Part 9 (2/2)
”We do not mean to imply that chronic indolence, if relieved occasionally by spasmodic fits of industry, is to be recommended. Men who have this character run into the opposite extreme of that which we have been stigmatizing, and fail as invariably of securing success in life. To call their occasional periods of application energy, would be a sad misnomer. Such persons, indeed, are but civilized savages, so to speak; vagabonds at heart in their secret hatred of work, and only resorting to labor occasionally, like the wild Indian who, after lying for weeks about his hut, is roused by sheer hunger to start on a hunting excursion. Real energy is persevering, steady, disciplined. It never either loses sight of the object to be accomplished, or intermits its exertions while there is a possibility of success. Napoleon on the plains of Champagne, sometimes fighting two battles in one day, first defeating the Russians and then turning on the Austrians, is an ill.u.s.tration of this energy. The Duke of Brunswick, idling away precious time when he invaded France at the outbreak of the first Revolution, is an example of the contrary.
Activity beats about a cover like an untrained dog, never lighting on the covey. Energy goes straight to the bird at once and captures it.”
CHAPTER XVII
SUCCESS BUT SELDOM ACCIDENTAL.
A man may leap into sudden fortune at a bound, and without effort or foresight, but it is doubtful if any great permanent success ever was the outcome of blind chance.
The old adage, ”Trust to luck,” like many other adages that time has kept in unmerited circulation, is a bad one. The man who trusts to luck for his clothing is apt to wear rags, and he who depends on it for food is sure to go hungry.
We hear a great deal about the wonderful things that have been done by chance, but we seldom take the time to examine them. We read that sir Isaac Newton, sitting in his garden one day, ”Chanced to see an apple fall to the ground,” and this set him to thinking, and he discovered the laws of gravitation. New, ever since the first apple fell from the first tree in Eden, men have been watching that very commonplace occurrence. We might extend the field so as to embrace oranges, coconuts and all the fruits and nuts which, in every land and through all the long centuries of man's existence, have been falling to the ground--not by chance, however, yet they set no men to thinking, simply because not one of the millions of men who ”chanced”
to see the incident, ”chanced” to have the reasoning powers of the great English scientist. If the apple, instead of falling to the ground, had shot up, without visible cause, to the sky, then the dullest observer would have wondered, even if he did not attempt to find an explanation. The falling of the apple in Newton's garden was not a chance, but an ordinary incident, which was made much of in the mind of an extraordinary man.
Watt ”chanced” to see the lid of the kettle in his mother's kitchen lifted by the steam within, and this incident we are asked to believe was the origin of the engine invented by that great man. If no one else had ever witnessed a like phenomenon, then we might give some consideration to the element of chance. It was in the brain of Watt, and not in the lifting of the kettle lid, that the steam engine was born. There are no accidents in the progress of science.
In the same way, we are asked to believe that Galileo discovered the telescope, Whitney the cotton gin, and Howe the sewing machine.
But there have been some curious cases of chance fortune. A man out hunting in California made a mis-step and was plunged into a deep gulch in the Sierra Nevada. His gun was broken and he was sorely bruised, but he was more that repaid for the accident by the discovery of a rich gold mine at the bottom.
What would you think of the man, who, because of this, should shoulder a gun and go into the mountains, hoping to be precipitated into a gulch full of gold. If he started out for this purpose, of course, the element of chance would be eliminated, and yet that man would show just as much good sense as do the thousands who go through life--trusting to luck, and hoping for a miracle that never comes.
Success may be unforeseen, but it is a rare thing for it to come to the man who has not been preparing for it.
Lord Bacon well says: ”Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand.”
The Romans had a saying which is as true to-day as when first uttered: ”Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.”
Accident does very little toward the production of any great result in life. Though sometimes what is called ”a happy hit” may 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 everyone 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 labor 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 to a statue since a 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 Nicolas 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 brilliantly colored soap-bubbles blown through 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.o.bservant 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 would 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 replenis.h.i.+ng 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 labor, 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 Na.s.sau 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 pa.s.sive listener.
While Captain (afterward 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 sh.e.l.l 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 Isambard Brunel took his first lessons in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny s.h.i.+pworm: 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+p, enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to a.s.sure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off.
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 acc.u.mulation 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 probably that but few of our mechanical inventions would have seen the light.
When Franklin made his discovery of the ident.i.ty 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.
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