Success – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success by Ralph Waldo Emerson is an oldie but a goodie.  Emerson was perhaps America’s first motivational speaker.  English was used a little differently in his day than now so you might find it a little challenging.  Still once you get past that you will find great gems of information here.

If Emerson and old english is not to your taste then I would like to suggest something newer to you, something about the law of attraction.   The law of attraction can feed your success like nothing else.  You can find the post here.

Here is Emerson’s definition of success:

The definition of success–To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one’s self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived–this is to have succeeded.

This is one of the most quoted pieces of Emerson’s writings but it is not from “Success” but another work.

>>Improve Your Chances For Success

 

SUCCESS
BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

So/ton and New York

Houghton Mifflin Company

1912

Copyright, 1870, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Copyright
2883, 1898, and 1904, by Edward W. Emerson

All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION

SUCCESS, and the varying stand-
ards of success, seem often to have
occupied Emerson’s mind. In Decem-
ber, 1858, he lectured upon ‘ ‘ Success ‘ ‘
at Hartford, and the following March
opened his course at the Freeman Place
Chapel, Boston, with ‘ ‘ The Law of Suc-
cess.” These lectures without doubt
are essentially the same in substance
as the present essay, which was first
printed in Society and Solitude in 187O.
Long before, however, as Dr. Edward
Emerson points out in the notes to the
Centenary Edition of Emerson’s writ-
ings, the notion that success is some-
thing subjective and, so to speak, acci-
dental, often the sum of many fail-
ures, had come into his mind and
v

INTRODUCTION

clung there in connection with the
course of his own life.

In the autumn of 1833, when he had
left the ministry, and was facing at the
age of thirty an uncertain future as a
“free lance,” Emerson wrote in his
diary, “Charles’s nai’f censure last
night provoked me to show him a fact
apparently entirely new to him, that
my entire success, such as it is, is com-
posed wholly of particular failures,
every public work of mine of the least
importance having been, probably with-
out exception, noted at the time as a fail-
ure. … I will take Mrs. Barbauld’s
line for my motto [of a brook]

” And the more falls I get, move faster on.”

But it is not for its autobiographic
reference that Emerson’s essay on
4 ‘ Success ‘ ‘ has been chosen for separ-
vi

INTRODUCTION

ate publication in the series of River-
side Press Editions . It has been selected
rather for its peculiar timeliness. How
almost of the minute is the accent of
the terse Concordian wisdom in the
essay’s opening paragraph :

Our American people cannot be taxed with
slowness in performance or in praising their
performance. The earth is shaken by our
engineries. We are feeling our youth and
nerve and bone. We have the power of terri-
tory and of seacoast, and know the use of these.
We count our census, we read our growing
valuations, we survey our map, which be-
comes old in a year or two. Our eyes run
approvingly along the lengthened lines of rail-
road and telegraph. We have gone nearest to
the Pole. We have discovered the Antarctic
continent. We interfere in Central and South
America, at Canton and in Japan; we are
adding to an already enormous territory. Our

vii

INTRODUCTION

political constitution is the hope of the
world, and we value ourselves on all these
feats.

We are no slower now than we were
in 1870, either in performance or in the
praising of it; shaking the earth by our
engineries has not ceased, and we have
territories and seacoasts in the antipo-
des. The lines of railroad and telegraph
are still lengthening. We have not only
gone nearest to the Pole, but an Ameri-
can explorer, amid the plaudits of the
press and the contestation of compet-
itors, has stood upon it. Our political
constitution may not be now so unani-
mously the hope of the world . We feel
our youth less, perhaps, our nerve
and bone. Yet still we value ourselves
on these feats and symbols of objective
success, and the Emersonian maxims
have a pertinence deeper and more far-
viii

