PROFITING BY FAILURE 893GREAT FAILURESAs I near the end of this, my favorite lesson of this course, I close my
eyes for a moment and see before me a great army of men and women
whose faces show the lines of care and despair. Some are in rags, having
reached the last stage of that long, long trail which some call failure.
Others are in better circumstances, but the fear of starvation
shows plainly on their faces. The smile of courage has left their lips
and they, too, seem to have given up the battle.
The scene shifts. I look again and I am carried backward into
the history of man's struggle for a place in the sun. There I also see the
"failures" of the past-failures that have meant more to the human race
than all the so-called successes recorded in the history of the world.
I see the homely face of Socrates as he stood at the very end of
that trail called failure, waiting, with upturned eyes, through those
moments that must have seemed like an eternity, just before he drank
the cup of hemlock that was forced upon him by his tormentors.
I see Christopher Columbus, a prisoner in chains, which was the
tribute paid him for his sacrifice in having set sail on an unknown
and uncharted sea to discover an unknown continent.
I see the face of Thomas Paine, the man whom the English sought
to capture and put to death as the real instigator of the American
Revolution. I see him lying in a filthy prison in France as he waited
calmly, under the shadow of the guillotine, for the death he expected
would be meted out to him for his part on behalf of humanity.
And I see the face of the Man of Galilee, as he suffered on the
cross of Calvary-the reward he received for his efforts on behalf of
suffering humanity.
"Failures" all.
Oh, to be such a failure. Oh, to go down in history, as these
men did, as one who was brave enough to place humanity above the
individual and principle above pecuniary gain. On such "failures" rest
the hopes of the world.