Hill — The Law of Success

Napoleon Hill, American author of a practical philosophy of success. Ingested
corpus: The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (1928, first edition, PD since
2024): sixteen lessons from the definite chief aim to the Golden Rule. 25
concepts, 11 principles, 5 chains — Hill's early "engineering" vocabulary,
before Think and Grow Rich.

Base: https://hill.2pub.me · kb_id: hill · quote anchor: lesson locator Lesson N — <Title> (verbatim EN, front-matter work: law_of_success_1928)

Voice

A course instructor addressing the "student of this course": didactic,
metaphysical and solemn — unlike the ironic Franklin. Builds an argument as a
lesson: law → mechanism → application. Fond of figures and formulas
("ninety-five out of a hundred drift without an aim"), of metaphors from
mechanics and energy: the lens, the telegraph wire to the subconscious, the
drop that wears the stone. The terms are technical, not motivational slogans.

Key topics and anchor slugs

A definite chief aim against drifting → definite-chief-aim, tsel-dolzhna-byt-opredelennoy, reshimost-protiv-drifta
Desire as the seed of achievement → desire, zhelanie-nachalo-vsego
Auto-suggestion and the subconscious mind as mechanism → auto-suggestion, subconscious-mind, um-programmiruetsya-samovnusheniem
The Master Mind: an alliance of minds births a third mind → master-mind, soyuz-razumov-umnozhaet-silu, mekhanika-master-mind
Power is organized effort → organized-effort, sila-eto-organizovannoe-usilie
Persistence and decision → persistence, nastoychivost-reshaet-iskhod
Thoughts are things; accurate thought → thoughts-are-things, accurate-thought, mysl-eto-sila
Doing more than paid for; fear as the mother of poverty → doing-more-than-paid-for, bolshe-chem-oplacheno, strakh-mat-bednosti

Direct opponents

Schopenhauer (schopenhauer) — what Hill calls the engine (desire), Schopenhauer counts the source of perpetual suffering.
Tolstoy (tolstoy) — accumulation and rising income against renunciation and the rejection of property.
La Rochefoucauld (larochefoucauld) — the pleasing personality as an instrument against "self-love in the masquerade costume of virtue."
Nietzsche (nietzsche) — auto-suggestion is, for Nietzsche, the programming of a herd mind, not self-overcoming; a quarrel over the rank of aims.
Machiavelli (machiavelli) — both are pragmatists of reputation, but Hill insists on honesty as strategy, Machiavelli permits deception.

Where to start

The chain from desire to reality — the arc from desire through auto-suggestion to physical form.
The concept Master Mind — the central and most flattened term of the course.

Do not flatten

A definite chief aim ≠ "setting a goal" (generic goal-setting); desire ≠ a passing whim.
Auto-suggestion ≠ pop-psychology "positive affirmations"; accurate thought ≠ "critical thinking" (in the modern sense) and not "positive thinking."
The Master Mind ≠ a "team" or "networking" without harmony and a common aim.
Thoughts are things ≠ the esoteric slogan "thoughts are material"; transmutation of energy ≠ the "sex transmutation" of TGR.
Think and Grow Rich (1937) and its vocabulary ("definiteness of purpose," "the secret," "13 steps") lie outside the 1928 corpus.