Mere energy is not enough, it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim. What is more common than "unsuccessful geniuses," or failures with "commanding talents"? Indeed, "unrewarded genius" has become a proverb. Every town has unsuccessful educated and talented men. But education is of no value, talent is worthless, unless it can do something, achieve something. Men who can do something at everything, and a very little at anything, are not wanted in this age.
In Paris, a certain Monsieur Kenard announced himself as a "public scribe, who digests accounts, explains the language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes." Jacks-at-all-trades are at war with the genius of the times.
What this age wants is young men and women who can do one thing without losing their ident.i.ty or individuality, or becoming narrow, cramped, or dwarfed. Nothing can take the place of an all-absorbing purpose; education will not, genius will not, talent will not, industry will not, will-power will not. The purposeless life must ever be a failure.
What good are powers, faculties, unless we can use them for a purpose?
What good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use them? A college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little to the men who cannot use them to some definite end.
The man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. He has no individuality; he is absorbed in the ma.s.s, lost in the crowd, weak, wavering, incompetent. His outlines of individuality and angles of character have been worn off, planed down to suit the common thought until he has, as a man, been lost in the throng of humanity.
"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."
What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived--ay, and died--for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his ill.u.s.trious father. Even from boyhood he bent all his energy to this one great purpose. He went straight from college to the House of Commons. In one year he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; two years later he was Prime Minister of England, and reigned virtually king for a quarter of a century. He was utterly oblivious of everything outside his aim; insensible to the claims of love, art, literature, living and steadily working for the sole purpose of wielding the governing power of the nation. His whole soul was absorbed in the overmastering pa.s.sion for political power.
"Consider, my lord," said Rowland Hill to the Prime Minister of England, "that a letter to Ireland and the answer back would cost thousands upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of their week"s wages. If you shut the post office to them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts and generous affections from home, kindred, and friends." The lad learned that it cost to carry a letter from London to Edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, and twice as much if there was the smallest inclosure. Against the opposition and contempt of the post-office department he at length carried his point, and on January 10, 1840, penny postage was established throughout Great Britain. Mr.
Hill was chosen to introduce the system, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year. His success was most encouraging, but at the end of two years a Tory minister dismissed him without paying for his services, as agreed. The public was indignant, and at once contributed sixty-five thousand dollars; and, at the request of Queen Victoria, Parliament voted him one hundred thousand dollars and ten thousand dollars a year for life.
Christ knew that one affection rules in man"s life when he said, "No man can serve two masters." One affection, one object, will be supreme in us. Everything else will be neglected and done with half a heart.
One may have subordinate plans, but he can have but one supreme aim, and from this aim all others will take their character.
It is a great purpose which gives meaning to life, it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable; makes strong and united what was weak, separated, scattered.
"Painting is my wife and my works are my children," replied Michael Angelo when asked why he did not marry.
"Smatterers" are weak and superficial. Of what use is a man who knows a little of everything and not much of anything? It is the momentum of constantly repeated acts that tells the story. "Let thine eyes look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left." One great secret of St. Paul"s power lay in his strong purpose. Nothing could daunt him, nothing intimidate. The Roman Emperor could not muzzle him, the dungeon could not appall him, no prison suppress him, obstacles could not discourage him. "This one thing I do" was written all over his work. The quenchless zeal of his mighty purpose burned its way down through the centuries, and its contagion will never cease to fire the hearts of men.
"Try and come home somebody," said the fond mother to Gambetta as she sent him off to Paris to school. Poverty pinched this lad hard in his little garret study and his clothes were shabby, but what of that? He had made up his mind to get on in the world. For years this youth was chained to his desk and worked like a hero. At last his opportunity came. Jules Favre was to plead a great cause on a certain day; but, being ill, he chose this young man, absolutely unknown, rough and uncouth, to take his place. For many years Gambetta had been preparing for such an opportunity, and he was equal to it, for he made one of the greatest speeches that up to that time had ever been made in France.
That night all the papers in Paris were sounding the praises of this ragged, uncouth Bohemian, and soon all France recognized him as the Republican leader. This sudden rise was not due to luck or accident.
He had been steadfastly working and fighting his way up against opposition and poverty for just such an occasion. Had he not been equal to it, it would only have made him ridiculous. What a stride; yesterday, poor and unknown, living in a garret, to-day, deputy elect, in the city of Ma.r.s.eilles, and the great Republican leader! The gossipers of France had never heard his name before. He had been expelled from the priest-making seminary as totally unfit for a priest and an utterly undisciplinable character. In two weeks, this ragged son of an Italian grocer arose in the Chamber, and moved that the Napoleon dynasty be disposed of and the Republic be declared established.
When Louis Napoleon had been defeated at Sedan and had delivered his sword to William of Prussia, and when the Prussian army was marching on Paris, the brave Gambetta went out of the besieged city in a balloon barely grazed by the Prussian guns, landed in Amiens, and by almost superhuman skill raised three armies of 800,000 men, provided for their maintenance, and directed their military operations. A German officer said, "This colossal energy is the most remarkable event of modern history, and will carry down Gambetta"s name to remote posterity."
