Man is his Own Fate - 1941

October 5, 1941 - JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, Minister of The Community Church, New York City

In 1941, John Haynes Holmes delivers a speech titled "Man Is His Own Fate," which serves as a profound theological and philosophical critique of fatalism in modern society. Holmes observes that the first four decades of the twentieth century, marked by world wars and global upheaval, shattered the previous era's optimistic belief in continuity and inevitable progress. He outlines how this earlier complacency was rooted in an "optimistic fatalism"—the belief that impersonal, beneficent forces (like economic determinism or evolution) assured a glorious future—which has since been replaced by a "pessimistic fatalism" characterized by despair, insecurity, and the feeling that humanity is doomed by internal societal forces. To save the world from this destructive mindset, Holmes argues that humanity must reject all forms of fatalism, recovering the core truth of religion and education: that man possesses divine capacity and freedom, making him responsible for his own destiny and the world's survival.

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The original speech text is provided below:

MAN IS HIS OWN FATE

By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, Minister of The Community Church, New York City

Delivered at Lehigh University, October 5, 1941

IT WAS just forty years ago, in September, 1901, that

I entered the Harvard Divinity School, and therewith

started my career as a minister of religion. To go back

to that time in memory is like going back to some very remote

period of history. If a person, before the days of 1914, had

tried to return to the ancient days of the Caesars and the

Christ, he would not have had a longer journey, psycholog-

ically and historically speaking, than I would have if I tried

to return to the first year of this present century. To move

from 1941 to September, 1939 (the invasion of Poland),

back through the postwar years to 1919 (the Versailles

Treaty), 1918 (the Armistice), 1917 (the Russian Revo-

lution), then back to August, 1914 (the opening of the first

World War), and then into these idyllic pre-war years and

back to September, 1901-this is like moving from the 19th

century to 1789 (the French Revolution), to 1492 (the

discovery of America), to 476 (the fall of Rome), and then

back through the declining years of the Empire to the open-

ing of the Christian era. So long it seems since I was a

young man going from the college to the theological school.

So stupendous have been the events within that period of a

single life-time! So vast have been the changes from that

old world, in which I was born and reared, to this new

world, in which I stumble and stagger toward my old age.

These changes are complete-as fundamental, perhaps, as

any that have taken place in any comparable period of his-

tory.

Professor Whitehead, of Harvard University, one of the

greatest philosophers of our day, has summed up the whole

transformation of these decades in the significant comment

that, in the years before 1914 and back into the 19th cen-

tury, we lived in a society that had a sense of continuity.

There was a connection, or continuum, between things, as

between the multitudinous stitches of a woven cloth. Event

followed event in a living sequence. Life was a process of

unfolding, as the seed unfolds into the leaf and bud, and

the bud in turn into the blossom. We spoke in those days

of the stream of history-as though society were a smoothly

flowing river which moved as serenely toward "the Sea

where it goes" as from "the Hills where (it) rose." What

it all meant was that we could count upon things happening

in natural and normal ways, without undue disturbance and

certainly without serious interruption. We could thus antici-

pate and plan for the future as accurately as we could read

and record the past. . . But now all this is gone! There is

no continuity any more in human events. Things happen

today which defy anticipation or even understanding. Order

has suddenly become chaos, and our whole society a con-

fusion of broken fragments. The stream of history is now

a raging flood, which sweeps the landscape with devasta-

tion and death. We are in the midst of a vast upheaval of

the social cosmos, and "no man knoweth what a day or an

hour may bring forth."

Another way of expressing this same transformation of

the world is to say that, a generation ago, we believed in

progress. When I was a boy in the Sunday School, I was

taught a statement of the five points of Unitarian doctrine,

of which the last was-"the progress of mankind onward

and upward forever." We were so sure about this idea that

we used to talk about a Law of Progress, which bound

mankind as surely as the law of gravitation binds the stars.

Man couldn't be lost, even though he wanted to be. He

was doomed to be saved, as in the old Calvinistic days he

was doomed to be damned. The science of evolution seemed

to substantiate this fateful reading of reality-the develop-

ment of life from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous,

from the simple to the complex and of course from the

lower to the higher. It was thus that we thought of the

course of history as the running of an unbroken line from

civilization to civilization-a line swerving now and then,

and on occasion turning back, but on the whole mounting

straight onward into the future. Sometimes we pictured

this line as a spiral, which moved downward only to sweep

upward to a higher level. Each generation stood on the

shoulders of the generation preceding it, and thus saw a

wider vision and breathed a purer air.

