CONCENTRATED ENERGY
This one thing I do.--ST. PAUL.
The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation;
and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine.
. . . Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion
more, and sends us home to add one stroke of faithful work.--EMERSON.
The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
May hope to achieve it before life be done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows,
A harvest of barren regrets.
OWEN MEREDITH.
The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which makes
the difference between one man and another--between the weak and
powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy--invincible
determination--a purpose once formed, and then death or
victory.--FOWELL BUXTON.
"There was not enough room for us all in Frankfort," said Nathan Mayer
Rothschild, in speaking of himself and his four brothers. "I dealt in
English goods. One great trader came there, who had the market to
himself: he was quite the great man, and did us a favor if he sold us
goods. Somehow I offended him, and he refused to show me his patterns.
This was on a Tuesday. I said to my father, 'I will go to England.'
On Thursday I started. The nearer I got to England, the cheaper goods
were. As soon as I got to Manchester, I laid out all my money, things
were so cheap, and I made a good profit."
"I hope," said a listener, "that your children are not too fond of
money and business to the exclusion of more important things. I am
sure you would not wish that."
"I am sure I would wish that," said Rothschild; "I wish them to give
mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business; that
is the way to be happy." "Stick to one business, young man," he added,
addressing a young brewer; "stick to your brewery, and you may be the
great brewer of London. But be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant,
and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette."
Not many things indifferently, but one thing supremely, is the demand
of the hour. He who scatters his efforts in this intense, concentrated
age, cannot hope to succeed.
"Goods removed, messages taken, carpets beaten, and poetry composed on
any subject," was the sign of a man in London who was not very
successful at any of these lines of work, and reminds one of Monsieur
Kenard, of Paris, "a public scribe, who digests accounts, explains the
language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes."
The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does
not consist in the amount of work done by each, but in the amount of
intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough
to achieve grand success; but they labor at haphazard, building up with
one hand only to tear down with the other. They do not grasp
circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty
of turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough,
and time in abundance,--the warp and woof of success,--they are forever
throwing back and forth an empty shuttle, and the real web of life is
never woven.
If you ask one of them to state his aim and purpose in life, he will
say: "I hardly know yet for what I am best adapted, but I am a thorough
believer in genuine hard work, and I am determined to dig early and
late all my life, and I know I shall come across something--either
gold, silver, or at least iron." I say most emphatically, no. Would
an intelligent man dig up a whole continent to find its veins of silver
and gold? The man who is forever looking about to see what he can find
never finds anything. If we look for nothing in particular, we find
just that and no more. We find what we seek with all our heart. The
bee is not the only insect that visits the flower, but it is the only
one that carries honey away. It matters not how rich the materials we
have gleaned from the years of our study and toil in youth, if we go
out into life with no well-defined idea of our future work, there is no
happy conjunction of circumstances that will arrange them into an
imposing structure, and give it magnificent proportions.
"What a immense power over the life," says Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Ward, "is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress,
the look, the very motions of a person, define and alter when he or she
begins to live for a reason. I fancy that I can select, in a crowded
street, the busy, blessed women who support themselves. They carry
themselves with an air of conscious self-respect and self-content,
which a shabby alpaca cannot hide, nor a bonnet of silk enhance, nor
even sickness nor exhaustion quite drag out."
It is said that the wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not
to what port he is bound.
"The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his
powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the
strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish
anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through
the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar
and leaves no trace behind."
"When I was young I used to think it was thunder that killed men," said
a shrewd preacher; "but as I grew older, I found it was lightning. So
I resolved to thunder less, and lighten more."
The man who knows one thing, and can do it better than anybody else,
even if it only be the art of raising turnips, receives the crown he
merits. If he raises the best turnips by reason of concentrating all
his energy to that end, he is a benefactor to the race, and is
recognized as such.
If a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the
other backward. Such is the progress of him who divides his purpose.
Success is jealous of scattered energies.
No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all
the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure. You can't
throw a tallow candle through the side of a tent, but you can shoot it
through an oak board. Melt a charge of shot into a bullet, and it can
be fired through the bodies of four men. Focus the rays of the sun in
winter, and you can kindle a fire with ease.
The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck
sledgehammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their
purpose. The successful men of to-day are men of one overmastering
idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.
"Scatteration" is the curse of American business life. Too many are
like Douglas Jerrold's friend, who could converse in twenty-four
languages, but had no ideas to express in any one of them.
