The more quickly youth breaks away from the prejudices of its surroundings, the more rapid will be its success.  The harder that age fights against prepossessions, born of the past, which gather round to obstruct the free operation of its mind, the longer will be the period of a happy, successful, and active life.

Prejudice is a mixture of pride and egotism, and no prejudiced man, therefore, will be happy.

XIV

CALM

The last two essays have dealt with the more depressing sides of practical life—­the sudden tempest which sweeps down on the business man, or the long period of depression which is the necessary prelude to the times in which optimism is justified.  But it is on the note of optimism, and not of pessimism, that I would conclude, and after the storm comes the calm.  What is calm to the man of experience in affairs?  It is the end to which turbulent and ambitious youth should devote itself in order that it may attain to happiness in that period of middle-age which still gives to assured success its real flavour.  Youth is the time of hope; old age is the time for looking back on the pleasures and achievements of the past—­when success or failure may seem matters of comparative unimportance.  Successful middle-age stands between the two.  Its calm is not the result either of senility or failure.  It represents that solid success which enables a man to adventure into fresh spheres without any perturbation.  New fields call to him—­Art, or Letters, or Public Service.  Success is already his, and it will be his own fault if he does not achieve happiness as well.

Successful middle-age appears to me to be the ideal of practical men.  I have tried to indicate the method by which it can be attained by any young man who is sufficiently resolute in his purpose.  Finance, Commerce, and Industry are, under modern conditions, spheres open to the talent of any individual.  The lack of education in the formal sense is no bar to advancement.  Every young man has his chance.  But will he practise industry, economy, and moderation, avoid arrogance and panic, and know how to face depression with a stout heart?  Even if he is a genius, will he know how not to soar with duly restrained wings?

The secret of power is the method by which the fire of youth is translated into the knowledge of experience.  In these essays I have suggested a short cut to that knowledge.  I once had youth, and now I have experience, and I believe that youth can do anything if its desire for success is sufficiently strong to curb all other desires.  I also believe that a few words of experience can teach youth how to avoid the pitfalls of finance which wait for the most audacious spirits.  I write out of the conviction of my own experience.

But, above all, stands the attainment of happiness as the final form of struggle.  Happiness can only be attained as the result of a prolonged effort.  It is the result of material surroundings and yet a state of the inner mind.  It is, therefore, in some form or another at once the consequence of achievement and a sense of calm.  The flavour is achievement, but the fruit should be the assured sense of happiness.