2-NRLF 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 o-o 
 
 L MAT 
 
THE POWER 
 OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
THE POWER 
 OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 HERBERT EDWARD LAW 
 F.C.S. 
 
 PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS- SAN FRANCISCO 
 
Copyright, 1913 
 by PAUL ELDER AKD COMPANY 
 
TO THE EARNEST MEN 
 
 AND WOMEN OUT OF WHOSE 
 
 BUSINESS ASSOCIATION 
 
 WITH ME THROUGH 
 
 MANY YEARS THESE 
 
 ESSAYS HAVE 
 
 GROWN 
 
 336042 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 THE POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND . 3 
 
 WEALTH 19 
 
 ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE . . 37 
 
 COURAGE 57 
 
 MENTAL CONTROL 75 
 
 FRICTION 97 
 
 BUSINESS BUILDING 109 
 
 ENTHUSIASM 127 
 
 LOOKING FORWARD 141 
 
 EFFECTIVENESS 155 
 
 [v] 
 
Preface 
 
 r l ^HESE essays had a very practical 
 and a very purposeful origin. They 
 grew out of the necessities and activities 
 of a large business. Their beginnings 
 were usually, or at least often, a sentence 
 or a paragraph in a business letter in- 
 tended to give direction to effort or sug- 
 gestion to thought; to give encourage- 
 ment by pointing the way; to arouse 
 hope by giving it a basis; to help by 
 showing how to help one's self. 
 
 Progress is the process of creating, 
 training and developing the instruments 
 of progress. Every work, great or small, 
 must create both the means and the in- 
 struments by which it can be accom- 
 plished. We can see this plainly in such 
 great undertakings as the construction 
 of the Panama Canal. But it is not less 
 true, though not so strikingly obvious, 
 in all other enterprises and undertak- 
 ings, whether they be public or private 
 a political upheaval or the establishment 
 of a new breakfast food business. 
 
 [VII] 
 
PBEFACE 
 
 The human instruments have to be 
 created, trained and developed no less 
 than the material instruments nay 
 more. The Panama Canal is in its es- 
 sence, and vitally, much more a matter 
 of men than of means, or of mechanical, 
 or engineering appliances, or even of 
 scientific adaptation and achievement. 
 
 The development of a big business 
 enterprise the biggest business enter- 
 prise is less a matter of capital than of 
 men. It can be done without capital- 
 is constantly being done but it cannot 
 be done without men. But the men have 
 to be created; that is, the right material 
 has to be found, trained and developed; 
 it has to be molded, educated, developed 
 and inspired. The process is one of 
 building up, of creation, not of cutting 
 down, adapting, reducing, fitting. A 
 great work can be accomplished by or- 
 dinary men inspired by the greatness of 
 the work they are called on to do; but 
 never by even great men who lack in- 
 spiration. Pigmies can do the work of 
 giants when they are inspired to do a 
 giant's work. But giants will only do 
 the work of pigmies when they lack the 
 inspiration to do a giant's work. 
 
 [VIII] 
 
PBEPACB 
 
 Growth, development, increase in 
 power must come from within. The 
 man or woman, to achieve, must be born 
 again. Accomplishment is the result, 
 not of fitness, but of determination to 
 be fit; not of preparedness but of striv- 
 ings for preparation, its sweat and its 
 struggle. 
 
 So in all these essays, there is no 
 formula for success. There is only an 
 effort to present the law of success, 
 and that law works out only through the 
 individual himself. 
 
 Success, achievement, growth, lie in 
 the individual himself, not in formu- 
 lated courses of action. The old maxims 
 of success laid stress on economy sav- 
 ing, the antithesis of waste. They were 
 false and faulty, . leading nowhere be- 
 cause they ignored the absolute essen- 
 tial of success which is production, cre- 
 ation, accomplishment. 
 
 In these essays the constant effort is 
 to stimulate, to inspire the individual to 
 desire and demand success; to demand 
 it of himself as an obligation of his be- 
 ing, and so to put himself in harmony 
 and accord with the law of success. The 
 success most constantly held in view is 
 
 [IX] 
 
PBEFACB 
 
 business success money making; money 
 making through the success of business. 
 This is not because there is any thought 
 that business, money making, is the only 
 kind, or even the most important kind 
 of success. It simply follows from the 
 original purpose and use of the letters 
 out of which these essays grew. They 
 were business letters to men and women 
 engaged in business. The success they 
 were seeking was success in their busi- 
 ness. The letters could be useful only 
 as they gave help in this direction. 
 
 But the principles that run through 
 them all or rather the principle for 
 there is really only one, that success 
 must come through one's self, is univer- 
 sal. It is true of success in all its grada- 
 tions and in all its kinds. Success, ac- 
 complishment, achievement come from 
 within and depend on ourselves. 
 
 Many who received these essays in 
 their earlier form of letters have grate- 
 fully expressed the value and helpful- 
 ness they were to them. In the hope 
 that they may prove helpful to others 
 they are presented in this form. 
 
 HERBERT EDWARD LAW. 
 
 San Francisco, December 1, 1913. 
 
 [x] 
 
THE POWER 
 OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
THE POWER 
 OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 THE Power of Mental Demand 
 is a potent force in achieve- 
 ment. Thought, the attitude 
 of the mind, affects the ex- 
 pression of the face, determines our 
 progress through life, and influences 
 and molds our physical conditions. 
 
 Whether this silent force achieves 
 these results through laws which we do 
 not yet understand, or whether as a con- 
 sequence of the demand we make on our 
 mental powers, we develop those ele- 
 ments in us which enable us to effect 
 the things sought, does not affect the 
 fact. There is illimitable power in 
 mental demand. It is the same law in 
 the world of affairs as that one in the 
 spiritual world enunciated so long ago, 
 "As thy day so shall thy strength be." 
 
 This Power of Mental Demand, like 
 every other force in the universe, is sub- 
 ject to laws. The first one is that it can 
 be enormously increased by consecutive, 
 systematized effort to increase it. 
 
 [3] 
 
PO T VBR or MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 To desire an end intently is, to a prac- 
 tical, logical mind, to group about the 
 effort to accomplish it every element of 
 thought, of advantage, of circumstance, 
 of surroundings, of fitness to its achieve- 
 ment. It is to summon and direct every 
 power of the mind and every element 
 of success to the accomplishment of de- 
 sire. This marshalling of elements 
 which go to make up success is to set 
 in train cause and effect. It is the con- 
 dition and the only condition under 
 which and through which the entire ef- 
 fort can be made to apply. 
 
 People who make great successes are 
 often thought of as people of one idea. 
 They so intently desire the thing they 
 aim for that they exclude all distracting 
 things. Thus, that measure of single- 
 ness of concentration is secured which 
 swings direct to the mark, when half- 
 hearted effort loses its way, and the will, 
 divided, fails of its goal. What intense 
 concentration may accomplish is impos- 
 sible to any other measure of thought 
 and effort. 
 
 An electric current below a certain in- 
 tensity will not illuminate. The singer 
 who stops short of a certain note is lost 
 
 [4] 
 
POWEB OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 in the mass of mediocrity; while the one 
 who surpasses by but a comparatively 
 small measure is singled out for great 
 honors and crowned with success. The 
 artist who gives that intangible but 
 requisite measure of feeling and force 
 to his picture becomes world renowned ; 
 while those who merely approach him 
 are never heard of. In more readily 
 measured things, the race horse, the ath- 
 lete, only emerges into value or promi- 
 nence when something more than the 
 ordinary is accomplished. Superiority 
 by the fraction of a second gains dis- 
 tinction. There is in all things no great 
 dividing line between what we may call 
 average success, keeping close to the 
 line of mediocrity, and that surpassing 
 power which singles out by accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 Intentness of purpose, therefore, con- 
 centrating, as it does, all the powers of 
 the mind and summoning all the ele- 
 ments of accomplishment, must measure 
 achievement. Purpose, desire, will, 
 must be superior to the forces with 
 which one contends. The contentions of 
 life are real, and it is not enough that 
 we make an effort. We must make the 
 
 [5] 
 
POWEB OP MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 effort which subjugates the adverse con- 
 ditions about us and turns them to our 
 service. An effort to succeed must be 
 an effort which brings success. This 
 intensity of desire is to the human be- 
 ing in action what the throttle is to an 
 engine. It governs the power, the force, 
 the reach, the extent the achievement. 
 It is the electric button which closes the 
 circuit and sets all the machinery of ac- 
 complishment in motion. 
 
 It is this Power of Mental Demand 
 which makes the runner hold out to win 
 the race. It is that something which 
 makes the soldier fight when he has al- 
 ready received his death wound. It is 
 almost a supernatural power, for it con- 
 trols and subjugates material condi- 
 tions. 
 
 History, biography, literature our 
 own experience, teem with illustrations 
 of incredible hardships, of ceaseless dif- 
 ficulties and almost insurmountable ob- 
 stacles overcome, and of tremendous 
 endurance through resolute demand on 
 this unmeasured source of power. 
 
 The men of accomplishment are not 
 always, indeed not usually, men of great 
 physical power, nor seemingly especially 
 
 [6] 
 
POWEK OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 adapted to the conditions under which 
 they have achieved. Often they are the 
 reverse of these. They are not often 
 even men of superior genius except in a 
 commanding resolution to achieve which 
 steel cannot constrain, which no hard- 
 ship can dishearten, which no difficulty 
 can daunt, which no danger can weaken, 
 which no demands of physical force or 
 mental conditions can turn aside or in- 
 fluence. There is in that silent force 
 the quality of steel it may bend, but it 
 does not break. It may subject itself 
 to a long difficult course, but it never 
 loses sight of its purpose; therefore it 
 never fails. It is characterized by ver- 
 satility, by tact, by resourcefulness; by 
 ceaseless moves and counter-moves it 
 meets and molds the conditions neces- 
 sary to its successful exercise. It is this 
 constant pressure of will which sharpens 
 the intellect, whets the energy and pol- 
 ishes the endeavor. This constant ap- 
 plication of means to ends gives tact, 
 suggests strategy, inspires courage, 
 arouses activity and develops the un- 
 known powers within us, rounding them 
 out and shaping them to its purpose. 
 
 [7] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 Failure is the relaxation of this silent 
 pressure. It is the evidence that the 
 connection between resolution and desire 
 has been broken. Failure is not an ex- 
 ternal condition; it is an internal one. 
 It is a condition of the mind. The com- 
 mon error made by most people who fail 
 is that they mistake desire for purpose ; 
 the emotion or impulse for the steadfast 
 unwavering course of action which alone 
 translates desire into accomplishment. 
 They do not vision with clearness that 
 since external conditions yield to the 
 power of the mind, it is to themselves, 
 their own attitude and mental control 
 that they must look. Mental resolve 
 must control and develop the action 
 which brings and makes possible 
 achievement. Its strength and the 
 fullness of its measure are determined 
 by the thoroughness with which the 
 active forces at our command are made 
 to respond to its dictates. 
 
