Pushing to the Front or Success Under Difficulties
About this book
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. ... in others is often but a strong expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his place in history, and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his books or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God has waited 6000 years for an observer like myself." "Fear not," said Julius Caesar to his pilot frightened in a storm; "thou bearest Caesar and his good fortunes." Egotism, so common in men of rank, may be a necessity. Nature gives man large hope lest he falter before reaching the high mark she sets for him. So she has overloaded his egotism, often beyond the pleasing point, to make sure that he will persist in pushing his way upward. Self-confidence indicates reserve power. It may show that one feels equal to the occasion. Morally considered, it is usually safe to trust those who can trust themselves, but when a man suspects his own integrity, it is time he was suspected by others. Moral degradation always begins at home. Did not Napoleon I., when he was a poor sub-lieutenant, believe that within him lay capacities enough to shake a world? In this busy world, men have no time to hunt about in obscure corners for retiring merit. They prefer to take a man at his own estimate until he proves himself unworthy. The world admires courage and manliness, and despises a young man who goes about "with an air of perpetual apology for the unpardonable sin of being in the world." "If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling, "he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." A person...