The Young Man and the World Part 3

Enter into conversation the next time you are at the club, or in a hotel, or restaurant, or wherever you meet men in intellectual hospitality, on almost any subject you may choose, you will be amazed at the information, the original thought, the keen a.n.a.lysis, even the constructive ideas of most of the men there.

One of the most fertile minds I have ever known is nothing but an unsuccessful lawyer in a country town; yet his intellect is as tropical, and as accurate, too, as was Napoleon's, or Gould's.

How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which their mere thinking ent.i.tles them? I say, to which their mere _thinking_ ent.i.tles them, because--I say it again--if you will put them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative importance, as follows:

First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true--true to friends, true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure or lover?

Second (and well-nigh first): Courage--the G.o.dlike quality that dreads not; the una.n.a.lyzable thing in man that makes him execute his conception--no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others--if it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great deed, regardless of the gossips.

Third: Reserve--the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or of the world may depend. This power of reserve involves silence. Talk all you please, but keep your large conceptions to yourself till the hour to strike arrives, and then strike with all your might.

In politics they call some men "rubber shoes"; such men continue long, but they never achieve highly. Do not try to cultivate this quality if Nature has been so kind as not to endow you with it. It is not a masterful quality. Have the courage not only of your convictions--that is not so hard--but _have the courage of your conceptions_. But do not simulate courage if you have it not. False courage is worse than cowardice--it is falsehood and cowardice combined.

Reserve also includes the power to wait; and that is almost as crucial a test of greatness as courage itself. Many a battle has been lost by over-eagerness. There was the greatness of Fate itself in the order of the American officer of the Revolution who said, "Wait, men, until you see the whites of their eyes."

Time is a young man's greatest ally. That is why youth holds the whip-hand of the world. That is why youth can afford to dare. It is also why age does not dare to dare. With youth, to-morrow is merely an accession of power; but with age--ah, well, with age, as Omar says,

"To-morrow I may be Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years."

Fourth: The fourth quality in character, the lowest one in the list, is Intellect. Not that it is not so valuable as the others, but it is so abundant, and, without the others, so useless. What is it we hear the strong-handed Philistines say in the market-place? "Brains are cheap"; that is what we hear them say. And they say truly. Many years ago I became acquainted with a millionaire who had acquired his wealth by building things, raising cattle, erecting factories--not by shuffling the cards of trade.

His grammar is defective, but his elemental vitality will do you as much good as a walk in the fresh air after the poisoned and steaming atmosphere of a crowded room. "How have I succeeded?" said he, in answer to a question one day. "Oh, by just having the nerve to decide upon a plan, and then by hiring these brainy fellows to do my work. I can get the services of the ablest lawyer in this city for a crumb of the loaf I realize from his thought and industry. The secret of success? Why, sir, it is will, that is all--will, nerve, 'sand.'"

Let me enlarge on the first great quality of character. Sincerity, truthfulness--write these on the tablets of your heart; get them into your blood. This is something that you can cultivate. One of the keen lawyers of my town whom we elected as judge of our court, and who is full of the fresh and living wisdom of the people, said this one day:

"A man can cultivate honesty--there is no doubt about that; but a man who is born honest has a great advantage."

So if you have any taint of the blood which you discover inclines you toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the reflection that _insincerity is a losing game_. Put it on the low ground of self-interest, and be truthful, be "square."

The old saying that "honesty is the best policy" has lost its original force by much repet.i.tion. And it does not go far enough, either. I am speaking of more than mere mercantile honesty; I am speaking of political sincerity, of intellectual sincerity. Never attempt to fool anybody. We live at such a rate of speed, our perceptions have become so abnormally sensitive and acute, that it is next to impossible to deceive any one; and he who attempts it is usually the only one deceived.

If, then, a man can mount upon this humble stepping-stone of low personal interest to sincerity for the sake of his own advantage, he will, after a while, be able to climb higher, to the exalted plane of truthfulness for the sake of truth; and then he will behold the beat.i.tudes of righteous living, and experience the joys which putting oneself in harmony with the order of the universe and the on-going of events never fails to bring. As a great scientist puts it, "Establish your polarity, young man, and sleep soundly at night."

And courage: A successful manufacturer said to me one day, in explaining his own success: _"I never let my idea get cold._ That, I think, is why I have succeeded. When a great business deal came to my mind, I did not waste my energy inquiring about whether I could do it.

