Who of us does not
know, and who of us, wavering between his standards and his feelings,
has not very often found it hard to tell just how he ought to value
the enthusiastic and arrogant self-sufficiency of healthy youth?
It is this, I take it, that is described here as "the pride of life."
Wherever there is eager and full-blooded youth there it appears. It
breaks out in the wild and purposeless mob of lower city life, in the
impatience and insubordination of the country boy who longs to be free
from his father's farm, in the crude skepticism of college students'
first discussions of religion. It is jealous of slight, of insult,
of the least suspicion of restraint or leading. It belongs to strong
young nations as well as to strong young men. By it they flaunt
defiance in the face of the world and are afraid of the imputation of
prudence. It is what you can see in the faces of any group of eager
young men as you pass them on the street. Sometimes it makes them
attractive and sometimes it makes them detestable. It turns the noble
youth into a hero and the mean youth into a bully.
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