The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 6

those who know how; but the day of the rule of
thumb has long since past. The Engineer of to-day must create, not

imitate. And to him who can create, this last century we call the
Twentieth is yet part of the first day of Creation.
In commerce the field is always open for young men. The world's trade
is barely yet begun. We hear people whining over the spread of the
commercial spirit, but what they mean is not the spirit of commerce. It
is persistence of provincial selfishness, a spirit which has been with us
since the fall of Adam, and which the centuries of whitening sails has
as yet not eradicated. The spirit of fair commerce is a noble spirit.
Through commerce the world is unified. Through commerce grows
tolerance, and through tolerance, peace and solidarity. Commerce is
world-wide barter, each nation giving what it can best produce for what
is best among others. Freedom breeds commerce as commerce
demands freedom. Only free men can buy and sell; for without selling
no man nor nation has means to buy. When China is a nation, her
people will be no longer a "yellow peril." It is poverty, slavery, misery,
which makes men dangerous. In the words of "Joss Chinchingoss," the
Kipling of Singapore, we have only to give the Chinaman
"The chance at home that he makes for himself elsewhere, And the star
of the Jelly-fish nation mid others shall shine as fair."
Since the day, twenty-three years ago, on which I first passed through
the Golden Gate of California, I have seen the steady increase of the
shipping which enters that channel. There are ten vessels to-day passing
in and out to one in 1880. Another twenty-five years will see a hundred
times as many. We have discovered the Orient, and even more, the
Orient has discovered us. We may not rule it by force of arms; for that
counts nothing in trade or civilization. Commerce follows the flag only
when the flag flies on merchant ships. It has no interest in following the
flag to see a fight. Commerce follows fair play and mutual service.
Through the centuries of war men have only played at commerce. The
Twentieth Century will take it seriously, and it will call for men to do
its work. It will call more loudly than war has ever done, but it will ask
its men not to die bravely, but to live wisely, and above all truthfully to
watch their accounts.
The Twentieth Century will find room for pure science as well as for
applied science and ingenious invention. Each Helmholtz of the future
will give rise to a thousand Edisons. Exact knowledge must precede
any form of applications. The reward of pure science will be, in the

future as in the past, of its own kind, not fame nor money, but the joy
of finding truth. To this joy no favor of fortune can add. The student of
nature in all the ages has taken the vow of poverty. To him money, his
own or others, means only the power to do more or better work.
The Twentieth Century will have its share in literature and art. Most of
the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written
for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent
times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not
trained to make time count, will be forgotten before the century is half
over. The books it saves will be books of its own kind, plain,
straightforward, clear-cut, marked by that "fanaticism for veracity"
which means everything else that is good in the intellectual and moral
development of man. The literature of form is giving way already to the
literature of power. We care less and less for the surprises and
scintillations of clever fellows; we care more and more for the real
thoughts of real men. We find that the deepest thoughts can be
expressed in the simplest language. "A straight line is the shortest
distance between two points" in literature as well as in mechanics. "In
simplicity is strength," as Watt said of machinery, and it is true in art as
well as in mechanics.
In medicine, the field of action is growing infinitely broader, now that
its training is securely based on science, and the divining rod no longer
stands first among its implements of precision. Not long ago, it is said,
a young medical student in New York committed suicide, leaving
behind this touching sentence: "I die because there is room for no more
doctors." And this just now, when for the first time it is worth while to
be a doctor. Room for no more doctors, no doubt, of