No excellence without labor

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The following is from McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader, used in schoolrooms in the 1800s, p. 230 - 232.

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NO EXCELLENCE WITHOUT LABOR

William Wirt (b. 1772, d. 1834) was born in Bladensburg, Md. He was admitted to the bar in 1799, and afterwards practiced law, with eminent success, at Richmond and Norfolk, Va. He was one of the counsel for the prosecution in the trial of Aaron Burr for treason. From 1817 to 1829 he was attorney-general for the United States. In 1803 he published the "Letters of a British Spy," a work which attracted much attention, and in 1817 a "Life of Patrick Henry."

1. The education, moral and intellectual, of every individual, must be chiefly his own work. Rely upon it that the ancients were right; both in morals and intellect we give the final shape to our characters, and thus become, emphatically, the architects of our own fortune. How else could it happen that young men, who have had precisely the same opportunities, should be continually presenting us with such different results, and. rushing to such opposite destinies?

2. Difference of talent will not solve it, because that difference is very often in favor of the disappointed candidate. You will see issuing from the walls of the same college, nay, sometimes from the bosom of the same family, two young men, of whom one will be admitted to be a genius of high order, the other scarcely above the point of mediocrity; yet you will see the genius sinking and perishing in poverty, obscurity, and wretchedness; while, on the other hand, you will observe the mediocre plodding his slow but sure way up the hill of life, gaining steadfast footing at every step, and mounting, at length, to eminence and distinction, an ornament to his family, a blessing to his country.

3. Now, whose work is this? Manifestly their own. They are the architects of their respective fortunes. The best seminary of learning that can open its portals to you can do no more than to afford you the opportunity of instruction; but it must depend, at last, on yourselves, whether you will be instructed or not, or to what point you will push your instruction.

4. And of this be assured, I speak from observation a certain truth: THERE IS NO EXCELLENCE WITHOUT GREAT LABOR. It is the fiat of fate, from which no power of genius can absolve you.

5. Genius, unexerted, is like the poor moth that flutters around a candle till it scorches itself to death. If genius be desirable at all, it is only of that great and magnanimous kind, which, like the condor of South America, pitches from the summit of Chimborazo, above the clouds, and sustains itself at pleasure in that empyreal region with an energy rather invigorated than weakened by the effort.

6. It is this capacity for high and long-continued exertion, this vigorous power of profound and searching investigation, this careering and wide-spreading comprehension of mind, and these long reaches of thought, that

"Pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

And pluck up drowned honor by the locks;"

this is the prowess, and these the hardy achievements, which are to enroll your names among the great men of the earth.

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I believe there is a great deal of truth in the above. How well one does in school and in life has a great deal to do with moral character. Industriousness and hard work are very important to success.

18 Oct 24