Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/50

 "Come into the world now, young man, and begin your life-long service; your good fortune, your privileges, have set you apart, but other men, alas, are also set apart by the very lack of what you have enjoyed; now bring your plenty to their want." If our thought is centered, I repeat, on those whom we call into the world, this speech comes easy, but it sticks in our throat if we begin to think of those who, we say, are in need of service. Immediately a second and profounder vision rises before us—no cheerful reaction of commencement audience and commencement speakers, but a violent opposition between the fortunate who are preparing aid and the more numerous unlucky who presumably are preparing to accept it. What confounds us is the plain fact that only those who hope to render the service have the slightest enthusiasm for it. We might well expect