“The world knows nothing of its greatest men;”
but there are forms of greatness, or at least excellence, that die and make no sign; there are martyrs who miss the palm, but not the stake; there are heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.
It cannot be denied that there is a class of men who never succeed in business. With a fair amount of earnest industry, they are still unable to get on. Bad luck seems to be their fate, and they are perpetually railing at fortune. In this they are not without sympathy. There are hundreds of simple, good-hearted people, who regard them as ill-starred mortals, against whom an inscrutable destiny had set itself, and who are always ready to pity their mischances and help them in their last extremity. But is not that a very foolish philosophy which refers the misfortunes or the prosperity of individuals to preternatural causes, or even natural causes entirely foreign to the persons? Some people, it is true, owe a great deal to accident. Much of their success is due to circumstances not of their own making. So it is with others who suffer disappointment or disaster. But in those cases in which failure or success is certainly dependent on no extraneous agencies, but on one’s own means and energies, I am confident that no little of the complaint of our hard lot is misdirected, and that the charity which helps us out of our successive difficulties is misplaced. In plain words, our failures in this or that thing are often attributable to the fact that we engage in enterprises beyond our power. The world is filled with examples of this truth. We see hundreds of men in all professions and callings who never achieve even a decent living. The bar of every city is crowded with them. They swell the ranks of our physicians and theologians, and swarm in the walks of science and literature; in short, they run against and elbow you everywhere. They are the unfortunate people who have mistaken their mission. They are always attempting tasks which they have not the first qualification to perform. Their ambition is forever outrunning their capabilities. They fancy that to call themselves lawyers, doctors, divines, or the like, is to be what they are styled. Their signs are stuck thickly on doors and shutters all over the city, but they are without honor or employment. Of course they never prosper. They have no fitness for their vocation, no practical skill, no natural talent, and hence they fail.