Free men freely work:
Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Genuine work alone, what thou workest faithfully, that is eternal as the Almighty Founder and World-Builder. — Carlyle.
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. — Emerson.
With hand on the spade and heart in the sky,
Dress the ground and till it;
Turn in the little seed, brown and dry,
Turn out the golden millet.
Work and your house shall be duly fed,
Work, and rest shall be won;
I hold that a man would better be dead
Than alive when his work is done. — Alice Cary
Thine to work as well as pray,
.Clearing thorny wrongs away;
Plucking up the weeds of sin.
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in. — Whittier
“I worked all day!” expostulated a French officer, apologizing for not having performed all the work assigned him when the whole army was straining every nerve preparing to invade Egypt.
"But had you not the night also?" asked Napoleon, rebukingly.
Genius, according to the definition of Joshua Reynolds, is "nothing more than the operation of a strong mind accidentally determined as to its object." "When I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of high genius," said Ruskin, "the first question I ask about him is, always, ‘Does he work?’” Mark these two words, — "operation" and "work." You will find a hundred men to whom that much misapprehended term "genius" has been applied ringing the changes upon work as the secret of achievement.
A very foolish notion prevails that the necessity for application is incompatible with great ability. The mistaken idea that the virtues of diligence and industry are inconsistent with marked natural gifts has defeated many a man in the race of life. Youths have the impression that "born genius" will do great things, anyway, and that if they have genius, they will become great men without exertion. Their ideal of a genius is one who never studies, or who studies nobody can tell when, and now and then strikes off some wonderful production at white heat; a fellow who, occasionally, takes up a pen as a magician's wand to supply his wants, and, when the pressure of necessity is relieved, resorts again to pleasure; an irregular, vagabond sort of person, who muses in the fields or dreams by the fireside; whose strong impulses hurry him into wild irregularities or foolish eccentricities; a man who abhors order and system, who can bear no restraint, and hates detail and labor. They have an idea that success is conquered at a single leap. "A masterly magazine article, a picture dashed off in fiery haste, some speech or deed or stroke of business ability will certainly, ere long, unless they greatly mistake, set the tongues of the town wagging, and carry them straight up the heights." They are waiting and hoping that they may accomplish some great thing in some great emergency, which will attract the attention of the world. They do not realize the power of continued exertion. They have little faith in plodding. They do not understand the magic of industry, the miracle of keeping everlastingly at it.
Have you been accustomed to think of Shakespeare as an ideal of spontaneous genius? Study Ben Jonson's lines about him:
For, though the poet's matter, nature be,
His art doth give the fashion. For that, he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same,
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel he may gain a scorn, —
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
Was Lord Byron, do you say, a poet born and not made? Listen to his own words: "The only genius that I know anything of is to work sixteen hours a day."
Did you ever realize what the creation of “David Copperfield," of "Bleak House," or of the "Pickwick Papers" cost Dickens? "My imagination," says he, "would never have served me as it has but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily toiling, drudging attention."
It required years of drudgery and reading a thousand volumes for George Eliot to get fifty thousand dollars for "Daniel Deronda." Schiller "never could get done." Dante sees himself "growing lean over his “Divine Comedy.'"
Anthony Trollope, "who never worked for anything but money, and who never for himself, nor anybody else for him, claimed that he possessed genius, although he was a successful novelist, made it a strict duty to write fifteen hundred words a day, rain or shine, in the vein or not in the vein." He followed, if not literally, at least in spirit, the advice which another literary man gave him, and which he gave to Robert Buchanan: "When you sit down to write, put a piece of cobbler's wax on the bottom of your chair! That's the only way to get work done!"
George Parsons Lathrop says that most of the authors whom he has known are obliged to work hard for at least twelve or sixteen hours a day. They are compelled to do this even at times when they would rather rest or sleep, or eat and drink and be merry. "I, myself,'' says Lathrop, "have often bowed to this necessity of working continuously without sleep or meat or amusement; and should have long since concluded that it must be owing to my own stupidity but for the fact of discovering that other authors, who are much more in the world's eye, have to do the same sort of thing. I love my work, I revere the art which I serve as earnestly as anyone can; but, when my fingers have clutched a penholder for eight or ten hours at a stretch, and the whole of such brain and nerve power as I possess has been brought to bear during that time, I confess that a due regard for veracity will not allow me to assert that the process has not involved drudgery. A redeeming and inspiring charm there always is, even in such arduous labors. I have found comfort in toilsome hack work, because it is always satisfactory to perform even obscure service thoroughly and to the best of one's power, and because by such work I could earn time to do higher and better things, which were quite certain not to win for me that cash compensation whereby the mortal part of man is kept going. But, simply on the ground that there is a great and enduring delight in the severest literary exertion, to spread a notion that a professional author need not undergo drudgery seems to me mischievous. It arouses false hopes in young aspirants who have not yet measured the tremendous problem of performing the best work under endless discouragements and at the cost of ceaseless, patient toil."
