“I think it has a very important effect. If we are kept perpetually under lowering influences—lowering both morally and æsthetically,—the tendency will inevitably be to drag us down. I say æsthetically, because I think in that sense good taste is a part of good morals. You can, of course, have good taste without good morals; but with morality there is a certain feeling or measure of reserve and nicety which does not accompany good taste without good morals. You know St. Paul says: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ That is as true to-day as it ever was. We can’t always be with our equals or our superiors, however; we must take people as we find them. But we should try to be with people who stand for high things, morally and intellectually. Then, when we have to be among people of a lower grade, we can help them, because I think human nature, on the whole, desires to be elevated rather than lowered.”
“Do you think it is necessary to success in life to have a special aim?”
“I think it is a great thing to have a special aim or talent, and it is better to make one thing the leading interest in life than to run after half-a-dozen.”
XIV
A TALK WITH EDISON
DRAMATIC INCIDENTS IN HIS EARLY LIFE
TO discover the opinion of Thomas A. Edison concerning what makes and constitutes success in life is an easy matter—if one can first discover Mr. Edison. I camped three weeks in the vicinity of Orange, N.J., awaiting the opportunity to come upon the great inventor and voice my questions. It seemed a rather hopeless and discouraging affair until he was really before me; but, truth to say, he is one of the most accessible of men, and only reluctantly allows himself to be hedged in by pressure of endless affairs.
“Mr. Edison is always glad to see any visitor,” said a gentleman who is continually with him, “except when he is hot on the trail of something he has been working for, and then it is as much as a man’s head is worth to come in on him.”
He certainly was not hot on the trail of anything on the morning when, for the tenth time, I rang at the gate in the fence which surrounds the laboratory on Valley Road, Orange. A young man appeared, who conducted me up the walk to the Edison laboratory office.