"I fly with the wind."
"But why is thy hair over thine eye?"
"To be grasped by him who meets me."
"The back of thy head, why is it bald?"
"When once I have rushed by, with winged feet, one can never grasp me from behind."
In its literal significance, however, opportunity means something either "in front of the door" or "outside of the harbor." For when the word first crept into common speech it created two pictures,--that of a ship with sails unfurled, riding at anchor, ready to start upon her unknown voyage, with just a moment to spare to catch her before the sails are bent; or the picture of a veiled figure standing for an instant at the door of one's life, knocking with sharp, swift strokes and then, if no answer comes, passing away into the darkness, refusing to be recalled.
In all the vocabulary of human speech no other word rings with truer eloquence, or speaks with greater triumph, than that one word,--opportunity. Born in the primeval forest of man's first dwelling-place, it has marked the central path of civilization and hewn its way to the front with unerring stroke. The finger of destiny ever points back to this factor in human life as the primal element in all achievement, the forerunner of all success. Without it human genius would die, man's talent and skill waste away, and the hope of the race would vanish.
Opportunity is the good angel that reveals the true issues of life, unfolding the bud of possibility into the full-blown flower of progress.
It is the remorseless foe of sleepy monotony, awakening the passions in the soul, rousing our powers to action. At the door of your life and mine comes this silent, veiled figure, its hands laden with wealth, knocking for admission. But, alas! it has been too often with us as George Eliot with such tragic pathos has put it: "The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand. The angels come to visit us and we know them only when they are gone."
There has been no period of time since God whirled out of chaos this universe of wonders whose every moment did not hold for some one, somewhere, some kind of opportunity. Man is the only creature under heaven that has been privileged to walk with his face skyward to gaze upon the stars, to behold the opportunities of life as they surge along his pathway. In her wisdom, nature has given our eyes the power of both the telescope and the microscope, that we may see our opportunities afar and rightly discern them when they come within our reach.
Do not regard your opportunities as mere visages floating in the horizon of your life, or autumn leaves driven by the winds of chance across your path. Every opportunity far from being a thing of chance, is a product of definite causes. Opportunity is unrealized possibility supplemented by conditions favorable for the execution of a purpose. And the power lies within you to create circumstances. That skillful artist, the human brain, draws a mental picture--an idea, the judgment approves, the will renders a decision to create that idea into actual being; in other words, gives it a soul, and then we have opportunity made real by the process of a creative force.
We are apt to regard this quality in our existence as a somewhat superhuman term, an abstraction beyond the realm of common life, or at most an asset within the reach of a favored few; whereas it is a common attribute playing a potential part in our every-day activities. In its very nature opportunity is democratic and goes, like a wayfarer, knocking at the gates of every man's life.
This messenger of fate, however, will not knock at the door of that man who is unable to meet the demands it would make upon him. It ever recognizes the eternal fitness of things, since it looks to its own promotion as well as the promotion of him who seeks to embrace it.
Opportunity, then, is not opportunity at all if a man is not equal to it.
When the steam engine lay in its elementary state in the great laboratory of nature, it was an opportunity for James Watt; and by his accepting it, opportunity realized its own fulfillment, became its own blessing and a blessing to all mankind. The unskilled laborer who dug out the ore could not claim this opportunity because he was not equal to its requirements.
Moreover, every man is himself an opportunity of infinite greatness. And he who depends upon the world alone to furnish him opportunities is destined to meet with failure. Self-reliance is the passport to success. The man who is continually bemoaning a lack of opportunity acknowledges his own lack of resources--is wanting in creative force.
Every golden moment is an opportunity for him to step out from the shadows into the sunshine. Optimism sees opportunity in the ordinary jog-trot of daily duty.
