Napoleon Hill
The term "social heredity," as used in connection with this lesson, has
particular reference to all methods through which a child is taught any
idea, dogma, creed, religion or system of ethical conduct, by its
parents or those who may have authority over it, before reaching the
age at which it may reason and reflect upon such teaching in its own
way; estimating the age of such reasoning power at, let us say, seven
to twelve years.
There are myriads of forms of fear, but none are more deadly than the fear of poverty and old age. We drive our bodies as if they were slaves because we are so afraid of poverty that we wish to hoard money for what - old age!
This common form of fear drives us so hard that we overwork our bodies and bring on the very thing we are struggling to avoid.
What a tragedy to watch a man drive himself when he begins to arrive along about the forty-year mile post of life-the age at which he is just beginning to mature mentally. At forty a man is just entering the age in which he is able to see and understand and assimilate the handwriting of Nature, as it appears in the forests and flowing brooks and faces of men and little children, yet this devil fear drives him so hard that he becomes blinded and lost in the entanglement of a maze of conflicting desires.
The
principle of organized effort is lost sight of, and instead of laying hold
of Nature's forces which are in evidence all around him, and
permitting those forces to carry him to the heights of great
achievement, he defies them and they become forces of destruction.
Perhaps none of these great forces of Nature are more available for man's unfoldment than is the principle of Auto-suggestion, but ignorance of this force is leading the majority of the human race to apply it so that it acts as a hindrance and not as a help.
Let us here enumerate the facts which show just how this misapplication of a great force of Nature takes place: Here is a man who meets with some disappointment; a friend proves false, or a neighbor seems indifferent.