Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
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"But every blow pierces my heart."
"Ay; but after a little it shall work for thee a far more
exceeding weight of glory."
"I cannot understand," as blow fell upon blow, "why I should
suffer in this way."
"Wait; what thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter."
And out of all this came the famous Koh-i-noor to sparkle in the
monarch's crown. ----
There is a lesson in the story of the diamond for every man, and
there is an ESPECIALLY good lesson for the young man who is
succeeding too fast.
That diamond became the extraordinarily beautiful stone that we
read about, and that many of us would foolishly like to own,
because of the trials through which it passed.
We do not mean to suggest that men, to succeed, should
NECESSARILY undergo repeated poundings and hammerings,
although, as a matter of fact, the really great men of the world
have undergone such grinding and polishing and hard knocks as no
diamond was ever submitted to. But we do say distinctly that
almost every man needs in the course of his life a FIRST-CLASS
FAILURE.
No man is more unfortunate than he who succeeds too quickly and
too easily. His success makes him exaggerate his own importance
and ability. It makes him underestimate the strength of those
who compete with him, and the difficulty of winning in the long
run.
The world is full of all kinds of disappointed beings--artists,
writers, business men--workers of all sorts, who lead
disappointed lives.
Of these men, a great many started out hopefully and promisingly.
But fate failed to do for them the work of the polishing lapidary
that we all need.
They succeeded too soon, they made money too easily, they rose
too suddenly.
Failure at the right time would have made them think, work and do
better. But failure came too late, and when the energy to fight
and overcome was no longer there.
If every young man who thinks well of himself will realize that
he mistakes good fortune for great ability, and that the failure
that has been put off will come sooner or later, unless he
thinks of it and struggles to improve himself in spite of
success, many disappointments will be saved in the future.
Discount your failure. Don't wait for it to discount you.
DON'T BE IN A HURRY, YOUNG GENTLEMEN
There are many young men on earth who fail because they lack
ambition and determination to advance. There are many more whose
trouble is hasty ambition. They fail to realize their present
chances in their hurried reaching out for something better. You
may see in any club, pool-room or other resort for wasting time
crowds of young men smoking and deploring their lack of success.
"I've been working three years at the same job and the same
salary," one will say, "and I don't see what chance I have for
getting ahead."
The young man who talks in this way does not realize that success
depends on developing the qualities which are in him. He can
develop them if he will, no matter what his place in the world.
Once he is ready to do good work, once he is developed, the work
will find him out. ----
When Napoleon Bonaparte was resting from his labors at St. Helena
he used to tell this story:
"One day on parade a young lieutenant stepped out of the ranks
much excited to appeal to me personally. He said to me that he
had been a lieutenant for five years and had not been able to
advance in rank. I said to him, 'Calm yourself. I was seven
years a lieutenant, and yet you see that a man may push himself
forward, for all that.' " ----
Napoleon, when he preached this lesson to the young, dissatisfied
officer, was the self-made Emperor of the French and of a great
many other nations. He had come to Paris a thin, hollow-cheeked,
under-sized boy from the conquered and despised island of
Corsica. He stuck in the humble grade of lieutenant for seven
years. When the time came he blossomed out.
When he was lieutenant he was developing himself. He studied and
mastered the art of war. He wrote the history of Corsica, and no
one would publish it. He wrote a drama which was never acted.
He wrote a prize essay for the Academy of Lyons, and did not win
the prize. On the contrary, his effort was condemned as
incoherent and poor in style. These were a few failures; enough
to make your ordinary young man throw up his hands and say:
"I've done all I can do; now let the world look out for me."
Just as he became hopeful about the future when he knew that he
had real military genius, he was dismissed from the army, and his
career seemed to be ended. He made the thin soup upon which he
and his brother lived. He could afford to change his shirt only
once a week. He said:
"I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted the door on my
poverty."
He kept at it, and all the time, successful or otherwise, he was
developing himself. He developed into an emperor. Young men
will please notice that fact, and the fact that Napoleon worked
and tried under adversity and monotony instead of grumbling.
