Your own aim in life may be modest or ambitious; it may be an ideal good you are seeking, or it may be purely worldly; but whatever it is—and we shall venture to offer some criticisms later for your guidance—you need energy and a trained mind to compass its achievement.
I. HUMAN ENERGY.
2. Your power-house is made up of body and mind, the combined activities of which go to form what we call human energy. Physical health—we do not say muscular strength—is of course fundamental; and although there have been men so unlike as Richelieu and Darwin who have overcome the handicap of a feeble constitution, the general rule still holds good: that to achieve your aims there must be a sufficiency of bodily vigour. A careful investigation of the health of men of achievement, whether world-famous or not, shows a high percentage of health power; without this they would not have been able to bear the strain of ceaseless labour.
3. But, after all, mental ability is the more important constituent of the human powerhouse. That every-day phrase, “Brains win,” is a popular embodiment of a great truth; for a man may be a veritable Samson in physique and yet a comparative dwarf in the mind-power that is so necessary to distinctive success Mental ability in a general sense, as well as in a particular sense (witness the possession of a marvellous memory or a penchant for languages is too often regarded as a gift of the gods that may decline in efficiency but cannot be improved. Even a poor memory or a lack of the language gift is looked upon by some as an unalterable fact. They think that no improvement, whatever means are adopted, is possible. As against this, we claim that just as physical power can be developed and a weak body made into a strong one, so can mental power be developed; and a mind that is merely average can be raised to a much higher degree of efficiency. This hopeless feeling about the possibility of improving one’s intellectual gifts is difficult to explain: so many people are gripped by it against their own better judgment. They want to believe that an increase of brain-power can be brought about but they fear it is out of the question. We, on the other hand, know that in 95 per cent. of cases it is a realisable ideal. The lessons and exercises that follow are an expression of our belief in this respect, and we commend them to the student’s careful attention.
II. MODELS OF ENERGY.
4. Human energy, therefore, is a combination of physical health and mental vim; and at this juncture we cannot do better than refer the reader to some striking examples. In so doing we shall not emulate Samuel Smiles—whose work is even now greatly misunderstood—but we shall try to fathom the mental operations of a few variously successful men, with a view to ascertain the origin of their energetic policy, and of the qualities of mind they displayed in accomplishing their aims.
1.Descartes, the great philosopher, began life as a soldier.
2.Faraday, the great physicist, began life as a bookseller’s assistant.
3.Pasteur, the great bacteriologist, began life as a country schoolmaster.
Here are three names standing as representatives of those whose careers were dramatically changed from their original purpose. What kind of influence was it that caused Faraday, for instance, to cease bookselling and begin experimenting in physics?
There is only one answer and that is intense interest in the subject.
And how did that interest arise?
It was born in him.
The same conclusion applies to Descartes and Pasteur.
III. WHAT IS YOUR WORK?
5. Now if we were to take instances of successful merchants or leading professional men who never changed their calling, we should find the same phenomenon: i.e., an intense interest in their work, and consequently a fitness of their minds for the duties to be discharged. In this sense, there are born grocers, just as there are born poets; provision dealing may be an object of such ardent zeal that it almost rises to the level of a love of writing sonnets; the spirit of romance enters into buying and selling, thereby surrounding it with a glamour that makes the merchant something more than a dull trader. Ribot, the great French psychologist, has proved that imagination can be as glowing and as active in material matters as in those that are more spiritual.
Interest Power.
6. Interest power, the strong tendency propelling us in one specific direction, is a natural gift. Thus, one man may be a clerk but his whole soul is in painting, or he may have been fortunate enough to have his tendency recognised early, and by being sent to an art school, he avoided years of unhappiness at an office desk. Another man is a stockbroker, but the “House” is only a means to an end, and that end is literature—in which he puts his whole soul, and at which he works with his fullest energy, as in the case of the late E. C. Stedman, the American critic. Such instances could be multiplied by the score, but those we have quoted are sufficient to indicate more clearly the fact we are trying to emphasize: that human energy has its primary origin in a desire born in us for some kind of special work. We can see it in the boy—sometimes before he has left school. He is always buying or selling something; he wants to be an engineer, and is never happy unless he is hanging about the locomotive shops; he is perhaps a sailor—and builds ships by day and dreams of voyages by night. We are not speaking of the stages through which every boy passes with more or less enthusiasm, but of the deep down instinct to live for a certain kind of work. Doubtless some boys show no predilection for any particular occupation; they just fall in with parental suggestion—or with necessity; for unfortunately in many instances choice is out of the question, and more’s the pity.
Presumably, however, you have already arrived at years of responsibility, and if your daily duties are such as appeal strongly to you, there can be no doubt you are already provided with the first basis of human energy: you are engaged in work you like. If you study the biography of achievement, you will find this fact in the foreground of every success. Men of might in any calling have been men who loved their work, whatever its nature, and this deep interest is in the main responsible for excellence: indeed some authorities regard it as the first mark of genius.
IV. THE IMPORTANCE OF ENVIRONMENT.
7. The next stage is that of suitable surroundings—in other words opportunities of exercising your desire to do the work on which you have set your heart. Some men are fortunate in getting into the right atmosphere early on in life; others have to fight their way through many obstacles before they secure the proper environment. It was no easy thing for Pasteur to forsake schoolmastering and get into laboratory work – but he did it. Edison found it no light task to leave newspaper selling and become an inventor—and yet he managed it somehow. And smaller men—men of whom you have never heard, and whose names never appear in the newspapers—have had to go through similar experiences.
Now it may be that, as already suggested, you have found the work you like, and therefore the environment is suited to your requirements. Even so, there are many hindrances; and the speed with which you overcome them depends, first on the strength and depth of your liking