I did not waste time and strength regretting that I was not stronger.

I did not destroy my force by doubting my own conception. I went at it. I did it. I spent all my energy on execution after I had once conceived it. Did I not make mistakes following such a plan? Why, of course I made mistakes; and G.o.d protect me from the man who never made a mistake!

"But acting by that method alone," said he, "is the way I achieved all my triumphs. I do not pursue that course now, because I am getting old, and I am in very poor health. Age and ill health make me doubt; so I have not made any large business success for several years. I should say that the reason why so many men who are really capable intellectually fail, is because they are infidels to their own thought, traitors to their own conception.

"If I could concentrate all the advice of my life into one thing,"

declared this strong wise man, in concluding his comments on failure and success, "it would be for those young men who expect to do something constructive to have faith in their idea, and act upon it before it gets cold. There is a tremendous force in the enthusiasm of your freshly formed plan. You have contributed largely to the defeat of your scheme when you have permitted yourself to doubt it."

It was only the other day that the newspapers were full of an extraordinary achievement of one of the American magicians of business; and the papers said that the remarkable thing about it was that the plan flashed upon him in a single evening, as he was leaving for a long vacation. He acted upon it instantly, and devoted his fortune, reputation, almost life, to its consummation. He succeeded.

If he had taken six months to have thought over it, his conception would have been abandoned.

While this man's plan came on him in an evening, a study of his life shows that, unconsciously to himself, it had been growing for a long series of years. It flowered out all at once, like the night-blooming cereus. Caesar decided to cross the Rubicon on the instant? Yes, but we cannot doubt that this imperial resolution had been formed the day when in the Forum, as Macaulay describes it, Caesar said that the future Dictator of Rome might be Pompey, or Cra.s.sus, or still somebody else whom n.o.body was thinking of (that somebody else being himself, of course).

And, indeed, Caesar would at that time have been the last that any Roman would have selected as the master of the world. He was young. He was small. He seemed almost frail. He was an unspeakable egotist. He was fastidious in his dress. I have read that he even used perfumes.

And how could the common eye discern, through all of these externals of frippery, the lion heart, the eagle vision, and the mind of conquest and empire?

There is a very great danger in the examples just cited. These men were geniuses, and they are not to be imitated except as their methods may be applicable to the common man. This paper is for common men--for people like ourselves. There _are_ geniuses; but their high-wrought lives, tornado activity, and methods of lightning are not for us. All the world's real leaders, whether in the fields of thought or action, whether in the council-chamber of the statesman, on the battle-field of the warrior, in the study of the writer, or in the laboratory of the scientist--all have been men of genius. No mediocre man ever was a great leader in the historic sense.

With our habit of looking at to-day as though it were eternity, we consider men "leaders," and use the adjectives "great," "splendid,"

etc., as applied to them, when historically these men will hardly be discernible.

But all the figures large enough to fill history's perspective always have been and always will be geniuses--men in whom the energy, the thought, the imagination, the power of hundreds of men are concentrated. Let us not deceive ourselves, and reap misery and disappointment by thinking that we can, by any effort, equal them.

Alexander, Caesar, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, Washington, Darwin, Goethe, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Pasteur, Edison, Plato, Rhodes, Ito, Diaz, Peter the Great--we cannot explain these phenomena of human intellect and character except by the word genius.

All our toil and patience and everything cannot seat us in the high places of these princes of Nature. "Who, by taking thought, can add a cubit to his stature?" (The Bible again, you see; we cannot get away from the Bible.)

But these men never knew that they were geniuses. They would have known it undoubtedly if they had stopped to think about it. But they were too busy with their task. A genius never thinks about his powers, any more than an eagle is concerned about the method of his royal flight from the mountain crag. But for us, of the common ma.s.s of men, only those methods of genius are applicable which are within our reach. Mostly for us are the slow and toilsome--the sure, if gradual--processes of patient labor and infinite pains.

So do not let the thought that you are a genius abide with you for a moment--the main traveled roads for us ordinary mortals! The beaten paths are not so far wrong, after all; and at their end is certain, even perhaps distinguished, if not startling and historic, success.

And, besides, epoch-makers are not needed until an epoch needs to be made.

