Self Help
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Samuel Smiles >> Self Help
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Coleridge, in many respects, resembled Constant. He possessed
equally brilliant powers, but was similarly infirm of purpose.
With all his great intellectual gifts, he wanted the gift of
industry, and was averse to continuous labour. He wanted also the
sense of independence, and thought it no degradation to leave his
wife and children to be maintained by the brain-work of the noble
Southey, while he himself retired to Highgate Grove to discourse
transcendentalism to his disciples, looking down contemptuously
upon the honest work going forward beneath him amidst the din and
smoke of London. With remunerative employment at his command he
stooped to accept the charity of friends; and, notwithstanding his
lofty ideas of philosophy, he condescended to humiliations from
which many a day-labourer would have shrunk. How different in
spirit was Southey! labouring not merely at work of his own choice,
and at taskwork often tedious and distasteful, but also
unremittingly and with the utmost eagerness seeking and storing
knowledge purely for the love of it. Every day, every hour had its
allotted employment: engagements to publishers requiring punctual
fulfilment; the current expenses of a large household duty to
provide: for Southey had no crop growing while his pen was idle.
"My ways," he used to say, "are as broad as the king's high-road,
and my means lie in an inkstand."
Robert Nicoll wrote to a friend, after reading the 'Recollections
of Coleridge,' "What a mighty intellect was lost in that man for
want of a little energy--a little determination!" Nicoll himself
was a true and brave spirit, who died young, but not before he had
encountered and overcome great difficulties in life. At his
outset, while carrying on a small business as a bookseller, he
found himself weighed down with a debt of only twenty pounds, which
he said he felt "weighing like a millstone round his neck," and
that, "if he had it paid he never would borrow again from mortal
man." Writing to his mother at the time he said, "Fear not for me,
dear mother, for I feel myself daily growing firmer and more
hopeful in spirit. The more I think and reflect--and thinking, not
reading, is now my occupation--I feel that, whether I be growing
richer or not, I am growing a wiser man, which is far better.
Pain, poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so
affrighten others, I am so bold as to think I could look in the
face without shrinking, without losing respect for myself, faith in
man's high destinies, or trust in God. There is a point which it
costs much mental toil and struggling to gain, but which, when once
gained, a man can look down from, as a traveller from a lofty
mountain, on storms raging below, while he is walking in sunshine.
That I have yet gained this point in life I will not say, but I
feel myself daily nearer to it."
It is not ease, but effort--not facility, but difficulty, that
makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life, in which
difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any
decided measure of success can be achieved. Those difficulties
are, however, our best instructors, as our mistakes often form our
best experience. Charles James Fox was accustomed to say that he
hoped more from a man who failed, and yet went on in spite of his
failure, than from the buoyant career of the successful. "It is
all very well," said he, "to tell me that a young man has
distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on,
or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young
man who has NOT succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on,
and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who
have succeeded at the first trial."
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often
discover what WILL do, by finding out what will not do; and
probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. It
was the failure in the attempt to make a sucking-pump act, when the
working bucket was more than thirty-three feet above the surface of
the water to be raised, that led observant men to study the law of
atmospheric pressure, and opened a new field of research to the
genius of Galileo, Torrecelli, and Boyle. John Hunter used to
remark that the art of surgery would not advance until professional
men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their
successes. Watt the engineer said, of all things most wanted in
mechanical engineering was a history of failures: "We want," he
said, "a book of blots." When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a
dexterously manipulated experiment, he said--"I thank God I was not
made a dexterous manipulator, for the most important of my
discoveries have been suggested to me by failures." Another
distinguished investigator in physical science has left it on
record that, whenever in the course of his researches he
encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he generally found
himself on the brink of some discovery. The very greatest things--
great thoughts, discoveries, inventions--have usually been nurtured
in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length
established with difficulty.
Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the stuff to have
made a good musician if he had only, when a boy, been well flogged;
but that he had been spoilt by the facility with which he produced.
Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to encounter
adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue praise
and too friendly criticism. When Mendelssohn was about to enter
the orchestra at Birmingham, on the first performance of his
'Elijah,' he said laughingly to one of his friends and critics,
"Stick your claws into me! Don't tell me what you like, but what
you don't like!"
It has been said, and truly, that it is the defeat that tries the
general more than the victory. Washington lost more battles than
he gained; but he succeeded in the end. The Romans, in their most
victorious campaigns, almost invariably began with defeats. Moreau
used to be compared by his companions to a drum, which nobody hears
of except it be beaten. Wellington's military genius was perfected
by encounter with difficulties of apparently the most overwhelming
character, but which only served to nerve his resolution, and bring
out more prominently his great qualities as a man and a general.