This was the Progress which was the great fetish of the 19th century.

But now we are not so sure of progress any more! In the

very moment of our greatest pride, we have been flung, as

down a precipice, from civilization to barbarism. The whole

fabric of our achievements, for centuries gone by, seems

tumbling into ruin. Where this prosperity of which we

boasted, this peace which we declared that we had won,

this progress which we proclaimed as the very law of life?

We thought we were getting somewhere in the good old

days. But we were deceived. We were not really getting

anywhere. When have men ever gotten anywhere? Look

at this line of history which we seemed to be climbing, like

a mountain trail, to the gleaming summits of man's golden

dream! It is not a straight nor an unbroken line at all.

On the contrary, it goes down quite as much as it goes up,

and it is broken in a hundred places. Egypt and Babylon,

Egypt and Babylon,Ninevah and Tyre, Greece and Rome! Man has tried here

to get ahead, and he has tried there and always, sooner or

later, he has failed. Like a fountain or a rocket, humanity

goes up, only to come down again. There is no progress.

There is only struggle-and a struggle which in the end

seems to lead only to defeat and not to victory.

Another way of describing this change which has come

over our attitudes in recent years is in terms of what I may

call the future. When I was a young man there was a

future. We counted upon it. We planned for it. We never

doubted of its coming-this happy day when prosperity and

peace should be scattered over all he earth! Our one con-

cern was that it should be enjoyed in equal measure by all

the sons of men. So we worked for larger opportunities and

equitable privileges—that, when our dreams came true, there

should be no disinherited to suffer and be ashamed. ... But

now this future seems to have disappeared. Our vision of

the coming day can no more be found. It is as though a

lovely landscape, stretching out before our enraptured gaze,

had suddenly been shut off by fogs, and tempests, and black

night. We can no longer see where we are going. We are

not even sure of our direction. Therefore, the next step,

and not any distant goal, is our prime concern. So far from

thinking about distributing tomorrow the good things of

this earth, we are wondering today if there will be any good

things to distribute. Our problem, in other words, has been

completely changed from one of enjoyment to one of sheer

survival. How impressively this was shown in the Joint

Declaration published by President Roosevelt and Prime

Minister Churchill after their famous Atlantic conference

some weeks ago! This Declaration was not a constitution.

It was no plan for a new world-least of all, a blue-print

for the future. In all the document, there was not a prom-

ise nor a guarantee of any kind. On the contrary, there

was only a confession of profound conviction by two har-

assed statesmen, and of the desperate hopes that were found-

ed upon this conviction. We "desire,' we "believe," we

"hope to see," we "will endeavor"-these were the modest

phrases used by these two leaders of our great democracies.

They did not dare say anything more, for all depended, in

their minds, upon "the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny."

But how is that going to be done? What is it going to

cost? What, if anything, will there be left? These are the

immediate questions-so dark and terrible that they shut out

all futures whatsoever. So we live in the present, and un-

derstand, as we have never understood before, that "suffi-

cient unto the day is the evil thereof."

The realization of these changed times which affects us

most is in the matter of security-our own personal secur-

ity! When I was a young men, security was as much

taken for granted as the light of day. What a man had, he

held; and what a man wanted, he could earn.

Granted any position in the economic world, and any brains and any

character-then safety was assured. I remember my father say-

ing to me "There are three things, my boy, which you

must do. You must buy a house, and thus have a home.

You must keep a small bank account, as protection against

a rainy day. And you must take out some life insurance, to

guard your wife and family from the hazard of your sudden

death. Do these three things-and there is nothing in the

world can touch you." Well, I did those things. But what

does anyone of them mean today in terms of the security

which my father wanted me to have, and felt certain that I

could have? I own a house in which I have lived for a

quarter of a century-and I suppose that if I could sell it

today for half of what I paid for it, I should be lucky. I

have a bank account which I have tried to keep at a certain

figure for many years—and any day now it may be borrowed,

appropriated, or confiscated by the government, or reduced

to nothing at all by the process of inflation. I have carried

life insurance ever since I was married—and I am wonder-

ing today if my policies will be worth the paper they are

printed on when, in the natural course of events, I die.

