Alumni Oration

"'What Shall We Do To Succeed?' Delivered at the Encœnia of the University of New Brunswick, by Judge Skinner" University Monthly XIII, 8 (1894): 102-108. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Mankind worship success, it could not do otherwise. It is the great ideal towards which all reach out, and upon which every eye doth rest and every heart craves. There is no room for failure; in all the world its an anomaly, a disease that Society should remove and cure. The effort to do so is continuous, and ever will be. It is the mistakes we make that prevents it being done The establishment of schools, colleges and universities are amongst the greatest efforts of the race to accomplish the purpose, and therefore education is an instrument to this end.

Ignorance never advances. Education is the leader of the world, the hope of humanity. The educated man should toe a successful man, but he often is not. I have seen the ignorant pass the educated in the race of life towards success very often indeed, and to discover the reason we will not have far to go. "Know thyself" should be the universal law and then the determination to make the best of ourselves should be the first step towards its application, and that determination carried into action puts us upon the royal road.

If I were to ask each young man who to-day gets the stamp of this University impressed upon his mind, what do you most desire? he would say success, he hopes for it, he longs for it, his heart craves it.

But success is the hardest thing in the world to get; it is the most difficult point on earth to reach; you must climb the precipices that are nearly perpendicular, and frown out upon you like the forts of an enemy. You must labor by day and work at night, and you will be your own greatest enemy in the struggle You can more easily triumph over all the other obstacles that you will meet, than you can conquer yourself; you must harness your mind, and drive it by your will, you must subdue your passions and make pack horses of them to draw you along That was what your Creator intended them to be. You must naturally have or cultivate a love for toil, and if you fall you must rise again and pass on, with an awful determination, otherwise you will meet the common fate and wonder why you did not reach the goal.

The future, and what shall we do with it, is then the principal point for our consideration today.

The future is all we have. We come to it by the laws of succession. We are heirs to the future by the will of the past. Even the present is not, because it goes as soon as it comes. The future is forever arriving, and this is the infinite enigma that we have not what we have, and we are forever looking forward to get what we cannot keep; and therefore the mind can never be at rest. We carry with us the impress of our surroundings, and eternity is the environment of the soul. Therefore we have upon us the imprint of immortality, and must forever crave and forever fight for the subjugation and conquest of nature.

We level the mountains,
And cross the oceans;
Harness the lightning,
And imprison the steam;

and demand of nature that she gives us her secret We weigh the stars and measure their orbits, and one victory is but a step to another, and thus it will go on forever; nor are we satisfied with our triumphs over nature. We desire education as we do food; we hunger for both. We cling to the future, although we have it not, we demand of it, what it has for us, yet it forever comes empty handed to us.

The future is not a carrier. It brings nothing, it expects everything of us, what have we for it is the crucial question of all our lives, its only an opportunity. We are the creators.

The Builder of the Universe does not complete his works. He leaves mankind to do that. We are the right hand of omnipotence, if we choose to be so, he who educates himself, creates himself anew.

The Infinite one calls into existence the Oceans; but men build the ships that cross them and use the stars for finger boards, along the perilous ways. He unfolds the Continents, but men build the Railways, the Canals, the telegraphs and all that make and mark the progress of the world, and the superiority of the race. He leaves man a savage, but gives him impulses that causes him to finish the work, so well begun. God never creates an educated man He supplies the raw material, we do the rest He creates the soul and we the character. What a stupendous work we have to perform, what a magnificent position we hold in the divine economy? co-creators with the Infinite, the holders of divine trust for the eternal, how we perform it answers the question shall we succeed.

The craving for knowledge is the desire of the mind to know the future.

To become a master we look towards the eternity before us as children of the eternity from which we came.

We would sooner meet punishment than annihilating, therefore we want to know what are the possibilities of the future Each day to the educated man opens a new view. Every step forward discloses a widening road.

'Tis a pity then that education should not always be crowned with success, why is it not we will see. It is because we are not true to ourselves, that is the most difficult thing to be, we can be true to others with the greatest ease, but we think we can be false to ourselves with impunity; but we cannot. The greatest punishments that are inflicted upon us are self imposed. Can I honestly say to myself that I have done my duty? if I can my enemy may howl at my gate till his voice becomes as loud as the thunder, and I shall not be disturbed We are a part of the infinite, therefore when we satisfy ourselves we meet a portion of the divine requirements, and have worshipped at the true alter that is set up in every soul. There are other larcenies than those of property. He, who seeking to be educated and does not do his best robs his own mind and metes out his own punishment, and disgraces himself in the presence of himself and becomes his own executioner, and blocks his own way.

The more you know the more you want to know—the more you require to know and the easier it becomes to acquire the addition, the capacity of the mind increases geometrically by the burdens of acquisition that you place upon it. It is a camera that will receive and retain and throw off at will all impressions. We never forget any thing, sickness, indolence, misfortune may prevent us from being able to use it; but the store house remains full all the same, and the more we put in it the more it will hold.

