The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so society, with all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers.
Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them in the realities which it shall one day see and know. Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, laboring humanity would perish. Those who cherish a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in their heart, will one day realize it. Early explorers cherished a vision of another world, and they discovered it; Astronomers fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and they revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it. Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Shall your basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and your purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain : "Ask and receive." Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here are youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But they dream of better things; they think of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. They conceive of, mentally build up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of them; unrest urges them to action, and they utilize all their spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of their latent powers and resources. Very soon so altered have their minds become that the workshop can no longer hold them. It has become so out of harmony with their mentality that it falls out of their life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of their expanding powers, they pass out of it forever. Years later we see these youth as a full-grown adults. We find them a master of certain forces of the mind which they wield with world-wide influence and almost unequaled power. In their hands they hold the cords of gigantic responsibilities; they speak, and lives are changed; people hang upon their words and remold their characters, and, sunlike, they become the fixed and luminous center around which innumerable destinies revolve. They have realized the Vision of their youth. They have become one with their Ideal. And you, too, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers - and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city - bucolic and open mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'I have nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world." The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. Seeing people grow rich, they say, "How lucky they are!" Observing others become intellectual, they exclaim, "How highly favored they are!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, the remark, "How chance aids them at every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these people have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck"; do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune"; do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it "chance." In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. "Gifts," powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized. The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, this you will become. |
Chapter Six - Quotations & Excerpts
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