SUCCESS A COURSE IN MORAL INSTRUCTION BY FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP Professor of Philosophy SECOND EDITION MADISON Published by the University April, 1913 BJ68 • W855 HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION MONROE C. GUTMAN LIBRARY Copyright 1913 by Frank Chapman Sharp. • INTRODUCTION Of those who start in business for themselves at least one-third sooner or later fail. They may in their fall injure others through their inability to pay their debts. Or they may merely lose the money, the time, and the energy, which they have staked in the venture. In either event they have attempted, and failed. We have records only of those who are unable to pay their debts. In this class, according to the analysis of Bradstreet's, one-fifth of the failures are due primarily to causes lying outside of the individual; the other four-fifths are due primarily to the man himself.* These figures are calculated to make even the most self-confident serious. But there is worse behind. Many who succeed in making a living fail in life. Life, for them, turns out in the end to be a disappointment. They find it either tasteless or bitter, even though they may have obtained what the world calls success. Naturally we have no information that enables us to locate the responsibility for this class of failures. The causes are usually complex; but it is safe to say that the character or intellect of the individual himself is more or less at fault in the vast majority of cases. There remains one thing more. Many who do not fail in the sense of being crushed by an overwhelming disaster, fail in the sense that they get out of themselves and their circumstances far less than they might have done. This too is a serious matter; for life is not so rich in resources *A careful calculation which appeared in one of the magazines a few years ago placed the proportion of failures at forty per cent. I regret that I have been unable to find the article again. Certain fundamental data of this problem will be found in Bradstreet's for January 21, 1911, p. 37, and in The Century Magazine, 79:583 (Feb. 1910). Cf. also The World's Work, 17:11302 (Feb. 1909). [5] |