the scriptures might be fulfilled. For the
two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell are
a woman who is not dignified and a man who is.

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS

There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles
which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever
known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest romances of
chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious tract. Moreover,
the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry; the religious
tracts are about religion. But these things are about nothing; they are
about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine, you
may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men
how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even
succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such
thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is
not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a
millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a
donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have
succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad
philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the
ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. These
writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade
or speculation--how, if he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder;
how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They
profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting
yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer;
and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a
definite and business-like proposal, and I really think that the people
who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a
legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish
a book about electricity which literally told one nothing about
electricity; no one would dare to publish an article on botany which
showed that the writer did not know which end of a plant grew in the
earth. Yet our modern world is full of books about Success and
successful people which literally contain no kind of idea, and scarcely
any kind of verbal sense.

It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (s