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