Through all the intricacies and uncertainties of life and in the labyrinth of philosophies that have been devised to obtain some notion of reality, there is a practical short cut that we have to use while we are building safe and logical highways. Events will not wait. We have to act without full knowledge and in our thinking, quick if there is little time, or more deliberate if time permits, we seek a practical plan---one that will succeed. It is based upon experience, upon what information we have, much or little. The test is: Will it work, will it save the situation, will it succeed? That is the practical short cut. It is the way of action. In safe surroundings or in intervals of safety, there are those among us who try to reason these things out. Their thoughts take in a wider scope. They reason about the nature of truth, for example, or of beauty, or of what is good, about the subjective and the objective; and perhaps some of them find answers that the rest of us can use. But among these philosophers there are some who become impatient with this searching for the ultimate, that seems so often to arrive nowhere; and they look for practical answers. These are the realistic or pragmatic philosophers, so-called, of whom WiIIiam James and John Dewey are perhaps the leading modern representatives. Their test again is: "Will it work? Will it succeed? They are concerned with what can be used in action, what is expedient. Some go so far as to assert that what is expedient; that which works out well, is true or right. It may be bandying with words. But, however that may be, these people say that the important thing is for a belief or a philosophy to work out in practice, to be successful; and practical people incline to agree with them. Other thinkers, once classified among the philosophers, dealt with what was called "natural philosophy." This is now the domain of the chemist, the physicist, and the astronomer, and of others following them, such as the biologists, the anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists; all known as scientists. These all practice the pragmatic method to a greater or lesser degree. It is, in fact, almost an ideal with them. In this method, by inductive thinking, one arrives at a guess that seems to bring order and to explain the relation among his data. This guess is tested by deductive thinking. Its implications and corollaries are traced to their conclusions. Inconsistencies are found and changes are needed. New guesses are made and analyzed. Thus by observing, and speculating, by dreaming and imagination, by guesses, flashes of intuition and by hard, careful thinking and, very often, by including the thoughts of others, one may arrive at a conclusion so apparently sound that it seems worth special testing. Experiments are carried out; observations are made under critical conditions, and thus we may arrive at something that seems better than a guess. It is worth calling a theory or hypothesis. But still it may not be safe against further test. It is accepted unmodified only so long as it succeeds. We may cite an example from physical astronomy. "Will light waves from a star be deflected in passing close to the sun as observed in a total or near total eclipse of the sun? If they are not so deflected then energy is not affected by gravity and has not the properties of mass that Prof. Einstein and others had assigned to it." It was observed that the light was deflected about as much as had been predicted by the new theories. This helped to show that the fundamental theories grouped around the name of Isaac Newton and long accepted as close to ultimate truth, are only a part of the story. Such a proof may be conclusive or may leave possibilities that it is incomplete or for only a limited set of circumstances or does not exclude conditions other than those assumed. Further verification may be needed. But at any rate, this is the scientific method of feeling a way out into the unknown, of learning the ways of nature, or of society, or of finance, or of psychology. The knowledge may be empirical, not final, but it is useful to those seeking practical results. The method may be applied in such a field as ethics. In a recent book "Out of My Later Years" by Albert Einstein, he says "Ethical directives can be made rational and coherent by logical thinking and empirical knowledge. If we agree on some fundamental ethical propositions, other ethical propositions can be derived from them, provided that the original premises are stated with sufficient precision. Such ethical premises play a similar role in ethics, to that played by axioms in mathematics." Later on he says "Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience." That is to say, if a principle of ethics actually works out beneficially, and does not lead to injustice or other harm, it is true for all practical purposes. And ethics is certainly a practical thing. But the Success Principle is not limited in its application to philosophy and science. It applies in all the affairs of life. In fact that is where its application began. We may quote Prof. Einstein again from the book cited above. "The whole of science" he says "is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking." The ordinary man, seeking to keep alive, the practical man in dealing with nature; about which, fundamentally, he knows nothing, uses the pragmatic method. Surrounded by mysteries on all sides he does the thing which, by experience, he believes will succeed. In a new situation he proceeds with caution, looking first and listening, tasting a little of the unknown fruit or nut, venturing a little out of hiding to see if the monster will attack, testing and drawing back. It is the way of animals too, trial and error, possibly a thousand errors -if not fatal- till the successful trial is made; with the element of thought or the help of memory less and less as we go lower in the scale of intelligence. The successful trial results in escape from the difficulty. It is effective for that one occasion at least. With a modicum of memory and after many or few repetitions of the successful trial, a habit may develop or a knowledge of what to do in the circumstance if it is encountered again. Thus we and our friends of the fields and woods feel a way through the unknown dangers of our environment. We learn to adjust to the ways of nature or of our fellowmen. We learn; and the more intelligent of our fellow creatures learn. On a lower level there is less of learning, but instincts are developed that determine conduct. The instinct that succeeds preserves its owner. It is retained, inherited and strengthened, while violation of the instinct or a lack of it may lead to death. This brings us to the fundamental domain or field of the success principle. Capacities, abilities, instincts, physical form, which lead to success, that is to preservation of life and to reproduction are preserved by inheritance. The success principle is the basis of natural selection. It determines survival of the individual and of his species. For the principle itself to apply it appears that there must be a possibility of selection, and for a preservation of the successful idea, or maxim, or method, or way of life, or trait, or capacity, or physical feature, either by intelligent choice, or less intelligent acceptance through trial and error, or by natural selection, where that which we call intelligence does not apply at all-or does it? The selection is by an automatic basic something that acts like intelligence and may even be of the ultimate nature of intelligence. This "something" is like intelligence operating without mind, merely because like reproduces like as a general rule in living things; but with exceptions, mutations, that also tend to be preserved. These changes may fit the creature better to its environment or help it to succeed in the competition for existence. By this simple operation it would seem that every possibility of life has been utilized by some creature large or microscopic, independent or parasitic with a variety and completeness which are like the work of an intelligence utterly minute in its operation and ingenious beyond all comprehension. Is the principle even more fundamental and universal in its application? Does it apply to inanimate things which do not reason, nor remember, nor reproduce their like? Perhaps some analogy can be carried further but it would be strained and hardly satisfactory. To choose that which works properly and discard what does not fit seems a possibility that was brought along when life came into the cosmos. Here is a thought to take with you - anyone who is not quite satisfied with himself or with what he has done. Everything that lives now is the result of success. Success, not failure, is your background. You are the present link in an unbroken chain of success that leads back at least to the beginning of life on earth. Mines Magazine November 1950 L.W. Storm, '02 Medalist 1954