Success In Life

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Title:     Success In Life
Author: Gail Hamilton [More Titles by Hamilton]

The Successful

There are successes more melancholy than any failure. There are failures more noble than success. The man who began life as a ploughboy, who went from his father's farm to the great city with his wardrobe tied up in his handkerchief, and one dollar in his pocket, and who by application, economy, and forecast has amassed a fortune, is not necessarily a successful man. If his object was to amass a fortune, he is so far successful; but it is a mean and miserable object, and his life would be a contemptible, if it were not a terrible, failure. We do not keep this sufficiently in mind. American society, and perhaps all society, is too apt to do homage to material prosperity; but material prosperity may be obtained by the sacrifice of moral grandeur; and so obtained, it is an apple of Sodom. A man may call out his whole energy, wield all his power, and wealth follow as one of the results. This is well. Wealth may even be an object, if it be a subordinate object,--the servant of a higher power. Wealth may minister to the best part of man,--but only minister, not master. Only as a minister it deserves regard. When it usurps the throne and becomes monarch, it is of all things most pitiful and abject. The man who sets out with the determination to be rich as an end, sets out with a very ignoble determination; and he who seeks or values wealth for the respect which it secures and the position it gives, is not very much higher in the scale; yet such people are often held up to the admiration and imitation of American youth; and oftener still have those men been held up for imitation who, whether by determination or drift, had become rich, and whose sole claim to distinction was that they had become rich. Again and again I have seen "success" which seemed to me to be the brand of ignominy rather than the stamp of worth,--the epitaph of culture, if not of character. I look on with a profound and regretful pity. You successful,--YOU! with half your powers lying dormant,--you, with your imagination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your religion a thing of tithes and forms;--you successful, in whom romance has died out; to whom fidelity and constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice; who remember love and heroism and self-sacrifice only as the vaporings of youth; who measure principles by your purse, utility by your using; who see nothing glorious this side of honesty; nothing terrible in the surrender of faith; nothing degrading that is not amenable to the law; nothing in your birthright that may not be sold for a mess of pottage, if only the mess be large enough, and the pottage savory;--you successful? Is this success? Then, indeed, humanity is a base and bitter failure.

It is not necessary that a man should be a robber or a murderer, in order to degrade himself. Without defrauding his neighbor of a cent, without laying himself open to a single accusation of illegality or violence, a man may destroy himself. A moral suicide, he kills out all that belongs to his highest nature, and leaves but a bare and battered wreck where the temple of the holy Ghost should rise.

"Measure not the work
Until the day's out, and the labor done;
Then bring your gauges."

Is that man successful who trades on his country's necessities? He, not a politician, nor a horse-jockey, nor a footpad, but a man who talks of honor and integrity,--a man of standing and influence, whose virtue is not tempted by hunger, whose life has been such that he may be supposed intelligently to comprehend the interests which are at stake, and the measures which should be taken to secure them,--is he successful because he obtains in a few months, by the perquisites--not illegal, but strained to the extreme verge of legal--of an office,--not illegal, but accidental, not in the line of promotion,--a sum of money which the greatest merit and the highest office in the land cannot claim for years? He is shrewd. He understands his business. He knows the ins and outs. He can manage the sharpers. He can turn an honest penny, and a good many of them. He need not refuse to do himself a good turn with his left hand, while he is doing his country a good turn with his right. It is all fair and aboveboard. He does the business assigned him, and does it well. He takes no more compensation than the law allows. The money may as well go to him as to shoddy contractors, Shylock sutlers, and the legion of plebeian rascals. But it was a good stroke. It was a great chance. It was a rare success.

O wretched failure! O pitiful abortion! O accursed hunger for gold! When the nation struggles in a death-agony, when her life-blood is poured out from hundreds of noble hearts, when men and women and children are sending up to the Lord the incense of daily sacrifice in her behalf, and we know not yet whether prayer and effort, whether faith and works, shall avail,--whether our lost birthright, sought carefully, and with tears, shall be restored to us once more,--in this solemn and awful hour, a man can close his eyes and ears to the fearful sights and great signs in the heavens, and, stooping earthward, delve with his muck-rake in the gutter for the paltry pennies! A man? A MAN! Is this manhood? Is this manliness? Is this the race that our institutions engender? Is this the best production which we have a right to expect? Is this the result which Christianity and civilization combine to offer? Is this the advantage which the nineteenth century claims over its predecessors? Is this the flower of all the ages,--earth's last, best gift to heaven?

