{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_73116/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_73116","id":"gutenberg_73116","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73116","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life","Students -- Conduct of life"],"text":"A WAY OF LIFE\n\n  _An Address to Yale Students\n  Sunday evening, April 20th, 1913_\n\n\n  By\n\n  WILLIAM OSLER\n\n\n  LONDON\n  CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.\n  1913\n\n\n\n\n  What each day needs that shall thou ask,\n  Each day will set its proper task.\n                                      _Goethe._\n\n\nFELLOW STUDENTS--\n\nEvery man has a philosophy of life in thought, in word, or in deed,\nworked out in himself unconsciously.  In possession of the very best,\nhe may not know of its existence; with the very worst he may pride\nhimself as a paragon.  As it grows with the growth it cannot be\ntaught to the young in formal lectures.  What have bright eyes, red\nblood, quick breath and taut muscles to do with philosophy?  Did not\nthe great Stagirite say that young men were unfit students of\nit?--they will hear as though they heard not, and to no profit.  Why\nthen should I trouble you?  Because I have a message that may be\nhelpful.  It is not philosophical, nor is it strictly moral or\nreligious, one or other of which I was told my address should be, and\nyet in a way it is all three.  It is the oldest and the freshest, the\nsimplest and the most useful, so simple indeed is it that some of you\nmay turn away disappointed as was Naaman the Syrian when told to go\nwash in Jordan and be clean.  You know those composite tools, to be\nbought for 50 cents, with one handle to fit a score or more of\ninstruments.  The workmanship is usually bad, so bad, as a rule, that\nyou will not find an example in any good carpenter's shop; but the\nboy has one, the chauffeur slips one into his box, and the sailor\ninto his kit, and there is one in the odds-and-ends drawer of the\npantry of every well-regulated family.  It is simply a handy thing\nabout the house, to help over the many little difficulties of the\nday.  Of this sort of philosophy I wish to make you a present--a\nhandle to fit your life tools.  Whether the workmanship is Sheffield\nor shoddy, this helve will fit anything from a hatchet to a corkscrew.\n\nMy message is but a word, _a Way_, an easy expression of the\nexperience of a plain man whose life has never been worried by any\nphilosophy higher than that of the shepherd in _As You Like It_.  I\nwish to point out a path in which the wayfaring man, though a fool,\ncannot err; not a system to be worked out painfully only to be\ndiscarded, not a formal scheme, simply a habit as easy--or as\nhard!--to adopt as any other habit, good or bad.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nA few years ago a Xmas card went the rounds, with the legend \"Life is\njust one 'derned' thing after another,\" which, in more refined\nlanguage, is the same as saying \"Life is a habit,\" a succession of\nactions that become more or less automatic.  This great truth, which\nlies at the basis of all actions, muscular or psychic, is the\nkeystone of the teaching of Aristotle, to whom the formation of\nhabits was the basis of moral excellence.  \"In a word, habits of any\nkind are the result of actions of the same kind; and so what we have\nto do, is to give a certain character to these particular actions\"\n(_Ethics_).  Lift a seven months old baby to his feet--see him tumble\non his nose.  Do the same at twelve months--he walks.  At two years\nhe runs.  The muscles and the nervous system have acquired the habit.\nOne trial after another, one failure after another, has given him\npower.  Put your finger in a baby's mouth, and he sucks away in\nblissful anticipation of a response to a mammalian habit millions of\nyears old.  And we can deliberately train parts of our body to\nperform complicated actions with unerring accuracy.  Watch that\nmusician playing a difficult piece.  Batteries, commutators,\nmultipliers, switches, wires innumerable control those nimble\nfingers, the machinery of which may be set in motion as automatically\nas in a pianola, the player all the time chatting as if he had\nnothing to do in controlling the apparatus--habit again, the gradual\nacquisition of power by long practice and at the expense of many\nmistakes.  The same great law reaches through mental and moral\nstates.  \"Character,\" which partakes of both, in Plutarch's words, is\n\"long-standing habit.\"\n\nNow the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually\nby long and steady repetition.  It is the practice of living for the\nday only, and for the day's work, _Life in day-tight compartments_.