Chapter 14
[Ill.u.s.tration: William Ewart Gladstone]
All occupations that enervate, paralyze, or destroy body or soul should be avoided. Our manufacturing interests too often give little thought to the employed; the article to be made is generally the only object considered. They do not care if a man spends the whole of his life upon the head of a pin, or in making a screw in a watch factory. They take no notice of the occupations that ruin, or the phosphorus, the dust, the a.r.s.enic that destroys the health, that shortens the lives of many workers; of the cramped condition of the body which creates deformity.
The moment we compel those we employ to do work that demoralizes them or does not tend to elevate or lift them, we are forcing them into service worse than useless. "If we induce painters to work in fading colors, or architects with rotten stone, or contractors to construct buildings with imperfect materials, we are forcing our Michael Angelos to carve in snow."
Ruskin says that the tendency of the age is to expend its genius in perishable art, _as if it were a triumph to burn its thoughts away in bonfires_. Is the work you compel others to do useful to yourself and to society? If you employ a seamstress to make four or five or six beautiful flounces for your ball dress, flounces which will only clothe yourself, and which you will wear at only one ball, you are employing your money selfishly. Do not confuse covetousness with benevolence, nor cheat yourself into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you. It is what those who stand s.h.i.+vering on the street, forming a line to see you step out of your carriage, know it to be. These fine dresses do not mean that so much has been put into their mouths, but _that so much has been taken out of their mouths_.
Select a clean, useful, honorable occupation. If there is any doubt on this point, abandon it at once, for _familiarity with a bad business will make it seem good_. Choose a business that has expansiveness in it. Some kinds of business not even a J. Pierpont Morgan could make respectable. Choose an occupation which will develop you; which will elevate you; which will give you a chance for self-improvement and promotion. You may not make quite so much money, but you will be more of a man, and _manhood is above all riches, overtops all t.i.tles_, and _character is greater than any career_. If possible avoid occupations which compel you to work in a cramped position, or where you must work at night and on Sundays. Don't try to justify yourself on the ground that somebody must do this kind of work. Let "somebody," not yourself, take the responsibility. Aside from the right and wrong of the thing, it is injurious to the health to work seven days in the week, to work at night when Nature intended you to sleep, or to sleep in the daytime when she intended you to work.
Many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation just because there was money in it.
"Study yourself," says Longfellow, "and most of all, note well wherein kind nature meant you to excel."
Dr. Matthews says that "to no other cause, perhaps, is failure in life so frequently to be traced as to a mistaken calling." We can often find out by hard knocks and repeated failures what we can not do before what we can do. This negative process of eliminating the doubtful chances is often the only way of attaining to the positive conclusion.
How many men have been made ridiculous for life by choosing law or medicine or theology, simply because they are "honorable professions"!
These men might have been respectable farmers or merchants, but are "n.o.bodies" in such vocations. The very glory of the profession which they thought would make them s.h.i.+ning lights simply renders more conspicuous their incapacity.
Thousands of youths receive an education that fits them for a profession which they have not the means or inclination to follow, and that unfits them for the conditions of life to which they were born.
Unsuccessful students with a smattering of everything are raised as much above their original condition as if they were successful. A large portion of Paris cabmen are unsuccessful students in theology and other professions and also unfrocked priests. They are very bad cabmen.
"Tompkins forsakes his last and awl For literary squabbles; Styles himself poet; but his trade Remains the same,--he cobbles."
Don't choose a profession or occupation because your father, or uncle, or brother is in it. Don't choose a business because you inherit it, or because parents or friends want you to follow it. Don't choose it because others have made fortunes in it. Don't choose it because it is considered the "proper thing" and a "genteel" business. The mania for a "genteel" occupation, for a "soft job" which eliminates drudgery, thorns, hards.h.i.+ps, and all disagreeable things, and one which can be learned with very little effort, ruins many a youth.
When we try to do that for which we are unfitted we are not working along the line of our strength, but of our weakness; our will power and enthusiasm become demoralized; we do half work, botched work, lose confidence in ourselves, and conclude that we are dunces because we cannot accomplish what others do; the whole tone of life is demoralized and lowered because we are out of place.
