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

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be made by a bold venture, the common highway of steady industry

and application is the only safe road to travel. It is said of the

landscape painter Wilson, that when he had nearly finished a

picture in a tame, correct manner, he would step back from it, his

pencil fixed at the end of a long stick, and after gazing earnestly

on the work, he would suddenly walk up and by a few bold touches

give a brilliant finish to the painting. But it will not do for

every one who would produce an effect, to throw his brush at the

canvas in the hope of producing a picture. The capability of

putting in these last vital touches is acquired only by the labour

of a life; and the probability is, that the artist who has not

carefully trained himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a

brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch.

 

Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true

worker. The greatest men are not those who “despise the day of

small things,” but those who improve them the most carefully.

Michael Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio,

what he had been doing at a statue since his previous visit. “I

have retouched this part—polished that—softened this feature—

brought out that muscle—given some expression to this lip, and

more energy to that limb.” “But these are trifles,” remarked the

visitor. “It may be so,” replied the sculptor, “but recollect that

trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.” So it was

said of Nicholas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of his conduct

was, that “whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well;”

and when asked, late in life, by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by

what means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of

Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, “Because I have neglected

nothing.”

 

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by

accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there

has really been very little that was accidental about them. For

the most part, these so-called accidents have only been

opportunities, carefully improved by genius. The fall of the apple

at Newton’s feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental

character of some discoveries. But Newton’s whole mind had already

been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation

of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple

falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius

could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant

discovery then opening to his sight. In like manner, the

brilliantly-coloured soap-bubbles blown from a common tobacco pipe-

-though “trifles light as air” in most eyes—suggested to Dr. Young

his beautiful theory of “interferences,” and led to his discovery

relating to the diffraction of light. Although great men are

popularly supposed only to deal with great things, men such as

Newton and Young were ready to detect the significance of the most

familiar and simple facts; their greatness consisting mainly in

their wise interpretation of them.

 

The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in the

intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb says of the

non-observant man, “He goes through the forest and sees no

firewood.” “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” says Solomon,

“but the fool walketh in darkness.” “Sir,” said Johnson, on one

occasion, to a fine gentleman just returned from Italy, “some men

will learn more in the Hampstead stage than others in the tour of

Europe.” It is the mind that sees as well as the eye. Where

unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision

penetrate into the very fibre of the phenomena presented to them,

attentively noting differences, making comparisons, and recognizing

their underlying idea. Many before Galileo had seen a suspended

weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the

first to detect the value of the fact. One of the vergers in the

cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung

from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a

youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea

of applying it to the measurement of time. Fifty years of study

and labour, however, elapsed, before he completed the invention of

his Pendulum,—the importance of which, in the measurement of time

and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overrated. In

like manner, Galileo, having casually heard that one Lippershey, a

Dutch spectacle-maker, had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an

instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer to the

beholder, addressed himself to the cause of such a phenomenon,

which led to the invention of the telescope, and proved the

beginning of the modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as

these could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a

mere passive listener.

 

While Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown was occupied in

studying the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving

one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed, near

which he lived, he was walking in his garden one dewy autumn

morning, when he saw a tiny spider’s net suspended across his path.

The idea immediately occurred to him, that a bridge of iron ropes

or chains might be constructed in like manner, and the result was

the invention of his Suspension Bridge. So James Watt, when

consulted about the mode of carrying water by pipes under the

Clyde, along the unequal bed of the river, turned his attention one

day to the shell of a lobster presented at table; and from that

model he invented an iron tube, which, when laid down, was found

effectually to answer the purpose. Sir Isambert Brunel took his

first lessons in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny shipworm:

he saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the

archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with

a kind of varnish; and by copying this work exactly on a large

scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and

accomplish his great engineering work.

 

It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these

apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling a matter as

the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to

quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering

land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not

far off. There is nothing so small that it should remain

forgotten; and no fact, however trivial, but may prove useful in

some way or other if carefully interpreted. Who could have

imagined that the famous “chalk cliffs of Albion” had been built up

by tiny insects—detected only by the help of the microscope—of

the same order of creatures that have gemmed the sea with islands

of coral! And who that contemplates such extraordinary results,

arising from infinitely minute operations, will venture to question

the power of little things?

 

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of

success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in

life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made

by successive generations of men, the little bits of knowledge and

experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a

mighty pyramid. Though many of these facts and observations seemed

in the first instance to have but slight significance, they are all

found to have their eventual uses, and to fit into their proper

places. Even many speculations seemingly remote, turn out to be

the basis of results the most obviously practical. In the case of

the conic sections discovered by Apollonius Pergaeus, twenty

centuries elapsed before they were made the basis of astronomy—a

science which enables the modern navigator to steer his way through

unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring path to

his appointed haven. And had not mathematicians toiled for so

long, and, to uninstructed observers, apparently so fruitlessly,

over the abstract relations of lines and surfaces, it is probable

that but few of our mechanical inventions would have seen the

light.

 

When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and

electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of what use is

it?” To which his reply was, “What is the use of a child? It may

become a man!” When Galvani discovered that a frog’s leg twitched

when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely

have been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could

have led to important results. Yet therein lay the germ of the

Electric Telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents

together, and, probably before many years have elapsed, will “put a

girdle round the globe.” So too, little bits of stone and fossil,

dug out of the earth, intelligently interpreted, have issued in the

science of geology and the practical operations of mining, in which

large capitals are invested and vast numbers of persons profitably

employed.

 

The gigantic machinery employed in pumping our mines, working our

mills and manufactures, and driving our steam-ships and

locomotives, in like manner depends for its supply of power upon so

slight an agency as little drops of water expanded by heat,—that

familiar agency called steam, which we see issuing from that common

tea-kettle spout, but which, when put up within an ingeniously

contrived mechanism, displays a force equal to that of millions of

horses, and contains a power to rebuke the waves and set even the

hurricane at defiance. The same power at work within the bowels of

the earth has been the cause of those volcanoes and earthquakes

which have played so mighty a part in the history of the globe.

 

It is said that the Marquis of Worcester’s attention was first

accidentally directed to the subject of steam power, by the tight

cover of a vessel containing hot water having been blown off before

his eyes, when confined a prisoner in the Tower. He published the

result of his observations in his ‘Century of Inventions,’ which

formed a sort of text-book for inquirers into the powers of steam

for a time, until Savary, Newcomen, and others, applying it to

practical purposes, brought the steam-engine to the state in which

Watt found it when called upon to repair a model of Newcomen’s

engine, which belonged to the University of Glasgow. This

accidental circumstance was an opportunity for Watt, which he was

not slow to improve; and it was the labour of his life to bring the

steam-engine to perfection.

 

This art of seizing opportunities and turning even accidents to

account, bending them to some purpose is a great secret of success.

Dr. Johnson has defined genius to be “a mind of large general

powers accidentally determined in some particular direction.” Men

who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will always find

opportunities enough; and if they do not lie ready to their hand,

they will make them. It is not those who have enjoyed the

advantages of colleges, museums, and public galleries, that have

accomplished the most for science and art; nor have the greatest

mechanics and inventors been trained in mechanics’ institutes.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention;

and the most prolific school of all has been the school of

difficulty. Some of the very best workmen have had the most

indifferent tools to work with. But it is not tools that make the

workman, but the trained skill and perseverance of the man himself.

Indeed it is proverbial that the bad workman never yet had a good

tool. Some one asked Opie by what wonderful process he mixed his