\n\"Ah,\" I hear you say, \"that is an easy matter, simple as Elisha's\nadvice!\"  Not as I shall urge it, in words which fail to express the\ndepth of my feelings as to its value.  I started life in the best of\nall environments--in a parsonage, one of nine children.  A man who\nhas filled Chairs in four universities, has written a successful\nbook, and has been asked to lecture at Yale, is supposed popularly to\nhave brains of a special quality.  A few of my intimate friends\nreally know the truth about me, as I know it!  Mine, in good faith I\nsay it, are of the most mediocre character.  But what about those\nprofessorships, etc.?  Just habit, a way of life, an outcome of the\nday's work, the vital importance of which I wish to impress upon you\nwith all the force at my command.\n\nDr. Johnson remarked upon the trifling circumstances by which men's\nlives are influenced, \"not by an ascendant planet, a predominating\nhumour, but by the first book which they read, some early\nconversation which they have heard, or some accident which excited\nardour and enthusiasm.\"  This was my case in two particulars.  I was\ndiverted to the Trinity College School, then at Weston, Ontario, by a\nparagraph in the circular stating that the senior boys would go into\nthe drawing-room in the evenings, and learn to sing and dance--vocal\nand pedal accomplishments for which I was never designed; but like\nSaul seeking his asses, I found something more valuable, a man of the\nWhite of Selborne type, who knew nature, and who knew how to get boys\ninterested in it.[1]  The other happened in the summer of 1871, when\nI was attending the Montreal General Hospital.  Much worried as to\nthe future, partly about the final examination, partly as to what I\nshould do afterwards, I picked up a volume of Carlyle, and on the\npage I opened there was the familiar sentence--\"_Our main business is\nnot to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly\nat hand._\"  A commonplace sentiment enough, but it hit and stuck and\nhelped, and was the starting-point of a habit that has enabled me to\nutilize to the full the single talent entrusted to me.\n\n\n[1] The Rev. W. A. Johnson, the founder of the school.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nThe workers in Christ's vineyard were hired by the day; only for this\nday are we to ask for our daily bread, and we are expressly bidden to\ntake no thought for the morrow.  To the modern world these commands\nhave an Oriental savour, counsels of perfection akin to certain of\nthe Beatitudes, stimuli to aspiration, not to action.  I am prepared\non the contrary to urge the literal acceptance of the advice, not in\nthe mood of Ecclesiastes--\"Go to now, ye that say to-day or to-morrow\nwe will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and\nsell and get gain; whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow\";\nnot in the Epicurean spirit of Omar with his \"jug of wine and Thou,\"\nbut in the modernist spirit, as a way of life, a habit, a strong\nenchantment, at once against the mysticism of the East and the\npessimism that too easily besets us.  Change that hard saying\n\"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof\" into \"the goodness\nthereof,\" since the chief worries of life arise from the foolish\nhabit of looking before and after.  As a patient with double vision\nfrom some transient unequal action of the muscles of the eye finds\nmagical relief from well-adjusted glasses, so, returning to the clear\nbinocular vision of to-day, the over-anxious student finds peace when\nhe looks neither backward to the past nor forward to the future.\n\nI stood on the bridge of one of the great liners, ploughing the ocean\nat 25 knots.  \"She is alive,\" said my companion, \"in every plate; a\nhuge monster with brain and nerves, an immense stomach, a wonderful\nheart and lungs, and a splendid system of locomotion.\"  Just at that\nmoment a signal sounded, and all over the ship the water-tight\ncompartments were closed.  \"Our chief factor of safety,\" said the\nCaptain.  \"In spite of the _Titanic_,\" I said.  \"Yes,\" he replied,\n\"in spite of the _Titanic_.\"  Now each one of you is a much more\nmarvellous organization than the great liner, and bound on a longer\nvoyage.  What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as\nto live with \"day-tight compartments\" as the most certain way to\nensure safety on the voyage.  Get on the bridge, and see that at\nleast the great bulkheads are in working order.  Touch a button and\nhear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the\nPast--the dead yesterdays.  Touch another and shut off, with a metal\ncurtain, the Future--the unborn to-morrows.  Then you are safe,--safe\nfor to-day!  