In returning to my correspondent and her perfectly legitimate desire to know the road to success, we must realize that to a large part of the world social success is the only kind they understand.
The great inventors and benefactors of mankind live too far away on a plane by themselves to be the object of jealousy to any but a very small circle; on the other hand, in these days of equality, especially in this country where caste has never existed, the social world seems to hold out alluring and tangible gifts to him who can enter its enchanted portals.Even politics, to judge by the actions of some of our legislators, of late, would seem to be only a stepping-stone to its door!
"But my question," I hear my fair interlocutor saying."You are not answering it!"All in good time, my dear.I am just about to do so.Did you ever hear of Darwin and his theory of "selection?" It would be a slight to your intelligence not to take it for granted that you had.
Well, my observations in the world lead me to believe that we follow there unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild beasts in the forest.Certain individuals are endowed by nature with temperaments which make them take naturally to a social life and shine there.In it they find their natural element.They develop freely just where others shrivel up and disappear.There is continually going on unseen a "natural selection," the discarding of unfit material, the assimilation of new and congenial elements from outside, with the logical result of a survival of the fittest.Aside from this, you will find in "the world," as anywhere else, that the person who succeeds is generally he who has been willing to give the most of his strength and mind to that one object, and has not allowed the flowers on the hillside to distract him from his path, remembering also that genius is often but the "capacity for taking infinite pains."There are people so constituted that they cheerfully give the efforts of a lifetime to the attainment of a brilliant social position.No fatigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter to be willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished object.You will never find such an individual, for instance, wandering in the flowery byways that lead to art or letters, for that would waste his time.If his family are too hard to raise, he will abandon the attempt and rise without them, for he cannot help himself.He is but an atom working as blindly upward as the plant that pushes its mysterious way towards the sun.Brains are not necessary.Good looks are but a trump the more in the "hand." Manners may help, but are not essential.The object can be and is attained daily without all three.Wealth is but the oil