The Call of the Twentieth Century

The Call of the Twentieth
Century

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Call of the Twentieth Century
by David Starr Jordan Copyright laws are changing all over the world.
Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before
downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg
eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Call of the Twentieth Century
Author: David Starr Jordan
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9469] [This file was first
posted on October 3, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CALL
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ***

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Marvin A. Hodges, and Project
Gutenbert Distributed Proofreaders

THE CALL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
An Address to Young Men
By DAVID STARR JORDAN
Chancellor of Leland Stanford Junior University
1903

To Vernon Lyman Kellogg

_So live that your afterself-- the man you ought to be--may in his time
be possible and actual. Far away in the twenties, the thirties of the
Twentieth Century, he is awaiting his turn. His body, his brain, his soul
are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will you leave
for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind
trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response
to the truth about you? Will you, boy of the Twentieth Century, let him
come as a man among men in his time, or will you throw away his
inheritance before he has had the chance to touch it? Will you let him
come, taking your place, gaining through your experiences, hallowed
through your joys, building on them his own, or will you fling his hope
away, decreeing, wanton-like, that the man you might have been shall
never be?_

The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no
century has shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may

see what kind of a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and
what manner of men it will demand to do it.
In most regards one century is like another. Just as men are men, so
times are times. In the Twentieth Century there will be the same joys,
the same sorrows, the same marrying and giving in marriage, the same
round of work and play, of wisdom and duty, of folly and distress
which other centuries have seen. Just as each individual man has the
same organs, the same passions, the same functions as all others, so it is
with all the centuries. But we know men not by their likenesses, which
are many, but by differences in emphasis, by individual traits which are
slight and subtle, but all-important in determining our likes and dislikes,
our friendships, loves, and hates. So with the centuries; we remember
those which are past not by the mass of common traits in history and
development, but by the few events or thoughts unnoticed at the time,
but which stand out like mountain peaks raised "above oblivion's sea,"
when the times are all gathered in and the century begins to blend with
the "infinite azure of the past." Not wars and conquests mark a century.
The hosts grow small in the vanishing perspective, "the captains and
the kings depart," but the thoughts of men, their attitude toward their
environment, their struggles toward duty,--these are the things which
endure.
Compared with the centuries that are past, the Twentieth Century in its
broad outlines will be like the rest. It will be selfish, generous, careless,
devoted, fatuous, efficient. But three of its traits must stand out above
all others, each raised to a higher degree than any other century has
known. The Twentieth Century above all others will be _strenuous,
complex_, and democratic. Strenuous the century must be, of course.
This we can all see, and we have to thank the young man of the
Twentieth Century who gave us the watchword of "the strenuous life,"
and who has raised the apt phrase to the