There is no such thing as security any more. There is as

little permanency in values as stability in institutions. For

years the preachers of religion have proclaimed "the deceit-

fulness of riches," and the emptiness of all merely material

possessions. Well, here they are the prophecies come true!

Now we know that the things of the spirit alone endure.

In our time, as in times before, there has come the moment

described by Prospero, in Shakespeare's play, The Tempest,

when

"...all which (we) inherit shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind."

These, now, are various ways of describing the change

which has come over the minds of men in my time. We

have lost the sense of continuity, as we see the order of the

world reduced to chaos. We no longer believe in a law of

progress to lead us on our way. We miss the future in our

absorption in the perils of the passing moment.

And we look in vain for any vestiges of the security which once was

ours. What is the explanation of this change? Were we

wrong yesterday, or are we wrong today? One fact is cer-

tain, and that is that, in my youth, we did not see things

as they really were. We were either hopelessly deceived by

the nature of the world and the process of man's life and the

trends of history, or else we deliberately fooled ourselves as

to what was going on. The late John Buchan (Lord

Tweedsmuir), in the autobiography which he composed

shortly before his death, declared that the besetting sin of

the Victorian Age was its complacency." It had everything

settled to its own advantage. It knew that everything was

coming out all right. Where did this complacency come

from? From what roots did it spring? What, if anything,

was the secret of a period which was more sadly deluded

than any other period that man has ever known?

There may be various answers to these questions. One

answer is certainly fundamental-that, for one reason or

another, we all slipped into the attitude of fatalism. It

should be remembered that fatalism is of two kinds-the

optimistic as well as the pessimistic. Its essence is a belief

in blind, impersonal forces which control our lives and

therefore determine our destinies. These forces are usually

thought of as subversive or destructive forces, which sweep

man away to some dreadful doom of futility and despair,

since fate is a denial of freedom which is man's highest at-

tribute! But, in the logic of things, these blind impersonal

forces may be quite as well beneficient as bad. If we be-

lieve in such forces at all, and have any kind of an optimistic

approach to life, we may see them as shaping our ends to

good and not to evil. And that is precisely what happened

in an age when man was optimistic beyond all bounds of

reason. Largely under the influence of a science which ex-

panded the cosmos to enormous magnitude, and reduced

everything therein to a reign of iron law, we came to feel

that we were in the hands of forces infinitely greater than

ourselves which were moulding the destinies not only of the

stars but of the human race. These destinies, in that con-

fident and happy age, seemed themselves to be happy, and we

welcomed their control. Forces of improvement, progress,

and fulfilment had seized upon us, and were carrying us on

to the golden age of which all the centuries had dreamed,

and which we at last were to behold. It was as though,

after much drifting and futile struggle, we had been caught

in the current of some mighty stream which was lifting us

up and bearing us on. The hand of fate was upon us, to our

salvation and not our doom.

The illustrations of this fatalism, which underlay the com-

placency of the 19th century, are numerous. One of the

most effective is Karl Marx, the most formidable thinker of

this modern age, whose writings had a larger influence, in a

shorter space of time, and to more dire consequences, than

those of any other man who has ever lived. Marx, like his

philosophical master, Hegel, was a fatalist, and interpreted

all the life of society in terms of fatalism. He saw man in

the control of certain economic forces which were weaving

the pattern of a destiny which was his whether he wanted it

or not. Under the operations of this "economic determin-

ism," as he called it, the rich were growing richer, and the

poor poorer. In due course, the necessary struggle between

these two classes would result in a cataclysmic revolution

which would destroy capitalism and bring in the new so-

cialistic order. All this was a process, or a fate. In its

intermediate stages, it was disastrous and terrible, but in

the end beneficent. It marked at last the fulfilment of all

man's dream of happiness and peace upon the earth.