----
The newspaper reporter who does not get ahead very fast, the
author whose manuscripts are treated as were Napoleon's first
efforts, may study with considerable profit a young American
writer named Richard Harding Davis. That young man had been a
reporter in Philadelphia for seven years when he went to work on
a New York evening newspaper at a small salary. He had written
and was writing some of his best stories, but could not get
ahead, apparently. Nevertheless, he kept on trying, and
developed himself. When other young men were busy talking about
themselves or deploring their lot Davis was writing and grinding
away out of working hours at the effort to get out and realize
what was in him. He succeeded. ----
A few cases have been mentioned for young men to think over.
They are selected at random. No young man need worry about
himself so long as he can honestly say that he is doing his best.
Being in the same place at the same salary for seven years can do
you no harm, if you are developing during that time what is in
you. But you may well worry if you are drifting aimlessly,
pitying yourself, making no effort. If your mind stays in the
same spot for years, that is dangerous. But don't worry about
anything else.
WHEN THE BABY CHANGED INTO A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD
Nothing is more common than to hear men--especially great and
moral men--deplore the results of civilization, of mechanical,
industrial and scientific progress. We quote a typical lament by
a noble and sincere man, the Reverend Charles Wagner, author of
an admirable book called "The Simple Life." The author says:
"If it had been prophesied to the ancients that one day humanity
would have all of the machinery now in use to sustain and protect
natural existence, they would have concluded therefrom, first, an
increase of independence, and in the second place, a great
decrease in the competition for worldly possessions, They would
have thought that the simplification of life would have been the
result of such perfected means of action, that there would follow
the realization of a higher standard of morality. Nothing of
this sort has come to pass--not happiness, nor social peace, nor
energy for good has increased."
Naturally, from a superficial point of view, it is discouraging
to see poverty, ostentation of wealth, injustice and the love of
money increasing, instead of declining, with the great
developments in human power.
Suppose it had been said two hundred years ago that some day one
single man, with a loom, would be able to make cloth enough
to clothe scores in one day; that a few children working in a
stocking factory would be able to produce more stockings than a
million women could knit.
It would, of course, have been prophesied that when these great
inventions came everybody would be well clothed, every woman and
child would have warm stockings--and so on.
But we find, as society's powers increase, as machinery improves,
and the means of producing and distributing wealth develop, that
the struggle for existence and the display of avarice are
accentuated.
The pessimistic man, observing these conditions, is filled with
despair for the future of humanity. He predicts worse and worse
times ahead, while he longs for the peaceable old days before the
steam engine had appeared among us. ----
Now, in order to map out a parable, we must ask you to do a good
deal of supposing.
Suppose, in place of the human race, one single human baby.
Suppose that its mother had never seen another baby, and had no
idea of the laws governing a baby's development.
And suppose, as the helpless baby lay on its back in the cradle,
waving its arms, kicking its legs, gasping and blinking, that the
following prophecy had been made to the mother:
"Some day that baby of yours will be five feet high. Some day it
will be able to walk and run, and throw stones, and carry
weights, and fight, and do all kinds of things."
Of course, the mother, hearing this, would have been very much
rejoiced, saying to herself:
"My baby now is feeble and helpless, and I must watch it all the
time to see that it does not roll out of the cradle, or that the
cat does not bite it. When my baby gets to be five feet high and
able to fight and run and jump, of course it will be free from
danger, it will live happily, and I shall be free from anxiety."
Now, suppose that fourteen years have passed. The mother has
seen the baby grow to be five feet high and fourteen years old,
and the prophecy is fulfilled.
Is the mother happy? She is weeping bitterly. The baby has
certainly improved in its powers most wonderfully. It can run
and jump and fight. As a result of its abilities, it comes back
one day with a black eye, the next day with a broken nose, the
next day with a sore toe. It is always in trouble. It has even
developed vicious traits of its own. It tells lies, it steals,
it is even disrespectful to its mother.
You supposed, don't forget, that this mother never saw another
baby, and knew nothing about the development of human beings
along certain lines. Would she not be horrified at her child's
condition? Would she not think it getting worse and worse,
and that it must end horribly and tragically? Would she not sigh
for the old days of the cradle, and wish that her baby might go
back to its babyhood and live comfortably once more, on its back,
with its hands and feet in the air and a vacant look in its eyes?
