will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what
Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature.
Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as
your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even
all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot,"
says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal
with persons."

"_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," is just as applicable to lawyers and
mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused by
the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any
single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A
man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has
set about him.

"When I was born,
From all the seas of strength
Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, This be thy portion, child,"

declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a
Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try
cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for
which Nature has not fitted him.

Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and
their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they
have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy
can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for
him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies.