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

investigator in physical science has left it on

record that, whenever in the course of his researches he

encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he generally found

himself on the brink of some discovery. The very greatest things—

great thoughts, discoveries, inventions—have usually been nurtured

in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length

established with difficulty.

 

Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the stuff to have

made a good musician if he had only, when a boy, been well flogged;

but that he had been spoilt by the facility with which he produced.

Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to encounter

adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue praise

and too friendly criticism. When Mendelssohn was about to enter

the orchestra at Birmingham, on the first performance of his

‘Elijah,’ he said laughingly to one of his friends and critics,

“Stick your claws into me! Don’t tell me what you like, but what

you don’t like!”

 

It has been said, and truly, that it is the defeat that tries the

general more than the victory. Washington lost more battles than

he gained; but he succeeded in the end. The Romans, in their most

victorious campaigns, almost invariably began with defeats. Moreau

used to be compared by his companions to a drum, which nobody hears

of except it be beaten. Wellington’s military genius was perfected

by encounter with difficulties of apparently the most overwhelming

character, but which only served to nerve his resolution, and bring

out more prominently his great qualities as a man and a general.

So the skilful mariner obtains his best experience amidst storms

and tempests, which train him to self-reliance, courage, and the

highest discipline; and we probably own to rough seas and wintry

nights the best training of our race of British seamen, who are,

certainly, not surpassed by any in the world.

 

Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found

the best. Though the ordeal of adversity is one from which we

naturally shrink, yet, when it comes, we must bravely and manfully

encounter it. Burns says truly,

 

“Though losses and crosses

Be lessons right severe,

There’s wit there, you’ll get there,

You’ll find no other where.”

 

“Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity.” They reveal to us our

powers, and call forth our energies. If there be real worth in the

character, like sweet herbs, it will give forth its finest

fragrance when pressed. “Crosses,” says the old proverb, “are the

ladders that lead to heaven.” “What is even poverty itself,” asks

Richter, “that a man should murmur under it? It is but as the pain

of piercing a maiden’s ear, and you hang precious jewels in the

wound.” In the experience of life it is found that the wholesome

discipline of adversity in strong natures usually carries with it a

self-preserving influence. Many are found capable of bravely

bearing up under privations, and cheerfully encountering

obstructions, who are afterwards found unable to withstand the more

dangerous influences of prosperity. It is only a weak man whom the

wind deprives of his cloak: a man of average strength is more in

danger of losing it when assailed by the beams of a too genial sun.

Thus it often needs a higher discipline and a stronger character to

bear up under good fortune than under adverse. Some generous

natures kindle and warm with prosperity, but there are many on whom

wealth has no such influence. Base hearts it only hardens, making

those who were mean and servile, mean and proud. But while

prosperity is apt to harden the heart to pride, adversity in a man

of resolution will serve to ripen it into fortitude. To use the

words of Burke, “Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by

the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and instructor, who

knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our

skill: our antagonist is thus our helper.” Without the necessity

of encountering difficulty, life might be easier, but men would be

worth less. For trials, wisely improved, train the character, and

teach self-help; thus hardship itself may often prove the

wholesomest discipline for us, though we recognise it not. When

the gallant young Hodson, unjustly removed from his Indian command,

felt himself sore pressed down by unmerited calumny and reproach,

he yet preserved the courage to say to a friend, “I strive to look

the worst boldly in the face, as I would an enemy in the field, and

to do my appointed work resolutely and to the best of my ability,

satisfied that there is a reason for all; and that even irksome

duties well done bring their own reward, and that, if not, still

they ARE duties.”

 

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill; and to win it

without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour. If there

were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were

nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.

Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a

wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour. All experience

of life indeed serves to prove that the impediments thrown in the

way of human advancement may for the most part be overcome by

steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance, and above

all by a determined resolution to surmount difficulties, and stand

up manfully against misfortune.

 

The school of Difficulty is the best school of moral discipline,

for nations as for individuals. Indeed, the history of difficulty

would be but a history of all the great and good things that have

yet been accomplished by men. It is hard to say how much northern

nations owe to their encounter with a comparatively rude and

changeable climate and an originally sterile soil, which is one of

the necessities of their condition,—involving a perennial struggle

with difficulties such as the natives of sunnier climes know

nothing of. And thus it may be, that though our finest products

are exotic, the skill and industry which have been necessary to

rear them, have issued in the production of a native growth of men

not surpassed on the globe.

