fades away just as quickly as it came. The very fact that he always lives in the clouds, is always dreaming of the great things he is going to do, seems to convince him that he actually does them. But he never stays at one thing long enough to reach effectiveness. His whole life has been spent in starting things brilliantly and enthusiastically; few men have ever begun so many things as he, or completed so few.
The putting-off habit will kill the strongest initiative. Too much caution and lack of confidence are fatal enemies of initiative. How much easier it is to do a thing when the purpose impels us, when enthusiasm carries us along, than when everything drags in the postponement! One is drudgery, the other delight.
Hungering and striving after knowledge Is what makes a scholar; hungering and striving after virtue is what makes a saint; hungering and striving after noble action is what makes a hero and a man. The great successes we see everywhere are but the realization of an intense longing, a concentrated effort. Everyone is gravitating toward his aim just in proportion to the power and intensity of his desire, and his struggle to realize it.
One merely “desires” to do this or that, or “wishes” he could, or “would be glad” if he could. Another knows perfectly well that, if he lives, he is going to do the thing he sets his heart on if it is within the limits of human possibility. We do not hear him whining because nobody will pay his way to college. He does not say he “wishes” he could go. He says, “I am going to prepare myself for a great life-work. I have faith in my future. I have made a vow to myself to succeed, and I am going to do so on a broad-gauge plan. I am not going to start out half equipped, half fitted. I will have a college training.”
When you find a boy who resolves within himself that, come what will, he is going to do the thing he sets his heart on, and that there are no “ifs” or “buts” or “ands” about it, you may be sure he is made of winning stuff. He will not postpone and postpone the realization of his vision until too late, until its glory has vanished. He will lose no time in putting forth all his energy to make it real, and, if it is a possible thing he will succeed.
Chapter IX.
Has Your Vocation Your Unqualified Approval?
I QUOTE the following sentences from a letter just received. “In your February editorial, the following paragraph has impressed me mightily: ‘To spend a life in buying and selling lies, or cheap, shoddy shams, is demoralizing to every element of nobility,—to excellence in any form.’ Now, I happen to be in the sham business and hate it so heartily that I want to get out of it as soon as I can do so with justice to others’ interests.”
This young man, who gets more than ten thousand dollars a year in salary, says that he is expected to “trade upon the credulity of the poorer classes, who can ill afford to be preyed upon,” and he continues:—
“While I need the money, I cannot enjoy this kind of work, nor can I write with conviction or ambition on projects which I naturally know to be fakes. Besides, I am afraid of the very thing pointed out in your editorial; namely, growing down to the work. I hate hypocrisy worse than any other thing, and I cannot do my best work in any business based on such a foundation. I do not want to remain in an occupation which pays its highest salaries to the most skillful fakirs.”
It is pitiable to see a strong, bright, promising young man, capable of filling a high position, trying to support himself and his family in an occupation which has not received his approval, which is lowering his ideals, which dwarfs his nature, which makes him despise himself, which strangles all that is best and noblest within him, and which is constantly condemning him and ostracizing him and his family from all that is best and truest in life.
How often we hear a young man say: “I do not like the business I am in. I know it has a bad influence on me. I do not believe in the methods used, or the deceptions practiced. I am ashamed to have my friends know what I am doing, and I say as little about it in public as possible. I know I ought to change, but it is the only business I understand in which I can earn as much money as I need to keep up appearances, for I have been getting a good salary and have contracted expensive habits of living, and I have not the force of character to risk a change.”
Do not deceive yourself with the idea that somebody has got to do this questionable work, and that it might as well be you. Let other people do it, if they will; there is something better for you. The Creator has given you a guarantee, written in your blood and brain cells, that if you keep yourself clean and do that which he has indicated in your very constitution, you will be a man, will succeed, and will belong to the order of true nobility; but if you do not heed that edict, you will fail. You may get a large salary, but this alone is not success. If the almighty dollar is dragging its slimy trail all through your career; if money-making has become your one unwavering aim, you have failed, no matter how much you have accumulated. If your money smells of the blood of the innocent, if there is a dirty dollar in it, if there is a taint of avarice in it, if envy and greed have helped in its accumulation, if there is a sacrifice of the rights and comforts of others in it, if there is a stain of dishonor on your stocks and bonds, or if a smirched character looms up in your pile, do not boast of your success, for you have failed. Making money by dirty work is bad business, gild it how we will.
There are a thousand indications in you that the Creator did not fit you for what is wrong, but only for the right. Do the right, and all nature, all law, and all science will help you, because the attainment of rectitude is the plan of the universe. It is the very nature of things. Reverse it, and all these forces are pledged to defeat you.
To the young men who have written for advice, let me say that if you are making money by forcing yourself by sheer will power to do what you loathe, what does not engage your whole heart, or that into which you cannot fling your entire being, because you fear that it is not quite right, you can do a thousand times better in an occupation which has your unreserved, unqualified consent. If you refuse to smirch your ability, no matter what the reward, you will thereby increase your success-power a thousandfold.
The very fact that you can come out of a questionable situation boldly and take a stand for the right, regardless of consequences, will help you immeasurably. The greater self-respect, increased self-confidence, and the tonic influence which will come from the sense of victory, will give you the air of a conqueror instead of that of one conquered. Nobody ever loses anything by standing for the right with decision, with firmness, and with vigor.
You have a compass within you, the needle of which points more surely to the right and to the true than the needle of the mariner points to the pole star. If you do not follow it you are in perpetual danger of going to pieces on the rocks. Your conscience is your compass, given you when you were launched upon life’s high seas. It is the only guide that is sure to take you safely into the harbor of true success.
What if a mariner should refuse to steer by the pointing of his compass, declaring it to be all nonsense that the needle should always point north, and should pull it around so that it would point in some other direction, fasten it there, and then sail by it? He would never reach port in safety.
It takes only a little influence—just a little force,—to pull the needle away from its natural pointing. Your conscience-compass must not be influenced by greed or expediency. You must not trammel it. You must leave it free. The man who tampers with the needle of his conscience, who pulls it away from its natural love, and who tries to convince himself that there are other standards of right, other stars as reliable as the pole star of his character, and proposes to follow them in some questionable business, is a deluded fool who invites disaster.
Every little while I meet young men
