Concentration
In this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, the first law of success may be said to be concentration. It is impossible to be successful in every branch of business, or renowned in every department of a professional life. We must learn to bend our energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It has been said that a great deal of the wisdom of a man in this century is shown in leaving things unknown, and a great deal of his practical ability in leaving things undone. The day of universal scholarships is past. Life is short, and art is long. The range of human wisdom has increased so enormously that no human brain can grapple with it, and the man who would know one thing well must have the courage to be ignorant of a thousand other things, however attractive or interesting. As with knowledge, so with work. The man who would get along must single out his specialty, and into that must pour the whole stream of his activity—all the energies of his hand, eye, tongue, heart, and brain. Broad culture, many-sidedness, are beautiful things to contemplate; but it is the narrow-edged men—the men of one single and intense purpose—who steel the soul against all things else, that accomplish the hard work of the world.
The great men of every age who have had the arduous task to shape human destiny have been men of one idea impelled by resolute energy. Take those names that are historic, and, with the exception of a few great creative minds, you find them to be men who are identified with some one achievement upon which their life force was spent. The great majority of men must concentrate their energies upon the complete mastery of some one profession, trade, or calling, or they will experience the disappointment of those whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest. A man may have the most dazzling talents, but if they are scattered upon many objects he will accomplish nothing. Strength is like gunpowder: to be effective it needs concentration and aim. The marksman who aims at the whole target will seldom hit the center. The literary man or philosopher may revel among the sweetest and most beautiful flowers of thought, but unless he gathers or condenses these in the honeycomb of some great thought or work, his finest conceptions will be lost or useless.
The world has few universal geniuses who are capable of mastering a dozen languages, arts, or sciences, or driving a dozen callings abreast. Beginners in life are perpetually complaining of the disadvantages under which they labor; but it is an indisputable fact that more persons fail from a multiplicity of pursuits and pretensions than from a poverty of resources. "The one prudence in life," says a shrewd American essayist, "is concentration, the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine, property and its cares, friends and a social habit, politics, music, or feasting. Every thing is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work." The gardener does not suffer the sap to be driven into a thousand channels merely to develop a myriad of profitless twigs. He prunes the branches, and leaves the vital juices to be absorbed by a few vigorous, fruit-bearing branches.
While the highest ability accomplishes but little if scattered on a multiplicity of objects, on the other hand, if one has but a thimbleful of brains, and concentrates them upon the thing he has in hand, he may achieve miracles. Momentum in physics, if properly directed, will drive a tallow candle through an inch board. Just so will oneness of aim and the direction of the energies to a single pursuit, while all others are waived, enable the veriest weakling to make his mark where he strikes. The general who scatters his soldiers all about the country insures defeat; so does he whose attention is diffused through innumerable channels, so that it can not gather in force on any one point. The human mind, in short, resembles a burning-glass, whose rays are intense only as they are concentrated. As the glass burns only when its rays are converged to a focal point, so the former illumes the world of science, literature, or business only when it is directed to a solitary object. What is more powerless than the scattered clouds of steam as they rise to the sky? They are as impotent as the dew-drop that falls nightly upon the earth; but concentrated and condensed in a steam boiler they are able to cut through solid rock, to hurl mountains into the sea, and to bring the antipodes to our doors.
It is the lack of concentration and wholeness which distinguishes the shabby, half-hearted, and blundering—the men who make the mob of life—from those who win victories. In slower times success might have been won by the man who gave but a corner of his brain to the work in hand, but in these days of keen competition it demands the intensest application of the thinking faculty. Exclusive dealings in worldly pursuits is a principle of hundred-headed power. By dividing his time among too many objects, a man of genius often becomes diamond dust instead of diamond. The time spent by many persons in profitless, desultory reading would, if concentrated upon a single line of study, have made them masters of an entire branch of literature or science. Distraction of pursuits is the rock upon which most unsuccessful persons split in early life. In law, in medicine, in trade, in the mechanical professions the most successful persons have been those who have stuck to one thing. Nine out of ten men lay out their plans on too vast a scale, and they who are competent to do almost any thing do nothing, because they never make up their minds distinctly as to what they want or what they intend to be.
We are often compelled to a choice of acquisitions, for there are some things the possession of which is incompatible with the possession of others, and the sooner this truth is known and recognized the better the chances of success and happiness. Much material good must be resigned if we would attain the highest degree of moral excellence, and many spiritual joys must be foregone if we resolve at all risks to win great material advantages. To strive for a high personal position, and yet expect to have all the delights of leisure; to labor for vast riches, and yet to ask for freedom from anxiety and care, and all the happiness which flows from a contented mind; to indulge in sensual gratifications, and yet demand health, strength, and vigor; to live for self, and yet to look for the joys that spring from a virtuous and self-denying life—is to ask for impossibilities.