This character often depends little, if at all, in some cases,
upon the intellect, or even upon the moral qualities, the goodness or
badness, of the individual. It is itself an imponderable something; yet it
carries weight with it. There may be abler men, cleverer men; but it is
the one possessed of will who rises to the surface at these times--the one
who can by some subtle power make other men obey him.
"The will-power goes on universally. In the young aristocrat who gets his
tailor to make another advance in defiance of his conviction that he will
never get his money back. It goes on between lawyer and client; betwixt
doctor and patient; between banker and borrower; betwixt buyer and seller.
It is not tact which enables the person behind the counter to induce
customers to buy what they did not intend to buy, and which bought, gives
them no satisfaction, though it is linked therewith for the effort to be
successful. Whenever two persons meet in business, or in any other
relation in life, up to love-making, there is this will-fight going on,
commonly enough without any consciousness of the struggle. There is a dim
consciousness of the result, but none of the processes. It often takes
years of the intimacy of married life to find out with whom of the pair
the mastery really lies.
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