INTRODUCTION

reaching than they could have had for
audiences in 1858, or readers in 187O.
Many writers since Emerson’s time
have exalted sensibility over talent in
the scale of powers, but no one not
even Walter Pater so persuasively.
Yet not a little of the attractiveness of
the Emersonian view of success lies in
the fact that it is by no means limited
to the intangible achievements. Like
all true New Englanders, or perhaps
we might say like all true Transcend-
entalists, Emerson valued that success
which the neighbors can see, though
he valued more enormously more
that respect for ourselves which comes,
as he says, if we have succeeded. It is
this self-respect springing from “quiet
wise perception ‘ ‘ that Emerson exalts
and expounds both subtly and convinc-
ingly in the following pages . Who can
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INTRODUCTION

say that in the scramble of business big
and little, tri-partite politics, conver-
sational culture, science that is applied,
education that is vocational, and a re-
ligion that ‘ ‘ pays dividends ‘ ‘ there is no
room for “the tranquil, well-founded,
far-seeing soul” which, as Emerson
says, ‘ c is no express-rider, no attorney,
no magistrate ‘ ‘ ; which l 4 lies in the
sun and broods on the world.”

F. G.

OCTOBER 11, 1912.

SUCCESS

One thing is for ever good;

‘That one thing is Success ,

Dear to the Eumenides y

And to all the heavenly brood.

Who bides at home, nor looks abroad.

Carries the eagles and masters the sword.

But if thou do thy best,
Without remission, without rest.
And invite the sunbeam,
And abhor to feign or seem
Even to those who thee should love
And thy behavior approve;
If thou go in thine own likeness,
Be it health or be it sickness ;
If thou go as thy father s son,
If thou wear no mask or lie,
Dealing purely and nakedly;

SUCCESS

OUR American people cannot
be taxed with slowness in
performance or in praising their
performance. The earth is shaken
by our engineries. We are feel-
ing our youth and nerve and bone.
We have the power of territory
and of seacoast, and know the use
of these. We count our census, we
read our growing valuations, we
survey our map, which becomes
old in a year or two. Our eyes run
approvingly along the lengthened
lines of railroad and telegraph.

SUCCESS

We have gone nearest to the Pole.
We have discovered the Antarctic
continent. We interfere in Central
and South America, at Canton
and in Japan ; we are adding to an
already enormous territory. Our
political constitution is the hope
of the world, and we value our-
selves on all these feats.

‘T is the way of the world ; ‘t is
the law of youth, and of unfold-
ing strength. Men are made each
with some triumphant superiority,
which, through some adaptation of
fingers or ear or eye or ciphering
or pugilistic or musical or literary
craft, enriches the community with

SUCCESS

a new art; and not only we, but
all men of European stock, value
these certificates. Giotto could
draw a perfect circle: Erwin of
Steinbach could build a minster;
Olaf, king of Norway, could run
round his galley on the blades of
the oars of the rowers when the
ship was in motion; Ojeda could
run out swiftly on a plank pro-
jected from the top of a tower,
turn round swiftly and come back ;
Evelyn writes from Rome: “Ber-
nini, the Florentine sculptor, archi-
tect, painter and poet, a little before
my coming to Rome, gave a pub-
lic opera, wherein he painted the
3

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scenes, cut the statues, invented
the engines, composed the music,
writ the comedy and built the
theatre.”

” There is nothing in war/’ said
Napoleon, ” which I cannot do by
my own hands. If there is nobody
to make gunpowder, I can manu-
facture it. The gun-carriages I
know how to construct. If it is
necessary to make cannons at the
forge, I can make them. The de-
tails of working them in battle, if it
is necessary to teach, I shall teach
them. In administration, it is I
alone who have arranged the fi-
nances, as you know/’
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It is recorded of Linnaeus, among
many proofs of his beneficent skill,
that when the timber in the ship-
yards of Sweden was ruined by
rot, Linnaeus was desired by the
government to find a remedy. He
studied the insects that infested the
timber, and found that they laid
their eggs in the logs within cer-
tain days in April, and he directed
that during ten days at that season
the logs should be immersed under
water in the docks; which being
done, the timber was found to be
uninjured.

Columbus at Veragua found
plenty of gold; but leaving the
5

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coast, the ship full of one hundred
and fifty skilful seamen, some
of them old pilots, and with too
much experience of their craft and
treachery to him, the wise ad-
miral kept his private record of his
homeward path. And when he
reached Spain he told the King and
Queen that ” they may ask all the
pilots who came with him where is
Veragua. Let them answer and
say if they know where Veragua
lies. I assert that they can give no
other account than that they went
to lands where there was an abun-
dance of gold, but they do not
know the way to return thither,
6

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but would be obliged to go on a
voyage of discovery as much as if
they had never been there before.
There is a mode of reckoning,” he
proudly adds, “derived from as-
tronomy, which is sure and safe to
any one who understands it.”

Hippocrates in Greece knew
how to stay the devouring plague
which ravaged Athens in his time,
and his skill died with him. Dr.
Benjamin Rush, in Philadelphia,
carried that city heroically through
the yellow fever of the year 1793-
Leverrier carried the Copernican
system in his head, and knew
where to look for the new planet.
7

SUCCESS

We have seen an American wo-
man write a novel of which a
million copies were sold, in all lan-
guages, and which had one merit,
of speaking to the universal heart,
and was read with equal interest
to three audiences, namely, in the
parlor, in the kitchen, and in the
nursery of every house. We have
seen women who could institute
hospitals and schools in armies.
We have seen a woman who by
pure song could melt the souls of
whole populations . And there is no
limit to these varieties of talent.

These are arts to be thankful
for, each one as it is a new
8

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direction of human power. We
cannot choose but respect them.
Our civilization is made up of a
million contributions of this kind.
For success, to be sure we esteem
it a test in other people, since we
do first in ourselves. We respect
ourselves more if we have suc-
ceeded. Neither do we grudge
to each of these benefactors the
praise or the profit which accrues
from his industry.

Here are already quite different
degrees of moral merit in these ex-
amples. I don’t know but we and
our race elsewhere set a higher
value on wealth, victory and coarse
9

SUCCESS

superiority of all kinds, than other
men, have less tranquillity of
mind, are less easily contented.
The Saxon is taught from his in-
fancy to wish to be first. The
Norseman was a restless rider,
fighter, freebooter. The ancient
Norse ballads describe him as af-
flicted with this inextinguishable
thirst of victory. The mother says
to her son :

” Success shall be in thy courser tall,
Success in thyself, which is best of all,
Success in thy hand, success in thy foot,
In struggle with man, in battle with

brute :

The holy God and Saint Drothin dear
Shall never shut eyes on thy career ;
Look out, look out, Svend Vonved ! ”

1O

SUCCESS

These feats that we extol do not
signify so much as we say. These
boasted arts are of very recent
origin. They are local conven-
iences, but do not really add to
our stature. The greatest men of
the world have managed not to
want them. Newton was a great
man, without telegraph, or gas,
or steam-coach, or rubber shoes,
or lucifer-matches, or ether for
his pain ; so was Shakspeare and
Alfred and Scipio and Socrates.
These are local conveniences, but
how easy to go now to parts of the
world where not only all these
arts are wanting, but where they
11

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are despised. The Arabian sheiks,
the most dignified people in the
planet, do not want them ; yet
have as much self-respect as the
English, and are easily able to
impress the Frenchman or the
American who visits them with
the respect due to a brave and
sufficient man.

These feats have to be sure great
difference of merit, and some of
them involve power of a high kind.
But the public values the invention
more than the inventor does. The
inventor knows there is much more
and better where this came from.
The public sees in it a lucrative
12

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secret. Men see the reward which
the inventor enjoys, and they think,
‘How shall we win that?’ Cause
and effect are a little tedious ; how
to leap to the result by short or by
false means ? We are not scrupu-
lous. What we ask is victory, with-
out regard to the cause ; after the
Rob Roy rule, after the Napoleon
rule, to be the strongest to-day,
the way of the Talley rands, pru-
dent people, whose watches go
faster than their neighbors’, and
who detect the first moment of de-
cline and throw themselves on the
instant on the winning side. I have
heard that Nelson used to say,
13

SUCCESS

‘ < Never mind the justice or the
impudence, only let me succeed.”
Lord Brougham’s single duty of
counsel is, “to get the prisoner
clear.” Fuller says ’tis a maxim
of lawyers that “a crown once
worn cleareth all defects of the
wearer thereof. ” Rien ne r’eussit
mieux que le succes. And we Amer-
icans are tainted with this insanity,
as our bankruptcies and our reck-
less politics may show. We are
great by exclusion, grasping and
egotism. Our success takes from
all what it gives to one. ‘Tis a
haggard, malignant, careworn run-
ning for luck.

