HOW TO WORK 



learn that not even the highest talent can free itself 

 from the thraldom of labor. Everywhere the history 

 of achievement repeats that lesson. 



De Maupassant, for example, has told us of his con- 

 viction that such effort as he gave to the attainment of 

 literary skill would have assured success in any field. 

 Everyone knows how he served apprenticeship year 

 after year under his master Flaubert before his work 

 was thought worthy of publication. Stevenson's fin- 

 ished product was produced with infinite toil, if we may 

 accept his own statements. 



These were cases where success came not through in- 

 herent brilliancy of faculty, but through inherent stabil- 

 ity of will. But we may hear the same story regarding 

 men of the most brilliant natural endowment. Thus 

 Macaulay, who wrote a universal history when eight 

 years old, used to work for weeks on a single review 

 article when in his prime. Sir Rowan Hamilton was a 

 veritable marvel of precocity as a child, yet he devoted 

 the major part of his life to the development of the 

 system of quaternions on which his fame rests. Darwin 

 gave twenty years of assiduous investigation to his theory 

 of evolution before announcing it to the world. 



And nearly all the masters of the elder day were 

 prodigies of industry. Michelangelo painted the 

 entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with his own 

 hands, he himself having in the first place constructed 

 a wonderful scaffolding on which to stand. Leonardo 

 was "zealous in labor above all men" as his multiform 

 accomplishments in diversified fields amply testify. 

 Erasmus contracted in early life habits of application 



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