Take the Nobler Risk

There is a passage in a letter of William James to his mother, written when he was a senior at Harvard College, which met with sympathetic response when I read it to some of you the other day in the classroom. It perfectly sets forth the application of our slogan to the situation you are now facing: "I feel very much the importance of making soon a final choice of my business in life. I stand now at the place where the road forks. One branch leads to material comfort, the flesh-pots; but it seems a kind of selling of one's soul. The other branch leads to mental dignity and independence, combined however with physical penury. If I myself were the only one concerned, I should not hesitate an instant in my choice. But it seems hard on Mrs. W. J., that not impossible she, to ask her to share an empty purse and a cold hearth. On the one side is science, upon the other business (the honorable, honored and productive business of printing seems most attractive) with medicine, which partakes of advantages of both, between them, but which has drawbacks of its own. I confess, I hesitate. I fancy there is a fond maternal cowardice which would make you and every other mother contemplate with complacency the worldly fatness of a son, even if obtained by some sacrifice of his higher nature. But I fear there might be some anguish in looking back from the pinnacle of prosperity over the life you might have led in the pure pursuit of truth. It seems as if one could not afford to give that up for any bribe, however great." Because William James took what seemed to him the nobler risk, hundreds of intelligent men who are unable to take the high hurdles of absolutism have run the race of life with a rationally fortified religious faith. Safety-first at the crossways where James found himself and where you are finding yourselves is intellectual and spiritual suicide. If you choose to save your life there, you may make money and achieve comfort and position, but life will slip through your fingers. If you choose to lose your life in a great enterprise that arouses your manhood, you will save it.