14

SUCCESS

Egotism is a kind of buckram
that gives momentary strength and
concentration to men, and seems to
be much used in Nature for fabrics
in which local and spasmodic en-
ergy is required. I could point to
men in this country, of indispensa-
ble importance to the carrying on
of American life, of this humor,
whom we could ill spare; any one
of them would be a national loss.
But it spoils conversation. They
will not try conclusions with you.
They are ever thrusting this pam-
pered self between you and them.
It is plain they have a long educa-
tion to undergo to reach simplicity
15

SUCCESS

and plain-dealing, which are what
a wise man mainly cares for in his
companion. Nature knows how to
convert evil to good ; Nature util-
izes misers, fanatics, show-men,
egotists, to accomplish her ends ;
but we must not think better of
the foible for that. The passion
for sudden success is rude and
puerile, just as war, cannons and
executions are used to clear the
ground of bad, lumpish, irreclaim-
able savages, but always to the
damage of the conquerors.

I hate this shallow Americanism
which hopes to get rich by credit,
to get knowledge by raps on mid-
16

SUCCESS

night tables, to learn the economy
of the mind by phrenology, or skill
without study, or mastery without
apprenticeship, or the sale of goods
through pretending that they sell,
or power through making believe
you are powerful, or through a
packed jury or caucus, bribery and
“repeating” votes, or wealth by
fraud. They think they have got
it, but they have got something
else, a crime which calls for
another crime, and another devil
behind that ; these are steps to sui-
cide, infamy, and the harming of
mankind. We countenance each
other in this life of show, puffing,
17

SUCCESS

advertisement and manufacture of
public opinion ; and excellence is
lost sight of in the hunger for sud-
den performance and praise.

There was a wise man, an Ital-
ian artist, Michel Angelo, who
writes thus of himself: “Mean-
while the Cardinal Ippolito, in
whom all my best hopes were
placed, being dead, I began to un-
derstand that the promises of this
world are for the most part vain
phantoms, and that to confide in
one’s self, and become something
of worth and value, is the best and
safest course.” Now, though I am
by no means sure that the reader
18

SUCCESS

will assent to all my propositions,
yet I think we shall agree in my
first rule for success, that we
shall drop the brag and the adver-
tisement, and take Michel An-
gelo’s course, ” to confide in one’s
self, and be something of worth
and value/’

Each man has an aptitude born
with him. Do your work. I have
to say this often, but Nature says
it oftener. ‘T is clownish to insist
on doing all with one’s own hands,
as if every man should build his
own clumsy house, forge his ham-
mer, and bake his dough ; but he
is to dare to do what he can do

19

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best; not help others as they would
direct him, but as he knows his
helpful power to be. To do other-
wise is to neutralize all those ex-
traordinary special talents distrib-
uted among men. Yet whilst this
self-truth is essential to the exhibi-
tion of the world and to the growth
and glory of each mind, it is rare
to find a man who believes his own
thought or who speaks that which
he was created to say. As nothing
astonishes men so much as common
sense and plain dealing, so nothing
is more rare in any man than an act
of his own. Any work looks won-
derful to him, except that which he
20

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can do. We do not believe our own
thought; we must serve somebody;
we must quote somebody; we dote
on the old and the distant ; we are
tickled by great names ; we import
the religion of other nations ; we
quote their opinions ; we cite their
laws. The gravest and learnedest
courts in this country shudder to
face a new question, and will wait
months and years for a case to
occur that can be tortured into a
precedent, and thus throw on a
bolder party the onus of an initia-
tive. Thus we do not carry a coun-
sel in our breasts, or do not know
it; and because we cannot shake off
21

SUCCESS

from our shoes this dust of Europe
and Asia, the world seems to be
born old, ‘society is under a spell,
every man is a borrower and a
mimic, life is theatrical and litera-
ture a quotation; and hence that
depression of spirits, that furrow
of care, said to mark every Ameri-
can brow.

