can observe in the world outside there, haven't chosen either in the
matter of the world outside, where they shall go, what they shall
do, what part they shall play, or in the matter of the world within,
what they will be and what they are determined they will never be.
They are still in much the same state of suspended choice as we seem
to be in, but in the meanwhile THINGS HAPPEN TO THEM. And things
are happening to us, things will happen to us, while we still
suppose ourselves in the wings waiting to be consulted about the
casting of the piece. . . .

"Nevertheless this immense appearance of choice which we get in the
undergraduate community here, is not altogether illusion; it is more
reality than illusion even if it has not the stable and complete
reality it appears to have. And it is more a reality for us than it
was for our fathers, and much more a reality now than it was a few
centuries ago. The world is more confused and multitudinous than
ever it was, the practicable world far wider, and ourselves far less
under the pressure of inflexible moulding forces and inevitable
necessities than any preceding generations. I want to put very
clearly how I see the new world, the present world, the world of
novel choice to which our youth and inexperience faces, and I want
to define to you a certain selection of choices which I am going to
call aristocratic, and to which it is our manifest duty and destiny
as the elect and favoured sons of our race to direct ourselves.

"It isn't any choice of Hercules I mean, any mere alternative
whether we will be, how shall I put it?--the bridegrooms of pleasure
or the bridegrooms of duty. It is infinitely vaster and more subtly
moral than that. There are a thousand good lives possible, of which
we may have one, lives which are soundly good, or a thousand bad