Read the old story in the _Chambered Nautilus_, so\nbeautifully sung by Oliver Wendell Holmes, only change one line to\n\"Day after day beheld the silent toil.\"  Shut off the past!  Let the\ndead past bury its dead.  So easy to say, so hard to realize!  The\ntruth is, the past haunts us like a shadow.  To disregard it is not\neasy.  Those blue eyes of your grandmother, that weak chin of your\ngrandfather, have mental and moral counterparts in your make-up.\nGenerations of ancestors, brooding over \"Providence, Foreknowledge,\nWill and Fate--Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge, absolute,\" may\nhave bred a New England conscience, morbidly sensitive, to heal which\nsome of you had rather sing the 51st Psalm than follow Christ into\nthe slums.  Shut out the yesterdays, which have lighted fools the way\nto dusty death, and have no concern for you personally, that is,\nconsciously.  They are there all right, working daily in us, but so\nare our livers and our stomachs.  And the past, in its unconscious\naction on our lives, should bother us as little as they do.  The\npetty annoyances, the real and fancied slights, the trivial mistakes,\nthe disappointments, the sins, the sorrows, even the joys--bury them\ndeep in the oblivion of each night.  Ah! but it is just then that to\nso many of us the ghosts of the past,\n\n  Night-riding Incubi\n  Troubling the fantasy,\n\ncome in troops, and pry open the eyelids, each one presenting a sin,\na sorrow, a regret.  Bad enough in the old and seasoned, in the young\nthese demons of past sins may be a terrible affliction, and in\nbitterness of heart many a one cries with Eugene Aram, \"Oh God!\nCould I so close my mind, and clasp it with a clasp.\"  As a vaccine\nagainst all morbid poisons left in the system by the infections of\nyesterday, I offer \"a way of life.\"  \"Undress,\" as George Herbert\nsays, \"your soul at night,\" not by self-examination, but by shedding,\nas you do your garments, the daily sins whether of omission or of\ncommission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.  To look\nback, except on rare occasions for stock-taking, is to risk the fate\nof Lot's wife.  Many a man is handicapped in his course by a cursed\ncombination of retro- and intro-spection, the mistakes of yesterday\nparalysing the efforts of to-day, the worries of the past hugged to\nhis destruction, and the worm Regret allowed to canker the very heart\nof his life.  To die daily, after the manner of St. Paul, ensures the\nresurrection of a new man, who makes each day the epitome of a life.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nThe load of to-morrow, added to that of yesterday, carried to-day\nmakes the strongest falter.  Shut off the future as tightly as the\npast.  No dreams, no visions, no delicious fantasies, no castles in\nthe air, with which, as the old song so truly says, \"hearts are\nbroken, heads are turned.\"  To youth, we are told, belongs the\nfuture, but the wretched to-morrow that so plagues some of us has no\ncertainty, except through to-day.  Who can tell what a day may bring\nforth?  Though its uncertainty is a proverb, a man may carry its\nsecret in the hollow of his hand.  Make a pilgrimage to Hades with\nUlysses, draw the magic circle, perform the rites, and then ask\nTiresias the question.  I have had the answer from his own lips.  The\nfuture is to-day,--there is no to-morrow!  The day of a man's\nsalvation is _now_--the life of the present, of to-day, lived\nearnestly, intently, without a forward-looking thought, is the only\ninsurance for the future.  Let the limit of your horizon be a\ntwenty-four hour circle.  On the title page of one of the great books\nof science, the _Discours de la M\u251c\u0119thode_ of Descartes (1637) is a\nvignette showing a man digging in a garden with his face towards the\nearth, on which rays of light are streaming from the heavens; beneath\nis the legend \"_Fac et Spera_.\"  'Tis a good attitude and a good\nmotto.  Look heavenward, if you wish, but never to the horizon--that\nway danger lies.  Truth is not there, happiness is not there,\ncertainty is not there, but the falsehoods, the frauds, the\nquackeries, the _ignes fatui_ which have deceived each\ngeneration--all beckon from the horizon, and lure the men not content\nto look for the truth and happiness that tumble out at their feet.\nOnce while at College climb a mountain-top, and get a general outlook\nof the land, and make it the occasion perhaps of that careful\nexamination of yourself, that inquisition which Descartes urges every\nman to hold once in a lifetime,--not oftener.\n\nWaste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a\nman who is anxious about the future.  Shut close, then, the great\nfore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of a life\nof Day-Tight Compartments.  