The Value of Experience : Part 1

How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success
by Major A.R. Calhoon

(Page 9 of 26)

"What experience have you had?" This is apt to be the first question put by an employer to the applicant for a place, be he mechanic, clerk, or laborer. If you need a doctor, you would prefer to trust your case to a man of experience, rather than to one fresh from a medical college. Apart from the established reputation, that comes only with time, and natural abilities which count for much, the principal difference between men in every calling is the difference in their experiences.

If this experience is so essential, we must regard as wanting in judgment the young man, who, after a short service, imagines he is as well qualified to conduct the business as his superior in place. No amount of natural ability, and no effort of energy can compensate for the training that comes from experience. Indeed, it is only after we have studied and tested ourselves, and overestimated our talents to our injury, more than once, that experience gives us a proper estimate of our own strength and weakness.

Contact with others is requisite to enable a man to know himself. It is only by mixing freely in the world that one can form a proper estimate of his own capacity. Without such experience, one is apt to become conceited, puffed up, and arrogant; at all events, he will remain ignorant of himself, though he may heretofore have enjoyed no other company.

Swift once said: "It is an uncontroversial truth, that no man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them." Many people, however, are readier to take measure of the capacity of others than of themselves. "Bring him to me," said a certain Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, speaking of Rousseau - "bring him to me that I may see whether he has got anything in him!" - the probability being that Rousseau, who knew himself better, was much more likely to take measure of Tronchin than Tronchin was to take measure of him.

A due amount of self-knowledge is, therefore, necessary for those who would _be_ anything or _do_ anything in the world. It is also one of the first essentials to the formation of distinct personal convictions. Frederick Perthes once said to a young friend, "You know only too well what you _can_ do; but till you have learned what you _can not_ do, you will neither accomplish anything of moment nor know inward peace."

Any one who would profit by experience will never be above asking help. He who thinks himself already too wise to learn of others, will never succeed in doing anything either good or great. We have to keep our minds and hearts open, and never be ashamed to learn, with the assistance of those who are wiser and more experienced than ourselves.

The man made wise by experience endeavors to judge correctly of the things which come under his observation and form the subject of his daily life. What we call common sense is, for the most part, but the result of common experience wisely improved. Nor is great ability necessary to acquire it, so much as patience, accuracy, and watchfulness.

The results of experience are, of course, only to be achieved by living; and living is a question of time. The man of experience learns to rely upon time as his helper. "Time and I against any two," was a maxim of Cardinal Mazarin. Time has been described as a beautifier and as a consoler; but it is also a teacher. It is the food of experience, the soil of wisdom. It may be the friend or the enemy of youth; and time will sit beside the old as a consoler or as a tormentor, according as it has been used or misused, and the past life has been well or ill spent.

"Time," says George Herbert, "is the rider that breaks youth." To the young, how bright the new world looks! - how full of novelty, of enjoyment, of pleasure! But as years pass, we find the world to be a place of sorrow as well as of joy. As we proceed through life, many dark vistas open upon us - of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps misfortune and failure. Happy they who can pass through and amidst such trials with a firm mind and pure heart, encountering trials with cheerfulness, and standing erect beneath even the heaviest burden!

Thomas A. Edison, the great inventor, in speaking of his success to the writer, said:

"I had when I started out all the patience and perseverance that I have now, but I lacked the experience. Seeing that I had only ten weeks' regular schooling in all my life, I can say with truth that experience has been my school and my only one.

"Many believe that my life has been a success from the start, and I do not try to undeceive them, but as a matter of fact my failures have exceeded my successes as one hundred to one; but even the experience of these failures has been in itself an educator and has enabled me not to repeat them."

The brave man will not be baffled, but tries and tries again until he succeeds. The tree does not fall at the first stroke, but only by repeated strokes and after great labor. We may see the visible success at which a man has arrived, but forget the toil and suffering and peril through which it has been achieved. For the same reason, it is often of advantage for a man to be under the necessity of having to struggle with poverty and conquer it. "He who has battled," says Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger and more expert than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed among the provision wagons, or even rest unwatchful 'abiding by the stuff.'"

Scholars have found poverty tolerable compared with the privation of intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the mind. "I cannot but choose say to Poverty," said Richter, "Be welcome! So that You come not too late in life." Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry and poetry introduced him to Varus and Virgil and Maecenas. "Obstacles," says Michelet, "are great incentives. I lived for whole years upon a Virgil and found myself well off."

Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again before they succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their courage and stimulate them to renewed efforts. Talma, the greatest of actors, was hissed off the stage when he first appeared on it. Lacordaire, one of the greatest preachers of modern times, only acquired celebrity after repeated failures. Montalembert said of his first public appearance in the church of St. Roch: He failed completely, and, on coming out, every one said, "Though he may be a man of talent he will never be a preacher." Again and again he tried, until he succeeded, and only two years after his _debut_, Lacordaire was preaching in Notre Dame to audiences such as few French orators have addressed since the time of Bossuet and Massilon.

When Mr. Cobden first appeared as a speaker at a public meeting in Manchester, he completely broke down and the chairman apologized for his failure. Sir James Graham and Mr. Disraeli failed and were derided at first, and only succeeded by dint of great labor and application. At one time Sir James Graham had almost given up public speaking in despair. He said to his friend Sir Francis Baring: "I have tried it every way - extempore, from notes, and committing it all to memory - and I can't do it. I don't know why it is, but I am afraid I should never succeed." Yet by dint of perseverance, Graham, like Disraeli, lived to become one of the most effective and impressive of parliamentary speakers.

In every field of effort success has only come after many trials. Morse with his telegraph and Howe with his sewing machine lived in poverty and met with many disappointments before the world came to appreciate the value of their great inventions.

Published by the Christian Herald, Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, Bible House, New York.
Copyright 1895 by Louis Klopsch.