The Young Man and the World | Page 2

because it is elemental. You may
have all the gifts and graces but if you have not this essential you are
bankrupt. Be honest to the bone. Be clean of blood as well as of tongue.

Never try to create a deeper impression than Nature creates for you, and
that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For example,
never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight conceals an
intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact external
counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to distinguish the
philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in appearance of the
greatest of living writers is a cab driver without even the brightness of
the jehu.
Be what you are, therefore, and no more; yes, and no less--which is
equally important. In a word, start right. Be honest with yourself, too. If
you have started wrong, go back and start over again. But don't change
more than once. Some men never finish because they are always
beginning. Be careful how you choose and then stick to your second
choice. A poor claim steadily worked may be better than a good one
half developed. The man who makes too many starts seldom makes
anything else.
But don't pretend that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you
hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account
with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless,
financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of
your debt. Also Nature renders you a daily accounting.
And, at the very beginning, Nature writes upon the tablet of your inner
consciousness an inventory of your strengths and of your weaknesses,
and lists there those tasks which you are best fitted to perform--those
tasks which Nature meant you to perform. For Nature put you here to
_do something_; you were not born to be an ornament.
First, then, learn your limitations. Take time enough to think out just
what you cannot do. This process of elimination will soon reduce life's
possibilities for you to a few things. Of these things select the one
which is nearest you, and, having selected it, put all other loves from
you.
It is a business maxim in my profession that "law is a jealous mistress."
It is very true, but it is not more true than it is that every other calling in

life is a jealous mistress. To every man his task is the hardest, his
situation the most difficult.
By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society
will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what
Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature.
Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as your
success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even all
the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot," says
Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with
persons."
"_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," is just as applicable to lawyers and
mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused
by the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any
single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A
man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has
set about him.
"When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, This be thy portion, child,"
declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a
Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try
cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for
which Nature has not fitted him.
Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and
their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they have
no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy can
make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for
him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies. Usually
some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.
Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond
parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they thought,
would enable him better to "make his mark"--that is, to parade up and
down before the public eye and fill the public ear with declamation.

Even yet that profession has clientless members, miserable in their
hearts over their self-consciousness that they are not lawyers and never
can be lawyers, who would have been useful, prosperous, and happy if
they could have been permitted to