Success (Second Edition) by Max Aitken Beaverbrook
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Max Aitken Beaverbrook >> Success (Second Edition)
SUCCESS
BY LORD BEAVERBROOK
SECOND EDITION
LONDON STANLEY PAUL & CO 31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.2
_First published in November 1921_; _Reprinted November 1921_
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The contents of this volume originally appeared as weekly articles by
Lord Beaverbrook in the _Sunday Express_. They aroused so much interest,
and so many applications were received for copies of the various
articles, that it was decided to have them collected and printed in
volume form.
He who buys _Success_, reads and digests its precepts, will find this
inspiring volume a sure will-tonic. It will nerve him to be up and
doing. It will put such spring and go into him that he will make a
determined start on that road which, pursued with perseverance, leads
onwards and upwards to the desired goal--SUCCESS.
PREFACE
The articles embodied in this small book were written during the
pressure of many other affairs and without any idea that they would be
published as a consistent whole. It is, therefore, certain that the
critic will find in them instances of a repetition of the central idea.
This fact is really a proof of a unity of conception which justifies
their publication in a collected form. I set out to ask the question,
"What is success in the affairs of the world--how is it attained, and
how can it be enjoyed?" I have tried with all sincerity to answer the
question out of my own experience. In so doing I have strayed down many
avenues of inquiry, but all of them lead back to the central conception
of success as some kind of temple which satisfies the mind of the
ordinary practical man.
Other fields of mental satisfaction have been left entirely outside as
not germane to the inquiry.
I address myself to the young men of the new age. Those who have youth
also possess opportunity. There is in the British Empire to-day no bar
to success which resolution cannot break. The young clerk has the key of
success in his pocket, if he has the courage and the ability to turn the
lock which leads to the Temple of Success. The wide world of business
and finance is open to him. Any public dinner or meeting contains
hundreds of men who can succeed if they will only observe the rules
which govern achievement.
A career to-day is open to talent, for there is no heredity in finance,
commerce, or industry. The Succession and Death Duties are wiping out
those reserves by which old-fashioned banks and businesses warded off
from themselves for two or three generations the result of hereditary
incompetence. Ability is bound to be recognised from whatever source it
springs. The struggle in finance and commerce is too intense and the
battle too world-wide to prevent individual efficiency playing a bigger
and a better role.
If I have given encouragement to a single young man to set his feet on
the path which leads upwards to success, and warned him of a few of the
perils which will beset him on the road, I shall feel perfectly
satisfied that this book has not been written in vain.
BEAVERBROOK.
CONTENTS
I. SUCCESS
II. HAPPINESS: THREE SECRETS
III. LUCK
IV. MODERATION
V. MONEY
VI. EDUCATION
VII. ARROGANCE
VIII. COURAGE
IX. PANIC
X. DEPRESSION
XI. FAILURE
XII. CONSISTENCY
XIII. PREJUDICE
XIV. CALM
I
SUCCESS
Success--that is the royal road we all want to tread, for the echo off
its flagstones sounds pleasantly in the mind. It gives to man all that
the natural man desires: the opportunity of exercising his activities to
the full; the sense of power; the feeling that life is a slave, not a
master; the knowledge that some great industry has quickened into life
under the impulse of a single brain.
To each his own particular branch of this difficult art. The artist
knows one joy, the soldier another; what delights the business man
leaves the politician cold. But however much each section of society
abuses the ambitions or the morals of the other, all worship equally at
the same shrine. No man really wants to spend his whole life as a
reporter, a clerk, a subaltern, a private Member, or a curate. Downing
Street is as attractive as the oak-leaves of the field-marshal; York and
Canterbury as pleasant as a dominance in Lombard Street or Burlington
House.
For my own part I speak of the only field of success I know--the world
of ordinary affairs. And I start with a contradiction in terms. Success
is a constitutional temperament bestowed on the recipient by the gods.
And yet you may have all the gifts of the fairies and fail utterly. Man
cannot add an inch to his stature, but by taking thought he can walk
erect; all the gifts given at birth can be destroyed by a single curse.
