14
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
beautiful as longing. Ever in the busy stir of life glows down the wished Ideal. Perhaps the longing to be, so helps to make us what we would be. Searching through the historical drift-wood, the remains of many noble men who have lived and thought, we find what animated, what vitalized their action, to have been, a thirst for permanence, a longing to speak, to write, to do something that should be immortal.
It was this feeling that prompted some one to say, "Let us build such a church that they who come after us shall take us for madmen." A little of this divine madness enters into all our noblest undertakings. It was this that made the reign of Peter the Great grander, more brilliant, more terrible, than that of any other Russian Czar.
Like all men, who are to work out great designs, he was full of mysterious contradictions. In him were mingled virtues and vices—grandeur and weakness. His soul was too great to rest satisfied with the highest fortune if it were merely personal and like himself of ephemeral duration. He wished to make Russia one of the noblest, one of the most powerful nations of the world. But he felt, that which to his conquering power was most irritating, the consciousness of weakness. He determined to civilize his people. But he determined to do it by force,a task equal to twisting ropes out of sea-sands.
"You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will. But the scent of the roses will hang 'round it still."
Over the streets of Moscow the blood of his subjects crept curdling cold. Frozen bodies of the murdered nobility were placed along the road-side, cruel monuments of tyrannical rule. But after all this he found that the scent of the barbarian hung 'round the Russian still. "For true power was never born of brutish strength."
Was he truly "Great?" The fleet from the shores of tha Past floating back to us on the waves of Memory bears in its crew few greater.
Was he good? Human fanaticism errs when it pretends to be the executor of the high decrees of Divine justice. Rather leave him as he stands personally obscure in the mist of glory, alternately cursed and worshiped by the world.
Through this window we can look in upon the dark workings of Despotism. Upon a nation ruled by a tyrant. He was not bloodthirsty. He was only determined to succeed. He knew that the millions around him were not men. But he thought by war with its cannonade he could set their dull nerves throbbing.
There is another window, it is high and wide. It flashes out to all the world bright rays of promise. Through it we can look in upon a nation whose boast it is that they are free. But dimly, though not far in the future, can be seen the pale form of this truth panting and gasping, for there are blood-hounds on its trail. Bloodhounds of Fraud and Sin, all gaunt and lean. Faint echoes of their howl reaches us even now. It is that all men are not "free and equal." That the votes of the poor and ignorant can be bought by the rich and knowing. That the cup of freedom, which is held to the lips of the ignorant, is empty, and therefore should be snatched away. Is the man who speaks so truly brave and free? Is freedom then but to break the fetters for our own sweet sake?
"No! True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear."
If they are unworthy freedom on account of ignorance teach them. Make education the brave preventive Politics is an afterwork, a poor patching.
The molding of human beings is the most difficult of all arts. But here in this poor, miserable Actual, is a grand Ideal. As we come down to the bank and look out upon the great Red Sea, we shrink and shudder. But there comes a whisper from the Delphic cave within "Go forward and the waters shall be a wall on either side."
Glancing back for a moment through the old window we find that in whatever Peter the Great may have failed it was the failure of a sublime genius wandering at will. His great coarse nature needed the softening, controlling guide of culture. Shall we fail for the want of the same guide?
If we, as a people, are more ignorant, more unworthy freedom now than we were when our fathers gave it to us, it is our fault. They did their work and did it nobly. Ours is to hush forever this cruel howl. Remembering;
"Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great men are portions of eternity; Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran With lofty message, ran for thee and me; For God's law, since the starry song began, Hath been, and still forevermore must be That every deed which outlasts Time's span Must incite the soul to be erect and free."
SHALL IT BE THE DELUGE?
MASTERS ORATION—PROF. W. H. CARRUTH.
I believe that condition of society to be the best in which every man earns what he gets, and gets what he earns.
This best condition is what a hopeless generation has come to call in a sneering way the "millenium. Of course we do not expect to attain to it much this side of eternity, but it is manifestly absurd to conclude that therefore we should not attempt any bettering of the present.
In the moral and physical worlds the penalties of lawbreaking are swift and sure, fixed by the same hand that made the laws. But in the social world an inscrutable Providence has left the adjustment of rewards almost entirely in the hands of men.
Now in this matter of deserts there are three possible conditions. 1st, That state in which goods are held in common, or divided equally among all: this is Communism; 2nd, The state in which the extreme of inequality exists, in which distribution is made by force instead of by merit; and lastly, all the ground between these two extremes, the midway point being that Utopian state in which every man gets exact and even-handed justice.
It is hardly necessary to do more than call attention to the injustice of Communism. Not only are men born with the most varied capabilities, but they also exhibit the most varied degrees of willingness to use those natural gifts. Certainly a man who can work but will not, does not deserve the same reward as he who does his best; yet Communism would give them an equal claim to the common income. Under this system many men would not get what they earned, and many would not earn what they got.
Society, to-day, is not very far from the other extreme.