University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School - Mirror Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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Man shall not live by bread alone is an inappealable edict to which each one of us must answer, and for the non-observance of which there is no defense and no excuse. We wrong ourselves, we wrong the world, we wrong posterity if we shall not attempt to ameliorate conditions which surround us. We are untrue to the era in which we live and to the hour that marked our birth, for it is man ' s predestined purpose that he shall recognize and espouse the good. Just as natural as that a flower shall bloom in its own beauty and give forth its fragrance, so is it natural that man, the grand culmination of nature, shall adhere to that which is commendable and eschew that which is evil. We are living in an era of progress and enlightenment that far outshines any period civilization has ever known. All the vaunted learning of the ancient Egyptians, all the hidden and closely-guarded lore of their temples and their priests, all the forbidden secrets of antiquity are as naught compared with the perceptions of our time. We are endowed with a reasoning, thinking, discriminating intellect that is capable of absorbing, understanding, creating, and mastering. In our veins flows the true red blood of human instinct. As it surges through our brains, it becomes surcharged with the indellible impress of ambition, and, as it courses in our bodies, that impress im- pregnates every part of our natures and urges and fires us to action. Within our brains, where lies that same ambition, there also lies a power which controls and directs it, and which is far greater than it — the power of discrimination and of original preference — which may be likened unto the North Star by which to guide our ships of life far away from the siren voices of destruction and into the calm waters of safety. To each of us is given the power to make or to mar. The world delays its progress only so long as man refuses or fails to act. The great guiding force of this existence is man. He has within himself the ability, the might, the potency to do all things, and even tonight obsession is scurrying in fear and dread, realizing, more than man himself, the sway of the human brain. And civilization is marching on ! 28

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millennium, it will come into its own. Even now, if properly understood and rightly used, it will guard his advances into whatsoever field man may choose to essay, and will break down all barriers that seek to bar his progress. Learn the force of this great within and use it. Use it rightly and vigorously, and fear not. It would be unfair, however, to deny or to dispute what should be recognized as a universal and an ever-present fact — that evil forces have never ceased to permeate and have ever sought to dominate all things temporal. Whether this be the result of original sin or what not, matters little in a life of practical achievement. It is sufficient to know that it does exist. That whenever and wherever man has sought to build, to originate or to succeed, there has been an ever-present deteriorating and destructive influence keeping pace with and oftentimes outstripping his efforts. Nature herself has felt the bane of this influence, and man, a product of nature, is always surrounded and menaced by it. All good is correlated with its evil. The course of the world has demonstrated this, and destiny seems to make it so. But destiny is subject to the eternal and everlasting decree, pronounced co-instantaneously with the completion of the world, that good must ultimately triumph, and man is but the instrument of destiny. Civilization, destiny, is marching on, and we are the chosen and selected media through whom it- must work, and who must lead it to its successes or its failures. Your personal careers are assured. Learn the full power and the might of your brains, and work with all your energy and you will be able to command success. But this individual, this personal ambition is the smallest part of your lives. The whole world needs you. The people of the nations, less favored than you, are crying out to you for help. Steeped in ignorance, devoid of aspiration, overcome with dread, hopeless, and groping in the mid- night of despondency, your kindred are grovelling in the accumulated dust and dirt of the ages. Subjects of disease, instruments of disorder, germs of evil ; they yet possess enough of the divine spark of humanity to cause them to recognize in you and all of us that hope born of the centuries-old agony of despair which has been their only heritage, and, with wide-open and beseeching eyes, their hands are outstretched in a fervid appeal to all of us for help. 27

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