 The dreamy desires of an idle brain 
 are not more an achieving purpose than 
 the vapor from a simmering pot is the 
 steam power of modern material civili- 
 zation. They must both be confined, di- 
 rected, and energized; in the one case 
 
 [8] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 by the heat of enthusiasm as in the other 
 by that of fuel. Achieving purpose is the 
 silent force of mental power, which, once 
 formed and put into action, never ceases 
 until its object is obtained. To such a 
 purpose every power of the mind is at 
 command. Such a purpose calls for all 
 the resources and influence of enthu- 
 siasm. It calls for all the patience, all 
 the perseverance, all the characteristic 
 energy, all the indomitable force within 
 one. 
 
 Such a purpose goes further. It points 
 out what these forces are and how they 
 may be obtained and developed. It 
 teaches us that perseverance is the first 
 element of success; that labor is a 
 condition which underlies success. It 
 teaches us to be ceaseless in our appli- 
 cation. It teaches us to concentrate our 
 thoughts and bring every energy to bear ; 
 to call up and gather about us every 
 mental force that can add to our effort 
 or aid in its accomplishment. It is the 
 power that permits no limit to be placed 
 on the resources and measures which are 
 to be drawn upon. It is boundless in its 
 suggestions, unceasing in its promptings 
 and inexhaustible in its patience and en- 
 
 [9] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 durance. It is a power which makes us 
 grasp with a firmer hold. It is a power 
 which compels us to greater preparation, 
 greater thoroughness. It points out all 
 the difficulties, obstacles and discourage- 
 ments, and indicates the method of at- 
 tacking them. It is at once a stimu- 
 lator and a generator of energy, vitality 
 and force; at the same time skillfully 
 directing resources, and concentrating 
 them where they will do the most good. 
 
 A second law of this Power of Mental 
 Demand is that its supply is illimitable ; 
 it increases with use ; it responds to the 
 demands made upon it. To demand res- 
 olutely is at once to increase the power 
 of achievement. It is to widen one's 
 horizon. It is the first certain step to 
 the absolute control of the thing desired. 
 
 Napoleon said: " Fortune is a fickle 
 jade and I will demand everything of 
 her." The Power of Mental Demand 
 spurns frugal use. Like the wanton it 
 yields only to insistent prodigality. To 
 waste is to increase it; to husband is 
 to waste it. 
 
 To demand resolutely is the first step. 
 This is apparent in the lives of all great 
 achievers. In their achievement you will 
 
 [10] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 find an effort wholly beyond themselves, 
 an aim higher than they were cognizant 
 of, a courage, pluck, perseverance, bear- 
 ing, resoluteness, the extent and depth 
 of which they themselves did not know 
 and the very volume and momentum of 
 which carried them beyond the begin- 
 nings of their ambitions. 
 
 There can be no limit on the power of 
 achievement except that put upon it by 
 desire. Desire makes possible that 
 which without it would be impossible. 
 It makes every great force subservient, 
 and if requiring modification or shaping, 
 it shapes it. It seems an unreal power 
 because intangible; yet it is the might- 
 iest power in the world. It is the one 
 power that can never be subjected to 
 any condition, any restraint or any in- 
 fluence, except it come from the will, the 
 desire creating it. 
 
 We see a type of this power in Nature. 
 The vital purpose of the plant is to re- 
 produce itself. If conditions are favor- 
 able, it does this in an unhurried way, 
 affluent of foilage, flower and fruit. If 
 conditions are unfavorable, it summons 
 every latent power. Demanding the ut- 
 most of its vital power, no conditions of 
 
 tin 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 impoverished soil, of drought or expos- 
 ure short of absolute annihilation can 
 prevent the maturity of seed. 
 
 In the animal world we find similar 
 illustrations. In Hawaii the soil is lack- 
 ing in bone building materials. And in 
 these Islands there are frequent in- 
 stances among cattle feeding chiefly in 
 the mountainous pasture lands where na- 
 tive grasses are their only food, where 
 the mother cow gives birth to a strong, 
 healthy calf, only to die of weakness her- 
 self because she has given up the ma- 
 terial of her own bones in order to sup- 
 ply the needs of her offspring ; so strong 
 is this demand that the law of her being 
 be fulfilled. 
 
 In nature we see perfect results only 
 where this indomitable law, this power 
 of demand does exist. 
 
 Just so does this mental demand bring, 
 through the brain, a direction and con- 
 trol of conditions, opportunities, time 
 and all the forces within us in the meas- 
 ure in which they are needed to accom- 
 plish the most. 
 
 Too much importance cannot be at- 
 tached to the strength of this desire, for 
 if allowed to falter, the current that con- 
 
 [12] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 nects cause and effect is broken. There 
 is a lack of fidelity to purpose. The aim 
 of life is lost. 
 
 It is very necessary in every under- 
 taking that this desire be first estab- 
 lished and recognized and that it be 
 planted on a foundation so strong that 
 the element of doubt never creeps in. 
 If it waver but for a moment its force 
 is lost for a time and is very hard to 
 regain. It calls for steadfastness of the 
 highest order. It calls for meeting the 
 conditions in life in a way that will con- 
 tribute to your best physical condition, 
 in order that you may be able to respond 
 with the full measure of your powers to 
 every demand of your undertaking. 
 
 This Power of Mental Demand is not 
 a visionary one. It is a potent force, 
 which, if you call upon it when you are 
 discouraged, will give you hope. If you 
 call upon it when you are in doubt, it 
 will reassure you. If you call upon it 
 when you are uncertain, it will indicate 
 your course. If you call upon it when 
 you fear, it will give you courage. 
 
 It is the motive power which pushes 
 forward and sustains the methods and 
 energies necessary to the achievement of 
 
 [13] 
 
POWEB OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 purpose. It is the constant companion 
 on which you can rely for that kind of 
 advice, that kind of support which re- 
 sponds to your need in exact quantity 
 and kind. It is that silent associate 
 which has made achievement a certainty. 
 It is the store-house of your accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 It commands all the talent, all the en- 
 ergy, all the thought, all the purpose 
 necessary to accomplishment. It informs 
 the hand and the brain what tools to use 
 and how to use them. It makes you 
 master of the situation. It gives you 
 that assurance which comes from the 
 sense of adequacy. With every added 
 atom of energy that you throw into this 
 demand, you strengthen the brain cen- 
 ters, you draw to you every external 
 force contributing to mental power. Did 
 you ever realize the power of this re- 
 solve when you wanted to make some 
 one understand you without speaking to 
 him? Have you ever thought resolutely 
 and intently on a subject, and then writ- 
 ten a letter, only to find the recipient 
 of that letter was impressed with the 
 same subject, in your trend, before your 
 letter was received? Have you ever been 
 
 [14] 
 
POWEB OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 in a room and thought earnestly and in- 
 tently on a certain subject and had your 
 companion turn around and speak to 
 you on the subject, voicing your very 
 thoughts? Have you ever desired 
 greatly to see a person and have him 
 in a few hours walk in without being 
 sent for? 
 
 These things are neither accidents 
 nor coincidences. They are too fre- 
 quent and uniform in their relation to 
 the putting forth of this thought effort. 
 The power seems absolute. The out- 
 come is sure. The forces operate with 
 singular constancy. They are not a 
 supernatural power. Perhaps they are 
 but a higher development of the brain. 
 They are the achievement of a strong, 
 resolute determination. 
 
 They are among the first evidence of 
 a growing strength, of a possibility, of 
 a force within one's self greater than 
 the physical force. If you have not ex- 
 perienced them to their full limit it may 
 be because you have not recognized them, 
 because you have not seen them, because 
 you have not associated with them in- 
 timately enough. 
 
 [15] 
 
POWER OF MENTAL DEMAND 
 
 With their first experience will come a 
 foreseeing of the achievement that has 
 always been before you but never clearly 
 visualized. They are subtle, though 
 definite and keen powers. Who can tell 
 their extent? 
 
 Make this mental demand on yourself 
 without flinching. Call for that out of 
 yourself which will command success, 
 which will compel results. Make your 
 demand and anticipate its fulfillment. 
 Eespond to the calls of your intelligence. 
 Demand grows with the effort to in- 
 crease it, and power with demand. 
 These are the laws of the Power of 
 Mental Demand. It grows with its use. 
 We are what we determine to be. We 
 are the creatures of destiny; but our 
 destiny is within us. It must be 
 achieved by our own effort. The means 
 of achievement is in the Power of Mental 
 Demand. 
 
 [16] 
 
WEALTH 
 
WEALTH 
 
 K:JHES obtained under proper 
 conditions represent not mere- 
 ly an accumulation; they de- 
 velop and broaden our mental 
 and moral forces. That love of money 
 which is the root of all evil is the covet- 
 ousness of avarice, the love of money 
 for its own sake. In the acquisition of 
 money from this motive there is no 
 growth of larger and better power, no 
 uplift, no rising to a wider vision. 
 
 Everything that is of value as a force 
 is capable of benefit or harm. The force 
 of the mind can be directed either for 
 evil or for good. Eeverie and rest can 
 easily degenerate into laziness and 
 brainless, dreamy longings ; or they can 
 be directed and utilized for the purpose 
 of re-creating present forces and draw- 
 ing to us those that are beneficial. 
 Beneficent water may become a de- 
 structive force; fire, the most vital agent 
 in human comfort and refinement, may 
 become a scourge. 
 
 The acquisition of riches, if they are 
 taken unjustly from others, or if they 
 
 [19] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 have their origin in covetousness, are de- 
 structive of the best, like all other mis- 
 used powers. If riches flow through 
 proper channels, they have the greatest 
 possible power for good. In modern 
 life they make possible all the great 
 achievements. Wealth cannot indeed 
 buy us friends, but it is a means of in- 
 troduction by which we can gain valu- 
 able friendships. 
 
 Wealth is not a universal nor an in- 
 fallible measure of success ; but it points 
 the way and furnishes the means. It is 
 both an incentive and a goal. In the 
 usual and ordinary walks of life it is 
 an essential concomitant of a high grade 
 success. The life is more than meat and 
 the body than raiment. But life is poor 
 without these. 
 
 There is a benefit in travel, in being 
 able to command good things, in being 
 able to entertain your friends, to gather 
 about you those influences which add to 
 your own forces. 
 
 A taste for the luxurious, if it stimu- 
 lates endeavor, may be your most ef- 
 fective virtue. To dress meanly, to be 
 surrounded with cheap furnishings, to 
 be situated so that the eye falls con- 
 
 [20] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 stantly on that which is repulsive to it, 
 are depressing to a refined spirit, and 
 destructive of vital forces. To be con- 
 stantly deprived of enjoyment, to long 
 for that which is native to you, and 
 which you cannot possess because you 
 cannot afford it, to be obliged to shun 
 your desirable friends because you can- 
 not meet them on equal terms and en- 
 tertain them, to deny yourself those 
 pleasures in which you find your recrea- 
 tion and recuperative forces, is to live 
 a narrow, starved, cramped existence 
 which stifles all that is best within you. 
 Eefinement, high ideals, high achieve- 
 ments are greatly affected by their sur- 
 roundings and by the inspiration which 
 comes from perfect contentment and a 
 condition favorable to their growth. It 
 is just as impossible to rear healthy and 
 normal children in close rooms with a 
 stifling atmosphere, poor nourishment, 
 and restricted opportunities as it is to 
 develop ideas, conceptions, great plans, 
 and high-spirited accomplishments un- 
 der starved mental conditions. The 
 higher refinements come to those having 
 a reasonable amount of leisure; you do 
 
 [21] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 not get the elegance of life from ex- 
 cessive and incessant toil. 
 