Like all human affairs, success is partly a matter of predestination and
partly of free will. You cannot make the genius, but you can either
improve or destroy it, and most men and women possess the assets which
can be turned into success.
But those who possess the precious gifts will have both to hoard and to
expand them.
What are the qualities which make for success? They are three:
Judgment, Industry, and Health, and perhaps the greatest of these is
judgment. These are the three pillars which hold up the fabric of
success. But in using the word judgment one has said everything.
In the affairs of the world it is the supreme quality. How many men have
brilliant schemes and yet are quite unable to execute them, and through
their very brilliancy stumble unawares upon ruin? For round judgment
there cluster many hundred qualities, like the setting round a jewel:
the capacity to read the hearts of men; to draw an inexhaustible
fountain of wisdom from every particle of experience in the past, and
turn the current of this knowledge into the dynamic action of the
future. Genius goes to the heart of a matter like an arrow from a bow,
but judgment is the quality which learns from the world what the world
has to teach and then goes one better. Shelley had genius, but he would
not have been a success in Wall Street--though the poet showed a flash
of business knowledge in refusing to lend money to Byron.
In the ultimate resort judgment is the power to assimilate knowledge
and to use it. The opinions of men and the movement of markets are all
so much material for the perfected instrument of the mind.
But judgment may prove a sterile capacity if it is not accompanied by
industry. The mill must have grist on which to work, and it is industry
which pours in the grain.
A great opportunity may be lost and an irretrievable error committed by
a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of
thought. "He who would be Caesar anywhere," says Kipling, "must know
everything everywhere." Nearly everything comes to the man who is always
all there.
Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally
industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or
circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work. Hogarth's
industrious and idle apprentice point a moral, but they do not tell a
true tale. The real trouble about industry is to apply it in the right
direction--and it is therefore the servant of judgment. The true secret
of industry well applied is concentration, and there are many
well-known ways of learning that art--the most potent handmaiden of
success. Industry can be acquired; it should never be squandered.
But health is the foundation both of judgment and industry--and
therefore of success. And without health everything is difficult. Who
can exercise a sound judgment if he is feeling irritable in the morning?
Who can work hard if he is suffering from a perpetual feeling of
malaise?
The future lies with the people who will take exercise and not too much
exercise. Athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is
invaluable. No ordinary man can hope to succeed who does not work his
body in moderation. The danger of the athlete is to believe that in
kicking a goal he has won the game of life. His object is no longer to
be fit for work, but to be superfit for play. He sees the means and the
end through an inverted telescope. The story books always tell us that
the Rowing Blue finishes up as a High Court Judge.
The truth is very different. The career of sport leads only to failure,
satiety, or impotence.
The hero of the playing fields becomes the dunce of the office. Other
men go on playing till middle-age robs them of their physical powers. At
the end the whole thing is revealed as vanity. Play tennis or golf once
a day and you may be famous; play it three times a day and you will be
in danger of being thought a professional--without the reward.
The pursuit of pleasure is equally ephemeral. Time and experience rob
even amusement of its charm, and the night before is not worth next
morning's headache. Practical success alone makes early middle-age the
most pleasurable period of a man's career. What has been worked for in
youth then comes to its fruition.
It is true that brains alone are not influence, and that money alone is
not influence, but brains and money combined are power. And fame, the
other object of ambition, is only another name for either money or
power.
Never was there a moment more favourable for turning talent towards
opportunity and opportunity into triumph than Great Britain now presents
to the man or woman whom ambition stirs to make a success of life. The
dominions of the British Empire abolished long ago the privileges which
birth confers. No bar has been set there to prevent poverty rising to
the heights of wealth and power, if the man were found equal to the
task.
The same development has taken place in Great Britain to-day. Men are no
longer born into Cabinets; the ladder of education is rapidly reaching a
perfection which enables a man born in a cottage or a slum attaining the
zenith of success and power.
There stand the three attributes to be attained--Judgment, Industry, and
Health. Judgment can be improved, industry can be acquired, health can
be attained by those who will take the trouble. These are the three
pillars on which we can build the golden pinnacle of success.
