the author, the actor, the singer, struggling for expression, haunt them until they are made real. So the ambitions and ideals of the business man, the professional man, clamor for expression so long as he is able to continue in the game.
Those who have never won big battles in business do not realize what a deep hold this passion for conquest, this insatiable thirst for victory, gets upon the achiever; how it grips him, encourages him, nerves him for greater triumphs.
A great business man develops the lust of power, the passion for conquest, as did Napoleon or other great warriors. The desire to achieve, to dominate; grows stronger and more vigorous with every new victory.
The ambition for greater achievements is fed by every fresh triumph, and the passion for conquest, which years of winning and the habit of conquering have strengthened, becomes colossal, often abnormal, so that men who have grown accustomed to wielding enormous power shudder at the very thought of laying down the scepter.
Think of the great business potentates of our country, whose power governs vast fields of activity—think of these men as retiring, giving up active life, because they have acquired a competence! Some of our captains of industry, railroad men, bankers, and financiers, wield more real power to-day, exercise a greater influence upon civilization than many European rulers.
We hear a great deal of criticism of the greed of rich men, which keeps them pushing ahead after they have more money than they can ever use to advantage, but the fact is, many of these men find their reward in the exercise of their powers, not in amassing money, and greed plays a comparatively small part in their struggle for conquest. Yet this is not true of all rich men. Many of them are playing the game, and keep on playing it, for the love of accumulating. Their selfishness and greed have been indulged so long that they amount to a passion, and the accumulators oftentimes become money-mad.
But the higher type of man plays the game, from start to finish, for the love of achievement; because it satisfies his sense of duty, of justice; plays it because it will make him a larger, completer man; because it satisfies his passion for expansion, for growth. He plays the game for the training it gives, for the opportunity of self-expression. He feels that he has a message to deliver to mankind, and that he must deliver it like a man.
The tyranny of habit is also a powerful factor in keeping men going. The daily routine, the business or professional system, becomes a part of our very nature. When we have been going to our office or business at just such a time every morning, doing about the same things every day for a quarter or half a century, any radical change—a sudden cessation of all these activities, a switching from the daily use of our strongest faculties to comparatively unused ones—is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, nor an easy thing to endure.
Every normal man has a dread of the shrinking and shriveling which inevitably follow the change from an active to an inactive life. He dreads this because it is a sort of slow suicide, a gradual atrophy of a talent or power which had perhaps been the pride of his life.
There are many reasons why a man should not retire when he has a competence. A whole life’s momentum, the grip of habit, which increases facility and desire at every repetition; strong ties of business or professional friendship; and, above all, the passion for conquest, for achievement, the love of the game, tend to keep him in it.
It is the love of forging ahead, of pushing out into new fields, which has grown to giant proportions' in the grand struggle for supremacy, the ambition to push on a little further, not greed or selfishness, that keeps the majority of men in harness.
The artist, the business or the professional man is much like the hunter, who will endure all sorts of hardships and privations in the pursuit of game but loses all interest in it the moment he bags it.
The love of achievement is satisfied in the very act of creation, in the realization of the ideal which had haunted the brain. Ease, leisure, comfort are nothing compared with the exhilaration which comes from achievement.
Who can describe the sense of triumph that fills the inventor, the joy that thrills him when he sees for the first time the perfect mechanism or device—the work of his brain and hand—that will ameliorate the hard conditions of mankind and help to emancipate man from drudgery?
Who can imagine the satisfaction, the happiness of the scientist who, after years of battling with poverty, criticism, and denunciation, and the tortures of being misunderstood by those dearest to him, succeeds at last in wresting some great secret from nature, in making some marvelous discovery that will push civilization forward?
The struggle for supremacy—the conquest of obstacles, the mastery of nature, the triumph of ideals—has been the developer of man, the builder of what we call progress. It has brought out and broadened and strengthened the finest and noblest traits in human nature.
The idea that a man, whatever his work in the world, should retire just because he has made enough money to live upon for the rest of his life is unworthy of a real man, who was made to create, to achieve, to go on conquering.
Every normal human being is born with a great sacred obligation resting upon him— to use his highest faculties as long as he ¡can, and to give his best to the world; and the laws of his nature and of the universe are such that the more he gives to the world, the more he gets for himself—the larger, the completer man he becomes. But the moment he tries to sell himself to selfishness, to greed, to self-indulgence, the smaller, meaner man he becomes.
It is no wonder that the man who retires merely for selfish gratification is uneasy, unhappy, and is sometimes driven to suicide. He knows in his heart that it is wrong to withdraw his great productive, creative ability from a world which needs it so much. He knows that it is a sin against his own development, his own future possibilities, to cease the exercise of his Godlike powers.
It is the wrestling with obstacles and the overcoming of difficulties that have made man a giant of achievement.
If we could analyze a strong, vigorous character, we should find it made up largely of the conquering • habit, the habit of overcoming. On the other hand, if we should analyze a weak character we should find just the reverse—the habit of failure, the habit of letting things slide, of yielding instead of conquering—the lack of courage, of persistency, of grit.
There is the same difference between a self-made man, who has fought his way up to his own loaf, and the pampered youth who has never been confronted by great responsibilities that would exercise his powers and call out his reserves, that there is between the stalwart oak which has struggled for its existence with a thousand storms, with all the extremities of the elements, and the hothouse plant which has never been allowed to feel a breath of frost or a rough wind.
Every bit of the oak’s fiber has registered a victory, so that when its timber is called upon to wrestle with storms and the fury of the sea, it says, “I am no stranger to storms; I have met them many a time before. I feel within me stamina and fiber to resist the fury of any sea, because I have fought and overcome its equal a thousand times.”
The hothouse plant succumbs to the first adverse wind.
Responsibility is a powerful developing factor of which the idle, aimless person never gets the advantage. Great responsibilities bring out great reserves to match them.
The consciousness of having a message for mankind has held multitudes of people to their ideals, amidst suffering, hardship, and overwhelming difficulties.
Every normal human being is happiest as well as strongest when active, especially when doing that which he was intended to do, that which he is best fitted to do; when he is trying to make real the vision of his highest moment. He
