Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume) E-Book
Orison Swett Marden
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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition," readers are presented with a comprehensive collection of Marden's influential works, coalescing eighteen separate texts into one powerful volume. Marden, a pioneer of the self-help genre, employs a literary style marked by eloquence and pragmatism, interweaving personal anecdotes with philosophical insights to inspire and motivate. This edition showcases the breadth of Marden's thought, addressing themes such as human potential, success, and the importance of a positive mindset'—an echo of the late 19th and early 20th-century American Transcendentalism that shaped the ethos of the self-improvement movement. Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) was deeply influenced by his own struggles in life, including overcoming poverty and experiencing spiritual awakenings that propelled him toward personal development. His writings reflect his commitment to empowering individuals through practical wisdom and encouragement, drawing from his belief in the transformative power of attitude and ambition. As a founder of the success magazine "Success," Marden's work resonated with a generation eager to embrace the principles of self-improvement and empowerment. This essential volume is highly recommended for anyone seeking profound insights into personal growth and the keys to unlocking their potential. Marden's timeless wisdom is relevant today for readers at any stage of their journey, serving as both a personal guide and a source of inspiration that champions the resilience of the human spirit. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume)
Table of Contents
Introduction
This single-author collection gathers eighteen influential works by Orison Swett Marden into one accessible volume, offering a panoramic view of his enduring philosophy of personal advancement and ethical success. The purpose is both comprehensive and practical: to present, in unified form, Marden’s core ideas on character-building, disciplined will, constructive thought, and resourceful action. Rather than a fragmentary sampling, the edition assembles full-length books that, together, map the breadth of his contribution to inspirational and self-improvement literature. It provides readers, students, and researchers with a cohesive resource that highlights the continuity of Marden’s counsel across themes of purpose, perseverance, prosperity, health, and mental poise.
The texts gathered here span complementary nonfiction forms. Many volumes take the shape of motivational handbooks and essay collections that distill principles for conduct and achievement. Others employ narrative illustration and biographical sketches to model practical ideals in everyday life and public accomplishment. Selections designed for younger readers use brief, instructive stories to foster character and aspiration. Several books focus on specific domains—personal finance, health and vitality, or attitude and mental discipline—while others survey success more broadly. Together, these modes—essays, practical manuals, character studies, and illustrative anecdotes—offer multiple entry points into Marden’s method of translating ideals into daily habits and results.
Throughout the volume, unifying themes emerge with clarity. Marden emphasizes the cultivation of a resolute will aligned with honorable purpose; the centrality of character as the bedrock of lasting achievement; and the creative power of thought, cheerfulness, and hopeful expectation. He links prosperity to service, integrity, and usefulness, presenting industry and thrift as partners to imagination and aspiration. Health and self-mastery appear not as ends in themselves but as supports for meaningful labor and contribution. Across varied topics—whether urging persistence under difficulty or inviting readers to think constructively—the books form a coherent ethic of disciplined optimism and responsible self-leadership.
Stylistically, Marden’s prose is direct, exhortative, and example-driven. He addresses the reader with clear counsel, reinforces ideas through repetition and parallel phrasing, and relies on illustrative anecdotes—often drawn from public figures, notable careers, or everyday striving. This approach blends moral reflection with practical advice, favoring plain language and vivid incident over abstraction. Chapters commonly move from principle to application, using brief narratives to anchor guidance in lived experience. The tone is earnest and encouraging, aiming to awaken purpose rather than impress with ornament. The result is a body of work marked by clarity, accessibility, and a steady focus on actionable ideals.
Taken together, these books remain significant because they crystallize a formative chapter in modern self-improvement writing while maintaining a timeless relevance. Their guidance is grounded in habits—attention, diligence, thrift, self-control—that adapt to changing circumstances without losing force. Marden’s union of ethical aspiration with practical method speaks to readers seeking more than technique: a framework that connects inner conviction to outward effectiveness. As historical documents, the works reflect the aspirations of their period; as living resources, they continue to offer readers a structured approach to forming character, sustaining hope, and channeling energy toward constructive ends in private and public life.
This edition’s breadth helps readers trace how Marden’s key ideas reinforce one another. Principles of willpower and right thinking find concrete expression in counsel on career, enterprise, and leadership. Discussions of cheerfulness and health support advice on productivity and poise under pressure. Reflections on thrift and prosperity are anchored in duty, purpose, and service. The books may be read continuously or consulted selectively for specific aims—strengthening attitude, refining habits, clarifying goals, or renewing resilience. In every case, the emphasis remains on forming a reliable inner compass that guides outer action, uniting aspiration with disciplined follow-through.