 That riches are misused, just as all 
 other force powers are, is true ; but their 
 misuse is not the consequence of their 
 existence; neither does it diminish their 
 power for good. 
 
 It is essential to have everything 
 about us just as neat, just as at- 
 tractive, just as tasteful, just as health- 
 ful and as inspiring in its influence as 
 possible. It is injurious to have things 
 look mean, contracted, unpleasant, un- 
 congenial or undesirable. Strong char- 
 acters have surmounted all difficulties 
 and risen to a point where they are 
 able to surround themselves with these 
 helpful influences; and from that time 
 on they achieve still greater things. At 
 the same time, they would have accom- 
 plished still greater things if their op- 
 portunities had been greater, and if the 
 conditions surrounding them had sooner 
 expanded their forces. It is necessary 
 in all this thought to keep constantly in 
 mind that the misuse of forces must not 
 be construed as a characteristic of the 
 forces. 
 
 [22] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 Men of active achievement in all ages 
 have almost invariably been compara- 
 tively rich or financially prosperous; 
 they have been at least men of large 
 earning capacity. Washington, Morris, 
 Hancock, Adams, revolutionary heroes, 
 D 'Israeli, Gladstone, Cavour, Bismark, 
 Gambetta, European statesmen of un- 
 challenged accomplishment are exam- 
 ples. Asquith and Lloyd George of 
 England and Eoosevelt, La Follette and 
 Bryan of America, all men whose effort 
 and achievement have been along lines 
 claimed to be for the benefit of the un- 
 privileged, are no less examples in point. 
 Their wealth, or what is potentially the 
 same thing, their earning power, freed 
 them from that physical drudgery which 
 often chains up or destroys one-half of 
 the achievements of great lives. 
 
 High ideals are made more possible 
 of realization by favorable conditions. 
 Wealth is the consequence of achieve- 
 ments which are the outgrowth under 
 favorable circumstances of a conception 
 based on the possibility of its achieve- 
 ment. Wealth is not the consequence 
 of industry, but the consequence of a 
 high conception which is followed by a 
 
 [23] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 high quality of effort. Thousands of 
 people are industrious but they never 
 acquire wealth. The essential is that 
 industry shall be applied to a high con- 
 ception, to a high ideal, to a high pos- 
 sibility; and this possibility will not 
 grow out of mean conditions any more 
 than purity will grow out of vice. In- 
 dustry without the use of the mental 
 forces on a high plane devotes its life 
 to labor of the humblest sort; it saws 
 wood; it carries bricks; it shovels coal; 
 it repairs railway tracks; it builds 
 roads; it does a thousand and one 
 things, useful but not calling for de- 
 veloping effort, which go to make up 
 a laborer's life. 
 
 High mental forces guide the enter- 
 prises in which common labor is ex- 
 pended. It provides the man of low or 
 unawakened mentality with the oppor- 
 tunities of sustenance. It opens up 
 mines; it markets the product of the 
 mine. It conceives and builds, giving 
 occupation to the artisan. 
 
 Mere saving does not bring wealth. 
 Thousands scrimp and economize all 
 their lives; they squander when they 
 think they save; they spend more vital- 
 
 [24] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 ity, energy, and effort in saving than 
 in earning; they associate with people 
 and have entertainments and surround- 
 ings which are not calculated to develop 
 the best there is in them, or to bring 
 about the high grade of force which 
 makes every effort more potential ; they 
 narrow their outlook and restrict their 
 efforts and therefore their living is an 
 extravagance and not an economy. All 
 their acts are thus devoid of judgment, 
 are not the consequence of well-stimu- 
 lated, well-fed mental forces, and con- 
 sequently their investments are unfortu- 
 nate. They put their money where it is 
 insecure and is lost. You can call to 
 mind any number of cases of that kind. 
 They make the mistake of devoting all 
 their energies to labor, giving no time 
 to recreation, rest or reverie. The con- 
 sequence is, they do not see one-half of 
 the opportunities of life; they do not 
 get the best from their efforts. "The 
 destruction of the poor is their pov- 
 erty," their poverty of vision, of out- 
 look, of desire. "Poor folks have poor 
 ways." 
 
 The men of wealth and great achieve- 
 ments do not, as a rule, spend their lives 
 
 [25] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 in detail and hard physical labor. They 
 reflect much; their actions are the 
 consequence of deliberate, concentrated 
 forces, whose power is raised by favor- 
 able surroundings. 
 
 Few of the old maxims for gaining 
 wealth are sound in this day, if they 
 ever were. The requirement of the pres- 
 ent day is that the mental forces be 
 in the finest accord with the require- 
 ments of achievement; that every sur- 
 rounding shall exercise a favorable 
 influence. 
 
 Wealth can secure these surroundings 
 and conditions. It is therefore, an emi- 
 nent aid to great success. As a power 
 for good, wealth is a factor of tremend- 
 ous importance. It is not the unin- 
 flueritial solicitor who goes from door 
 to door who accomplishes the most good 
 for charity. It is the men of power and 
 influence, the men of wealth who can 
 and do surround themselves with every- 
 thing advantageous to successful control 
 and command, and who can direct that 
 command to good ends. 
 
 Your thoughts are a force; they are 
 an absolute power. If you earnestly 
 desire wealth by right means that de- 
 
 [26] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 sire will draw to you all the proper 
 forces which assist in its acquisition. If 
 these thoughts and forces are for good ; 
 if they are for the purpose of acquiring 
 wealth that you may enjoy it, but not 
 hoard it up ; in a word, if the desire for 
 wealth is for the good it can effect, it 
 will accomplish that purpose; every in- 
 fluence and every associated force will 
 be for good. Your success, desired and 
 prosecuted on proper lines, will bring 
 good to every one with whom you come 
 in contact. It will give employment to 
 those about you ; will provide sustenance 
 for their families; will bring health 
 where ill-health has been. It will give 
 you the power to extend succor to those 
 who are in need. It will give you the 
 power and the means with which to ex- 
 tend the good work and forces which 
 bring about better conditions among 
 those needing and deserving them. In 
 a word, it not only makes possible your 
 own success, but in proportion as you 
 succeed, does it also bring with it 
 opportunities for accomplishing good 
 which without success would be abso- 
 lutely out of your reach. 
 
 [27] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 Biches, to some extent, are, therefore, 
 not only a necessity for your own self 
 and for the bringing to bear those con- 
 ditions which are favorable to your suc- 
 cess and to your greater achievements, 
 but they also bring to you mental and 
 physical forces for good. They add to 
 your power for achieving good in all 
 lines in proportion as you are success- 
 ful. If you think of nothing but poverty, 
 you will attract poverty to you, since 
 the force of your thoughts attract their 
 kind. If you conceive every effort to 
 be a failure, if you fear its non-success, 
 then you are attracting all the elements 
 of failure to you. The thoughts and 
 mental forces which you have within you 
 will always attract those elements kin- 
 dred to them. 
 
 Suitable physical surroundings and 
 conditions tend to induce the mental 
 state which attracts those forces to you. 
 If you allow yourself to feel that you 
 must always be surrounded by poverty 
 and hardships and difficulties, you cre- 
 ate the state of mind which induces the 
 forces sustaining these conditions. If 
 you doubt the correctness of this fact, 
 take a fairly wide ditch which you can 
 
 [28] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 just jump over; make up your mind 
 positively that you are going to land 
 just a foot short of the bank. You won't 
 be disappointed; you will land in the 
 ditch. 
 
 If you keep earnestly desiring success, 
 and with it its riches, you will not only 
 be bringing all the mental forces to bear, 
 but you will be turning every external 
 condition as far as lies in your power 
 to that end; you will be creating an 
 absolute demand for it. Whenever you 
 aspire and resolve to reach for some- 
 thing higher, you make a practical radi- 
 cal step towards it. No achievement is 
 possible without first an ideal, and just 
 as an ideal is the forerunner of an 
 achievement, just so is a desire, a reso- 
 lution and a mental force demanding a 
 certain condition the first step towards 
 its achievement. It is the forming of 
 the aspiration, the desire which insures 
 achievement, just as the arranging of 
 a house for the reception of a guest 
 must be with a view to secure his com- 
 fort. 
 
 Environment has a greater influence 
 than hereditary. We know what civili- 
 zation has done, and the forces which 
 
 [29] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 have evolved the present human being 
 out of a savage. We know that desire 
 has produced fine, shapely trotting 
 horses of enormous speed ; and we know 
 further that all the detail in effecting 
 these conditions has made them rapid 
 and certain in proportion as conditions 
 favorable to them could be placed about 
 them. It has often been said that when 
 a person has money, it is easy for him 
 to make money. In nine-tenths of the 
 cases, it is not the money which he pos- 
 sesses that enables him to make more, 
 but it is the opportunities, mental and 
 physical which the money enables him to 
 find, and the power developed in him in 
 acquiring the money he has, that brings 
 him the greater power to further ac- 
 cumulate money. 
 
 Christ was not poor; he could bring 
 to himself the best that the world held; 
 he could multiply resources at will; he 
 could command ten legions of angels, 
 Though when he entered upon his min- 
 istry he renounced the acquisition of 
 wealth, he had, through the power of 
 his personality, the literal command of 
 all things needful, all physical, material 
 things. And this power he gave to his 
 
 [30] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 disciples when lie sent them forth, so 
 that they were supplied with food, rai- 
 ment and shelter. He attracted men to 
 him so that they gave the needs, the 
 associations and the joys of life; and he 
 was numbered with the rich in his death. 
 The achievement of any end is made 
 possible by the forces of the mental de- 
 mand, which in turn can come only as 
 a consequence of surroundings, mental 
 and physical, which make the conception 
 possible. Every achievement has its 
 first existence in a conception. The man 
 who made a balloon first conceived the 
 possibility of rising in the air. The 
 man who digs for gold first conceives 
 the possibility of its being in the ground. 
 The man who accomplishes any purpose 
 must first have its conception in his 
 mind. In proportion as our conditions 
 and surroundings (mental and physical) 
 are of a high order favorable to high 
 conceptions, in that proportion will they 
 come to us. It therefore follows that 
 the desire for wealth, that the possession 
 of wealth, and the enjoyment of every 
 good thing which it brings, are essential 
 to the world's highest achievements, and 
 that under these conditions and influ 
 
 [31] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 ences, the greatest possibilities become 
 realities. Its power for good is im- 
 measurably greater in its outcome than 
 its power for evil; people who create 
 fortunes do not generally misuse them. 
 
 The thought or force which comes 
 from one person to another is as real 
 as a current of air or electricity. This 
 force for good or evil acts upon those 
 with whom you come in contact. If an- 
 other 's thoughts are richer than yours, 
 if he has more foresight, better judg- 
 ment, more grit, more resolution, more 
 executive force, more settled purpose, 
 more resolute methods, those qualities 
 will be added to your mental forces. It 
 is your duty to give back as good a 
 thought as you receive; if you do not 
 there is an inequality of exchange; if 
 your thought is equal in quality to the 
 one you receive, it is a mutually just 
 exchange; it is a fair business transac- 
 tion. 
 
