Self Help
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Samuel Smiles >> Self Help
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Dalton, the chemist, repudiated the notion of his being "a genius,"
attributing everything which he had accomplished to simple industry
and accumulation. John Hunter said of himself, "My mind is like a
beehive; but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, it is
yet full of order and regularity, and food collected with incessant
industry from the choicest stores of nature." We have, indeed, but
to glance at the biographies of great men to find that the most
distinguished inventors, artists, thinkers, and workers of all
kinds, owe their success, in a great measure, to their
indefatigable industry and application. They were men who turned
all things to gold--even time itself. Disraeli the elder held that
the secret of success consisted in being master of your subject,
such mastery being attainable only through continuous application
and study. Hence it happens that the men who have most moved the
world, have not been so much men of genius, strictly so called, as
men of intense mediocre abilities, and untiring perseverance; not
so often the gifted, of naturally bright and shining qualities, as
those who have applied themselves diligently to their work, in
whatsoever line that might lie. "Alas!" said a widow, speaking of
her brilliant but careless son, "he has not the gift of
continuance." Wanting in perseverance, such volatile natures are
outstripped in the race of life by the diligent and even the dull.
"Che va piano, va longano, e va lontano," says the Italian proverb:
Who goes slowly, goes long, and goes far.
Hence, a great point to be aimed at is to get the working quality
well trained. When that is done, the race will be found
comparatively easy. We must repeat and again repeat; facility will
come with labour. Not even the simplest art can be accomplished
without it; and what difficulties it is found capable of achieving!
It was by early discipline and repetition that the late Sir Robert
Peel cultivated those remarkable, though still mediocre powers,
which rendered him so illustrious an ornament of the British
Senate. When a boy at Drayton Manor, his father was accustomed to
set him up at table to practise speaking extempore; and he early
accustomed him to repeat as much of the Sunday's sermon as he could
remember. Little progress was made at first, but by steady
perseverance the habit of attention became powerful, and the sermon
was at length repeated almost verbatim. When afterwards replying
in succession to the arguments of his parliamentary opponents--an
art in which he was perhaps unrivalled--it was little surmised that
the extraordinary power of accurate remembrance which he displayed
on such occasions had been originally trained under the discipline
of his father in the parish church of Drayton.
It is indeed marvellous what continuous application will effect in
the commonest of things. It may seem a simple affair to play upon
a violin; yet what a long and laborious practice it requires!
Giardini said to a youth who asked him how long it would take to
learn it, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years together."
Industry, it is said, fait l'ours danser. The poor figurante must
devote years of incessant toil to her profitless task before she
can shine in it. When Taglioni was preparing herself for her
evening exhibition, she would, after a severe two hours' lesson
from her father, fall down exhausted, and had to be undressed,
sponged, and resuscitated totally unconscious. The agility and
bounds of the evening were insured only at a price like this.
Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great
results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to
advance in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that "to
know HOW TO WAIT is the great secret of success." We must sow
before we can reap, and often have to wait long, content meanwhile
to look patiently forward in hope; the fruit best worth waiting for
often ripening the slowest. But "time and patience," says the
Eastern proverb, "change the mulberry leaf to satin."
To wait patiently, however, men must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness
is an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a bishop has said, "Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity;" so are cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of
practical wisdom. They are the life and soul of success, as well
as of happiness; perhaps the very highest pleasure in life
consisting in clear, brisk, conscious working; energy, confidence,
and every other good quality mainly depending upon it. Sydney
Smith, when labouring as a parish priest at Foston-le-Clay, in
Yorkshire,--though he did not feel himself to be in his proper
element,--went cheerfully to work in the firm determination to do
his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to like it, and reconcile
myself to it, which is more manly than to feign myself above it,
and to send up complaints by the post of being thrown away, and
being desolate, and such like trash." So Dr. Hook, when leaving
Leeds for a new sphere of labour said, "Wherever I may be, I shall,
by God's blessing, do with my might what my hand findeth to do; and
if I do not find work, I shall make it."