Readers approaching these works for the first time will find a comprehensive map of Marden’s approach to personal progress; those returning will discover how the volumes deepen and echo one another. The collection invites steady, reflective reading, with attention to practice as well as insight. It offers encouragement without illusion, rigor without severity, and a consistent call to align thought, character, and effort. By assembling these eighteen books in one volume, the edition honors a sustained contribution to inspirational literature and provides a durable companion for study, application, and growth across the many seasons of work and life.
Historical Context
Orison Swett Marden (1848–1924) wrote across the late Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when the United States surged through industrialization, urban growth, and mass immigration. Born in Thornton, New Hampshire, and later working in Boston and New York, he addressed a public fascinated by upward mobility and character-building. His emphasis on self-mastery, cheerfulness, and practical ambition in books such as An Iron Will, How To Succeed, and Pushing to the Front reflected an era that celebrated the self-made citizen. The same period prized moral uplift and civic responsibility, and his language of personal discipline aligned with broader efforts to reconcile rapid economic change with ethical purpose.
Marden’s career unfolded within a powerful culture of adult education, lyceum and Chautauqua circuits, and the rise of mass-circulation magazines. Educated at Boston University and Harvard, he translated scholarship and biography into accessible instruction. In 1897 he founded Success magazine, based in the nation’s publishing hub and business capital, which popularized interviews and case studies of leading figures. That periodical context shaped works like Little Visits with Great Americans and Architects of Fate, which mined real lives for broadly applicable lessons. The format fit a public already reading McClure’s and The Saturday Evening Post, where personality profiles and serialized narratives offered moral exemplars for an aspirational readership.
Marden wrote at the crossroads of New Thought metaphysics, emerging psychology, and an older Emersonian self-reliance. In Boston- and New England–centered mind-cure circles, works by figures such as Ralph Waldo Trine (In Tune with the Infinite, 1897) circulated alongside contemporary discussions of Christian Science and practical psychology. William James’s treatments of will and habit, and a popular appetite for mental science, formed the intellectual air. Titles such as The Miracles of Right Thought, Peace, Power, and Plenty, Every Man a King, and The Victorious Attitude reframed prosperity as mental posture and disciplined suggestion, pairing optimism with ethical self-command rather than speculative mysticism or fatalism.
Economic volatility gave Marden’s optimism a specific urgency. The Panic of 1893 and the Panic of 1907 exposed the fragility of fortunes in a modern corporate economy, while antitrust actions and regulatory reforms tried to channel market power. His counsel on thrift, resilience, and purposeful planning matched these conditions. During World War I (1914–1918), national campaigns for saving and War Savings Stamps (from 1917) normalized financial prudence; Thrift and How To Get What You Want resonated with that civic ethos. In a world of fluctuating wages, strikes, and rising living costs, Marden’s success formula linked stability to character, budgeting, and steady skill acquisition.
Progressive health reform and the physical culture movement supplied another backdrop. Theodore Roosevelt’s call for the “strenuous life” (1899), YMCA programs, anti-tuberculosis drives, and Bernarr Macfadden’s Physical Culture magazine normalized daily regimens, exercise, and dietary discipline. Keeping Fit and Cheerfulness as a Life Power echo these trends by casting vitality and mental poise as strategic assets in work and citizenship. Public health advances, from municipal sanitation to workplace safety, reinforced the idea that sound bodies and steady nerves were not luxuries but prerequisites for modern productivity. Marden’s prescriptions aligned with scientific temperance and mental hygiene campaigns that sought to harmonize energy, morale, and efficiency.
The Progressive Era’s moral economy—part Social Gospel, part “Gospel of Wealth”—shaped Marden’s insistence that success entailed service and integrity. Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay urged philanthropy as duty; settlement-house reformers such as Jane Addams (Hull House, 1889) linked education with uplift. Marden’s Character: The Grandest Thing in the World, How To Succeed, and Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life sit in this milieu of practical ethics for students, shop clerks, and managers alike. As high schools expanded and business colleges multiplied, he offered portable conduct literature that cut across class and gender at a time when women’s clubs, civic leagues, and immigrant associations pressed for broad-based self-improvement.
Marden’s life story reinforced his message. Orphaned young in New Hampshire and long a wage earner before turning author and editor, he embodied the perseverance he prescribed. He operated hotels in New England, experienced the loss of a major manuscript in a fire in the 1890s, and rebuilt his project—Pushing to the Front—into a bestseller. Through Success magazine and related volumes he profiled industrial and scientific leaders—figures such as Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931), Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), and Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919)—to convert biography into method. The repeated pairing of adversity and ascent anchors works like An Iron Will and He Can Who Thinks He Can.
Marden’s corpus formed a bridge from nineteenth-century self-help to twentieth-century motivational culture. His Prosperity—How to Attract It and Peace, Power, and Plenty anticipate later positive-thinking literature, while his rhetoric of discipline and confidence prefigures corporate training and executive coaching. After his death in 1924, successors such as Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich, 1937) and Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People, 1936) popularized related formulas for achievement, and Norman Vincent Peale later spiritualized optimism. The 18 books gathered here distill a period when Americans tried to humanize modern capitalism—through character, will, and hope—amid machines, markets, and mass democracy.
