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Some mishap, one day, focuses attention upon the princely totalities of the law-making spenders, and a howl goes up from the "sovereigns," who, as has been wisely observed, never have any power until they are mad.
The other way of greatness is the way of intensity, that focuses all its impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash of lightning. Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supreme and dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty.
Blessed be God! the Christian view of sorrow, while it leaves much unexplained, focuses a steady light on these two points; its origin and its end. 'He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness, is enough to calm all agitation, and to make the faintest heart take fresh courage. With that double certitude clear before us, we can face anything.
Will is the sun-glass which so concentrates and so focuses the sun's rays that they quickly burn a hole through the paper that is held before it. The same rays, not thus concentrated, not thus focused, would fall upon the paper for days without any effect whatever. Will is the means for the directing, the concentrating, the focusing, of the thought-forces.
Life, vital energy, is not due, as is universally thought, to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy is created within the body; it is merely transmitted. The body, in fact, acts as a means of transmission as a sort of "organic burning glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point.
After one year in rented rooms, a house was purchased on North Broad Street, near Ontario Street, and fitted up as a hospital with wards, operating room and dispensary. It was situated just where a network of railroads focuses and near a number of large factories and machine shops, where accidents were occurring constantly. Almost immediately its wards were filled.
If my house is on fire, I run to the hydrant by a mere automatic operation of my nerves. If my leg is caught in the bight of a paying-out hawser, my whole brain focuses at once on that single thought, "an axe." If I am enduring the agony which opium alone can cause and cure, every faculty of my mind is called to the aid of the tortured body which wants it.
If, however, he focuses attention upon his subject, he can find an infinite number of themes and, therefore, give variety to his speech. From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, publishers. Every one knows what books are. But what is literature? It is the ark on the flood. It is the light on the candlestick.
Here the aggregation of immigrants focuses acutely the complex problems peculiar to them. Here is the child laborer in factories and on the streets. Here women and girls struggle under fearful economic pressure. Here is the political boss and what ex-President Roosevelt terms "organized alliance between the criminal rich and the criminal poor."
Here are fishing-rods, tennis racquets, riding-whips, golf-balls, running-shoes, baseball bats, footballs, oars, paddles, snow-shoes, goggles for motorists, Indian clubs and rifles. Each of these physical objects focuses the attention of the observer in more or less exact proportion to his interest in the particular sport suggested by the implement.
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