Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

MISCELLANEOUS 561
— and there is no other age at which so many people are
prompted to hitch their wagons to stars.
Now I do not mean to say that I think people's ideals
fall off as they grow older, they simply alter very much.
Beyond question, many people do lose their ideals in practical
life as they come into the disappointments and anomalies
of life, and as they come to know what the affairs of
the world involve. But, of course, that is all very wrong.
Just because you are disappointed
;
just because a thing is not
what you thought and does not appear as you thought it
was going to appear; because the majority of people you
come in contact with are not what you think they ought
to be or conceived that they would be ; all this is no reason
why your ideals should be lost.
As a matter of fact, the evolution should be a creation of
ideals rather than a loss, and those who have effect in the
world know that the progress of ideals should be into a more
and more, rather than into a less, exacting sphere, and
should be toward putting into other lives hopes and aspirations
and ideals which are dominant and strong and manly.
As you go on into life and affairs open up before you,
the aspirations remain, more or less, but they may seem to
wane because they go through changes. What happens to
you becomes of not so much consequence, and your hopes
become less because it becomes perfectly clear, as time
goes on, that they are going to be disappointed. There are
quantities of things that you thought would be so and so
which are not so and so. This is a disappointing fact providing
you have permitted yourself to become too selfcentered
and intent upon the form of things.
Aspirations and hopes may fail, but they should be
replaced, and under strong and satisfactory conditions they
are replaced, by convictions — by their gradual transformation
into firmly rooted beliefs as to what is so and so, what
is worth while, what is to do. What can be done involves
not only a belief in your ideals but also a dominant impulse