WHAT DOTH IT PROFIT?

"In this world there are only two tragedies," wrote Wilde in one of his few epigrams which touched below the surface, "the one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." President Lowell in his Baccalaureate Sermon to the graduating class in Appleton Chapel yesterday forsaw the possibility of such tragedy when he took for his text the pessimistic words of the Preacher and King of Jerusalem, "What profit hath a man of all his labor that he taketh under the sun?" But the President spoke well for the present as well, when he advised against future disappointment with a study of the nature of man's labor and the profit to be obtained therefrom.

The attainment of a goal long in view, the consummation of an event devoutly wished for, is likely to assume the proportions of tragedy in the life of the individual. Gibbon sat down on a moonlight night after completing his labors of forty years on the Decline and Fall and philosophized on the vanity of human achievement. It is the feeling which comes to the athlete after the objective game, to the ordinary man after the last final examination, and to the Senior in the ultimate anti-climax,--Commencement Week. Viewed as ends in themselves such accomplishments may well be but vanity and vexation of the spirit.

But the burden of Mr. Lowell's remarks on this occasion were apropriately to the contrary as he pointed out a philosophical escape. Personal success need not turn to ashes and bitter brew if only regarded as the means to a greater end. We need not fall back completely on the scant solace which comes with the final realization that happiness accompanied the labor itself and not the material fruits of the labor, that we must enjoy in retrospect.

It is a practical philosophy of life which Mr. Lowell imparted to the assembled product of Harvard College. It is summed up in his words, "We enjoy our work because we feel that it is worth doing, and it is worth doing because in some form it will endure. It has moral value that outlasts the hour when it is done and the man who does it."