 He who gets all he can from others, 
 without giving a fair equivalent in re- 
 turn, cultivates a meanness, a selfishness, 
 that counteracts the good of his acquisi- 
 tion. This lack of a fair exchange is 
 the basis of mental, spiritual and physi- 
 
 [32] 
 
WEALTH 
 
 cal poverty in every station of life. 
 If we take from others, we thereby ac- 
 knowledge our obligation to give to 
 others, and we cannot make any ap- 
 proach to perfection and to the strength 
 which perfection brings, unless we dis- 
 charge every obligation of our lives. Be- 
 fore the tree can give us its rich and 
 sustaining fruit, it must draw from the 
 air and the earth the materials with 
 which it may do so; and in the process 
 of drawing and using and developing 
 these materials for beneficent uses, it 
 grows stronger. It has robbed the air 
 and the earth of nothing that they could 
 not spare, and it has added to its own 
 strength and the wealth of the world. 
 
 Wealth is not a universal nor an 
 infallible measure of success. But it 
 points the way and furnishes the means. 
 It is both an incentive and a goal. 
 
 [33] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND 
 THEIR VALUE 
 
ASSOCIATES AND 
 THEIR VALUE 
 
 A)CiATEs have two values, an en- 
 riching value and a recreation 
 value. One kind of associate 
 gives us something we do not 
 ourselves possess. The other enables us 
 to relax and forget; to get absolute 
 mental rest by the diversion they offer ; 
 the change of mental bend they give. 
 
 It is quite as important to build one's 
 self to re-create as it is to be striving 
 for helpful gain every moment. An even 
 balance of relaxation and achievement 
 go well hand in hand. All the great 
 leaders of the world have been men of 
 incisive methods of recreation. Because 
 T like to play golf does not mean that 
 **olf is good recreation for some one 
 3lse. Each must do the thing which 
 gives them recreation. Eecreation is a 
 different thing to different people, but, 
 in almost every case associates have 
 some relation to it. 
 
 Associates who have ideals, and plans, 
 and purposes with which we are in sym- 
 
 [37] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIB VALUE 
 
 pathy or which are parallel or kindred 
 to ours develop in us a keener zest and 
 the strength that transforms them into 
 achievement. The combined flame of 
 purpose creates a stronger draft and an 
 intenser flame. 
 
 It is just as possible to get benefit 
 from an associate, even without effort, 
 as it is to attract the life giving elements 
 from the air. 
 
 But associates to have an enriching 
 value must have positive qualities. They 
 must have something to give of force or 
 accomplishment. That is why common- 
 place people and commonplace environ- 
 ment, and the people and things that 
 bore are not helpful. They may be 
 harmless in their way, just as people are 
 harmless as associates who are uncer- 
 tain in their action, undetermined in 
 their methods and unforceful in their 
 attitude. They may be harmless in their 
 way but they are apt to create a vacillat- 
 ing condition of mind, and degeneracy 
 of concentration and of habits of achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 Thoughts are companions. They in- 
 fluence and lead us. They shape our 
 actions and the tendency of our effort, 
 
 [38] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIB VALUE 
 
 and the impelling forces which are about 
 us. Unfriendly and harmful thoughts, 
 if persisted in, eventually subjugate the 
 entire mind and control its whole action. 
 In the production of the most deadly 
 poison known, the manufacturers have 
 extreme difficulty on account of the 
 proneness of the workmen to eat the 
 poison. For this reason, one man is 
 never permitted in a room alone. The 
 constant thought of its power creates a 
 desire to taste it, which, workmen say, 
 is almost irresistible. This illustrates 
 how association with an unwholesome 
 thought entirely subjugates the intelli- 
 gence, and instead of warning off the 
 danger creates an influence so strong 
 that good thoughts, thoughts that 
 would carry away from the danger, 
 have been entirely destroyed. 
 
 If you start out in the morning feeling 
 well rested, enjoying the sunshine, in 
 touch with Nature and feeling kindly 
 towards all, those are good associates 
 and have a strong and beneficial influ- 
 ence. They seem to bring to you every- 
 thing that is congenial to them, every- 
 thing that is a member of their own 
 family. If you get up feeling unrested, 
 
 [39] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 antagonistic, out of harmony with the 
 world and Nature, everything will seem 
 to go against you. Countless irritations 
 will spring up. It is this experience that 
 gave rise to the saying that "it never 
 rains but it pours." Affinities always 
 come together, it is possible to shape 
 your experiences before they arrive ; and 
 to determine their character and their 
 influence on you by the associates you 
 have in your mind and which will attract 
 their kind. 
 
 Mothers in all times have realized the 
 importance of good associates for their 
 children. They are careful not to let 
 their boys associate with those whose 
 moral tone is not good. If a boy's mind 
 runs to bad thoughts, he draws bad in- 
 fluences to him. He will become con- 
 firmed in bad ways and influence others 
 in the same direction, unless some other 
 mind acts on his with sufficient force of 
 good to counteract the evil forces at 
 work in his mind. 
 
 It is impossible to over-estimate the 
 importance of good associates. By this 
 is meant associates who have high aims, 
 noble resolutions, resolute characters; 
 those who are workers and achievers; 
 
 [40] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 those whose words help us ; those whose 
 acts and influence stimulate and increase 
 the best forces in ourselves. 
 
 The influence of associates is very sub- 
 tle, yet very powerful. We cannot afford 
 to overlook their value and seek their aid 
 any more than we can afford to overlook 
 the value of hygienic surroundings and 
 general healthful conditions. To as- 
 sociate with the courageous, the brave 
 and the ambitious, will enable us to 
 strengthen or develop those same qual- 
 ities in ourselves, and this without 
 taking away from them. Indeed, as- 
 sociation acts and reacts on the asso- 
 ciates. Helpful associations are mutu- 
 ally beneficial. 
 
 If we associate with those who have no 
 aim nor ambition in life, we are getting 
 an influence which is hurtful to us and 
 which we have to throw off before we 
 can again be at the standard at which 
 we began. It is just as impossible to 
 derive benefit from ineffectual associates 
 as it is to obtain water from a dry well. 
 We shall get from them exactly what 
 they have. Unless we want to be like 
 them, to have implanted in ourselves 
 those tendencies or forces which we find 
 
 [41] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 in them, then we should not associate 
 with them. It is not of morals alone 
 that this is trne. It is as unalterably 
 and as effectively true of the forces 
 which influence our business career, 
 which have to deal with our courage, 
 with our action, with high ideals, with 
 lofty aspirations, with a love for work, 
 with the aims of an achieving disposi- 
 tion; with the possession of the charac- 
 teristics of patience, energy and quiet, 
 resolute force. All business men and 
 women should make it a part of their 
 business and a part of their career to 
 choose such associates as will be help- 
 ful to them. Such associates will be 
 restful and yet have a power for good. 
 It must be borne in mind that the 
 accumulation of forces of power never 
 ceases. It is said that the mind is not 
 at rest even when we sleep ; that it goes 
 out on lines laid out for it by the as- 
 sociates and thoughts of the day and 
 gathers to itself other powers, where it 
 can find them, which conform to the con- 
 dition, to the attitude which it is in. In 
 our waking moments it is doubly true; 
 these forces are piling up for themselves 
 the elements which they are to spend. 
 
 [42] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 It rests with us to determine what the 
 character of these forces will be just as 
 completely as it rests with us to deter- 
 mine where we shall go. 
 
 Thought is an unseen force and is ab- 
 sorbed, developed, or given out uncon- 
 sciously. You are bound to feel, to judge 
 and to experience to some extent the 
 same as the person with whom you as- 
 sociate. You are influenced in a greater 
 or lesser degree by that person. It is 
 probably different from mesmeric power, 
 but it is certainly a very definite power. 
 It exists to such an extent that people 
 often act contrary to their own desires 
 when under the influence of the thought 
 of others. If they are refined you will 
 become more so. If they are vulgar or 
 common it will lower your tone. Your 
 judgment, your motives, your whole na- 
 ture will be injuriously influenced by 
 them. You easily recall associates who 
 irritate, fret and worry you. You re- 
 member the unaccounted for depression, 
 the sea of trouble you feel you are in 
 when you are with them. You are 
 in an attitude that makes you suffer, 
 and you are radically conscious of it. 
 You take no pleasure in their com- 
 
 [43] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIE VALUE 
 
 pany and you avoid it when you can. 
 There are others whose company you 
 as consciously or as unconsciously seek. 
 You know that you are at rest when 
 you are with them; the time passes 
 pleasantly, and, as you probably put it, 
 "they seem to understand." The fact 
 is that it is not merely that they under- 
 stand. It is the combining of two similar 
 forces, forces that have an affinity for 
 each other. 
 
 All persons have this influence to a 
 greater or less degree upon one another. 
 It is not always so definite and realizable 
 as in the two illustrations just used. 
 But it exists and your observation and 
 thought should be trained to be keenly 
 discriminating in this respect. 
 
 You recall, perhaps, that some people, 
 when they advise you, unsettle your own 
 convictions; make you uncertain as to 
 what is best to do ; they do not give you 
 any better plan, but throw doubt and 
 create obstacles in the way of the plans 
 you had in mind. Such persons are an 
 absolute hindrance. They have not ad- 
 vanced to the same degree of percep- 
 tion and judgment that you have. 
 
 [44] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 Therefore, their influence is a lowering 
 one. 
 
 The old Chinese form of Government 
 included a board of censors whose duty 
 and privilege it was to criticise or find 
 fault with any policy or method of any 
 other branch of the government, whether 
 that policy or method was merely pro- 
 posed or already put in force. But this 
 power of criticism was subject to one 
 very important requirement and respon- 
 sibility. It must always be accompan- 
 ied by a proposal or plan for a different 
 policy or method, together with reasons 
 why it was better, and a willingness to 
 take the responsibility for putting the 
 new plan or policy in operation. 
 
 In this is the basis of a good rule for 
 testing advice regarding your own plans. 
 Is the person who advises you against 
 the plans you have proposed or under- 
 taken ready to offer you different ones 
 and willing to take the responsibility of 
 their working out better than yours? 
 
 You live in the thoughts you associate 
 with. They form a part of the forces 
 which are moulding you and forming 
 your character. It is either moulding 
 a character for stronger, abler, broader, 
 
 [45] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 more courageous, more resolute achieve- 
 ment, or it is a breaking-down process, 
 which is undermining and destroying the 
 possibility of adding forces to those al- 
 ready accumulated. Its final result is 
 the character it creates. Its immediate 
 influence is the happiness which you ex- 
 perience, the contentment which you feel. 
 Associates, whether thoughts or people, 
 who irritate, fret or take the mind in any 
 channel which consumes force and vital- 
 ity, but which gives no valuable return, 
 are as harmful as a disease. It may 
 seem incongruous to liken them to con- 
 sumption, and yet consumption is but an 
 eating up of the vital powers. Harmful 
 associates are not less destructive; they 
 attack a still more important part of our 
 existence, the mental and spiritual. 
 