"I do not remember a book in all the departments of learning," said Beecher, "nor a scrap of literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated. Genius needs industry as much as industry needs genius." "Genius begins great works," said Joubert; "labor alone finishes them."
"Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiastic young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "Dream on canvas!" growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you must learn to put on canvas that make your dream."
After Rubens had become famous and rich an alchemist urged him to assist in transmuting metals into gold, a secret which the scientist felt sure he had discovered. "You have come twenty years too late," replied Rubens; "I discovered the secret long ago." Pointing to his palette and brushes, he added, "Everything I touch turns to gold."
Michael Angelo said of Raphael: "One of the sweetest souls that ever breathed; he owed more to his industry than to his genius."
"Many young painters," asserts Goethe, "would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael."
"I work harder than any plowman," Millet would sometimes say. "My advice to all boys is ‘Work!' They can't all be geniuses, but they can all work; and, without work, even the most brilliant genius will be of very little good. I never recommend any one to be an artist. If a boy has a real calling to be an artist, he will be one without being recommended. Scores of people bring their children to me and ask me if I should advise them to bring them up as painters and I always say, 'Certainly not.' But, whatever a boy intends to be, he must grind at it; study all the minutest details and scamp any of the uninteresting elementary part, but be thoroughly well up in all the ground work of the subject."
"Nothing can be done well without taking trouble," said another artist. Alma Tadema. "You must work hard if you mean to succeed."
"People sometimes attribute my success to my genius," said Alexander Hamilton. "All the genius I know anything about is hard work. The genius lies in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought."
On his seventieth birthday Daniel Webster told the secret of his success: "Work has made me what I am. I never ate a bit of idle bread in my life."
What said Newton of his accomplishment? "If I have done the public any service it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought."
“A somewhat varied experience of men” says Huxley, "has led me, the longer I live, to set less value on mere cleverness and to attach more and more importance to industry and to physical endurance. No success is worthy of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of the waves of fortune."
Turn whichever way you will, you will find that, for this man or that who has made himself a name for greatness, the road to distinction has been paved with years of self-denial and hard work, heartaches, headaches, nerve aches, disheartening trials, discouraged hours, fears and despair. It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men. The infinite capacity for taking pains is Carlyle's definition of genius. I do not of course say that taking pains will of itself make a genius of you if nature has denied you extraordinary gifts; but I wish to emphasize the fact that it is not the man of the greatest natural vigor and capacity who achieves the highest results, but he who employs his powers with the greatest industry and the most carefully disciplined skill, — the skill that comes by labor, application, and experience. A sound judgment and a close application may do more for you than the most brilliant talent. In the ordinary business of life anything can be done by industry which can be done by “genius;” also many things which "genius," pure and simple, cannot do. There is something for every youth within the reach of industry which "genius" alone can never win. “There is no art or science” says Clarendon, "too difficult for industry to attain to.”
“Persevering mediocrity,” says one, “is much more respectable and unspeakably more useful than talented inconstancy.” “It is not always the highest talent that thrives best,” says Joseph Cook; “mediocrity, with tact, will outweigh talent oftentimes.” Genius without a sure foundation of common sense and reason, and a very definite knowledge of the importance of work, is of small use to the possessor or to the world. There is probably such a thing as genius; but, nine times out of ten, it is only a great aptitude for patient labor, which is accomplished during the hours when those people born tired by nature are either sleeping, wishing, or hoping that something would turn up, — never exerting themselves to turn up something.
What becomes of the "smart boys" at school who drop back into nothingness so many times when their plodding schoolmates rise slowly but surely? They fall behind in the race of life because they do not feel the need of hard work in their cases; they are impatient of application, irritable, scornful of men's dullness, squeamish at petty disgusts; they love a conspicuous place, short work, and a large reward; they loathe the sweat of toil, the vexations of life, and the dull burden of care.
"There is one precept," said Joshua Reynolds, "in which I shall only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid I shall repeat it too often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have bat moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is to be obtained without it."
Worship your heroes if you will; gaze with awe upon the favored of the gods as they tread upon the mountain heights. But remember that it is not alone a sensitive and passionate heart allied to a vivid and powerful imagination that makes your Shakespeare: it is the poet's unceasing toil that “makes” him; his genius appears in his “work” “What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.'”