a very large measure of success.
Youth should be taught that there is something in circumstances; that there is such a thing as a poor pedestrian happening to find no obstruction in his way, and reaching the goal when a better walker finds the drawbridge up, the street blockaded, and so fails to win the race; that wealth often does place unworthy sons in high positions, that family influence does gain a lawyer clients, a physician patients, an ordinary scholar a good professorship; but that, on the other hand, position, clients, patients, professorships, manager's and superintendent's positions do not necessarily constitute success. He should be taught that in the long run, as a rule, the best man does win the best place, and that persistent merit does succeed.
There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of Webster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail.
The youth should be taught that "he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate;" that "diligence is the mother of good luck;" that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her:—
"In idle wishes fools supinely stay:
Be there a will and wisdom finds a way."
It has been well said that the very reputation of being strong willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. It often cows enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.
"If Eric's in robust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland," says Emerson, "he will steer west and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results." Obstacles tower before the living man like mountain chains, stopping his path and hindering his progress. He surmounts them by his energy. He makes a new path over them. He climbs upon them to mountain heights. They cannot stop him. They do not much delay him. He transmutes difficulties into power, and makes temporary failures into stepping-stones to ultimate success.
How many might have been giants who are only dwarfs. How many a one has died "with all his music in him."
It is astonishing what men who have come to their senses late in life have accomplished by a sudden resolution.
Arkwright was fifty years of age when he began to learn English grammar and improve his writing and spelling. Benjamin Franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. Milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and Scott at fifty-five took up his pen to redeem an enormous liability. "Yet I am learning," said Michael Angelo, when threescore years and ten were past, and he had long attained the highest triumphs of his art.
Even brains are second in importance to will. The vacillating man is always pushed aside in the race of life. It is only the weak and vacillating who halt before adverse circumstances and obstacles. A man with an iron will, with a determination that nothing shall check his career, if he has perseverance and grit, is sure to succeed. We may not find time for what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our strength, we usually approximate if we do not fully reach. Hunger breaks through stone walls; stern necessity will find a way or make one.
Success is also a great physical as well as mental tonic, and tends to strengthen the will-power. Dr. Johnson says: "Resolutions and success reciprocally produce each other." Strong-willed men, as a rule, are successful men, and great success is almost impossible without it.
A man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and turns neither to the right nor the left, though a paradise tempt him, who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts him, is sure of success. We could almost classify successes and failures by their various degrees of will-power. Men like Sir James Mackintosh, Coleridge, La Harpe, and many others who have dazzled the world with their brilliancy, but who never accomplished a tithe of what they attempted, who were always raising our expectations that they were about to perform wonderful deeds, but who accomplished nothing worthy of their abilities, have been deficient in will-power. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it. The great linguist of Bologna mastered a hundred languages by taking them singly, as the lion fought the bulls.
I wish it were possible to show the youth of America the great part that the will might play in their success in life and in their happiness also. The achievements of will-power are simply beyond computation. Scarcely anything in reason seems impossible to the man who can will strong enough and long enough.
How often we see this illustrated in the case of a young woman who suddenly becomes conscious that she is plain and unattractive; who, by prodigious exercise of her will and untiring industry, resolves to redeem herself from obscurity and commonness; and who not only makes up for her deficiencies, but elevates herself into a prominence and importance which mere personal attractions could never have given her. Charlotte Cushman, without a charm of form or face, climbed to the very top of her profession. How many young men, stung by consciousness of physical deformity or mental deficiencies, have, by a strong persistent exercise of will-power, raised themselves from mediocrity and placed themselves high above those who scorned them.
History is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune, by the firm resolution of an iron will. The consciousness of being looked upon as inferior, as incapable of accomplishing what others accomplish; the sensitiveness at being considered a dunce in school, has stung many a youth into a determination which has elevated him far above those who laughed at him, as in the case of Newton, of Adam Clark, of Sheridan, Wellington, Goldsmith, Dr. Chalmers, Curran, Disraeli, and hundreds of others. "Whatever you wish, that you are; for such is the force of the human will, joined to the Divine, that whatever we wish to be seriously, and with a true intention, that we become." While this is not strictly true, yet there is a deal of truth in it.
It is men like Mirabeau, who "trample upon impossibilities;" like Napoleon, who do not wait for opportunities, but make them; like Grant, who has only "unconditional surrender" for the enemy, who change the very front of the world. "We have but what we make, and every good is locked by nature in a granite hand, sheer labor must unclench."
What cares Henry L. Bulwer for the suffocating cough, even though he can scarcely speak above a whisper? In the House of Commons he makes his immortal speech on the Irish Church just the same.
"I can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant, to Alexander. "Be gone," shouted the conquering Macedonian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try."
Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, I should say unhesitatingly, they lacked will-power. They could not half will. What is a man without a will? He is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. I should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. Can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? It is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. What chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life?