II
HAPPINESS: THREE SECRETS
Near by the Temple of Success based on the three pillars of Health,
Industry, and Judgment, stands another temple. Behind the curtains of
its doors is concealed the secret of happiness.
There are, of course, many forms of that priceless gift. Different
temperaments will interpret it differently. Various experiences will
produce variations of the blessing. A man may make a failure in his
affairs and yet remain happy. The spiritual and inner life is a thing
apart from material success. Even a man who, like Robert Louis
Stevenson, suffers from chronic ill-health can still be happy.
But we must leave out these exceptions and deal with the normal man, who
lives by and for his practical work, and who desires and enjoys both
success and health. Granted that he has these two possessions, must he
of necessity be happy? Not so. He may have access to the first temple,
but the other temple may still be forbidden him. A rampant ambition can
be a torture to him. An exaggerated selfishness can make his life
miserable, or an uneasy conscience may join with the sins of pride to
take their revenge on his mentality. For the man who has attained
success and health there are three great rules: "To do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly." These are the three pillars of the
Temple of Happiness.
Justice, which is another word for honesty in practice and in intention,
is perhaps the easiest of the virtues for the successful man of affairs
to acquire. His experience has schooled him to something more profound
than the acceptance of the rather crude dictum that "Honesty is the best
policy"--which is often interpreted to mean that it is a mistake to go
to gaol. But real justice must go far beyond a mere fear of the law, or
even a realisation that it does not pay to indulge in sharp practice in
business. It must be a mental habit--a fixed intention to be fair in
dealing with money or politics, a natural desire to be just and to
interpret all bargains and agreements in the spirit as well as in the
letter.
The idea that nearly all successful men are unscrupulous is very
frequently accepted. To the man who knows, the doctrine is simply
foolish. Success is not the only or the final test of character, but it
is the best rough-and-ready reckoner. The contrary view that success
probably implies a moral defect springs from judging a man by the
opinions of his rivals, enemies, or neighbours. The real judges of a
man's character are his colleagues. If they speak well of him, there is
nothing much wrong. The failure, on the other hand, can always be sure
of being popular with the men who have beaten him. They give him a
testimonial instead of a cheque. It would be too curious a speculation
to pursue to ask whether Justice, like the other virtues, is not a form
of self-interest. To answer it in the affirmative would condemn equally
the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount and the advice to do unto
others what they should do unto you. But this is certain. No man can be
happy if he suffers from a perpetual doubt of his own justice.
The second quality, Mercy, has been regarded as something in contrast or
conflict with justice. It is not really so. Mercy resembles the
prerogative of the judge to temper the law to suit individual cases. It
must be of a kindred temper with justice, or it would degenerate into
mere weakness or folly. A man wants to be certain of his own just
inclination before he can dare to handle mercy. But the quality of mercy
is, perhaps, not so common in the human heart as to require this
caution. It is a quality that has to be acquired. But the man of success
and affairs ought to be the last person to complain of the difficulty of
acquiring it. He has in his early days felt the whip-hand too often not
to sympathise with the feelings of the under-dog. And he always knows
that at some time in his career he, too, may need a merciful
interpretation of a financial situation. Shakespeare may not have had
this in his mind when he said that mercy "blesseth him that gives and
him that takes"; but he is none the less right. Those who exercise mercy
lay up a store of it for themselves. Shylock had law on his side, but
not justice or mercy. One is reminded of his case by the picture of
certain Jews and Gentiles alike as seen playing roulette at Monte Carlo.
Their losses, inevitable to any one who plays long enough, seem to
sadden them. M. Blanc would be doing a real act of mercy if he would
exact his toll not in cash, but in flesh. Some of the players are of a
figure and temperament which would miss the pound of flesh far less than
the pound sterling.
What, then, in its essence is the quality of mercy? It is something
beyond the mere desire not to push an advantage too far. It is a feeling
of tenderness springing out of harsh experience, as a flower springs out
of a rock. It is an inner sense of gratitude for the scheme of things,
finding expression in outward action, and, therefore, assuring its
possessor of an abiding happiness.
