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art and science; but as such it is not a lawless necromancer without deliberate purpose. The spirit that summons, guides and controls it is the soul's mysterious power of self-direction. And this power is equally susceptible of being so developed as to indicate selection and exclusion or clamoring images.

Hence it would seem that the mind may train and develop its own power of willing. When cultivation and improvement of Will are sought, we may say, "I will to will with energy and decision! I will to persist in willing! I will to will intelligently and for a goal! I will to exercise the Will according to the dictates of reason and of morals !” Some men are born with what are called "strong Wills." If these are to be reasonable Wills as well, they must be trained. For the most part Will would seem to develop and to acquire something of the "sweet quality of reasonableness," under life-processes which are more or less unconscious and unpurposed so far as this end is concerned; nevertheless, the exigencies of "getting on " are constant and unappreciated trainers. Discipline knocks men about with ruthless jocularity. "A man who fails, and will not see his faults, can never improve." Here is a grim-visaged, and oftentimes humorous schoolmaster who gives small pity to his pupils. They must needs acquire some power of Will or demonstrate themselves, not human, but blockheads. Much of life's suffering is due to the fact that force of Will is neither developed nor trained by conscious intelligent effort, and is more often devoid than possessed of rational moral quality. This is a curious thing that the Will is left, like Topsy, "to grow up." Why value this power, yet take it "catch-as-catch-can?" Why hinge success upon it, yet give it so little conscious attention? Why delegate its improvement to the indirection of "hard knocks," and dis

appointment cankering resolution, and misfortune making water of life's blooded forces, and all manner of diseases destroying the fine fibre of mind's divine organism? Why neglect the Will until consequence, another name for hell, oftentimes, has removed "heaven" by the diameter of the universe?

James Tyson, a bushman in Australia, died worth $25,000,000. "But," he said, with a characteristic semiexultant snap of the fingers, "the money is nothing. It was the little game that was the fun!" Being asked once, "What was the little game?" he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to him: "Fighting the desert. That has been my work. I have been fighting the desert all my life, and I have won! I have put water where was no water, and beef where was no beef. I have put fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads. Nothing can undo what I have done, and millions will be happier for it after I am long dead and forgotten."

"The longer I live," said Fowell Buxton, whose name is connected in philanthropy with that of Wilberforce, "the more certain I am that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is ENERGY

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INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION

a purpose once fixed, and then Death or Victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a MAN without it." The power, then, of such resistless energy should with resistless energy be cultivated.

"When the Will fails, the battle is lost."

III.

The perfect Will is high Priest of the moral self. Indeed, a true cultivation of Will is not possible without

reference to highest reason or ideas of right. In the moral consciousness alone is discovered the explanation of this faculty of the soul. A great Will may obtain while moral considerations are ignored, but no perfection of Will can be attained regardless of requirements of highest reason. The crowning phase of the Will is always ethical.

Here is the empire of man's true constitution. Resolute Will scorns the word "impossible." The strong Will of large and prolonged persistence condemns whatever is unreasonable. Nobility of Will is seen in the question, "What is right?" Napoleon exhibits the strong continuous Will. Washington illustrates the persistence of moral resolution. Jesus incarnates the Will whose law is holi

ness.

The Will that possesses energy and persistence, but is wanting in reasonableness and moral control, rules in its kingdom with the fool's industry and the fanatical obstinacy of Philip the Second. "It was Philip's policy and pride to direct all the machinery of his extensive empire, and to pull every string himself. . . . The object, alike paltry and impossible, of this ambition, bespoke the narrow mind." Thus has Motley described an incarnation of perverted wilfulness.

If the "King" will not train himself, how shall he demand obedience of his subjects, the powers of body, mind and spirit? This is the "artist" of whom Lord Lytton sang:

"All things are thine estate; yet must
Thou first display the title deeds,
And sue the world. Be strong; and trust
High instincts more than all the creeds."

BALANCE.

Full waves, full tides, swing in from out the vast,
Lapping and dashing, breasting up the marge;
Yet ever gently turned, or backward cast

In sullen wrath. The steadfast shore comes large.
Here meet two infinites, equal, face to face,
In wage titanic for all time and space.

To urge right onward-this the Will's high course; And this to stand, a soul of adamant.

The sea recedes: force triumphs over force; Crumbles the shore: the waves their vict'ry chant. Lo, at the heart of Power's war untimed Emerges soul- undaunted and sublimed,

-THE AUTHOR.

66

CHAPTER III.

THE CONDUCT OF LIFE.

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ESOLVE is what makes a man manifest; not puny resolve, not crude determinations, not errant purpose but that strong and indefatigable Will which treads down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter; which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men giants."— Ike Marvel.

The thing that is, and creates human power, as the author remarks in "Business Power," is the Will. Theoretically, the Will is the man. Practically, the Will is just a way the man has of being and doing. The Will is man's inherent nature-tendency to act - to do something. This tendency to act in some way must act on itself— take itself in hand, so to speak, in order that it may act intelligently, continuously, and with a purpose. Will is itself power; but unfolded, controlled and directed power in man is Will self-mastered, not man-mastered nor naturemastered. The man-mastered and nature-mastered Will goes with the motive or impulse which is strongest. The self-mastered Will goes with the motive which the self makes greatest, and with mere impulse in very slight degree so far as the life of intelligence is concerned.

The self-mastered Will can do anything-within reason; and reason in this connection should be conceived in its highest human sense. The function of Will

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