So the skilful mariner obtains his best experience amidst storms
and tempests, which train him to self-reliance, courage, and the
highest discipline; and we probably own to rough seas and wintry
nights the best training of our race of British seamen, who are,
certainly, not surpassed by any in the world.
Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found
the best. Though the ordeal of adversity is one from which we
naturally shrink, yet, when it comes, we must bravely and manfully
encounter it. Burns says truly,
"Though losses and crosses
Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there, you'll get there,
You'll find no other where."
"Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity." They reveal to us our
powers, and call forth our energies. If there be real worth in the
character, like sweet herbs, it will give forth its finest
fragrance when pressed. "Crosses," says the old proverb, "are the
ladders that lead to heaven." "What is even poverty itself," asks
Richter, "that a man should murmur under it? It is but as the pain
of piercing a maiden's ear, and you hang precious jewels in the
wound." In the experience of life it is found that the wholesome
discipline of adversity in strong natures usually carries with it a
self-preserving influence. Many are found capable of bravely
bearing up under privations, and cheerfully encountering
obstructions, who are afterwards found unable to withstand the more
dangerous influences of prosperity. It is only a weak man whom the
wind deprives of his cloak: a man of average strength is more in
danger of losing it when assailed by the beams of a too genial sun.
Thus it often needs a higher discipline and a stronger character to
bear up under good fortune than under adverse. Some generous
natures kindle and warm with prosperity, but there are many on whom
wealth has no such influence. Base hearts it only hardens, making
those who were mean and servile, mean and proud. But while
prosperity is apt to harden the heart to pride, adversity in a man
of resolution will serve to ripen it into fortitude. To use the
words of Burke, "Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by
the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and instructor, who
knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our
skill: our antagonist is thus our helper." Without the necessity
of encountering difficulty, life might be easier, but men would be
worth less. For trials, wisely improved, train the character, and
teach self-help; thus hardship itself may often prove the
wholesomest discipline for us, though we recognise it not. When
the gallant young Hodson, unjustly removed from his Indian command,
felt himself sore pressed down by unmerited calumny and reproach,
he yet preserved the courage to say to a friend, "I strive to look
the worst boldly in the face, as I would an enemy in the field, and
to do my appointed work resolutely and to the best of my ability,
satisfied that there is a reason for all; and that even irksome
duties well done bring their own reward, and that, if not, still
they ARE duties."
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill; and to win it
without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour. If there
were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were
nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a
wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour. All experience
of life indeed serves to prove that the impediments thrown in the
way of human advancement may for the most part be overcome by
steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance, and above
all by a determined resolution to surmount difficulties, and stand
up manfully against misfortune.
The school of Difficulty is the best school of moral discipline,
for nations as for individuals. Indeed, the history of difficulty
would be but a history of all the great and good things that have
yet been accomplished by men. It is hard to say how much northern
nations owe to their encounter with a comparatively rude and
changeable climate and an originally sterile soil, which is one of
the necessities of their condition,--involving a perennial struggle
with difficulties such as the natives of sunnier climes know
nothing of. And thus it may be, that though our finest products
are exotic, the skill and industry which have been necessary to
rear them, have issued in the production of a native growth of men
not surpassed on the globe.
Wherever there is difficulty, the individual man must come out for
better for worse. Encounter with it will train his strength, and
discipline his skill; heartening him for future effort, as the
racer, by being trained to run against the hill, at length courses
with facility. The road to success may be steep to climb, and it
puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.
But by experience a man soon learns that obstacles are to be
overcome by grappling with them,--that the nettle feels as soft as
silk when it is boldly grasped,--and that the most effective help
towards realizing the object proposed is the moral conviction that
we can and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties often fall away
of themselves before the determination to overcome them.
Much will be done if we do but try. Nobody knows what he can do
till he has tried; and few try their best till they have been
forced to do it. "IF I could do such and such a thing," sighs the
desponding youth. But nothing will be done if he only wishes. The
desire must ripen into purpose and effort; and one energetic
attempt is worth a thousand aspirations. It is these thorny "ifs"-
-the mutterings of impotence and despair--which so often hedge
round the field of possibility, and prevent anything being done or
even attempted. "A difficulty," said Lord Lyndhurst, "is a thing
to be overcome;" grapple with it at once; facility will come with
practice, and strength and fortitude with repeated effort. Thus
the mind and character may be trained to an almost perfect
discipline, and enabled to act with a grace, spirit, and liberty,
almost incomprehensible to those who have not passed through a
similar experience.
