If you can get a child learning to walk to fix his eyes on any object, he will generally navigate to that point without capsizing, but distract his attention and down he goes.
The young man seeking a position to-day is not asked what college he came from or who his ancestors were. "_What can you do?_" is the great question. It is special training that is wanted. Most of the men at the head of great firms and great enterprises have been promoted step by step from the bottom.
"I know that he can toil terribly," said Cecil of Walter Raleigh, in explanation of the latter's success.
As a rule, what the heart longs for the head and the hands may attain. The currents of knowledge, of wealth, of success, are as certain and fixed as the tides of the sea. In all great successes we can trace the power of concentration, riveting every faculty upon one unwavering aim; perseverance in the pursuit of an undertaking in spite of every difficulty; and courage which enables one to bear up under all trials, disappointments, and temptations.
Chemists tell us that there is power enough in a single acre of grass to drive all the mills and steam-cars in the world, could we but concentrate it upon the piston-rod of a steam-engine. But it is at rest, and so, in the light of science, it is comparatively valueless.
Dr. Mathews says that the man who scatters himself upon many objects soon loses his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm.
"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain. Form a plan; have an object; then work for it, learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be useful some day!"
Definiteness of aim is characteristic of all true art. He is not the greatest painter who crowds the greatest number of ideas upon a single canvas, giving all the figures equal prominence. He is the genuine artist who makes the greatest variety express the greatest unity, who develops the leading idea in the central figure, and makes all the subordinate figures, lights, and shades point to that center and find expression there. So in every well-balanced life, no matter how versatile in endowments or how broad in culture, there is one grand central purpose, in which all the subordinate powers of the soul are brought to a focus, and where they will find fit expression. In nature we see no waste of energy, nothing left to chance. Since the shuttle of creation shot for the first time through chaos, design has marked the course of every golden thread. Every leaf, every flower, every crystal, every atom even, has a purpose stamped upon it which unmistakably points to the crowning summit of all creation--man.