Do not be discouraged,--like every other\nhabit, the acquisition takes time, and the way is one you must find\nfor yourselves.  I can only give general directions and\nencouragement, in the hope that while the green years are on your\nheads, you may have the courage to persist.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nNow, for the day itself!  What first?  Be your own daysman! and sigh\nnot with Job for any mysterious intermediary, but prepare to lay your\nown firm hand upon the helm.  Get into touch with the finite, and\ngrasp in full enjoyment that sense of capacity in a machine working\nsmoothly.  Join the whole creation of animate things in a deep,\nheartfelt joy that you are alive, that you see the sun, that you are\nin this glorious earth which nature has made so beautiful, and which\nis yours to conquer and to enjoy.  Realise, in the words of Browning,\nthat \"There's a world of capability for joy spread round about us,\nmeant for us, inviting us.\"  What are the morning sensations?--for\nthey control the day.  Some of us are congenitally unhappy during the\nearly hours; but the young man who feels on awakening that life is a\nburden or a bore has been neglecting his machine, driving it too\nhard, stoking the engines too much, or not cleaning out the ashes and\nclinkers.  Or he has been too much with the Lady Nicotine, or fooling\nwith Bacchus, or, worst of all, with the younger Aphrodite--all\n\"messengers of strong prevailment in unhardened youth.\"  To have a\nsweet outlook on life you must have a clean body.  As I look on the\nclear-cut, alert, earnest features, and the lithe, active forms of\nour college men, I sometimes wonder whether or not Socrates and Plato\nwould find the race improved.  I am sure they would love to look on\nsuch a gathering as this.  Make their ideal yours--the fair mind in\nthe fair body.  The one cannot be sweet and clean without the other,\nand you must realise, with Rabbi Ben Ezra, the great truth that flesh\nand soul are mutually helpful.  The morning outlook--which really\nmakes the day--is largely a question of a clean machine--of physical\nmorality in the wide sense of the term.  \"_C'est l'estomac qui fait\nles heureux,_\" as Voltaire says; no dyspeptic can have a sane outlook\non life; and a man whose bodily functions are impaired has a lowered\nmoral resistance.  To keep the body fit is a help in keeping the mind\npure, and the sensations of the first few hours of the day are the\nbest test of its normal state.  The clean tongue, the clear head, and\nthe bright eye are birth-rights of each day.  Just as the late\nProfessor Marsh would diagnose an unknown animal from a single bone,\nso can the day be predicted from the first waking hour.  The start is\neverything, as you well know, and to make a good start you must feel\nfit.  In the young, sensations of morning slackness come most often\nfrom lack of control of the two primal instincts--biologic\nhabits--the one concerned with the preservation of the individual,\nthe other with the continuance of the species.  Yale students should\nby this time be models of dietetic propriety, but youth does not\nalways reck the rede of the teacher; and I dare say that here, as\nelsewhere, careless habits of eating are responsible for much mental\ndisability.  My own rule of life has been to cut out unsparingly any\narticle of diet that had the bad taste to disagree with me, or to\nindicate in any way that it had abused the temporary hospitality of\nthe lodging which I had provided.  To drink, nowadays, but few\nstudents become addicted, but in every large body of men a few are to\nbe found whose incapacity for the day results from the morning\nclogging of nocturnally-flushed tissues.  As moderation is very hard\nto reach, and as it has been abundantly shown that the best of mental\nand physical work may be done without alcohol in any form, the safest\nrule for the young man is that which I am sure most of you\nfollow--abstinence.  A bitter enemy to the bright eye and the clear\nbrain of the early morning is tobacco when smoked to excess, as it is\nnow by a large majority of students.  Watch it, test it, and if need\nbe, control it.  That befogged, woolly sensation reaching from the\nforehead to the occiput, that haziness of memory, that cold fish-like\neye, that furred tongue, and last week's taste in the mouth--too many\nof you know them--I know them--they often come from too much tobacco.\nThe other primal instinct is the heavy burden of the flesh which\nNature puts on all of us to ensure a continuation of the species.  To\ndrive Plato's team taxes the energies of the best of us.  One of the\nhorses is a raging, untamed devil, who can only be brought into\nsubjection by hard fighting and severe training.  