Self-trust is the first secret of
success, the belief that if you are
here the authorities of the universe
put you here, and for cause, or with
some task strictly appointed you in
your constitution, and so long as
you work at that you are well and
successful. It by no means consists
22

SUCCESS

in rushing prematurely to a showy
feat that shall catch the eye and
satisfy spectators. It is enough if
you work in the right direction. So
far from the performance being the
real success, it is clear that the suc-
cess was much earlier than that,
namely, when all the feats that
make our civility were the thoughts
of good heads. The fame of each
discovery rightly attaches to the
mind that made the formula which
contains all the details, and not to
the manufacturers who now make
their gain by it; although the mob
uniformly cheers the publisher, and
not the inventor. It is the dulness
23

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of the multitude that they cannot
see the house in the ground-plan ;
the working, in the model of the
projector. Whilst it is a thought,
though it were a new fuel, or a new
food, or the creation of agriculture,
it is cried down, it is a chimera ; but
when it is a fact, and comes in the
shape of eight per cent, ten per
cent, a hundred per cent, they cry,
< They ought to come
down ; they are n’t growing any
better; they should be cut and
corded before spring/
35

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Wordsworth writes of the de-
lights of the boy in Nature :

” For never will come back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the
flower.”

But I have just seen a man, well
knowing what he spoke of, who
told me that the verse was not true
for him; that his eyes opened as
he grew older, and that every
spring was more beautiful to him
than the last.

We live among gods of our
own creation. Does that deep-
toned bell, which has shortened
many a night of ill nerves, ren-
der to you nothing but acoustic vi-
36

SUCCESS

brations ? Is the old church which
gave you the first lessons of reli-
gious life, or the village school, or
the college where you first knew
the dreams of fancy and joys of
thought, only boards or brick and
mortar? Is the house in which
you were born, or the house in
which your dearest friend lived,
only a piece of real estate whose
value is covered by the Hartford
insurance? You walk on the beach
and enjoy the animation of the pic-
ture. Scoop up a little water in the
hollow of your palm, take up a
handful of shore sand; well, these
are the elements. What is the
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beach but acres of sand ? what is
the ocean but cubic miles of wa-
ter? a little more or less signifies
nothing. No, it is that this brute
matter is part of somewhat not
brute. It is that the sand floor is
held by spheral gravity, and bent
to be a part of the round globe,
under the optical sky, part of
the astonishing astronomy, and
existing at last to moral ends and
from moral causes.

The world is not made up to
the eye of figures, that is, only
half; it is also made of color. How
that element washes the universe
with its enchanting waves ! The
38

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sculptor had ended his work, and
behold a new world of dream-like
glory. ‘T is the last stroke of Na-
ture ; beyond color she cannot go.
In like manner, life is made up,
not of knowledge only, but of love
also. If thought is form, senti-
ment is color. It clothes the skel-
eton world with space, variety and
glow. The hues of sunset make
life great; so the affections make
some little web of cottage and fire-
side populous, important, and fill-
ing the main space in our history.
The fundamental fact in our
metaphysic constitution is the
correspondence of man to the
39

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world, so that every change in that
writes a record in the mind. The
mind yields sympathetically to the
tendencies or law which stream
through things and make the order
of Nature; and in the perfection
of this correspondence or expres-
siveness, the health and force of
man consist. If we follow this hint
into our intellectual education, we
shall find that it is not proposi-
tions, not new dogmas and a log-
ical exposition of the world that
are our first need; but to watch
and tenderly cherish the intellect-
ual and moral sensibilities, those
fountains of right thought, and
40

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woo them to stay and make their
home with us. Whilst they abide
with us we shall not think amiss.
Our perception far outruns our
talent. We bring a welcome to
the highest lessons of religion and
of poetry out of all proportion be-
yond our skill to teach. And, fur-
ther, the great hearing and sym-
pathy of men is more true and wise
than their speaking is wont to be.
A deep sympathy is what we re-
quire for any student of the mind;
for the chief difference between
man and man is a difference of im-
pressionability. Aristotle or Bacon
or Kant propound some maxim
41

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which is the key-note of philoso-
phy thenceforward. But I am more
interested to know that when at
last they have hurled out their
grand word, it is only some fam-
iliar experience of every man in
the street. If it be not, it will never
be heard of again.

