whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and reshape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays.

For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it. And so when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone: whereas had he changed his nature with time and circumstances, his fortune would have been unchanged.

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

Every one follows his own bent. Man is like a tree. You’ve never quarrelled with a fig tree because it doesn’t bear cherries, have you?

Truth I pursued,as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.

The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her.

There is your best path, if you can get on it and direct it as best you can. The direction it may take yet is not in your power: but what sort of man walks that path, when you are a man, that you <i>can</i> decide.

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.

We have not the strength to follow our reason all the way

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.

And I wondered if he knew how well, how naturally he led. Was it, in the end, so different leading men? Was it not much the same — picking out the trail, deciding the safest way, strengthening the unsure step with words of encouragement, guiding, going ahead, but not too far ahead — was not trailcraft much the same as kingcraft?

So I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc. Like many others, my career happened like it did because certain doors opened and certain doors closed. You know, at a certain point I thought it would be great to make film documentaries. Well, in fact, I found that to be incredibly hard and very expensive to do and I didn’t really have the courage to keep battling away at that. In another age, I might have been an academic in a university, if the university system had been different. So it's all about trying to find the best fit between your talents and what the world can offer at that point in time.

A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.”
[In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker]

Thus our actual path in life, as well as the course of our ideas, is often indicated by accident; the continuance only, and establishment of the one or the other, is dependent on our free will.