The way to Will-power. Henry Hazlitt.

The way to Will-power. Henry Hazlitt. Original publication date: 1922. 114 pages. 

What a thrilling little treasure this is, a completely rediscovered book by Henry Hazlitt from 1922. This is Hazlitt before he became an advocate of the Austrian School, and here he is not writing on economics but personal ethics as informed by ancient principles. But the pre-Austrian in him shines through, because it is an application of the theory of time preference he picked up from his reading. 

The book has been nearly impossible to get until this new edition, completely reset by the Mises Institute. Why bring it back? Because it is Hazlitt, and because it is just splendid as a manual for the management of personal life. Just look at some of these quotes:

"Will-Power, then, may be defined as the ability to keep a remote desire so vividly in mind that immediate desires which interfere with it are not gratified".

"As long as we keep in the backgrounds of our minds that the will is really an abstraction, there is no harm in speaking of it a good part of the time as if it were an entity; and insofar as it can be said to represent a definite and permanent entity, the will may be defined as our desire to be a certain kind of character. "

"It is not the 'conscience' in itself, nor the 'evil' desires, that ultimately count; it is the relation of the one to the other. The stronger his conscience, or counter-desires, must be; the weaker his desires, the less need he has for a strong conscience."

"A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character."

Opinion: 

It is not the first book I have read by him, and it will not be the last. Because his language without paraphernalia or superfluous embellishments, and his coherent and intelligent ideas make him, in my eyes, one of the most stimulating authors to talk about philosophy. Also because he was a man who wanted to make the world a better place through his written words and his own life experience.