The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

The old saying that "honesty is the best policy" has lost its original force by much repetition. And it does not go far enough, either. I am speaking of more than mere mercantile honesty; I am speaking of political sincerity, of intellectual sincerity. Never attempt to fool anybody. We live at such a rate of speed, our perceptions have become so abnormally sensitive and acute, that it is next to impossible to deceive any one; and he who attempts it is usually the only one deceived.

If, then, a man can mount upon this humble stepping-stone of low personal interest to sincerity for the sake of his own advantage, he will, after a while, be able to climb higher, to the exalted plane of truthfulness for the sake of truth; and then he will behold the beatitudes of righteous living, and experience the joys which putting oneself in harmony with the order of the universe and the on-going of events never fails to bring. As a great scientist puts it, "Establish your polarity, young man, and sleep soundly at night."

And courage: A successful manufacturer said to me one day, in explaining his own success: "I never let my idea get cold. That, I think, is why I have succeeded. When a great business deal came to my mind, I did not waste my energy inquiring about whether I could do it. I did not waste time and strength regretting that I was not stronger. I did not destroy my force by doubting my own conception. I went at it. I did it. I spent all my energy on execution after I had once conceived it. Did I not make mistakes following such a plan? Why, of course I made mistakes; and God protect me from the man who never made a mistake!

"But acting by that method alone," said he, "is the way I achieved all my triumphs. I do not pursue that course now, because I am getting old, and I am in very poor health. Age and ill health make me doubt; so I have not made any large business success for several years. I should say that the reason why so many men who are really capable intellectually fail, is because they are infidels to their own thought, traitors to their own conception.

"If I could concentrate all the advice of my life into one thing," declared this strong wise man, in concluding his comments on failure and success, "it would be for those young men who expect to do something constructive to have faith in their idea, and act upon it before it gets cold. There is a tremendous force in the enthusiasm of your freshly formed plan. You have contributed largely to the defeat of your scheme when you have permitted yourself to doubt it."

It was only the other day that the newspapers were full of an extraordinary achievement of one of the American magicians of business; and the papers said that the remarkable thing about it was that the plan flashed upon him in a single evening, as he was leaving for a long vacation. He acted upon it instantly, and devoted his fortune, reputation, almost life, to its consummation. He succeeded. If he had taken six months to have thought over it, his conception would have been abandoned.

While this man's plan came on him in an evening, a study of his life shows that, unconsciously to himself, it had been growing for a long series of years. It flowered out all at once, like the night-blooming cereus. Cæsar decided to cross the Rubicon on the instant? Yes, but we cannot doubt that this imperial resolution had been formed the day when in the Forum, as Macaulay describes it, Cæsar said that the future Dictator of Rome might be Pompey, or Crassus, or still somebody else whom nobody was thinking of (that somebody else being himself, of course).

And, indeed, Cæsar would at that time have been the last that any Roman would have selected as the master of the world. He was young. He was small. He seemed almost frail. He was an unspeakable egotist. He was fastidious in his dress. I have read that he even used perfumes. And how could the common eye discern, through all of these externals of frippery, the lion heart, the eagle vision, and the mind of conquest and empire?

There is a very great danger in the examples just cited. These men were geniuses, and they are not to be imitated except as their methods may be applicable to the common man. This paper is for common men—for people like ourselves. There are geniuses; but their high-wrought lives, tornado activity, and methods of lightning are not for us. All the world's real leaders, whether in the fields of thought or action, whether in the council-chamber of the statesman, on the battle-field of the warrior, in the study of the writer, or in the laboratory of the scientist—all have been men of genius. No mediocre man ever was a great leader in the historic sense.

With our habit of looking at to-day as though it were eternity, we consider men "leaders," and use the adjectives "great," "splendid," etc., as applied to them, when historically these men will hardly be discernible.