Self-Help with Smiles

While self-help books have been around for millennia, the popularity of the genre owes a great deal to Samuel Smiles's Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct. 

First published in 1859, it was revised in 1866, when the subtitle was updated to Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance. In thirteen chapters, Smiles offers advice on success for readers of all backgrounds, illustrating his points with anecdotes about the rise of individuals in professions ranging from ballet to authorship, pottery to government. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had sold 250,000 copies.

Smiles's practical advice influenced many people, including Sakichi Toyoda, the grandfather of the Toyota company, but it has also been criticized by luminaries such as F.A. Hayek (whose analysis Roger Donway smartly refutes). Those who value liberty and responsibility may appreciate its timeless wisdom in relation to three points: self-reliance, the spirit of industry, and moral character. 

In his opening chapter, Samuel Smiles observes, "The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength." He emphasizes the value of helping oneself: "Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves." If government or another group does too much, "the inevitable result is to render them comparatively helpless"—an unintended consequence affirmed by modern psychologists: giving someone excessive help, especially if unsolicited, can have negative consequences. 

Moreover, Smiles observes, government cannot legislate people into productivity: "no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober."  Such reforms are achieved "by better habits, rather than by greater rights." Smiles therefore advocates cultivating "individual character." Success comes when individuals practice discipline and, like Isaac Newton, "close observation of little things," which may produce discoveries.   

Smiles analyzes numerous examples of individuals whose creativity and perseverance led to success. They include inventors, such as James Watt, who patented his separate condenser for the steam engine; Sir Richard Arkwright, who founded the modern factory system; and Josiah Wedgwood, whose pottery business is known even today. As Smiles emphasizes, such businessmen not only thrive but improve their communities. In 1785, Wedgwood testified to Parliament that "about 20,000 persons then derived their bread directly from the manufacture of earthenware, without taking into account the increased numbers to which it gave employment in coal-mines, and in the carrying trade by land and sea."   

Interestingly, Smiles argues that it is not only men in trade who are "men of business." For him, that category includes men such as the Duke of Wellington, whose attention to practical details—"soldier's shoes, camp-kettles, biscuits and horse fodder"—made him an effective commander during the Napoleonic Wars. 

Essential to such stories is Smiles's insistence that one need not be a genius to succeed. In chapter 4, he opines, "The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful." Without discounting the importance of "the original endowment of the heart and brain"—not everyone can be a Shakespeare—he praises "common sense, attention, application, and perseverance." 

Throughout Self-Help, Smiles includes compelling examples of people who persisted through years of trials and pain. He notes, for instance, the "incessant toil" of ballet dancers. "When [Marie] Taglioni was preparing herself for her evening exhibition, she would, after a severe two hours' lesson from her father, fall down exhausted, and had to be undressed, sponged, and resuscitated totally unconscious. The agility and bounds of the evening were insured only at a price like this." 

Consistency is key. In his final chapter, Smiles argues, "Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well-governed State they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities in the main which rule the world." Good character may be cultivated with good habits, to which he assigns a pivotal role: "Principles, in fact, are but the names which we assign to habits; for the principles are the words, but the habits are the things themselves: benefactors or tyrants, according as they are good or evil." As we grow old, we see the result of those habits: "we are bound by the chains which we have woven around ourselves."

Self-Help reminds us that government cannot fix all our problems, but we can choose the chains that bind us. Perseverance and good character never go out of style.