Another illustration is that of evolution. The great mas-

ters of this science were not fatalists. But it was inevitable

that a theory of ordered development, in the blind and un-

heeding realm of organic life, should be carried over philo-

sophically into the conscious life of man, and be made the

revelation of a progress which was written in the stars. The

human race was evolving, psychologically, sociologically, eth-

ically, as well as biologically—and this was enough to sug-

gest that the race was moving onward and upward, under

cosmic influences, to a destiny greater than it could conceive,

or could itself achieve. It is difficult to say just where the

line was crossed, in this evolutionary thinking, into the field

of fate, but that it was crossed there can be no doubt. Take

our own great American evolutionist, John Fiske, for ex-

ample! In 1884, he published a book, supremely typical of

the times, which was entitled, The Destiny of Man. In this

book, he declared dogmatically that "on the earth there will

never be a higher creature than man," and of man he prophe-

sied the certain consummation of his fondest desires. "The

future is lighted for us," he wrote, "with the radiant colors

of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love

shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of

priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is

confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and as we gird

ourselves up for the work of life, we may look forward to

the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world

shall become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign for-

ever and ever, king of kings, and lord of lords."

Even religion fell into this fatalistic tendency of which I

speak. The essence of fatalism, as I have said, is a belief in

blind, impersonal forces, implicit in the cosmos, which de-

termine the destiny of man altogether apart from his own

interference or control. It is doubtful if religion, in our

time, ever surrendered to the idea of these blind, impersonal

forces. It always proclaimed and magnified the thought of

God as an intelligent and loving ruler of the universe. But

religion went far in the direction of placing in the hands

of this deity a determination of man's destiny in which he

had little or no participation. It was a curious revival of

the doctrine of predestination as applied to this world instead

of to the next, and as weighted on the side of joy instead

of woe. Thus, in the old theology, the human race, with a

few exceptions, was predestined to endless wretchedness in

hell. But in the 19th century theology, in its more liberal

phases at least, the human race was predestined to eternal

happiness in a heaven set up here upon the earth. This op-

timistic fatalism was given immortal expression by Robert

Browning, in his famous couplet,

"God's in his heaven, All's right with the world."

It was into a fatalism of this type that we drifted in the

late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is the explanation

of the "complacency," of which John Buchan speaks as the

characteristic of this age. Everything was all right-or

would be all right. If anything was wrong, it was in process

of change to the better, and ultimately to the best. And so

men felt the sense of continuity, and talked of progress, and

planned for the future, and felt secure. And now every-

thing has crashed-and straightway we have fallen into

another fatalism. This time the more familiar fatalism of

despair and not of hope, of darkness and not of light!

Surely, to any sensitive person, it must be apparent that a

cloud of fatalistic foreboding is sweeping over our world like

a storm across the sky. There is good reason for this feeling

today that we are in the clutch of forces set upon our undo-

ing. The very measure of our confidence and hope in the

last century is the measure of our fear and despair in this.

Everything that we have built has been destroyed. All that

we have trusted has proven vain. Into our proud civiliza-

tion and across our beautiful world have swept the tides of

barbarism which we thought had been subdued forever. It

is true that all is not lost-not yet! These tides may be

swept back again, and the world delivered. But the dreadful

thing is that, for the first time in conscious memory, we

face an enemy we are not sure that we can beat. And if we do

beat him, there is the further dreadful fact that, in the

struggle for victory, we are destroying ourselves as well as

him. We are in a way to repeat the achievement of the

Roman conqueror, described by Tacitus, who "made a desert

and called it peace." All of which means, or seems to mean,

that we are being annihilated by destructive forces inherent

in the social process itself! After all, this experience of ours

is not new. The passing of a world, in bloodshed and

terror, has happened before. There is a fate upon us—a grim

and ghastly fate-that the price of victory is defeat, and the

logic of life is death!

This pessimistic fatalism, so different from the old opti-

mistic type, is set forth in two judgments upon this age-

and upon all for that matter!-which are characteristic

ages, products of our time.

One is the judgment of Oswald Spengler, as set forth in

bis tremendous book, The Decline of the West. This work

is not so much a history as it is a philosophy of history.

According to Spengler, there is no such thing as continuity

in human affairs, and certainly there is no such thing as

progress. History simply discloses a succession of civiliza-

tions which are not so many steps in the onward march of

man, but rather so many bubbles upon an eternal sea of

nothingness. Civilizations are simply phenomena which

come and go. They appear only to disappear, they rise only

to fall and transmit nothing to the future.

