"Didn't you find this new star?" inquired the old man. "Yes," replied Adams. “And isn't it true that sailors guide themselves across the trackless deep by the stars?" the old man went on. "Then what's the good of you finding out this new star if you can't even find your way across these downs?" asked the sage, and the question satisfied him as admitting of no reply. The point of this story is that if we are to let ourselves be bound by the thoughts of others we must remain in a narrow groove of ignorance. Had Adams remained in his Cornish village and thought that the ideas of the yokels were the confines of truth he would never have achieved fame. Never mind if people think you are wrong or foolish. They cannot judge. Let them think you are a failure if they like. So long as you know that you are doing your best, and are advancing in knowledge and power, that is the only thing that matters. Suppose, for a moment, that Napoleon as a boy in his Corsican home had been able to unfold the scheme of his life and the dazzling conquests which he made; suppose he had announced that he would win a throne by his own powers. Everyone would have laughed at him, told him that he was mad, and urged him to settle down to the life of the island as the extent of his ambition. If that had happened, and he had accepted their standard of thought, he would have done nothing, and the whole history of the world would have been different. You remember that when Noah was building his ark the people laughed at him for a fool; but he was saved when they were drowned. The work of the poet Keats was savagely attacked by the critics : if he had accepted their standard, how much poorer our literature would have been by the loss of his work! Yet he was adjudged a failure. If you will listen to other people and let yourself be guided by them, you bind yourself by the limits of their minds, and unless, by some happy chance, those you associate with are large-minded, you must cramp your intellect and remain one of the crowd for the rest of your days. The world is yours. The limit of your powers is the limit of your own mind, which will expand just proportionately to the manner in which you use it. Set up your own standard for everything. Trust your own judgment. If a certain thought is true, it does not matter if all the world proclaims it false it is true just the same. If you are assured that a plan of action which you devise is the right one, the opinion of a thousand people to the contrary will not necessarily prove it to be wrong. It is success to take your own course, even if it be wrong, so long as you believe it to be right. Do not be afraid of failure. Nobody is infallible, and it is not conceivable that the first man who offers you advice, with incomplete knowledge of your thoughts and of your capacity, should necessarily be a better judge than you yourself of what you ought to do. You know your own thoughts completely, and have full acquaintance with your capacity for your task. If you believe your own judgment, if you are satisfied that you are making progress, and if you have confidence in your own powers, you are successful, whatever people may think, and despite the fact that you may not be making much money. Most people, considered as a mass, are like sheep. They run about hither and thither, bleating advice, uncertain what to do, and distrustful of anyone who wants to do anything out of the ordinary. They will criticise you to-day, copy you to-morrow, and follow you blindly the next day. Are such people to be your guides, to set up your standards for you? When you are criticised there is the probability that you are on the right road. Weigh criticism and listen to advice. Gather wisdom, even from the brains of fools, but decide for yourself. Go your own way after you have made sure that it is the right way and the best way -the way that will lead you where you wish to travel. You are succeeding all the time you are striving after something better, and you are a failure from the moment that you weaken. You must meet disaster bravely and cheerfully, and go on. You must encounter success without losing your head or your sense of your own limitations; and go on. You must work at congenial tasks and take the unpleasant ones with them; and go on to your next duty. You must snatch your brief joys, and look for more; help one man, and then assist another. Always you must advance, looking forward and fighting onward, for progress is success. Are you succeeding, or are you hesitating because you are listening to the craven whispers of those who lack courage as well as brains? One day you will have no option of choice: you will be called into the Unknown, and if you are cowardly in this world, you will go into the next with terror. The future cannot frighten the man with courage in his heart, and he who goes out of this life with the consciousness of work well and faithfully done will go armed at all points, a man mentally free, passing into the land where the final success awaits him. CHAPTER XXXI THE REWARD OF POWER "But what is Life? "Tis not to stalk about, and draw fresh air JOSEPH ADDISON. ECAUSE life is what we ourselves make it, we BECA ought to develop our capacity for using its gifts. The world is so ordered that while each one of us must shape his life by his own efforts, we are still dependent upon each other for success. The labourer provides us with the raw materials. Commerce and individual businesses are carried on by many hands controlled by a few brains. The man who can get people to give him all he wants, and all they can yield to him, is the most successful; and it is equally true that the higher a man climbs the more is he dependent upon other people for the maintenance of his prosperity. We learn from others, and we teach ourselves to apply our knowledge. We work with others, and |