Ah ! if one could keep this sens-
ibility, and live in the happy suf-
ficing present, and find the day
and its cheap means contenting,
which only ask receptivity in you,
and no strained exertion and can-
kering ambition, overstimulating
to be at the head of your class and
the head of society, and to have
42

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distinction and laurels and con-
sumption ! We are not strong by
our power to penetrate, but by
our relatedness. The world is en-
larged for us, not by new objects,
but by finding more affinities and
potencies in those we have.

This sensibility appears in the
homage to beauty which exalts the
faculties of youth; in the power
which form and color exert upon
the soul ; when we see eyes that are
a compliment to the human race,
features that explain the Phid-
ian sculpture. Fontenelle said :
“There are three things about
which I have curiosity, though I
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know nothing of them, music,
poetry and love/’ The great doc-
tors of this science are the greatest
men, Dante, Petrarch, Michel
Angelo and Shakspeare. The wise
Socrates treats this matter with a
certain archness, yet with very
marked expressions. “I am al-
ways,” he says, “asserting that I
happen to know, I may say, no-
thing but a mere trifle relating to
matters of love ; yet in that kind
of learning I lay claim to be more
skilled than any one man of the
pastor present time/’ They may
well speak in this uncertain man-
ner of their knowledge, and in this
44

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confident manner of their will,
for the secret of it is hard to de-
tect, so deep it is ; and yet genius
is measured by its skill in this
science.

Who is he in youth or in ma-
turity or even in old age, who
does not like to hear of those sens-
ibilities which turn curled heads
round at church, and send won-
derful eye-beams across assem-
blies, from one to one, never miss-
ing in the thickest crowd? The
keen statist reckons by tens and
hundreds ; the genial man is inter-
ested in every slipper that comes
into the assembly. The passion,
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alike everywhere, creeps under
the snows of Scandinavia, under
the fires of the equator, and swims
in the seas of Polynesia. Lofn is
as puissant a divinity in the Norse
Edda as Camadeva in the red vault
of India, Eros in the Greek, or
Cupid in the Latin heaven. And
what is specially true of love is
that it is a state of extreme im-
pressionability; the lover has more
senses and finer senses than oth-
ers; his eye and ear are tele-
graphs ; he reads omens on the
flower, and cloud, and face, and
form, and gesture, and reads
them aright. In his surprise at
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the sudden and entire understand-
ing that is between him and the
beloved person, it occurs to him
that they might somehow meet
independently of time and place.
How delicious the belief that he
could elude all guards, precau-
tions, ceremonies, means and de-
lays, and hold instant and sempi-
ternal communication! In solitude,
in banishment, the hope returned,
and the experiment was eagerly
tried. The supernal powers seem
to take his part. What was on his
lips to say is uttered by his friend.
When he went abroad, he met, by
wonderful casualties, the one per-
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son he sought. If in his walk he
chanced to look back, his friend
was walking behind him. And it
has happened that the artist has
often drawn in his pictures the
face of the future wife whom he
had not yet seen.

But also in complacencies no-
wise so strict as this of the pas-
sion, the man of sensibility counts
it a delight only to hear a child’s
voice fully addressed to him, or
to see the beautiful manners of
the youth of either sex. When
the event is past and remote, how
insignificant the greatest com-
pared with the piquancy of the
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SUCCESS

present ! To-day at the school ex-
amination the professor interro-
gates Sylvina in the history class
about Odoacer and Alaric. Syl-
vina can’t remember, but suggests
that Odoacer was defeated; and
the professor tartly replies, * No,
he defeated the Romans/ But
’tis plain to the visitor that ’tis
of no importance at all about Odo-
acer and ‘t is a great deal of im-
portance about Sylvina, and if she
says he was defeated, why he had
better a great deal have been de-
feated than give her a moment’s
annoy. Odoacer, if there was a
particle of the gentleman in him,
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would have said, Let me be de-
feated a thousand times.

