Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

CHAPTER IV—APPLICATION AND PERSEVERANCE

“Rich are the diligent, who can command

Time, nature’s stock! and could his hour-glass fall,

Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand,

And, by incessant labour, gather all.”—D’Avenant.

“Allez en avant, et la foi vous viendra!”—D’Alembert.

 

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means,

and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of every

day, with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample

opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most

beaten paths provide the true worker with abundant scope for effort

and room for self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies

along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the

most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the

most successful.

 

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not

so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find

that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the

winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators. In the

pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner

qualities are found the most useful—such as common sense,

attention, application, and perseverance. Genius may not be

necessary, though even genius of the highest sort does not disdain

the use of these ordinary qualities. The very greatest men have

been among the least believers in the power of genius, and as

worldly wise and persevering as successful men of the commoner

sort. Some have even defined genius to be only common sense

intensified. A distinguished teacher and president of a college

spoke of it as the power of making efforts. John Foster held it to

be the power of lighting one’s own fire. Buffon said of genius “it

is patience.”

 

Newton’s was unquestionably a mind of the very highest order, and

yet, when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary

discoveries, he modestly answered, “By always thinking unto them.”

At another time he thus expressed his method of study: “I keep the

subject continually before me, and wait till the first dawnings

open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light.” It

was in Newton’s case, as in every other, only by diligent

application and perseverance that his great reputation was

achieved. Even his recreation consisted in change of study, laying

down one subject to take up another. To Dr. Bentley he said: “If

I have done the public any service, it is due to nothing but

industry and patient thought.” So Kepler, another great

philosopher, speaking of his studies and his progress, said: “As

in Virgil, ‘Fama mobilitate viget, vires acquirit eundo,’ so it was

with me, that the diligent thought on these things was the occasion

of still further thinking; until at last I brooded with the whole

energy of my mind upon the subject.”

 

The extraordinary results effected by dint of sheer industry and

perseverance, have led many distinguished men to doubt whether the

gift of genius be so exceptional an endowment as it is usually

supposed to be. Thus Voltaire held that it is only a very slight

line of separation that divides the man of genius from the man of

ordinary mould. Beccaria was even of opinion that all men might be

poets and orators, and Reynolds that they might be painters and

sculptors. If this were really so, that stolid Englishman might

not have been so very far wrong after all, who, on Canova’s death,

inquired of his brother whether it was “his intention to carry on

the business!” Locke, Helvetius, and Diderot believed that all men

have an equal aptitude for genius, and that what some are able to

effect, under the laws which regulate the operations of the

intellect, must also be within the reach of others who, under like

circumstances, apply themselves to like pursuits. But while

admitting to the fullest extent the wonderful achievements of

labour, and recognising the fact that men of the most distinguished

genius have invariably been found the most indefatigable workers,

it must nevertheless be sufficiently obvious that, without the

original endowment of heart and brain, no amount of labour, however

well applied, could have produced a Shakespeare, a Newton, a

Beethoven, or a Michael Angelo.

 

Dalton, the chemist, repudiated the notion of his being “a genius,”

attributing everything which he had accomplished to simple industry

and accumulation. John Hunter said of himself, “My mind is like a

beehive; but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, it is

yet full of order and regularity, and food collected with incessant

industry from the choicest stores of nature.” We have, indeed, but

to glance at the biographies of great men to find that the most

distinguished inventors, artists, thinkers, and workers of all

kinds, owe their success, in a great measure, to their

indefatigable industry and application. They were men who turned

all things to gold—even time itself. Disraeli the elder held that

the secret of success consisted in being master of your subject,

such mastery being attainable only through continuous application

and study. Hence it happens that the men who have most moved the

world, have not been so much men of genius, strictly so called, as

men of intense mediocre abilities, and untiring perseverance; not

so often the gifted, of naturally bright and shining qualities, as

those who have applied themselves diligently to their work, in

whatsoever line that might lie. “Alas!” said a widow, speaking of

her brilliant but careless son, “he has not the gift of

continuance.” Wanting in perseverance, such volatile natures are

outstripped in the race of life by the diligent and even the dull.

“Che va piano, va longano, e va lontano,” says the Italian proverb:

Who goes slowly, goes long, and goes far.

 

Hence, a great point to be aimed at is to get the working quality

well trained. When that is done, the race will be found

comparatively easy. We must repeat and again repeat; facility will

come with labour. Not even the simplest art can be accomplished

without it; and what difficulties it is found capable of achieving!

