Culture and Service, 1904: An Address Delivered at the Sixtieth Annual Commencement of the University of Michigan (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Culture and Service, 1904: An Address Delivered at the Sixtieth Annual Commencement of the University of Michigan

It was my task on that occasion to demolish Taine's philosophy of art, and to do it in six minutes. I pleaded hard for ten, but the inexorable reply was: "No; boil it down. The world will never miss what you leave out!"

What I have to say this morning will relate to the ethics of work, - a subject of immense and universal interest, seeing that work is the great law of life for us all. You who leave the University to-day as graduates, are presumably looking forward to a life of labor. You do not expect to be idlers. The vast majority, no doubt, will find themselves face to face with that same interesting dilemma that has confronted the human species since the days of our arboreal ancestry, - the dilemma, work or starve. And you will work. There may be some who are conscious of a special talent for leisure, and who would welcome a chance to exercise the gift rather frequently. Still, even they do not seriously envy our so-called leisure class who live to amuse themselves; for the victims of perennial leisure, whether they wear the clothes of a gentleman, or of a tramp, form one of the most unfortunate elements of the entire population.

I think it safe to assume, moreover, that the great majority of you not only expect to work, as a matter of course, but are fairly cheerful over the prospect. You may not feel exactly the eagerness of the hero rejoicing to run a race, but you are not worrying. You are already accustomed to labor in one form and another; and while you may not always have found it exhilarating, it has been in the main quite tolerable. You have no misgivings as to your ability to make friends with what appears to be the natural order of the world, and all you ask is a fair chance to show what you are good for. And all that is well.

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