Speaker 1: System. System is that principle of order by which confusion
is rendered impossible. In the natural and universal order, everything
is in its place, so that the vast universe runs
more perfectly than the most perfect machine. Disorder in space
would mean the destruction of the universe, and disorder in
a man's affairs destroys his work and his prosperity. All
complex organizations are built up by system. No business or
society can develop into large dimensions apart from system, and
this system is pre eminently the instrument of the merchant,
the business man, and the organizer of institutions. There are
many departments in which a disorderly man may succeed. Although
attention to order would increase his success, he will not
succeed in business unless he can place the business entirely
in the hands of a systematic manager, who will thereby
remedy his own defect. All large business concerns have been
evolved along definitely drawn systematic lines, any violation of which
would be disastrous to the efficiency and welfare of the business.
Complex business or other organizations are built up, like complex
bodies in nature by scrupulous attention to details. The disorderly
man thinks he can be careless about everything but the
main end. But by ignoring the means he frustrates the end.
By the disarrangement of details, organisms perish, and by the
careless neglect of details, the growth of any work or
concern is prevented. Disorderly people waste an enormous amount of
time and energy. The time frittered away and hunting for
things is sufficient where if it conserved by order to
enable them to achieve any success. For Slovenly people never
have a place for anything, and have to hunt frequently
for a long time for any article that they require,
in the irritation, bad humor, and chagrin which this daily
hunting for things brings about as much energy as dissipated
as would be required to build up a big business
or scale the highest heights of achievement in any direction.
Borderly people can serve both their time and energy. They
never lose anything and therefore never have to find anything.
Everything is in its place, and the hand can be
at once placed upon it, though it may be in
the dark. They can well afford to be cool and deliberate,
and so use their mental energies in something more profitable
than irritation, bad temper and accusing others for their own
lack of order. There is a kind of genius in
system which can perform apparent wonders with ease. A systematic
man can get through so great a quantity of work
in such a short time, and with such freedom from
such exhaustion as to appear almost miraculous. He scales the
heights of success, while his slovenly competitor is wallowing hopelessly
in the bogs of confusion. His strict observance to the
law of order enables him to reach his ends swiftly
and smoothly, without friction or loss of time. The demands
of system in all departments of the business world are
as rigid and exacting as the holy vows of a saint,
and cannot be violated in the smallest particular, but at
the risk of one's financial prospects. In the financial world,
the law of order is an iron necessity, and he
who faultlessly observes it saves time, temper, and money. Every
enduring achievement in human society rests upon a basis of system.
So true is this that where system withdrawal on progress
would cease. Think for instance, of the vast achievements of literature,
the works of classic authors and of great geniuses, the
great poems, the innumerable prose works, the monumental histories. Think
also the social intercourse of human society, of its religions,
its legal statutes, and its vast fund of book knowledge.
Think of all these wonderful resources and achievements of language,
and then reflect that they all depend for their origin, growth,
and continuance on the systematic arrangements of twenty six letters,
in arrangement having inexhaustible and illimitable results by the fact
of its rigid limitation within certain fixed rules. Again, all
the wonderful achievements of mathematics have come from the systematic
arrangement of ten figures, while the most complex piece of machinery,
with its thousands of parts working together smooth and almost
noiselessly to the achievement of the end for which it
was designed, was brought forth by the systematic observance of
a few mechanical laws. Herein we see how system simplifies
that which is complex, how it makes easy that which
was difficult, How it relates in infinite variety of details
of the one central law or order, and so enables
them to be dealt with and accounted for with perfect
regularity and with an entire absence of confusion. The scientist's
names and classifies the myriad details of the universe, from
the microscopic rotifer to the telescopic star, by his observance
of the principles of system, so that out of many
millions of objects, reference can be made to any object
in at most a few minutes. It is this faculty
of speedy references and swift dispatch which is of such
overwhelming importance in every department of knowledge and industry, and
the amount of time and labor thus saved to humanity
is so vast as to be incomprehensible. We speak of religious, political,
and business systems, and so on, indicating all things in
human society are welded together by the adhesive qualities of order.
System is indeed one of the great fundamental principles in
progress and in the binding together in one complete whole
of the world's millions of human beings, while they are
at the same time each striving for a place, and
are competing with one another in opposing aims and interest.
We see here how system is allied with greatness for
the many separate units whose minds are untrained to the
discipline of system are kept in their places by the
organizing power of the comparatively few who perceive the urgent
and inescapable necessity for the establishment of fixed and innas
viable rules, whether in business, law, religion, science, or politics,
in fact, in every sphere of human activity. For immediately,
when two human beings meet together, they need some common
ground of understanding for the avoidance of confusion, in a word,
some system to regulate their actions. Life is too short
for confusion, and knowledge grows and progress proceeds along avenues
of system which prevent retardation and retrogression, so that he
who systematizes his knowledge or business simplifies and enhances it
for his successor, enabling him to begin with a free
mind where he left off. Every large business has its
system which renders its vast machinery workable, enabling it to
run like a well balanced and well oiled machine. A
remarkable business man a friend of mine, once told me
that he could leave his huge business for twelve months
and it would run on without a hitch till his return.
