Success

Success

Project Gutenberg's Success (Second Edition), by Max Aitken
Beaverbrook This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Success (Second Edition)
Author: Max Aitken Beaverbrook
Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15248]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUCCESS
(SECOND EDITION) ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jared Buck and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net).

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 rôle.
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