ter what comes, no matter how mixed his theology may be, no
matter what may be the rewards of wrong-doing, or the perils and
losses of right-doing, he will do right; then, if there is any moral
law in the universe, that man must sometime, somewhere, arrive at
his inward triumph, his spiritual victory and peace.

And the corollary of this is that if I have done wrong the best and
only way to cure it is to quit doing wrong and begin to do right. If
any man will stick to this, make it his anchor in times of storm,
his pole-star in nights of uncertainty, he will cast out of his life
that which is life's greatest enemy--Fear. He need not fear man nor
woman, nor governments nor mischief-makers, nor the devil nor God.
He will be able to say with the accent of sincerity that word of
William Ernest Henley, to me the greatest spiritual declaration in
any language:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Beneath the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Let me repeat that I have not been telling what I did with the
implication that the youth of twenty-one would do well to follow me.
I did not do all these things. Far from it! I wish I had. I only say
that if I were twenty-one, as I now see life, I would do as I have
here suggested. But perhaps I would not. I might go about barking my
shins and burning my fingers, making idiotic experiments in the
endeavour to prove that I was an exception to all the rules, and
knew a little more than all the ancients. So let not the young man
be discouraged if he has committed follies; for there seems to
emerge a peculiar and vivid wisdom from error, from making an ass of
one's self, and all that, more useful to one's own life than any
wisdom he can get from sages or copybooks.

In what I have written I have not tried to indicate the art of
"getting on," or of acquiring riches or position. These usually are
what is meant by success. But success is of two kinds, outward and
inward, or apparent and real. Outward success may depend somewhat
upon what is in you, but it depends more upon luck. It is a gambling
game. And it is hardly worth a strong man