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50.
Exaggerated enthusiasm is unfortunate for
more than one reason.
After having been the cause of I know not how many initial delays, it strikes a
deadly blow at hope, that beauteous star whose rays illumine every enterprise of
the persevering.
"There is no hope of hoping forever," says an ancient adage.
When we are forced to see the star we trusted suffer eclipse and become lost in
clouds of darkness, we finally lose all belief in its light.
Wrong-headed enthusiasts will never admit to themselves that they have carried
their lantern too high and at too great a pace through the storm, and that they
have neglected to satisfy themselves of the quality of the oil with which it is
fed.
They prefer to lay it all to their own ill-luck, and because of their
foolishness of heart, Hope, that powerful friend in every sort of undertaking,
disappears for ever from the horizon of those who have called upon it too often,
when there was no legitimate excuse for its appearance save in the form of a
deceiving will-o-the-wisp.
CHAPTER IV
INDECISION THE INVETERATE FOE OF PERSEVERANCE
Decision is a much rarer virtue than one might suppose. Still rarer are the
people who know how to make practical use of this quality.
By the word "decision" we do not mean to imply those sudden resolutions which
characterize superficial and headstrong people.
Decision is only fruitful when it is the outcome of reflection and of the habit
of coordination, the practice of which enables us to discern very quickly the
advantages and the possibilities of any project.
It can never be based upon judgments formed in advance, for, since it draws all
its deductions from experience, it is a difficult matter for it to rely
exclusively upon antecedent occurrences, inasmuch as events are never brought
about in an exactly similar fashion.
Prompt decisions are then formed principally upon existing conditions, with a
due regard to their relative similarity to the facts of the past.
Nevertheless it is the philosophy of these same facts, which, by giving rise to
reflection, will bring about the decision which is, in reality, a composite of
observation and initiative.
The faculty of being able to collect all one's thoughts and concentrate them is
the foundation of a judicious decision.
By practicing this mental concentration one very soon learns to neglect no
single detail of the circumstances with which we are acquainted that are in the
last analogous to those in which we find ourselves.
This study of detail will cause to surge before our eyes a thousand minute
observations, which, when taken _en masse, _will constitute proofs of a
sufficiently convincing quality to permit of our basing a definite opinion upon
them.
This is a point of the greatest importance to those who are desirous of
acquiring the virtue of perseverance.
If they do not learn the art of concentration they will never acquire the
faculty of observation, and they can never make a decision from an exact
knowledge of the facts concerned.
Reflection and concentration are the twin luminaries that shed light upon the
dark places of our consciousness.
But how can it be possible to stop and make a decision when there is nothing
whatever to indicate in which direction one had better proceed?
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