Labourers for the public good especially, have to work long and
patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of immediate recompense
or result. The seeds they sow sometimes lie hidden under the
winter's snow, and before the spring comes the husbandman may have
gone to his rest. It is not every public worker who, like Rowland
Hill, sees his great idea bring forth fruit in his life-time. Adam
Smith sowed the seeds of a great social amelioration in that dingy
old University of Glasgow where he so long laboured, and laid the
foundations of his 'Wealth of Nations;' but seventy years passed
before his work bore substantial fruits, nor indeed are they all
gathered in yet.
Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely
changes the character. "How can I work--how can I be happy," said
a great but miserable thinker, "when I have lost all hope?" One of
the most cheerful and courageous, because one of the most hopeful
of workers, was Carey, the missionary. When in India, it was no
uncommon thing for him to weary out three pundits, who officiated
as his clerks, in one day, he himself taking rest only in change of
employment. Carey, the son of a shoe-maker, was supported in his
labours by Ward, the son of a carpenter, and Marsham, the son of a
weaver. By their labours, a magnificent college was erected at
Serampore; sixteen flourishing stations were established; the Bible
was translated into sixteen languages, and the seeds were sown of a
beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey was never
ashamed of the humbleness of his origin. On one occasion, when at
the Governor-General's table he over-heard an officer opposite him
asking another, loud enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once
been a shoemaker: "No, sir," exclaimed Carey immediately; "only a
cobbler." An eminently characteristic anecdote has been told of
his perseverance as a boy. When climbing a tree one day, his foot
slipped, and he fell to the ground, breaking his leg by the fall.
He was confined to his bed for weeks, but when he recovered and was
able to walk without support, the very first thing he did was to go
and climb that tree. Carey had need of this sort of dauntless
courage for the great missionary work of his life, and nobly and
resolutely he did it.
It was a maxim of Dr. Young, the philosopher, that "Any man can do
what any other man has done;" and it is unquestionable that he
himself never recoiled from any trials to which he determined to
subject himself. It is related of him, that the first time he
mounted a horse, he was in company with the grandson of Mr. Barclay
of Ury, the well-known sportsman; when the horseman who preceded
them leapt a high fence. Young wished to imitate him, but fell off
his horse in the attempt. Without saying a word, he remounted,
made a second effort, and was again unsuccessful, but this time he
was not thrown further than on to the horse's neck, to which he
clung. At the third trial, he succeeded, and cleared the fence.
The story of Timour the Tartar learning a lesson of perseverance
under adversity from the spider is well known. Not less
interesting is the anecdote of Audubon, the American ornithologist,
as related by himself: "An accident," he says, "which happened to
two hundred of my original drawings, nearly put a stop to my
researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show how
far enthusiasm--for by no other name can I call my perseverance--
may enable the preserver of nature to surmount the most
disheartening difficulties. I left the village of Henderson, in
Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for
several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to
my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden
box, and gave them in charge of a relative, with injunctions to see
that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of several
months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleasures of
home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I was
pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened; but
reader, feel for me--a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of
the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of
paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly a thousand
inhabitants of air! The burning beat which instantly rushed
through my brain was too great to be endured without affecting my
whole nervous system. I slept for several nights, and the days
passed like days of oblivion--until the animal powers being
recalled into action through the strength of my constitution, I
took up my gun, my notebook, and my pencils, and went forth to the
woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I
might now make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not
exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."
The accidental destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers, by his
little dog 'Diamond' upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by
which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment
destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it
is said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief
that it seriously injured his health, and impaired his
understanding. An accident of a somewhat similar kind happened to
the MS. of Mr. Carlyle's first volume of his 'French Revolution.'
