Architects of Fate; Or, Steps to Success and Power

by Orison Swett Marden

"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

In a fable one of the Fates spun filaments so fine that they were invisible, and she became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to the spot by these very threads.

Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to implant civilization among the wild tribes. After fifteen years' labor he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but he goes on to say, "It took fifteen years to get it off, and just fifteen minutes to get it on him again."

Physiologists say that dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, asses, and mules. Large birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power of flight.

After a criminal's head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and he raised his hands several times as if to brush away the exciting cause. It was said that the cheek of Charlotte Corday blushed on being struck by a rude soldier after the head had been severed from the body.

Humboldt found in South America a parrot which was the only living creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe. The bird retained the habit of speech after his teachers had died.

Caspar Hauser was confined, probably from birth, in a dungeon where no light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. At seventeen he was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent intelligence. When released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon. Only cold and dismal silence seemed to satisfy him. All that gave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain. The sweetest music was a source of anguish to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vomiting.

Deep in the very nature of animate existence is that principle of facility and inclination, acquired by repetition, which we call habit. Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. In spite of the protests of his weakened will the trained nerves continue to repeat the acts even when the doer abhors them. What he at first chooses, at last compels. Man is as irrevocably chained to his deeds as the atoms are chained by gravitation. You can as easily snatch a pebble from gravitation's grasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from its inevitable effect upon character and destiny. "Children may be strangled," says George Eliot, "but deeds never, they have an indestructible life." The smirched youth becomes the tainted man.

Practically all the achievements of the human race are but the accomplishments of habit. We speak of the power of Gladstone to accomplish so much in a day as something marvelous; but when we analyze that power we find it composed very largely of the results of habit. His mighty momentum has been rendered possible only by the law of the power of habit. He is now a great bundle of habits, which all his life have been forming. His habit of industry no doubt was irksome and tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently, it has gained such momentum as to astonish the world. His habit of thinking, close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power. He formed the habit of accurate, keen observation, allowing nothing to escape his attention, until he could observe more in half a day in London than a score of men who have eyes but see not. Thus he has multiplied himself many times. By this habit of accuracy he has avoided many a repetition; and so, during his lifetime, he has saved years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his achievements, have thrown away.

Gladstone early formed the habit of cheerfulness, of looking on the bright side of things, which, Sydney Smith says, "is worth a thousand pounds a year." This again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in Parliament. This loss of energy has wasted years of many a useful life, which might have been saved by forming the economizing habit of cheerfulness.