And as our tenderness for youth
and beauty gives a new and just
importance to their fresh and man-
ifold claims, so the like sensibility
gives welcome to all excellence,
has eyes and hospitality for mer-
it in corners. An Englishman of
marked character and talent, who
had brought with him hither one
or two friends and a library of
mystics, assured me that nobody
and nothing of possible interest
was left in England, he had
brought all that was alive away.
I was forced to reply: “No, next
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SUCCESS

door to you probably, on the other
side of the partition in the same
house, was a greater man than any
you had seen/’ Every man has a
history worth knowing, if he could
tell it, or if we could draw it from
him. Character and wit have their
own magnetism. Send a deep man
into any town, and he will find an-
other deep man there, unknown
hitherto to his neighbors. That is
the great happiness of life, to
add to our high acquaintances.
The very law of averages might
have assured you that there will
be in every hundred heads, say ten
or five good heads. Morals are

SUCCESS

generated as the atmosphere is.
‘T is a secret, the genesis of either;
but the springs of justice and cour-
age do not fail any more than salt
or sulphur springs.

The world is always opulent,
the oracles are never silent; but
the receiver must by a happy
temperance be brought to that
top of condition, that frolic health,
that he can easily take and
give these fine communications.
Health is the condition of wis-
dom, and the sign is cheerfulness,
an open and noble temper.
There was never poet who had
not the heart in the right place.
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The old trouveur, Pons Capdueil,
wrote,

u Oft have I heard, and deem the witness

true,

Whom man delights in, God delights in
too.”

All beauty warms the heart, is
a sign of health, prosperity and the
favor of God. Everything lasting
and fit for men the Divine Power
has marked with this stamp. What
delights, what emancipates, not
what scars and pains us, is wise
and good in speech and in the arts.
For, truly, the heart at the centre
of the universe with every throb
hurls the flood of happiness into
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every artery, vein and veinlet, so
that the whole system is inundated
with the tides of joy. The plenty
of the poorest place is too great :
the harvest cannot be gathered.
Every sound ends in music. The
edge of every surface is tinged
with prismatic rays.

One more trait of true success.
The good mind chooses what is
positive, what is advancing em-
braces the affirmative. Our sys-
tem is one of poverty. ‘T is pre-
sumed, as I said, there is but one
Shakspeare, one Homer, one Je-
sus, not that all are or shall
be inspired. But we must begin
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SUCCESS

by affirming. Truth and goodness
subsist forevermore. It is true
there is evil and good, night and
day : but these are not equal. The
day is great and final. The night
is for the day, but the day is not
for the night. What is this im-
mortal demand for more, which
belongs to our constitution? this
enormous ideal ? There is no such
critic and beggar as this terrible
Soul. No historical person begins
to content us. We know the satis-
factoriness of justice, the suffic-
iency of truth. We know the an-
swer that leaves nothing to ask.
We know the Spirit by its victor-
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SUCCESS

ious tone. The searching tests to
apply to every new pretender are
amount and quality, what does
he add? and what is the state of
mind he leaves me in? Your the-
ory is unimportant ; but what new
stock you can add to humanity, or
how high you can carry life ? A
man is a man only as he makes
life and nature happier to us.

I fear the popular notion of suc-
cess stands in direct opposition in
all points to the real and whole-
some success. One adores public
opinion, the other private opinion ;
one fame, the other desert; one
feats, the other humility ; one lu-
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SUCCESS

ere, the other love; one mono-
poly, and the other hospitality of
mind.

