February 21, 1 9 1 8 
Land & \\^atcr 
2 1 
The Will and the Way 
Pelmanism as an Educational Factor 
By SIR JAMES YOXALL, M.P. 
By coincidence a book 1 openfii in tlic Tube train told me the story 
of a man so despondent, thougli deserving, that he thought himself 
■ beleaguered by all the circumstances of his life." He even found a 
name for his condition. " I'm beset," he thought, as many another is 
thinking dolefully at this minute. For " nothing had ever gone right 
with him." He had had " no luck." Fate always seemed against him. 
" He was the most conscientious worker in the office, but other clerks had 
been promotedover his head. The manager was always finding fault with 
him for being so slow. Perhaps lie was slow," he thought. 
Part of the coincidence was that I had been thinking that very afternoon 
of the man\- deserving people who mean well and try well but never " do 
well," and I had been reflecting again why it was. What blocks thcni ? 
What keeps them in the dismal groove of unsuccess ? It is so easy to 
blame them, so tempting to feel di.sdain for them, but Heaven forgive n;e 
if 1 rlo ! I have long known that the distance between success in life, as 
people call it, and failure, is no great gulf ; I have long been aware that 
success and failure are near n<-ighl)ours, that may at any moment merge 
the one into the other ; for only 
thin partitions do their bounds divide, 
at iinv rate, up to fifty or fifty-five years old. 
1 turned the page — success is often a matter of turning a page — and 
read on. The unsuccessful clerk was not happy even at home. " Emilj- 
was a good wife in many ways, but she was .so abominably careless about 
vital details." Of course she was, for so few women, relatively, have 
had the help of the right education yet. " She could not realise the 
importance of method and accuracy either in housework or cooking." 
It takes several generations of wise forbears to breed accuracy and method 
into us, and if we are not born with a necessary quality we must acquire 
it, or fail. " He was always being forced to remonstrate with her, but 
ihe never improved. And all these worries seemed to be steadily accu- 
mulating. He had never a moment now that was not filled by the necessity 
to counter some new difficulty." I shut the book,* and seemed to see 
that man and his wife sinking into the slough of despond deeper, as the 
habit of non-success grew upon them day by day. 
Yes, one knows people like that. The woman who sits basking by the 
•ire, when she feels that she should not, and says " I suppose I must be 
getting ready," but is still there half an hour later ; and then says more 
weakl)-. " I shail be late ! " yet does not stir. The minutes tick by, 
until presently she says, " I don't know that it's very important. . . . 
it's so late now — it wouldn't be much good going jiow, would it ? I 
shan't be the oiily one not there . . , It's so late now — I don't think 
I'll go. would you ? . . . It won't matter for once I " And in a few 
.eai-s that " once " becomes every time. 
The man, too, who hardly ever keeps an appointment punctually. 
nd misses maiiy a chance of getting on a little, simply because never, even 
by accident, does he arrive anywhere five minutes early. And the other 
kind of man, who believes in doing " no more work than you're paid for," 
and not that much if possible, and therefore is seldom long in employ. 
The man, too, who blames his memory, or his schooUng, or his start in life, 
for his non-succe»( ; who blames everything and everybody but himself. 
Heaven forbid that I should be scorning such folk, or boasting as one that 
putteth his armour off because the fight is won ; What I am really trying 
to ilo is to indicate a mode and a place of help. 
