HOW TO WORK 



French. I bought a dictionary, and I learned French. 

 And this, my lord, is what I have done/ concludes the 

 narrator simply. 'It seems to me that we may learn 

 everything when we know the twenty-six letters of the 

 alphabet.' " 



Such anecdotal illustrations of the power of applica- 

 tion might be added to indefinitely, but it is perhaps 

 needless to extend the list. It is scarcely too much to 

 say that the history of every great man reiterates, in 

 some measure, the same story. Opinions may differ 

 as to the share played by such habits of application in 

 attaining success in the case of any individual man of 

 undoubted genius. A Leonardo, and a Michelangelo, 

 for example, have such powers of mind that even a 

 comparatively slight effort must raise them above the 

 level of their fellows, albeit not to the towering height 

 they actually attain. But I am not so sure that Aristotle 

 and Pliny were men of genius in the same sense. They 

 were men of comprehensive, talented minds, of course; 

 but they plodded into the citadel of genius through the 

 gateway of toil ; they did not soar in on the wings of in- 

 spiration. Acquired habits of application did for 

 them what inherent brilliancy did for the few favored 

 others. It is such examples that have led to the familiar 

 even if not all-sufficient definition of genius as 

 "Capacity to work, or to take pains." 



The moral of such lives ?s: Make yourself a master 

 in one line, "Know something about everything, but 

 everything about something." That is what these men 

 did. That is the object of such application. 

 ii [161] 