Do not worry about greatness, therefore. If greatness is for you, G.o.d's call will surely come to you. If it does not--well, the archeologists uncovered Nippur the other day, with its palaces and courts and abodes of those who were great and mighty more than 2,500 years before Abraham.

So consider Nippur, and be patient and humble. I instanced Rhodes in naming some of the world's monarchs of mind and will. Very well!

Yesterday all Christendom was ringing with his imperial work. He was developing a continent; establishing the reign of law, industry, and peace where savagery and the wilderness had held sway for a million years.

But it was _yesterday_ that he did this. He is dead now. Already you have half forgotten him. You see we are living a century in a minute.

Besides, if Clotho has not spun greatness into your destiny, be sure that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor--that is what you are. Put it from you. Be a man.

Yes, consider Nippur, and be a man. One lesson these ancient ruins teach--the nothingness of fame, and that the only things in life worth while are love and duty. I cannot think of any blessing so great to an ardent young American as to learn at the very threshold of his career of activities that duty and affection are the only things really whose value lasts and increases--the only things that pay increasing dividends.

In a conversation in which the same view of reading given in this paper was set forth, a very bright and earnest woman questioned the propriety of such advice. "For," said she, "the result of that advice is to quiet rather than excite the activities and ambitions; it is to r.e.t.a.r.d rather than hasten intellectual acquisition; it is to check rather than advance a young man's career."

But, granting that this be true, the very objection is itself one of the highest merits of the advice thus criticized. For the only grave danger before capable young Americans, and, indeed, before our Nation, is that of hastening too much, of sweeping on too rapidly, of straining every nerve too tensely, of living our lives with an ardor all too fierce and hot. Don't hurry--the world will last several millions of years longer.

What most of the young men of this country need is restraint, not stimulant; what this Nation needs is reserve. The only serious fear I entertain for our future is that the great rapidity of our common lives will make us neurotic. I prefer a young man to be a little less scintillant, than that his brilliancy should be at the expense of exhausted nerves and enfeebled vitality.

This paper is supposed to be advice which will be practically helpful to young men in their struggle with the world. Very well, then! From the low view-point of self-interest, I would advise every young man to cultivate unselfishness. Do at least one thing every day which helps somebody else, and from which you cannot possibly harvest any profit and advantage. Do one thing every day that cannot in any way bring you tangible reward, directly or indirectly, now or ever.

I know of no discipline of character equal to this. After a while a subtle change will come over your nature. You will grow into an understanding of the practical value of the Master's words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." There comes to you an acquisition of power. Your influence, by a process which escapes any human a.n.a.lysis, reaches out over your a.s.sociates, and, in proportion to the magnitude of your character, over humanity.

A man cannot select a surer road to character ruin than to have a selfish motive back of every action. To do all of your deeds, or most of them, with the thought of the advantage they will bring you, will result in paralysis of soul as surely as certain drugs introduced into the nerves for a long period of time will result in physical paralysis. I do not think that there can be a more valuable suggestion made to a young man facing the world and desiring to increase his powers than to practise unselfishness.

What is it we say of certain men: "Oh, he is for himself." It is a Cain-like label. Never let it be pinned on your coat. In politics, note how the power of some leader dissolves when his followers find out that it is all for him and none for them. And in business we are all on our guard against the man who wants the whole thing, and will take it if he is not watched. Even when selfishness succeeds, it never satisfies. It is like the drunkard's thirst.

No, no, young man, put selfishness from you. It is not even the method of business profit. After all, we are living for happiness, are we not? Very well. Try to make some one else happy, and experience a felicity more delicate and exalted than you ever imagined in your fondest dreams of joy. By all means practise unselfishness. "Get the habit," as our Americanism has it. Live for somebody or something besides yourself. Really none of us amount to enough to live for ourselves alone. Oh, no! that game is not worth the candle, believe me.

Finally and especially, reverence age. Be deferential to maturity.

This is the one thing in which we Americans are yet deficient. The man who has lived a single decade longer than you, deserves your consideration and respect. Be in no haste to displace your seniors.

Time will do that all too quickly. The finest characteristic of the Oriental is his profound regard for all age. Follow the Asiatic in this one thing only. Heed venerable counsels; defer to maturity's wisdoms. There is something majestic about advancing years. Be to all men and women older than yourself what you would like other young men to be to your father and mother.

Be a man; that's the sum of it all--be a man. Be all that we Americans mean by those three words.