11-15-38 MFP *-22-33 THE THING TO DO PHI BETA KAPPA ADDRESS AT VASSAR COLLEGE BEFORE One word on the theme which has been announced, I want to express my grateful remembrance of the fact that this is the second, if not the third, successive year in which I have been invited to Vassar. Let me add the earnest hope that you may not repent of it before the evening is over, and conclude from this experience that, however it may be with a woman, it is always a mistake to give a man more than one chance to say Yes. The brilliant President of a great California University has defined Wisdom as "Knowing What to Do Next," and Virtue as "Doing It." Responding to the call with which the young ladies of the Phi Beta Kappa have honored me, I shall try to merit your attention by speaking to you for a little of "The Thing to Do." In proportion, then, to any success in saying the right word to you on this subject, that word must come, however unworthy the voice through which it speaks, as the counsel of Wisdom and the command of Virtue. The universal inquiry in the graduating class on Commencement Day is, What next? The mere man has no monopoly of it. The girl graduate too is absorbed in questions about what she shall do. Misty visions float before her eyes. Now, as always, the vague outlines are apt to shape themselves, to the first gaze alike of the simplest and of the wisest, into happy homes and home responsibilities. But in these days of broader horizons, many another purpose in life comes in to enlarge or to confuse the picture. Whether with the home or without a home, comes the thought of a career worthy of the capacities here discovered, the training here given; perhaps a literary, or artistic or scientific career, perhaps educational or professional, perhaps reformatory, perhaps social: but always a career, always the desire for a sphere in which to exercise the proper power of the trained abilities and enjoy their rightful influence, always the resolve to do something. "The Excesses of Democracy" 4 THE THING TO DO Let us first see now if there is not one especial thing which, in any career and whatever else may or may not be done, it is the duty of every girl graduate to attempt, in her respective sphere and to the full measure of her capacity. It was sixty-five years ago that a singularly acute French observer pronounced the legal profession the most conservative element in this country, and the greatest safeguard against the excesses, as he called them, of Democracy. But the intervening two-thirds of a century have shown many changes. We have seen no political craze, from secession to the payment of national debts in fiat money or in silver, no popular delusion, from spirit portraits to communism or to the right of some laborers to prohibit free labor, that has not been led by lawyers; and we have seen no depth of degradation to which, in pursuit of a fee, some members of this profession have not descended, and that, too often, without incurring the active repudiation of the majority. Perhaps the dangerous tendencies in America of which De Tocqueville spoke are at the present time "the excesses of Democracy"; though perhaps again they may be merely the general tendencies of the age, exhibited here a little earlier or more freely because of the liberty of action Democracy affords. At any rate, there has never been a day in the history of the country when such a restraining influence as he attributed to the lawyers was so much needed as at present. Meanwhile the legal profession, through a not inconsiderable number of its members, has developed into one of the active means, not for restraining but for actually furthering the excesses; and, as a whole, it certainly exerts now a less conservative and restraining influence than was gratefully recognized in our earlier history. When John Stuart Mill taught, in a little book less talked about now than his later publications, that women made contributions to the sum of human knowledge and consequent progress as important as those coming from men, though different in kind, being apt to be intuitional rather than logical, he may have furnished a hint as to the real safeguard against social disorders that in his time were hardly known. If the conservative influence which is hereafter to protect us from the excesses either of Democracy or of the spirit of the age is no longer to be surely and always found in the old quarter, it may still prove that we can turn for it to a class with higher inspirations and keener moral perceptions, to a class with deeper interest in the outcome, and capable of unquestionably greater influence, whenever aroused to exercise it. It may prove, in fact, that we can look to CONSERVATISM OF EDUCATED WOMEN 5 the educated women of the country rather than to its lawyers for the true conservatism in principle, in methods and in constant application that is to save us from many of the most dangerous tendencies of the time. Hope, then, will not be lost for the future of our triumphant Democracy till the characteristic excellencies of educated women are corrupted or destroyed. Educated Women The reasons for such an expectation lie in human nature itself, Conservaand in that female ability which Mr. Mill demonstrated for such tism of contributions to human knowledge and progress. All the instincts of the educated woman are toward good order and good morals and good life; all her interests are against rash experiments and revolutionary changes; the character alike of her judgment, her feelings and her needs gives promise of sound and sane views of life and of human conduct. Both by inherent qualities and by acquired relations, the rightly educated woman is a natural and necessary conservative. With her mental alertness and vivid perceptions, she can never be a drag upon the machinery of human progress; but, thanks to her special aptitudes, she may always be its moderator and its governor. This at least is clear, that the Twentieth Century woman has greater opportunities than were ever given to human creature of her kind before, in the eighty centuries of the world's history of which we are supposed to have some records; that she has been better prepared to improve them; and that she is more peremptorily called to the work,-this Twentieth Century woman to whom have been given the keys of knowledge, which are becoming almost the keys of life and death. The ferment and amazing discovery and development of the Nineteenth Century did not end when it closed; - they could be but the hotbed for starting the prodigious, myriad-formed, almost infinite growths to be confidently expected in the Twentieth. If, in the midst of these teeming and steaming activities, woman now possesses the real power which Mr. Mill attributed to her, then the imperative duty which her superior moral elevation, her nature and her surroundings impose, for the whole term of her existence and throughout the whole course of our bewildering progress, is to furnish this conservative force in American life, which two-thirds of a century ago De Tocqueville thought already necessary. Her Wisdom will point it out as the thing to do next, her Virtue will shine in doing it. Thus the subject to which I have ventured to invite your attention, "The Thing to Do," rises before you, attends your incoming and your outgoing, and henceforth forever entreats and commands you. 1A Loss of The Madness of Extremes 6 THE THING TO DO Of specific excesses toward which our Democratic institutions may be tending, perhaps we do not need now to speak in any great detail. It may be enough to recognize that the American who colonized the Atlantic Coast and the great Middle West, who framed the Constitution, started the Government, developed the country under it, and fought a gigantic civil war to preserve it, is not the American who leads the popular movements of today. The type is changing; the beliefs are changing, and the aims. He is neither Puritan any longer, nor Cavalier. He may outwardly deny the decay of faith, but he inwardly feels it. Nothing is more noticeable at the great centres of population and of national activity, or in any large section of what calls itself, and is often called, our best society, than this disappearance of the old foundation of character and action; this loss of profound, enduring, restful faith in anything. It is a laissez-aller age; an age of loosening anchors, and drifting with the tide; of taking things as they are, with cordial readiness to take them hereafter as they come; of an easy indifference, whose universal attitude towards each startling departure from old standards is "What does it matter, anyway?"-an age, in short, marked by a refined, "upto-date" adaptation of the old Epicurean idea that there is nothing in this world to do but to eat and drink and make merry, for to-morrow we die. As Omar, prime favorite of the flower of this new school, has sung: What boots it to repeat How time is slipping underneath our feet; The loss of faith brings us by a short cut straight to the loss of purpose in life- of any purpose, at least, beyond purely material ones. To those who need money, the duty of getting it first and above anything else becomes the gospel of life. To those who feel the need of position, whether in society, business or elsewhere, their gospel drives them to all means within the law to attain that. To those who have both money and position comes the only remaining purpose in life, that of using them for an existence of amusement and enjoyment. Is it too much to say that never before in our history have such aspirations so completely dominated and limited such large classes? But this craze for mere amusement and enjoyment, like other perverted appetites, grows by what it feeds on. The amusement |