It was by early discipline and repetition that the late Sir Robert

Peel cultivated those remarkable, though still mediocre powers,

which rendered him so illustrious an ornament of the British

Senate. When a boy at Drayton Manor, his father was accustomed to

set him up at table to practise speaking extempore; and he early

accustomed him to repeat as much of the Sunday’s sermon as he could

remember. Little progress was made at first, but by steady

perseverance the habit of attention became powerful, and the sermon

was at length repeated almost verbatim. When afterwards replying

in succession to the arguments of his parliamentary opponents—an

art in which he was perhaps unrivalled—it was little surmised that

the extraordinary power of accurate remembrance which he displayed

on such occasions had been originally trained under the discipline

of his father in the parish church of Drayton.

 

It is indeed marvellous what continuous application will effect in

the commonest of things. It may seem a simple affair to play upon

a violin; yet what a long and laborious practice it requires!

Giardini said to a youth who asked him how long it would take to

learn it, “Twelve hours a day for twenty years together.”

Industry, it is said, fait l’ours danser. The poor figurante must

devote years of incessant toil to her profitless task before she

can shine in it. When Taglioni was preparing herself for her

evening exhibition, she would, after a severe two hours’ lesson

from her father, fall down exhausted, and had to be undressed,

sponged, and resuscitated totally unconscious. The agility and

bounds of the evening were insured only at a price like this.

 

Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great

results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to

advance in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that “to

know HOW TO WAIT is the great secret of success.” We must sow

before we can reap, and often have to wait long, content meanwhile

to look patiently forward in hope; the fruit best worth waiting for

often ripening the slowest. But “time and patience,” says the

Eastern proverb, “change the mulberry leaf to satin.”

 

To wait patiently, however, men must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness

is an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the

character. As a bishop has said, “Temper is nine-tenths of

Christianity;” so are cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of

practical wisdom. They are the life and soul of success, as well

as of happiness; perhaps the very highest pleasure in life

consisting in clear, brisk, conscious working; energy, confidence,

and every other good quality mainly depending upon it. Sydney

Smith, when labouring as a parish priest at Foston-le-Clay, in

Yorkshire,—though he did not feel himself to be in his proper

element,—went cheerfully to work in the firm determination to do

his best. “I am resolved,” he said, “to like it, and reconcile

myself to it, which is more manly than to feign myself above it,

and to send up complaints by the post of being thrown away, and

being desolate, and such like trash.” So Dr. Hook, when leaving

Leeds for a new sphere of labour said, “Wherever I may be, I shall,

by God’s blessing, do with my might what my hand findeth to do; and

if I do not find work, I shall make it.”

 

Labourers for the public good especially, have to work long and

patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of immediate recompense

or result. The seeds they sow sometimes lie hidden under the

winter’s snow, and before the spring comes the husbandman may have

gone to his rest. It is not every public worker who, like Rowland

Hill, sees his great idea bring forth fruit in his lifetime. Adam

Smith sowed the seeds of a great social amelioration in that dingy

old University of Glasgow where he so long laboured, and laid the

foundations of his ‘Wealth of Nations;’ but seventy years passed

before his work bore substantial fruits, nor indeed are they all

gathered in yet.

 

Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely

changes the character. “How can I work—how can I be happy,” said

a great but miserable thinker, “when I have lost all hope?” One of

the most cheerful and courageous, because one of the most hopeful

of workers, was Carey, the missionary. When in India, it was no

uncommon thing for him to weary out three pundits, who officiated

as his clerks, in one day, he himself taking rest only in change of

employment. Carey, the son of a shoemaker, was supported in his

labours by Ward, the son of a carpenter, and Marsham, the son of a

weaver. By their labours, a magnificent college was erected at

Serampore; sixteen flourishing stations were established; the Bible

was translated into sixteen languages, and the seeds were sown of a

beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey was never

ashamed of the humbleness of his origin. On one occasion, when at

the Governor-General’s table he overheard an officer opposite him

asking another, loud enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once

been a shoemaker: “No, sir,” exclaimed Carey immediately; “only a

cobbler.” An eminently characteristic anecdote has been told of

his perseverance as a boy. When climbing a tree one day, his foot

slipped, and he fell to the ground, breaking his leg by the fall.

He was confined to his bed for weeks, but when he recovered and was

able to walk without support, the very first thing he did was to go

and climb that tree. Carey had need of this sort of dauntless

courage for the great missionary work