"MEN OF CHARACTER MUST ACT UP TO THEIR PRINCIPLES" DECLARES PRESIDENT LOWELL

President Lowell's Baccalaureate Sermon to the class of 1922, given in Appleton Chapel at 4 o'clock on Sunday was taken from the following text:

II Corinthians, X: 12

"They measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."

Why is it not wise? Before we can answer that we must know what we mean by wise. Do we mean worldly wisdom, a shrewd perception of the course which will lead to material success? In that sense of the word, such a measurement by themselves, that is by one another,--a guiding of conduct by the customary standards, by what the market place will tolerate, may be wise. Average honesty may be a good standard for mere money-making. The old proverb says that honesty is the best policy--meaning that it is best for purely business reasons. It may be or it may not. It may be so as a rule, but not always. A man who is honest solely because it is the best business policy is honest only from a broad perception of his own material interest, not from any moral principle. If placed in a position where a dishonest act would yield a profit and could never be discovered, or do him any worldly harm, he would have no reason, drawn from the best policy principle, to shun the dishonest act. That is if he had no sense of an inherent moral motive for being honest.

But the word has another meaning--a spiritual as distinguished from a worldly significance. Almost all men, and all men of character, believe that there is an intrinsic reason for moral conduct, apart from its material value to the man himself; that self-sacrifice for a worthy object is neither an irrational folly, nor a mere survival of a primitive herd instinct, but the noblest act of the most highly developed creature on the earth. The memory of the young men who died in the war is too fresh in our minds to let us think for a moment that their heroic deaths were due to a cold conviction of personal advantage or enlightened self interest. They did not want to die; but they went forth knowing the danger, even courting it, from a profound sense of duty. No one shall persuade us that they did so from a traditional but irrational altruism, and that self-devotion is less worthy of admiration than we feel it to be. If anyone could so persuade, us he would rob life of that which makes, it best worth living. No one shall prevent us from glorying in those young men, or drawing from their example a firmer conviction that all life has to offer is small compared with doing what is right.

Assuming, then, that there is an imperative moral duty to do right, and that to be wise means to act in accord with that obligation, why is it that those who measure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves among themselves are not wise? Perhaps it is better to ask first why men are so prone to measure their conduct in this way. It is, in fact, a very easy standard of life. To do as others do is simple. It saves the trouble of thinking and deciding. It is a good excuse also for some relaxation of a rigorous principle, particularly when one is in a tight place. But how far is it wise from the point of view of its effect upon the public interest? Most of us have seen its results at one time or another, in business, in public affairs, in every day life, in war, and even in sport. There is, in fact, nothing more demoralizing than the habit of palliating things which every one knows ought not to be done, on the ground that every one does them. A man under such conditions is apt to compare himself, not with the best, or even with the average, but with those who do the things he is only too ready to excuse in himself. In fact he is prone to believe that the rivals by whom he is measuring himself are a little worse than they really are. The tendency in any community where such a habit prevails generally is downward. The only way to lift the world is for men of character to act up to their principles, although it be to their own loss; and by their example provoke others to do likewise. A good example is as contagious as a bad one.

Must Consider Duty

How about its consequences for the man himself? We know very well that some people who act on their principles without regard to the opinions of others do not do either the community or themselves much good. We call them fanatics or cranks, and are more inclined to censure than admire them. Such men are not necessarily superior in moral standards to others; but are simply lacking in good judgment. The difficulty with them is not that their zeal is excessive, but that their aim is defective. Their very eccentricity attracts attention, making people feel; and what is worse making the fanatics themselves feel, that they live up to their principles more than other men who are really quite as conscientious but more sensible. In forming one's own principles of conduct it is proper to consider, not what most men do, but what most men sincerely believe that men ought to do. This is wise, not in order to conform to other men's standards of conduct, but to obtain light in forming one's own standard; to avoid narrow, partial and prejudiced opinions; to ensure so far as possible that one sees clearly and fully all the considerations on which his opinions ought to be based. But when he has reached his opinion of what is right and wrong; when he has framed his standard of moral conduct; a man must act upon it without flinching. Let every man be firmly persuaded in his own mind, and happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth; for if he swerve from what he believes to be right because others do the same he lowers his own moral tone and weakens his own moral fibre. If self-sacrifice be admirable and not foolish, if there be such a thing as moral obligation, it is because there is a moral order in the universe; and if there be such a moral order it must be for every man's ultimate welfare to conform thereto. Whether he call his belief in a moral order, and the duties it involves, a philosophy, a theology or a faith, he throws away all that is best worth having if he fails to act upon it; and if he permits himself to be beguiled into a departure from it by thinking that he cannot be much to blame for doing what many others do he certainly is not wise.

Great Merit in Doing Little

Everyone is familiar with the parable of the talents, and how the man with one talent who failed to use it was condemned and cast into outer darkness. Sometimes one can wish that the story had been differently told, that it had been the man with five talents who had neglected to use them to the fullest extent, and had therefore been condemned, for to whom much has been committed of him will be required the more. Duties he upon a man according to his power for good and evil. Those who can do only little must do that little, and great is their merit if they do it faithfully. Those whose influence is wider must use it to the full for good, and great is their desert if they do so, but great also is their deficiency if they neglect their opportunities. Even in a democracy, and in any form of civil policy that has ever existed or can be conceived, power is not evenly distributed. Public office gives power, business positions and wealth do the same, and so do knowledge and the possession of a trained mind. Strangely enough the word talents which is used in the parable to denote a sum of money has now come to signify mental capacity. So much the better for our purpose, because it gives point to the appropriate moral here. Many of the men before me will have important business positions, many will have wealth in greater or less degree, not a few, the more the better, will hold, public office, and many more will, I hope, take an active part in public affairs; but all possess knowledge and trained minds beyond the average, and therefore of such college men much is required.

