This incident corroborates the truth of the poet’s thought, “We rise on
stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.”
A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination
on which he thought his future depended.
“Never mind,” he said to himself. “What is the next thing to
be done?” and he found that policy of “never minding,” and
going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies
for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest
scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat
and wrote:
“It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long
as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people
who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”
(716)
See SUCCESS IN FAILURE.
=Defective Memory=--See MEMORY AND DISEASE.