I am prepared now to confess that I was bitterly hurt and injured by the injustice of these attacks.  But I regret nothing.  Why?  Because these early violent criticisms taught me to treat ferocious onslaughts in later life with complete indifference.  A certain kind of purely cynical intelligence would hold that I should have been far wiser to adopt the pliable role.  But that innate judgment which dwells in the recesses of the mind tells me that my whole capacity for action in affairs would have been destroyed by the moral collapse of yielding to that threat.  Pliability would have become a habit rather than a matter of judgment and will, for fortitude only comes by practice.

Every young man who enters business will at some time or another meet a similar crisis which will determine the bias of his career and dictate his habitual technique in negotiation.

But he may well exclaim, “How do you help me?  You say that courage may be stubbornness and even stupidity—­and compromise a mere form of cowardice or weakness.  Where is the true courage which yet admits of compromise to be found?”

It is the old question:  How can firmness be combined with adaptability to circumstances?  There is no answer except that the two qualities must be made to run concurrently in the mind.  One must be responsive to the world, and yet sensible of one’s own personality.  It is only the special circumstance of a grave crisis which will put a young man to this crucial test of judgment.  The case will have to be judged on its merits, and yet the final decision will affect the whole of his career.  But one practical piece of advice can be given.  Never bully, and never talk about the whip-hand—­it is a word not used in big business.

The view of the intellect often turns towards compromise when the direction of the character is towards battle.  Such a conflict of tendencies is most likely to lead to the wise result.  The fusion of firmness with a careful weighing of the risks will best attain the real decision which is known as courage.  The intellectual judgment will be balanced by the moral side.  Any man who could attain this perfect balance between these two parallel sides of his mind would have attained, at a single stroke, all that is required to make him eminent in any walk of life.  One regards perfection, but cannot attain it.  None the less, it is out of this struggle to combine a sense of proportion with an innate hardihood that true courage is born; and courage is success.

IX

PANIC

Panic is the fear which makes great masses of men rush into the abyss without due reason.  It is, in fact, a mass sentiment with which there is no reasoning.  Yet at one time or another in his career every man in business will be confronted with a stampede of this character, and if he does not understand how to deal with it, he will be trampled in the mud.