第6章 Fundamental Techniques…(6)

Rockefeller got his feeling of importance by giving money to erecta modern hospital in Peking, China, to care for millions of poorpeople whom he had never seen and never would see. Dillinger,on the other hand, got his feeling of importance by being a bandit, abank robber and killer. When the FBI agents were hunting him, hedashed into a farmhouse up in Minnesota and said,“I'm Dillinger！"

He was proud of the fact that he was Public Enemy Number One.

“I'm not going to hurt you, but I'm Dillinger！" he said.

Yes, the one significant difference between Dillinger andRockefeller is how they got their feeling of importance.

History sparkles with amusing examples of famous peoplestruggling for a feeling of importance. Even George Washingtonwanted to be called"the President of the United States"； andColumbus pleaded for the title"Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroyof India." Catherine the Great refused to open letters that werenot addressed to"Her Imperial Majesty"； and Mrs. Lincoln, in theWhite House, turned upon Mrs. Grant like a tigress and shouted,“How dare you be seated in my presence until I invite you！"

Our millionaires helped finance Admiral Byrd's expedition tothe Antarctic in 1928 with the understanding that ranges of icymountains would be named after them; and Victor Hugo aspiredto have nothing less than the city of Paris renamed in his honor.

Even Shakespeare, mightiest of the mighty, tried to add luster tohis name by procuring a coat of arms for his family.

People sometimes became invalids in order to win sympathyand attention, and get a feeling of importance. For example, takeMrs. McKinley. She got a feeling of importance by forcing herhusband, the President of the United States, to neglect importantaffairs of state while he reclined on the bed beside her for hoursat a time, his arm about her, soothing her to sleep. She fed hergnawing desire for attention by insisting that he remain with herwhile she was having her teeth fixed, and once created a stormyscene when he had to leave her alone with the dentist while hekept an appointment with John Hay, his secretary of state.

Some authorities declare that people may actually go insanein order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling ofimportance that has been denied them in the harsh world ofreality. There are more patients suffering from mental diseases inthe United States than from all other diseases combined.

What is the cause of insanity? Nobody can answer such asweeping question, but we know that certain diseases, such assyphilis, break down and destroy the brain cells and result ininsanity. In fact, about one-half of all mental diseases can beattributed to such physical causes as brain lesions, alcohol, toxinsand injuries. But the other half—and this is the appalling part ofthe story—the other half of the people who go insane apparentlyhave nothing organically wrong with their brain cells. In postmortem examinations, when their brain tissues are studied underthe highest-powered microscopes, these tissues are found to beapparently just as healthy as yours and mine.

Why do these people go insane?

I put that question to the head physician of one of our mostimportant psychiatric hospitals. This doctor, who has received thehighest honors and the most coveted awards for his knowledge ofthis subject, told me frankly that he didn't know why people wentinsane. Nobody knows for sure But he did say that many peoplewho go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that theywere unable to achieve in the world of reality. Then he told methis story：

“I have a patient right now whose marriage proved to bea tragedy. She wanted love, sexual gra tification, children andsocial prestige, but life blasted all her hopes. Her husband didn'tlove her. He refused even to eat with her and forced her to servehis meals in his room upstairs. She had no children, no socialstanding. She went insane; and, in her imagination, she divorced her husband and resumed her maiden name. She now believesshe has married into English aristocracy, and she insists on beingcalled Lady Smith.

“And as for children, she imagines now that she has had a newchild every night. Each time I call on her she says： ‘Doctor, I hada baby last night.'"

Life once wrecked all her dream ships on the sharp rocksof reality; but in the sunny, fantasy isles of insanity, all herbarkentines race into port with canvas billowing and windssinging through the masts.

Tragic? Oh, I don't know. Her physician said to me：“If I couldstretch out my hand and restore her sanity, I wouldn't do it. She'smuch happier as she is."

One of the first people in American business to be paid a salaryof over a million dollars a year （when there was no income taxand a person earning fifty dollars a week was considered well off）was Charles Schwab, He had been picked by Andrew Carnegieto become the first president of the newly formed United StatesSteel company in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight yearsold. Schwab later left U. S. Steel to take over the then-troubledBethlehem Steel company, and he rebuilt it into one of the mostprofitable companies in America.

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, ormore than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab?

Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew moreabout the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense.

Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men workingfor him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than hedid.