One of the most valuable assets which we can possess is the ability to mold from the adverse circumstances about us our opportunities. And "a wise man," says Bacon, "will make more opportunities than he finds." When Michael Angelo takes the castaway rock which he finds in his path and carves from it "The Young David;" when Herschel at the midnight hour, after playing his violin for a living, goes out and studies the star-lit skies, the field of his immortal conquest; when Elihu Burritt, working at the forge, grapples with mathematics, and masters several languages; when obstacles are overcome, and adversity yields to the invincible wills of men, then has opportunity by this self-made principle been hewn out of the very stumbling blocks which were in the way.
Every man is a treasury of untold wealth. He is not great merely for what he is, but for the greatness of his possibility--that undreamed grandeur which opportunity is ever seeking to reveal. True greatness does not emanate from the power of genius so much as it does from the wise discrimination which we exercise in the choice of our opportunities, and the intelligence with which we lay hold upon them. It is a fine art in life to know just the thing to do, and the opportune moment for doing it.
Eternal vigilance is the price we must pay, and the constant whetting of our faculties.
Our life is a succession of opportunities. Yet however numerous they may be, or however bright, they are not availing until placed into the crucible of experience. Gold, silver, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds--all the precious jewels imbedded in the treasure-house of nature, become valuable to us only when we dig them out, polish and shape them for our use. Likewise our opportunities enrich us only as we reach out after them and make them an abiding element in our life.
But to know one's opportunity when he sees it, is the secret of life's great problem. "Know thy opportunity," is the motto of Pittacus of Mitylene, one of the seven wise men. It is inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. And each day, in the temple of our memory, we should write it anew. For the practical question is not whether we are making the most of our opportunities, but whether we are conscious of them at all.
Moreover, to know them _instantly_ as well as to know them instinctively is essential to our well-being. When Victor Hugo charges us to take all reasonable advantage of that which the present offers, he reveals the true character of opportunity. It lives only in the present tense, it knows no to-morrows, and makes a record of the yesterdays only when it has found lodgment in our lives.
Suppose DeWitt Clinton, denounced and ridiculed, had been led into the belief that his idea was a mere phantom, a mystic nightmare, the Erie Canal would not be a reality. Suppose Robert Fulton had accepted the issuing vapor of the tea-kettle as a mere phenomenon without seeking in it the opportunity for a mighty purpose; suppose that Cyrus W. Field or Marconi, or Edison or Ericsson, or the hundreds of others who by their inventive genius have been a blessing to mankind, had been contented with simply dreaming of the stupendous undertakings which they achieved!
It is the man who knows his opportunities when he sees them, who grips them as they pass, who stands at the door of his activities ready to welcome and turn to good account each new opportunity that comes, that is the typically successful man. Many young men have had noble ideas, backed by strong convictions, but failing to "strike while the iron was hot,"
have let their convictions die, the mental picture of their ideals vanish, and to their sorrow have seen them wrought by another into reality.
And below this class of men we will find a lower type--the man who is always waiting for something to turn up, and always missing it when it does. This is the man whom Dickens has immortalized in fiction in the familiar figure of Micawber. This class, however, is unmistakably diminishing in our day, but still there are many who seem to come just short of the prizes of life. They are always just too late for the opportunity that should have brought them fame and fortune.
Shakespeare has aptly portrayed that supreme moment in life which we call opportunity:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries."
And the annals of human experience are filled and overflowing with achievements--examples of opportunities that were laid hold upon at just the critical moment of the tide.
When the armies of Saul and Goliath were encamped in the valley of Elah, an opportunity was given to every soldier in Israel to meet the Philistine giant, but the youthful shepherd, David, alone accepted it, and his name has been praised for thirty centuries.
An unlettered girl, a peasant in France, saw an opportunity to save the glory of her country, and with a courage that baffles human understanding Joan of Arc went forth to conquer.
When George III of England ascended the throne and began to oppress the Colonists, an opportunity was created for the American people to act. With sublime patriotism they arose to the occasion in defense of their rights, and historians allude to the inspiring event as the opening scene in the Revolution.