Our own civilization at this moment is declining, and must soon go

the way of all other civilizations before it-and there is

nothing that we can do about it. We are caught, like so

many fingers, in the wheels of fate. In the most helpless

and hopeless statement of fatalism I have ever read, Spengler

declares that, in this moment of catastrophe, we are like the

Roman soldier in Pompeii who, when the awful Vesuvian

eruption fell upon the city, was left at his post and re-

mained steadfastly to perish. "An honorable end," says

Spengler, as a kind of final confession of faith, "is the one

thing that cannot be taken away from a man."

A second judgment, characteristic of these times, is found

in the neo-Calvinism which is today creeping into so many

of our more orthodox Christian churches. This neo-Calvin-

ism has as its chief exponent in Europe the great Karl Barth,

and in this country Dr. Reinhold Neibuhr, of the Union

Theological Seminary. This theology presents a pessimism

of the blackest type. Man is under the curse of original

sin. Since he is in birth and character a sinner, he can do

nothing good. He is thus unable to save himself in eternity

or the world in time. His society, inwrought with the sinful-

ness of his own nature, is doomed to perish. Man's only hope

is the ever-present, ever-forgiving grace of God. Which

reminds me, I trust not irreverently, of the story of the

woman, in a great storm at sea, who asked the captain if the

ship was going to be saved! "Madam," he replied, "we must

trust in God." "Oh," she exclaimed in dismay, "is it as bad

as that?"

Such is the fatalism into which we have been betrayed.

Before 1914, an optimistic fatalism which assured us that we

were floating on a quiet stream into a haven of perfect bliss!

After that dreadful date, a pessimistic fatalism which as-

sured us that we were caught in a maelstrom of disaster

from which there is no escape! The former fatalism is de-

cidedly more pleasant than the latter, but it is difficult to

say which is the more fatal to the higher interests of man's

being. Both must be described as maladies of the time.

They are like spiritual cancers which eat away the vitality of

the soul. In three closely analogous ways, at least, they are

disastrous:

In the first place, they rob man of his sense of power. In

the ordinary course of events, we feel that we can do things,

and are meant to do things, in the world of men. In lieu

of being taught otherwise, we seem to be conscious of an

original source of strength in our bodies, as of ideas in our

minds, which move us to action which seems to be both spon-

taneous and effective. We rejoice in this power, as a child

rejoices in his limbs, and interpret it to mean that we have

our part to play in the life of man and in the high purposes

of God. Then there comes this fatalism which is like a stroke

of paralysis. We have no part to play. It is all done for us.

Our strength is but an illusion of activity. Like actors in a

theatre, we have no power to change a drama all written

before we came upon the stage.

In the second place, the optimistic or the pessimistic type

of fatalism—it makes no difference!-robs man of his dignity

as a human being. Under the rule of fate, he has no freedom

or initiative. He can determine nothing for himself or for

humanity. He is like one of the animals who move from

day to day under the control of mere blind instinct, and wit

not where they are going, or why they live at all. The whole

glory of man is to be found in the fact that he is a moral

being, capable of making choices, and acting upon these

choices. To deny this attribute to man, as fate denies it, is

like the dethroning of a king. His power is gone, his dignity

lost, and all the splendor of his day departed.

Lastly, and more particularly, there is the denial to man of

responsibility. Under the operations of any kind of fate,

whether optimistic or pessimistic, man is no longer responsible

for anything. Things are decided, outcomes determined, al-

together apart from his thought, decision, or activity. It

makes no difference what he does, or does not do the same

course of human events will unfold to the same ultimate

result. This is the final degradation of man, as it is the

worst danger to society. For if fate is in control of things,

then anything goes. As anything and everything did go in

the years before and the years after the Great War! In

both cases, men's thoughts were fatalistic. Before 1914

everything was all right-so a man did not have anything

to worry about, and could do what he pleased. After 1918.

and the end of the war, everything was all wrong, so again

man did not have anything to worry about, and could do

what he pleased. So in the one period as in the other, man

divorced himself from responsibility, and there ensued such

a reign of moral anarchy and dissolution as the world has

not seen in many centuries. If any one thing more than

another has brought us to where we are today, it is this ir-

responsibility which has its roots in fatalism.