He had lent the MS. to a literary neighbour to peruse. By some
mischance, it had been left lying on the parlour floor, and become
forgotten. Weeks ran on, and the historian sent for his work, the
printers being loud for "copy." Inquiries were made, and it was
found that the maid-of-all-work, finding what she conceived to be a
bundle of waste paper on the floor, had used it to light the
kitchen and parlour fires with! Such was the answer returned to
Mr. Carlyle; and his feelings may be imagined. There was, however,
no help for him but to set resolutely to work to re-write the book;
and he turned to and did it. He had no draft, and was compelled to
rake up from his memory facts, ideas, and expressions, which had
been long since dismissed. The composition of the book in the
first instance had been a work of pleasure; the re-writing of it a
second time was one of pain and anguish almost beyond belief. That
he persevered and finished the volume under such circumstances,
affords an instance of determination of purpose which has seldom
been surpassed.
The lives of eminent inventors are eminently illustrative of the
same quality of perseverance. George Stephenson, when addressing
young men, was accustomed to sum up his best advice to them, in the
words, "Do as I have done--persevere." He had worked at the
improvement of his locomotive for some fifteen years before
achieving his decisive victory at Rainhill; and Watt was engaged
for some thirty years upon the condensing-engine before he brought
it to perfection. But there are equally striking illustrations of
perseverance to be found in every other branch of science, art, and
industry. Perhaps one of the most interesting is that connected
with the disentombment of the Nineveh marbles, and the discovery of
the long-lost cuneiform or arrow-headed character in which the
inscriptions on them are written--a kind of writing which had been
lost to the world since the period of the Macedonian conquest of
Persia.
An intelligent cadet of the East India Company, stationed at
Kermanshah, in Persia, had observed the curious cuneiform
inscriptions on the old monuments in the neighbourhood--so old that
all historical traces of them had been lost,--and amongst the
inscriptions which he copied was that on the celebrated rock of
Behistun--a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some 1700 feet from
the plain, the lower part bearing inscriptions for the space of
about 300 feet in three languages--Persian, Scythian, and Assyrian.
Comparison of the known with the unknown, of the language which
survived with the language that had been lost, enabled this cadet
to acquire some knowledge of the cuneiform character, and even to
form an alphabet. Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson sent his
tracings home for examination. No professors in colleges as yet
knew anything of the cuneiform character; but there was a ci-devant
clerk of the East India House--a modest unknown man of the name of
Norris--who had made this little-understood subject his study, to
whom the tracings were submitted; and so accurate was his
knowledge, that, though he had never seen the Behistun rock, he
pronounced that the cadet had not copied the puzzling inscription
with proper exactness. Rawlinson, who was still in the
neighbourhood of the rock, compared his copy with the original, and
found that Norris was right; and by further comparison and careful
study the knowledge of the cuneiform writing was thus greatly
advanced.
But to make the learning of these two self-taught men of avail, a
third labourer was necessary in order to supply them with material
for the exercise of their skill. Such a labourer presented himself
in the person of Austen Layard, originally an articled clerk in the
office of a London solicitor. One would scarcely have expected to
find in these three men, a cadet, an India-House clerk, and a
lawyer's clerk, the discoverers of a forgotten language, and of the
buried history of Babylon; yet it was so. Layard was a youth of
only twenty-two, travelling in the East, when he was possessed with
a desire to penetrate the regions beyond the Euphrates.
Accompanied by a single companion, trusting to his arms for
protection, and, what was better, to his cheerfulness, politeness,
and chivalrous bearing, he passed safely amidst tribes at deadly
war with each other; and, after the lapse of many years, with
comparatively slender means at his command, but aided by
application and perseverance, resolute will and purpose, and almost
sublime patience,--borne up throughout by his passionate enthusiasm
for discovery and research,--he succeeded in laying bare and
digging up an amount of historical treasures, the like of which has
probably never before been collected by the industry of any one
man. Not less than two miles of bas-reliefs were thus brought to
light by Mr. Layard. The selection of these valuable antiquities,
now placed in the British Museum, was found so curiously
corroborative of the scriptural records of events which occurred
some three thousand years ago, that they burst upon the world
almost like a new revelation. And the story of the disentombment
of these remarkable works, as told by Mr. Layard himself in his
'Monuments of Nineveh,' will always be regarded as one of the most
charming and unaffected records which we possess of individual
enterprise, industry, and energy.