And he does occasionally leave it for several months while
traveling and on his return, every man, boy and girl,
every tool, book and machine, every detail down to the
smallest is in its place, doing its work as when
he left, and no trouble, no difficulty, no confusion has arisen.
There can be no marked success part of a love
of regularity and discipline, and the avoidance of friction, along
with the restfulness and the efficiency of mind, which spring
from such regularity. People who abhore discipline, whose minds are
ungoverned and anarctic, and who are careless and irregular in
their thinking, their habits and the management of their affairs,
cannot be highly successful and prosperous, and they fill their
lives with numerous worries, troubles, difficulties, and petty annoyances, all
of which would disappear under a proper regulation of their lives.
An unsystematic mind is an untrained mind, and it can
no more cope with well disciplined minds in the race
of life than an untrained athlete can successfully compete with
a carefully trained competitor in athletic races. The ill disciplined mind,
who thinks anything will do rapidly falls behind the well
disciplined minds who are convinced that only the best will
do in the strenuous race for the prizes of life,
whether they be material, mental, or moral prizes. The man who,
when he comes to do his work, is unable to
find his tools, or balance his figures, or to find
the key of his desk or the key to his thoughts,
will be struggling in his self made toils, while his
methodical neighbour will be freely and joyfully scaling the invigorating
heights of successful achieved. The business man whose method is
slevenly or cumbersome, or behind the most recent developments of
skilled minds should only blame himself as his prospects are decadent,
and should wake up to the necessity for more, highly
specialized and effective methods in his concern. He should seize
upon everything, every invention and idea that will enable him
to economize time and labor and aid him in thoroughness,
deliberation and dispatch. System is the law by which everything,
every organism, business, character, nation, empire is built by adding
cell to sell, department to department, thought to thought, law
to law, and colony to colony. In orderly sequence and classification,
all things concerns and institutions grow in magnitude and evolve
to completeness. The man who is continually improving his methods
is gaining in building power. It therefore behooves a business
man to be resourceful and inventive in the improvement of
his methods. For the builders, whether of cathedrals or characters,
business or religions, are the strong ones of the earth,
the protectors and pioneers of humanity. The systematic builder is
a creator and preserver, while the man of disorder demolishes
and destroys. And no limit can be set to the
growth of a man's powers, the completeness of his character,
the influence of his organization, or the extent of his business,
if he but preserve intact the discipline of order, and
have every detail in its place, keep every department to
its special task, and tabulate and classify with such efficiency
and perfection as to enable him, at any moment to
bring under examination or into requisition, to the remotest detail
in connection with him. Special work in system has contained
these four ingredients one readiness, two accuracy, three utility four comprehensiveness.
Readiness is a liveness. It is that spirit of alertness
by which a situation is immediately grasp and dealt with.
The observance of system fosters and develops this spirit. The
successful general must have the power of readily meeting any
new and unlooked for move on the part of the enemy.
So every business man must have the readiness to deal
with any unexpected development affecting his line of trade, and
so also must the man of thought be able to
deal with the details of any new problems which may arise.
Dilatoriness is a vice that is fatal to prosperity, for
it leads to incompatibility and stupidity. The men of ready hands,
ready hearts, and ready brain, who know what they are doing,
do it methodically, skillfully, and with smooth yet consummate dispatch.
Are the men who need to think little of prosperity
as an end, for it comes to them whether they
seek it or not. Success runs after them and knocks
at their door, and they unconsciously command it by the
superb excellence of their faculties and methods. Accuracy is of
supreme importance in all commercial concerns and enterprises. But there
can be no accuracy apart from system, and a system
which is more or less imperfect will involve its originator
in mistakes more or less disastrous until he improves it.
Inaccuracy is one of the commonest failings, because accuracy is
closely allied to self discipline, and self discipline, along with
that glad subjection to external discipline which it involves, is
an indication of high moral culture to which the majority
have not yet attained. If the inaccurate man will not
willingly subject himself to the discipline of his employer or instructor,
but thinks he knows better, his failing can never be remedied,
and he will thereby bind himself down to an inferior position,
if in the business world, or to imperfect knowledge, if
in the world of thought. The prevalence of the vice
of inaccuracy, and in view of its disastrous effect, it
must be regarded as a vice, though perhaps one of
the lesser vices is patent to every observe. In the
way in which the majority of people relate a circumstance
or repeat a simple statement of fact, it is nearly
always made untrue by more or less marked in accuracies.
Few people, perhaps not reckoning those who deliberately lie, have
trained themselves to be accurate in what they say, or
are so careful as to admit and state their liability
to error. And from this form of inaccuracy, many untruthsome
misunderstandings arise. More people take pains to be accurate in
what they do than in what they say. But even
here inaccuracy is very common, rendering many inefficient and incompetent,
and unfitting them for any strenuous and well sustained endeavor.