How it shortens the road to success to make a wise choice of one's occupation early, to be started on the road of a proper career while young, full of hope, while the animal spirits are high, and enthusiasm is vigorous; to feel that every step we take, that every day's work we do, that every blow we strike helps to broaden, deepen, and enrich life!
Those who fail are, as a rule, those who are out of their places. _A man out of his place is but half a man; his very nature is perverted_.
He is working against his nature, rowing against the current. When his strength is exhausted he will float
Has a young man a right to choose an occupation which will only call into play his lower and inferior qualities, as cunning, deceit, letting all his n.o.bler qualities shrivel and die? Has he a right to select a vocation that will develop only the beast within him instead of the man? which will call out the bulldog qualities only, the qualities which overreach and grasp, the qualities which get and never give, which develop long-headedness only, while his higher self atrophies?
The best way to choose an occupation is to ask yourself the question, "What would my government do with me if it were to consider scientifically my qualifications and adaptations, and place me to the best possible advantage for all the people?" The Norwegian precept is a good one: "Give thyself wholly to thy fellow-men; they will give thee back soon enough." We can do the most possible for ourselves when we are in a position where we can do the most possible for others. _We are doing the most for ourselves and for others when we are in a position which calls into play in the highest possible way the greatest number of our best faculties; in other words, we are succeeding best for ourselves when we are succeeding best for others_.
The time will come when there will be inst.i.tutions for determining the natural bent of the boy and girl; where men of large experience and close observation will study the natural inclination of the youth, help him to find where his greatest strength lies and how to use it to the best advantage. Even if we take for granted what is not true, that every youth will sooner or later discover the line of his greatest strength so that he may get his living by his strong points rather than by his weak ones, the discovery is often made so late in life that great success is practically impossible. Such inst.i.tutions would help boys and girls to start in their proper careers early in life; and _an early choice shortens the way_. Can anything be more important to human beings than a start in life in the right direction, where even small effort will count for more in the race than the greatest effort--and a life of drudgery--in the wrong direction? A man is seldom unsuccessful, unhappy, or vicious when he is in his place.
After once choosing your occupation, however, never look backward; stick to it with all the tenacity you can muster. Let nothing tempt you or swerve you a hair's breadth from your aim, and you will win. Do not let the thorns which appear in every vocation, or temporary despondency or disappointment, shake your purpose. You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else. Great tenacity of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places which appear in every career to ultimate triumph. This determination, or fixity of purpose, has a great moral bearing upon our success, for it leads others to feel confidence in us, and this is everything. It gives credit and moral support in a thousand ways. People always believe in a man with a fixed purpose, and will help him twice as quickly as one who is loosely or indifferently attached to his vocation, and liable at any time to make a change, or to fail. Everybody knows that determined men are not likely to fail. They carry in their very pluck, grit, and determination the conviction and a.s.surance of success.
The world does not dictate _what_ you shall do, but it does demand that you do _something_, and that you shall be a king in your line. There is no grander sight than that of a young man or woman in the right place struggling with might and main to make the most of the stuff at command, determined that not a faculty or power shall run to waste.
Not money, not position, but power is what we want; and character is greater than any occupation or profession.
"Do not, I beseech you," said Garfield, "be content to enter on any business that does not require and compel constant intellectual growth." Choose an occupation that is refining and elevating; an occupation that you will be proud of; an occupation that will give you time for self-culture and self-elevation; an occupation that will enlarge and expand your manhood and make you a better citizen, a better man.
Power and constant growth toward a higher life are the great end of human existence. Your calling should be the great school of life, the great man-developer, character-builder, that which should broaden, deepen, and round out into symmetry, harmony, and beauty, all the G.o.d-given faculties within you.