The quality of Humility is by far the most difficult to attain. There
is something deep down in the nature of a successful man of affairs
which seems to conflict with it. His career is born in a sense of
struggle and courage and conquest, and the very type of the effort seems
to invite in the completed form a temperament of arrogance. I cannot
pretend to be humble myself; all I can confess is the knowledge that in
so far as I could acquire humility I should be happier. Indeed, many
instances prove that success and humility are not incompatible. One of
the most eminent of our politicians is by nature incurably modest. The
difficulty in reconciling the two qualities lies in that "perpetual
presence of self to self which, though common enough in men of great
ambition and ability, never ceases to be a flaw."
But there is certainly one form of humility which all successful men
ought to be able to practise. They can avoid a fatal tendency to look
down on and despise the younger men who are planting their feet in their
own footsteps. The established arrogance which refuses credit or
opportunity to rising talent is unpardonable. A man who gives way to
what is really simply a form of jealousy cannot hope to be happy, for
jealousy is above all others the passion which tears the heart.
The great stumbling block which prevents success embracing humility is
the difficulty of distinguishing between the humble mind and the
cowardly one. When does humility merge into moral cowardice and courage
into arrogance? Some men in history have had this problem solved for
them. Stonewall Jackson is a type of the man of supreme courage and
action and judgment who was yet supremely humble--but he owed his bodily
and mental qualities to nature and his humility to the intensity of his
Presbyterian faith. Few men are so fortunately compounded.
Still, if the moral judgment is worth anything, a man should be able to
practise courage without arrogance and to walk humbly without fear. If
he can accomplish the feat he will reap no material reward, but an
immense harvest of inner well-being. He will have found the blue bird of
happiness which escapes so easily from the snare. He will have joined
Justice to Mercy and added Humility to Courage, and in the light of this
self-knowledge he will have attained the zenith of a perpetual
satisfaction.
III
LUCK
Some of the critics do not believe that the pinnacle of success stands
only on the three pillars of Judgment, Industry, and Health. They point
out that I have omitted one vital factor--Luck. So widespread is this
belief, largely pagan in its origin, that mere fortune either makes or
unmakes men, that it seems worth while to discuss and refute this
dangerous delusion.
Of course, if the doctrine merely means that men are the victims of
circumstances and surroundings, it is a truism. It is luckier to be born
heir to a peerage and L100,000 than to be born in Whitechapel. Past and
present Chancellors of the Exchequer have gone far in removing much of
this discrepancy in fortune. Again, a disaster which destroys a single
individual may alter the whole course of a survivor's career. But the
devotees of the Goddess of Luck do not mean this at all. They hold that
some men are born lucky and others unlucky, as though some Fortune
presided at their birth; and that, irrespective of all merits, success
goes to those on whom Fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she
frowns. Or at least luck is regarded as a kind of attribute of a man
like a capacity for arithmetic or games.
This view is in essence the belief of the true gambler--not the man who
backs his skill at cards, or his knowledge of racing against his
rival--but who goes to the tables at Monte Carlo backing runs of good or
ill luck. It has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of
chance to produce events continuously favourable or continuously
unfavourable.
The whole conception is a nightmare of the mind, peculiarly unfavourable
to success in business. The laws of games of chance are as inexorable as
those of the universe. A skilful player will, in the long run, defeat a
less skilful one; the bank at Monte Carlo will always beat the
individual if he stays long enough. I presume that the bank there is
managed honestly, although I neither know nor care whether it is. But
this at least is certain--the cagnotte gains 3 per cent. on every spin.
Mathematically, a man is bound to lose the capital he invests in every
thirty throws when his luck is neither good nor bad. In the long run his
luck will leave him with a balanced book--minus the cagnotte. My advice
to any man would be, "Never play roulette at all; but if you must play,
hold the cagnotte."
The Press, of course, often publishes stories of great fortunes made at
Monte Carlo. The proprietors there understand publicity. Such statements
bring them new patrons.
