Through loyalty to such a cause,
through devotion to an ideally united social group, and only through
such loyalty, can the problems of human personality be solved. By
nature, and apart from some cause to which we are loyal, each of us is
but a mass of caprices, a chaos of distracting passions, a longing for
happiness that is never fulfilled, a seeking for success which never
attains its goal. Meanwhile, no merely customary morality ever
adequately guides our lives. Mere social authority never meets our
needs. But a cause, some unity of many lives in one, some call upon the
individual to give himself over to the service of an idealized
community--this gives sense to life. This, when we feel its presence, as
we do upon this occasion, we love, as the lovers love the common life of
friendship that is to make them one, or as the mothers delight in the
life that is to unite themselves and their children in the family, or as
the devout feel that through their communion in the life of their church
they become one with the Divine Spirit.
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