The Law of Success: An Overview of Lesson Fourteen from Napoleon Hill

Lesson fourteen from Napoleon Hill’s book The law of success It is titled Tolerance. Hill believes that intolerance is a form of ignorance that must be abolished in order to be successful. Intolerance is the cause of wars and creates enemies in business.

Hill expresses his view that intolerance wreaks havoc on religious organizations that divide into sects and denominations that focus on opposing each other rather than uniting in peace and destroying evil in the world.

He reports that we are influenced by physical inheritance and social inheritance. Physical inheritance dates back to a time when we struggled for existence and only the physically strong could survive. Social heritage is what we absorb from our environment when we are young according to the beliefs of parents, teachers, and religious leaders.

Hill claims that most prejudices are acquired before the age of fourteen from 3 organized forces of schools, churches, and the public press. Interestingly, I found two versions of The law of success, which approached those 3 forces differently. One expanded on the 3. The other censored all the information Hill wrote about the churches.

In the uncensored edition, Hill stated: “Any plan to abolish war, to be successful, depends on the successful coordination of efforts among all the churches and schools of the world for the stated purpose of thus fertilizing the minds of the young people. with the idea of ​​abolishing war that the very word ‘war’ will strike terror in their hearts. “

Hill felt that if individual churches subordinated their own individual interests, came together to establish a universal world church, and focused on universal peace, then world peace would be possible. Once again, Hill’s views on this universal church and the purpose of peace were omitted in an edition of his book that I reviewed.

Of greater interest, Hill felt that women church members would be responsible for unifying this new world ideal of universal peace. In Hill’s own words, “it is the nature of women to implant, in the minds of young people, ideals that will grow for the benefit of generations yet to be born, while men are generally motivated by the convenience of the present.” .

In other works by Napoleon Hill written later in his life, this principle of tolerance is not mentioned at all.

I don’t know the story behind this controversial chapter. I suspect that he received pressure or criticism to edit or remove this idealistic theory from the subsequent two editions of the same book or from other successful books that he later wrote.

Hill said near the end of the chapter that he had a personal experience with intolerance and that it was one of his most difficult experiences. He reported that an enemy was trying to ruin his reputation and destroy his life of honest effort to do good in the world. Then he included an essay he wrote, which reminded me a lot of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The essay was titled ‘Tolerance!’ and the last sentence asks to be cited to conclude this review. He speaks of what he hopes to find in the afterlife as he passes out of this earthly human existence. “I hope to find there only human souls, brothers and sisters, all without marks of race, creed or color, because I will want to end intolerance so that I can lie down and rest an eon or two, undisturbed by strife, ignorance, superstition and small misunderstandings that mark this earthly existence with chaos and pain “.