Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/458

452 talents and ambitions of the aspirant; a good general education; a complete professional training; habits of work and play in due proportion; ability to keep abreast of the times, socially, professionally and generally; capability of meeting and of making mutually helpful all people with whom the accidents of life bring one in contact in social or in professional life, and a good-tempered persistence in making a record that shall, with its steadily lengthening and strengthening chain, become a constantly more and more helpful factor of all success.

Professional success attained, the greatest problem, that of making that success in highest degree valuable and productive, is one which appeals to the thoughtful man more importunately than ever could the problem of gaining a triumphant success in any division of the great world of humanity. It is not so much the acquirement of wealth, whether of money or of wisdom or of fame, which must compel thought and anxious sleeplessness, as it is the problem of investment and of securing safe and satisfactory returns on the accumulated and invested capital. If the capital consists of material wealth, the question how to use it for the highest and best purposes becomes a serious one and the example of the great philanthropist is studied to ascertain the outcome of his endeavor to do most and best with his surplus, to learn how far such attempts have hitherto proved successful and how far they have proved unfruitful or harmful. If the capital is personal fame and power and influence, the same question comes up in a modified form and the successful man is fortunate, or unfortunate, after all, proportionally as he is able to make his fame and power and influence felt for good in the great world's movements.

The ultimate measure of the man, of the woman, is the degree of final approximation to the success of a Peabody in promoting education, of a Carnegie in giving men opportunity to learn and to develop, of a Booker Washington in promoting the advance of a race, of a Roosevelt in advancing the standard of honest and patriotic politics, of a Rockefeller in discreetly seeking out the greatest needs of humanity and providing for their effective supply, of a Vassar in promoting the special care of women in their intellectual life, of any approximation gained for self and others to a higher life in wisdom and learning, in knowledge and culture.

The prerequisites of success are the perfect training of the body, brain and soul; the methods are scientific, in education, in training and in practice. The resultant form is a specific type, a species. The results of the work are as specific, in every profession; usually measured, crudely, by accumulated capital, in form of learning, of skill, of property; but its use is ever the same, its abuse usually common to all forms. Its use is the elevation and upbuilding of humanity, its abuse self-gratification; its glory is seen in the progress of mankind.