Graduation Address

"Address to the Graduating Class" University Monthly 33, 7-9 (April-June 1914): 337-340. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

Some four decades ago the class of '75 sat, as you sit now. "the observed of all observers"; and when the magic words, "Ego admitto te," had been pronounced, and the mortar-boards placed on, somewhat awry, by the stately old President, Dr. Jack, we went forth from these old familiar halls, as you do today, with bright hopes, and lofty ideals and glowing enthusiasms, to fight in the battle of life.

Now, with battered harness and dinted shield, I have come back, commissioned by your worthy Chancellor, to give you, who have just passed your vigil and donned your armour, some advice and counsel, gleaned from my experience, as to how to wield your weapons, and bear yourselves in the fight.

Whether your ideals are lofty or low, whether you consider life to be a great bundle of little things, or a little bundle of great things, will depend largely on the view you take of the true meaning of life. Life, believe me, is no mere dress parade, no sham battle. Browning, who has plumbed the profundities of life more deeply than any other English poet, thus expresses his belief in its reality and beneficence:—

Life is no blot or blank for us:
It means intensely, and it means good;
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

Philosophers have put forth many, and various views on this much vexed question.

The Epicureans found the summum bonum in pleasure, sensual and aesthetic enjoyment: the Stoics placed it in heroic endurance; but later philosophers have found a truer and nobler ideal in Duty—" Stern daughter of the voice of God."

I have spoken of the ideals of youth. These are of necessity unripe and immature: it needs the sun of experience to ripen and perfect them. Here as elsewhere, if there is life there must be growth.

"To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty," says Stevenson, "is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and to take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched, but none the wiser."

In the limited time at my disposal, I shall attempt to trace the development of one or two of these youthful ideals, and try to draw from them some helpful lessons.

For instance, what was the principal motive, which impelled each of you to spend four years of more or less strenuous study at this University? Perhaps I can answer this question from my own experience. What was my own motive for taking a college course? Searching back in memory, I find that my principal reason was that I would be thus enabled the more easily to earn a livelihood; my ideal was to make a living. It was not till years after that it dawned upon me that the true ideal was to make a life; that the only thing worth while was worthy and noble living.

To be, not to possess, that is the problem of life. In this materialistic age. it is extremely difficult to keep from joining in the mad rush for wealth. It is for such as you, who have enjoyed the advantage of a liberal education to follow the higher ideal, and to show in your lives that you value more highly the things, of the mind and spirit. Add this prayer to your Litany. "From the danger of becoming a mere money-maker, Good Lord deliver us." "To be wealthy," writes Stevenson, "a rich nature is the first requisite, and money but the second. To be of a quick and healthy blood, to share in all honorable curiosities, to be rich in admiration, and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others, to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence or unkindness—these are the best things in life which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing."

Moreover these are the things that endure, and of which Fortune cannot deprive us.

"All that is at all
Lasts ever, past recall:
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure."

I have said that a too common aim in life, characteristic of youth, but by no means confined to it, is to get, to acquire. Later we find that the complement of this is to give, to impart.

Ëll your lives you have been acquiring—in the schools, at the University—garnering rich stores of knowledge, tilling your minds with golden thoughts, developing power and ability. Now the question for you ought to be, "*How can we expend this accumulated wealth for the good of others?" To hoard the knowledge and power we possess for selfish ends only, is to be a miser of more than gold,

"God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out."

The hope of our democracy today is in the young men and women sent out, well equipped for service, from our higher institutions of learning. Your influence should be felt in the social, commercial, and political life of our country. The great need of Canada today is men:—

"Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking."

And where can we expect to find them if not among the graduates of our universities?

In the Tate Gallery in London I saw a picture by an eminent artist which impressed me strongly. Stretched on a bier lay the body of a man, covered lightly with a pall. Scattered about in confusion, as if hastily thrown down, lay the ermine robe, emblematical of rank and power; the spear, shield and helmet, of military renown; a golden goblet, sensual pleasures; a book and lute, art and literary fame; flowers and peacock feathers, the pride and pomp of life—all illustrating what bubbles we are and what bubbles we pursue. The legend attached to the picture expressed the lesson the painter designed to teach: —

"What I spent, I had;
What I saved, I lost;
What I gave, I have."

The only thing that endures, and of which death cannot rob us is what we have given of ourselves to others.

Just one more thought. In the hurry and bustle, in the strain and stress of life, keep alive your aesthetic tastes, your love of Nature, of Literature, and of Art; do not allow them to become atrophied by disuse. The man or woman who is not awed by the sight of Niagara, or charmed by such a poem as the "Immortality Ode," or moved to ecstacy by the Hallelujah Chorus in the Messiah, is as much to be pitied as one who has lost his sense of sight or hearing.

In Darwin's Autobiography it is pathetic to read that, owing to his too strenuous application to his favorite pursuits, he had entirely lost his appreciation of music. It had become to him only a series of confused sounds.

It is a common belief that with advancing years, our love of Nature must necessarily weaken and fade, but my own experience shows that Emerson has the truer thought. "Wordsworth writes," he says, "of the delights of the boy in Nature:—

"For never will come back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower."

"But I have," he continues, "just seen a man, well knowing what he spoke of who told me that the verse was not true for him; that his eyes opened as he grew older, and that every spring was more beautiful to him than the last."

Thus in the evening of life when the years of well-earned leisure come, and "the certain moment cuts the deed oil, calls the glory from the gray," the cultivation of this part of our nature may be a comfort and a solace.

And now in closing I cannot, I think, do better than leave with you the last words of the great Sir Walter Scott.

As he lay dying, and his friend Lockhart leaned over him to catch his last words, he did not counsel him to strive for wealth, or rank, or fame, although he himself had won all these, but he said, in words so simple that a child could understand them, yet so profound that a philosopher could add nothing:—

"My dear, be a good man, be virtuous, be religious, be a good man.
Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here. God
bless you."