"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so
heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to
sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved
the Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers
gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae,
and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the
actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it
will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your
own study or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's
weather-beaten face and admiring the splendor of his single eye."
"The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality
in every study and pursuit is the quality of attention," said Charles
Dickens. "My own invention, or imagination, such as it is, I can most
truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for
the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging
attention." When asked on another occasion the secret of his success,
he said: "I never put one hand to anything on which I could throw my
whole self." "Be a whole man at everything," wrote Joseph Gurney to
his son, "a whole man at study, in work, and in play."
_Don't dally with your purpose_.
"I go at what I am about," said Charles Kingsley, "as if there was
nothing else in the world for the time being. That's the secret of all
hard-working men; but most of them can't carry it into their
amusements."
Many a man fails to become a great man by splitting into several small
ones, choosing to be a tolerable Jack-of-all-trades rather than to be
an unrivaled specialist.
"Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said Edward
Bulwer Lytton, "and as much about the world as if I had never been a
student, have said to me, 'When do you get time to write all your
books? How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' I shall
surprise you by the answer I made. The answer is this--'I contrive to
do so much by never doing too much at a time. A man to get through
work well must not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the
reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little
to-morrow. Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was
not till I had left college and was actually in the world, I may
perhaps say that I have gone through as large a course of general
reading as most men of my time. I have traveled much and I have seen
much; I have mixed much in politics, and in the various business of
life; and in addition to all this, I have published somewhere about
sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much special research. And
what time do you think, as a general rule, I have devoted to study, to
reading and writing? Not more than three hours a day; and, when
Parliament is sitting, not always that. But then, during these three
hours, I have given my whole attention to what I was about.'"
S. T. Coleridge possessed marvelous powers of mind, but he had no
definite purpose; he lived in an atmosphere of mental dissipation which
consumed his energy, exhausted his stamina, and his life was in many
respects a miserable failure. He lived in dreams and died in reverie.
He was continually forming plans and resolutions, but to the day of his
death they remained simply resolutions and plans.
He was always just going to do something, but never did it. "Coleridge
is dead," wrote Charles Lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left
behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and
divinity--not one of them complete!"
Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded,
in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.
Hogarth would rivet his attention upon a face and study it until it was
photographed upon his memory, when he could reproduce it at will. He
studied and examined each object as eagerly as though he would never
have a chance to see it again, and this habit of close observation
enabled him to develop his work with marvelous detail. The very modes
of thought of the time in which he lived were reflected from his works.
He was not a man of great education or culture, except in his power of
observation.
With an immense procession passing up Broadway, the streets lined with
people, and bands playing lustily, Horace Greeley would sit upon the
steps of the Astor House, use the top of his hat for a desk, and write
an editorial for the "New York Tribune" which would be quoted far and
wide.
Offended by a pungent article, a gentleman called at the "Tribune"
office and inquired for the editor. He was shown into a little
seven-by-nine sanctum, where Greeley, with his head close down to his
paper, sat scribbling away at a two-forty rate. The angry man began by
asking if this was Mr. Greeley. "Yes, sir; what do you want?" said the
editor quickly, without once looking up from his paper. The irate
visitor then began using his tongue, with no regard for the rules of
propriety, good breeding, or reason. Meantime Mr. Greeley continued to
write. Page after page was dashed off in the most impetuous style,
with no change of features and without his paying the slightest
attention to the visitor. Finally, after about twenty minutes of the
most impassioned abuse ever poured out in an editor's office, the angry
man became disgusted, and abruptly turned to walk out of the room.
Then, for the first time, Mr. Greeley quickly looked up, rose from his
chair, and slapping the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder, in a
pleasant tone of voice said: "Don't go, friend; sit down, sit down, and
free your mind; it will do you good,--you will feel better for it.
Besides, it helps me to think what I am to write about. Don't go."
One unwavering aim has ever characterized successful men.
"Daniel Webster," said Sydney Smith, "struck me much like a
steam-engine in trousers."
As Adams suggests, Lord Brougham, like Canning, had too many talents;
and, though as a lawyer he gained the most splendid prize of his
profession, the Lord Chancellorship of England, and merited the
applause of scientific men for his investigations in science, yet his
life on the whole was a failure. He was "everything by turns and
nothing long." With all his magnificent abilities he left no permanent
mark on history or literature, and actually outlived his own fame.
