To prevent this, the next period
confronts him:
Third: Service for others. That is the acid test where many a man falls
short: to know when he has enough, and to be willing not only to let
well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to
recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a
brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many
men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on
pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more
power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad
incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course,
only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the
truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should
they now help others: as their means have come from the public, so now
they owe something in turn to that public.
No man has a right to leave the world no better than he found it. He
must add something to it: either he must make its people better and
happier, or he must make the face of the world fairer to look at. And
the one really means the other.
"Idealism," immediately say some. Of course, it is. But what is the
matter with idealism? What really is idealism? Do one-tenth of those who
use the phrase so glibly know it true meaning, the part it has played in
the world? The worthy interpretation of an ideal is that it embodies an
idea--a conception of the imagination.
Pages:
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443