Everything that we learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the
mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things which may at
first sight appear comparatively valueless in education--such as
the study of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and
surfaces which we call mathematics--are really of the greatest
practical value, not so much because of the information which they
yield, as because of the development which they compel. The
mastery of these studies evokes effort, and cultivates powers of
application, which otherwise might have lain dormant, Thus one
thing leads to another, and so the work goes on through life--
encounter with difficulty ending only when life and culture end.
But indulging in the feeling of discouragement never helped any one
over a difficulty, and never will. D'Alembert's advice to the
student who complained to him about his want of success in
mastering the first elements of mathematics was the right one--"Go
on, sir, and faith and strength will come to you."
The danseuse who turns a pirouette, the violinist who plays a
sonata, have acquired their dexterity by patient repetition and
after many failures. Carissimi, when praised for the ease and
grace of his melodies, exclaimed, "Ah! you little know with what
difficulty this ease has been acquired." Sir Joshua Reynolds, when
once asked how long it had taken him to paint a certain picture,
replied, "All my life." Henry Clay, the American orator, when
giving advice to young men, thus described to them the secret of
his success in the cultivation of his art: "I owe my success in
life," said he, "chiefly to one circumstance--that at the age of
twenty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the process of
daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or
scientific book. These off-hand efforts were made, sometimes in a
cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some
distant barn, with the horse and the ox for my auditors. It is to
this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for
the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me onward and have
shaped and moulded my whole subsequent destiny."
Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong defect in his
articulation, and at school he was known as "stuttering Jack
Curran." While he was engaged in the study of the law, and still
struggling to overcome his defect, he was stung into eloquence by
the sarcasms of a member of a debating club, who characterised him
as "Orator Mum;" for, like Cowper, when he stood up to speak on a
previous occasion, Curran had not been able to utter a word. The
taunt stung him and he replied in a triumphant speech. This
accidental discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged
him to proceed in his studies with renewed energy. He corrected
his enunciation by reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly, the
best passages in literature, for several hours every day, studying
his features before a mirror, and adopting a method of
gesticulation suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful figure.
He also proposed cases to himself, which he argued with as much
care as if he had been addressing a jury. Curran began business
with the qualification which Lord Eldon stated to be the first
requisite for distinction, that is, "to be not worth a shilling."
While working his way laboriously at the bar, still oppressed by
the diffidence which had overcome him in his debating club, he was
on one occasion provoked by the Judge (Robinson) into making a very
severe retort. In the case under discussion, Curran observed "that
he had never met the law as laid down by his lordship in any book
in his library." "That may be, sir," said the judge, in a
contemptuous tone, "but I suspect that YOUR library is very small."
His lordship was notoriously a furious political partisan, the
author of several anonymous pamphlets characterised by unusual
violence and dogmatism. Curran, roused by the allusion to his
straitened circumstances, replied thus; "It is very true, my lord,
that I am poor, and the circumstance has certainly curtailed my
library; my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope
they have been perused with proper dispositions. I have prepared
myself for this high profession by the study of a few good works,
rather than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not
ashamed of my poverty; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could
I have stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I
rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest; and should I ever
cease to be so, many an example shows me that an ill-gained
elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me
the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible."
The extremest poverty has been no obstacle in the way of men
devoted to the duty of self-culture. Professor Alexander Murray,
the linguist, learnt to write by scribbling his letters on an old
wool-card with the end of a burnt heather stem. The only book
which his father, who was a poor shepherd, possessed, was a penny
Shorter Catechism; but that, being thought too valuable for common
use, was carefully preserved in a cupboard for the Sunday
catechisings. Professor Moor, when a young man, being too poor to
purchase Newton's 'Principia,' borrowed the book, and copied the
whole of it with his own hand. Many poor students, while labouring
daily for their living, have only been able to snatch an atom of
knowledge here and there at intervals, as birds do their food in
winter time when the fields are covered with snow. They have
struggled on, and faith and hope have come to them. A well-known
author and publisher, William Chambers, of Edinburgh, speaking
before an assemblage of young men in that city, thus briefly
described to them his humble beginnings, for their encouragement:
"I stand before you," he said, "a self-educated man. My education
was that which is supplied at the humble parish schools of
Scotland; and it was only when I went to Edinburgh, a poor boy,
that I devoted my evenings, after the labours of the day, to the
cultivation of that intellect which the Almighty has given me.
From seven or eight in the morning till nine or ten at night was I
at my business as a bookseller's apprentice, and it was only during
hours after these, stolen from sleep, that I could devote myself to
study. I did not read novels: my attention was devoted to
physical science, and other useful matters. I also taught myself
French. I look back to those times with great pleasure, and am
almost sorry I have not to go through the same experience again;
for I reaped more pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket,
studying in a garret in Edinburgh, then I now find when sitting
amidst all the elegancies and comforts of a parlour."
