Customer Reviews

The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale

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First published in 1969, Weiss's careful assessment of the so-called "American myth of success" is still relevant today and continues to be referenced by other authors writing on the subject. Roy Anker has honored it with several pages of exposition in his Self-Help and Popular Religion in Early American Culture (1999). He stated that Weiss's text "seems balanced, fair-minded, and revisionist in import, especially in its analysis of the character ethic."

According to Weiss, the success myth involves the belief that "all men, in accordance with certain rules, but exclusively by their own efforts, can make of their lives what they will" as well as "the cluster of ideas surrounding this conviction". It is rooted in an idealism and ideology that believes "opportunity exists for all" quite apart from any empirical investigation into "the degree to which opportunity has or has not been available in our society".

Success is generally defined in material, earthly terms this side of death. However, as Weiss demonstrates, this doesn't mean that there wasn't or isn't a moral and/or metaphysical dimension to success. He begins with the Protestant ethic of early American Puritanism, making reference to Max Weber's influential book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). The maxims of this ethic include industry, frugality, and prudence. Weiss states that even Benjamin Franklin espoused these virtues in his The Way to Wealth, but secularized them and gave them a utilitarian aspect where proper behavior brought earthly rewards. The tradition of the Protestant ethic continued into the 19th century, but after the Civil War, during the "Guilded Age", there was a transition from moral purity to metaphysical power, from traits of character to states of mind as the key to success or failure. Within this context, the literature of the New Thought movement is given attention as an inheritor of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist dogma but mixed with the pragmatism of William James (Weiss also acknowledges in a Chapter 5 footnote the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg's ideas on New Thought and James through his father; however, he fails to mention the influence of Swedenborg on Emerson). During this transition there were those who attempted to salvage aspects of the older values through fiction while also critiquing industrialism, urbanization, excessive wealth-getting, and moral decline. The literature of Horatio Alger, Jr., as well as the work and attitudes of the following five popular Christian novelists are discussed: Augusta Jane Evans, E. P. Roe, Charles Sheldon (of In His Steps fame), Gene Stratton Porter, and Harold Bell Wright, each offering practical spiritual and moral counsel.

One must keep in mind that Weiss is not concerned with clearly distinguishing between conservative and liberal Christianity, both of which have a history throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, although it is clear for those who know the differences (aside from the variations within each camp) that Emerson and the later New Thought proponents in the 19th century embraced a heterodox, liberal type. Weiss points out that the "reformist nature of New Thought extended beyond matters of organization to questions of doctrine as well. The new dispensation denied the doctrine of original sin. The well-known couplet from the New England primer - 'In Adam's fall, we sinned all' - had 'no truth in it at all'" (page 144). Although the Puritan's Calvinism (which associates original sin with the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity) falls within the parameters of conservative Christianity, it is not equivalent with it (contrary to the opinion of some Calvinists). The move away from Calvinism in the 19th century included conservatives as well as liberals who embraced Arminian or Pelagian/Semi-Pelagian concepts of moral freedom while holding different opinions on the notion of "original sin". See, for example, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Second Edition, 1996) by Melvin Dieter for the conservative transition, and The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion (2001) by Gary Dorrien for the liberal transition. Weiss ends his book by looking at the thought of Norman Vincent Peale whose book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), which was influenced by New Thought, impacted both conservatives and liberals alike, making it one of the most popular books in the self-help tradition. Anker's Self-Help and Popular Religion in Modern American Culture (1999) looks at the literature and influence of Peale, and his student Robert Schuller, in more detail.

I highly recommend Weiss's book, and refer to it often along with Roy Anker's two-volume study while researching success literature in American history.