the higher passions, of reflection, as self aggrandizement in wealth, in place, in polit- ical, or national prominence under the pretense of patriotism, are not at all uncommon among the highly educated who have given the intellectual full sway to the neglect of the moral. Symmetry of character, balance, is what is needed. The moral or religious faculties may be so developed as to make of the student a fanatic or religious monstrosity ; but the ethical, the moral, the religious, is the supreme faculty ; and to have slighted this in the process of your education would have yielded a more distorted result than to have built up only the ethical. Man shall not live by bread alone, yet bread is important. Man must live before he can live well. It is essential that men make a living — sometimes. The importance depends somewhat on their fitness to live at all. Cultivated brain has a commercial value. Young people are quick to see this and are flocking to the colleges. This pecuniary value of scholarship can hardly be over- estimated. But do not forget how easily this key to the treasury vaults of earth may be made to unlock the treasures of heaven. Culture should be no mere cart-horse. There is one universal mind, common to all men. Every man has an inlet to this, and to all of it. He who' is once admitted to the right of reason and to the reason of right is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, this man may think. What has befallen any man this man may understand. What a prophet or a saint has felt, this man may feel. Whoever has access to this universal mind is a party to all that is done or can be done, to all that has been enjoyed or can be enjoyed, i. e., to all the solid, endurable satisfactions of life. Your college education should introduce you to this universal mind. Whatever your career — farmer, housewife, teacher, en- gineer, merchant, manufacturer, lawyer, doctor, banker, editor, you should be ashamed if, in spite of all the dirt and din of the world, you do not lead intellectual lives. And familiarity with th^ intellectual does strongly tend to purify and elevate men spir- itually. Goodness is a citizen of the rational world, some resident in which will lead toward moral cultivation. Learning has a price- less value beyond its power to coin wealth. Many a man first fully appreciates this truth when unmeasured success in business reveals to him his unmeasured failure in the business of living. Wealth is a great good. Its pursuit is honorable and commend- able. It underlies all the high, persuasive culture of the world. But he who trains his mind to make it a tool, who sharpens his wits as he would file a saw, who goes to college as he would go to the market to bring back a load of goods to sell, must be in- spired with a higher ideal of learning before he is worthy to be called a gentleman, with the "complete and generous education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the office, both public and private, of peace and war." President Wilson recently gave Phi Beta Kappa members about this advice : Young Ladies and Gentlemen — Why did you come to col- lege ? Not that for yourself alone your eyes might be lifted to a larger horizon that other men less instructed have not been priv- ileged to see ; but you also wanted to lift the eyes of these to this broader horizon. The professed purpose of your ancestors in the conquest of this America was to see to it that every foot of the continent should be the home of a free self-governed people who should have no government not resting on the consent of the governed ; no institution not for the common good ; that every citizen of whatever race or class should have equality under the law, and equal opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You cannot set limit to such knightly adventurers. Their day is gone ; but their spirits stalk the land carrying inspira- tion wherever they go, and everywhere reminding men of the fine lineage of those seeking justice and civic righteousness. How many of you will devote yourselves to like adventure ? How many of you will volunteer to carry spiritual messages of liberty and equality and justice, as well as worldly messages of intelligence and honest industry to the world? How many of you will forego, for the service of your fellow mortals, everything but your alle- giance to truth and right and freedom and justice? We live but once in this world, and we live without distinction if we do not live the life of sacrifice. We die but once, and we die without distinction, if we are unwilling to die the death of sacrifice. Do you covet honor ? You will never win it by serving yourself. Do you covet distinction? You will never win it except as the ser- vant of mankind. Do not forget as you leave these halls why you have been here. You have been here not merely to prepare yourselves to make a living. You have been here in order to enable the world to live more amply, to live with greater vision, to live with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You have been here that you may enrich the world, and in this world-en- richment you will find the richest solid, enduring satisfactions of life.