The career of the Comte de Buffon presents another remarkable
illustration of the power of patient industry as well as of his own
saying, that "Genius is patience." Notwithstanding the great
results achieved by him in natural history, Buffon, when a youth,
was regarded as of mediocre talents. His mind was slow in forming
itself, and slow in reproducing what it had acquired. He was also
constitutionally indolent; and being born to good estate, it might
be supposed that he would indulge his liking for ease and luxury.
Instead of which, he early formed the resolution of denying himself
pleasure, and devoting himself to study and self-culture.
Regarding time as a treasure that was limited, and finding that he
was losing many hours by lying a-bed in the mornings, he determined
to break himself of the habit. He struggled hard against it for
some time, but failed in being able to rise at the hour he had
fixed. He then called his servant, Joseph, to his help, and
promised him the reward of a crown every time that he succeeded in
getting him up before six. At first, when called, Buffon declined
to rise--pleaded that he was ill, or pretended anger at being
disturbed; and on the Count at length getting up, Joseph found that
he had earned nothing but reproaches for having permitted his
master to lie a-bed contrary to his express orders. At length the
valet determined to earn his crown; and again and again he forced
Buffon to rise, notwithstanding his entreaties, expostulations, and
threats of immediate discharge from his service. One morning
Buffon was unusually obstinate, and Joseph found it necessary to
resort to the extreme measure of dashing a basin of ice-cold water
under the bed-clothes, the effect of which was instantaneous. By
the persistent use of such means, Buffon at length conquered his
habit; and he was accustomed to say that he owed to Joseph three or
four volumes of his Natural History.
For forty years of his life, Buffon worked every morning at his
desk from nine till two, and again in the evening from five till
nine. His diligence was so continuous and so regular that it
became habitual. His biographer has said of him, "Work was his
necessity; his studies were the charm of his life; and towards the
last term of his glorious career he frequently said that he still
hoped to be able to consecrate to them a few more years." He was a
most conscientious worker, always studying to give the reader his
best thoughts, expressed in the very best manner. He was never
wearied with touching and retouching his compositions, so that his
style may be pronounced almost perfect. He wrote the 'Epoques de
la Nature' not fewer than eleven times before he was satisfied with
it; although he had thought over the work about fifty years. He
was a thorough man of business, most orderly in everything; and he
was accustomed to say that genius without order lost three-fourths
of its power. His great success as a writer was the result mainly
of his painstaking labour and diligent application. "Buffon,"
observed Madame Necker, "strongly persuaded that genius is the
result of a profound attention directed to a particular subject,
said that he was thoroughly wearied out when composing his first
writings, but compelled himself to return to them and go over them
carefully again, even when he thought he had already brought them
to a certain degree of perfection; and that at length he found
pleasure instead of weariness in this long and elaborate
correction." It ought also to be added that Buffon wrote and
published all his great works while afflicted by one of the most
painful diseases to which the human frame is subject.
Literary life affords abundant illustrations of the same power of
perseverance; and perhaps no career is more instructive, viewed in
this light, than that of Sir Walter Scott. His admirable working
qualities were trained in a lawyer's office, where he pursued for
many years a sort of drudgery scarcely above that of a copying
clerk. His daily dull routine made his evenings, which were his
own, all the more sweet; and he generally devoted them to reading
and study. He himself attributed to his prosaic office discipline
that habit of steady, sober diligence, in which mere literary men
are so often found wanting. As a copying clerk he was allowed 3d.
for every page containing a certain number of words; and he
sometimes, by extra work, was able to copy as many as 120 pages in
twenty-four hours, thus earning some 30s.; out of which he would
occasionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his means.
