Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — Tenacity and Talent. [ARTICLE]

Tenacity and Talent.

The one is often mistaken for the other. In the majority of instances where tenacity masquerades as talent, and assumes all the corresponding attributes, the world does not detect the difference, and tenacity wins where genuine ability, which lacks this strong element only, fails of its accomplishment. It is a curious psychological study as to just what extent talent can exist, however, without tenacity of purpose. To a high degree the one implies the other. Mere desire is not that power of adherence which purpose implies, and this purpose, this staying power of life, so to speak, is a quality that can hardly be overestimated. The term tenacity, from the good old Latin word teneo, to hold, fully justifies its honorable significance. There is, practically, no conception of accomplishment that may not be realized by him whose purpose shall hold firm. The power to conceive any given achievement implies the power to realize that conception, if one will bring to it the energy and concentration of tenacity. This staying power is too little regarded by society in general It is really that highest form of force, the persistent energy, which Herbert Spencer makes the ultimatum of his conception of power. When the modern Ulysses declared his intention to “fight it on that line, if it took all summer, ”he embodied in his words, not a mere dogged determination, not a settled inertia, but the finest philosophy of that supremo law—the persistence of force.— Boston Traveller.