Samuel Smiles is famous for writing the first self help book in 1882 titled, simply enough, Self Help. His main ideas therein are that the harder one works, the farther one goes and the better one is. If a person is poor, it's his or her own fault.
Obviously, this guide also doubles as a textbook to Smiles' personal philosophy: most self-help books do. But what has me curious, is what other philosophies contributed to this? The enlightenment, fueled with the ideas of Locke, had ended a long time before Smiles published his work, but those ideas undoubtedly still held some sway in society. The catholic church had also made a comeback by that time: a church that, to my limited knowledge, agreed with several of Hobbes' general principals. This could easily have been an influence even if Smiles followed another religion, simply because of how many people were religious, and how much religion had soaked into culture.
Of these potential influences, there are a few similarities of interest. For one, it seems rather Hobbsian that it is the individual's fault if he doesn't get further in life, but rather Lockeian to believe that any man can better himself without influence of government. For that matter, Smiles wrote in his book
"Whatever is donefor men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless. Even the best institutions can give a man no active help."
Smiles shows both Hobbsian and Lockeian ideas in his philosophy, and goes on to inspire one of the best known believers of socialism: Karl Marx. How else did he effect people's views? Karl Marx inspired to communist movement: what other ripple effects did his book cause?