All of this means that, if we are to save our world and

redeem these times, we must get rid of this fatalism which

has been ensnaring us so long. I realize that this is only one

of many things that must be done. But I insist that this

is the fundamental thing, since it touches upon the moral

and spiritual elements of man's being, and thus penetrates

to the core of reality. Unless man can be rescued from these

binding chains of a bad philosophy and a worse science, and

thus made again to be a free and responsible agent of human

affairs, then there is little use of trying to do anything.

Our military campaigns, our political strategems, our per-

sonal sacrifices will be in vain; for, whether the totalitarian

states be beaten or not, we shall be enslaved to a cosmic

totalitarianism which denies to us that inner freedom with-

out which no outer freedom whatsoever is worth having. I

repeat that we must rescue man from the clutch of fatalism

-and I know of only two influences that can do it. Not

government or society, or economics or politics, or any reform

or revolution! But just those two agencies of man's life

which have been from the beginning, and must remain to

the end, if the race is ever to be delivered from its woe.

The first of these two influences is religion. We must

hear again the proclamation of that truth which is central

to all religions-that man is the child of God, and holds

within himself the power of his own salvation. Every great

prophet of religion has held this faith, and has urged men

to be worthy of the divine within them. Every great seer

of the spirit has found this spirit in the human soul, and

has labored to awaken this soul to a consciousness and use

of its divine inheritance. Ye are the children of God! Ye

are the light of the world! Ye are the salt of the earth!

This does not mean that man is perfect. He has an earthly

inheritance as well as a heavenly-is flesh as well as spirit.

This does not mean that man's will is final. It is God's

will that is supreme, and man's business to find that will

and make it his own. This does not mean that man is free

in the sense of acting without restriction or restraint. There

is a moral order in this universe which man must work with

and not against, if he would succeed. But it does mean that

man has the divine within him; that he operates creative

powers of good and evil; that he can choose, for himself and

for his fellows, to be saved or damned; that if the world is

to be saved, he must save it, and if the world is to be lost,

he will lose it. Man is his own fate. He determines, freely,

his own future. In this vast realm of the spirit which is

man's home, there is no escaping this august responsibility

of destiny.

I count it the shame of the church, in ancient times, that

it confused or lost this central truth of the devine capacity

of man in pagan dogmas of sin, predestination, and eternal

punishment. But I count it equally the shame of science

and philosophy, of learning generally in our time, that it

has obscured or denied this truth in sordid theories of de-

terminism, materialism, and mechanism. That so-called en-

lightened minds have undertaken, with incredible arrogance,

to degrade man to the level of the atom and the molecule, in-

stead of lifting the atom and the molecule to the level of

man and God! What is the explanation of these times but

the loss of all religion, all spiritual consciousness and will,

and the stupid acceptance of force and matter as the secret

of life? And what are Fascism, Nazism, and Communism,

with their denial of all spiritual truth and their repudiation

of all moral values, but the logical conclusion and represen-

tation of our thinking? Nothing can save us, in this catas-

trophic era, but a recovery of religion—a visitation, may I

say, of great preaching. Such preaching as Ralph Waldo

Emerson had in mind when he said that the true preacher

is one who makes man "sensible that he is in an infinite

Soul, that the earth and heavens are in his mind.

If you please to plant yourself on the side of a Fate," con-

tinued Emerson, "and say, Fate is all, then we say, a part of

Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of

choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate.

Events are our children. The soul of Fate is the soul of us.'

If religion is the first of the two influences which can

banish the superstition of fatalism, education is the second.

And as our present crisis demands of religion great preach-

ing, so it demands of education great teaching. Where are

our great teachers these days? We do not hear any more,

in our colleges and universities, of great teachers but only

of great scholars as though scholarship were of any worth

without its successful impartation! The myth of our time, in

educational circles, seems to be the idea that "knowledge

is power." Well, it is power; but it is not the greatest

power, and it may be used to disgusting and wicked ends, as

witness what is going on in our contemporary world. Yet

we seek knowledge-for itself alone, apparently—as a kind

of summum bonum. What chance has a man to a faculty

appointment these days who has not a Ph.D. after his name?

