Page:Frank David Ely -Why defend the nation? Sound Americanism... (1924).pdf/63



S THE whole is but the sum of all its parts, so a nation is but the composite of its manhood and womanhood. The qualities of its people determine the character and kind of a nation; so it is apparent that any real and permanent improvement in the nation is contingent upon the prior improvement of large numbers of the individual members of the race.

Just as the physical man depends upon training and exercise for healthy bodily growth and development, so does the mind depend upon teaching and example for its mental and moral growth. The proper evaluation of the attributes of mind, the adoption and cultivation of those which fit us as desirable members of society, and the shunning of others which can only drag down, lower, or destroy, constitute a duty to ourselves and to the race which in value and importance stands second to none.

Phrenology tells us that the bump of ambition is located at the very tip-top of the human anatomy—symbolic of the upward direction of its urge. This ambition—this desire for advancement—marks a progressive people. It is inseparable from our race; and nowhere is opportunity for its highest satisfaction and realization so abundant as in our United States.

Here class exists only as we make it. There are no sharply drawn lines—"Verboten" is nowhere written. We may, if we choose, dally along in life, and a complaisant world will still offer a smile and a pleasant word. But if we dally long we must mark flight after flight of industrious, determined, and more or less brilliant youngsters as they pass us, going upward on the trail to heights which we have never scaled; going ever upward, though now and then a broken one, come to grief, brings us company, but little cheer. The ones we remember and talk or think about in the long evenings or in the silent places are those who proved to be the very meteors of genius in their ambitious flight to recognized success and attainment.