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 determine

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 en

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

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

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 t

Judgment, Industry, and Health, as the instruments of success, depend largely on a fourth quality, which may be called either restraint or moderation. The successful men of these arduous days are those who control themselves strictly. Those who are learned in the past may point out exceptions to this rule. But Charles James Fox or Bolingbroke were only competing with equals in the art of genteel debauchery. Their habits were those of their competitors. They were not fighting men who safeguarded

Many serious letters and a half-humorous criticism in Punch suggest that I am to be regarded as the apostle of a pure materialism. That is not so. I quite recognise the existence of other ambitions in the walks of Art, Religion, or Literature. But at the very outset I confined the scope of my advice to those who wish to triumph in practical affairs. I am talking to the young men who want to succeed in business and to build up a new nation. Criticism based on any other conception of my purpose is

A great number of letters have reached me from young men who seem to think that the road to success is barred to them owing to defects in their education. To them I would send this message: Never believe that success cannot come your way because you have not been educated in the orthodox and regular fashion. The nineteenth century made a god of education, and its eminent men placed learning as the foremost influence in life. I am bold enough to dissent, if by education is meant a course of study

What is arrogance? To begin with, it is the besetting sin of young men who have begun to prosper by their own exertions in the affairs of the world. It is not pride, which is a more or less just estimate of one's own power and responsibilities. It is not vanity or conceit, which consists in pluming oneself exactly on the qualities one does not possess. Arrogance is in essence something of far tougher fibre than conceit. It is the sense of ability and power run riot; the feeling that the world is

Courage! It sounds an easy quality to possess, bringing with it the dreams of V.C.s, and bestowing on every man worth the name the power to endure physical danger. But courage in business is a more complex affair. It presupposes a logical dilemma which can only be escaped in the field of practice. The man who has nothing but courage easily lets this quality turn into mere stubbornness, and a crass obstinacy is as much a hindrance to business success as a moral weakness. Yet to the man who does n

Panic is the fear which makes great masses of men rush into the abyss without due reason. It is, in fact, a mass sentiment with which there is no reasoning. Yet at one time or another in his career every man in business will be confronted with a stampede of this character, and if he does not understand how to deal with it, he will be trampled in the mud. The purely stubborn man will be the first to go under. He will say, and may be perfectly right in saying, that there is no real cause for anxie

Depression is not a word which sounds cheerfully in the ears of men of affairs. But the actuality is not as bad as the term. It differs in every respect from Panic. It is not a sudden and furious gust breaking on a peaceful situation, irrational both in its onset and in its passing away, but something which can be foreseen, and ought to be foreseen, by any prudent voyager on the waters of business. The wise mariner will furl his sails before the winds blow too strong. Nor is depression in itself

The bitterest thing in life is failure, and the pity is that it is almost always the result of some avoidable error or misconception. With the rare exception of a man who is by nature a criminal or a waster, there need be no such thing as failure. Every man has a career before him, or, at worst, every man can find a niche in the social order into which he can fit himself with success. The trouble in so many cases is that it takes time and opportunity for a man to discover in what direction his n

Nothing is so bad as consistency. There exists no more terrible person than the man who remarks: "Well, you may say what you like, but at any rate I have been consistent." This argument is generally advanced as the palliation for some notorious failure. And this is natural For the man who is consistent must be out of touch with reality. There is no consistency in the course of events, in history, in the weather, or in the mental attitude of one's fellow-men. The consistent man means that he inte

The most common, and, perhaps, the most serious of vices is prejudice. It is a thing imbibed with one's mother's milk, fortified by all one's youthful surroundings, and only broken through, if at all, by experience of the world and a deliberate mental effort. Prejudice is, indeed, a vice in the most serious sense of the term. It is more damaging and corroding in its effects than most of the evil habits which are usually described by that term. It is destructive of judgment and devastating in its

The last two essays have dealt with the more depressing sides of practical life—the sudden tempest which sweeps down on the business man, or the long period of depression which is the necessary prelude to the times in which optimism is justified. But it is on the note of optimism, and not of pessimism, that I would conclude, and after the storm comes the calm. What is calm to the man of experience in affairs? It is the end to which turbulent and ambitious youth should devote itself in order that