8 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis 



mean devotion to methods. It does not imply a certain 

 number of hours a day. It does not suggest a content- 

 ment with the doing of a daily stint in a manner which 

 calls for neither commendation nor criticism. Devotion 

 to work means work because one must work, and, faced 

 by such a spirit, seemingly insurmountable obstacles are 

 swept away along with other trivial factors of birth and 

 race and station. 



But work itself is not enough. The second ingredient 

 in our strength of character is unselfishness : the desire 

 to share the joys and the sorrows of life with others; the 

 accomplishment of the friendly act for its own sake ; the 

 appreciation of a bond of proper sympathy of man for 

 man. The man who works with an unselfish devotion 

 ever searches for that which shall bring his neighbor to 

 a higher level of doing and thinking and living. A great 

 man must indeed be unselfish and take a pride in the 

 merit which his talent may lend to others. 



And in the search for truth, even in the little things of 

 life, our great man interprets that which he finds and is 

 ever threading the beads of fact into some pattern of a 

 worldly philosophy. Faithfulness to truth is after all 

 but a faithfulness to the little things and our great man 

 achieves merit in his respect for that which is known and 

 that which is unknown. Because of his consciousness of 

 his own limitations and because of his respect for truth, 

 the great man is humble. 



We have been misinformed in our ideas of great men. 

 We have been misled into looking for magnificence and 

 for vain-glorious trappings in which our fancy would 

 clothe an important person. Indeed the humble sim- 

 plicity of the truly great man disarms us quite com- 

 pletely and we crane the neck to overlook exactly that 

 which we seek. 