We may apply this affirmative
law to letters, to manners, to art,
to the decorations of our houses,
etc. I do not find executions or
tortures or lazar-houses, or grisly
photographs of the field on the
day after the battle, fit subjects for
cabinet pictures. I think that some
so-called “sacred subjects” must
be treated with more genius than
I have seen in the masters of Ital-
ian or Spanish art to be right
pictures for houses and churches.
Nature does not invite such ex-
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hibition. Nature lays the ground-
plan for each creature accurately,
sternly fit for all his functions ;
then veils it scrupulously. See
how carefully she covers up the
skeleton. The eye shall not see it ;
the sun shall not shine on it. She
weaves her tissues and integu-
ments of flesh and skin and hair
and beautiful colors of the day
over it, and forces death down un-
derground, and makes haste to
cover it up with leaves and vines,
and wipes carefully out every trace
by new creation. Who and what
are you that would lay the ghastly
anatomy bare ?

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Don’t hang a dismal picture on
the wall, and do not daub with
sables and glooms in your conver-
sation. Don’t be a cynic and dis-
consolate preacher. Don’t bewail
and bemoan. Omit the negative
propositions. Nerve us with in-
cessant affirmatives. Don’t waste
yourself in rejection, nor bark
against the bad, but chant the
beauty of the good. When that
is spoken which has a right to be
spoken, the chatter and the crit-
icism will stop. Set down nothing
that will not help somebody ;

” For every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual
breath.”

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SUCCESS

The affirmative of affirmatives
is love. As much love, so much
perception. As caloric to matter,
so is love to mind ; so it enlarges,
and so it empowers it. Good will
makes insight, as one finds his
way to the sea by embarking on
a river. I have seen scores of peo-
ple who can silence me, but I
seek one who shall make me for-
get or overcome the frigidities
and imbecilities into which I fall.
The painter Giotto, Vasari tells
us, renewed art because he put
more goodness into his heads. To
awake in man and to raise the
sense of worth, to educate his
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feeling and judgment so that he
shall scorn himself for a bad ac-
tion, that is the only aim.

‘T is cheap and easy to destroy.
There is not a joyful boy or an
innocent girl buoyant with fine
purposes of duty, in all the street
full of eager and rosy faces, but
a cynic can chill and dishearten
with a single word. Despondency
comes readily enough to the most
sanguine. The cynic has only to
follow their hint with his bitter
confirmation, and they check that
eager courageous pace and go
home with heavier step and pre-
mature age. They will them-
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SUCCESS

selves quickly enough give the
hint he wants to the cold wretch.
Which of them has not failed to
please where they most wished
it ? or blundered where they were
most ambitious of success? or
found themselves awkward or
tedious or incapable of study,
thought or heroism, and only
hoped by good sense and fidelity
to do what they could and pass
unblamed? And this witty male-
factor makes their little hope less
with satire and skepticism, and
slackens the springs of endeavor.
Yes, this is easy ; but to help the
young soul, add energy, inspire
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hope and blow the coals into a
useful flame ; to redeem defeat by
new thought, by firm action, that
is not easy, that is the work of
divine men.

We live on different planes or
platforms. There is an external
life, which is educated at school,
taught to read, write, cipher and
trade ; taught to grasp all the boy
can get, urging him to put himself
forward, to make himself useful
and agreeable in the world, to
ride, run, argue and contend, un-
fold his talents, shine, conquer and
possess.

But the inner life sits at home,
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SUCCESS

and does not learn to do things,
nor value these feats at all. ‘T is
a quiet, wise perception. It loves
truth, because it is itself real; it
loves right, it knows nothing else ;
but it makes no progress; was as
wise in our first memory of it as
now; is just the same now in ma-
turity and hereafter in age, it was
in youth. We have grown to man-
hood and womanhood; we have
powers, connection, children, re-
putations, professions: this makes
no account of them all. It lives in
the great present; it makes the
present great. This tranquil, well-
founded, wide-seeing soul is no ex-
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press-rider, no attorney, no mag-
istrate : it lies in the sun and broods
on the world. A person of this
temper once said to a man of
much activity, ” I will pardon you
that you do so much, and you me
that I do nothing.” And Euripides
says that ” Zeus hates busybodies
and those who do too much.”

FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY NUMBERED

COPIES PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., IN NOVEMBER, 1912

NO.

UNIVERSITY CFCSlffflRMAUBW