The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Iron Will, by Orison Swett Marden

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Title: An Iron Will

Author: Orison Swett Marden

Release Date: August 11, 2004 [EBook #13160]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
American Philosopher, Statesman, Diplomatist, and Author.
_b. Boston, 1706; d. Philadelphia, 1790_.]

AN IRON WILL

_By_ ORISON SWETT MARDEN

AUTHOR OF "PUSHING TO THE FRONT," ETC.

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
ABNER BAYLEY

_ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS_

New York:
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

1901
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.

AN IRON WILL.

CHAPTER I.

TRAINING THE WILL.

"The education of the will is the object of our existence," says
Emerson.

Nor is this putting it too strongly, if we take into account the human
will in its relations to the divine. This accords with the saying of J.
Stuart Mill, that "a character is a completely fashioned will."

In respect to mere mundane relations, the development and discipline of
one's will-power is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. No
man can ever estimate the power of will. It is a part of the divine
nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. We speak of God's
fiat "_Fiat lux_, Let light be." Man has his fiat. The achievements of
history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the
human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men
like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and
Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they
planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the
tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal
qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless
will.

"It is impossible," says Sharman, "to look into the conditions under
which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much
really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated,
strengthened, and made operative in right directions." Youn