[A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After by Edward Bok]@TWC D-Link book
A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

CHAPTER XX
13/21

Besides, if his business has seemed important enough to demand his entire attention, are not the great uplift questions equally worth his exclusive thought?
Are they easier of solution than the material problems?
A man can live a life full-square only when he divides it into three periods: First: that of education, acquiring the fullest and best within his reach and power; Second: that of achievement: achieving for himself and his family, and discharging the first duty of any man, that in case of his incapacity those who are closest to him are provided for.

But such provision does not mean an accumulation that becomes to those he leaves behind him an embarrassment rather than a protection.

To prevent this, the next period confronts him: Third: Service for others.

That is the acid test where many a man falls short: to know when he has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches.
Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course; only calling an early grave by another name.

They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should they now help others: as their means have come from the public, so now they owe something in turn to that public.
No man has a right to leave the world no better than he found it.


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