And when, by a stroke of diplomacy, Thomas Jefferson purchased from Napoleon Bonaparte the Louisiana Territory, one million square miles, or over six hundred millions of acres, for two cents and a half an acre, an opportunity was seized whose benefit to the American Nation no one can estimate.
But if you would know a grand hero in whose life opportunity shone like Mars, read the life of Ulysses S. Grant--the man out of whose very failures evolved a most brilliant success. When, standing with leaden heart in the little store at Galena, the opportunity for a military life came knocking at the door, he welcomed it. For when morning broke on the 12th of April, 1861, and the first guns of the Civil War roared upon Sumter, Grant marched to the front, and soon became a brigadier-general "The spur of disappointed hopes, the fire of his ambition, and the iron will that lay back of many of his failures--all the qualities latent in the man of coming greatness, sprang into mighty being."
A gigantic opportunity next confronted him, for yonder on the banks of the Cumberland frowned the massive walls of Fort Donelson. Behind them Buckner's gray legions stood ready for action. It was the hour of fate.
Grant pressed on, the Confederates surrendered the stronghold, and the first Union victory was won. Shiloh and Vicksburg, Cold Harbor and Petersburg, Richmond and Appomattox, and many other glorious victories tell the story of opportunities masterfully grasped.
Our country is the land of "the golden fleece," and wherever you may be in its vast domain, you are the one who must answer for yourself the stupendous question--"To what height shall I attain?" You are like the man in the "Arabian Nights" dropped into a valley filled with diamonds. It is within your power to select that which is most valuable for your enrichment. There are splendid opportunities on every hand, and whether you shall grasp them or let them go, remains alone for you to determine.
The door of opportunity for the highest development of every individual, in every phase of life, is ever open. Every golden moment holds something of value for the earnest seeker, just as every flower holds in its bosom a treasure for the thrifty bee. No one of us may ever have such splendid opportunities as did the illustrious ones to whom we owe our present inheritance. But at the threshold of our lives will ever come the veiled figure with its gifts, and, however modest may be the treasures which it brings, if we accept them and turn to good account all that they hold of value to us, our reward will be truly great.
"Pull many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
IV
The Active Hand
"They Plied Their Oars With Vigor"
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
"Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no worthy action done."
The Individual Problem
With steady, even, and vigorous stroke the young heroes from Hellas ply their oars, and the blue waters of the Euxine are flecked with foam. Here is an ideal picture. A band of enterprising young men, alert, active, ambitions--a scene typical of the highest conception of life. It has ever been scenes like this that have challenged the admiration of the world.
And the plaudits of men and of angels attend the young man today who has a worthy object in view, who believes in himself, and bends to the oars with might and main.
An "active hand" symbolizes usefulness and thrift. Has it ever occurred to you what a wonderful piece of mechanism is that hand with which Nature has equipped you for seizing the oars of life's activities? Galen, the famous anatomist, after a prolonged study of the human hand, conceiving it to be the proximate instrument of the soul, was forced to renounce atheism, to acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being. Scientists regard the human hand as being the most remarkable organ, not vital, in the whole animal kingdom.
It is conceded to be, also, the most pronounced physical characteristic differentiating man from the lower animals. The chimpanzee and the gorilla, closely allied to the human species in many respects, are noticeably deficient in the use of their modified hands; being able to grasp things only in a cumbersome way. The squirrel handles a nut with agility, the beaver builds his dam, and likewise do many other animals accomplish much with certain deftness. But the grace, suppleness, and precision, so characteristic of the human hand, are lacking. Only in man does the organ attain perfection. He alone enjoys the distinction of being able to manipulate thumb and forefinger in combination, enabling him to attain a high degree of skill.
The hand is the organ of the fifth and last sense, and the only one of the five which is active. When the other organs of sense fail it comes to their rescue--the blind man reads with his hand and the dumb man speaks with it. Being an active organ it gives expression to man's capabilities: Put a sword into it and it will fight, a plow and it will till, a harp and it will play, a brush and it will paint.