CHAPTER I
TRAINING THE WILL.
"The education of the will is the object of our
existence," says Emerson.
Nor is this putting it too strongly, if we take into
account the human will in its relations to the divine. This accords
with the saying of J. Stuart Mill, that "a character is a
completely fashioned will."
In respect to mere mundane relations, the development
and discipline of one's will-power is of supreme moment in relation
to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power of will. It is
a part of the divine nature, all of a piece with the power of
creation. We speak of God's fiat "Fiat lux, Let light
be." Man has his fiat. The achievements of history have been the
choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was
the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like
Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and
Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they
planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the
tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable
personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack
of dauntless will.
"It is impossible," says Sharman, "to
look into the conditions under which the battle of life is being
fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to
which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative
in right directions." Young people need to go into training for
it. We live in an age of athletic meets. Those who are determined to
have athletic will-power must take for it the kind of exercise they
need.
This is well illustrated by a report I have seen of
the long race from Marathon in the recent Olympian games, which was
won by the young Greek peasant, Sotirios Louès.
A STRUGGLE IN THE RACE OF LIFE.
There had been no great parade about the training of
this champion runner. From his work at the plough he quietly betook
himself to the task of making Greece victorious before the assembled
strangers from every land. He was known to be a good runner, and
without fuss or bustle he entered himself as a competitor. But it was
not his speed alone, out-distancing every rival, that made the young
Greek stand out from among his fellows that day. When he left his
cottage home at Amarusi, his father said to him, "Sotiri, you
must only return a victor!" The light of a firm resolve shone in
the young man's eye. The old father was sure that his boy would win,
and so he made his way to the station, there to wait till Sotiri
should come in ahead of all the rest. No one knew the old man and his
three daughters as they elbowed their way through the crowd. When at
last the excitement of the assembled multitude told that the critical
moment had arrived, that the racers were nearing the goal, the old
father looked up through eyes that were a little dim as he realized
that truly Sotiri was leading the way. He was "returning
a victor." How the crowd surged about the young peasant when the
race was fairly won! Wild with excitement, they knew not how to
shower upon him sufficient praise. Ladies overwhelmed him with
flowers and rings; some even gave him their watches, and one American
lady bestowed upon him her jeweled smelling-bottle. The princes
embraced him, and the king himself saluted him in military fashion.
But the young Sotirios was seeking for other praise than theirs. Past
the ranks of royalty and fair maidenhood, past the outstretched hands
of his own countrymen, past the applauding crowd of foreigners, his
gaze wandered till it fell upon an old man trembling with eagerness,
who resolutely pushed his way through the excited, satisfied throng.
Then the young face lighted, and as old Louès advanced to the
innermost circle with arms outstretched to embrace his boy, the young
victor said, simply: "You see, father, I have obeyed."
MENTAL DISCIPLINE.
The athlete trains for his race; and the mind must be
put into training if one will win life's race.
"It is," says Professor Mathews, "only
by continued, strenuous efforts, repeated again and again, day after
day, week after week, and month after month, that the ability can be
acquired to fasten the mind to one subject, however abstract or
knotty, to the exclusion of everything else. The process of obtaining
this self-mastery--this complete command of one's mental powers--is a
gradual one, its length varying with the mental constitution of each
person; but its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost
labor it ever costs."
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all
education," it was said by Professor Huxley, "is the
ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to
be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which
ought to be learned, and, however early a man's training begins, it
is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly."