Miss Martineau says, "Lord Brougham was at his chateau at Cannes when
the daguerreotype process first came into vogue. An artist undertook
to take a view of the chateau with a group of guests on the balcony.
His Lordship was, asked to keep perfectly still for five seconds, and
he promised that he would not stir, but alas,--he moved. The
consequence was that there was a blur where Lord Brougham should have
been.
"There is something," continued Miss Martineau, "very typical in this.
In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by history, this
very man should have been the central figure. But, owing to his want
of steadfastness, there will be forever a blur where Lord Brougham
should have been. How many lives are blurs for want of concentration
and steadfastness of purpose!"
Fowell Buxton attributed his success to ordinary means and
extraordinary application, and being a whole man to one thing at a
time. It is ever the unwavering pursuit of a single aim that wins.
"_Non multa, sed multum_"--not many things, but much, was Coke's motto.
It is the almost invisible point of a needle, the keen, slender edge of
a razor or an ax, that opens the way for the bulk that follows.
Without point or edge the bulk would be useless. It is the man of one
line of work, the sharp-edged man, who cuts his way through obstacles
and achieves brilliant success. While we should shun that narrow
devotion to one idea which prevents the harmonious development of our
powers, we should avoid on the other hand the extreme versatility of
one of whom W. M. Praed says:--
His talk is like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses,
It slips from politics to puns,
It glides from Mahomet to Moses:
Beginning with the laws that keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For skinning eels or shoeing horses.
If you can get a child learning to walk to fix his eyes on any object,
he will generally navigate to that point without capsizing, but
distract his attention and down he goes.
The young man seeking a position to-day is not asked what college he
came from or who his ancestors were. "_What can you do?_" is the great
question. It is special training that is wanted. Most of the men at
the head of great firms and great enterprises have been promoted step
by step from the bottom.
"I know that he can toil terribly," said Cecil of Walter Raleigh, in
explanation of the latter's success.
As a rule, what the heart longs for the head and the hands may attain.
The currents of knowledge, of wealth, of success, are as certain and
fixed as the tides of the sea. In all great successes we can trace the
power of concentration, riveting every faculty upon one unwavering aim;
perseverance in the pursuit of an undertaking in spite of every
difficulty; and courage which enables one to bear up under all trials,
disappointments, and temptations.
Chemists tell us that there is power enough in a single acre of grass
to drive all the mills and steam-cars in the world, could we but
concentrate it upon the piston-rod of a steam-engine. But it is at
rest, and so, in the light of science, it is comparatively valueless.
Dr. Mathews says that the man who scatters himself upon many objects
soon loses his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm.
"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain.
Form a plan; have an object; then work for it, learn all you can about
it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on
speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be
useful some day; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at
auction a brass door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it
might be useful some day!"
Definiteness of aim is characteristic of all true art. He is not the
greatest painter who crowds the greatest number of ideas upon a single
canvas, giving all the figures equal prominence. He is the genuine
artist who makes the greatest variety express the greatest unity, who
develops the leading idea in the central figure, and makes all the
subordinate figures, lights, and shades point to that center and find
expression there. So in every well-balanced life, no matter how
versatile in endowments or how broad in culture, there is one grand
central purpose, in which all the subordinate powers of the soul are
brought to a focus, and where they will find fit expression. In nature
we see no waste of energy, nothing left to chance. Since the shuttle
of creation shot for the first time through chaos, design has marked
the course of every golden thread. Every leaf, every flower, every
crystal, every atom even, has a purpose stamped upon it which
unmistakably points to the crowning summit of all creation--man.
Young men are often told to aim high, but we must aim at what we would
hit. A general purpose is not enough. The arrow shot from the bow
does not wander around to see what it can hit on its way, but flies
straight to the mark. The magnetic needle does not point to all the
lights in the heavens to see which it likes best. They all attract it.
The sun dazzles, the meteor beckons, the stars twinkle to it, and try
to win its affections; but the needle, true to its instinct, and with a
finger that never errs in sunshine or in storm, points steadily to the
North Star; for, while all the other stars must course with untiring
tread around their great centers through all the ages, the North Star,
alone, distant beyond human comprehension, moves with stately sweep on
its circuit of more than 25,000 years, for all practical purposes of
man stationary, not only for a day, but for a century. So all along
the path of life other luminaries will beckon to lead us from our
cherished aim--from the course of truth and duty; but let no moons
which shine with borrowed light, no meteors which dazzle, but never
guide, turn the needle of our purpose from the North Star of its hope.