The most beautiful thing about youth is its power and eagerness tomake ideals, and he is unfortunate who goes out into the world withoutsome picture of services to be rendered, or of a goal to beattained. There are very few of us who, at some time or another, havenot cherished these ideals, perhaps secretly and half ashamed asthough to us alone had come an inspiration of a career that shouldtouch the pulses of the world and leave it better than we foundit. And in the making of youthful ideals we have changed very littlewith the passage of the centuries. The character of the ideals haschanged with changing needs, but not we ourselves. Our young men stillsee visions; they still fill the future with conflict and withstruggle and prospectively live out their lives with the crown ofachievement in the distance. It is well that it should be so. Theideals of our youth are the motive-power of our lives, and even thoseof us who have lived far into the eras of disappointment would notwillingly wipe from our memories even the most extravagant day dreamsfrom which we drew energy and hope and fortitude andself-reliance.
If ideals have such a power over our lives, if they energize anddirect our first entry into the world of affairs—asunquestionably they do—they must be counted among the realforces of the day and as such they are as much a matter for ourscrutiny and control as educational development or physicalperfection. Not, perhaps, in the same way, for our ideals belong tothat private domain wherein we rightly resent either dictation orauthority from the outside. But we can apply both dictation andauthority for ourselves. With a firm determination to be upon theright side of the great issues of the day, to uphold honor and justicein public affairs, to uproot the tares and to sow the wheat in thedomain of national business, we can apply our whole mental strength toa proper determination of those issues, to a correct distribution of[Pg. 4]praise and blame, to a careful adjustment of the means to the end andto a precise appreciation of the facts. We can satisfy ourselves thatwe have heard both sides and that enthusiasm has not deadened our earsto all appeals but the most noisy. We can see to it that our attitudeis the judicial one and that our minds are so fixed upon the truth andupon the whole truth that there is no room for prejudice or forpassion. All these things can be reared as a superstructure upon thegroundwork of lofty ideals, for just as there can be no progresswithout ideals so there can come nothing but calamity from ideals thatare not guided by reflection and by knowledge.
Never before has it been so hard to know the facts as it is to-day.If we must give credit to the press for the diffusion of knowledgeso also must we recognize its equal power to diffuse prejudice andbias. The newspaper and the magaz