of being thrown upon his naked faculty and limited resources, when he
feels himself capable of dexterously using the resources of others, and
so producing an effective work. "Why," he asks, "must I confine myself
to my own small experience, when I feel persuaded that it will interest
no one? Why express the opinions to which my own investigations have
led me when I suspect that they are incomplete, perhaps altogether
erroneous, and when I know that they will not be popular because they
are unlike those which have hitherto found favour? Your restrictions
would reduce two-thirds of our writers to silence!"

This reduction would, I suspect, be welcomed by every one except the
gagged writers; but as the idea of its being operative is too
chimerical for us to entertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is
to expound the principles of success and failure, not to make Quixotic
onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young
interrogator: "Take warning and do not write. Unless you believe in
yourself, only noodles will believe in you, and they but tepidly. If
your experience seems trivial to you, it must seem trivial to us. If
your thoughts are not fervid convictions, or sincere doubts, they will
not have the power of convictions and doubts. To believe in yourself is
the first step; to proclaim your belief the next. You cannot assume the
power of another. No jay becomes an eagle by borrowing a few eagle
feathers. It is true that your sincerity will not be a guarantee of
power. You may believe that to be important and novel which we all
recognise as trivial and old. You may be a madman, and believe yourself
a prophet. You may be a mere echo, and believe yourself a voice. These
are among the delusions against which none of us are protected. But if
Sincerity is not necessarily a guarantee of power, it is a necessary
condition of power, and no genius or prophet can exist without it."