William Cobbett's account of how he learnt English Grammar is full
of interest and instruction for all students labouring under
difficulties. "I learned grammar," said he, "when I was a private
soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or
that of my guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my
book-case; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table; and
the task did not demand anything like a year of my life. I had no
money to purchase candle or oil; in winter time it was rarely that
I could get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my
turn even of that. And if I, under such circumstances, and without
parent or friend to advise or encourage me, accomplished this
undertaking, what excuse can there be for any youth, however poor,
however pressed with business, or however circumstanced as to room
or other conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of
half-starvation: I had no moment of time that I could call my own;
and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing,
singing, whistling, and brawling of at least half a score of the
most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their
freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farthing that I
had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper! That farthing
was, alas! a great sum to me! I was as tall as I am now; I had
great health and great exercise. The whole of the money, not
expended for us at market, was two-pence a week for each man. I
remember, and well I may! that on one occasion I, after all
necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shifts to have a
halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a
redherring in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes at
night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found
that I had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable
sheet and rug, and cried like a child! And again I say, if, I,
under circumstances like these, could encounter and overcome this
task, is there, can there be, in the whole world, a youth to find
an excuse for the non-performance?"
We have been informed of an equally striking instance of
perseverance and application in learning on the part of a French
political exile in London. His original occupation was that of a
stonemason, at which he found employment for some time; but work
becoming slack, he lost his place, and poverty stared him in the
face. In his dilemma he called upon a fellow exile profitably
engaged in teaching French, and consulted him what he ought to do
to earn a living. The answer was, "Become a professor!" "A
professor?" answered the mason--"I, who am only a workman, speaking
but a patois! Surely you are jesting?" "On the contrary, I am
quite serious," said the other, "and again I advise you--become a
professor; place yourself under me, and I will undertake to teach
you how to teach others." "No, no!" replied the mason, "it is
impossible; I am too old to learn; I am too little of a scholar; I
cannot be a professor." He went away, and again he tried to obtain
employment at his trade. From London he went into the provinces,
and travelled several hundred miles in vain; he could not find a
master. Returning to London, he went direct to his former adviser,
and said, "I have tried everywhere for work, and failed; I will now
try to be a professor!" He immediately placed himself under
instruction; and being a man of close application, of quick
apprehension, and vigorous intelligence, he speedily mastered the
elements of grammar, the rules of construction and composition, and
(what he had still in a great measure to learn) the correct
pronunciation of classical French. When his friend and instructor
thought him sufficiently competent to undertake the teaching of
others, an appointment, advertised as vacant, was applied for and
obtained; and behold our artisan at length become professor! It so
happened, that the seminary to which he was appointed was situated
in a suburb of London where he had formerly worked as a stonemason;
and every morning the first thing which met his eyes on looking out
of his dressing-room window was a stack of cottage chimneys which
he had himself built! He feared for a time lest he should be
recognised in the village as the quondam workman, and thus bring
discredit on his seminary, which was of high standing. But he need
have been under no such apprehension, as he proved a most efficient
teacher, and his pupils were on more than one occasion publicly
complimented for their knowledge of French. Meanwhile, he secured
the respect and friendship of all who knew him--fellow-professors
as well as pupils; and when the story of his struggles, his
difficulties, and his past history, became known to them, they
admired him more than ever.
Sir Samuel Romilly was not less indefatigable as a self-cultivator.
The son of a jeweller, descended from a French refugee, he received
little education in his early years, but overcame all his
disadvantages by unwearied application, and by efforts constantly
directed towards the same end. "I determined," he says, in his
autobiography, "when I was between fifteen and sixteen years of
age, to apply myself seriously to learning Latin, of which I, at
that time, knew little more than some of the most familiar rules of
grammar. In the course of three or four years, during which I thus
applied myself, I had read almost every prose writer of the age of
pure Latinity, except those who have treated merely of technical
subjects, such as Varro, Columella, and Celsus. I had gone three
times through the whole of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. I had
studied the most celebrated orations of Cicero, and translated a
great deal of Homer. Terence, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal, I
had read over and over again." He also studied geography, natural
history, and natural philosophy, and obtained a considerable
acquaintance with general knowledge. At sixteen he was articled to
a clerk in Chancery; worked hard; was admitted to the bar; and his
industry and perseverance ensured success. He became Solicitor-
General under the Fox administration in 1806, and steadily worked
his way to the highest celebrity in his profession. Yet he was
always haunted by a painful and almost oppressive sense of his own
disqualifications, and never ceased labouring to remedy them. His
autobiography is a lesson of instructive facts, worth volumes of
sentiment, and well deserves a careful perusal.
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