No,--no,--no,--this is a changeling, and no child. The true brother's blood cries to us from Baltimore. It rings out from the East where Winthrop fell. It swells up from the West with Lyon's dirge. And all along, from hill and valley and river-depths, where the soil is drenched, and the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are scattered,--cleaving clearly through the rattle of musketry, mingling grandly with the "diapason of the cannonade," or floating softly up under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice" ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the magnificent strain,--victorious, triumphant, exultant,--

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
Sweet and honorable is it for country to die.

The Unsuccessful

The unsuccessful men are all around us; and among them are those who confound all distinctions set up by society, and illustrate the great law of compensation set up by God, cutting society at right angles, and obtuse angles, and acute angles, unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned by the careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to those for whom things suggest thoughts.

Have you not seen them,--these unsuccessful men?--men who seem not to have found their niche, but are always on somebody's hands for settlement, or, if settled, never at rest? If they are poor, their neighbors say, Why does he not learn a trade? or, Why does he not stick to his trade? He might be well off, if he were not so flighty. He has a good head-piece, but he potters rhymes; he tricks out toy-engines and knick-knacks; he roams about the woods gathering snakes and toads; and meanwhile he is out at the elbows. If he is rich, they say, Why does he not make a career? He has great resources. His brain is inexhaustible. He is equipped for any emergency. There is nothing which he might not attain, if he would only apply himself, but he fritters himself away. He sticks to nothing. He touches on this, that, and the other, and falls off.

True, O Philosophers, he does stick to nothing, but condemn him not too harshly. It is the old difficulty of the square man in the round hole, and the round man in the square hole. They never did rest easy there since time began, and never will. Many--perhaps the greater number--of people have no overmastering inclination for any employment. They are farmers because their fathers were before them, and that road was graded for them,--or shoemakers, or lawyers, or ministers, for the same reason. If circumstances had impelled them in a different direction, they would have gone in a different direction, and been content. It is not easy for them to conceive that a man is an indifferent lawyer, because his raw material should have been worked up into a practical engineer; or an unthrifty shoemaker, because he is a statesman nipped in the bud. Yet such things are. Sometimes these men are gay, giddy, rollicking fellows. Sometimes their faces are known at the gaming-houses and the gin-palaces. Sometimes they go down quickly to a dishonored grave, over which Love stands bewildered, and weeps her unavailing tears. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are gloomy, sad, silent. Perhaps they are morose. Worse still, they are whining, fretful, complaining. You would even call them sour. Often they are cynical and disagreeable. But be not too hasty, too sweeping, too clear-cut. I have seen such men who were the reverse of the Pharisees. Their faces were a tombstone. The portals of their soul were guarded by lions scarcely chained. But though their temple had no Beautiful Gate, it was none the less a temple, consecrated to the Most High. Within it, day and night, the sacred fire burned, the sacred Presence rested. There, honor, justice, devotion, and all heroic virtues dwelt. Thence falsehood, impurity, profanity, whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,--were excluded. They are unsuccessful, because they will not lower the standard which their youth unfurled. Its folds float high above them, out of reach, but not out of sight, nor out of desire. With constant feet they are climbing up to grasp it. You do not see it; no, and you never will. You need not strain your aching eyes; but they see it, and comfort their weary hearts withal.

These men may receive sympathy, but they do not need pity. They are a thousand times more blessed than the vulgarly successful. The shell is wrinkled, and gray, and ugly; but within, the meat is sweet and succulent. Perhaps they will never make a figure in the world, but

"True happiness abides with him alone
Who in the silent hour of inward thought
Can still suspect and still revere himself
In lowliness of mind."

And it is even better never to be happy than to be sordidly happy. It is better to be nobly dissatisfied than meanly content. A splendid sadness is better than a vile enjoyment.