Synopsis (Selection)
An Iron Will
A practical guide to developing unwavering willpower through decision, self-discipline, and concentration, illustrated with examples of leaders who converted resolve into achievement.
Architects of Fate or, Steps to Success and Power
Argues that individuals shape their destiny through character, habits, and purposeful effort, using biographical sketches to outline concrete steps toward influence and success.
Be Good to Yourself
Advocates self-respect, kindness to oneself, and constructive inner dialogue as foundations for happiness, health, and sustained achievement.
Character: The Grandest Thing in the World
Presents character—integrity, courage, and moral purpose—as the supreme asset in life and work, with guidance on cultivating these traits.
Cheerfulness as a Life Power
Explores cheerfulness as a practical strength that boosts health, relationships, and productivity, and offers ways to cultivate a buoyant, helpful spirit.
Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life
A collection of brief true-to-life stories and sketches designed for students, imparting lessons on industry, honesty, and perseverance.
Every Man A King; or, Might In Mind-Mastery
Promotes mastery of thought and emotion as the route to personal sovereignty, confidence, and prosperity, with exercises in self-control and suggestion.
He Can Who Thinks He Can, and Other Papers on Success in Life
A series of essays asserting that belief in one's ability unlocks initiative and opportunity, paired with practical counsel on focus, purpose, and persistence.
How To Get What You Want
Outlines a process for clarifying desires, forming definite plans, and acting steadily with a positive mental attitude to secure chosen aims.
How To Succeed - Or, Stepping-Stones To Fame And Fortune
Comprehensive handbook of success principles—definiteness of purpose, hard work, promptness, and integrity—supported by anecdotes of self-made achievers.
Keeping Fit
Discusses physical vigor as a prerequisite for efficiency and success, emphasizing exercise, rest, nutrition, and clean living.
Little Visits with Great Americans or, Success Ideals and How to Attain Them
Profiles and interviews with notable Americans distilling their habits and philosophies, offering practical ideals for character and career.
Peace, Power, and Plenty
Connects inner serenity and faith with practical power and material abundance, teaching mental poise, gratitude, and constructive vision.
Prosperity – How to attract It
Sets out ethical, service-centered methods for attracting prosperity through right thinking, value creation, gratitude, and wise management of resources.
Pushing to the Front or, Success Under Difficulties
Encourages assertive initiative and perseverance in the face of obstacles, showing how courage, preparation, and opportunity-seizing propel people to leadership.
The Miracles Of Right Thought
Asserts that disciplined, affirmative thinking shapes circumstances and health, and provides methods to replace fear and doubt with constructive ideas.
The Victorious Attitude
Shows how a confident, resilient attitude transforms setbacks into growth, outlining habits of optimism, self-reliance, and purposeful action.
Thrift
Explains the moral and practical value of saving, economy, and intelligent spending, presenting thrift as a pathway to independence and stability.
Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume)
An Iron Will
CHAPTER I.
TRAINING THE WILL.
"The education of the will is the object of our existence," says Emerson.
Nor is this putting it too strongly, if we take into account the human will in its relations to the divine. This accords with the saying of J. Stuart Mill, that "a character is a completely fashioned will."
In respect to mere mundane relations, the development and discipline of one's will-power is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power of will. It is a part of the divine nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. We speak of God's fiat "Fiat lux, Let light be." Man has his fiat. The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
"It is impossible," says Sharman, "to look into the conditions under which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative in right directions." Young people need to go into training for it. We live in an age of athletic meets. Those who are determined to have athletic will-power must take for it the kind of exercise they need.
This is well illustrated by a report I have seen of the long race from Marathon in the recent Olympian games, which was won by the young Greek peasant, Sotirios Louès.
A STRUGGLE IN THE RACE OF LIFE.
There had been no great parade about the training of this champion runner. From his work at the plough he quietly betook himself to the task of making Greece victorious before the assembled strangers from every land. He was known to be a good runner, and without fuss or bustle he entered himself as a competitor. But it was not his speed alone, out-distancing every rival, that made the young Greek stand out from among his fellows that day. When he left his cottage home at Amarusi, his father said to him, "Sotiri, you must only return a victor!" The light of a firm resolve shone in the young man's eye. The old father was sure that his boy would win, and so he made his way to the station, there to wait till Sotiri should come in ahead of all the rest. No one knew the old man and his three daughters as they elbowed their way through the crowd. When at last the excitement of the assembled multitude told that the critical moment had arrived, that the racers were nearing the goal, the old father looked up through eyes that were a little dim as he realized that truly Sotiri was leading the way. He was "returning a victor." How the crowd surged about the young peasant when the race was fairly won! Wild with excitement, they knew not how to shower upon him sufficient praise. Ladies overwhelmed him with flowers and rings; some even gave him their watches, and one American lady bestowed upon him her jewelled smelling-bottle. The princes embraced him, and the king himself saluted him in military fashion. But the young Sotirios was seeking for other praise than theirs. Past the ranks of royalty and fair maidenhood, past the outstretched hands of his own countrymen, past the applauding crowd of foreigners, his gaze wandered till it fell upon an old man trembling with eagerness, who resolutely pushed his way through the excited, satisfied throng. Then the young face lighted, and as old Louès advanced to the innermost circle with arms outstretched to embrace his boy, the young victor said, simply: "You see, father, I have obeyed."