World Needs Thinking

Not always immediately, but ultimately, man is led by those whose thinking is clear, conscientious and generous; and never in its history has the world been more in need of such thinking than it is now. By now I do not mean only during the next half a dozen years, but during the period when the men who are now graduating will be in a position to exert their influence in the fullest measure. Civilization cannot be independent of the material instruments of which it makes use, and the increase in man's control, and ability to apply, the forces of nature has been greater during the last hundred years than in any preceding twenty centuries of the world's history. A little over a hundred years ago horses supplied, as in the days of the Romans, the most rapid means of conveying men, merchandise or intelligence. Wind was the only power for crossing the sea. Today anything of public interest that happens in any civilized country is known in every newspaper office over the earth almost as soon as it occurs. A man's voice can now be heard all over this country, and soon will be audible over the whole world. Flight across the Atlantic is an accomplished fact; and during the Great War we sent a million armed men to Europe in a few months. Civilization has always been deeply influenced by inventions. No one can doubt what a change was wrought in the ancient world by the use of metals. The improvement of transportation by land and water enlarged trade, and trade brought intercourse with its new relation its enlarged horizon and its temptations to a foreign conquest, until the sailing ship and the mariner's compass opened the whole world to the people of Europe. It has been pointed out that the invention of firearms and especially of cannon destroyed the feudal organization of society, because the baron's castle was not longer a refuge difficult to capture. The extent to which the recent progress in applied science will affect both the relation of men to one another and the interdependence of different peoples is as yet unknown; nor will it be wholly settled for a generation to come, even if no further scientific discoveries and inventions are made. Who will determine these new relations aright? Upon whom will the guidance for better or worse rest? Obviously upon the intelligent, the educated and the public spirited people of the world. Will they set themselves earnestly to this gigantic task, or will they immerse themselves in their private pursuits and pleasures and let things drift?

Trained for Service to Country

By the benefactions of people dead and living filled with far sighted generosity you have been trained, not only for your own benefit, but also for service to the country where you have been born. There lies the most vital point. John Harvard, and the benefactors who followed him, whose example has been followed in a host of other colleges, were inspired by a desire to help their own community, but they had no conception of the vast area over which the seed they nourished would bear fruit. When the earlier colleges were planted the small settlements on the Atlantic sea-board were laboriously pushing their way from the shore into the forest; but now their graduates go forth across the long range of hills into the vast plains beyond and through the Rocky Mountains to the western ocean. They can, if they will, influence the destiny of the Continent. Then the few people were of one stock. Now all the races of Europe have crowded into the land. We hear much talk of the American spirit, as if it were a thing fixed and done, but it is still in the making and will be for many years to come. Shall it be a chaos of jarring self-interests, to which each race and each class contributes its harsher notes, or shall it be a harmony of what is best in each. The question will not soon have its final answer, and that answer will depend less upon the generation which is passing away than on that which is now coming on the stage. Even men now young may not see all that will come in the fullness of time. Our forefathers planted the seed, our fathers cultivated it, and we must carry on the work even though

It may not be our lot to wield

The sickle in the ripened field;

Nor ours to hear on autumn eves

The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Problems Concern Whole World

The problems before us are flot those of our own land alone, but of the world. The Great War has partly caused and partly revealed a vast change in the position of our country. It has been like a young giant, boasting of his strength, yet in fact only half aware of his real force. The war and the events that followed have shown that the United States, with her resources in men and nature, has become a power unmatched in the world. Other nations are looking to it as they have hardly looked to another people before. It is no small thing to have power to influence the fate of all mankind upon the earth. With power comes opportunity and with opportunity responsibility. Our own right hand may yet teach us terrible things. Our power is likely to grow still greater in the world, and what do we want our nation to become? Shall we be satisfied with material wealth and comfort, or do we desire a higher destiny? In the ancient world there were two peoples, both commercial, both prosperous, both powerful in their day and both at last conquered by the Romans. One of them, the Greeks, led the way for all later European peoples in art, in literature, in philosophy and in science. The other, the Carthaginians, have left nothing, and all we know of them comes from the histories of their conquerors. A nation is what its people make it.

Live up to Highest Aspiration

If we could retain the fervor and devotion that our young men displayed in the war, and which they would put forth again in a national crisis; if we could retain that spirit in the slow, hard labors of peace; if their exaltation should never fade in the light of common day, we could be the greatest people that ever dwelt upon the earth. This is not to be achieved by men's comparing themselves among themselves, or measuring themselves by an average standard; but by living up to the best they know and measuring themselves by their own highest aspiration. Nor should such men be discouraged because they are not always understood. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Thus drifting afar to the dim vaulted caves

Where life and its ventures are laid,

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

May see us in sunshine or shade.

Yet true to our course though our shadow grow dark

We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark.

Nor ask how we look from the shore