I hear of people that never failed in anything they undertook. I do not believe in them. In the first place, however, I do not believe this testimony is true. It is the honest false-witness, it is the benevolent slander of their affectionate and admiring friends. But if it were in any case true, I should not believe in the man of whom it was affirmed. It is difficult to conceive that a person of elevated character should not attempt many things too high for him. He finds himself set down in the midst of life. Earth, air, and water, his own mind and heart, the whole mental, moral, and physical world, teem with mysteries. He is surrounded with problems incapable of mortal solution. He must grasp many of them and he foiled. He must attack many foes and be repulsed. He may be stupidly blind, or selfish, or cowardly, and make no endeavor,--in which case he will of course endure no defeat. If he sets out with small aims, he may accomplish them; but it is not a thing to boast of. It is better to fall below a high standard than to come up to a low one,--to try great things and fail, than to try only small ones and succeed. For he who attempts grandly will achieve much, while he whose very desires are small will make but small acquisitions. Of course, I am not speaking now of definite, measurable matters of fact, in which the reverse is the case. Of course, it is better to build a small house and pay for it, than to build a palace and involve yourself in debt. It is wiser to set yourself a reasonable task and perform it, than a prodigious one and do nothing. I am endeavoring to present only one side of a truth which is many-sided,--and that side is, that great deeds are done by those who aspire greatly. You may not attain perfection, but if you strive to be perfect, you will be better than if you were content to be as good as your neighbors. You are not, perhaps, the world's coming man; but if you aim at the completest possible self-development, you will be a far greater man than if your only aim is to keep out of the poor-house. "I have taken all knowledge to be my province," said Lord Bacon. He did not conquer; he could not even overrun his whole province; but he made vast inroads,--vaster by far than if he had designed only to occupy a garden-plot in the Delectable Land. True greatness is a growth, and not an accident. The bud, brought into light and warmth, may burst suddenly into flower; but the seed must have been planted, and the kindly soil must have wrapped it about, and shade and shine and shower must have wrought down into the darkness, and nursed and nurtured the tiny germ. The touch of circumstance may reveal, may even quicken, but cannot create, nobility.

This I reckon to be success in life,--fitness,--perfect adaptation. I hold him successful, and him only, who has found or conquered a position in which he can bring himself into full play. Success is perfect or partial, according as it comes up to, or falls below, this standard. But entire success is rare in this world. Success in business, success in ambition, is not success in life, though it may be comprehended in it. Very few are the symmetrical lives. Very few of us are working at the top of our bent. One may give scope to his mechanical invention, but his poetry is cramped. One has his intellect at high pressure, but the fires are out under his heart. One is the bond-servant of love, and Pegasus becomes a dray-horse, Apollo must keep the pot boiling, and Minerva is hurried with the fall sewing. So we go, and above us the sun shines, and the stars throb; and beneath us the snows, and the flowers, and the blind, instinctive earth; and over all, and in all, God blessed forever.

Now, then, success being the best thing, we do well to strive for it; but success being difficult to attain, if not unattainable, it remains for us to wring from our failures all the sap and sustenance and succor that are in them, if so be we may grow thereby to a finer and fuller richness, and hear one day the rapturous voice bid us come up higher.

And be it remembered, what a man is, not what a man does, is the measure of success. The deed is but the outflow of the soul. By their fruits ye shall know THEM. The outward act has its inward significance, though we may not always interpret it aright, and its moral aspect depends upon the agent. "In vain," says Sir Thomas Browne, "we admire the lustre of anything seen; that which is truly glorious is invisible." Character, not condition, is the trust of life. A man's own self is God's most valuable deposit with him. This is not egotism, but the broadest benevolence. A man can do no good to the world beyond himself. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If a man's soul is stunted and gnarled and dwarfed, his actions will be. If his soul is corrupt and base and petty, so will his actions be. Faith is the basis of works. Essence underlies influence. If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, and his soul be not filled with good, I say that an untimely birth is better than he.

When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom the world calls unsuccessful, furnished with every virtue and adorned with every grace, made considerate through suffering, sympathetic by isolation, spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm and contemptuous, tender even of the sorrows and tolerant of the joys which they despise, enduring the sympathy and accepting the companionship of weakness because it is kindly offered, though it be a burden to be dropped just inside the door, and not a treasure to be taken into the heart's chamber, I am ready to say, Blessed are the unsuccessful.