MENTAL DISCIPLINE.
The athlete trains for his race; and the mind must be put into training if one will win life's race.
"It is," says Professor Mathews, "only by continued, strenuous efforts, repeated again and again, day after day, week after week, and month after month, that the ability can be acquired to fasten the mind to one subject, however abstract or knotty, to the exclusion of everything else. The process of obtaining this self-mastery--this complete command of one's mental powers--is a gradual one, its length varying with the mental constitution of each person; but its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost labor it ever costs."
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education," it was said by Professor Huxley, "is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly."
DOING THINGS ONCE.
When Henry Ward Beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish so much more than other men, he replied:
"I don't do more, but less, than other people. They do all their work three times over: once in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, doing it once instead of three times."
This was by the intelligent exercise of Mr. Beecher's will-power in concentrating his mind upon what he was doing at a given moment, and then turning to something else. Any one who has observed business men closely, has noticed this characteristic. One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing.
CENTRALIZING FORCE.
The mental reservoir of most people is like a leaky dam which we sometimes see in the country, where the greater part of the water flows out without going over the wheel and doing the work of the mill. The habit of mind-wandering, of worrying about this and that,
"Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, Is oft but Perseverance in disguise."
Many a man would have been a success had he connected his fragmentary efforts. Spasmodic, disconnected attempts, without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea, will never bring success. It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.
LEARNING TO SWIM.
The way to learn to run is to run, the way to learn to swim is to swim. The way to learn to develop will-power is by the actual exercise of will-power in the business of life. "The man that exercises his will," says an English essayist, "makes it a stronger and more effective force in proportion to the extent to which such exercise is intelligently and perseveringly maintained." The forth-putting of will-power is a means of strengthening will-power. The will becomes strong by exercise. To stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power.
DR. CUYLER.
"It is astonishing," says Dr. Theodore Cuyler, "how many men lack this power of 'holding on' until they reach the goal. They can make a sudden dash, but they lack grit. They are easily discouraged. They get on as long as everything goes smoothly, but when there is friction they lose heart. They depend on stronger personalities for their spirit and strength. They lack independence or originality. They only dare to do what others do. They do not step boldly from the crowd and act fearlessly."
THE BIG TREES.
What is needed by him who would succeed in the highest degree possible is careful planning. He is to accumulate reserved power, that he may be equal to all emergencies. Thomas Starr King said that the great trees of California gave him his first impression of the power of reserve. "It was the thought of the reserve energies that had been compacted into them," he said, "that stirred me. The mountains had given them their iron and rich stimulants, the hills had given them their soil, the clouds had given their rain and snow, and a thousand summers and winters had poured forth their treasures about their vast roots."
No young man can hope to do anything above the commonplace who has not made his life a reservoir of power on which he can constantly draw, which will never fail him in any emergency. Be sure that you have stored away, in your power-house, the energy, the knowledge that will be equal to the great occasion when it comes. "If I were twenty, and had but ten years to live," said a great scholar and writer, "I would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the tenth."
"I WILL."
"There are no two words in the English language which stand out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checker-board, to so great an extent as the words 'I will.' There is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and individuality, in the round, ringing tone which characterizes its delivery. It talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression."
As one has well said: "He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to become greater, becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary is the beginning of the end--it precedes death; to live is to achieve, to will without ceasing."
Be thou a hero; let thy might Tramp on eternal snows its way, And through the ebon walls of night, Hew down a passage unto day.
Park Benjamin.
CHAPTER II.
THE RULERS OF DESTINY.
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent, or hinder, or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea-seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? Each well-born soul must win what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
There is always room for a man of force.--Emerson.
The king is the man who can.--Carlyle.
A strong, defiant purpose is many-handed, and lays hold of whatever is near that can serve it; it has a magnetic power that draws to itself whatever is kindred.--T.T. Munger.
What is will-power, looked at in a large way, but energy of character? Energy of will, self-originating force, is the soul of every great character. Where it is, there is life; where it is not, there is faintness, helplessness, and despondency. "Let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you." Men who have left their mark upon the world have been men of great and prompt decision. The achievements of will-power are almost beyond computation. Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open air.
