Whatever is true of the religious life is true also of the working life;
the two are different aspects of the same vital experience. In the field
of work he who would keep his life must lose it, and in losing his life a
man secures it for immortality. The noble worker pours himself into his
work with sublime indifference to its rewards, and by the very
completeness of his self-surrender and self-forgetfulness touches degrees
of excellence and attains a splendour of vision which are denied those
whose ventures are less daring and complete. And the largeness of
conception, the breadth of treatment, the beauty of skill which a man
gains when he casts all his spiritual fortune into his work often secure
the richest measure of those returns which men value so highly because
they are the tangible evidences of success. No man can forget himself for
the sake of fame; but let him forget himself for the sake of his work, and
fame will gladly serve him while lesser men are vainly wooing her. The man
who is superior to fortune is much more likely to be fortunate than he who
flatters fortune and wears her livery. Notwithstanding the successes that
attend cleverness and dexterity and the flattery of popular taste and the
study of the weaknesses of men, it remains true that greatness rules in
every sphere, and that in the exact degree in which a man is superior is
he authoritative and finally successful. Notoriety is easily bought, but
fame remains unpurchasable; external successes, sought as final ends, are
but the hollow mockeries of true achievement.




Chapter XV

Securing Right Conditions