Chapter Six: Visions And Ideals
by James Allen
The dreamers are the
saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible,
so men, through 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 as 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.
He who cherishes a beautiful
vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus
cherished a vision of another world and he discovered it. Copernicus
fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and
he 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 man's basest desires receive the fullest
measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of
sustenance? Such is not the Law. Such a condition 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 a soul a waking angle
stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Your circumstances may be
uncongenial, but they shall not remain so if you only perceive an ideal
and strive to reach it. You can't travel within and stand still without.
Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor. Confined long hours in
an unhealthy workshop; unschooled and lacking all the arts of refinement.
But he dreams of better things. He thinks of intelligence, or refinement,
of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal
condition of life. The wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession
of him; unrest urges him to action, and he uses all his spare times and
means to the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon so
altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It
has become so out of harmony with his mind-set that it falls out of his
life as a garment is cast aside. And with the growth of opportunities that
fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it altogether.
Years later we see this youth as a grown man. We find him a master of
certain forces of the mind that he wields with world-wide influence and
almost unequaled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic
responsibilities; he speaks and lives are changed; men and women hang upon
his words and remold their characters. Sun-like, he becomes the fixed and
uminous center around which innumerable destinies revolve. He has become
the vision of his youth. He has become one with his ideal.
And you too, youthful reader,
will realize the vision (not just 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.
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 a
man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!" Observing another become
skilled intellectually, they exclaim, "How highly favored he is!" And
noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark,
"How chance helps him at every turn!" They do not see the trials and
failures and struggles which these men have encountered in order to gain
their experience. They have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made,
of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have
exercised so 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, 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. The strength
of the effort is the measure of the result. Change is not. Gifts, powers,
material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of
effort. They are thoughts completed, objectives 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 Five
Chapter Seven