"THE WILLS, THE WON'TS, AND THE CAN'TS."
"There are three kinds of people in the world," says a recent writer, "the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The first accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything."
The shores of fortune, as Foster says, are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith, and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port.
Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out with high hopes, I should say they lacked will-power. They could not half will: and what is a man without a will? He is like an engine without steam. Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
Will has been called the spinal column of personality. "The will in its relation to life," says an English writer, "may be compared at once to the rudder and to the steam engine of a vessel, on the confined and related action of which it depends entirely for the direction of its course and the vigor of its movement."
Strength of will is the test of a young man's possibilities. Can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? It is the iron grip that takes and holds. What chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? The man who would forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of prompt and determined decision.
A TAILOR'S NEEDLE.
It is in one of Ben Jonson's old plays: "When I once take the humor of a thing, I am like your tailor's needle--I go through with it."
This is not different from Richelieu, who said: "When I have once taken a resolution, I go straight to my aim; I overthrow all, I cut down all."
And in business affairs the counsel of Rothschild is to the same effect: "Do without fail that which you determine to do."
Gladstone's children were taught to accomplish to the end whatever they might begin, no matter how insignificant the undertaking might be.
WHAT IS WORSE THAN RASHNESS
It is irresolution that is worse than rashness. "He that shoots," says Feltham, "may sometimes hit the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution is like an ague; it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit."
The man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. But the positive man, the decided man, is a power in the world, and stands for something; you can measure him, and estimate the work that his energy will accomplish.
Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. "Vigilance in watching opportunity," said Phelps, "tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement--these are the martial virtues which must command success." "The best men," remarked Chapin, "are not those who have waited for chances, but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor."
Is it not possible to classify successes and failures by their various degrees of will-power? A man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt him, who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts him, is sure of success.
"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the gold of Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to the wind!"
CONSCIOUS POWER.
"Conscious power," says Mellès, "exists within the mind of every one. Sometimes its existence is unrealized, but it is there. It is there to be developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. It is by an absolute knowledge of yourself, the proper estimate of your own value."
"There is hardly a reader," says an experienced educator, "who will not be able to recall the early life of at least one young man whose childhood was spent in poverty, and who, in boyhood, expressed a firm desire to secure a higher education. If, a little later, that desire became a declared resolve, soon the avenues opened to that end. That desire and resolve created an atmosphere which attracted the forces necessary to the attainment of the purpose. Many of these young men will tell us that, as long as they were hoping and striving and longing, mountains of difficulty rose before them; but that when they fashioned their hopes into fixed purposes aid came unsought to help them on the way."
DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF?
The man without self-reliance and an iron will is the plaything of chance, the puppet of his environment, the slave of circumstances. Are not doubts the greatest of enemies? If you would succeed up to the limit of your possibilities, must you not constantly hold to the belief that you are success-organized, and that you will be successful, no matter what opposes? You are never to allow a shadow of doubt to enter your mind that the Creator intended you to win in life's battle. Regard every suggestion that your life may be a failure, that you are not made like those who succeed, and that success is not for you, as a traitor, and expel it from your mind as you would a thief from your house.
There is something sublime in the youth who possesses the spirit of boldness and fearlessness, who has proper confidence in his ability to do and dare.
The world takes us at our own valuation. It believes in the man who believes in himself, but it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain of himself; who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from others, and is afraid to go ahead on his own account.
It is the man with a positive nature, the man who believes that he is equal to the emergency, who believes he can do the thing he attempts, who wins the confidence of his fellow-man. He is beloved because he is brave and self-sufficient.
Those who have accomplished great things in the world have been, as a rule, bold, aggressive, and self-confident. They dared to step out from the crowd, and act in an original way. They were not afraid to be generals.
There is little room in this crowding, competing age for the timid, vacillating youth. He who would succeed to-day must not only be brave, but must also dare to take chances. He who waits for certainty never wins.
"The law of the soul is eternal endeavor, That bears the man onward and upward forever."
"A man can be too confiding in others, but never too confident in himself."
Never admit defeat or poverty. Stoutly assert your divine right to hold your head up and look the world in the face; step bravely to the front whatever opposes, and the world will make way for you. No one will insist upon your rights while you yourself doubt that you have any. Believe you were made for the place you fill. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. A young man once said to his employer, "Don't give me an easy job. I want to handle heavy boxes, shoulder great loads. I would like to lift a big mountain and throw it into the sea,"--and he stretched out two brawny arms, while his honest eyes danced and his whole being glowed with conscious strength.
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN, English Naturalist.b. Shrewsbury, 1809; d. Down, 1882.
The world in its heart admires the stern, determined doer. "The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going." "It is wonderful how even the apparent casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to assist a design, after having in vain attempted to frustrate it."
