From The Young Man and Himselfby James S. Kirtley Chapter XV. Concentration. pp. 111-114.© 1902CONCENTRATION.VERSATILITY has its perils. Every man has only so much power, which he can run into one channel and get energy or run off into several channels and let it waste itself in diffusion. In that latter way he will gain in breadth but lost [lose?] in depth and momentum. No man can be a specialist in two things, especially if those two things are antagonistic to each other and require opposite kinds of habits. Every man should have a vocation [occupation] and an avocation [diversion, distraction]. In his vocation he must do his work, in his avocation find his recreation from work and for work. The vocation is to be re-enforced by the avocation. To be sure some vocations are so large that one can only follow some one phase of them. It is a positive weakness to do too many things. "He who follows two hares catches neither," is a true proverb. The knife that has four blades, a cork screw, a gimlet, a screw driver and a hammer, is not usually esteemed very highly for its merits as a knife. It is only valuable as a curiosity. The man who can sing equally well in a quartette as bottom bass or top tenor will not have church music committees hunting him up very eagerly. The preacher who can be a successful pastor of a large city church, editor of an important paper, lecturer with a hundred fifty engagements a year, leader of the prohibition party, President of the Law and Order League, chairman of the School Board, and still be a success is not turned out in every graduating class of Seminary students. The lawyer who is a real estate agent, stock broker, member of City Council and of the School Board, chairman of the local political club, captain of the military company, leader of the village band and member of the fire department will not acquire the fame of Rufus Choate as an advocate or of John Marshall as a jurist. To be sure, a man must be bigger than his calling, must know "something about everything and everything about everything;" but we have too often seen the folly of knowing a little about everything and everything about nothing. We know the general contempt in which the jack-of-all-trades is held -- the man who is a fairly good carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, watchmaker, shoemaker, and railroad ticket agent. DO ONE THING WELL. One successful calling is possible to any man, but only one, though he may have very useful information about many callings. The attempt to ride two horses is never a very comfortable or edifying experience, especially if the two horses are some distance apart or going in opposite directions. To aim at two goals is to miss them both. Better to use a few powers intensely than many powers feebly. It is better, in itself, to do one thing well than many things only tolerably well. Joseph II. of Austria was a jack-of-all-trades. On his tomb was this inscription: "Here lies a man who, with the best intentions , never carried out a single plan." The opposite of this was Charles Kingsley, who said, "I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being." "No man can serve two masters," said Jesus. Full allegiance to one forbids allegiance to another. Every calling and task demands that one yield up his whole self to it. The lawyer before the jury has only one purpose--to win the jury. He must know nothing else; no other attraction must interest him till that is done. He must not indulge in the spectacular or humorous simply to win attention to those talents of his, but he must live and speak for one thing. The physician must live for the time being for his patient. Blessed is the man who can do as Kingsley did. A Roman army once fought so intensely that they were not aware of an earthquake that took place while the battle was going on. Hegel was at Jena October 14, 1806, when the city fell before the armies of Napoleon, yet he was so absorbed in finishing an important treatise on philosophy that he was not aware of the battle.
Pitiable is the man who cannot bring his powers to a focal point and make his life successful and useful. De Quincy, with all his learning, never concentrated his whole self upon a useful purpose, but diffused himself in dreaming over the whole universe. Coleridge, with his ponderous learning, never made up his mind to turn it to any useful purpose, and when he died Charles Lamb said that he left forty thousand treatises--philosophical and theological--not one of them complete. Lord Brougham and Lord Canning attained eminence and influence but were recognized everywhere as far beneath what their talents demanded. They did not know how to concentrate their attainments. Edward Everett was one of the most gifted men America has yet produced, but he tried to be a specialist in too many different lines, as preacher, professor, and statesman. In the art museum in Cincinnati one section is devoted to the unfinished pictures of Lessing. "The weakest creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something." Better have fewer and smaller powers and get them working together at one thing than greater powers distracted upon a dozen tasks. The little sun glass, by focusing all the rays that fall upon its surface upon one point can soon kindle a fire. "this one thing I do," said the great Apostle Paul. The man who really succeeds can say the same thing to-day. For forty-six years Noah Webster did nothing but work on his dictionary, and our verdict is that he was wise in doing only that one thing. Till Cyrus W. Field had the Atlantic cable safely laid he thought and dreamed and planned nothing else. Gladstone, while working at a given task, was so intense that for the time being a stranger might imagine that he knew nothing else and could do nothing else but that one thing. The power to form and carry out purposes is dependent on the concentration of energy on those purposes. The mark aimed at becomes dim and unattractive to one who is aiming at many marks. That which we fail to put the whole man into scorns the fragment that is given it. An art requires the whole heart and life of its devotee. Every calling should be an art into which one can put his whole self. An interesting bit of personal history was recently given in an interview by the composer, Reginald De Koven, which shows that a man can do but one thing: "When I returned to the United States, after an absence of fourteen years abroad, I went to Chicago, and successively worked as a bank teller and as a manager of a stock-brokerage firm. It was while I was in the bank that I wrote my first operas. They were not complete successes. I found that there was but one thing for me to do if I was to succeed as a writer of music, and that was to learn my business, a term which is just as applicable to an art as to a commercial calling. I had to study under some great master. I went to Vienna and spent a year with Richard Genee, the composer, and there learned the rudiments of my success. "There is no talent that is not inspiration. However, nothing is accomplished without hard work. A man may have talent at his finger's ends, but that talent must be trained to be of worth. Often I have practiced from tent to twelve hours a day. The great professional pianists never gave a concert without practicing over ten hours the day previous." The late professor Joseph Henry once said to a college mate at Princeton: "Mr. A-- sometimes laughs at me. He says that I have but one idea. He can discuss every topic, and aims to excel in many things; but I have learned that if I ever make a breach I must train my guns at continually upon one point." "The man who seeks but one thing in life, and
but one, end of chapter, page 114.-cpl 6-1-96. |