"The Passion For Achievement" By Orison Swett Marden
I've been trying to collect a full, complete set of every Success Magazine printed in the 1800’s. The first magazine was December 1897 (I’ve got 2 copies of it!), and then it ran for a complete year as a monthly magazine, then in December of 1898, it turned into a weekly magazine and ran that way until the end of the century. So there are 12 monthly magazines (I’m missing 2 of them) and then 55 weekly issues (and I’m missing 10 of them). You can see my almost complete collection in the attached picture! Someday I want to publish all of these for members, but it will be a monumental task. I’ve also thought about just pulling out the best of the best, and printing a book with just those articles. You’ll have to let me know what you’d like the most. But one thing I do with every issue is try to find and read any of the articles written by Orison Swett Marden. He was the founder of the magazine, and one of the most prolific writers during the New Thought Movement. I love everything he has to say! Here is one of my favorite articles I found in the September 1909 Success Magazine that I think you’ll love if you’re an achiever like me: The Passion For Achievement - By Orison Swett Marden “What are the motives which keep men slaving after they have acquired a competence?” “Is ambition a selfish attribute?” These and similar questions have often been asked me. The passion for conquest, for power, the love of achievement, is one of the most dominant and persistent characteristics of human nature. With most men the bread-and-butter and housing problem, the question of getting a living, a competence, is only one, and often one of the least, of the motives for an active career. We have an instinctive feeling that we have been set in motion by a bigger power; that there is an invisible spring within us—the “imperious must”—which impels us to go onward, to weave the pattern given us in the Mount of Transfiguration of our highest moment, to make our life-vision real. A divine impulse constantly urges us to reach upward to our highest ideal. There is something back of our supreme ambition deeper than a mere personal gratification, we instinctively feel that there is a vital connection between it and the great plan of creation, the progress, the final goal of the race.