Let your position be commonplace, whatever you are yourself.  If you are a genius, and contrive to conceal the fact, you really deserve to get on in the world, and you will do so, if only you keep on the level road.  Remember always that the world is a place where second-rate people mostly succeed:  not fools, nor first-rate people.

Cynically put, no doubt, but admirably true.  A great blockhead will never be made an archbishop; but in ordinary times a great genius stands next to him in the badness of his chance.  After all, good sense and sound judgment are the essentially needful things in all but very exceptional situations in life—­and for these commend us to the safe, steady-going, commonplace man.  It cannot be denied that the great mass of mankind stand in doubt and fear of people who are wonderfully clever.  What an amount of stolid, self-complacent, ignorant, stupid, conceited respectability, is wrapped up in the declaration concerning any person, that he is “too clever by half!” How plainly it teaches that the general belief is that too ingenious machinery will break down in practical working, and that most men will do wrong who have the power to do it!

The following propositions are true in very large communities, but they will not hold good in the country or in little towns:—­

Remember always that what is real and substantive ultimately has its way in this world.

You make good bricks for instance:  it is in vain that your enemies prove that you are a heretic in morals, politics, and religion; insinuate that you beat your wife; and dwell loudly on the fact that you failed in making picture-frames.  In so far as you are a good brick-maker, you have all the power that depends on good brick-making; and the world will mainly look to j-our positive qualities as a brick-maker.

After having gone on with a number of maxims of a very base, selfish, and suspicious nature, to the increasing horror of the girls who are listening, Ellesmere passes from the consideration of modes of action to a much more important matter:—­

Those who wish for self-advancement should remember, that the art in life is not so much to do a thing well, as to get a thing that has been moderately well done largely talked about.  Some foolish people, who should have belonged to another planet, give all their minds to doing their work well.  This is an entire mistake.  This is a grievous loss of power.  Such a method of proceeding may be very well in Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, but is totally out of place in this puffing, advertising, bill-sticking part of creation.  To rush into the battle of life without an abundance of kettle-drums and trumpets is a weak and ill-advised adventure, however well-armed and well-accoutred you may be.  As I hate vague maxims, I will at once lay down the proportions in which force of any kind should be used in this world.  Suppose you have a force which may be represented