Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/717

Rh To the multitude perhaps success in life is gauged by a money scale: to be rich is to be successful, to be poor is to be unsuccessful; but this is far from being a desirable standard to erect. But few can reap success according to this idea; and the rest must reap failure and discontentment, A truer and better conception is that the man who develops his faculties and cultivates his dispositions aright, who, amid the warfare and vicissitudes of life, keeps his judgment sound, his aims sincere, his temper sweet, his domestic and social relations duly adjusted, and who thus in a true sense lives through his whole career, is the type of a successful man. The Roman poet Horace, whose good sense strikes us at every turn, must have had this idea to some extent; since the thought with which he feels he could satisfy himself were his existence to be suddenly brought to a term is that expressed in the word "Vixi," the exact equivalent of the Abbé Sièyes's "J'ai vécu," "I have lived."

The education, then, that we want is an education for life; we want to be taught how to live, how to make the best of ourselves, of our circumstances, of our relations, of our environment generally. Is this the type of education prevalent in the present day? We fear not. The dominant idea in most—we might almost say in all—of our schools is that of a purely selfish success, which means, if realized, a quite incomplete success, one that leaves the general life of the man or woman essentially unblest. What our young people need above all things to be taught is to know themselves and their surroundings, and to understand the true objects of life. They want an education dominated by common sense and right motive; and the few who get such an education are not likely to fail of success in any sense. It is a great thing to be taught the simple habit of verification: one who has this will score many a point even in the competition of the market-place. It is a great thing to be taught, with conviction, that a well-regulated life is always worth living, and that this world is worth doing justice to. Many are stranded in mid-life simply because they have not taken things seriously enough, because they have trusted to chance rather than to doing with their might what their hands found to do. No time is unsuitable for overhauling one's scheme of life, and trying to find out its weak places if it has any; but perhaps the beginning of a new year offers the greatest advantages for such a review. All should aim at a true success in life; and a true success is within the reach of all, if prudence but take the helm.

article by Mr. George lies, which we publish in our present number, draws attention to the economic waste resulting from unrestricted competition, and suggests the action which the State may hereafter be compelled to take, in the public interest, to check the undue greed of individuals and corporations. Competition, as it seems to us, is not a thing which there is any use in opposing or condemning. It is simply, in the last resort, individual self-assertion; and as long as there are individuals they will assert themselves. Sometimes it occurs to a number of individuals that they can assert themselves—i. e., promote their own interests—more effectually by uniting their means and their efforts than by acting in complete independence of one another: then we have combination or co-operation; but the consolidated body still has its own competitors and its own battles to fight. From this we gather that there are certain unnecessary forms or modes of competition, and that experience points out, from time to time, what these are; but that competition, in the broad sense, is as lasting as human nature. Now, if we differ at all from our respected