SUCCESS AND LUCK

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 January 1928, Page 8

SUCCESS AND LUCK

AMERICAN PROFESSOR’S VIEWS. Professor Joseph Jastrow, head of the department of psychology in Wisconsin University, addressing the Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University, lately, declared that brains were not essential in the struggle for material success in America. “Success is generally due to a combination of lucky circumstances and outside influence,” said Professor Jastrow. “One has to use only enough brains to keep one from standing in the way of success. We have greatly over-emphasised the value of intelligence in business and in other affairs of everyday life. « Many have achieved success without undue display of mental activity. “We read ‘success magazines,’ hoping to find the way to win our own fortune. We do not gain a great deal of help, but we read about fortunate individuals who have invested blindly and become rich overnight; then we find that they are only ordinary dull folks after all. Good brains, as a. matter of fact, are not common. “Older people spend a considerable time criticising the younger generation, forgetting what went on in their own minds when they were children. Young people should not be expected to be stupidly rational all the time. All people must blow off a little steam now and then, and the son and daughter have more excess steam than the father and mother.”