in turn aid him on his way; the man or woman who, like the eagle, uses the very contrary wind that would thwart his flight, that would turn him and carry him in the opposite direction, as the very agency upon which he mounts and mounts and mounts, until actually lost to the human eye, and which, in addition to thus aiding him, brings to him an ever fuller realization of his own powers, or in other words, an ever greater power.

It is this that gives the man or the woman who in storm or in sunny weather, rides over every obstacle, throws before him every barrier, and, as Browning has said, finally “arrives.”  Take, for example, the successful business man,—­for it is all one, the law is the same in all cases,—­the man who started with nothing except his own interior equipments.  He has made up his mind to one thing,—­success.  This is his ideal.  He thinks success, he sees success.  He refuses to see anything else.  He expects success:  he thus attracts it to him, his thought-forces continually attract to him every agency that makes for success.  He has set up the current, so that every wind that blows brings him success.  He doesn’t expect failure, and so he doesn’t invite it.  He has no time, no energies, to waste in fears or forebodings.  He is dauntless, untiring, in his efforts.  Let disaster come to-day, and to-morrow—­ay, even yet to-day—­he is getting his bearings, he is setting forces anew into operation; and these very forces are of more value to him than the half million dollars of his neighbor who has suffered from the same disaster.  We speak of a man’s failing in business, little thinking that the real failure came long before, and that the final crash is but the culmination, the outward visible manifestation, of the real failure that occurred within possibly long ago. A man carries his success or his failure with him:  it is not dependent upon outside conditions.

Will is the steady directing power:  it is concentration.  It is the pilot which, after the vessel is started by the mighty force within, puts it on its right course and keeps it true to that course, the pilot under whose control the rudder is which brings the great ocean liner, even through storms and gales, to an exact spot in the Liverpool port within a few minutes of its scheduled time, and at times even upon the very minute.  Will is the sun-glass which so concentrates and so focuses the sun’s rays that they quickly burn a hole through the paper that is held before it.  The same rays, not thus concentrated, not thus focused, would fall upon the paper for days without any effect whatever.  Will is the means for the directing, the concentrating, the focusing, of the thought-forces.  Thought under wise direction,—­this it is that does the work, that brings results, that makes the successful career.  One object in mind which we never lose sight of; an ideal steadily held before the mind, never lost sight of, never lowered, never swerved from,—­this, with persistence, determines all.  Nothing can resist the power of thought, when thus directed by will.