Career and How it is to be Made
The ancient Hindus believed that a man’s career depended solely on the influence of particular stars and planets on his life. If the conjunction of stars at the moment of a man’s birth happened to be propitious, he was destined to achieve greatness and fortune, which were otherwise impossible for him. No ability, no merit, no industry could thwart or counteract the evil influence of an unfavourable planet on the life of a man born under its ascendancy. Hence the old Hindus believed in the supremacy of an invisible agency which they named “Fate,” and which they believed to be more powerful than anything else in the world. If a man was destined by Fate to greatness and fortune, no circumstances, however adverse, could obstruct his path; likewise, if a man was doomed to misfortune and misery, no power on earth, however well-disposed, could lift him one inch above the low depth to which he was condemned by the decrees of Fate. This somewhat extravagant belief is still entertained by a large section of the Hindus, chiefly those who are uneducated. The educated Indians, however, have modified this belief to a large extent. They are neither staunch believers in Fate, nor do they accord unqualified support to the opposite belief, as expressed in the proverb, “Every man is the architect of his own fortune’; they steer a middle course between these extremes, and hold that a man can by his own exertions raise himself to a position of power and influence, provided his circumstances in life are not altogether adverse.
Now in what way can a man rise in the world by his own exertions ? On what quality or qualities does a man’s career in life really depend. It is evident that a man must possess some share of natural intelligence before he can derive any benefit from education. Indeed, the influence of education is so great that it seems that our inborn faculties play only a subordinate part in shaping our career; it seems as if education were everything and genius nothing, for the effects of the former are visible, while the latter performs its parts unobserved. It is not until the forces of education have been defied by the superior force of genius, that the very existence of genius in a person is credited in any one. Every clever school boy is by his admirers believed to be a young genius, and there have been so many cases of such genius, turning out to be illusory, that mankind have grown rather sceptic on that point. They refuse to give the name of genius even to men who have done great things in literature, or in industry, or in amassing fortunes. There are at the present day so many opportunities of distinction, such wonderful facilities for acquiring knowledge, such numerous openings for honourable employment, that if a man rises to power and position, no credit is given to his inborn mental faculties, but everything is attributed to his education, his industry and his surroundings. Genius is believed to be a very rare bird in the modern world, because at the present day the opportunities for education and training are so many and so various. The term genius is, in current usage, restricted to those who rise to greatness and achieve wonders without any education or training; it does not mean, what it should mean, a person who possesses by natural gift extraordinary ability of any kind. Whatever people might say to the contrary, the unquestionable fact is that every person has inherited from nature a share, great or small, of natural ability, and that it is on this mental faculty that the effects of education and training chiefly depend. No amount of education can avail in the case of a born idiot. But even a born genius could effect little, if it were not for a variety of other things that help him onward. This is what the poet means in the following well-known lines .—
“Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.”
The truth seems therefore to be that neither genius alone nor education alone is the chief determining factor in a man’s career. Each is as necessary as the other; but in what proportion each is needed before a man’s career is in any degree successful, is more than anyone can say. The most perplexing cases are those of men who with a plentiful share of inborn intellectual ability and with all the benefits that could be conferred by the best kind of education, have still failed miserably to achieve anything useful or conspicuous. It seems from these cases that something else is also needed, besides natural intelligence and education.
Success in life is a most complex affair, comprising a variety of circumstances, each of which is the effect of a plurality of causes that act and react upon one another in a most complicated and bewildering manner. What we designate by the single term success in life comprises a multiplicity of gifts, capacities, and possessions, such as wealth, fame, social esteem, social influence, authority, power, etc. and each of these cannot evidently be acquired by this or that well-ascertained method, or in a prescribed amount of time, or by the expenditure of a stated amount of industry. There is a subtle power on which a great deal of what is unattainable otherwise, depends, and this subtle power is opportunity. Genius is unavailing, education, industry vain, if opportunity is wanting ; at the same time, strangely enough, opportunity may be as favourable as is possible in the case of any mortal, and yet a man’s life may be a failure. A man may have been born in a good family; he may have received a good education; he may have inherited a decent share of intelligence; and yet with all these opportunities his career may be a wreck, his life a hopeless ruin. For he may be wanting in that which alone makes birth, education, intelligence and industry of value, not only for purposes of success in life, but also intrinsically. The most important essential of success in life is, therefore, not opportunity, but character.
The value of character in human life cannot be over-estimated : character alone is that which makes human life human. Without it, man is no better than a brute; without it, power and position, honour and fame, wealth and grandeur are alike but dust; without it, genius is as powerless as opportunity. Character is not only the product of education, but is also dependent greatly on inherited disposition, and perhaps more so on the sort of companions one chooses for oneself. Many a promising youth has become an abandoned wretch through the evil influence of evil companions, on the other hand, many a young man has been rescued from the abyss of destruction by the wholesome influence of good companions. A common proverb says that a man is known by the company he keeps; it is possible to stretch this saying and assert that “a man is made by the company he keeps.”
We have now arrived at a solution of the question, ‘On what does the career of a man depend ?’ We have seen that it does not depend exclusively on education or acquired merit, nor does it depend on opportunity or favourable chances, nor yet does it depend upon excellence of character, however important this last factor might be in the making or the marring of a man’s fortune. The man of the saintliest character, if he is nothing else, will be as miserable a failure so far as worldly success goes, as the thoroughgoing scoundrel. Character will give a polish to genius; it will lend weight to education; it will make the most of a good opportunity; but if there is nothing else in a man than character he is likely to remain as ill-fated as the born idiot, or the illiterate dunce, or the careless fool.
What, then, is the solution at of this knotty problem? Well,—it is a solution that leaves the answer as vague as before, and the inquirer perhaps more mystified. For the truth is that a man’s career does not depend upon any one quality or circumstance, but upon the inter mixture of the effects of a variety of c uses acting and reacting on one another,—first, genius or men faculties, which are implanted by nature; secondly, education, which is imparted by man to man; thirdly, favourable chances, which are partly the result of accident, over which man has no control, and partly dependent upon a man’s will, and lastly, character, which again is partly inherited and therefore to that extent non-voluntary, and partly acquired. But in what order those essentials are needed in the making of a man’s career is more than any one can say : the order will be different in different cases, and each one must find out for himself what things are needed for him, and which of them first, and which next.
It must be observed that in the above list, there is so large a proportion of things beyond the man’s control—such as mental faculties, which are a gift of nature; favourable opportunity, which is mostly the result of chance; character, which is largely dependent upon inherited disposition—that the making of his career seems to be a task really lying outside his power. It seems that we are thrown back on that old-world fatalism with which we started our discussion, and that we must conclude by saying that a man’s career does not depend upon himself so much, as on God.
