“We do not say that to be the head of a big business and to be rich are the chief ends for which to work, but as far as you prize these things, you can only secure them in the way I have mentioned.
“If you are a country school-teacher, on a small salary, and never expect to be invited to teach in a higher school, you never will. But if your ambition is to be principal in a college, you can attain this position. You will read the educational journals, and will know all of the great teachers who now live, and all of those who have gone before. Their names and lives will be familiar to you. You will dwell in thought on the virtues of Roger Ascham, and Arnold of Rugby will be your friend. You will attend the Teachers’ Institutes and take part, too, and encourage the leader by your sympathy. You will attract to your side all the good teachers in the neighborhood, and will soon be in communication with the chief educators in the country, and your promotion is sure as sunrise. As soon as you are made worthy by holding fast to the ideal, you will be called up higher. But suppose you seek to attain promotion by connivance and wire-pulling, your defeat is certain. The thing to do is to be worthy and be ready to accept the invitation promptly, and it will come.
“The necessity of this clearness of ideal which brings a calm certainty of manner is more marked perhaps in the professions of law and healing than elsewhere.
“We are just beginning to appreciate the fact that the good physician heals more by his presence than his potions. A physician who believes that man is made in the image of his Maker and that his body is the dwelling-place of an immortal spirit, has ever before him a most lofty ideal. To come within the atmosphere of such a man, clean in body and pure in heart, is to absorb to a certain extent his qualities of mind, which is a powerful force acting on the body for health. He fills the patient with hope and faith, allays apprehension, calms the mind of disorder, and allows the vis medicatrix natura to act. A doctor of this kind believes in his power to succeed—and he does. The lawyer who fears the other side and is doubtful of his case and who believes the judge is partial, has already lost his cause. But if he believes his client is innocent and that the jury will clear him, if they can be made to see the true state of affairs, brings judge and jury to this way of thinking, and receives the verdict he asks for.
“To make people work against you and get the world in opposition to you, just hold in thought that you are unfortunate and unlucky and that no one appreciates you, and then the world is down on you sure enough. You bring about the thing you fear. But what we want is men who are positive without being pugnacious; men who are cheerful but not frivolous. These are the successful men, and wherever they go they carry help, health and healing.
“The second requisite of success is that you shall hold your thought in the positive and not in the negative mood.
“Be on the lookout for good, and it will come to you. Avoid negation. Shun controversy. Religious (?) disputes have hurt the cause of Truth a thousand times more than all infidels and barbarians, for controversy stirs up a train of thought and feeling that should never be aroused, and which brings a reaction in the form of distrust, jealousy, bickering and hate. The exercise of such hateful emotions disturbs the poise of your mind and invites failure. If a man voices wrong thoughts in your presence, do not be so vain as to imagine you can set him straight by argument. Conversions are not made in that way. You need not lend your assent to his wrong statements, but your silence will be a powerful force acting on him and will tend to make him doubt his infallibility, will set him to thinking seriously and may bring him back into the line of Truth. If you had argued with him, the chances are that his efforts to refute you would have sunk him deeper into his error, for while you were talking to him he would have been thinking up an argument to overthrow your efforts to put him right, and failure to do so would have reacted on you and made you hot and impatient.
“Again I say, a positive and not a negative attitude are necessary to success. Parents and teachers say to children, ‘don’t, don’t, don’t,’ thus sending to them and putting them in a negative element. Their powers are not directed by this ‘don’t’ to secure what they need. They drift rapidly, aimlessly from one worthless, mischievous waste of power to another. Let the parent and teacher say ‘do,’ direct this force, open a way for its use. You cannot gain force, power, by refraining from doing. Power is gained by doing, and gained only by doing. What is the great difference between the spirit of the Old and New Testaments? The Old Testament is full of ‘Thou shalt nots,’ while the New is full of positive force. Contrast Leviticus with the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments with ‘Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’
“Positive moods come to all in greater or less extent. If we court them, entertain them, they remain long with us. They only go when we send them from us. If we keep a silent demand for them they will return to us and the visit be longer than before. Put ourselves in the right attitude and they will cease to be visitors, but will take up their permanent abode with us, the mood will then here become a state.
“In such state success is inevitable. Each person may have success, should have it. Should be satisfied with nothing less than success. We have each felt moments of success, the exultation and life coming from it. We must have this as our state of mind, continual success, permanent success. Success, not necessarily, as the world understands it. Success does not need to be defined; each one knows it, none can be deceived about it. Success brings peace and rest and that highest state of happiness we can know here on earth—a foretaste of Heaven. This does not come by striving nor trying, ‘Not by might nor by power but by my spirit, saith the Lord.’ It comes by holding ourselves in a receptive attitude, ‘Hoping all things, believing all things.’ Looking not back, but forward, living to-day. There must be definite, high, pure purpose.