This youth who was poring over his books in an attic while other youths were promenading the Champs elysees, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of France, and the greatest orator in the Republic. What a striking example of the great reserve of personal power, which, even in dissolute lives, is sometimes called out by a great emergency or sudden sorrow, and ever after leads the life to victory! When Gambetta found that his first speech had electrified all France, his great reserve rushed to the front, he was suddenly weaned from dissipation, and resolved to make his mark in the world. Nor did he lose his head in his quick leap into fame. He still lived in the upper room in the musty Latin quarter, and remained a poor man, without stain of dishonor, though he might easily have made himself a millionaire. When Gambetta died the "Figaro" said, "The Republic has lost its greatest man." American boys should study this great man, for he loved our country, and made our Republic the pattern for France.
There is no grander sight in the world than that of a young man fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim. He is bound to win; the world stands one side and lets him pa.s.s; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. He does not have one half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield, because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. What a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles, which dishearten others, as though they were but stepping-stones! Defeat, like a gymnasium, only gives him new power; opposition only doubles his exertions, dangers only increase his courage. No matter what comes to him, sickness, poverty, disaster, he never turns his eye from his goal.
"Duos qui sequitur lepores, neutrum capit."
CHAPTER VII.
SOWING AND REAPING.
Be not deceived; G.o.d is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.--GALATIANS.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.--G. D. BOARDMAN.
Just as the twig is bent the tree"s inclined.--POPE.
How use doth breed a habit in a man.--SHAKESPEARE.
All habits gather, by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
DRYDEN.
Infinite good comes from good habits which must result from the common influence of example, intercourse, knowledge, and actual experience--morality taught by good morals.--PLATO.
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.--SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. Then man is impenitent, then obstinate, then he is d.a.m.ned.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
"Rogues differ little. Each began as a disobedient son."
In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt.--JOHN FOSTER.
You cannot in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true if the habit of your life has been insincere.--F. W. ROBERTSON.
The tissue of the life to be, We weave with colors all our own; And in the field of destiny, We reap as we have sown.
WHITTIER.
"Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict," said the great lawyer, Lord Tenterden, as he roused from his lethargy a moment, and then closed his eyes forever. "Tete d"armee" (head of the army), murmured Napoleon faintly; and then, "on the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior." "Give Dayrolles a chair," said the dying Chesterfield with his old-time courtesy, and the next moment his spirit spread its wings.
"Young man, keep your record clean," thrilled from the lips of John B.
Gough as he sank to rise no more. What power over the mind of man is exercised by the dominant idea of his life "that parts not quite with parting breath!" It has shaped his purpose throughout his earthly career, and he pa.s.ses into the Great Unknown, moving in the direction of his ideal; impelled still, amid the utter retrocession of the vital force, by all the momentum resulting from his weight of character and singleness of aim.
[Ill.u.s.tration: VICTOR HUGO]
"Every one is the son of his own works."
"Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is seed-grain that cannot die."
"It is a beautiful arrangement in the mental and moral economy of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may, by frequent repet.i.tions, become a habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around the neck like a wreath of flowers."
Cholera appeared mysteriously in Toulon, and, after a careful examination, the medical inspectors learned that the first victims were two sailors on the Montebello, a government transport, long out of service, anch.o.r.ed at the entrance to the port. For many years the vessel had been used for storing old, disused military equipments.
Some of these had belonged to French soldiers who had died before Sebastopol. The doctors learned that the two poor sailors were seized, suddenly and mortally, a few days after displacing a pile of equipments stored deep in the hold of the Montebello. The cholera of Toulon came in a direct line from the hospital of Varna. It went to sleep, apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims, to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life.
Professor Bonelli, of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine.
To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy"s hand four thousand years sprang into life when planted. They only awaited moisture, heat, sunlight, and air to develop them.
In Jefferson"s play, Rip Van Winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every invitation to drink said, "Well, this time don"t count." True, as Professor James says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literalness wiped out. There is a tendency in the nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring intervals. Dr. Combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods. "If we repeat any kind of mental effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering upon it without premeditation when the time approaches."
"The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the plague."
The nervous system is a living phonograph, infinitely more marvelous than that of Edison. No sound, however feeble, however slight, can escape being recorded in its wonderful mechanism. Although the molecules of this living machine may all be entirely changed many times during a lifetime, yet these impressions are never erased or lost.
They become forever fixed in the character. Like Rip Van Winkle, the youth may say to himself, I will do this just once "just to see what it is like," no one will ever know it, and "I won"t count this time." The country youth says it when he goes to the city. The young man says it when he drinks "just to be social." Americans, who are good church people at home, say it when in Paris and Vienna. Yes, "just to see what it is like" has ruined many a n.o.ble life. Many a man has lost his balance and fallen over the precipice into the sink of iniquity while just attempting "to see what it was like." "If you have been pilot on these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "No, I don"t, but I know where the deep water is."