W. Vision and te:411.—The will is a complex mental faculty, and weakness of will often has its origin in indecision, in the reluctance of the judgment to make choice between two alternatives. A man who thinks clearly and feels strongly should have a strong will. A man of higb purpose born of clear vision will have an aggressive will. The man of muddled vision, on the contrary, works without a clear-cut purpose in view, and is liable to be weak of will.
Therefore, if we would strengthen our will-power, we must cultivate our imagination and encourage it to build for us an ideal that will bring our whole be ing into action. The man who wants something with his whole soul, wills irresistibly. He whose desire or purpose is drab, lackadaisical, sentimental, has the will of a jelly fish.
The business man must have vision, not merely that be may plan new undertakings and provide for the contingencies of the future, but that he may work un der the stimulus of a great purpose and develop a will which does not quail before opposition.
11. will not undertake to define or de scribe the genius whose creations in art or literature captivate all men, possessing beauty, power and charm far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. But a few words about the genius in business are worth while. The business genius is not an unfamiliar figure in the United States. His touch is magical. Every enter prise he undertakes meets with astonishing success. He makes new and startling moves, but he always wins. Like James J. Hill he builds a railroad across a desert, or like Pierpont Morgan he consolidates the steel plants of the country, and pays not tbe slightest attention to critics and wins. Often these men of genius in business have beg,un work with a school edu cation that was meager and pitiful. Yet they do not blunder, they judge wisely, they decide promptly, and they succeed.
Foolish people often attribute the success of such men to luck or good fortune. Now luck is a negli gible factor in the success of any man, but in the busi ness success of such men as James J. Hill, Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, luck played abso lutely no part at all. They earned their success be cause they planned and fought for it.
The business genius is a man whose intellectual pow ers—his judgment, imagination, memory, will—are all so strongly and finely balanced that they grasp a busi ness situation and solve a business problem with the rapidity of intuition. Schopenhauer defined the genius as being the man who could see the truth with out the aid of logical processes, whereas ordinary mor tals, "like moles in the earth," grope about in dark ness. Whatever the philosophical explanation may
be, it is a fact that certain exceptional men in business, as well as in the arts, possess powers which place them in a class by themselves. Tthey are Nietszche's super men.
12. The fixed strong faculty perverted or wrongly used is necessarily harmful. Hence a man of vigorous imagination, if his judgment happens to be biased by prejudice, religion or convention, espe cially if he is conceited or obstinate, sometimes clings to an ideal with the devotion of a fanatic long after he should have learned by experience that it is in adequate and imperfect. He is a victim of what the French call the "idee "fixed idea." If a man gazes blankly for a certain length of time at any object, seeking to think of nothing at all, he may pass into a hypnotic state and temporarily lose control of his mental faculties, accepting as true and pleasant whatever may be suggested to him as being true and pleasant. Certain natures are similarly im pressed by prolonged contemplation of an idea in which they believe. It may be a curious religious faith, or an idea that death awaits them at a certain age, or the idea that imminent peril threatens society from Mormonism or from free masonry. They read no books except those in sympathy with their own views, and in the course of time become known in their communities as people who have queer views on this or that subject. They are victims of the fixed idea. On all other subjects they may be perfectly matter-of-fact and sane, but when they talk of their pet idea you discover at once that they are in a state of fascination or semi-hypnotism, their judgment no longer work ing normally.
When the "idee Ave" appeais in business, it plays havoc with profits. In a Massachusetts killage, a country store was kept during the Civil War times by a man of very positive convictions. Under no circum stances would he ever sell any article, however shop worn, for less than the cost. After the war was over the prices of nearly all articles declined rapidly as the greenback appreciated. Our storekeeper found his shelves stocked with goods which could not be sold at the prices he had paid for them. He refused to sell at all, and when his stock was put up at auction after his death, the town roared with laughter as the auc tioneer brought forth article after article which had been in stock- for over ten years.