Self-Reliance

Self-reliance is the pilgrim’s best staff, the worker’s best tool. It is the master key that unlocks all the difficulties of life. “Help yourself and Heaven will help you” is a maxim that receives daily confirmation. He who begins with crutches will end with crutches. Help from within always strengthens, but help from without invariably enfeebles the recipient. It is not in the sheltered garden, but in the rugged Alpine cliffs where storms beat most violently that the toughest plants are reared. It is not by use of corks, bladders, and lifebuoys that you can best learn to swim but by plunging courageously into the waves and buffeting them. To wait until some charitable man passes by to stand with arms folded, sighing for a helping hand is not the part of any manly mind. The habit of depending upon others should be vigorously resisted since it tends to weaken the intellectual faculties and paralyze judgment. The struggle against adverse circumstances has, on the contrary, a bracing and strengthening effect, like that of the pure mountain air on an enfeebled frame. This is a lesson, which, nowadays, is not taught in colleges. To us, it seems the vice of the modern system of education is that they lay down too many royal roads to knowledge. Those impediments which formerly compelled the student to think and labor for himself are now most carefully removed, and he glides so smoothly along the well-beaten highway that he pauses not to heed the flowers on either side.