Apply your strength and your
intellect on matters which lie at hand and on problems which admit of a
solution. The happiest man is not the man who has the grandest dreams,
but the man whose aspirations are best fitted to guide his talents: the
most efficient worker is not the one who mistakes his own fancies for an
external support, but he who has most accurately gauged the conditions
under which he is laboring. Trust in Providence may lead you to pass
successfully through dangers which would have repelled an unbeliever, or
it may lead you to break your neck in pursuing a dream. It makes heroes
and cowards, patriots and assassins, saints and bigots who each mistake
their wisdom or their folly for divine intimations. Providence for us
can only be that aggregate of external forces to which willingly or
unwillingly we must adapt ourselves. We should calmly calculate by all
available means the conditions of our life, and then dare, without
ignoring, the dangers that are inevitable. Through all human affairs
there runs an element of uncertainty which cannot be suppressed, and we
seek in vain to disguise it under names consecrated by old associations;
there are evils which are only made more poignant by our efforts to
explain them away; and to each of us will very speedily come an end of
his labors in the world.
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