« * * * « 
Ihe \'crv day I opened that book I had been visiting such a place. 
ft is rare, and I think unique ; it exi.sts as a place of business, and is not 
run as a place of philanthropy, gratis ; but it is philanthropic in its business, 
which is to help the unsuccessful and only partly successful to learn how 
to help themselves. I had visited the Pelman Institute, that is, I had tested 
the men and the methods there ; I had satisfied myself that the men are 
neither unpractical visionaries nor advertising charlatans: I had verified 
the testimonials which they pubhsh and the names of well-known people 
among their clients ; 1 inquired into the methods they use in a way 
which only one who is him.seU a teacher could do ; I procured and have 
studied the books they issue to their clients ; I examined the queries they 
put the schedules they work by, and the degrees of individual effort they 
nquire to be put forth. I went there rather sceptical. I went away rather 
enthusiastic. ' And because the more I think about it the more I feel that 
" Pelmanism " is the name of .something much required by myriads 
of i^eople to-day I am writing these pages. " Pelmanism " is no fake, no 
dodge, no knack of temporary influence only, and it is not for the few 
alone. It is not for the relatively few whom Nature has endowed with the 
successful (jualities. who cannot help " getting on." and who get on early 
because the many do not compete with them : it is for the many whom 
Nature has endowed with all qualities for success except the instinctive 
kn«>wledge of how to use them aptly. There is no m>-stery about Pelman- 
ism, except that it is not ladled out to all and sundry, and is'keptasa 
secret for those who wish to have it, those who will work as well 
as pay. I thought the training might be mere mnemonics or artificial 
memorizing only; I thought that the development of will-power might be 
done by hypnotic suggestion, perhaps ; but no suspicion which I harboureti 
was justified by my inquiries, searching as 1 think they were. Every 
facility for a thorough investigation was placed at my disposal by 
Mr. W. J. Ennever, the Founder of the Institute. 
I am mvself a trained, experienced teacher, and know the drawbacks of 
schools. 1 know the faults of the class svstem ; how if the cla.ss or form 
be large the teacher must lecture rather than teach ; and how if the class 
be small, even, it is srill too large, for the most effective teaching is done 
when the tutor has one pupil and only ope ; in teaching, the eiifectual 
thing is to help each lame dog over his own particular stile, and that is 
what class-teaching can seldom do. I also know that if the pupil does not 
wish to learn, he will not learn, though you teach at him ever so brilliantly 
and assidously. And therefore I know that most of the defects which 
adults discover in themselves are defects which cannot be removed from 
the average person while i boy or a girl at school. I also know that the 
instruction received from another is nofhini; likr so valuable as the educa- 
tion which one can gain for oneself 
■ Wiifttcii ImprMdoDi." By J. D. BttMford. 
Therefore it delighted me to discover that the Pelman Iii-Hliite works 
along lines which at a hundred public meetings on education 1 have 
ventured to lay down. Places for lecturing, coaching, and preparing 
people for cxam.inations are valuable, and many ; so are places in which 
the tuition goes on by post, between tutor and learner, and when the learner 
is in earnest the effect is sure to be good. But this is not a place for thus 
imparting general or examinational information ; it is a place for indicating 
how to learn, how to live and learn and how to learn and live. Here any 
willing, earnest applicant may get just the books, papers, hints, sugges- 
tions, advice, and " leg-up " which he needs for himself. But he must use 
them faithfully and assiduously ; if he does not, his fee is returned with a 
polite note indicating that he has not shown liimscif suitable — that is. 
worthy of the help which the system can give. CompiiLsory continuative 
education has not been tried in England yet, and one cannot say how it 
will work out ; but voluntary continuative education — self-education- 
with aid from csunsellors and guides, philosophers and friends, has a great 
future in this country, 1 am sure. Every year the number of adults who 
discover that it will be worth while to go on getting educated increases. 
Most people leave school too early to be able to know while at school 
what education is for ; that knowledge seldom comes to anybody earlier 
than the age of puberty, and most young people leave school before that 
age. The fact is that the schools can do little to incite a habit of con- 
tinuative education, except in the naturally gifted few ; what the schools 
do is teach boys and girls " ho\v to use their mental knives and forks," 
so to speak ; the appetite for the meal comes later, if at all. 
