The following is an excerpt from the sermon, “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 1, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.):
“I turn now to the final phase of our subject with much reluctance. Until now we have been talking of the most pleasant possibilities of the theme. Now we must briefly take stock of those conditions by which personality becomes impaired, if not altogether lost.
“What are these conditions?
“Perhaps we had better concentrate upon the most common cause of this tragedy: the withering blight of unwholesome influences during the plastic period of adolescence.
“I am glad that I do not know exactly how many keen-eyed, splendid youths have come to this place of high privilege where we live [the University of Michigan]… resolved to make the very most of their lives, who have failed either to realize their own bright dreams or to justify the investment made in them — all because they early fell easy victims to influences which they had neither the will, wit, nor wisdom to combat. And these influences were human influences, generated by persons whose outlook upon life was wholly opportunistic, selfish, sordid, petty, reprehensible.
“In this dull, gray atmosphere of doubt, distrust, and excessive sophistication which hovers over so many quarters where students congregate, our ambitious youth struggles for a little time to hold on to a group of ideals which seem less and less worth holding, every day, until he himself turns scoffer — and then he is done. He goes out, at length, to make his way, but it is a lonesome way, and his friendships must ever be sought among his own kind — the kind that feels as he feels about life. They are in the world for what they can get, like birds of prey. They will as promptly and effectively invade his rights as any, and he knows it. He mentally puts up his guard to defend himself against a whole race for which he bears no love — a race that will do him hurt unless he practices eternal vigilance.
“I have seen them come to college through these many years past, full of eager enthusiasm, ingenuous, lovable, arms outstretched to the world, ready to greet it with open palms. I have seen many of them go, furtive, suspicious, eyes heavy-lidded with the growing weight of distrust, incipient lines of cynicism penciling the corners of the mouth — so plainly that he who runs may read their message.” [This is a reference to Habakkuk 2:2.]
“Coming in with open palms; going out with clenched fists, to meet and overcome the world. And meanwhile the personality has escaped. Nobody can say exactly where it has gone or precisely when it took its leave — but it is gone.
“The man himself may hardly be aware of his loss, but his personality is gone. Whether he may find it possible, in later life, to retrieve it is a question I should not like to try to answer, because I do not know. All I know about it is that there isn’t room enough inside any human skin for a cultivated cynicism and a forceful personality — and cynicism is a thoroughly disintegrating mental obsession. Once it takes full possession and begins to color one’s thoughts about life, I fear the results are almost invariably dismal in the extreme.”
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