happy is the man who is able to follow straight on, though often wearily and painfully, in the tracks of the divine ideal who stood by his side in his youth, though sadly conscious of weary lengths of way, of gulfs and chasms, which since those days have come to stretch[61] between him and his ideal—of the difference between the man god meant him to be—of the manhood he thought he saw so clearly in those early days—and the man he and the world together managed to make of him.

i say, happy is that man. i had almost said that no other than he is happy in any true or noble sense, even in this hard materialistic nineteenth century, when the faith, that the weak must go to the wall, that the strong alone are to survive, prevails as it never did before—which on the surface seems specially to be organized for the destruction of ideals and the quenching of enthusiasms. i feel deeply the responsibility of making any assertion on so moot a point; nevertheless, even in our materialistic age, i must urge you all, as you would do good work in the world, to take your stand resolutely and once for all, and all your lives through, on the side of the idealists.