----
The human race has gone ahead, as that supposititious baby goes
ahead in fourteen years. We have obtained many new forces, many
new accomplishments. We have learned to use steam and
electricity, as the child learns to use its legs and its hands.
But, like the child of fourteen, we have not developed morally or
mentally in proportion to our physical development.
But just as surely as the child passes on from childhood, with
its follies, its quarrels, and its accidents, to mature,
self-respecting manhood, just so surely will the human race go
through its babyhood, through its boyhood, and on into years of
wisdom, justice, self-control and real accomplishment. ----
At present we are in a childish condition as a race, just about
able to walk and run around a little. We do not see our future
clearly, and many of us look back regretfully to the simple days
of industrial babyhood.
But those days can never be brought back, even if we wanted to
bring them back. The thing for us to do is to remember that
great progress and a great future are ahead of us, and do all we
can to prepare for the future and hurry it along. We should
refrain especially from feelings of pessimism. We should study
and work to control ourselves as well as we can, and look ahead
into the future.
Remember this very true saying and apply it in your attitude
toward the world:
"It is not enough to believe in God; one must believe in man, in
humanity and its future."
THE EYE THAT WEIGHS A TON
All our fussing and fuming about little matters must end in time.
It is a comfort to feel sure that the time will come when
questions of wages, starvation, justice, supply and demand,
finance, and all the miserable worries of to-day, from
Presidential elections to the digging of sewers, will be things
of the past.
Had we been intended for such things exclusively, we might as
well have been put in a hole in the ground or in some cool corner
of Hades to fight out our troubles. We should not have needed
for our home a beautiful globe, swinging through endless space,
bathed in sunlight or blessed with the companionship of other
suns and planets whirling with us on mysterious errands.
Man's work of to-day--the fighting, the sweating, the starving,
the cheating and lying, the miserable births and the dull,
stupid, monotonous living--will end soon. Real HUMAN life
will dawn and end the period of savage life.
Control of nature's forces will supply every man with what he
needs to keep his body alive, his soul and his brain free from
care.
Then men will cease their animal lives, cease eating to live and
living to eat. They will live to think. The brain, which
differentiates them from the animals, will give the real interest
to their lives. Mental work--art, science and things worth
while--will occupy them. ----
Does it not seem probable that when the day of organized life
comes our chief interest will be the study of the universe--the
other worlds outside of our own?
The great man will be he whose genius shall cross interstellar
space as Columbus crossed the ocean. The great newspaper editor
will be the first to get a signed statement from Mars.
The discoverer of that day will get from some older planet
information millions of years ahead of our own.
As the dull mind of the field-plodder now looks toward the great
cities--toward the vast movement outside his own little life--so
shall men look away from this little, limited, but by that time
well regulated, planet, to the mysteries and the grandeurs of the
worlds outside.
Life will be complete in those coming days. Men will look back
with pity to the time when they quarreled about little metal
money tokens, locked each other up in jail, or choked each other
to death legally.
Let us hope and believe that we may come back then to share the
pleasure of the world's mature days, since we are sentenced to
exist here to-day in the greasy, clammy period of struggle and
half-bakedness. ----
While the infant sits drawing milk, with never a dream of solid
food, the teeth are growing beneath its gums. And while we crawl
around here now, with no conception of our future state, some of
the forces at work among us are preparing for the days when real
life shall begin. Among these forces you may count the
constructors of the great cosmic eye--the huge telescope that is
now building in Paris. Compared with all other exhibits at the
Paris Fair, that great instrument will be as a giant among
babies, a Corliss engine among children's toys.
It is the precursor of the great instruments which in the future
will take man on his travels through space. Imperfect as it is,
it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight.
----
Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown glass lenses
more than four feet in diameter, weighing a ton, and suspended at
the end of a tube one hundred feet long! It will reach out
thousands of billions of miles into space, giving us, perhaps,
new secrets of the universe. Yet it is but a child's toy
compared to the instruments which must follow it.