But whatever you do be greater than your calling; let your manhood overtop your position, your wealth, your occupation, your t.i.tle. A man must work hard and study hard to counteract the narrowing, hardening tendency of his occupation. Said Goldsmith,--
Burke, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
"Constant engagement in traffic and barter has no elevating influence,"
says Lyndall. "The endeavor to obtain the upper hand of those with whom we have to deal, to make good bargains, the higgling and scheming, and the thousand petty artifices, which in these days of stern compet.i.tion are unscrupulously resorted to, tend to narrow the sphere and to lessen the strength of the intellect, and, at the same time, the delicacy of the moral sense."
Choose upward, study the men in the vocation you think of adopting.
Does it elevate those who follow it? Are they broad, liberal, intelligent men? Or have they become mere appendages of their profession, living in a rut with no standing in the community, and of no use to it? Don't think you will be the great exception, and can enter a questionable vocation without becoming a creature of it. In spite of all your determination and will power to the contrary, your occupation, from the very law of a.s.sociation and habit, will seize you as in a vise, will mold you, shape you, fas.h.i.+on you, and stamp its inevitable impress upon you. How frequently do we see bright, open-hearted, generous young men come out of college with high hopes and lofty aims, enter a doubtful vocation, and in a few years return to college commencement so changed that they are scarcely recognized. The once broad, n.o.ble features have become contracted and narrowed. The man has become grasping, avaricious, stingy, mean, hard. Is it possible, we ask, that a few years could so change a magnanimous and generous youth?
Go to the bottom if you would get to the top. Be master of your calling in all its details. Nothing is small which concerns your business.
Thousands of men who have been failures in life have done drudgery enough in half a dozen different occupations to have enabled them to reach great success, if their efforts had all been expended in one direction. That mechanic is a failure who starts out to build an engine, but does not _quite_ accomplish it, and s.h.i.+fts into some other occupation where perhaps he will almost succeed, but stops just short of the point of proficiency in his acquisition and so fails again. The world is full of people who are "almost a success." They stop just this side of success. Their courage oozes out just before they become expert. How many of us have acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable because not carried quite to the point of skill? How many people "almost know a language or two," which they can neither write nor speak; a science or two whose elements they have not quite acquired; an art or two partially mastered, but which they can not practice with satisfaction or profit! The habit of desultoriness, which has been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation which might possibly be of use later.
Beware of that frequently fatal gift, versatility. Many a person misses being a great man by splitting into two middling ones.
Universality is the _ignis fatuus_ which has deluded to ruin many a promising mind. In attempting to gain a knowledge of half a hundred subjects it has mastered none. "The jack-of-all-trades," says one of the foremost manufacturers of this country, "had a chance in my generation. In this he has none."
"The measure of a man's learning will be the amount of his voluntary ignorance," said Th.o.r.eau. If we go into a factory where the mariner's compa.s.s is made we can see the needles before they are magnetized, they will point in any direction. But when they have been applied to the magnet and received its peculiar power, from that moment they point to the north, and are true to the pole ever after. So man never points steadily in any direction until he has been polarized by a great master purpose.
Give your life, your energy, your enthusiasm, all to the highest work of which you are capable. Canon Farrar said, "There is only one real failure in life possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows."
"'What must I do to be forever known?' Thy duty ever."
Who does the best his circ.u.mstance allows, Does well, acts n.o.bly, angels could do no more.
YOUNG.
"Whoever can make two ears of corn, two blades of gra.s.s to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before," says Swift, "would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together."
CHAPTER XII
CONCENTRATED ENERGY
This one thing I do.--ST. PAUL.
The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coa.r.s.e or fine.
... Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and sends us home to add one stroke of faithful work.--EMERSON.
The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, May hope to achieve it before life be done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, A harvest of barren regrets.
OWEN MEREDITH.
The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another--between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy--invincible determination--a purpose once formed, and then death or victory.--FOWELL BUXTON.
"There was not enough room for us all in Frankfort," said Nathan Mayer Rothschild, in speaking of himself and his four brothers. "I dealt in English goods. One great trader came there, who had the market to himself: he was quite the great man, and did us a favor if he sold us goods. Somehow I offended him, and he refused to show me his patterns.
This was on a Tuesday. I said to my father, 'I will go to England.'