Self Help

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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
colours. "I mix them with my brains, sir," was his reply. It is
the same with every workman who would excel. Ferguson made
marvellous things--such as his wooden clock, that accurately
measured the hours--by means of a common penknife, a tool in
everybody's hand; but then everybody is not a Ferguson. A pan of
water and two thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black
discovered latent heat; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of
pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light and
the origin of colours. An eminent foreign savant once called upon
Dr. Wollaston, and requested to be shown over his laboratories in
which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries,
when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an
old tea-tray on the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test
papers, a small balance, and a blowpipe, said, "There is all the
laboratory that I have!"

Stothard learnt the art of combining colours by closely studying
butterflies' wings: he would often say that no one knew what he
owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served
Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. Bewick first practised
drawing on the cottage walls of his native village, which he
covered with his sketches in chalk; and Benjamin West made his
first brushes out of the cat's tail. Ferguson laid himself down in
the fields at night in a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly
bodies by means of a thread with small beads on it stretched
between his eye and the stars. Franklin first robbed the
thundercloud of its lightning by means of a kite made with two
cross sticks and a silk handkerchief. Watt made his first model of
the condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist's syringe, used
to inject the arteries previous to dissection. Gifford worked his
first problems in mathematics, when a cobbler's apprentice, upon
small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose;
whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on
his plough handle.

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with opportunities
or suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt to take
advantage of them. Professor Lee was attracted to the study of
Hebrew by finding a Bible in that tongue in a synagogue, while
working as a common carpenter at the repairs of the benches. He
became possessed with a desire to read the book in the original,
and, buying a cheap second-hand copy of a Hebrew grammar, he set to
work and learnt the language for himself. As Edmund Stone said to
the Duke of Argyle, in answer to his grace's inquiry how he, a poor
gardener's boy, had contrived to be able to read Newton's Principia
in Latin, "One needs only to know the twenty-four letters of the
alphabet in order to learn everything else that one wishes."
Application and perseverance, and the diligent improvement of
opportunities, will do the rest.

Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improvement in every
pursuit, and turned even accidents to account. Thus it was in the
discharge of his functions as a writer's apprentice that he first
visited the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the
surviving heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation of a
large class of his works. Later in life, when employed as
quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, he was accidentally
disabled by the kick of a horse, and confined for some time to his
house; but Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith
set his mind to work. In three days he had composed the first
canto of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which he shortly after
finished,--his first great original work.

The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so many gases,
was accidentally drawn to the subject of chemistry through his
living in the neighbourhood of a brewery. When visiting the place
one day, he noted the peculiar appearances attending the extinction
of lighted chips in the gas floating over the fermented liquor. He
was forty years old at the time, and knew nothing of chemistry. He
consulted books to ascertain the cause, but they told him little,
for as yet nothing was known on the subject. Then he began to
experiment, with some rude apparatus of his own contrivance. The
curious results of his first experiments led to others, which in
his hands shortly became the science of pneumatic chemistry. About
the same time, Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction
in a remote Swedish village; and he discovered several new gases,
with no more effective apparatus at his command than a few
apothecaries' phials and pigs' bladders.

Sir Humphry Davy, when an apothecary's apprentice, performed his
first experiments with instruments of the rudest description. He
extemporised the greater part of them himself, out of the motley
materials which chance threw in his way,--the pots and pans of the
kitchen, and the phials and vessels of his master's surgery. It
happened that a French ship was wrecked off the Land's End, and the
surgeon escaped, bearing with him his case of instruments, amongst
which was an old-fashioned glyster apparatus; this article he
presented to Davy, with whom he had become acquainted. The
apothecary's apprentice received it with great exultation, and
forthwith employed it as a part of a pneumatic apparatus which he
contrived, afterwards using it to perform the duties of an air-pump
in one of his experiments on the nature and sources of heat.

In like manner Professor Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy's scientific
successor, made his first experiments in electricity by means of an
old bottle, white he was still a working bookbinder. And it is a
curious fact that Faraday was first attracted to the study of
chemistry by hearing one of Sir Humphry Davy's lectures on the
subject at the Royal Institution. A gentleman, who was a member,
calling one day at the shop where Faraday was employed in binding
books, found him poring over the article "Electricity" in an
Encyclopaedia placed in his hands to bind. The gentleman, having
made inquiries, found that the young bookbinder was curious about
such subjects, and gave him an order of admission to the Royal
Institution, where he attended a course of four lectures delivered
by Sir Humphry. He took notes of them, which he showed to the
lecturer, who acknowledged their scientific accuracy, and was
surprised when informed of the humble position of the reporter.
Faraday then expressed his desire to devote himself to the
prosecution of chemical studies, from which Sir Humphry at first
endeavoured to dissuade him: but the young man persisting, he was
at length taken into the Royal Institution as an assistant; and
eventually the mantle of the brilliant apothecary's boy fell upon
the worthy shoulders of the equally brilliant bookbinder's
apprentice.