Every young man, then, who passes out from his college goes out rich and brings to the world, a new acquisition, a new creation, an educated mind. Tariffs cannot reach it; the assessor cannot tax it. But the owner can use it, or he can abuse it and that is the parting of the way.

We are what our desires make us—if we seek to have these desires accomplished, our ideas are the offspring of our desires. None will seek to be educated unless they love knowledge and they will not love knowledge unless they are imbued with the impulse of making the best of themselves. Although there is no room for failure, yet it is the most prominent thing in all the world; the pathways of life are strewn with wrecks that encumber the road like the tangle of the forest. That need not be so; if men attended to their part of creation as their Maker has attended to His, these wrecks would never have been strewn along the high-ways of life.

We know enough to do our duty, but we will not. We are most generally false to this great trust imposed upon us. We know, the conditions but we refuse to perform them. We think we can evade them, but they are as eternal, as unchangeable and as exacting as the law of gravitation. It could not be otherwise. There is not anything without law to govern it and when we violate the laws upon which success depends there is no trial with a chance to escape. The offence and the punishment go arm in arm; one is the compliment of the other. If the student will not continue to study, he will gather as he sows. If a man will not seek the knowledge necessary to meet the requirements of his position, the opportunity passes him and will not return. The doctrine of sympathy extends not to the mind. We must all walk through life alone though surrounded by thousands, the solitudes of the intellect are as vast as nature, and we become just what we make ourselves to be.

The University is but as the spring-board to the athelete; he bounds into the air and the distance he may leap and the success of his effort will depend upon his training, the strength of his constitution and the determination of mind. Success does not lie in wait for him, but it comes as soon as he performs its conditions. It is not something to be acquired; it is a status in which to grow. When we get it, we are a part of it.

Its conditions are hard, exceedingly exacting, and every young man should find out from self communion if he is willing to perform them. If he is not, or is not certain, then he ought to get out of the way. An indolent man with a good education given him by his parents is like a lighthouse with the lamps removed. He signifies what he was, rather than what he shall be; he is one of the wrecks in ruinous perfection lying along the way.

I look always upon a graduating class with much sorrow. I know so many of it will sink below the horizon of their youthful hopes; yet they need not, but they will not labor.

The student is a workman in an intellectual quarry. He must cut out the stone, then shape and finish it for the purpose intended. No one else can do it for him. Our mistakes are our stumbling blocks; let us then avoid them. We will make but few mistakes if we follow unflinchingly the instincts of the soul which is another name for judgment. Intuition is but a synonym for inspiration. We all have intuitive knowledge, if we be guided by it we shall succeed. If your desires lead you contrary to your intuition and you follow your desires, you are lost, and perhaps forever. That is not only true in morals but in education and in every life struggle as well. When we violate our intuition we fall into the rapids and the cataract is near. It is not enough to be moral, we must be just; it is not enough to be just, we must be laborious and we must go further still, we must be true to ourselves. Our intuitions are the telephones that link us to the Infinite; God is at one end, we at the other, and we can always communicate at will and always get an answer for we have it when we ask.

I have noticed that we fail of success because we do not study its conditions aright. We look for models by keeping our eyes on those who have been successful. Does one desire to be an orator, he perhaps studies Demosthenes or Daniel Webster, without any hope of becoming like either of them. Does he intend to be an engineer, he reads the life of George Stephenson, or some other great man in that line of life. That is well in its way, but not the true course to be followed. It is as if the physician studied health instead of disease. To become successful we should know why so many fail.

I have seen those who appeared the most promising at the start get badly distanced in the race by the more ignorant but the more industrious; by the less ingenious but the more cunning. If you enter a profession that holds success before you only on condition that you work and study all your life, then, work and study you must or you too will be rolled up among the wrecks. An iron will is necessary to every career. But you say, if I have it not how can I get it? Follow your intuitions and you will grow, and become stronger every day yon live.

I think every faculty of the soul can be surrendered to and controlled by the will. The power of the Infinite is a vast and incomprehensible will.

The time will come when the soul will be enlarged and the mind strengthened by moral and ethical teaching of a scientific character.

We sometimes think the moral and mental natures are separate. They are not; they are one and what God has joined together let no man part. There are no divorces in the economy of nature; the mind is a whole, a grand entity. It has been said that the greatest study of mankind is man. I would seek to amend that by saying that the greatest study of man is himself

The mastery of one's self is the foundation of success. I have seen students in the joy of graduation think it was right to get intoxicated. I have feared for them, not because they got drunk, but because they had not mastered themselves, and he that does not master himself had better steal away and net stand in the road of others.

If you really wish to succeed and have accepted the conditions, study failure and success will take care of itself.

If you find one falls from indolence, then see that you are not indolent. If one succeeds from cunning, then study cunning, and yon will soon find that nobility of character, reliableness in life and unspotted integrity is the higher cunning. It is the law of the continuity of all the laws of the mind. But the greatest and most essential condition of success is money. Money is not everything, but it is nearly everything. Without it you cannot be anything in the state or in the church.