 

Wherever there is difficulty, the individual man must come out for

better for worse. Encounter with it will train his strength, and

discipline his skill; heartening him for future effort, as the

racer, by being trained to run against the hill, at length courses

with facility. The road to success may be steep to climb, and it

puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.

But by experience a man soon learns that obstacles are to be

overcome by grappling with them,—that the nettle feels as soft as

silk when it is boldly grasped,—and that the most effective help

towards realizing the object proposed is the moral conviction that

we can and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties often fall away

of themselves before the determination to overcome them.

 

Much will be done if we do but try. Nobody knows what he can do

till he has tried; and few try their best till they have been

forced to do it. “IF I could do such and such a thing,” sighs the

desponding youth. But nothing will be done if he only wishes. The

desire must ripen into purpose and effort; and one energetic

attempt is worth a thousand aspirations. It is these thorny “ifs”-

-the mutterings of impotence and despair—which so often hedge

round the field of possibility, and prevent anything being done or

even attempted. “A difficulty,” said Lord Lyndhurst, “is a thing

to be overcome;” grapple with it at once; facility will come with

practice, and strength and fortitude with repeated effort. Thus

the mind and character may be trained to an almost perfect

discipline, and enabled to act with a grace, spirit, and liberty,

almost incomprehensible to those who have not passed through a

similar experience.

 

Everything that we learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the

mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things which may at

first sight appear comparatively valueless in education—such as

the study of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and

surfaces which we call mathematics—are really of the greatest

practical value, not so much because of the information which they

yield, as because of the development which they compel. The

mastery of these studies evokes effort, and cultivates powers of

application, which otherwise might have lain dormant, Thus one

thing leads to another, and so the work goes on through life—

encounter with difficulty ending only when life and culture end.

But indulging in the feeling of discouragement never helped any one

over a difficulty, and never will. D’Alembert’s advice to the

student who complained to him about his want of success in

mastering the first elements of mathematics was the right one—“Go

on, sir, and faith and strength will come to you.”

 

The danseuse who turns a pirouette, the violinist who plays a

sonata, have acquired their dexterity by patient repetition and

after many failures. Carissimi, when praised for the ease and

grace of his melodies, exclaimed, “Ah! you little know with what

difficulty this ease has been acquired.” Sir Joshua Reynolds, when

once asked how long it had taken him to paint a certain picture,

replied, “All my life.” Henry Clay, the American orator, when

giving advice to young men, thus described to them the secret of

his success in the cultivation of his art: “I owe my success in

life,” said he, “chiefly to one circumstance—that at the age of

twenty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the process of

daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or

scientific book. These off-hand efforts were made, sometimes in a

cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some

distant barn, with the horse and the ox for my auditors. It is to

this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for

the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me onward and have

shaped and moulded my whole subsequent destiny.”

 

Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong defect in his

articulation, and at school he was known as “stuttering Jack

Curran.” While he was engaged in the study of the law, and still

struggling to overcome his defect, he was stung into eloquence by

the sarcasms of a member of a debating club, who characterised him

as “Orator Mum;” for, like Cowper, when he stood up to speak on a

previous occasion, Curran had not been able to utter a word. The

taunt stung him and he replied in a triumphant speech. This

accidental discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged

him to proceed in his studies with renewed energy. He corrected

his enunciation by reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly, the

best passages in literature, for several hours every day, studying

his features before a mirror, and adopting a method of

gesticulation suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful figure.

He also proposed cases to himself, which he argued with as much

care as if he had been addressing a jury. Curran began business

with the qualification which Lord Eldon stated to be the first

requisite for distinction, that is, “to be not worth a shilling.”

While working his way laboriously at the bar, still oppressed by

the diffidence which had overcome him in his debating club, he was

on one occasion provoked by the Judge (Robinson) into making a very

severe retort. In the case under discussion, Curran observed “that

he had never met the law as laid down by his lordship in any book

in his library.” “That may be, sir,” said the judge, in a