The words which Davy entered in his note-book, when about twenty
years of age, working in Dr. Beddoes' laboratory at Bristol, were
eminently characteristic of him: "I have neither riches, nor
power, nor birth to recommend me; yet if I live, I trust I shall
not be of less service to mankind and my friends, than if I had
been born with all these advantages." Davy possessed the
capability, as Faraday does, of devoting the whole power of his
mind to the practical and experimental investigation of a subject
in all its bearings; and such a mind will rarely fail, by dint of
mere industry and patient thinking, in producing results of the
highest order. Coleridge said of Davy, "There is an energy and
elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on and analyze
all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences.
Every subject in Davy's mind has the principle of vitality. Living
thoughts spring up like turf under his feet." Davy, on his part,
said of Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired, "With the
most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and
enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want of order,
precision, and regularity."

The great Cuvier was a singularly accurate, careful, and
industrious observer. When a boy, he was attracted to the subject
of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon which
accidentally fell in his way. He at once proceeded to copy the
drawings, and to colour them after the descriptions given in the
text. While still at school, one of his teachers made him a
present of 'Linnaeus's System of Nature;' and for more than ten
years this constituted his library of natural history. At eighteen
he was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near
Fecamp, in Normandy. Living close to the sea-shore, he was brought
face to face with the wonders of marine life. Strolling along the
sands one day, he observed a stranded cuttlefish. He was attracted
by the curious object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the
study of the molluscae, in the pursuit of which he achieved so
distinguished a reputation. He had no books to refer to, excepting
only the great book of Nature which lay open before him. The study
of the novel and interesting objects which it daily presented to
his eyes made a much deeper impression on his mind than any written
or engraved descriptions could possibly have done. Three years
thus passed, during which he compared the living species of marine
animals with the fossil remains found in the neighbourhood,
dissected the specimens of marine life that came under his notice,
and, by careful observation, prepared the way for a complete reform
in the classification of the animal kingdom. About this time
Cuvier became known to the learned Abbe Teissier, who wrote to
Jussieu and other friends in Paris on the subject of the young
naturalist's inquiries, in terms of such high commendation, that
Cuvier was requested to send some of his papers to the Society of
Natural History; and he was shortly after appointed assistant-
superintendent at the Jardin des Plantes. In the letter written by
Teissier to Jussieu, introducing the young naturalist to his
notice, he said, "You remember that it was I who gave Delambre to
the Academy in another branch of science: this also will be a
Delambre." We need scarcely add that the prediction of Teissier
was more than fulfilled.

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world so much as
purpose and persistent industry. To the feeble, the sluggish and
purposeless, the happiest accidents avail nothing,--they pass them
by, seeing no meaning in them. But it is astonishing how much can
be accomplished if we are prompt to seize and improve the
opportunities for action and effort which are constantly presenting
themselves. Watt taught himself chemistry and mechanics while
working at his trade of a mathematical-instrument maker, at the
same time that he was learning German from a Swiss dyer.
Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration while working
as an engineman during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a
few moments in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he
worked his sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery
waggons. Dalton's industry was the habit of his life. He began
from his boyhood, for he taught a little village-school when he was
only about twelve years old,--keeping the school in winter, and
working upon his father's farm in summer. He would sometimes urge
himself and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, though
bred a Quaker; and on one occasion, by his satisfactory solution of
a problem, he won as much as enabled him to buy a winter's store of
candles. He continued his meteorological observations until a day
or two before he died,--having made and recorded upwards of 200,000
in the course of his life.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up
into results of the greatest value. An hour in every day withdrawn
from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable a
person of ordinary capacity to go far towards mastering a science.
It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ten
years. Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits,
in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good
principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. Mason
Good translated Lucretius while riding in his carriage in the
streets of London, going the round of his patients. Dr. Darwin
composed nearly all his works in the same way while driving about
in his "sulky" from house to house in the country,--writing down
his thoughts on little scraps of paper, which he carried about with
him for the purpose. Hale wrote his 'Contemplations' while
travelling on circuit. Dr. Burney learnt French and Italian while
travelling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the
course of his profession. Kirke White learnt Greek while walking
to and from a lawyer's office; and we personally know a man of
eminent position who learnt Latin and French while going messages
as an errand-boy in the streets of Manchester.

