Hence
it is that a mere handful of men and women who rarely or never had
other authority than their own unselfish purpose, have in all times,
even the worst, been able to put their stamp upon the community
for good. I am thinking of the Felix Adlers, the Dr. Rainsfords,
the Josephine Shaw Lowells, the Robert Ross McBurneys, the R. Fulton
Cuttings, the Father Doyles, the Jacob H. Schiffs, the Robert W.
de Forests, the Arthur von Briesens, the F. Norton Goddards, the
Richard Watson Gilders, and their kind; and thinking of them brings
to mind an opportunity I had a year or two ago to tell a club of
workmen what I thought of them. It was at the Chicago Commons. I
had looked in on a Sunday evening upon a group of men engaged in
what seemed to me a singularly unprofitable discussion of human
motives. They were of the school which professes to believe that
everything proceeds from the love of self, and they spoke learnedly
of the ego and all that; but as I listened the conviction grew,
along with the feeling of exasperation that sort of nonsense always
arouses in me, that they were just vaporing, and I told them so.
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