"Keep on fighting," answered Grant.
Do not get into the habit of feeling that you are not sufficiently
well equipped. This comes of a very honest intellectual process--the
understanding, as we get more knowledge, of how very little we really
know; as we get more skill, of how very unskilled we really are; the
feeling that, high as our training is, there is some one else more
highly trained. Of course there is; but if that is any excuse why you
should do nothing--because there is some person who can do it
better--you will never do anything; and then what will happen when all
of the other fellows who "could do it better" die?
You will by that time be too old to do anything at all. So sail in
yourself, and pat on the back every other young fellow that sails in.
If you learn the law, for example, understand that the way to acquire
the art of _practising_ law is to _practise_ it, and not merely watch
somebody else practise it. Suppose every young man with a scientific
mind had declined to make any experiment because there were abler
scientists than he: how many Pasteurs and Finsens and Marconis and
Edisons and Bells would the world have had? And I might go on for an
hour with similar illustrations.
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