struggle of the higher with the lower which goes on ceaselessly throughout nature. It is the triumph over the lower that keeps the race on the ascent.

Said Professor William James, "If this life is not a real fight in which something is eternally gained for the universe, it is no better than a game of private theatricals. But it feels like a real fight, as if there were something really wild in the universe, which we with our idealities and faithfulness are needed to reform."

There is no more real fight than that which is being waged perpetually between man's higher and lower nature; we must be perpetually on our guard or the lower will win. There is a schoolmaster in each one of us, it is true, but the moment the schoolmaster gets slack we begin to deteriorate. If we are not continually on the alert our ambition begins to sag, and before we realize it we are in a rut.

We do our most effective work in our struggle to get what we are after, to arrive at the goal of our ambition. We make our greatest effort, our most strenuous endeavor, while we are climbing, not after we have arrived at our goal. This is one reason why rich men's sons rarely achieve any great personal success. They lack the climbing motive, that tremendous urge, the prodding of ambition, which drives us on to achieve what we desire. Ambition is the leader of all great achievement. It is the forerunner which goes ahead and clears a way for the other faculties. It is the prod which

urges men out of their lethargy, overcomes their inertia. It is what keeps us to our task, but for it we would quit work and lie down. tion we should be a sorry lot.

But for ambi

Unless you are inspired by a great purpose, a resolute determination to make your life count, you will not make much of an impression upon the world about you. The difference in the quantity and quality of success is largely one of ambition and determination. If you lack these you must cultivate them vigorously, persistently, or you will be a nobody. I have never known any one to amount to much who did not have an ambition to make a place for himself in the world, and who did not keep his purpose alive by the constant struggle to reach his goal. The moment ambition sags, we lose the force that propels us; and once our propelling power is gone we drift with the tide of cir

cumstances.

ENTHUSIASM, THE MIRACLE

WORKER

He did it with all his heart and prospered.

II Chronicles.

What are hardships, ridicule, persecution, toil, sickness, to the soul throbbing with an over-mastering enthusiasm?

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.

P

ASTEUR, the great scientist and head of the

Pasteur Institute in Paris, as he left his work one night was heard to say: "Ah, seven hours to wait before I can go back to the laboratory!"

This is the spirit that wins, the enthusiasm which takes the drudgery out of the hardest work and makes it a delight.

Some time ago I read about a colored man who was sitting in the shade of a tree while his hoe was lying idle and the weeds were thick among the vegetables. When asked if he were resting, he replied, "No; I'm not tired. I'm only waiting for the sun to go down so I can quit work."

This is the spirit that loses, the lack of energy and enthusiasm that inevitably leads to failure. It will make all the difference in the world to

you, my friend, whether you are trying to make your life a superb masterpiece, whether you work it up with that enthusiasm and zeal which never tires, or whether the hours drag and the days are all too long.

It makes a tremendous difference whether you regard your position as a superb opportunity, a splendid stepping-stone, or whether your mind is focused upon the clock and your pay envelope.

When I see a man who is proud of his job, whose whole heart is in it, who is impatient to get to his work in the morning and dreads to see the hours pass and the quitting time come, then I know that he is an artist and not an artisan.

If you approach your work as an artist, whose soul hungers for beauty, approaches a masterpiece which he has longed for years to put upon canvas, and for which he has made many a sacrifice; if you will bring the same zeal and enthusiasm to your task that young Lincoln brought to the coveted book that he had walked many miles to borrow; if you bring the same yearning for selfimprovement and the same zest and determination that the slave boy, Fred Douglas, brought to the posters on the barn and the fences and the scraps of paper picked up on the plantation, from which he wrested the beginning of an education; if you approach your work with the enthusiasm of the deaf, dumb, and blind Helen Keller, you cannot fail to win out.

Many of the defeats suffered in the present European war are said to have been due to the falling short of their aim of shot and shell. The guns lacked projectile power. At the beginning of the war the Germans had a great advantage over the Allies because of the tremendous projectile power of their big guns, some of which could throw shells more than twenty miles.

Thousands of human beings lose out in the battle of life from the lack of projectile power. They do not throw themselves with sufficient force or enthusiasm into their careers to make their lives effective.

One thing that has always characterized Theodore Roosevelt is his whole-hearted enthusiasm. No matter whether his activities have been employed in school or college, as a cowboy on the prairies, as a police commissioner, as an officer, as a soldier in the war, as Vice-President or President, or as a hunter of wild game in the jungles of Africa, he has been all there. He has always flung his whole soul into his work, he has been enthusiastic, dead in earnest, in everything he has undertaken.

No man ever accomplishes anything great until he goes to his undertaking with a determination which knows no retreat, until he carries to it that enthusiasm which melts obstacles and fuses obstructions.

An enthusiastic, dead-in-earnest person shows