Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

\ 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.