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contemplation. And yet there was probably never a man

endowed with such remarkable gifts who accomplished so
little that was worthy of them the great defect in his character
being the want of Will to turn his gifts to account; so that, with
numerous gigantic projects constantly floating in the mind, he
never brought himself even seriously to attempt to execute any
one of them. It used to be said of him, that whenever either
natural obligation or voluntary undertaking made it his duty
to do anything, the fact seemed a sufficient reason for his not
doing it. Halleck has said: The easiest way to ruin the will is
to suffer emotions to evaporate without leading to action; to
frame decisions and then not act on them. The will and the
character are very speedily ruined in this way. From a moral
point of view, those persons are exceedingly contemptible who
are always going to do something, but who never do it; so
are those who will with reasons answer you in regard to why
they have done nothing. A remarkably successful business man
said he had divided all persons into two classes: those who did
what they had promised or were directed to do, and those who
returned with some reason why they had not done it. When
he employed persons, he always set them a certain hard task
at the outset. If they returned with a reason why they had not
done it, he dismissed them. In this way he surrounded himself
with an unusually fine set of employees upon whom he could
depend.
Lack of Continuity. This is another mark of the negative
Will. The person may be well endowed with other mental
qualities, but without this stick-to-itiveness he will never
be able to work his Will to the fullest degree. The quality of
instability fickleness inconstancy has ruined more bright
men than perhaps any other negative quality. It causes the
person to dissipate his energy in many directions, instead of
concentrating it upon the chosen task. Concentration is power.
Concentration is focused Will. Continuity is the holding of the
keen edge of the Will up against the one object to be shaped.
The Marks of the Negative Will