In law, medicine, or the ministry, a college education is absolutely necessary, both cultural and preparatory. If a doctor, you must spend four years at the medical college, a year or two in the hospitals, then finish by visiting the clinics of Europe. By the time you are thirty years of age you are _fitted_ to step into line with the best doctors. And unless you can do all this――and it takes a lot of money――KEEP OUT. The days are passing when the boy can go from the high school to some cheap commercial medical college and take any kind of a stand among the educated doctors and the now enlightened communities. There is plenty of room in the world for the kind of a doctor I have first described, but absolutely no places waiting for the latter kind. These are not doctors, just medical warts, the sort of quacks we had a shot at in our last Chat. The boy who has business talents and tastes will, of course, be far better able to rise and command positions if he possesses an education. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that a college education, just because it is a college education, will make a business man of you from the start. Of two boys having equal business talents the one whose mind has been trained to think and who has mixed with all sorts of fellows at college, will probably have advantages for getting along that the non-college boy does not possess. But unless your father or someone back of you has money to spare, I believe that the average boy with commercial instincts does better in the end by getting into business early in life. He gets a better fitting for his career. Now I think you can readily understand the first rule for becoming a successful man. Find out what your talents are, then fit yourself so that you can utilize all these talents. There are schools now being established where every boy can have this done. But he must work with pleasure. If you find you have made a mistake in your choice――and you will know this by being constantly dissatisfied――get out and try something else. Keep trying until you find some vocation or trade which you go at with increased pleasure every day. When this state of mind has arrived you have found yourself. CHAPTER VIII ENVIRONMENTS AND DISEASES WHICH RUST BRAIN-TOOLS We now reach the most important details concerning the keeping of the brain in activity and vigor. Having brought you to an understanding of the body, how to take care of it, of all that belongs at the start to make up a successful man, we must put ourselves in a position to know how to live and act so that throughout adult life and up to the age of many years, but not old age, we can get out of us all that is possible.