Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/505

 482 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS living they are ciphers; and when they die the rim of the cipher is simply rubbed out. Fortunately, not all belong to this do-nothing class. There are some whose lives are positive, whose energies are not all exhausted in the mere process of living, and whose purposes are not all limited to self and selfish interests, and because of them the world moves, and civilization, with accumulating benefits, is constantly developing. To such men in each gen- eration every succeeding generation is debtor, for the sum of their activities and achievements makes the civilization of the day. But this sum total does not consist wholly, or even for the most part, of the actual accomplishments of the in- dividual actors, but of the forces that they have set in motion in others. The originator himself may do little or nothing in the practical operation of his idea or invention, but the multitude of workers who owe their opportunity to work and their means of working to his initiative, are the agents through whom he works. The inventor of wireless tel- egraphy may be sitting in his quiet home; but really it is he who is calling over leagues of ocean billows to summon help for the endangered vessel and rescue for hundreds of im- periled lives. Moreover, these new discoveries and inventions do not die with their authors or with the passing of the age that wit- . nesses their birth. Ideas never die. Their application to practical purposes may be neglected or forgotten, but truth can never cease to exist; and, when occasion demands, its vitality will be found unaffected by neglect or lapse of time. Thus it is that the greatest benefactors of the race are those who have wrought in the mines of thought ; whose discoveries have been in the realm of truth, rather than in that of phy- sical appliances. Intelligence is the source of all advancement in the physical, moral, or spiritual world. When Martin Luther first felt the force of the truth, "The just shall live by faith, ' ' and rose from his tired knees on the sacred stairway in Rome to proclaim this truth to the world, he started a spiritual revolution which has gone on with in- ->