siness success as a moral weakness. Yet to the man who does not
possess moral courage the most brilliant abilities may prove utterly
useless. There is the folly of resistance and the folly of complaisance.
There is the tendency towards eternal compromise and the desire for
futile battle. Until the mind of youth has adjusted itself between the
two extremes and formed a technique which is not so much independent of
either tendency as inclusive of both, youth cannot hope for great
success.

The evils which pure stubbornness brings in its train are perfectly
clear. Men cling to a business indefinitely in the fond wish that a loss
may yet be turned into a profit. They hope on for a better day which
their intelligence tells them will never dawn. For this attitude of mind
stupidity is a better word than stubbornness, and a far better word than
courage. When reason and judgment bid us give up the immediate battle
and start afresh on some new line, it is intellectual cowardice, not
moral courage, which bids us persevere. This obstinacy is the reverse of
the shield of which courage is the shining emblem--for courage in its
very essence can never be divorced from judgment.

But it is easy for the character to run to the other extreme. There is a
well-known type of Jewish business man who never succeeds because he is
always too ready to compromise before the goal of a transaction has been
attained. To such a mind the certainty of half a loaf is always better
than the probability of a whole one. One merely mentions the type to
accentuate the paradox. Great affairs above all things require for their
successful conduct that class of mind which is eminently sensitive to
the drift of events, to the characters or changing views of friends and
opponents, to a careful avoidance of that rigidity of standpoint which
stamps the doctrinaire or the mule. The mind of success must be
receptive and plastic. It must know by the receptivity of its capacities
whether it is paddling against the tide or with it.

But it is perfectly clear that this quality in the man of affairs, which
is akin to the artistic temperament, may very easily degenerate into
mere pliability. Never fight, always negotiate for a remnant of the
profits, becomes the rule of life. At each stage in the career the
primroses will beckon more attractively towards the bonfire, and the
uphill path of contest look more stony and unattractive. In this process
the intellect may remain u