Napoleon Hill did not write in a vacuum. The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century witnessed the publication of a vast variety of motivational and “success oriented” books, pamphlets, and magazines. Hill no doubt availed himself of many of them in his personal reading and research for Think and Grow Rich!
The following excerpts from a small 332-page pocketbook published in 1896 by Louis Klopsch (New York) are instructive. Just as echoes of Napoleon Hill can be found in every “success” book or other “how to achieve” resource produced since the 1950s, so can glimpses be found in pre-Think and Grow Rich! books of rhetorical and other techniques Hill would use in his landmark work.
In the excerpt below, note the use of inspirational quotations from well-known individuals. Note the emphatic, forceful language (“Very well, I will be a king!”). Note the emphasis on faith as a source of empowerment, the discussion about “dogged determination,” persistence in the face of tough obstacles, and “invincible will.” Here Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying, “‘Impossible’ is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” Hill in Think and Grow Rich! reports that he once took a dictionary and immediately cut out the word “impossible.” Ideas and techniques such as these certainly foreshadow Think and Grow Rich! Hill’s genius lay in how he artfully blended and integrated such narrative and rhetorical techniques with the very practical, applicable “how to do it” principles of success that he developed during his more than 20 years of research.
The excerpt that follows is from Chapter XV, “Willpower,” from How to Succeed; or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune by Dr. Orison Swett Marden.
CHAPTER XV
WILLPOWER.
In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to do it. –W. HUMBOLDT.
It is firmness that makes the gods on our side. – VOLTAIRE
People do not lack strength they lack will. – VICTOR HUGO
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way. – JEREMY COLLIER.
When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom. – JOHN FOSTER
“Do you know,” asked Balzac’s father, “that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?” “Very well,” replied his son, “I will be a king.” After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won success as an author.
“Why do you repair that magistrate’s bench with such great care?” asked a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. “Because I wish to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,” replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years later.
“I will be marshal of France and a great general,” exclaimed a young French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He became a successful general and a marshal of France.
“There is so much power in faith,” says [Edward] Bulwer [-Lyton],* “even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies.”
There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of Webster’s Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail.
“Is there one who difficulties dishearten?” asked John Hunter. “He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of man never fails.”
“Circumstances,” says Milton, “have rarely favored famous men. They have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles.”…
The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal.
At nineteen, Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not abated.
In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: “My situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive.” But his will defied circumstances and he rose above them….
We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.
At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect. “It shall succeed!” he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying over the papers when he went back. “They are very cruel,” she said. “They don’t understand.” “I’ll make them understand,” he replied cheerfully. “It was a fight for six years,” he said afterward. “Poverty, sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the dogged determination that is should succeed.” It did succeed. The invention was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy man.
Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. “There shall be no Alps,” he said, and the road cross the Simplon* was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. “Impossible,” said he, “is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” He was a man who toiled terribly, sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. “I made my generals out of mud,” he said.
To think we are able is almost to be so—to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of Suwarrow’s* character lay in his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, he preached it up as a system….
What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, and telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s…? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.
A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith† has well said, that in order to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?
A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the superior of circumstances. His is free; nay, more, he is a king; and though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles, once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.
What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on the stumps. Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined endeavor. The world always listens to a man with a will in him. You might as well snub the sun as such men as Bismarck and Grant.
Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when despondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctor who can implant hope and courage in the human soul. So he is the greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
How much I could do if I only tried.
* (1803-1873) English dramatist, novelist, and politician.
* The Simplon Pass is 6,590 feet (2,009 meters) high in the Lepontine Alps in Southern Switzerland. Napoleon had his troops build the Simplon Road here between 1800 and 1806 as an entryway to Italy. The Pass has been a major trade route between southern and northern Europe since the 13th century.
* The Russian Aleksandr V. Suvorov (1729-1800) was one of the greatest military commanders of all time, ranking with Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and George Patton, J. Others have labeled him a butcher who was more interested in destroying than defeating his enemies. His battle record was 63 victories, no defeats, frequently against numerically superior enemies.
†Smith (1771-1845) was an English clergyman, essayist, and lecturer considered by many as the wittiest man of his era. He was a founder of the Edinburgh Review.