This much you all\nknow as men: once the bit is between his teeth the black steed\nPassion will take the white horse Reason with you and the chariot\nrattling over the rocks to perdition.\n\nWith a fresh, sweet body you can start aright without those feelings\nof inertia that so often, as Goethe says, make the morning's lazy\nleisure usher in a useless day.  Control of the mind as a working\nmachine, the adaptation in it of habit, so that its action becomes\nalmost as automatic as walking, is the end of education--and yet how\nrarely reached!  It can be accomplished with deliberation and repose,\nnever with hurry and worry.  Realise how much time there is, how long\nthe day is.  Realise that you have sixteen waking hours, three or\nfour of which at least should be devoted to making a silent conquest\nof your mental machinery.  Concentration, by which is grown gradually\nthe power to wrestle successfully with any subject, is the secret of\nsuccessful study.  No mind however dull can escape the brightness\nthat comes from steady application.  There is an old saying, \"Youth\nenjoyeth not, for haste\"; but worse than this, the failure to\ncultivate the power of peaceful concentration is the greatest single\ncause of mental breakdown.  Plato pities the young man who started at\nsuch a pace that he never reached the goal.  One of the saddest of\nlife's tragedies is the wreckage of the career of the young collegian\nby hurry, hustle, bustle and tension--the human machine driven day\nand night, as no sensible fellow would use his motor.  Listen to the\nwords of a master in Israel, William James: \"Neither the nature nor\nthe amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity\nof our breakdowns, but their cause lies rather in those absurd\nfeelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and\ntension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude of results, that\nlack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which the work with us\nis apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who would do the\nsame work would, nine out of ten times, be free.\"  _Es bildet ein\nTalent sich in der Stille_, but it need not be for all day.  A few\nhours out of the sixteen will suffice, only let them be hours of\ndaily dedication--in routine, in order and in system, and day by day\nyou will gain in power over the mental mechanism, just as the child\ndoes over the spinal marrow in walking, or the musician over the\nnerve centres.  Aristotle somewhere says that the student who wins\nout in the fight must be slow in his movements, with voice deep, and\nslow speech, and he will not be worried over trifles which make\npeople speak in shrill tones and use rapid movements.  Shut close in\nhour-tight compartments, with the mind directed intensely upon the\nsubject in hand, you will acquire the capacity to do more and more,\nyou will get into training; and once the mental habit is established,\nyou are safe for life.\n\nConcentration is an art of slow acquisition, but little by little the\nmind is accustomed to habits of slow eating and careful digestion, by\nwhich alone you escape the \"mental dyspepsy\" so graphically described\nby Lowell in the _Fable for Critics_.  Do not worry your brains about\nthat bugbear Efficiency, which, sought consciously and with effort,\nis just one of those elusive qualities very apt to be missed.  The\nman's college output is never to be gauged at sight; all the world's\ncoarse thumb and finger may fail to plumb his most effective work,\nthe casting of the mental machinery of self-education, the true\npreparation for a field larger than the college campus.  Four or five\nhours daily--it is not much to ask; but one day must tell another,\none week certify another, one month bear witness to another of the\nsame story, and you will acquire a habit by which the one-talent man\nwill earn a high interest, and by which the ten-talent man may at\nleast save his capital.\n\nSteady work of this sort gives a man a sane outlook on the world.  No\ncorrective so valuable to the weariness, the fever and the fret that\nare so apt to wring the heart of the young.  This is the talisman, as\nGeorge Herbert says,\n\n  The famous stone\n  That turneth all to gold,\n\nand with which, to the eternally recurring question, What is Life?\nyou answer, I do not think--I act it; the only philosophy that brings\nyou in contact with its real values and enables you to grasp its\nhidden meaning.  Over the Slough of Despond, past Doubting Castle and\nGiant Despair, with this talisman you may reach the Delectable\nMountains, and those Shepherds of the Mind--Knowledge, Experience,\nWatchful and Sincere.  