He who can do this will not be daunted by imaginary difficulties, or waste his powers by needless preparation to meet them, and, on the other hand, he will not court failure by undertaking the tasks that lie before him, and neglecting to make due allowances for contingencies.
But if the choice lay between the over-anxious and the over-sanguine temperament, then for all the purposes of an active and happy life the hopeful is infinitely preferable.
It is just possible that excessive care and caution would in the long run more often prove right in judgment than injudicious hope; but even that is perhaps doubtful.
Not merely the unforeseen, but that which cannot be foreseen by the most anxious vigilance, is so potent a factor in human affairs that the fortuitous and accidental may perhaps be said to shape as many of our ends as all our cares can do.
Moreover, anxiety and fear and morbid apprehension are quite as distorting as high-flown hope and confidence.
But even though it be granted that the more cautious temperament is the safer of the two, any advantage in this way is more than counterbalanced by the pluck and energy which a boundless hopefulness is able to inspire.
There is, it must be confessed, very little “go” to be got out of those who are habitually given to a despondent and over-anxious view of things, however useful they may be as skids upon wheels that are apt to go too fast; while, all the world over, it is and always has been those who are dazzled by the brilliancy and colour in which they themselves deck out the future who have done the greatest deeds and excited the greatest influence.
All history almost has been made, wars have been waged, freedoms have been won, dynasties have been overthrown, reforms have been brought about, inventions have been perfected, not by men who have been pre-eminent for their skill in forecasting difficulties, but by those who have insanely “laughed at impossibilities.”
No doubt great caution as well as great hope has been characteristic of many of the foremost men of history, but as a rule the greatest of human works have been accomplished by those whose cautious fears and prudent foresight have continually been borne down by their sanguine temperament or some equivalent to it.
The utterances of oracles, the reading of the stars, omens and prophecies, witchcraft and palmistry, and every other species of infatuation have at all times been called in to inspire just that confident hope with which capricious Nature has so largely endowed some of her children, while to others of them she seems to have denied it altogether.