"The man who succeeds," says Prentice Mulford, "must always in mind or imagination live, move, think, and act as if he gained that success, or he never will gain it."
"We go forth," said Emerson, "austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on our heels to save our lives. A book, a bust, or only the sound of a name shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe in will. We cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution."
CHAPTER III.
FORCE OF WILL IN CAMP AND FIELD.
Oh, what miracles have been wrought by the self-confidence, the self-determination of an iron will! What impossible deeds have been performed by it! It was this that took Napoleon over the Alps in midwinter; it took Farragut and Dewey past the cannons, torpedoes, and mines of the enemy; it led Nelson and Grant to victory; it has been the great tonic in the world of discovery, invention, and art; it has helped to win the thousand triumphs in war and science which were deemed impossible.
The secret of Jeanne d'Arc's success was not alone in rare decision of character, but in the seeing of visions which inspired her to self-confidence--confidence in her divine mission.
It was an iron will that gave Nelson command of the British fleet, a title, and a statue at Trafalgar Square It was the keynote of his character when he said, "When I don't know whether to fight or not, I always fight."
It was an iron will that was brought into play when Horatius with two companions held ninety thousand Tuscans at bay until the bridge across the Tiber had been destroyed--when Leonidas at Thermopylæ checked the mighty march of Xerxes--when Themistocles off the coast of Greece shattered the Persian's Armada--when Cæsar finding his army hard pressed seized spear and buckler and snatched victory from defeat--when Winkelried gathered to his breast a sheaf of Austrian spears and opened a path for his comrades--when Wellington fought in many climes without ever being conquered--when Ney on a hundred fields changed apparent disaster into brilliant triumph--when Sheridan arrived from Winchester as the Union retreat was becoming a route and turned the tide--when Sherman signaled his men to hold the fort knowing that their leader was coming.
History furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. Prompt decision and whole-souled action sweep the world before them. Who was the organizer of the modern German empire? Was he not the man of iron?
NAPOLEON AND GRANT.
"What would you do if you were besieged in a place entirely destitute of provisions?" asked the examiner, when Napoleon was a cadet.
"If there were anything to eat in the enemy's camp, I should not be concerned."
When Paris was in the hands of a mob, and the authorities were panic-stricken, in came a man who said, "I know a young officer who can quell this mob."
"Send for him." Napoleon was sent for; he came, he subjugated the mob, he subjugated the authorities, he ruled France, then conquered Europe.
May 10, 1796, Napoleon carried the bridge at Lodi, in the face of the Austrian batteries, trained upon the French end of the structure. Behind them were six thousand troops. Napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in front. At the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. The front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. Without a word or a look of reproach, Napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aids and generals rushed to his side. Forward again over heaps of dead that choked the passage, and a quick run counted by seconds only carried the column across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the Austrians taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap. The guns of the enemy were not aimed at the advance. The advance was too quick for the Austrian gunners. So sudden and so miraculous was it all, that the Austrian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly, and their supports fled in a panic instead of rushing to the front and meeting the French onslaught. This Napoleon had counted on in making the bold attack.
What was Napoleon but the thunderbolt of war? He once journeyed from Spain to Paris at seventeen miles an hour in the saddle.
"Is it possible to cross the path?" asked Napoleon of the engineers who had been sent to explore the dreaded pass of St. Bernard.
"Perhaps," was the hesitating reply, "it is within the limits of possibility."
"Forward, then."
Yet Ulysses S. Grant, a young man unknown to fame, with neither money nor influence, with no patrons or friends, in six years fought more battles, gained more victories, captured more prisoners, took more spoils, commanded more men, than Napoleon did in twenty years. "The great thing about him," said Lincoln, "is cool persistence."
"DON'T SWEAR--FIGHT."
When the Spanish fire on San Juan Hill became almost unbearable, some of the Rough Riders began to swear. Colonel Wood, with the wisdom of a good leader, called out, amid the whistle of the Mauser bullets: "Don't swear--fight!"
In a skirmish at Salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot into his regiment, Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a review.
When Pellisier, the Crimean chief of Zouaves, struck an officer with a whip, the man drew a pistol that missed fire. The chief replied: "Fellow, I order you a three days' arrest for not having your arms in better order."
The man of iron will is cool in the hour of danger.
"I HAD TO RUN LIKE A CYCLONE."
This was what Roosevelt said about his pushing on up San Juan Hill ahead of his regiment: "I had to run like a cyclone to stay in front and keep from being run over."
The personal heroism of Hobson, or of Cushing, who blew up the "Albemarle" forty years ago, was but the expression of a magnificent will power. It was this which was the basis of General Wheeler's unparalleled military advancement: a second lieutenant at twenty-three, a colonel at twenty-four, a brigadier-general at twenty-five, a major-general at twenty-six, a corps commander at twenty-seven, and a lieutenant-general at twenty-eight.