Blessed ARE the unsuccessful, the men who have nobly striven and nobly failed. He alone is in an evil case who has set his heart on false or selfish or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, he is alike unsuccessful. But he who "loves high" is king in his own right, though he "live low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is sure. God may overrule his desires, and thwart his hopes, and baffle his purposes, but all things shall work together for his good. Though he fall, he shall rise again. Every defeat shall be a victory. Every calamity shall drop down blessing. Inward disappointment shall minister to enduring joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press the wine of life.

Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his promise. As I write that name, hallowed from our olden time, and now baptized anew for the generations that are to follow, comes back again warm, bright, midsummer morning, freighted with woe,--that dark, sad summer morning that wrenched him away from sweet life, and left silence for song, ashes for beauty,--only cold, impassive clay, where glowing, vigorous vitality had throbbed and surged.

Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that early grave, but, one by one, from his silent desk came those brilliant books, speaking to all who had ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith,--words of higher import than their sound,--key-words to a lofty life; for all the bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness that gleam in golden setting throughout his books must have been matched with bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul from which they sprang. Looking at what might have been accomplished with endowments so rare, culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our lament for the dead is not untinged with bitterness. A mind so well poised, so self-confident, so eager in its honorable desire for honorable fame, that, without the stimulus of publication, it could produce work after work, compact and finished, studded with gems of wit and wisdom, white and radiant with inward purity,--could polish away roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal perfection, and attaining a rare excellence,--surely, here was promise of great things for the future; but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little drummer-boy, not knowing what he did, sped a bullet straightway to as brave a heart as ever beat, and quenched a royal life.

I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand hearts will supply each its own name wreathed with cypress and laurel. Were these lives failures? Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its offset? The choice of life or death is in no man's hands. The choice is only and occasionally in the manner. All must die. To a few, and only a few, is granted the opportunity of dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the King of Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful brow, and set it on their own triumphant. They die, not from inevitable age or irresistible disease, but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime and zenith of life, in that glorious transition-hour when hope is culminating in fruition. They die of set purpose, with unflinching will, for God and the right. O thrice and four times happy these who bulwark liberty with their own breasts! No common urn enshrines their sacred dust. No vulgar marble emblazons their hero-deeds. Every place which their life has touched becomes at once and forever holy ground. A nation's gratitude embalms their memory. In the generations which are to come, when we are lying in undistinguished earth, mothers shall lead their little children by the hand, and say: "Here he was born. This is the blue sky that bent over his baby head. Here he fell, fighting for his country. Here his ashes lie";--and the path thither shall be well worn, and for many and many a year there shall be hushed voices, and trembling lips, and tear-dimmed eyes. Everywhere there shall be death,--yours and mine,--but only here and there immortality,--and it is his.

So the young soldier's passing away is not untimely. The longest life can accomplish only benefaction and fame, and the life that has accomplished these has reached life's ultimatum. It is a fair and decorous fate to devote length of days to humanity, but he who gathers up his life with all its beauty and happiness and hope, and lays it on the altar of sacrifice,--he has done all. A century of earthly existence only scatters its benefits one by one. The martyr binds his in a single bundle of life, and the offering is complete. To all noble minds fame is sweet and desirable, and threescore years and ten are all too few to carve the monument more durable than brass; but when such men as Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools that fall from their dying grasp, and complete the fragmentary structure, in shape more graceful, it may be, in height more majestic, in colors more lovely, than their own hands could have wrought. We attribute to them, not simply what they did, but all that they might have done. Had Winthrop lived, failing health, adverse circumstance, might have blasted his promise in the bud; but now nothing of that can ever mar his fame. We surround him with his aspirations. We glorify him with his possibilities. He is not only the knight without fear and without reproach, but the author immortal as the brightest auspices could have made his strong and growing powers. A century could not have left him greater than the love and hope and sorrow of his countrymen, building on the little that is known of his short and beautiful life, have made him.

O men and women everywhere who are following on to know the Lord, faint yet pursuing; men women who are troubled, toiling, doubting, hoping, watching, struggling; whose attainments "through the long green days, worn bare of grass and sunshine," lag hopelessly behind your aspirations; who are haunted evermore by the ghosts of your young purposes; who see far off the shining hills your feet are fain to tread; who work your work with dumb, assiduous energy, but with perpetual protest,--I bid you good luck in the name of the Lord.

[The end]
Gail Hamilton's essay: Success In Life

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