Life is the real school, therefore, it is also the sternest schoolmaster ; how 
it raps our knuckles when we blunder, how it lashes us with hot shame when 
we fail ! To me the saddest street sight — worse than some accident 
which may end or prevent years of life not worth the living — is the broken 
down, elderly failure of a man who comes faltering along. He has had his 
chance, his time, his lifetime almost, and he has not known, nor cared to 
learn how to know, how to use them ; and no chance now comes his 
way. There are people who believe in one life only ; there are happier 
people who believe in another ; both kinds of people ought snrely to 
make as much of this present life as they may. Both ought to educate 
themselves — the one because this life may be the onlj' sphere, and the 
other because this life may be the probation for another. Living is 
" a serious art," and we need to be artists in living : we ought to master 
the secrets of living ; and obviously we should begin to do so pretty 
young, while the door stands open. Yet how many of us fail ! 
— we give 
All life to learning how to live, 
And die in ignorance, the gloom 
Around us to the very tomb. 
For few of us continue our education seriously, day by day. 
Suddenly, at sixty or so, the man who has neglected to use the school 
of life while he could, discovers that he has failed. He discovers it " too 
late," as he says — his chances are all gone. He may try to comfort 
himself by talking of his " bad luck," or ths people who were always 
" against him," and he may belittle what others have successfully done ; 
but it is poor comfort. Indolence, feebleness, indetermination, follies, 
vices, blindness to chances are much alike in their effects, and every 
effect had a cause. 
♦ * • * * 
Pelmanism is not for the self-satisfied : nor for the easily satisfied, 
content with any way of life, no matter how narrow and poor ; nor for 
the sluggard, too inert , nor the laggard, too idle. It is discipline, and 
many a chent has found it to be just the training he needed. It is a 
means of energizing, and energy is the master-force of everything. I do 
not believe in conclusive natural disability, except when it is due to 
incurably bad health ; I do not believe that tsp to the age of fifty and 
more it is ever too late to mend ; I am sure that mental effort prolongs 
and fortifies bodily life. I have seen so many men fail whom everybody 
expected to succeed, and so many succeed in spite of apparent cause 
and excuse for failure, that I have no faith in what is called destiny or 
fate. I have seen many men go dull with the monotony, along some 
groove with high walls to it. who being afterwards kicked out of the 
groove, so to speak, by something which seemed a stroke of ill chance, 
have begun to get on, directly they were out of that groove. One can't 
jump out of it all at once, as a rule ; success seldom comes all at once, 
without preparation for it ; but out of the groove, sooner or later, that 
man will climb who studies how to try. 
The clerk who does not " get on," the salesman, the commercial 
traveller, the shopkeeper who does not sell successfully ; the underling, 
" the most conscientious worker in the office," who is, neverthele.'-s, too 
slow ; the teacher not successful in a peculiarly difficult vocation ; the 
would-be writer who always gets his manuscript (it should be typescript) 
back again ; the solicitor who might as well be his own clerk ; the doctor 
who vainly waits for patients : the briefless man at the Bar ; the curate 
never offered a Ix-nefice : and many another, would find the discipline, 
guidance, and training of Pelmanism help them on. When peace comes 
again competition in life will be fiercer than ever, for men will return 
from the great, stern l^niversity of the War with qualifications developed 
that thev did not previously know they possessed ; 1 have passed most 
of a life-time in trying to help on the cause of education, but I am glad 
to say that / shall not have to run the gauntlet of the sterner competition 
to come. I suspected Pelmanism ; when it began to be heard of, I thought 
it quackery : with self-satisfaction and vanity, I supposed that / needed 
nothing of the kind. Now T wish I had taken it up when I heard of it 
first. It 
— spurs Ihe lated traveller apace 
To gain th€ timely inn. 
Pelmanism is fully explained and described in "Mind and Memory," 
uihich, with a copv of" Truth's " remarkable report vn the work of the Pelman 
Institute, will be sent, gratis and post free, tv any reader of La.nd A Water 
who addresses The P/'Inuni Iii^Ulidr (u, \\'iiiha»i H'Uisr, Plun)iishiiry 
.'Street, London, li-'.C' i 
