学文网There is not yet any inventory of a man’s faculties, any more than a bible of his opinions. Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?
Life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated, there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged―that no honest seeking goes unrewarded. A man should prize events and possessions as the ore in which this fine mineral is found; and he can well afford to let events and possessions, and the breath of the body go, if their value has been added to him in the shape of power. If he has secured the elixir, he can spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled.
All successful men have agreed in one thing―they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things. A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing―characterizes all valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an industrious one.
The most valiant men are the best believers in the tension of the laws. “All the great captains,” said Bonaparte, “have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of the art―by adjusting efforts to obstacles.”
The affirmative class monopolizes the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon! Of the sixty thousand men making his army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were thieves and burglars. The men whom, in peaceful communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to their duty, and won his victories by their bayonets.
This aboriginal might give a surprising pleasure when it appears under conditions of supreme refinement, as in the proficients in high art. When Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went down into the Pope’s gardens behind the Vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed them with glue and water with his own hands, and having, after many trials, at last suited himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away, week after week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets. He surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as much as in purity of intellect and refinement. He was not crushed by his one picture left unfinished at last. Michel was wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape them.
“Ah!” said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, “if a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”
Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.
And I hold that an economy may be applied to it; it is as much a subject of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and gases are. This is not gold, but the gold-maker; not the fame, but the exploit.
If these forces and this husbandry are within reach of our will, and the laws of them can be read, we infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and has its own sublime economies by which it may be attained. The world is mathematical, and has no casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success has no more eccentricity, than the gingham and muslin we weave in our mills.
迄今为止，还没有一个清单能列出人类所有的才能，如果有，那必定会是一部超越《圣经》的宝典。而事实上，谁能为人类的力量作一个界定呢?
生命本身就是对力量的追寻，世界因这种追寻而饱满。这种追寻无处不在，而且只要一个人诚挚地追求，就不会一无所得。因此，每个人都应珍视他的经历，珍视他的拥有，因为这些就是一笔宝藏；如果这笔宝藏能转变成力量给予他，他就能继续去体验，继续去拥有，生命也因此前行。如果他好好利用了这笔宝藏，他就能从中分享到人生中无上的乐趣。
所有成功者都有一个共同点――他们都是信仰宇宙运行因果规律的人，他们相信，自始至终，事物的发展都是凭规律，而不是运气。这种对因果规律，对每一次脉搏跳动之间的紧密联系，对人类生存的法则以至对于报偿，对于“劳而获”的信仰，贯彻在成功者所有有价值的想法之中，并且制约着这些上进者的每一次努力。
最英勇的男人一定是最信仰法则力量的男人。“所有成功的统帅，”拿破仑•波拿巴说：“都是由于遵守战斗规则，针对不同的敌人，相应调整努力方取得伟大的成就。”
力量强大的人们独享着人类的敬意，他们发起并完成所有伟大的壮举。拿破仑的脑海中萦绕着多么大的力量!他要组建6万人的***队，似乎其中3万人都是小偷和强盗。在和平的条件下，这些人也许正戴着脚镣，在哨兵步***的监视下，呆在监狱里。但拿破仑把他们一个个拉出来，赋予他们使命，并且利用他们的刺刀获得了胜利。
当米歇尔•安吉洛，一个土著人，出现在极文雅的环境下，出现在某精通高超艺术的专家面前时，他就要带给人们意外的惊喜了。当时他被强迫在西斯廷的小礼拜堂里画壁画，这个丝毫不懂艺术的人，居然走进梵蒂冈旁边的保罗花园，用铲子挖出赭色的、红色的、黄色的土，亲手用胶和水把它们混合起来。在经过许多次试验后，他终于感到满意了。爬上梯子画开去，一周又一周，一月又一月，画女巫，画预言者。米歇尔精力超人，在智力和优雅上，都胜过了他的后继者，他不会被他的一幅最终没画完的画压倒。米歇尔惯于草拟被画者的骨架，然后给他们加上肉体和衣服，最后则用布帘盖住他们。
一个勇敢的画家看到这些事，对我说：“如果一个人失败了，你会发现他一直在做梦，而不是工作。在艺术界，只有当你脱下外衣，磨碎颜料，像个铁路边的挖地工一样，每天持续工作，你才有可能获得成功。”
成功总是伴随某种积极的有利的因素：一个盎司的力量只能平衡一盎司的梦想。
我坚持认为我们应经济地使用这种力量，它就像是流体或气体那样具有精确的规则或者数量。这不是黄金，而是点金术；不是名望，而是不懈的追求。
如果这些力量、这种管理在达成我们意愿的能力之内，而且其中的规律可以认识到的话，我们推断，一切的成功、一切人类想得到的利益都最终都能得到，这些成功和利益都有其卓越的制度，让人类来遵循并最终达成目的。世界是精确的，在它所有宏大的、流动的过程中，并不是无序的。成功并不古怪，它就像我们在工场里编织的棉布那样普通。