The man who habitually uses up a portion of his
own or his employer's time in trying to correct his errors,
or for the correction of those mistakes another has to
be employed, is not the man to maintain any position
in the workaday world, much less to reach a place
among the ranks of the prosperous. There never yet lived
a man who did not make some mistakes on his
way to his particular success. But he is the capable
and right minded man who perceives his mistakes and quickly
remedies them, and who is glad when they are pointed
out to him. It is habitual and persistent inaccuracy, which
is a vice. And he is the incapable and wrong
minded man who will not see or admit his mistakes,
and who takes offense when they are pointed out to him.
The progressive man learns by his own mistakes as well
as by the mistakes of others. He is always ready
to test good advice by practice, and aims a greater
and ever greater accuracy in his methods, which means higher
and higher perfection, For accuracy is perfect, and the measure
of a man's accuracy will be the measure of his
uniqueness and perfection. Utility or usefulness, is the direct result
of method in one's work. Labor arrives at fruitful and
profitable ends when it is systematically pursued. If the gardener
is to gather in the best produced he must not
only sew in plant, but he must so implant at
the right time. And if any work is to be
fruitful in results, it must be done seasonably, and the
time for doing a thing must not be allowed to
pass by. Utility considers the practical end and employs the
best means to reach that end. It avoids side issues,
dispenses with theories, and retains its hold only on those
things which can be appropriated to good use in the
economy of life. Unpractical people burden their minds with useless
and unverifiable theories and court failure by entertaining speculations which,
by their very nature cannot be applied in practice. The man,
whose powers are shown in what he does, and not
in mere talking or arguing, avoids metaphysical quibbling and quandaries,
and applies himself to the accomplishment of some good and
useful end. That which cannot be reduced to practice should
not be allowed to hamper the mind. It should be
thrown aside, abandoned, and ignored. A man recently told me
that if his theory should be proved to have no
useful end, he should still retain hold upon it as
a beautiful theory. If a man chooses to cling to
so called beautiful theories which are proved to have no
use in life and no substantial basis of reality, he
must not be surprised if he fails in his worldly undertakings,
for he is an unpractical man. When the powers of
mind are diverted from speculative theorizing to practical doing, whether
in material or moral directions, skill power, knowledge, and prosperity increase.
A man's prosperity is measured by his usefulness to the community.
And a man is useful in accordance with what he does,
and not because of the theories which he entertains. The
carpenter fashions a chair, the builder erects a house, the
mechanic produces a machine, and the wise man molds a
perfect character. Not the schismatic, the theorists, and the controversialists, but
the workers, the makers, and the doers are the salt
of the earth. Let a man turn away from the
mirage of intellectual speculation and begin to do something, and
to do it with all his might, and he will
thereby gain a special knowledge, wield a special power, and
reach his own unique position and prosperity among his fellows.
Comprehensiveness is that quality of mind which enables a man
to deal with a large number of related details, to
grasp them in their entirety, along with the single principle
which governs them and binds them together. It is a
masterly quality, giving organizing and governing power, and is developed
by systematic attention to details. The successful merchant holds in
his mind, as it were, all the details of his business,
and regulates them by a system adapted to his particular
form of trade. The inventor has in his mind all
the details of his machine, along with their relation to
a central mechanical principle, and so perfects his invention. The
author of a great poem or story relates all his
characters and incidents to a central plot, and so produces
a composite and enduring literary work. Comprehensiveness is analytic and
synthetic capacity combined in the same individual. A capacious and
well ordered mind holds within its silent depths an army
of details in their proper arrangement, and true working order
is the mind that is near to genius, even if
it has not already arrived. A man cannot be a genius,
nor does he need to be, but he can be
gradually evolving his mental capacity by careful attention to system
in his thoughts and business, And as his intellect depends
and broadens, his powers will be intensified in his prosperity accentuated,
such then are the four corner pillars in the temple
of prosperity, and of themselves they are sufficient to permanently
sustain it without the addition of the remaining four. The
man who perfects himself in energy, economy, integrity, and system
will achieve an enduring success in the work of his life,
no matter what the nature of that work may be.
It is impossible for one to fail who is full
of energy, who carefully economizes his time and money, and
virtuously husbands his vitality, who practices unswerving integrity, and who
systematizes his work by first systematizing his mind, such a
man's efforts will be rightly directed, and that too with
concentrated power, so that they will be effective and fruitful.
In addition, he will reach a manliness and an independent
dignity which will unconsciously command respect and success, and will
strengthen weaker ones by its very presence in their midst
Seest thou a man diligent in business, he shall stand
before kings. He shall not stand before mean men, says Scripture.
Of such a one. He will not beg or whimper,
or complain or cynically blame others, but will be too
strong and pure and upright a man to sink himself
so low, and so standing high in the nobility and
integrity of his character, he will fill a high place
in the world in the estimation of men. His success
will be certain, and his prosperity will endure. He will
stand and not fall in the battle of life.