Daguesseau, one of the great Chancellors of France, by carefully
working up his odd bits of time, wrote a bulky and able volume in
the successive intervals of waiting for dinner, and Madame de
Genlis composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for
the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Elihu Burritt
attributed his first success in self-improvement, not to genius,
which he disclaimed, but simply to the careful employment of those
invaluable fragments of time, called "odd moments." While working
and earning his living as a blacksmith, he mastered some eighteen
ancient and modern languages, and twenty-two European dialects.

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on
the dial at All Souls, Oxford--"Pereunt et imputantur"--the hours
perish, and are laid to our charge. Time is the only little
fragment of Eternity that belongs to man; and, like life, it can
never be recalled. "In the dissipation of worldly treasure," says
Jackson of Exeter, "the frugality of the future may balance the
extravagance of the past; but who can say, 'I will take from
minutes to-morrow to compensate for those I have lost to-day'?"
Melancthon noted down the time lost by him, that he might thereby
reanimate his industry, and not lose an hour. An Italian scholar
put over his door an inscription intimating that whosoever remained
there should join in his labours. "We are afraid," said some
visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time." "To be sure
you do," replied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the
estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers,
formed that rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they have
left to their successors.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their
undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery
they regarded as the price of success. Addison amassed as much as
three folios of manuscript materials before he began his
'Spectator.' Newton wrote his 'Chronology' fifteen times over
before he was satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his 'Memoir'
nine times. Hale studied for many years at the rate of sixteen
hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law, he would
recreate himself with philosophy and the study of the mathematics.
Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while preparing his 'History of
England.' Montesquieu, speaking of one part of his writings, said
to a friend, "You will read it in a few hours; but I assure you it
has cost me so much labour that it has whitened my hair."

The practice of writing down thoughts and facts for the purpose of
holding them fast and preventing their escape into the dim region
of forgetfulness, has been much resorted to by thoughtful and
studious men. Lord Bacon left behind him many manuscripts entitled
"Sudden thoughts set down for use." Erskine made great extracts
from Burke; and Eldon copied Coke upon Littleton twice over with
his own hand, so that the book became, as it were, part of his own
mind. The late Dr. Pye Smith, when apprenticed to his father as a
bookbinder, was accustomed to make copious memoranda of all the
books he read, with extracts and criticisms. This indomitable
industry in collecting materials distinguished him through life,
his biographer describing him as "always at work, always in
advance, always accumulating." These note-books afterwards proved,
like Richter's "quarries," the great storehouse from which he drew
his illustrations.

The same practice characterized the eminent John Hunter, who
adopted it for the purpose of supplying the defects of memory; and
he was accustomed thus to illustrate the advantages which one
derives from putting one's thoughts in writing: "It resembles," he
said, "a tradesman taking stock, without which he never knows
either what he possesses or in what he is deficient." John Hunter-
-whose observation was so keen that Abernethy was accustomed to
speak of him as "the Argus-eyed"--furnished an illustrious example
of the power of patient industry. He received little or no
education till he was about twenty years of age, and it was with
difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and writing. He
worked for some years as a common carpenter at Glasgow, after which
he joined his brother William, who had settled in London as a
lecturer and anatomical demonstrator. John entered his dissecting-
room as an assistant, but soon shot ahead of his brother, partly by
virtue of his great natural ability, but mainly by reason of his
patient application and indefatigable industry. He was one of the
first in this country to devote himself assiduously to the study of
comparative anatomy, and the objects he dissected and collected
took the eminent Professor Owen no less than ten years to arrange.
The collection contains some twenty thousand specimens, and is the
most precious treasure of the kind that has ever been accumulated
by the industry of one man. Hunter used to spend every morning
from sunrise until eight o'clock in his museum; and throughout the
day he carried on his extensive private practice, performed his
laborious duties as surgeon to St. George's Hospital and deputy
surgeon-general to the army; delivered lectures to students, and
superintended a school of practical anatomy at his own house;
finding leisure, amidst all, for elaborate experiments on the
animal economy, and the composition of various works of great
scientific importance. To find time for this gigantic amount of
work, he allowed himself only four hours of sleep at night, and an
hour after dinner. When once asked what method he had adopted to
insure success in his undertakings, he replied, "My rule is,
deliberately to consider, before I commence, whether the thing be
practicable. If it be not practicable, I do not attempt it. If it
be practicable, I can accomplish it if I give sufficient pains to
it; and having begun, I never stop till the thing is done. To this
rule I owe all my success."

