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Editorial Section of Hearsts Sunday American, Atlanta, April 20, 1912
the Gates of Hell—And in Every Man’s Path
Copyright, idlC,
by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reaerred.
HAT keeps me back? Why
don’t I succeed? Why do
others go ahead and pass me?
What is the matter with me?
HOW can I achieve success?”
There is hardly a man
living who does not ask himself those questions.
There is not one who has not asked the questions
more than once.
Let us go at the thing in a different way, and
first of all decide—for the ten millionth time—
what SUCCESS really is.
Success is only one thing and that is, TO DO
YOUR BEST.
That is the point that we want to impress
upon young men to-day.
It is not what you do, or how much you do,
that counts; the one question by which you will
be judged is this:
“Did he do the best that was in him?”
* * 4- #
Ordinarily, when a picture of this kind is
shown, there goes with it solemn warnings, and
solemn advice, and more or less foolish encour
agement to try for the highest things.
Young men are taught that, if they will, they
can do anything that anybody else has done.
Such teaching is preposterous and discour
aging.
A man does not need to live many years
past twenty to find out that he cannot do some
of the things that other men have done. The
one thing for him to find out is, WHAT HE CAN
DO, and then do it. to the best of his power.
Success is not doing something that someone
else did—something that Napoleon did, or that
George Washington did, or that Christopher
Columbus did.
And there is more time wasted by men,
young and old, and middle-aged, worrying be
cause they can’t equal somebody else; more time
thus wasted than would give to each the only
real success, W HICH COMES FROM DOING
YOUR BEST.
Just remember that every man is exactly like
every other man, so far as the real man, the
inside thinking man, is concerned.
The difference is in the working machine
which means the body, the brain and the nervous
system that we get from our fathers and mothers
, on both sides. •
Thousands and tens of thousands of human
beings r.rc- represented in your body. And with
In Everybody’s Road Something Stands Preventing Progress. The Three-
Headed Monster of the Infernal Regions Is Duplicated On a Small Scale In Every
Man’s Life.
Perhaps the Commonest Kind of Heads on the Three-Headed Dog of the
Average Man Are the Three in This Picture—Dissipation, Dullness, Delay. Con
cerning Them and What Is Called “Success” We Hope to Write an Editorial
Different from Some Others.
that body, the brain, the heart, the nervous
system, you work.
You may get some defect from a great-great
grandfather ten generations back that keeps you
from doing that which you might otherwise do.
You see in this picture the word DULLNESS,
which keeps many back from real success.
Very often that dullness is not the man’s
fault—nine times out of ten it is not his fault.
The fault lies in not fighting against it, and
doing the best that you can in spite of it.
You see two babies lying in the cradle, both
feeble, helpless—and that very minute as they
lie there, they are as far apart as the North and
the South Pole, as far apart as the humblest,
dull-minded peasant and the greatest man that
ever lived.
And one of those children, no matter what
he does, or how hard he tries, CAN NEVER DO
WHAT THE OTHER ONE WILL DO,
ALTHOUGH THE OTHER MAY HARDLY TRY
AT ALL.
It seems like injustice. Perhaps it is injustice.
But remember that final judgment is not on
this earth. And what a handful of men or a
million men think of you is not of the slightest
importance—it will all be forgotten in five
hundred years.
The only thing that is important is whether
or not you have the will, the determination,
simply to do THE BEST THAT IS IN YOU.
♦ * * #
You are sent into this world by some power
beyond your control, call it Divine Providence,
destiny, fate, eternal law or whatever you like.
W hatever you call it, here you are, here you
must stay for an indefinite time, and here you
must work, and fail or succeed.
You are a body with legs, and arms, and eyes,
and a brain, and locked up inside of you is that
little atom of consciousness, that little power of
thought, which we call the soul. And that
power, invisible, indestructible, eternal, is the
only REAL YOU.
And (hat power must work and succeed or
fail IN THE BODY THAT HAPPENS TO BE
GIVEN TO YOU WHEN IT ARRIVES.
A sickly mother or a drunken father may
give you a body that will make good work prac
tically impossible.
An accident in childhood may make il
impossible for you to do more than earn a bare,
pitiful living.
It is not guesswork, but scientific fact, when
we say that the force which you call your soul
or mind must work through your material
brain, and is limited by that brain and its
structure.
