Outwitting the Devil

Outwitting the Devil blends autobiographical narrative with a philosophical dialogue in which Napoleon Hill interrogates a figure he calls the Devil, forcing a confession about how fear, indecision, and passivity destroy human potential.

The book opens with Hill recounting his 1908 meeting with industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Hill told Carnegie he planned to interview successful people and write about their methods. Carnegie proposed a far grander task: organizing the world's first practical philosophy of individual achievement by studying both the causes of success and the causes of failure. Carnegie warned that the work would require at least 20 years of unpaid effort. He introduced the concept of the "other self," a latent inner force that typically emerges only during emergencies or extreme adversity, compelling people to think their way past difficulty. Hill accepted the challenge and, armed with Carnegie's letters of introduction, began interviewing over 500 prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Alexander Graham Bell.

After years of research, Hill organized 17 principles of achievement and 30 major causes of failure, but he later realized this framework was only a skeleton. He cycled restlessly through ventures as an advertising manager, a candy company president, a wartime government aide under President Woodrow Wilson, a magazine publisher, and a sales trainer, each time abandoning profitable work due to inner dissatisfaction. By late 1923, he found himself stranded in Columbus, Ohio, without funds, paralyzed by what he calls "the worst of all human ailments: indecision" (11).

The first turning point arrived on Christmas Eve 1923. While walking in the countryside, Hill was seized by an overwhelming inner command directing him to return home and write his philosophy into manuscripts. Arriving home, he saw his children staring at a neighbor's Christmas tree, painfully aware there would be none in his own house. Despite his rational mind's protests, he wrote steadily and completed the manuscripts by early 1924.

Hill then purchased a business college in Cleveland but again grew restless. After a lecture in Canton, Ohio, he partnered with Don R. Mellett, publisher of the Canton Daily News, who planned to help publish Hill's philosophy. In July 1926, Mellett was murdered because of his newspaper exposés of bootlegger-police corruption, and Hill received an anonymous threat. He fled to relatives in West Virginia, where he spent months consumed by fear. His ambition vanished, and he sank into self-contempt, feeling like a fraud who taught others principles he could not apply.

The second turning point came in fall 1927. One night, Hill walked repeatedly around a schoolhouse, forcing himself to think. A sudden realization struck: This period of poverty and humiliation was his testing time, designed to force him to discover his "other self," as Carnegie had predicted. His lethargy lifted, and he received an inner command to drive to Philadelphia. He borrowed $50 from his brother-in-law, and within days located Albert L. Pelton, an advertiser from Hill's former magazine, who agreed to publish the books and provided a substantial advance. Hill's philosophy reached students worldwide.

Hill reflects that the "other self" follows no precedents and recognizes no limitations, and that every experience of temporary defeat carries the seed of an equivalent benefit. He asserts that faith opens a "sixth sense," a channel to what he calls Infinite Intelligence, the universal source of all knowledge and power, and that prayer cannot work in a mind dominated by fear.

The 1929 Depression then destroyed Hill's estate and income. Sitting before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he realized he had again lost his courage. He recognized that he had failed to apply the Master Mind principle, the harmonious coordination of two or more minds working toward a definite end, and had been laboring alone. A new resolve overcame his indifference, leading to the central event of the book: his "interview" with the Devil.

Hill acknowledges that the Devil may be real or imaginary, stating that the practical value of the information matters more than its source. The Devil claims to consist of negative energy, to occupy one half of every atom of matter, and to live in the minds of people who fear him, with God occupying the positive half.

The Devil identifies fear as his primary weapon, naming six varieties: the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, and death. Poverty is his greatest ally because it discourages independent thought. He names his enemies as those who inspire independent thinking, including Socrates, Confucius, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. He claims to use mass fear to start wars and economic depressions.

The Devil then reveals his most powerful tool: the habit of drifting. A drifter is a person who permits outside circumstances to control his mind, who has no definite major purpose, and who takes the path of least resistance. Drifting begins in childhood, the Devil explains, when parents, schoolteachers, and religious instructors unknowingly destroy children's capacity for independent thought. Parents impose their own beliefs, schools teach memorization rather than thinking, and religious instructors instill fear. The non-drifter, by contrast, maintains a major goal, makes quick decisions, and thinks independently. The only difference between drifters and non-drifters is the exercise of a right equally available to all: the choice to think for oneself.

The Devil reveals additional methods of control: flattery, which exploits vanity; failure, which causes most people to quit after two or three attempts; and propaganda, which influences people without their awareness. He provides a 10-point formula for protection against drifting, then reduces it to a single directive: "Be definite in everything you do and never leave unfinished thoughts in the mind" (118). He warns that drifting can be broken only before a critical threshold, beyond which a natural law makes the habit permanent.

That law is hypnotic rhythm, which the Devil defines as the universal force through which nature fixes all habits into permanence. Any impulse repeated through habit eventually reaches a stage of rhythm and can no longer be broken. The Devil gains permanent control by first inducing people to drift, then allowing hypnotic rhythm to seal the pattern. Those who control their own minds escape entirely. He identifies the fear of death as his primary entry point, because no one can prove what happens after death, and claims that churches unwittingly aid his cause by keeping fear alive.

The Devil reluctantly reveals seven principles for outwitting him. The first is definiteness of purpose, which closes the mind so tightly that the Devil cannot enter. The second is mastery over self, requiring discipline over three appetites: food, sex, and the careless expression of opinions. The third is learning from adversity: Failure is a state of mind one can control, and adversity forces people to break the grip of hypnotic rhythm by forming new thought-habits. The fourth is environmental influence, since hypnotic rhythm forces people to harmonize with the dominating influences around them; the Devil advocates forming a Master Mind alliance of carefully chosen individuals. The fifth is time, the mechanism through which hypnotic rhythm penalizes negative habits and rewards positive ones. The sixth is harmony: Nature forces everything within a given environment into harmonious relation, whether positive or negative. The seventh is caution, the most dangerous trait to neglect after drifting itself.

In his concluding summary, Hill identifies drifting, hypnotic rhythm, and time as the trio of forces that govern human destiny. He contrasts Samuel Insull, a utilities magnate who lost his industrial empire partly because flattery diverted his talents, with Henry Ford, who emerged from the same Depression unscathed because he never drifted. Hill acknowledges that his own life was saved by his single definite major purpose: organizing a philosophy of individual achievement. He reduces his entire philosophy to one statement: Dominating desires can be crystallized into physical equivalents through definiteness of purpose backed by definite plans, with the aid of hypnotic rhythm and time.