Hunter occupied a great deal of his time in collecting definite
facts respecting matters which, before his day, were regarded as
exceedingly trivial. Thus it was supposed by many of his
contemporaries that he was only wasting his time and thought in
studying so carefully as he did the growth of a deer's horn. But
Hunter was impressed with the conviction that no accurate knowledge
of scientific facts is without its value. By the study referred
to, he learnt how arteries accommodate themselves to circumstances,
and enlarge as occasion requires; and the knowledge thus acquired
emboldened him, in a case of aneurism in a branch artery, to tie
the main trunk where no surgeon before him had dared to tie it, and
the life of his patient was saved. Like many original men, he
worked for a long time as it were underground, digging and laying
foundations. He was a solitary and self-reliant genius, holding on
his course without the solace of sympathy or approbation,--for but
few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his
pursuits. But like all true workers, he did not fail in securing
his best reward--that which depends less upon others than upon
one's self--the approval of conscience, which in a right-minded man
invariably follows the honest and energetic performance of duty.

Ambrose Pare, the great French surgeon, was another illustrious
instance of close observation, patient application, and
indefatigable perseverance. He was the son of a barber at Laval,
in Maine, where he was born in 1509. His parents were too poor to
send him to school, but they placed him as foot-boy with the cure
of the village, hoping that under that learned man he might pick up
an education for himself. But the cure kept him so busily employed
in grooming his mule and in other menial offices that the boy found
no time for learning. While in his service, it happened that the
celebrated lithotomist, Cotot, came to Laval to operate on one of
the cure's ecclesiastical brethren. Pare was present at the
operation, and was so much interested by it that he is said to have
from that time formed the determination of devoting himself to the
art of surgery.

Leaving the cure's household service, Pare apprenticed himself to a
barber-surgeon named Vialot, under whom he learnt to let blood,
draw teeth, and perform the minor operations. After four years'
experience of this kind, he went to Paris to study at the school of
anatomy and surgery, meanwhile maintaining himself by his trade of
a barber. He afterwards succeeded in obtaining an appointment as
assistant at the Hotel Dieu, where his conduct was so exemplary,
and his progress so marked, that the chief surgeon, Goupil,
entrusted him with the charge of the patients whom he could not
himself attend to. After the usual course of instruction, Pare was
admitted a master barber-surgeon, and shortly after was appointed
to a charge with the French army under Montmorenci in Piedmont.
Pare was not a man to follow in the ordinary ruts of his
profession, but brought the resources of an ardent and original
mind to bear upon his daily work, diligently thinking out for
himself the rationale of diseases and their befitting remedies.
Before his time the wounded suffered much more at the hands of
their surgeons than they did at those of their enemies. To stop
bleeding from gunshot wounds, the barbarous expedient was resorted
to of dressing them with boiling oil. Haemorrhage was also stopped
by searing the wounds with a red-hot iron; and when amputation was
necessary, it was performed with a red-hot knife. At first Pare
treated wounds according to the approved methods; but, fortunately,
on one occasion, running short of boiling oil, he substituted a
mild and emollient application. He was in great fear all night
lest he should have done wrong in adopting this treatment; but was
greatly relieved next morning on finding his patients comparatively
comfortable, while those whose wounds had been treated in the usual
way were writhing in torment. Such was the casual origin of one of
Pare's greatest improvements in the treatment of gun-shot wounds;
and he proceeded to adopt the emollient treatment in all future
cases. Another still more important improvement was his employment
of the ligature in tying arteries to stop haemorrhage, instead of
the actual cautery. Pare, however, met with the usual fate of
innovators and reformers. His practice was denounced by his
surgical brethren as dangerous, unprofessional, and empirical; and
the older surgeons banded themselves together to resist its
adoption. They reproached him for his want of education, more
especially for his ignorance of Latin and Greek; and they assailed
him with quotations from ancient writers, which he was unable
either to verify or refute. But the best answer to his assailants
was the success of his practice. The wounded soldiers called out
everywhere for Pare, and he was always at their service: he tended
them carefully and affectionately; and he usually took leave of
them with the words, "I have dressed you; may God cure you."

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