I believe there is such a thing as a habit of success. Some people have the habit, and you can hardly imagine them anywhere in this world or any other where they would not be winning successes. Why? Because of two things, high purpose and an indomitable will. Given both, what can defeat us? “The day is his who works in it with serenity and great aims.”
Failure will come sometimes, to be sure, as it comes to all. But what of that? The indomitable spirit will still urge us on. Browning held that “we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better.” So holds every brave, strong soul. This is what I call the habit of success. That attitude toward life, which in a failure or a defeat finds only a lesson for the next time, is sure to win.
My definition of success, you will see, does not take large account of wealth or position or fame, or of many other things some people foolishly think spell success. One who has mastered the fine art of living has had real success, whether or not the world ever hears of him. Do not think that the success of one’s life is to be measured by the amount of pleasure in it. Some are fortunate all the days of their lives, with good health, sufficient means, and kind friends. Others have trouble after trouble heaped upon them, poverty, ill-health, and grief. We are likely, if we are not discerning, to think that one has failed of success when he has only been roughly buffeted by fate. We have to know the soul to know whether or not one has been a success. We have to know what God thinks of him.
What are the school days for unless they are to teach you values, to show you which things are of most worth? The same qualities which bring success in after life are needed in one’s preparation for life. Opportunities lie all about, unnoticed and neglected by some, by others seized and employed to their full. Side by side sit two students, one dull and listless or dissipating the energies of the mind in a thousand ways; the other earnest, alert to seize every opportunity for self-improvement. Later in life the two move on, one failing in everything he undertakes because of these same habits of indifference and indolence; the other applying his concentrated powers to the task in hand and winning victory. Success in life is not greatly a matter of opportunity, it is rather a matter of character.
“Still o’er the earth hastes Opportunity,
Seeking the hardy soul that seeks for her.”
XII
THE PROGRESS OF WOMAN
Of all the wonders which the history of civilization presents to us, especially during the past century, by far the most remarkable is the progress of woman. Just as we teach the story of political and religious freedom to the rising generation, in order that the blessings of civil and religious liberty may be more fully prized and guarded, so all girls and women should be taught something of the long, arduous struggle which women have had in order to reach the position which they now occupy in the most enlightened parts of the earth. Though a painful struggle, its history is instructive and stimulating. If we know what public opinion has been in the past regarding woman’s place in the world, we can more truly decide whether or not present-day tendencies are to persist.
It is so easy for the unthinking to assume that the world is as it was intended to be and that the customs and conventionalities of society are divinely ordained. This is one of the reasons why we should be careful students of history. No one who has the wide point of view which such study gives can fail to recognize the fact that ours is by no means a completed world, but that evolution is as surely in progress now as ever it was, and that human society is still in the making. Each generation is in duty bound to know the accumulated wisdom of past ages and to add something to it for future generations.
There are many phases of the so-called “woman-question,” the enfranchisement of woman being only one of them, though the one we are hearing most about to-day. All the questions which have arisen, and all which are likely to arise in the future, may be summed up in one or two all-important questions: Is there any freedom, privilege, or opportunity accounted good for men that should be denied to women? If so, to whom belongs the right to deny it?