During his after-life Scott was wont to pride himself upon being a
man of business, and he averred, in contradiction to what he called
the cant of sonneteers, that there was no necessary connection
between genius and an aversion or contempt for the common duties of
life. On the contrary, he was of opinion that to spend some fair
portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation was good for
the higher faculties themselves in the upshot. While afterwards
acting as clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he performed
his literary work chiefly before breakfast, attending the court
during the day, where he authenticated registered deeds and
writings of various kinds. On the whole, says Lockhart, "it forms
one of the most remarkable features in his history, that throughout
the most active period of his literary career, he must have devoted
a large proportion of his hours, during half at least of every
year, to the conscientious discharge of professional duties." It
was a principle of action which he laid down for himself, that he
must earn his living by business, and not by literature. On one
occasion he said, "I determined that literature should be my staff,
not my crutch, and that the profits of my literary labour, however
convenient otherwise, should not, if I could help it, become
necessary to my ordinary expenses."
His punctuality was one of the most carefully cultivated of his
habits, otherwise it had not been possible for him to get through
so enormous an amount of literary labour. He made it a rule to
answer every letter received by him on the same day, except where
inquiry and deliberation were requisite. Nothing else could have
enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of communications that
poured in upon him and sometimes put his good nature to the
severest test. It was his practice to rise by five o'clock, and
light his own fire. He shaved and dressed with deliberation, and
was seated at his desk by six o'clock, with his papers arranged
before him in the most accurate order, his works of reference
marshalled round him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog
lay watching his eye, outside the line of books. Thus by the time
the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had
done enough--to use his own words--to break the neck of the day's
work. But with all his diligent and indefatigable industry, and
his immense knowledge, the result of many years' patient labour,
Scott always spoke with the greatest diffidence of his own powers.
On one occasion he said, "Throughout every part of my career I have
felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance."
Such is true wisdom and humility; for the more a man really knows,
the less conceited he will be. The student at Trinity College who
went up to his professor to take leave of him because he had
"finished his education," was wisely rebuked by the professor's
reply, "Indeed! I am only beginning mine." The superficial person
who has obtained a smattering of many things, but knows nothing
well, may pride himself upon his gifts; but the sage humbly
confesses that "all he knows is, that he knows nothing," or like
Newton, that he has been only engaged in picking shells by the sea
shore, while the great ocean of truth lies all unexplored before
him.
The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally remarkable
illustrations of the power of perseverance. The late John Britton,
author of 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' and of many valuable
architectural works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston,
Wiltshire. His father had been a baker and maltster, but was
ruined in trade and became insane while Britton was yet a child.
The boy received very little schooling, but a great deal of bad
example, which happily did not corrupt him. He was early in life
set to labour with an uncle, a tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under
whom he bottled, corked, and binned wine for more than five years.
His health failing him, his uncle turned him adrift in the world,
with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in
his pocket. During the next seven years of his life he endured
many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his
autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a
week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter
evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot
to Bath, he there obtained an engagement as a cellarman, but
shortly after we find him back in the metropolis again almost
penniless, shoeless, and shirtless. He succeeded, however, in
obtaining employment as a cellarman at the London Tavern, where it
was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the morning until
eleven at night. His health broke down under this confinement in
the dark, added to the heavy work; and he then engaged himself, at
fifteen shillings a week, to an attorney,--for he had been
diligently cultivating the art of writing during the few spare
minutes that he could call his own. While in this employment, he
devoted his leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls,
where he read books by snatches which he could not buy, and thus
picked up a good deal of odd knowledge. Then he shifted to another
office, at the advanced wages of twenty shillings a week, still
reading and studying. At twenty-eight he was able to write a book,
which he published under the title of 'The Enterprising Adventures
of Pizarro;' and from that time until his death, during a period of
about fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in laborious literary
occupation. The number of his published works is not fewer than
eighty-seven; the most important being 'The Cathedral Antiquities
of England,' in fourteen volumes, a truly magnificent work; itself
the best monument of John Britton's indefatigable industry.
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