General Wheeler had sixteen horses killed under him, and a great number wounded. His saddle equipments and clothes were frequently struck by the missiles of the enemy. He was three times wounded, once painfully. He had thirty-two staff officers, or acting staff officers, killed or wounded. In almost every case they were immediately by his side. No officer was ever more exposed to the missiles of death than Joseph Wheeler.
What is this imperial characteristic of manhood, an iron will, but that which underlies all magnificent achievement, whether by heroes of the "Light Brigade" or the heroic fire-fighters of our great cities?
CHAPTER IV.
WILL POWER IN ITS RELATION TO HEALTH AND DISEASE.
I.
There is no doubt that, as a rule, great decision of character is usually accompanied by great constitutional firmness. Men who have been noted for great firmness of character have usually been strong and robust. As a rule it is the strong physical man who carries weight and conviction. Take, as an example, William the Conqueror, as he is pictured by Green in his history:
"The very spirit of the sea-robbers from whom he sprang seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery. No other knight under heaven, his enemies confessed, was William's peer. No other man could bend William's bow. His mace crashed through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. No other man who ever sat upon the throne of England was this man's match."
Or, take Webster. Sydney Smith said: "Webster is a living lie; because no man on earth can be as great as he looks." Carlyle said of him: "One would incline at sight to back him against the world." His very physique was eloquent. Men yielded their wills to his at sight.
The great prizes of life ever fall to the robust, the stalwart, the strong,--not to a huge muscle or powerful frame necessarily, but to a strong vitality, a great nervous energy. It is the Lord Broughams, working almost continuously one hundred and forty-four hours; it is the Napoleons, twenty hours in the saddle; it is the Franklins, camping out in the open air at seventy; it is the Gladstones, firmly grasping the helm of the ship of state at eighty-four, tramping miles every day, and chopping down huge trees at eighty-five,--who accomplish the great things of life.
To prosper you must improve your brain power; and nothing helps the brain more than a healthy body. The race of to-day is only to be won by those who will study to keep their bodies in such good condition that their minds are able and ready to sustain that high pressure on memory and mind, which our present fierce competition engenders. It is health rather than strength that is now wanted. Health is essentially the requirement of our time to enable us to succeed in life. In all modern occupations--from the nursery to the school, from the school to the shop or world beyond--the brain and nerve strain go on, continuous, augmenting, and intensifying.
As a rule physical vigor is the condition of a great career. Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give in to the cold," he said. For a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military Institute. His doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. He adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. Such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. It is equal to genius itself.
"I can do nothing," said Grant, "without nine hours' sleep."
What else is so grand as to stand on life's threshold, fresh, young, hopeful, with a consciousness of power equal to any emergency,--a master of the situation? The glory of a young man is his strength.
Our great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.
II.
Yet in spite of all this, in defiance of it, we know that an iron will is often triumphant in the contest with physical infirmity.
"Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves: There is a nobleness of mind that heals Wounds beyond salves."
"One day," said a noted rope-walker, "I signed an agreement to wheel a barrow along a rope on a given day. A day or two before I was seized with lumbago. I called in my medical man, and told him I must be cured by a certain day; not only because I should lose what I hoped to earn, but also forfeit a large sum. I got no better, and the doctor forbade my getting up. I told him, 'What do I want with your advice? If you cannot cure me, of what good is your advice?' When I got to the place, there was the doctor protesting I was unfit for the exploit. I went on, though I felt like a frog with my back. I got ready my pole and my barrow, took hold of the handles and wheeled it along the rope as well as I ever did. When I got to the end I wheeled it back again, and when this was done I was a frog again. What made me that I could wheel the barrow? It was my reserve will."
"What does he know," asks the sage, "who has not suffered?" Did not Schiller produce his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture? Handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. Milton writing "Who best can suffer, best can do," wrote at his best when in feeble health, and when poor and blind.
"... Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward."
The Rev. William H. Milburn, who lost his sight when a child, studied for the ministry, and was ordained before he attained his majority. He has written half a dozen books, among them a very careful history of the Mississippi Valley. He has long been chaplain of the lower house of Congress.
Blind Fanny Crosby, of New York, was a teacher of the blind for many years. She has written nearly three thousand hymns, among which are: "Pass Me not, O Gentle Saviour," "Rescue the Perishing," "Saviour More than Life to Me," and "Jesus keep Me near the Cross."
"The truest help we can render one who is afflicted," said Bishop Brooks, "is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear."
What a mighty will Darwin had! He was in continual ill health. He was in constant suffering. His patience was marvellous. No one but his wife knew what he endured. "For forty years," says his son, "he never knew one day of health;" yet during those forty years he unremittingly forced himself to do the work from which the mightiest minds and the strongest constitutions would have shrunk. He had a wonderful power of sticking to a subject. He used almost to apologize for his patience, saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if it were a sign of weakness.
