92 THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 



but later on such protection becomes not only ill-advised, but perni- 

 cious, and ultimately the individual must stand alone; he "must run 

 his own race; he must fight his own battles with a world that often 

 fights back, and he must make his own treaties of peace. This can- 

 not be done for you by family, or friends, or fortune. Each man, it 

 has long been said is the architect of his own fortune ; and this does 

 not mean in a narrow sense to build up material possessions, but in 

 the broadest and most comprehensive sense to build the whole edifice 

 of personality as it shall endure or perish. 



And what shall be the mainspring of action in this new world of 

 individual effort in which you are placed as after all but a constituent 

 unit, a part only of a whole that is made up of so many other individ- 

 uals of all sorts and conditions of men? What but the search for 

 truth? Truth in your own dealings with yourself and with your 

 fellow men as elements of human society ; truth in your inherent 

 outlook upon a world that often thinks too lightly of the actual 

 significance of the things of life along the way; truth in your beliefs 

 and your disbeliefs ; truth in the profession that you have chosen as 

 your life's particular calling. 



As for yourself as an element of human society, there is this to be 

 said. No man, however securely his feet may be placed, however 

 firmly he may be supported by his own personality, however strongly 

 he may have developed his own individual nature, can stand isolated 

 and apart from the rest of mankind. Every individual is a constitu- 

 ent part of the community in which he lives, the city, the state and the 

 nation that protects him, and secures to him, as the Declaration 

 phrases it: his "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And 

 he must bear in his turn, as a part of the reciprocity that must exist 

 bet'ween the community and the individual within it, his portion of 

 its burdens. In a republic, in particular, it is incumbent as a funda- 

 mental fact of responsibility and duty that each one should exercise 

 not only the ordinary prerogatives of citizenship, but that each one, 

 naturally and regularly, should feel it incumbent upon him to hear and 

 to heed its extraordinary summons whenever the public welfare 

 makes it necessary to proclaim them. As a part of the society in 

 which as a child of your day and generation you belong, it is your 

 duty to fit into the conditions of your environment; not passively and 

 thoughtlessly of the real significance of things, but alive to the truth 

 that is within them. For in all conditions of the social organiza- 