And you who read this, if your mind is fresh and your imagination
not jaded, may be the man who shall add to the power of this
instrument as Galileo added to that given to the world by
Lippershey, the humble Dutchman.
We invite the young American of ambition to study this latest
proof of man's growing skill, and see whether he can imagine
anything to add to it. ----
"I have not seen it" say you. If you are the right man, you do
not need to SEE it. Galileo only HEARD of Lippershey's
discovery. He thought hard on the problems of refraction for one
night, and as a result produced a telescope capable of magnifying
threefold. He finally produced a telescope of thirty-two-fold
power.
This French telescope magnifies six thousand times, but it is
only a baby telescope, full of faults. It is rendered imperfect
by the wavy motion of the air, which affects our sight just as
the motion of the waves affects the sight of a fish. It lacks
any adequate arrangement for light supply. The great trouble of
the astronomer is the getting of more light in his telescopes.
You may be the man to tell him how to do it without adding to the
diameter of his object glass.
Anyhow, think about the big telescope. If it does not make you
an astronomer or a great inventor, it may stir up your brain to
the pitch of inventing a really good chicken coop. That is still
lacking, and in great demand.
WHAT ANIMAL CONTROLS YOUR SPIRIT?
Of all animals upon earth man came last.
All of earth's animal creations are bound up in man.
As to the first statement there is no difference of opinion.
The Bible and Darwin agree that man was created last of all the
animals.
Very superficial observation will convince you that man contains
in his mental make-up all of the "inferior" animals, or at least
a great many of them.
You, Mr. Jones, or Smith, who read this are in your single self
a sort of synthesis of the entire animal creation.
If you could be divided into your component animal parts there
would be a menagerie in your house, and you, Smith or Jones,
would be missing. That thing we call a "soul" would be floating
around, impalpable, looking for its house to live in. ----
Of course, you can see the animal make-up in your neighbor more
readily than in yourself.
How do men describe each other? Do they not speak as follows,
and mean exactly what they say
"He is as sly as a fox."
"He eats like a pig."
"He has dog-like faithfulness."
"He is as brave as a lion."
"He is as treacherous as a snake."
"He was as hungry as a wolf," etc. ----
Our good and our bad qualities alike are mapped out in our humble
animal relations.
The horse stands for ambition, which strives and suffers in
silence. The dog represents friendship, which suffers and
sacrifices much, but whines loudly when injured.
We have no doubt that of the twelve passions which enter into
Fourier's complex analysis of man each has its prototype in some
one animal. ----
To rebel at the animal combination which makes up a man would be
folly.
The Maker of us all, from ants to anti-imperialists, naturally
gathered together the various parts in lower animal form before
finishing the work in man.
A harmoniously balanced mixture of all the animals is calculated
undoubtedly to produce the perfect man. ----
Therefore, study your animal make-up. Analyze honestly and
intelligently the so-called "lower" creatures from whom you
derive your mental characteristics. If you have not yet done so,
study at once some good work on embryology, and learn with
amazement and awe of your marvelous transformations before birth.
Then do your best to control the menagerie that is at work in
your mind.
Stultify Mr. Pig, if he is too prominent. Circumvent Mr. Fox,
if he tries to rule you and make of you a mere cunning machine.
Do not let your Old Dog Tray qualities of friendship lead to your
being made a fool.
In short, study carefully the animal qualities that make up your
temperament and prove in your own person the falseness of
Napoleon's irritating statement that a man's temperament can
never be changed by himself. ----
It may interest you to note that when man becomes insane, the
fact is at once made apparent that his mind, dethroned, had acted
as the ruler of a savage menagerie. Many crazy men imagine
themselves animals of one sort or another. Nearly all of them
display the grossest animal qualities, once their mind is
deranged. Women of the greatest refinement sink into dreadful
animalism when insane. Heine tells of a constable who, in his
boyhood, ruled his native city. One fine day "this constable
suddenly went crazy, * * * and thereupon he began to roar like a
lion or squall like a cat."
Heine remarks with calculated naivete: "We little boys
were greatly delighted at the old fellow, and trooped, yelling,
after him until he was carried off to a madhouse."