 Think good thoughts and they will in- 
 fluence those about you; they will influ- 
 ence those absent from you. You can 
 send to these thoughts of help, thoughts 
 of stimulation, thoughts of encourage- 
 ment, thoughts of courage, just as cer- 
 tainly as you can send them a telegraphic 
 message, expressing these thoughts. 
 
 It is just as impossible to have correct 
 methods of action with faulty methods 
 
 [46] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 of thought as it is to have a correct 
 garment if it has been badly cut. 
 Thoughts influence the judgment and 
 shape it. The experience or thought of 
 an hour does not stand alone, nor is its 
 influence confined to the thing in hand. 
 But it is the cumulative effect of all that 
 has existed before it that is applied, 
 and is its real governing and influencing 
 power. 
 
 This points out a powerful influence 
 that we can exercise in our work or busi- 
 ness. Our thoughts make and shape our 
 business. We can make them what we 
 will, and consistently train our minds 
 to keen, correct decisions, to effective 
 action, to spontaneous support. This 
 assures us an increase of power which 
 careless or indifferent thinking renders 
 impossible. Undirected thought makes 
 us and our work the victims of chance. 
 The difference is that between getting 
 exactly where we desire, and drifting 
 by accident wherever the tide or wind 
 of chance may take us. The mastery 
 of our own mind is to our career what 
 a rudder is to a ship. It is the force 
 which can direct our acts in such chan- 
 nels as we desire. 
 
 [47] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 The recognition of this fact gives us 
 a wonderful field of operation. Since we 
 can make our thoughts what we will, 
 and since we can draw to ourselves the 
 force of right thinking from others, we 
 are in a position to make up life in exact 
 conformity to our highest conception, 
 our noblest ideals, our finest desires. 
 We can have for companions the great- 
 est thoughts and thought forces that have 
 ever existed. We can bring ourselves 
 into daily and hourly association with 
 the kind of associates we want ; with the 
 power and influence that the associates 
 whom we need can bestow. We may as- 
 sociate hourly with the great leaders of 
 the day; we may be in touch with the 
 greatest achievers men of action, men 
 of varied powers and forces, who move 
 the world and rule every channel of its 
 activity. Not only may we thus select 
 our companions from the greatest and 
 ablest, and hourly associate with all that 
 is most beautiful and most forceful, but 
 we at the same time shape ourselves to 
 the end which we desire just as the tree 
 may be shaped by bringing to bear the 
 forces which will train it to the form de- 
 sired. 
 
 [48] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 The training and shaping of the career 
 as we would have it is not to be left to 
 chance. We can do what we will. We 
 may not be able to draw as largely as 
 others who have trained longer and who 
 have developed their powers of control 
 better than we. But in proportion as 
 we have exercised this power within our- 
 selves and taught ourselves to discipline 
 our forces and to train our brains, in 
 that proportion shall we achieve. 
 
 Our native condition has much to do 
 with the extent to which we can direct 
 our ends. This has, unconsciously per- 
 haps to ourselves, been working steadily 
 in the direction of its natural tendency. 
 Therefore, some of our powers will be 
 stronger in the direction we would have 
 them than others. But from the time of 
 the first recognition of control, the power 
 to control and shape is very great. 
 When we come to know the possibility 
 of this law, we for the first time under- 
 stand why "we can do what we will." 
 Our associates may be made what we 
 choose; therefore, the forming of our 
 characters, the quality and extent of our 
 growth, the limitation of our powers, 
 
 [49] 
 
ASSOCIATES AJSD THEIE VALUE 
 
 will be determined by the desires we 
 establish. 
 
 External surroundings have an influ- 
 ence on our thoughts and feelings. A 
 long stretch of blue water with its calm, 
 majestic sweep has an influence. Green 
 fields, the flowers, the trees, have an in- 
 fluence. Attractive colors, harmonious 
 arrangement have an influence. The 
 very people we meet, and their dress, 
 have an influence. Different sections of 
 cities exert different influences. There 
 is a depressing influence that only deter- 
 mination or a complete indifference can 
 withstand where suffering, want and 
 dirt are in evidence on every hand. 
 Only faith and vision can draw inspira- 
 tion or stimulating, clean, wholesome, 
 ennobling thoughts from surroundings 
 teeming with filth, and hideous with ugli- 
 ness, and where a stifling atmosphere 
 and suggestion of disease and misfor- 
 tune, and all that go with such a picture, 
 are pressed upon one. 
 
 The influence of external conditions 
 is evident when we ourselves are well 
 dressed and feel at perfect ease with 
 ourselves ; and the reverse when we are 
 poorly clad and meet some one whom we 
 
 [50] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 would not wish to see us in that state. 
 That perfect feeling of ease and re- 
 sourcefulness of which we are conscious 
 when everything about us is correct 
 and pleasing, does not come when con- 
 trary conditions exist. And so we can- 
 not overlook the fact that external 
 influences which surround us, are in 
 themselves a very strong factor in de- 
 termining and maintaining our mental 
 tone. 
 
 Shape your surroundings and your 
 contact to conditions as favorable as pos- 
 sible to the generating of contentment 
 and of good impressions on yourself. 
 Permit nothing to remain around you 
 which irritates or worries. Have those 
 things about which give you ease and 
 comfort and which gratify your tastes 
 and make your surroundings a counter- 
 part of your own self. Put them in 
 harmony with yourself, and move any- 
 thing from the room that is not in 
 harmony with you. It is just as neces- 
 sary that your surroundings be favor- 
 able to you and in harmony with your 
 tastes as that the objects before a camera 
 be suitably arranged. The camera will 
 reproduce exactly what it sees, and so 
 
 [51] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIR VALUE 
 
 will the eye reproduce in the mind and 
 the perceptions what it sees. The value 
 of selecting good surroundings cannot 
 be over-estimated. 
 
 Many business men are absolutely un- 
 able to work with any degree of com- 
 pleteness except in one spot. The little 
 sanctum devoted to efforts for develop- 
 ing plans, broadening measures and 
 reaching out and caring for great en- 
 terprises is often stowed in some remote 
 part of the building thoroughly inac- 
 cessible to invasion. Some religious or- 
 ders have rooms which are wholly 
 devoted to certain states of the mind, 
 and entered only by those who seek 
 these. They believe that the association 
 of the room itself has much to do with 
 attracting thoughts favorable to their 
 purpose. Such was the Holy of Holies 
 into which no one entered but the High 
 Priest, and he only once a year and after 
 the most exacting preparation. Some 
 believe thoughts, especially when talked 
 out in a certain room, are literally left 
 there. The more such thoughts are so 
 talked out, the more completely they are 
 left there, providing there is not the dis- 
 
 [52] 
 
ASSOCIATES AND THEIK VALUE 
 
 traction of the thought and talk of other 
 persons, different in purpose and motive. 
 
 Whether this is the literal truth or not 
 is not important in this connection. But 
 it is true that all of us require a certain 
 place, and certain conditions for accom- 
 plishing our best work. These condi- 
 tions, free from interruption, should be 
 sought when the heavy brain work of 
 your plans and purposes is to be ef- 
 fected. 
 
 Under some conditions long-reaching 
 executive thought is impossible. Every- 
 thing seems to conspire against it. You 
 say you are not in the mood for it ; the 
 fact is, your associates are not favorable 
 to it. Put yourself in a situation where 
 your associates are favorable to it and 
 you will get results you will feel that 
 you can think and work out to any 
 length. The difference will be as radical 
 as though you stepped from a cold room 
 to a warm one, or as though some person 
 antagonistic and depressing to you had 
 suddenly left the room. Put yourself 
 and your association in harmony with 
 your purpose. 
 
 [53] 
 
COURAGE 
 
COURAGE 
 
 COURAGE is the fundamental fact 
 of success. It makes us strong 
 in doing what we have re- 
 solved upon. 
 
 Courage gives persistence, banishes 
 weakness, displaces vacillation with 
 steadiness of purpose, resolves doubt. 
 It makes hesitancy and irresolution im- 
 possible. It sends us armed with confi- 
 dence on our road to success. Confidence 
 and the expectation of success draw to 
 us all the qualities and mental forces 
 which contribute to success. Courage, 
 therefore, is the vital element of success. 
 The lack of courage creates mental 
 difficulties; it constructs obstacles and 
 barriers ; it makes that seem impossible, 
 which, with the exercise of courage will 
 be entirely possible. The lack of courage 
 creates an expectation of failure, and 
 draws to us all the mental elements that 
 contribute to failure. It destroys our 
 confidence in ourselves and in our pur- 
 pose. It makes impossible that forceful, 
 resolute attitude which compels success. 
 
 [57] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 The absence of courage in its relation 
 to accomplishment is the most vital hu- 
 man defect. It is a moral vacuum which 
 draws into it all that is mean, small, 
 contemptible, shrinking, vacillating, weak- 
 ening, demoralizing and destroying. It 
 annihilates every noble impulse. 
 
 Courage creates a resolute, influential, 
 strong character, a determined will and 
 a commanding force. It secures respect 
 for our aim, and confidence and interest 
 in our purpose. Many people failing to 
 cultivate courage, wrongly ascribe their 
 failure to obtain the things they weakly 
 desire, to causes outside of themselves. 
 "We say, weakly desire, because strong 
 desire is not possible without courage. 
 A desire which resolves itself into a com- 
 mand draws out the strength of all our 
 mental forces and shapes all the physi- 
 cal conditions and the surrounding 
 influences favorable to achievement. 
 Courage dares to command. 
 
 There is nothing that will so over- 
 whelm a man with disgrace and humil- 
 iation as the lack of courage. In the 
 soldier it exposes him to every expres- 
 sion and experience of the contempt of 
 his fellows. He is despised and avoided, 
 
 [58] 
 
COUKAGE 
 
 because he is felt to lack that very qual- 
 ity which alone fits him for the soldier's 
 life or the soldier's duties the only 
 quality that can make him a soldier. So 
 in every walk of life courage for its 
 duties, for its achievements for its liv- 
 ing is so vital, that, lacking it, there 
 is no depth of contempt in which one 
 is not held by men and women of force 
 and action. There is no heritage of in- 
 famy so black as the taunt of cowardice 
 in one's forbears. 
 
 Courage is will; it is determination 
 that is unflinching. It is the power that 
 achieves. Cowardice is predetermined 
 failure. 
 
 Courage, even physical courage, is not 
 merely the absence of fear of bodily 
 harm or suffering. A stubborn animal 
 cringing and fearful of its own shadow, 
 will sometimes stand unmerciful whip- 
 ping, or be goaded into needlessly suf- 
 fering violent punishment, and yet lack 
 every principle of courage. And man in 
 his motives and actions sometimes dis- 
 plays the unintelligence of the beast. 
 
 Courage is a positive quality, a contin- 
 uing force. The effort which attempts 
 and fails, and makes no second attempt 
 
 [59] 
 
COUEAGE 
 
 is not a display of courage, but of its 
 opposite. Courage is never conquered; 
 it never gives up ; it never admits defeat ; 
 it never apologizes; it never puts the 
 blame of failure on something else. 
 Courage is persistence ; courage is pluck. 
 Courage is luck, because with courage, 
 success and the achievements we desire 
 are brought into existence wrung as it 
 were from fate or chance. 
 