What is the supreme qualification to accompany an appli-

cation for consideration for an academic position if not a

bibliography of books and articles which the applicant has

written and nobody but his wife and his proof-reader has

read? Am I wholly wrong in the suspicion which has crept

into my mind in recent years that, in all too many colleges,

the student is regarded by the professor not so much as the

raison d'etre of his existence, as a kind of aggravating in-

trusion upon his time in laboratory and study? At any rate,

it seems to be the research worker who is wanted today.

Not the man who can cultivate the field of knowledge

for the instruction and joy of a new generation of eager

learners, but the man who can extend that field by a square

inch or two for his own academic satisfaction and advance-

ment.

Yet it is to teaching that we must return, if education is

to do its work of quickening and guiding the soul of man.

For, in the last analysis, it is not knowledge which is power,

but personality. Teaching may be defined as the impartation

of knowledge through personality. "The spirit only can

teach," says Emerson. "Not any profane man, not any

sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach;

he only can create who is. The man on whom the soul descends,

through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach."

"Soul" is the word-for what is education but a process

of spiritual conception, in which soul is born of soul? I

think of my own college, Harvard, in the great days of Pres-

ident Charles William Eliot, who filled his faculty with men

who were not only scholars but teachers-in certain cases,

greater teachers than they were scholars! In any case, their

primary business was in the classroom, and not in the labora-

tory or the study. There, for example, was Professor George

Lyman Kittredge, the great authority on Shakespeare in his

day. Professor Kittredge had no Ph.D. attached to his name.

He used to ask where was the man who could examine him

for the degree. When he died, a few weeks ago, I was

amazed to note how few and unimportant were the books

which he had published. But what a teacher! His lecture-

room was his kingdom, and its platform his throne. Then

there was Professor Nathaniel Shailer. I used to suspect,

when I was in college, that he was no final authority on his

subject, geology. He was hardly what you would call a

productive scholar. Perhaps because he was primarily in-

terested not in rocks but in men, and preferred a conference

with a student to an excursion along the cliffs, or to the

writing of a book about it! The hundreds of boys who

swarmed each year into his classroom may not have learned

the last word or the minutest fact about geology, but they

touched and were inspired by one of the supreme personal-

ities of the time, and thus themselves made men. And

Professor George Herbert Palmer! I am sure he was never

a great philosopher. I doubt if he ever had an original idea.

Certainly he never produced an important philosophical

work. But he was the greatest teacher at Harvard in a

generation of great teachers, and his famous course, “Phil.

4," an unforgettable experience of the soul.

Great teaching! This is what we need from education, as

great preaching from religion, that the spirit of man may

come alive again and take possession of its world. Long

enough have we been the fools of fate. Before the war, we

let the world drift from our control, in the serene conviction

that the drifting was in the right direction, and we need

not worry. This was complacency-the open door to pride,

corruption and decay. Since the war, we have seen the world

plunged to ruin, and in despair have given way to the con-

viction that we are doomed, and can do nothing. This is

defeatism—the open door to decay, destruction, despair, and

death. From this there is no recovery, save in ourselves. We

must shake off the shackles of dead necessity, and regain

the sense of freedom and of faith. We must dispell the

fatalistic delusion that we are bound by forces greater than

our own, and assert the soul as the only force that is supreme.

What the world needs this desperate day is not arma-

ments, and war, and fighting, and killing-these are them-

selves the direst fate that can befall the lot of man. What

the world needs is faith!-the faith of man in himself, in

his world, and in his God. To do not as he must, but as he

will, to master destiny! It was said by Napoleon of his

marshal, Massena, that he was not himself until the battle

began to go against him. Then, when all seemed lost, "he

put on terror and victory as a robe." So in a deeper and

truer sense, in this hour of despair, we must put on victory.

For "it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance,

that the angel is shown."

Do you remember Emerson's tremendous lines, fit for

this theme and time -

"The sun set, but set not his hope:

Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:

Fixed on the enormous galaxy,

Deeper and older seemed his eye;

And matched his sufference sublime

The taciturnity of time.

He spoke, and words more soft than rain

Brought the age of gold again:

His action won such reverence sweet

As hid all measure of the feat."