Wealth and population should be considered merely as means, which, if we ourselves do not sink beneath our fortune, we shall use to help us to develop on a vast scale, a nobler, freer, and fairer life than hitherto has ever existed. We Americans have a great capacity for seeing things as they are. A thousand shams and glittering vanities have gone down before our straight-looking eyes; and because such things fail to impress us, we seem to be irreverent. We must look more steadfastly, deeper still, until we clearly perceive and understand that to live for money is to lead a false and vulgar life, to rest with complacency in mere numbers is to have a superficial and unreal mind. To form a right judgment of a people, as of individuals, we must consider what they are; not what they have, except in so far as their possessions are the result of work which at once forms and reveals character. And we must know that work is good only in as much as it helps to make life human,--that is, intelligent, moral and religious. And what we have the right to demand of those to whom we give a higher education is, that they shall body forth these principles in their lives and become leaders in the task of spreading them among the multitude. We demand, first of all, that they become men whose hearts are pure and loving, whose minds are open and enlightened, whose motives are benevolent and generous, whose purposes are high and religious; and if they are such men, it shall matter little to what special pursuits they turn, for whatever their occupation, honor, truth, and intelligence shall go with them, bearing, like mercy, a blessing for those who give and a blessing for those who receive. The spirit in which they work shall be more than what they do, as they themselves shall be more than what they accomplish.
A right spirit transforms the whole man, and the first and highest aim of the educator should be to impart a new heart, a new purpose, which shall bring into play forces that may oppose and overcome those faults of the young of which I have spoken, and which, if not corrected, lead to failure.
And here we come to the causes of ill success which lie within ourselves. We have our individual qualities and defects, and we have also the qualities and defects of the people whence we are sprung, and of the time-spirit into which we are born. It is the aim of education, as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of the age; but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit, too, is a narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture and religion strive to make us citizens of the world and universally benevolent, a care must be had that we retain what is strong and noble in the character we inherit from our ancestors.