 Courage is the resolution to conquer. 
 It is not a mere expression in words; 
 its characteristic expression is in action. 
 It requires courage to exercise the pa- 
 tience that gives the mental forces 
 rest, that arranges them and directs 
 them steadily, thoughtfully, deliberately. 
 Courage is the basis of intelligent action, 
 unyielding because it makes yielding un- 
 necessary by the direction and exercise 
 of all the principles which will bring 
 success. 
 
 Courage surrounds itself with success- 
 ful forces in the same way that a resolute 
 and skillful commander throws up en- 
 trenchments, establishes his lines of com- 
 munication and brings to bear all his 
 intelligence, skill and effort for the pro- 
 tection and strengthening of his position. 
 
 [60] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 Courage implies thoroughness, fore- 
 thought, deliberation, tact. Courage 
 is identified with actions rather than 
 words. Mere vaporing talk of success, 
 of application, of resolution, of stead- 
 fastness is not evidence of courage. 
 Courage is a quiet force that does not 
 talk of itself, but which never thinks of 
 victory as impossible. 
 
 The resolute, unhesitating way with 
 which a bulldog attacks is an example 
 of the brute force of courage. Yet the 
 bulldog exercises a great deal of intel- 
 ligence in his methods, not because he 
 fears for his existence, but because he 
 seeks success. He goes right to the 
 heart of things; he attacks the vital 
 part. The patience, the cunning, the 
 deliberation shown by animals of un- 
 doubted courage are substantive and 
 inseparable elements of their courage. 
 They make it an intelligent and effective 
 thing and not a mere unintelligent au- 
 tomaton. 
 
 Courage is indeed the exercise of all 
 the faculties. It brings to bear the full- 
 est intelligence and an unyielding and 
 an unceasing effort until the aim has 
 been achieved. The man who persists 
 
 [61] 
 
COUBAGB 
 
 steadfastly and resolutely in a purpose, 
 and does not relinquish it until he has 
 achieved it, exhibits a courage as high 
 and even more arduous than the soldier 
 does who risks his life in the conflict of 
 arms. It is a moral courage of a sus- 
 tained kind and requires a stronger 
 measure of personal force, oftentimes, 
 than the sudden or even heroic risk 
 of one's life or physical safety. Cour- 
 age in its highest degree is manifested 
 in persistence and energy, with calmness 
 and patience, exercised in the achieve- 
 ment of a great purpose. To be cour- 
 ageous means both to dare and to do. 
 The antithesis of courage is fear 
 cowardice. The man without courage 
 is fearful, a coward, craven. These 
 terms all express a particular manifes- 
 tation of the lack or absence of courage 
 a manifestation recognized and held 
 in contempt or despised. Fear makes 
 you doubt the likelihood of the success 
 of your enterprise. It weakens your 
 arm for the blow. It narrows your 
 mental forces. It draws to you all that 
 is weak and vacillating. It creates doubt 
 where doubt should not exist. It leads 
 you to apologize and explain, first to 
 
 [62] 
 
COUBAGE 
 
 yourself, and then to others, why you do 
 not succeed. It drives you to reason 
 yourself into believing that it is your 
 love of luxury, of comfort, of friends, 
 or something else which compel you to 
 abandon your effort before you have 
 achieved your end. A slave to fear, 
 you complain of conditions, you whine 
 at fate. It is fear which prompts you 
 to belittle others in the hope that thereby 
 your own lack of courage will not be 
 discovered. 
 
 The harboring of fear is destruction 
 of the power of putting forth effective 
 effort. It paralyzes the exercise of 
 force. It unconsciously but subtly im- 
 presses itself on every one with whom 
 you come in contact. These thought 
 forces, whether of fear or courage are 
 just as potent as words expressed. It 
 is not always possible to analyze or even 
 to demonstrate these thought forces 
 these thought influences of fear or 
 courage. But they are felt and have 
 their conscious or unconscious influence 
 and effect on those about you a potent 
 influence in spite of yourself. 
 
 The man or woman who says, "I will 
 go and try, but do not expect to sue- 
 
 [63] 
 
COTJKAGB 
 
 ceed," cultivates all the force of fear 
 and abandons all the force of courage. 
 Such a one prepares for failure just as 
 absolutely as another prepares for suc- 
 cess. It is just as impossible to be strong 
 and courageous, resolute and determined 
 in effort when one is constantly saying 
 to himself, "I cannot do this, I must fail, 
 it is impossible," as it is to really desire 
 and yet make no effort to accomplish. 
 Cowardice in the business make-up is 
 the only real obstacle of serious mo- 
 ment that successful people have to con- 
 tend with. When it is once removed 
 when courage takes its place every 
 stroke adds to our strength and brings 
 accomplishment visibly nearer. Cour- 
 age saves the friction of fretting; it 
 gives freedom from worry ; it gives con- 
 tent to the mind because it promises, 
 and its promises are valid and certain. 
 Fear destroys the high spirit, the am- 
 bition, the commanding power that go 
 out from us, shaping and forming that 
 which is worthy, and stimulating and 
 inspiring aid to it from others. Fear 
 or courage is the element which deter- 
 mines the fate of our fortunes. The 
 decision as to which it shall be rests 
 
 [64] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 with ourselves. Courage includes res- 
 olution and brings about the fulfillment 
 of the things resolved upon. No slavery 
 is so absolute as the slavery of fear ; no 
 shackles so heavy as those which fear 
 forges. No losses are so heavy as those 
 which fear piles up. 
 
 Courage is the casting out of fear. 
 Fear and Courage are the determining 
 influences in both individual and world 
 progress. The courageous unhesitat- 
 ingly push forward where others trem- 
 ble, falter and hesitate. 
 
 Fear is a negative force; courage a 
 positive influence. Fear robs you of 
 every manly instinct, and the power to 
 think and to feel noble impulses. It 
 condemns you to associate with all that 
 is weak, poor and undesirable. Under 
 the slavery of fear you cannot think be- 
 cause thought involves its translation 
 into vital action; and impulses are only 
 noble as there goes with them a belief 
 in their accomplishment. 
 
 Clear, determinate thinking is of the 
 highest value, but is only possible to the 
 courageous mind. Avoid chosen asso- 
 ciation with people weak and uncertain 
 in thought, for they will be incoherent 
 
 [65] 
 
COUEAGE 
 
 in purpose and doubtful in resolve. 
 Avoid it likewise with those who lack 
 courage, who are hesitating, doubtful, 
 uncertain in their action those who fear 
 to push out. Be resolute in following 
 your own plans. Have the courage of 
 your convictions. When you once start 
 out do not allow yourself to be changed 
 from your course either by the doubting 
 argument of others or by the timorous 
 influences of your own mind. If these 
 fear-thoughts come to you, these courage 
 destroying elements, throw them off. 
 
 Make it a practice never to think of 
 anything unfavorable to your under- 
 taking. Say to yourself, ' * I will be brave 
 and I will accomplish this thing; I will 
 think of nothing else but its accomplish- 
 ment; I will refuse to think of it at all 
 in connection or association with the 
 thought of fear or doubt of its outcome; 
 I will keep constantly in mind the re- 
 solve, 'I must be successful, I will be 
 successful;' whenever I am tempted by 
 doubt I will drown it ; I will be superior 
 to it; I will call upon my mental forces 
 for the strength of courage, for the 
 power of persistence; I will be successful 
 because I desire to be, because I have re- 
 
 [66] 
 
COUKAGE 
 
 solved to be, because I refuse to be un- 
 successful; I know the power of my 
 courage and I will use it; I have con- 
 fidence in that power and I will rely 
 upon it." 
 
 Do not be influenced by proverbs or 
 old saws. There is one to justify every 
 weakness. They are like the old fash- 
 ioned candle extinguisher. You can very 
 tidily and decently put out a candle with 
 one, but you can't light it with one. Bear 
 in mind that others cannot know your 
 business as well as you do yourself; they 
 cannot know your mind nor the powers 
 and purposes in it ; they cannot measure 
 your ability to achieve because they do 
 not know the forces at your command. 
 "What they cannot do, or fear to attempt 
 is no measure of what can be done nor 
 of your determination to do. The worth 
 while achievements of every day life 
 everywhere are accomplished after it has 
 been demonstrated that they cannot be 
 done. You are a force and a law in your- 
 self. The moment you allow anyone else 
 to influence you against your own good 
 thought, that moment you lose control 
 of the element of faith in yourself which 
 inspires courage and carries with it all 
 
 [67] 
 
COUBAGE 
 
 those forces which courage creates. Just 
 the moment you allow yourself to be 
 swerved in your course you begin acting 
 on another person's thought, the motives 
 and mainsprings of which you do not 
 control. You surrender to his direction. 
 You desert the courage and resolution 
 of your own mind which alone are the 
 forces that can sustain and carry you to 
 achievement. You accept the direction 
 of his, though it counsels fear and in- 
 vites failure. By permitting yourself to 
 be influenced in your purpose by another 
 person who cannot judge as you can, you 
 permit yourself to be weighted down 
 with an influence which cannot judge 
 of the conditions that exist because it is 
 impossible for it to know that most 
 vital and important condition of all, 
 the strength of your courage and deter- 
 mination. 
 
 Be absolutely free from fear of every 
 kind fear of want, fear of poverty, fear 
 of sickness, fear of anything. Such fear 
 saps your strength at the very outset of 
 effort. It arises from doubt of ability 
 in yourself of the lowest quality. Yet it 
 is fear of these very things that causes 
 more failure and inefficiency than any- 
 
 [68] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 thing else, because it has become the 
 fixed habit of thought of millions of men 
 and women. This fear-thought is borne 
 down on us from every direction. Fear 
 of all kinds must be banished from your 
 mind. Fear of criticism of imperfect 
 methods destroys the value that such 
 criticism might have for you. 
 
 Fear has neither good nor noble re- 
 sults. It does not relieve your mind 
 from strain or labor. On the contrary 
 it fills it with worry and fretfulness. 
 It destroys mental forces which are of 
 the greatest use to you. It does not 
 stimulate you to action but paralyzes 
 energy. It does not surround you with 
 those physical conditions which are fav- 
 orable to success, since it makes the ac- 
 cumulation of wealth impossible. It does 
 not surround you with the opportunities 
 for extending your influence, since it 
 weakens or destroys in you the very 
 basis of influence and power. 
 
 Fear is the most contemptible, the 
 most despicable, the meanest opponent 
 we have to contend with. It hasn't even 
 the qualities of sin to commend it, for 
 it does not give even passing or tempor- 
 ary pleasure or gratification. Yet fear 
 
 [69] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 is very pervasive in its quality, and in 
 its influence on human life. We ought 
 therefore to resolutely determine to keep 
 it out of our existence. The freer we 
 can keep our minds from these destruc- 
 tive influences, the stronger we shall be 
 in every respect. Fret and worry are the 
 moth and rust that corrupt our strength, 
 and fear is the thief that breaks through 
 to steal our purpose. Whenever you find 
 fear trying to gain an entrance repulse 
 it by a resolute attitude of mind and a 
 strengthening of purpose. 
 
