As in the physical world, disease is but the effort nature makes to remove some pressing evil, so failure should be but the methods whereby we are enabled to eliminate those traits of character which are a hindrance to our lasting success. As the inventor subjects his production to the most rigorous tests in order that inherent defects may become known and, if possible, remedied, even so does Providence, in subjecting us to great trials, discover to us by our failures wherein we lack; and we are remiss in duty to ourselves do we not most earnestly endeavor to improve by these tests?
The man who never failed is a myth. Such a one never lived, and is never likely to. All success is a series of efforts in which, when closely viewed, are to be seen more or less failures. These efforts are ofttimes not visible to the naked eye, but each individual heart is painfully conscious of how many of its most cherished plans ended only in failures. If you fail now and then, do not be discouraged; bear in mind that it is only the part and experience of every successful man. We might even go farther, and say that the most successful men often have the most failures. These failures, which to the feeble are mere stumbling-blocks, to the strong serve to remove the scales from their eyes, so that they now see clearer, and go on their way with a firmer tread and a more determined mien, and compel life to yield to them its most enduring trophies.
The weakling goes no farther than his first failure; he lags behind, and subsides into a life of discontent and vain regrets; and so by this winnowing process the number of the athletes is restricted to few, and there is clear space in the arena for those who determinedly press on. There can hardly be found a successful man who will not admit that he was made so by failure, and that what he once thought his hard fate was in reality his good fortune. Success can not be gained by a hop, skip, and a jump, but by arduous passages of gallant perseverance, toilsome efforts long sustained, and, most of all, by repeated failure; for the failures are but stepping-stones, or, at the worst, non-attainment of the desired end before the time.
If success were to crown your efforts now, where would be the great success of the future? It is the brave resolution to do better next time that lays the substrata of all real greatness. Many a prominent reputation has been destroyed by early success. Too often the effect of such success is to sap the energies. Imagining fame or fortune to be won, future efforts are remitted; relying on the fame of past achievements, the fact is overlooked that it is labor alone that renders any success certain; and so by the remission of labor and energy, disgrace or failure awakens him from his delusive dreams; but, alas! in how many instances the awakening comes too late!
There is no more prolific source of repining and discontent in life than that found in looking back upon past mistakes. We are fond of persuading ourselves and others that had others acted differently our whole course in life would have been one of unmixed success instead of the partial failure that it so often appears. If we would only look on past mistakes in the right spirit—in the spirit of humility, and with a desire to learn from past errors—it would be well; but the error men make in this review is in attributing the failures to circumstances instead of to character. They see the mistakes which lie on the surface, but fail to trace them back to the source from whence they spring. The truth is, that even trifling circumstances are the occasions for bringing out the predominant traits of character. They are tests of the nature and quality of the man rather than the causes of future success or failure.
None can tell how weighty may be the results of even trivial actions, nor how much of the future is bound up in our every-day decisions. Chances are lost, opportunities wasted, advisers ill-chosen, and disastrous speculations undertaken, but there is nothing properly accidental in these steps. They are to be regarded as the results of unbalanced characters, as much as the cause of future misery. The disposition of mind that led to these errors would certainly, under other circumstances, have led to different, but not less lamentable results.
We see clearly in judging others. We attribute their mischances without compunction to the faults we see in them, and sometimes even make cruel mistakes in our investigation; but in reviewing our own course self draws a veil over our imperfections, and we persuade ourselves that mistakes or unfortunate circumstances are the entire cause of all our misfortunes. It is true that no circumstances are always favorable, no training perfectly judicious, no friend wholly wise, yet he who is always shifting the blame of his failures upon these external causes is the very man who has the most reason to trace them to his own inherent weakness or demerits.
It is questionable whether the habit of looking much at mistakes, even of our own, is a very profitable one. It might be rendered of use were we only to do so in the proper spirit. Certainly the practice of mourning over and bewailing them, and charging upon them all the evils that afflict us, is the most injurious to our future course, and the greatest hindrance to any real improvement of character. Acting from impulse, and not from reason, is one of the chief causes of these mistakes; and if any would avoid them in the future they must test all their sudden impulses by the searching and penetrating ordeal of their best judgment before acting upon them. Above all, the steady formation of virtuous habits, the subjection of all actions to principles rather than to policy, the firm and unyielding adherence to duty, as far as it is known, are the best safeguards against mistakes in life.
Who lives that has not, during his life, aspired to something that he was unable to reach? The sorrows of mankind may all be traced to blighted hopes; like frost upon the green leaves comes the chilling conviction that our hopes are forever dead. We may live, but he who has placed his whole mind on the attainment of some object and fails to reach it, life to him seems a burden—a weary burden. To youth blighted hopes come like the cold dew of evening upon the flowers. The sun next morning banishes the dew, and the flower is brighter and purer from its momentary affliction. Sorrow purifies the heart of youth as the rain purifies the growing plant. But to the man of mature years the blighting of cherished hopes falls with a chilling effect. 'T is hard to proceed as though nothing had happened—to cheerfully take up life's load, yet such is the course of true manhood; this is the inheritance of life—the test of character.
Our world presents a strangely different aspect according to the different moods in which it is viewed. To him whose efforts have been crowned with success it is superlatively beautiful; to him whose life has known no care it appears to be filled with all manner of comfortable things; to those who pine in sickness and suffering, the unfortunate, and those whose efforts have ended only in failure, it most truthfully seems to be "a vale of tears," and human life itself a bubble raised from those tears and inflated with sighs, which, after floating a little while, decked, it may be, with a few gaudy colors from the hand of fortune, is at last touched by the hand of death, and dissolves.