Bulwer advises us to refuse to be ill, never to tell people we are ill, never to own it ourselves. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle. Do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills. We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind.
Is not the mind the natural protector of the body? We cannot believe that the Creator has left the whole human race entirely at the mercy of only about half a dozen specific drugs which always act with certainty. There is a divine remedy placed within us for many of the ills we suffer. If we only knew how to use this power of will and mind to protect ourselves, many of us would be able to carry youth and cheerfulness with us into the teens of our second century. The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. The longest-lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives.
Every physician knows that courageous people, with indomitable will, are not half as likely to contract contagious diseases as the timid, the vacillating, the irresolute. A thoughtful physician once assured a friend that if an express agent were to visit New Orleans in the yellow-fever season, having forty thousand dollars in his care, he would be in little danger of the fever so long as he kept possession of the money. Let him once deliver that into other hands, and the sooner he left the city the better.
Napoleon used to visit the plague hospitals even when the physicians dreaded to go, and actually put his hands upon the plague-stricken patients. He said the man who was not afraid could vanish the plague. A will power like this is a strong tonic to the body. Such a will has taken many men from apparent death-beds, and enabled them to perform wonderful deeds of valor. When told by his physicians that he must die, Douglas Jerrold said: "And leave a family of helpless children? I won't die." He kept his word, and lived for years.
CHAPTER V
THE ROMANCE OF ACHIEVEMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles, and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit! King of two hands he does his part In every useful toil and art: A heritage it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee.
Lowell.
Has not God given every man a capital to start with? Are we not born rich? He is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only God could equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvellous mechanism of his body and mind. It is individual effort that has achieved everything worth achieving.
THE FUN OF THE LITTLE GAME.
A big Australian, six feet four, James Tyson, died not long since, with a property of $25,000,000, who began life as a farm hand. Tyson cared little for money. He used to say of it:
"I shall just leave it behind me when I go. I shall have done with it then, and it will not concern me afterwards. But," he would add, with a characteristic semi-exultant snap of the fingers, "the money is nothing. It was the little game that was the fun."
Being asked, "What was the little game?" he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to him: "Fighting the desert. That has been my work. I have been fighting the desert all my life, and I have won. I have put water where was no water, and beef where was no beef. I have put fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads. Nothing can undo what I have done, and millions will be happier for it after I am long dead and forgotten."
Has not self-help accomplished about all the great things of the world? How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift. But success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price, and it is yours. A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
CONQUERORS OF FORTUNE.
Benjamin Franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree. When he started in the printing business in Philadelphia, he carried his material through the streets on a wheelbarrow. He hired one room for his office, work-room, and sleeping-room. He found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his room. Pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his dinner, he said:
"Unless you can live cheaper than I can, you cannot starve me out."
It was so that he proved the wisdom of Edmund Burke's saying, that "He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill: our antagonist is our helper."
The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore, and hungry, called at a tavern in Concord, N.H., and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and breakfast. Yet he put in work for everything he ever received, and out-matched the poverty of early days.
Gideon Lee could not even get shoes to wear in winter, when a boy, but he went to work barefoot in the snow. He made a bargain with himself to work sixteen hours a day. He fulfilled it to the letter, and when from interruption he lost time, he robbed himself of sleep to make it up. He became a wealthy merchant of New York, mayor of the city, and a member of Congress.
COMMERCIAL COURAGE.
The business affairs of a gentleman named Rouss were once in a complicated condition, owing to his conflicting interests in various states, and he was thrown into prison. While confined he wrote on the walls of his cell:
"I am forty years of age this day. When I am fifty, I shall be worth half a million; and by the time I am sixty, I shall be worth a million dollars."
He lived to accumulate more than three million dollars.
"The ruin which overtakes so many merchants," says Whipple, "is due not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business nerve."
Cyrus W. Field had retired from business with a large fortune when he became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between Europe and America. He plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being. It was an incredibly hard contest: the forests of Newfoundland, the lobby in Congress, the unskilled handling of brakes on his Agamemnon cable, a second and a third breaking of the cable at sea, the cessation of the current in a well-laid cable, the snapping of a superior cable on the Great Eastern--all these availed not to foil the iron will of Field, whose final triumph was that of mental energy in the application of science.
FOUR NEW YORK JOURNALISTS.
To Horace Greeley, the founder of the "Tribune," I need not allude; his story is or ought to be in every school-book.
James Brooks, once the editor and proprietor of the "Daily Express," and later an eminent congressman, began life as a clerk in a store in Maine, and when twenty-one received for his pay a hogshead of New England rum. He was so eager to go to college that he started for Waterville with his trunk on his back, and when he was graduated he was so poor and plucky that he carried his trunk on his back to the station as he went home.