 The power of the individual to accom- 
 plish is only faintly recognized by the 
 majority of men and women. It is only 
 a man or woman here and there who un- 
 derstands this tremendous possibility. 
 To believe you can do a thing and to have 
 the courage to steadily, confidently and 
 persistently live up to that belief, is to go 
 far and achieve much. There may be 
 difficulties and obstacles, but resolute 
 courage will overcome them as nothing 
 else can, and that, whether they be ex- 
 ternal difficulties, or those more serious 
 ones, the difficulties and obstacles that 
 arise within us. Courage destroys the 
 injurious and opposing forces by sup- 
 
 [70] 
 
COURAGE 
 
 planting them with forces that serve us. 
 There is thus a double gain. 
 
 Courage is the basis of happiness; 
 courage wins honor and respect ; courage 
 makes friends for us; courage brings 
 contentment; courage is the best guar- 
 antee of good judgment ; courage instills 
 truth; courage brings patience; courage 
 meets and overcomes adversity. Cour- 
 age gives life, makes failure impossible, 
 gives self-reliance, develops influence, 
 gives forcefulness and power to thought, 
 implants a love for labor, is the boon 
 companion of energy. 
 
 Plutarch says: "Courage consists 
 not in hazarding with fear, but in being 
 resolute in a just cause. " A phrenolo- 
 gist on examining the head of the Duke 
 of Wellington said, "Your Grace has not 
 the organ of animal courage largely de- 
 veloped." "You are right," replied the 
 great man, "and but for my sense of 
 duty I should have retreated in my first 
 fight. ' 9 That first fight, in India was one 
 of the most terrible on record. 
 
 Frederick the Great was so stricken 
 with fear in his first battle that he ran 
 away and hid himself in abject, over- 
 mastering and shameless fright. But he 
 
 [71] 
 
COUBAGE 
 
 lived to become, through a sense of pride 
 and duty, one of the great statesman 
 military geniuses of the world. 
 
 General Grant declared that he never 
 went into a battle without feeling a sick- 
 ening fear ; but that never kept him out. 
 The hearts of many great actors sink 
 within them every time they face the 
 footlights; but that does not keep them 
 from going on. Duty and application 
 create courage. 
 
 True courage is the result of a process 
 of reasoning ; it is a product of the mind. 
 A brave mind is impregnable to assault. 
 To believe a business or an undertaking 
 impossible is the way to make it so ; im- 
 possibilities like threatening dogs fly be- 
 fore him who is not afraid of them. 
 
 Courage like cowardice is contagious. 
 Feebleness of the will indicated by spas- 
 modic action, by fitful effort or lack of 
 persistence is a most frequent cause of 
 failure. The very reputation of being 
 strong-willed, courageous, plucky and in- 
 defatigable, is of immeasurable value. 
 Nothing that is of real value is ever 
 achieved without courageous labor. 
 
 [72] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 I TALKED this morning with a man 
 who is developing the wireless 
 telephone. He was aglow with 
 confidence in what would speedily 
 be accomplished by it. Distance and 
 media would be annihilated. Soon, he 
 believed, we would be able to talk plainly 
 and readily to the man in the submarine, 
 forty fathoms below the surface and 
 a thousand miles away, or to a friend 
 traveling in China. 
 
 As though suddenly conscious that his 
 confidence might seem extravagant he 
 said: "You think I'm crazy, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "I do not," I replied. Nor was this 
 mere kindly or tactful politeness. For 
 in my mind ran this thought : "I know 
 that wireless telegraphy transmits, and 
 something of how it does it; and won- 
 derful as this is I know that thought 
 and mental control is transmitted from 
 one individual to another, although I do 
 not know how it is done. The wireless 
 telephone to me seems less marvelous 
 
 [75] 
 
MENTAL, CONTROL 
 
 than this projecting of thought, of in- 
 fluence, of unexpressed commands or de- 
 sires. Why, therefore, should I doubt 
 the lesser marvel while believing the 
 greater ? ' ' 
 
 It is with this greater marvel in some 
 of its aspects that I would now deal. 
 What are its laws, and subtle as it is, 
 to what extent can it be harnessed to 
 utility and made tangibly serviceable? 
 
 Man has always utilized laws long be- 
 fore he understood them. The Austral- 
 ian bushman invented and skilfully used 
 the boomerang without so much as know- 
 ing that there were laws in accordance 
 with which it acted. So thought, mental 
 control, that indescribable grasp which 
 you have on friends and associates, by 
 and through which you receive and send 
 out influences, are frequently so posi- 
 tive in their operation as to be of dom- 
 inating direction in reality an essential 
 element in the successful management 
 of your business. Just as you call on 
 your mental forces to aid you in your 
 undertaking, and draw to you all forces 
 kindred to your work and purpose, so 
 you can, and do, send out thought, sug- 
 gestion, mental control, to your associ- 
 
 [76] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 ates and employes, for instance, which 
 are received and acted on assimilated 
 as it were as actually, though not as 
 consciously, as though they had come by 
 the spoken or written word. 
 
 The fact is there, though the explana- 
 tion may not be forthcoming at present. 
 The thing can be done the thing is be- 
 ing done. It is a factor in all great 
 achievements involving the combined ef- 
 fort of many men. It is the vital force 
 in leadership in constructive organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Can we consciously, definitely, confi- 
 dently use this power in advance of the 
 discovery of the laws governing it? The 
 bushman invented and used his boom- 
 erang and doesn't yet know that there 
 are any such things as laws governing it. 
 The conception of natural law would 
 only come by observing its results, its 
 phenomena. 
 
 A great business can only be built up 
 by the co-operation of many persons of 
 varying ability and skill acting along a 
 common line of endeavor toward a com- 
 mon end. It will succeed in proportion 
 as the efforts of all are co-ordinated and 
 vitalized by the insensible control and di- 
 
 [77] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 rection of one guiding purpose. Thus 
 this power of mental control is an essen- 
 tial to successful business, and all that 
 can be known of how to use it is im- 
 portant. 
 
 When you have personally met an em- 
 ploye you have formed a mental relation- 
 ship with him that makes you much more 
 responsive and your mind more recep- 
 tive. If you write a letter in a casual, 
 careless way, it has very little influence. 
 If, on the other hand, you put into writ- 
 ing it your very spirit, the intense inter- 
 est and the very force of your mental 
 powers, an awakening of interest, a re- 
 sponsive spirit, are aroused in the per- 
 son who receives it. It has an entirely 
 different effect from what the casually, 
 carelessly written letter has. And yet, 
 curious as it is, the two letters may not 
 be couched in very different language. 
 But marshalling all your mental forces 
 not only sends them, for whatever they 
 are worth, with your letter, but it 
 arouses in you a keen perception of all 
 the external sources from which help can 
 come to the one addressed. Your letter 
 is charged with a high voltage. It is the 
 word with power. 
 
 [78] 
 
MENTAL, CONTKOL 
 
 We do not fully understand these 
 forces; we can scarcely hope to under- 
 stand them fully at present. We only 
 know that they do exist, for we feel their 
 influence in a thousand ways, some of 
 which have been observed or experienced 
 by every person who has not shut his 
 eyes to them. 
 
 A ready but positive demonstration of 
 this mental control, this power, is given 
 by the different ways you treat different 
 persons with whom you have business re- 
 lations. Take, for instance, an agent or 
 an employe in whom you have no per- 
 sonal interest and another in whom you 
 have great confidence, in whom you cen- 
 ter hope, and who draws from you your 
 best thoughts and who inspires you to 
 your best letters. Write your letters to 
 the one who inspires them, but send 
 copies to the other doing exactly the 
 same work, under exactly the same con- 
 ditions. The one will prosper and de- 
 velop, the other will fail, or at least 
 meet with but a very meager success. 
 The intangible something in the way a 
 thing is said, the feeling, the mental 
 control, spirit force, or whatever spark 
 it is that gives life, vitality, meaning, 
 
 [79] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 feeling and inspiration and produces 
 action, is the subtle thing transmitted 
 the mental power that controls. 
 
 Feel for the employe the success you 
 desire for him or her; put into your 
 daily thoughts and wishes a strong de- 
 sire for his success; understand his 
 weaknesses and desire that they be 
 strengthened; carry in your mind his 
 shortcomings and failures and desire 
 that they be rectified, and not only think 
 out a plan of work for him but write 
 him the strongest letters and put your 
 thought in close, constant association 
 with him a part of every day. It is 
 doubtful whether a letter written with 
 such a purpose and in such an attitude 
 of mind is of more value from what it 
 says than from the fact that in writing 
 it you concentrate your mind for the 
 time being on the individual, and thus 
 give to him some of your mental power 
 which he adds to his own. 
 
 Keep out of your thoughts and asso- 
 ciation the spirit of worry, scolding, dis- 
 content and kindred spirits, for they are 
 hurtful to you and to those to whom 
 you send them. They are hurtful to you 
 because they put your mind in a frame 
 
 [80] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 for receiving distracting and depressing 
 impulses and materials. They are hurt- 
 ful to those to whom you are sending 
 thought mental control, because your 
 own mind is turgid and muddy and hence 
 its stream cannot be clear, limpid or re- 
 freshing. 
 
 Every thought of despair or doubt or 
 disbelief in their success transmitted to 
 them even involuntarily makes the dif- 
 ficulties of those you are trying to lead, 
 to divert, or help, just that much greater. 
 Forgetfulness of them, unconcern for 
 their success, neglect or ignoring of 
 them, may produce a similar indifference 
 to their own success, a similar doubt 
 or careless guarding and directing of 
 their own efforts. 
 
 This influence, this mental control with 
 which we are now dealing, has a more 
 direct, positive power of controlling 
 others than most of us are prepared 
 to appreciate because of our limited 
 knowledge of the laws which govern it. 
 But that the success or failure of an 
 individual is greatly determined by lead- 
 ership, and that this leadership is largely 
 a question of one mentally acting on or 
 being influenced by another is unques- 
 
 [81] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 tioned. The extent and quality of this 
 influence or this leadership is limited 
 only by the virility and the determina- 
 tion with which we exercise it. 
 
 Nothing is ever at a standstill. We 
 are either gaining or losing. Effort 
 makes greater effort possible, and our 
 power to exercise control or leadership 
 grows as we exercise it. 
 
 There is not a successful business man 
 or a successful organizer who will not 
 recall that many of his employes, many 
 of his associates possess more knowl- 
 edge than he did when he undertook their 
 guidance or leadership. They may, per- 
 haps, have had as good opportunities 
 for study, for growth as he. But the 
 mere fact that he undertook heavier re- 
 sponsibilities, attempted larger things, 
 determined on greater accomplishment 
 and exercised the mental control re- 
 quired by this leadership, kept him in 
 advance. It is a natural development 
 carried on and maintained unconsciously 
 but in abundant fact. 
 
 You will find this in the handling of 
 all large bodies, in the leadership of all 
 businesses. The head of the business 
 keeps on growing. He maintains his 
 
 [82] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 guiding influence, his power to control 
 through intelligent direction, skillful 
 management and that power to inspire 
 confidence which brings success to those 
 associated with him and to the enter- 
 prise. These may be superior to him 
 in many qualities; but until his powers 
 begin to wane, or until he begins to de- 
 stroy them, neglect them, or allow them 
 to lapse into disuse, his leadership re- 
 mains intact. 
 