It is necessary to dwell on this gambling side of the question, because
every man who believes in luck has a touch of the gambler in him, though
he may never have played a stake. And from the point of view of real
success in affairs the gambler is doomed in advance. It is a frame of
mind which a man should discourage severely when he finds it within the
citadel of his mind. It is a view which too frequently infects young men
with more ambition than industry.
The view of Fortune as some shining goddess sweeping down from heaven
and touching the lucky recipient with her pinions of gold dazzles the
mind of youth. Men think that with a single stroke they will either be
made rich for life or impoverished for ever.
The more usual view is less ambitious. It is the complaint that Fortune
has never looked a man's way. Failure due to lack of industry is excused
on the ground that the goddess has proved adverse. There is a third form
of this mental disease. A young man spoke to me in Monte Carlo the other
day, and said, "I could do anything if only I had the chance, but that
chance never comes my way." On that same evening I saw the aspirant
throwing away whatever chance he may have had at the tables.
A similar type of character is to be found in the young man who
consistently refuses good offers or even small chances of work because
they are not good enough for him. He expects that Luck will suddenly
bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the
high opinions he holds of his own capacities. After a time people tire
of giving him any openings at all. In wooing the Goddess of Luck he has
neglected the Goddess of Opportunity.
These men in middle age fall into a well-known class. They can be seen
haunting the Temple, and explaining to their more industrious and
successful associates that they would have been Lord Chancellor if a big
brief had ever come their way. They develop that terrible disease known
as "the genius of the untried." Their case is almost as pitiful or
ludicrous as that of the man of very moderate abilities whom drink or
some other vice has rendered quite incapable. There will still be found
men to whisper to each other as he passes, "Ah, if Brown didn't drink,
he might do anything."
Far different will be the mental standpoint of the man who really means
to succeed. He will banish the idea of luck from his mind. He will
accept every opportunity, however small it may appear, which seems to
lead to the possibility of greater things. He will not wait on luck to
open the portals to fortune. He will seize opportunity by the forelock
and develop its chances by his industry. Here and there he may go
wrong, where judgment or experience is lacking. But out of his very
defeats he will learn to do better in the future, and in the maturity of
his knowledge he will attain success. At least, he will not be found
sitting down and whining that luck alone has been against him.
There remains a far more subtle argument in favour of the gambling
temperament which believes in luck. It is that certain men possess a
kind of sixth sense in the realm of speculative enterprise. These men,
it is said, know by inherent instinct, divorced from reasoned knowledge,
what enterprise will succeed or fail, or whether the market will rise or
fall. They are the children of fortune.
The real diagnosis of these cases is a very different one from that put
forward by the mystic apostles of the Golden Luck. Eminent men who are
closely in touch with the great affairs of politics or business often
act on what appears to be a mere instinct of this kind. But, in truth,
they have absorbed, through a careful and continuous study of events
both in the present and the past, so much knowledge, that their minds
reach a conclusion automatically, just as the heart beats without any
stimulus from the brain. Ask them for the reasons of their decision, and
they become inarticulate or unintelligible in their replies. Their
conscious mind cannot explain the long-hoarded experience of their
subconscious self. When they prove right in their forecast, the world
exclaims, "What luck!" Well, if luck of that kind is long enough
continued it will be best ascribed to judgment.
The real "lucky" speculator is of a very different character. He makes a
brilliant coup or so and then disappears in some overwhelming disaster.
He is as quick in losing his fortune as he is in making it. Nothing
except Judgment and Industry, backed by Health, will ensure real and
permanent success. The rest is sheer superstition.
Two pictures may be put before the believer in luck as an element in
success. The one is Monte Carlo--where the Goddess Fortune is chiefly
worshipped--steeped in almost perpetual sunshine, piled in castellated
masses against its hills, gaining the sense of the illimitable from the
blue horizon of the Mediterranean--a shining land meant for clean
exercise and repose. Yet there youth is only seen in its depravity,
while old age flocks to the central gambling hell to excite or mortify
its jaded appetites by playing a game it is bound to lose.