There seems to be no room in this world for the poor. They are treated as the true Lazarus of our age without even the dogs to lick their sores. I have seen people of the same Church worshipping (or thinking they were) a common Father but because the one was rich and the other poor, their communion was postponed until they reached the other shore where all would be rich alike.

Remember this as long as you live—you must have money; without it you will be more helpless than a ship on a lee-shore without anchor or cable. You will be engulfed for certain. God respects the poor but man does not and to be successful you must have the respect of man.

You say "how can I have money?"

I reply, "nothing easier." You have only to save a portion of what you may get and you will find yourself rich enough in the end.

The road to wealth is as plain as the road to market, was one of the maxims of Franklin and it is true. In nature there is no waste and men should copy nature. Never enter into an obligation that you cannot meet, nor incur a liability that you cannot pay. The miser is a better man than the spendthrift. It is said that you should never buy what you do not want. I would rather say never purchase that which you can do without. There are more failures in life caused by the want of money even in callings that are removed from ordinary business than from any other cause. Therefore be saving; economy is the key note to financial as well as every kind of prosperity.

Pay as you go should be the common watchword. Avoid debt as you would the pestilence. Necessity may drive but had you followed your judgment the necessity had not arisen.

Aim for the best and take the next best, but let your calling be your master and you its servant. Keep yourself behind your business rather than in front of it. Find out what you can do best and then do it. Never be afraid that you will be under rated. Many are over-rated but none under. What ever is good in you is as sure to be found out as the evil. It is only bad men that have to die to be called good.

Education though is a dangerous possession; it fits one for certain vocations and has been thought to untie one for others. The son of the farmer thinks his education may unfit him for the farm; that is a great mistake. There is no calling in which education can be both ornamental and useful to the same extent as that of the farmer. The farmer is the child of nature in the best sense. The laws of the universe are his friends or his enemies in proportion as he understands them, and to understand them is the highest education. The seed he sows and the roots that he plants grow by food under the same law that applies to himself. The sun and the rain, the cold and the heat are his servants if he intelligently commands them.

The educated man need not fear the farm. Labor was thought to be a curse but the times have changed. Idleness is the real curse. Education and labor should never be separated. Education is labor crystalized into intellect. The true student is never afraid to work but he as a rule is only willing to work along the lines of the immaterial. That should not be, for education is becoming general and men must become educated in and not out of their calling.

There is no reason why literary honors should not pass to a man who works with his hands and with his head as well as to one who works with his head alone. This will have to be so in the future or the crowding of the professions will do more harm than good.

The students of the future will meet the new competitor that is coming rapidly to the front. Women are here and they have come to stay. It has taken Christian countries two thousand years to make them the equal of men but that point has been nearly reached, and in the future the struggle will be proportionally severe and educated men and education at institutions must recognize the new era and widen the way to be followed by the learned. Knowledge and work must embrace each other and thereby the world will advance. We are a maritime people without maritime instincts.

We love the ship but we do not like the sea and our sons are losing the chances held open there. To be a navigator of a ship should be the aim of many young men that go out from our schools for education is as needful on the mighty deep as upon the land.

The student should learned to be a master of detail; that is the strongest point in the chain of success. "Little drops of water and little grains of sand make up the mighty ocean and the beauteous land" was to me the song of my childhood and it should teach you as it did me that a well rounded life is but an aggregation of small things, any one of which requires attention. Every detail becomes a principle the moment you aim at success.

It may be said that I only lay down rules for the gifted; in a sense that may be true, but every educated man is a gifted man, anyway the greatest gift is a willingness to work. Many and many again are the men that I have seen rise in professional life who were only remarkable for their determination and readiness to labor. Industry is armed at every point, and every gate must open before it. When the summons is given that calls you to your life work, do not be afraid of the future, if you are honest, industrious, sober, determined and able to say "no." The word "no" is the greatest and most character making word in our language when intelligently and determinedly used. The men who succeed as a rule know how and when and where to say "no." Study that word, it is the key of life. Knowing it and using it rightly you seldom require to say yes for you are always doing what is right and are masters of your own careers.

Cultivate a love of the beautiful in nature, in art and in your own souls. The love of the beautiful is the basis of all good, without the love of the beautiful there had been no morality, without morality there would have been no religion, and without religon, the world would have been a desert and man a ruin.

If thus equipped you go out to the battle of life I think you must succeed and the results will be worth the strife. It is a grand thing to succeed, the hopes of a life realized give bounding joy whilst failure is worse than death. Many a man could walk to the cannon's mouth and die for his country with a calm boldness that would call down the plaudits of mankind, who could not bear to fail in the struggle of life.

Then let every student whom I address take up his work in earnest and go forth to the contest not only determined to succeed but to reach that high point not as a mere chance but as a fort taken by strategy, determination, bravery and the force of will.