The Results of Application.

WILLIAM HENRY SCOTT, LL.D., Pres. State University, Columbus, Ohio.

OW much we shall accomplish in life depends on our

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ability, our opportunity, and our application. The first two are fixed quantities. Our natural ability was determined before we could exercise any agency or choice. Over what is now our acquired ability we once had a large determining power; but for our present use it too is fixed. However we may modify it hereafter, we can do nothing to make it at this moment different in one jot or tittle from what it is. The past was the time to mold the present, but the past is gone, and no man has any more power in it. We once held also a large determining power over what is now our opportunity. But that power has been exhausted, and at each occasion we must accept our opportunity, if we accept it at all, just as it is.

But the third factor is in our control. We may determine what amount of application we will join with our ability and opportunity. It is by our application therefore that the result, so far as we have any power over it, is always measured. The only question that concerns any man is, How should I use the gifts and occasions that I now have in order that I may perform my duty in life and attain my proper destiny? It is idle for him to complain that he has not been endowed with greater talents or favored with a better opportunity. Repining will only impair his present action. All that remains for him is to put forth his ability, whatever it is, in the improvement of his actual opportunity.

What results may he expect? Perhaps success in the outward thing that he aims at. Burritt, the blacksmith, began his

career as a student of languages while he was working at the anvil fourteen hours a day. When his great acquirements became known and he was asked how he had made them, he wrote, "All that I have accomplished has been by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the antheap-particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact." Palissy, toiling in the face of poverty and failure to discover the secret of the white enamel, was so intoxicated with enthusiasm that men thought him a fool. God's fool he was, with a great hope at his heart for which he gladly suffered the loss of all things. His reward was success in what he sought and an immortal name. Tennyson, living apart, kept his mind brooding poetic themes, and through years of habitual retirement he nourished the thoughts and framed the expressions that made him the first poet of his generation. Gibbon has told us what years of research, reflection, and composition it cost him to produce his history-a work to which, with all its faults, we may apply the language which he applied to the empire itself—“ a solid fabric of human greatness." Michael Angelo observed nature with a searching and critical eye. He studied human anatomy with extraordinary minuteness and thoroughness. He would begin a piece of work in the most elementary way, and develop it through each stage, often by repeated trials and always with the closest attention. While he was painting the Sistine Chapel he would not allow himself time for meals or to dress and undress; but he kept bread within reach that he might eat when hunger impelled, and he slept in his clothes. What were the results? Paintings, statues, buildings, military works of the first order, "miracles of genius" which have remained unequaled by any modern hand.

No less is it true in the pursuits of common life that by stern and laborious application each individual realizes the best results of which he is capable. Whatever your place, you can make the most of it by applying yourself wholly to it. In almost every case the best work is the result of the greatest application. It comes only at the last and as the effect of the final

process. It is the exquisite product of all the resources and activities that can contribute to its perfection. It is the last and richest drop of the vintage.

Any work that is worthy of us has its difficulties. But what work is it whose difficulties cannot be overcome by heroic application? It is wonderful how the face of a dismal situation brightens when a calm and steady will confronts it. What seemed a mountain proves an airy phantasm. What seemed an impregnable Gibraltar is found to be penetrated with secret passages and stairways. But, however real and stubborn the obstacles may be, they almost always give way before a spirit of earnest application. Yet not always. The outward reward of even the most faithful endeavor sometimes fails. Either ability or opportunity, or both, may be wanting. Many causes may intervene whose existence and influence cannot be foreknown.

But there are other results that never fail. One of these is the growth of opportunity. Rigid for the present, for the future opportunity is elastic. Opportunity that is used opens the way to that which is greater. Press up to the boundary of the opportunity in which you now are, and it will be easy to step forth into the one that lies just beyond. Application is the path from lower opportunity to higher.

There are deeper and more abiding results. We may not aim to accomplish them. We may even be unconscious that they are forming, But while we are engrossed in pursuit of the outward object, the reaction of each effort that we put forth is impressing itself infallibly and ineffaceably in our nature. Our acts are recorded within us as if graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.

The secret of self-improvement is that under the law of supply and demand strength comes by use. Every exertion consumes force, thus creating a want; and nature, wise economist as she is, immediately stores a surplus where the want arises, against future demands. The power to do grows by faithful doing, and our ability, though for our present need it is neither

greater nor less than it is, can be made for the future indefinitely broader and more effective.

Application brings ease as well as strength. What we do often is done with less and less exertion. Learning is in great part but the process of acquiring ease by practice. The soldier, the penman, the musician, the orator, learn to perform the movements which their vocations require by repeating them till body and mind respond habitually and without effort.

Application produces skill. Up to a certain limit ease and skill increase together; but beyond that limit as the action becomes easier improvement is apt to cease. For while ease results from mere repetition, skill increases only by repetition that is conducted with attention and care. As attention and care decline, the performance becomes more easy but less skillful. Thus ease and skill, so far from growing in harmony side by side, become opposed to each other. Although the work as we performed it at first has become easy, the work as we ought to perform it is as difficult as ever; for all the energy that we are now able to save from the lower forms of effort through the ease which practice has brought us should be directed to more perfect achievement. Much of the mere routine of life we may turn over to habit and be content to get through it easily; but our real work should always command our highest intelligence and our fullest energy. In this we ought always to do our best; and if we do, we shall never cease to improve.

The hardest nature, apparently intractable by any force, will gradually yield to the influence of its own action; and thus an inner transformation may eventually be wrought. It is true, most men fail in their efforts at reform; but it is because their will is weak or because they do not wait with patience for results. These are the two requisites-time and an inexorable will. Given time enough, a will that knows no change can subdue the passions and develop the power and transmute the nature of the most degraded soul that breathes. No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. No matter how awkward your movements may be, or how

obtuse your senses, or how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty, grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception, strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire. If you will apply your inner force to the achievement of a high and magnanimous life, you shall yet see with the imaginative eye and hear with the musical ear and think with the illuminated understanding and feel with the pure and serene heart. A transforming spirit will brood over you, shedding a slow diffusing light through your darkness and out of the chaos of your nature evoking the beauty and order of a new life. Steadfastly work and wait, and the secrets of science, of literature, of art, may one day lie open to your mind and you may rise to ranges of experience whose noble splendors surpass your present power to comprehend.

With persistent faith all can be done. Not in a day, not in a year. The results of application are a form of growth, and like all growth they proceed slowly and unconsciously. But by faithful application, doing each day what can be done in that day, by thoughtfulness, by aspiration, by patient, undiscouraged fidelity in every least thing as well as in every greatest thing, the sublime result will at last be realized.

Find your true end. Let the desire to attain it be to you as the breath of life. Let your application to it be steadfast and unremitting. Commit yourself to it in unreserved devotion. The results will assuredly be the largest measure of achievement, the largest measure of happiness, and the attainment of the noblest nature that are possible to your endowment and your opportunity.