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Chapter XII: Concentrated Energy · Pushing to the Front

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