FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

(August)

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GETTING ONE'S

BEARINGS

I

BEARINGS, AN INTRODUCTION

T:

O take the bearings, which was originally a nautical term, has come to have a more general application. It meant, and means, to find the place of a headland, a passing ship, a distant lighthouse; to find the direction of a remote object which is in sight. From this, other facts concerning position may be determined. The method is readily transferred to the common life, in which a man has constantly to learn where things are, in what way he is related to them, by what means they can be approached. The term has been chosen for the title because this book is an outlook on the world, in order that we may see where we are and where other persons are, and thus be able to make rational adjustments. There are many terms relating to the ship and the sea which could be applied to the management of life, and which would be quickly and vividly suggestive. The comparison

of life to a voyage is interesting but not quite accurate; inasmuch as on a voyage we leave one shore for another, whereas in life we hold to the past while we are reaching into the future, which steadily becomes one with the past. It is true that we go from world to world, but there is no middle sea. We are all the while in contact with that which we seem to have left. Our years are continuous, and not a mere passage from port to port. Life is more like a building than a voyage. The foundation is never abandoned. The higher the structure rises the more firmly it rests upon the stones with which it started. Here is the wisdom of founding the house on a rock, because it will stay there so long as it is a house.

I trust it will be plain that these papers have not been written in the sole interest of any particular class or age. Of course, truths and principles which relate to life have special value to those whose life is still in the making. We may call them young; but as I define youth, it belongs to those who regard their methods as capable of improvement. The number of their years has little to do with this. The main point is that they have time, and the will, to do new things; or to do old things in a new way. Age begins when life becomes repetition, and hopes for nothing new. Its processes are then mechanical, and their results uniform. Ambition and hope are supplanted by habit and routine, which forbid ad