They feel that _for them_ there is no such thing as
leaving behind them a monument of their own constructive effort. Talk
to most young men in college or school, and you will find this
feeling, like a pathetic minor chord, running through their highest
and most daring boasts.
Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy
negativeness of life? However it happens, the truth is that too few
young men come out of our great universities with the greater part of
the boldness of youth left in them. Somehow or other those fine, and,
if you will, absurd enthusiasms which nobody but young men and
geniuses are blessed with, have been educated out of the graduate. How
many seniors in our historic American universities would not have
sneered John Bunyan out of existence, or have told the young and
unripe Bonaparte how presumptuous he was to think of fighting the
trained generals of Europe?
"Yes," says a certain type of young man, "all the great things have
been done. Nothing is left for me but the commonplaces." This is not
true.
The great things have not all been done; scarcely have they been
commenced. "There is more before us than there is behind us," said my
old forest "guide," wise with the wisdom of the woods and their
thoughtful silences.
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