An Iron Will

AN IRON WILL By ORISON SWETT MARDEN
AUTHOR OF PUSHING TO THE FRONT, ETC. WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF ABNER BAYLEY ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS
New York: THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
1901 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY. AN IRON WILL.
TRAINING THE WILL.
The education of the will is the object of our existence, says Emerson.
Nor is this putting it too strongly, if we take into account the human will in its relations to the divine. This accords with the saying of J. Stuart Mill, that a character is a completely fashioned will.
In respect to mere mundane relations, the development and discipline of one's will-power is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power of will. It is a part of the divine nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. We speak of God's fiat Fiat lux , Let light be. Man has his fiat. The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
It is impossible, says Sharman, to look into the conditions under which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative in right directions. Young people need to go into training for it. We live in an age of athletic meets. Those who are determined to have athletic will-power must take for it the kind of exercise they need.
This is well illustrated by a report I have seen of the long race from Marathon in the recent Olympian games, which was won by the young Greek peasant, Sotirios Louès.