There is, by the way, much of the natural animal in "little
boys." It takes years to make a fairly reasonable creature of a
young human. For that reason many ignorant parents are foolishly
distressed at juvenile displays of animalism, which are perfectly
natural. ----
The same Heine, whose writings you ought not to neglect,
describes beautifully a human menagerie. We'll quote that, and
then let you off for the day. Heine was living in Paris in the
forties, and used to visit a curious revolutionary freak named
Ludwig Borne. Of this man's house Heine wrote:
"I found in his salon such a menagerie of people as can hardly be
found in the Jardin des Plantes (the Paris zoological garden).
In the background several polar bears were crouching, who smoked
and hardly ever spoke, except to growl out now and then a real
fatherland 'Donnerwetter' in a deep bass voice. Near them was
squatting a Polish wolf in a red cap, who occasionally yelped out
a silly, wild remark in a hoarse tone. There, too, I found a
French monkey, one of the most hideous creatures I ever saw; he
kept up a series of grimaces, each of which seemed more lovely
than the last," etc.
If Heine's polar bears, wolf and monkey had studied themselves,
as we advise you to study yourself, they might have escaped the
sarcasm of the sharpest tongue ever born in or out of Germany.
FROM MAMMOTHS TO MOSQUITOES --FROM MURDER TO HYPOCRISY
You are standing with this writer on the edge of a stagnant pool
in Northern Europe, fifty thousand years ago.
The trees are strange, the life is strange. There are certain
familiar things visible. For instance, on one side of the pool
there is an angry mammoth, with long hair and long tusks.
He is a huge, savage beast, monster of power with tiny, vicious
eyes, and a curled trunk of unlimited force.
You recognize his resemblance to the modern elephant, and you
feel at home.
In the middle of the pool, standing up to his waist in water,
there is another queer creature. He has long, red hair, and
through his lips you can see that in his rage he is grinding a
large set of teeth with the canine incisors abnormally developed.
He is a shaggy, savage-looking brute, with a bloody and an
apprehensive eye. You will recognize him as a human being.
As he stands in the pool there is a familiar slap of his right
hand on the back of his left shoulder--he has killed a mosquito.
That is the picture. We leave the mammoth, primitive man and the
mosquito to settle their troubles.
We call your attention to this. If you really witnessed that
scene you would have undoubtedly said to the red-eyed savage in
the pool:
"My friend, you can kill that mosquito easily, and possibly in
time you will kill all the mosquitoes. But that MAMMOTH is a
problem that you will not solve for a long time, if ever."
Had you known that the red-eyed human animal in the middle of the
pool was sent there by Providence to regulate the globe,
cultivate it, destroy the noxious forms of animal life, etc., you
would certainly have believed that that person would have got rid
of the mosquitoes long before getting rid of the mammoth.
As a matter of fact, the mammoth has gone, the woolly rhinoceros
of Northern Europe has gone, the sabre-toothed tiger prowls no
more. Even wolves have disappeared, and the mosquito is still
flourishing in his millions and billions.
We have only just learned that it is he who gives us malaria,
that it is he who spreads yellow fever and undoubtedly many other
diseases.
The human race, which in its earliest, incapable childhood easily
managed to dispose of the mammoth and his huge fellow-monsters,
still stands helpless before the little mosquito, deadliest of
VISIBLE animals on earth.
Is it not interesting to realize that the hardest work of the
human race, as of the individual, is the most minute work; that
the intellect, which easily copes with the heaviest and the
biggest problems, is baffled by the tiniest?
Ultimately, and perhaps soon, we shall send the mosquito, the
house-fly and the other buzzing pirates to join in the grave's
silence their big brothers--the mastodon and the rest.
Then our fight will begin against invisible animal life, against
the actual microbes of disease which the mosquito has been
carrying around and injecting into us. It is a long fight, but,
of course, we shall win it. ----
And is it not interesting, also, to reflect that in the moral, as
in the physical, battles of life man requires the longest time to
deal with his smallest enemies?
Morally we are still primitive savages. We are still combating
murder, arson, theft--like the cave-dweller fighting the
physical mammoth, we are fighting the mammoths of moral
deformity.
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