The Meaning of Education

The Meaning of Education By Dr. E. G. Peterson, President, Utah Agricultural College

XI —Unselfishness The secret of world peace is personal. We pray for peace but we do not, in full, deserve it and if we think seriously we know we do not deserve it. As long as we embody jealousy and hate, so long as we deny in act if not in word Christ's simple doctrine of brotherly love, we cannot have complete peace. France is ennobled by the very sacrifice she has made; Belgium is exalted. These peoples have paid the full price and their reward will be as sure as their suffering. France and Belguim today are cleansed. It is said that thousands of the soldiers in the trenches pray to God with a deep meaning and a comradeship that is one of the glories of the war. Such men have rendered themselves, in a measure, holy. Were all the world such, peace would be automatic. War is an expres- sion of aggregate emotion, the accumulated wrath of millions, the jealousy of a whole population, the hate of a nation. The beginnings of war are in ourselves. The world advances with irresistible logic and in perfect harmony. As we conquer in part our own personal delin- quencies the world steps forward a bit in achievement looking toward the realization of the ideals which live in the hearts of most of us. If every man would kill the idealism within him the world would stop going forward. Invention would cease, discovery would end, poetry would not be written, music could not be written or sung, educational institutions would decay and man would lapse into the brute. Only in so far as we cherish idealism and crush selfishness does invention and dis- covery thrive, educational institutions flourish, poetry, phil- osophy and music ripen among us. And only in so far as we crush selfishness does deep religious devotion, which encom- passes all, take hold of us. Brigham Young is reported to have once said, "I will live my religion and be saved, if every other man goes to hell." This is the attitude of consummate devotion to ideals, to un- selfishness, if you will analyze it thoroughly; the unbending determination of a strong man to conquer himself. Brigham Young, of course, wished all men to be saved but he realized that no man could be saved by following the crowd. Only by

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burdening himself with the responsibility of his own acts and fighting it out to the end could his own soul be exalted. The statement might well have been uttered by Cromwell or CarlyLe. One day Brigham Young, so it is said, came into alter- cation, as he passed from his office to his home, with a pugna- cious brother. The argument became irritating to President Young. His emotion was aroused and his wrath, as powerful as any other phase of his wonderful strength, craved satisfac- tion. He undoubtedly had the temptation to crush the offender. Instead, he controlled his emotion and walked with all pos- sible composure to his home. A member of his household saw him enter, his face flushed, and hurry to his room where he locked himself in. This member of the household became somewhat anxious as the minutes passed. Later she went to the door to investigate and she heard from inside these startling words, "Down on your knees, Brigham, down on your knees!" A strong man conquering himself! This is the story of every life of achievement, of every worth-while thing in the world. This will be the story of world peace. The same key that unlocked the western desert will unlock the door to universal peace. The desert refused to re- spond when men came only for profit and pelf. Those who sought only for gold or fur saw nothing in the land but its bar- renness. Homes and a civilization were built only when men came to sacrifice. A degree of unselfishness gave to the world a knowledge of radium and the gasoline engine and "Lines to a Water Fowl." Unselfishness gave us the art of irrigation in America, and will conquer for us the insects that infest our crops and the dis- eases that prey upon us. France gave us our knowledge of radium because the French gave of their means unselfishly that Madame Currie might seek to discover the laws of nature. Had the attitude of France been one which said, "I will give nothing to others," the discovery of truth would have been delayed or prevented. We conquer nature only as we give un* to others. The people of our own nation give of their means that not only their own but their neighbors' children may be educated and that scientists may discover truth that will be a blessing to all. It is the idealism, the unselfishness, of the thousands of quiet men who till our fields and husband our flocks and herds as well as those who dwell in shops and offices that make possible free education which will be the salvation of the race. No poet ever wrote while thinking of self. There is a great desert yet to be reclaimed of sand and drouth. Only devotion to truth can conquer it and adjust it to the needs of

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man. All the unsolved problems of the race wait for solution until we conquer selfishness. We are building a great rural civilization in America. Many of the obstacles have been removed, and life on the farm is working toward that condition of stability for which we all hope. Rural life in America pauses now in its development for the farmers to conquer themselves. Are they sufficiently unselfish to cooperate. If not, all the machinery of govern- men and education will help only to a limited extent. If they are, rural life in America will blossom into a very rich social thing. Cooperation means organized unselfishness. California has organized a so-called Cooperative Fruit Grower's Exchange. It is, however, only a business cooperation. It entails no feel- ing of sacrifice. It is organized selfishness in a degree; al- though, we recognize it as the best of its kind in existence, and we hear nothing but admiration for its founders. Real cooperation involves moral devotion to the principles involved. Merely organizing to protect one's interests or to fight one's commercial enemies is not cooperation. We will never truly cooperate until we believe that the greatest among us are the servants of all. The world is entitled only to the degree of peace and pros- perity it does enjoy. As we enrich our souls we will endow and support things that are good. From such endowment will flow blessing upon blessing, until the world revels in plenty ; but the heavy demand will continue for sacrifice and devotion. The world will be conquered in every detail from the apple worm to the fierce passion of nations for war, only as in the hearts of all of us we drive out greed and envy and hate and replace these with a strong brotherly love. Logan, Utah.

Service to Country

J. Bryan Barton, writing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 22, who is with the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corpora- tion, in the service of our country, writes:"Undoubtedly you feel that the service rendered by our boys to our country just now is equally as im- portant as the missionary work which is directed more particularly for the spiritual welfare of men. The gospel anticipates religious and political lib- erty, and teaches that it must be maintained if needs be by force. For many years I have anticipated the time when the fate of the world should hang in the balance, and when the United States should come to the rescue and save mankind from oppression. We have always been told that our boys should take a part in that. We realize now that prophecy. I am thank- ful that I can take a small part in such a tremendous undertaking as Uncle Sam has begun. We know that successes will come, followed, perhaps, by short periods of reversals. We also know what the ultimate result will be for Kaiser Bill and his court."