You speak readily, and you think that speech
is part of vourself. IT IS SIMPLY PART OF
THE MACHINE IN WHICH YOU LIVE. A
surgeon can remove a small part of your brain,
without destroying your life—and you will never
speak again. He can remove another part of
your brain and you will have no feeling on the
left side of your body, or on the right, as he
chooses. Pins and needles would not be felt
if stuck into you. The power to feel has been
removed.
Surgeons can take away from you absolutely,
little by little, all power to express the force and
ability that you have.
W’hat they can take away, Nature—that is
to say, your father and your mother, and the
billions of grandfathers and grandmothers back
of you, may give you, and they may not give
it to you.
You are not to blame for what you don’t get.
BUT YOU ARE TO BLAME IF YOU DON'T
DO THE VERY BEST POSSIBLE W ITH W HAT
YOU HAVE.
* * * *
Think of yourself and of the more success
ful man beside you as you would think of two
men sent out into the forest to cut trees.
One man is sent out to do the cutting with a
sharp axe made of good steel.
The other man is sent out with a dull axe
made of poor steel.
The man with the sharp axe cuts down
hundreds of trees, and the man with the other
axe, with great difficulty and suffering, may cut
down only two or three.
That doesn’t mean that the man with the
sharp axe is the great man, and the man with
the dull axe the inferior man.
On the contrary, if the man with the poor
axe has done all that he possibly could do, and
the man with the fine axe has done only half
what he might have done, THE GREAT MAN
AND THE SUCCESSFUL MAN IS THE MAN
WITH THE DULL AXE.
# * * *
What the axe is to the woodsman, your brain,
your body, your quickness of perception, your
power of original thought, your ability to
remember, your energy, your courage in sus
taining fatigue—all of those things are material,
physical parts of your body, the axe with which
you chop down the tree success.
Many a man never heard of was in reality
greater than Napoleon. For Napoleon didn I
do half that he might have done. W hereas
millions unheard of have done ALL THAT
THEY COULD DO, and they were infinitely
more successful than the man with power un
limited, who died a failure on a barren island.
• ♦ ♦ •
Look over this picture and study it for your
own good.
Criticise yourself always, from the first day
(o the last.
When a man becomes satisfied uith him
self, stops criticising himself and seeing his
faults, he is pn$t his good days.
Realize that there is in front of you, as the
artist shows you here, some kind of a three
headed monster keeping you back. Chop off
the heads one at a time if you can.
But don’t fail to do fhe good that you might
do WHILE MOANING AND REGRETTING
SOMETHING THAT YOU NEVER COULD
HAVE DONE.
The manager of a small undertaking, the
earner of a moderate salary, who lives decently,
temperately, takes care of those who depend
upon him, is honest, a good citizen, interested
in the welfare of (he country, kind to the poor
and the weak, DOING THE BEST THAT HE
CAN WITH HIS DULL AXE. is a thousand
times betler than a man with a better body, a
sharper mental axe, doing onlv half, or a quarter,
that he might have done.
Let it he your comfort that this is only one
little life, a speck, a flash of time in eternity.
You see the spark that flashes from the wire
above a trolley car. You know that that flash,
which lasts a part of a second, is simply one
gleam in the great current of power.
W hat (hat spark is to that enterprise with
great engines'and the, line. THIS LITTLE LIFE
IS.TO YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE.
Your life never began, it will never end.
Consciousness, the soul in you. never could be
created. It never will be destroyed.
It will go through millions of lives on this
and other planets, and you will have millions of
diflerent bodies. You may be the next time a
miserable slave in Africa, and later the leader of
millions of men.
The one thing that you need do is TO -USE
THAT BODY, YOUR AXE. AS WELL AS YOU
CAN EACH TIME.
Realize your defects; don't cry over them
or waste time pitying yourself.
I)o as you would do if you were a courageous
man and the boss of (he woodehoppers handed
you an axe with a jagged, dull edge.
Say to yourself, “A poor axe, but I'll make
il cut somehow.”
Look at your own body, study your own
deficicnces, mental, physical.
Say to yourself, if you must, “A duli axe,
hut I will make it cut somehow."
Do that; cut into success as deep as you can.
do vour best and YOU WILL BE ONE OF THE
WORLD’S SUCCESSFUL MEN.
For (he 1 greatest man that ever lived never
did anything really great, in the eyes of eternity.
The onlv really great (hir.g (hat any man
ever did W AS TO DO HIS BEST.