or bad humour very much depends upon his will."
We may train ourselves in a habit of patience and contentment on the
one hand, or of grumbling and discontent on the other. We may accustom
ourselves to exaggerate small evils, and to underestimate great
blessings. We may even become the victim of petty miseries by giving way
to them. Thus, we may educate ourselves in a happy disposition, as well
as in a morbid one. Indeed, the habit of viewing things cheerfully, and
of thinking about life hopefully, may be made to grow up in us like any
other habit. [152] It was not an exaggerated estimate of Dr. Johnson to
say, that the habit of looking at the best side of any event is worth
far more than a thousand pounds a year.

The religious man's life is pervaded by rigid self-discipline and
self-restraint. He is to be sober and vigilant, to eschew evil and do
good, to walk in the spirit, to be obedient unto death, to withstand
in the evil day, and having done all, to stand; to wrestle against
spiritual wickedness, and against the rulers of the darkness of this
world; to be rooted and built up in faith, and not to be weary of
well-doing; for in due season he shall reap, if he faint not.

The man of business also must needs be subject to strict rule and
system. Business, like life, is managed by moral leverage; success in
both depending in no small degree upon that regulation of temper and
careful self-discipline, which give a wise man not only a command over
himself, but over others. Forbearance and self-control smooth the road
of life, and open many ways which would otherwise remain closed. And so
does self-respect: for as men respect themselves, so will they usually
respect the personality of others.

It is the same in politics as in business. Success in that sphere of
life is achieved less by talent than by temper, less by genius than by
character. If a man have not self-control, he will lack patience, be
wanting in tact, and have neither the power of governing himself nor of
managing others. When the quality most needed in a Prime Minister was
the subject of conversation in the presence of Mr. Pitt, one of the
speakers said it was "Eloquence;" another said it was "Knowledge;" and
a third said it was "Toil," "No," said Pitt, "it is Patience!" And
patience means self-control, a quality in which he himself was superb.
His friend George Rose has said of him that he never once saw Pitt out
of temper. [153] Yet, although patience is