Some of you may think this to be a miserable\nEpicurean doctrine--no better than that so sweetly sung by Horace:--\n\n  Happy the man--and Happy he alone,\n  He who can call to-day his own,\n  He who secure within can say,\n  To-morrow, do thy worst--for I have lived to-day.\n\n\nI do not care what you think, I am simply giving you a philosophy of\nlife that I have found helpful in my work, useful in my play.  Walt\nWhitman, whose physician I was for some years, never spoke to me much\nof his poems, though occasionally he would make a quotation; but I\nremember late one summer afternoon as we sat in the window of his\nlittle house in Camden there passed a group of workmen whom he\ngreeted in his usual friendly way.  And then he said: \"Ah, the glory\nof the day's work, whether with hand or brain!  I have tried\n\n  To exalt the present and the real,\n  To teach the average man the glory of\n      his daily work or trade.\"\n\n\nIn this way of life each one of you may learn to drive the straight\nfurrow and so come to the true measure of a man.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nWith body and mind in training, what remains?\n\nDo you remember that most touching of all incidents in Christ's\nministry, when the anxious ruler Nicodemus came by night, worried\nlest the things that pertained to his everlasting peace were not a\npart of his busy and successful life?  Christ's message to him is His\nmessage to the world--never more needed than at present: \"Ye must be\nborn of the spirit.\"  You wish to be with the leaders--as Yale men it\nis your birthright--know the great souls that make up the moral\nradium of the world.  You must be born of their spirit, initiated\ninto their fraternity, whether of the spiritually-minded followers of\nthe Nazarene or of that larger company, elect from every nation, seen\nby St. John.\n\nBegin the day with Christ and His prayer--you need no other.\nCreedless, with it you have religion; creed-stuffed, it will leaven\nany theological dough in which you stick.  As the soul is dyed by the\nthoughts, let no day pass without contact with the best literature of\nthe world.  Learn to know your Bible, though not perhaps as your\nfathers did.  In forming character and in shaping conduct, its touch\nhas still its ancient power.  Of the kindred of Ram and sons of\nElihu, you should know its beauties and its strength.  Fifteen or\ntwenty minutes day by day will give you fellowship with the great\nminds of the race, and little by little as the years pass you extend\nyour friendship with the immortal dead.  They will give you faith in\nyour own day.  Listen while they speak to you of the fathers.  But\neach age has its own spirit and ideas, just as it has its own manners\nand pleasures.  You are right to believe that yours is the best\nUniversity, at its best period.  Why should you look back to be\nshocked at the frowsiness and dullness of the students of the\nseventies or even of the nineties?  And cast no thought forward, lest\nyou reach a period when you and yours will present to your successors\nthe same dowdiness of clothes and times.  But while change is the\nlaw, certain great ideas flow fresh through the ages, and control us\neffectually as in the days of Pericles.  Mankind, it has been said,\nis always advancing, man is always the same.  The love, hope, fear\nand faith that make humanity, and the elemental passions of the human\nheart, remain unchanged, and the secret of inspiration in any\nliterature is the capacity to touch the cord that vibrates in a\nsympathy that knows nor time nor place.\n\nThe quiet life in day-tight compartments will help you to bear your\nown and others' burdens with a light heart.  Pay no heed to the\nBatrachians who sit croaking idly by the stream.  Life is a straight,\nplain business, and the way is clear, blazed for you by generations\nof strong men, into whose labours you enter and whose ideals must be\nyour inspiration.  In my mind's eye I can see you twenty years\nhence--resolute-eyed, broad-headed, smooth-faced men who are in the\nworld to make a success of life; but to whichever of the two great\ntypes you belong, whether controlled by emotion or by reason, you\nwill need the leaven of their spirit, the only leaven potent enough\nto avert that only too common Nemesis to which the Psalmist refers:\n\"He gave them their heart's desire, but sent leanness withal into\ntheir souls.\"\n\nI quoted Dr. Johnson's remark about the trivial things that\ninfluence.  Perhaps this slight word of mine may help some of you so\nto number your days that you may apply your hearts unto wisdom.\n\n\n\n  WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.\n  PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH","title":"A way of life : $b An address to Yale students Sunday evening, April 20th, 1913","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":4901}