WILL

The indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, looking for future good through present evil, have always begot confidence and commanded success, while the opposite qualities have as truly led to timid resolves, uncertain councils, alternate exaltation and depression, and final disappointment and disaster. A vacillating policy, irresolute councils, unstable will, subordination of the future to the present, efforts to relieve ourselves from existing trouble without providing against its recurrence, may bring momentary quiet, but expose us to greater disquiet than ever hereafter. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

Will is the monarch of the mind, ruling with despotic, and at times with tyrannical powers. It is the rudder of the mind, giving dire to its movements. It is the engineer giving course and point, speed and force to the mental machinery. It acts like a tonic among the soul’s languid powers. It is the band that ties into a strong bundle the separate faculties of the soul. It is the man’s momentum; in a word, it is that power by which the energy or energies of the soul are concentrated on a given point, or in a particular direction: it fuses the faculties into one mass, so that instead of scattering all over like grape ‘and canister, they spend their united force on one point. The intellect is the legislative department; the sensibilities are the judicial, and the will the executive.

Says Shakespeare, Our bodies are our gardens; to the which, our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.

Where there is a will there is a way. Nothing is impossible to him who wills. Will is the root; knowledge the stem and leaves; feeling the flower.

Mr. Walker, author of the “Original,” had so great a faith in the power of the will, that he says on one occasion he determined to be well, and he was so. This may answer once; but, though safer to follow than prescriptions, it will not always succeed. The power of mind over body is no doubt great, but it may be strained until the physical power breaks down altogether.  It is related of Muley Molec, the Moorish leader, that when lying ill, almost worn out by an incurable disease, a battle took place between his troops and the Portuguese; when, starting from his litter at the great crisis of the fight, he rallied his army, led them to victory, and instantly afterwards sank exhausted and expired.

It is will,—force of purpose,—that enables a man to do or be what ever he sets his mind on being or doing. A holy man was accustomed to say, “Whatever you wish, that you are; for such is the force of our will, joined to the Divine, that whatever we wish to be, seriously, and with a true intention, that we become. No one ardently wishes to be submissive, patient, modest, or liberal, who does not become what he wishes.”

Each individual feels and knows that practically he is free to choose between good and evil. It would paralyze all desire of excellence were it otherwise. The entire business and conduct of life, with its domestic rules, its social arrangements, and its public institutions, proceed upon the practical conviction that the will is free.  In every movement of our lives, conscience is proclaiming that the will is free. It is the only thing that is wholly ours, and it rests solely with ourselves individually, whether we give it the right or wrong direction.   Our habits or our temptations are not our masters, be we of them.

Said Lammenais once, “That which the easiest becomes a habit in us is the will. Learn then to will strongly and decisively.” Buxton held the conviction that a young man might be very much what he pleased, provided he formed a strong resolution and held to it. He said, “I am sure he may. In my own case it was so. Much of the happiness and all of my prosperity in life have resulted from the change that I made at an early age.” He adds, “If you seriously resolve to be energetic and industrious, depend upon it that you will for your whole life have reason to rejoice that you were wise enough to form and act upon that determination.” As will, considered without regard to direction, is simply constancy, firmness, perseverance, it will be obvious that everything depends upon right direction and motives. Directed towards the enjoyment of the senses, the strong will may be a demon, and the intellect merely its debased slave; but directed towards good, the strong will is a king, and the intellect is then the minister of man’s highest well-being.

“Where there is a will there is a way,” is an old and true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement. To think we are able is almost to be so,—to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself.  Thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of Omnipotence. “You can only half will,” Suwarrow would say to people who had failed. “I don’t know,” “I can’t,” and “impossible,” were words which he detested above all others. “Learn! do! try!” he would exclaim.

One of Napoleon’s favorite maxims was, “The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.” His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession, He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. “There shall be no Alps,” he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. “Impossible,” said he, “is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men and put a new life into them. “I made my generals out of mud,” he said. But all was of no avail: for Napoleon’s intense selfishness was his ruin, and the ruin of France, which be left a prey to anarchy. His life taught the lesson that power, however energetically wielded, without beneficence, is fatal to its possessor and its subjects; and that knowledge, or knowingness, without goodness, is but the incarnate principle of evil.