That Person Is Most Cultivated Who Is

We Are Learning That A Standard Of Social Ethics Is Not Attained By Travelling A Sequestered Byway, But By Mixing On The Thronged And Common Road Where All Must Turn Out For One Another, And At Least See The Size Of One Another's Burdens.

When The Sense Of Justice Seeks To Express Itself Quite Outside The Regular Channels Of Established Government, It Has Set Forth On A Dangerous Journey Inevitably Ending In Disaster.

To Attain Individual Morality In An Age Demanding Social Morality, To Pride One's Self On The Results Of Personal Effort When The Time Demands Social Adjustment, Is Utterly To Fail To Apprehend The Situation.

We Forget That The Accumulation Of Knowledge And The Holding Of Convictions Must Finally Result In The Application Of That Knowledge And Those Convictions To Life Itself.

We All Know That Each Generation Has Its Own Test, The Contemporaneous And Current Standard By Which Alone It Can Adequately Judge Of Its Own Moral Achievements, And That It May Not Legitimately Use A Previous And Less Vigorous Test. The Advanced Test Must Indeed Include That Which Has Already Been Attained; But If It Includes No More, We Shall Fail To Go Forward, Thinking Complacently That We Have "arrived" When In Reality We Have Not Yet Started.