 To will resolutely and intently the 
 end that you have in view for an asso- 
 ciate or employe is to bring to bear every 
 mental force for his success. It is to 
 make him what he could never be with- 
 out your aid. You not only teach him 
 thoroughness and accuracy, and the 
 skill and facility which much concen- 
 tration and thoughtful desire will gen- 
 erate, but you send him along with an 
 enthusiasm and spirit which, somehow, 
 unconsciously to himself, places him on 
 the road to success with a splendid im- 
 petus. Enthusiasm and the spirit of 
 success thereafter have a living person- 
 ality which they did not have before. 
 They appeal as they would not if pre- 
 sented only in cold type without any 
 
 [83] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 personal touch or the influence of a per- 
 sonality going with them. 
 
 There is something in this mental con- 
 trol which, though less tangible, per- 
 haps, is more potent than physical force. 
 Its effect remains as an impelling, for- 
 ward-going influence. You have taught 
 your employe or associate unconsciously 
 to him, to put himself in an attitude fa- 
 vorable to his success. You have made 
 him know that this attitude of mind, 
 these mental forces which you have de- 
 veloped in him have the power of con- 
 trolling, governing and directing other 
 forces and drawing them to him. Thus 
 you have put him in the mental atti- 
 tude capable of acquiring all that can be 
 acquired by his individuality and in the 
 best possible attitude to take that which 
 you have to give. Your work will be 
 greatly facilitated and speeded if you 
 have made him understand the import- 
 ance of keeping out of that impoverished 
 frame of mind which invites failure and 
 discouragement, impatience, lack of per- 
 sistence and kindred elements which 
 intercept and neutralize the strong men- 
 tal forces which must be applied to win 
 success. 
 
 [84] 
 
MENTAL, COETTKOL 
 
 Every stimulative, creative or helpful 
 thought thus sent out adds to and sur- 
 rounds itself with all the other additional 
 similar helpful elements, and thus is 
 given not only your individual force, but 
 all the other added forces. But in the 
 meantime, every helpful thought thus 
 sent out by you, has been renewed to 
 you by thought sent out by others, for 
 the control you are exercising is react- 
 ing upon yourself ; and instead of impov- 
 erishing you, like all good exercise, it 
 increases your power. 
 
 "No man liveth to himself and no 
 man dieth to himself." It is impossible 
 for any of us to be freed from or inde- 
 pendent of the mental forces with which 
 our environment is charged, which either 
 help or retard. There is no such thing 
 as neutrality of influence. These forces 
 are living things and their transmission 
 a reality. They exist as absolutely as 
 the laws of gravity. The mind cannot 
 be freed from them. If your employe 
 or associate does not receive helpful, 
 forceful influences, he will receive harm- 
 ful ones. The helpful ones go to achieve 
 your purpose; the harmful ones to make 
 
 [85] 
 
MENTAL COSTTBOL 
 
 your purpose, through this employe or 
 associate, impossible of achievement. 
 
 Continued separation from thought 
 exchange leads to mental starvation. 
 There is a narrowing of the horizon of 
 the mind, a weakening of the mental 
 powers, and some of the milder forms 
 of insanity in its shades of melancholia, 
 despondency and despair. Children, de- 
 nied the association of playmates of 
 their own years will grow old before their 
 time, absorbing the spirit of the older 
 persons with whom they are surrounded. 
 To retain their youth they need the in- 
 fluences and companionship of youth as 
 absolutely as they need physical exer- 
 cise. Like creates like; thought elements 
 come together just as naturally with 
 those of their own class as all other ele- 
 ments combine with their affinities. 
 
 It is this thought element that perme- 
 ates all great organizations. And no 
 matter how much physical association 
 there is, if there is no affinity of thought 
 nor any harmonious action or reaction 
 of mental forces, there will be no effec- 
 tive intelligence in its efforts, any more 
 than there would be in a gathering of 
 automatons all taught to say certain 
 
 [86] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 things without any of the thought 
 that goes with them. 
 
 In the carrying on or management of 
 a great business this mental exchange 
 puts you in closer sympathy and touch 
 with your employes and associates. It 
 enables you to understand and to know 
 intuitively much concerning them that 
 would otherwise entirely escape you. It 
 enables you to help them to enter into 
 conditions about them with an under- 
 standing and appreciation which would 
 be utterly impossible were you not in 
 this close and sympathetic touch. It is 
 this which gives you absolute control; 
 which influences, sways, directs and 
 makes them a part of yourself. It 
 combines in a compact body the entire 
 membership of the organization, each 
 member as intelligent, as useful to the 
 organization, and as necessary in the 
 care of it as each part of the human 
 body is in the service of the body as a 
 whole. 
 
 The great leaders of the world have 
 been men of this kind of influence. They 
 have attracted leaders as great and as 
 influential almost, as themselves. But 
 they have bound the entire organization 
 
 [87] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 by the close bond of this mental con- 
 trol to a single purpose, so that there 
 results few mistakes and little loss of 
 effort in unprofitable directions. 
 
 So close is this influence of personal 
 contact and association that you will 
 often find those under you writing let- 
 ters which you can scarcely tell from 
 your own. They will so nearly repre- 
 sent your own thoughts, your own ideas, 
 your own motives, that they will seem 
 a part of yourself. This is because 
 there has become one whole, of which 
 you and they are each a part, and as both 
 you and they are working for one end 
 and are actuated by the same spirit and 
 influenced by the same mental forces, 
 you naturally and inevitably become 
 very like in your methods, since the 
 action of each is the net result of the 
 play and inter-play, not only of ideas 
 but of this mental control which is as 
 absolute and positive as any physical 
 force in nature. 
 
 To get your employe or your associate 
 into the fold, to get him to thinking, 
 reasoning and realizing as you do, to 
 make him one with you is the first step. 
 In this process more force will be sent 
 
 [88] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 out than is received ; mentally you never 
 let go; you stay with them with the 
 individual. It does not make any dif- 
 ference what his difficulties, depressions, 
 discouragements are, they do not affect 
 you since you have drawn about your- 
 self a protecting cordon of successful 
 forces. But they will affect you unless 
 these successful forces with which you 
 have surrounded yourself are very much 
 superior to the unsuccessful forces which 
 a new employe, for instance, very often 
 conjures up and surrounds himself with. 
 But if they do affect you, you may know 
 it is because you have neglected to put 
 sufficient time, sufficient thought and 
 concentration and force into your direc- 
 tion. No employe or associate can be 
 made a success unless he is thus taken 
 into the fold unless you enter into the 
 spirit of his development. 
 
 Some people have the unfortunate and 
 disagreeable tendency of attracting to 
 themselves all that is depressing and dis- 
 couraging. In many instances they have 
 indeed come to realize that they cannot 
 create confidence in other people in their 
 line of endeavor if they themselves do 
 not show evidence of faith in it. And 
 
 [89] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 so they have come to realize that to talk 
 of misfortunes and to be blue is to com- 
 municate the same spirit to others. Just 
 as they realize that to stand in the cold 
 with little clothing on will be likely to 
 chill them and to bring on other dis- 
 agreeable consequences, so they have 
 learned to avoid those obvious forces 
 which militate against success. But they 
 have not realized that every moment 
 spent in entertaining discouragements 
 and harping on difficulties, justifying 
 failures and associating with all the bad 
 company that stich thoughts bring, at- 
 tract to themselves all there is to be had 
 of that sort of unsuccessful forces ; that 
 they are weighting themselves with influ- 
 ences which must be shaken off before 
 they can rise. 
 
 In this practical management of any 
 business it must be taken into considera- 
 tion that many of the people whom we 
 must take into our fold have no more 
 real experience in business methods than 
 a child. They are children in fact. Nat- 
 urally they depend on us for guidance, 
 and unless this mental support is forth- 
 coming, they are not going to be able to 
 apply methods more effectively than the 
 
 f90] 
 
MENTAL CONTROL 
 
 most inexperienced and incompetent of 
 us applied at the beginning of our busi- 
 ness. None of the experience and teach- 
 ings that we have had, none of the bet- 
 ter methods, none of the wise avoidances, 
 none of the thoughtful arranging of their 
 forces is going to apply in their cases. 
 But if this mental support is forthcom- 
 ing, everything that we have learned, all 
 the time, money, training and energy 
 we have spent in perfecting methods we 
 are going to make available to them. 
 
 Your position is like that of a man 
 put in charge of a complicated piece of 
 mechanism. If he does not know any- 
 thing about its operation he will fail of 
 results with it, notwithstanding the ma- 
 chine may be the best made. As well 
 might one put a man in charge of a 
 modern war vessel who had no knowl- 
 edge of it and expect him to operate 
 it skillfully. It is not enough in such 
 a case that the man has been taken 
 through the ship, and its machinery and 
 workings explained to him; it is neces- 
 sary that he be guided day by day and 
 the management of one part after an- 
 other taught him until he is thoroughly 
 familiar with the whole. 
 
 [91] 
 
MENTAL CONTKOL 
 
 Just so it is with the new employe or 
 associate. Every day there must be some 
 direction, some help, some guidance. It 
 cannot all be learned at once any more 
 than enough food can be taken in one 
 day to keep the body nourished and sat- 
 isfied for six. 
 
 A prominent handler of large enter- 
 prises recently said that he never per- 
 mitted a man in his employment to carry 
 on work in which he had no heart. No 
 matter how intelligent a man might be, 
 he said, failure would result if he at- 
 tempted to work without this feeling. 
 What this man meant by heart is the 
 mental co-operation and resolution to 
 draw to the task all that is favorable 
 to its accomplishment, and the desire 
 and will to do so. We find in almost 
 every department of life that in some 
 way, men realize the need of this per- 
 sonal mental force for the success of 
 their work. Some call it by one name 
 and some by another, but there is unan- 
 imity of conviction, the result of long 
 experience, that unless there is this affil- 
 iation and friendship, or a high resolve 
 for his work, generating those forces 
 
 [92] 
 
MENTAL CONTBOL 
 
 that are helpful, the best and completest 
 success will not be secured. 
 
 On the other hand, there is immeas- 
 urable power bound up in this mental 
 control. Eealizing its influence is but 
 the first step to its universal applica- 
 tion, and as each effort in this direction 
 increases and makes possible greater ef- 
 fort, just in that proportion will busi- 
 nesses and movements and enterprises 
 grow. 
 
 We are now indeed but children in 
 the handling and recognition of these 
 forces which surround us. The time is 
 coming when the little we now know will 
 be increased by much that we are only 
 dimly conscious of, or indistinctly see. 
 The demonstration of the existence of 
 these greater forces will come with their 
 fuller acquisition. It will come in the 
 larger power to achieve. It will only 
 be in the exercise of them, in actual ac- 
 complishment through them, that we 
 shall come to know and to be able to 
 measure their full possibilities. No 
 mere answering of the mail on the desk, 
 no mere perfunctory handling of the 
 routine of daily duties will give us either 
 the knowledge or control of these forces, 
 
 [93] 
 
MENTAL CONTEOL 
 
 or give us leadership or organizing abil- 
 ity. We must believe in the truth and 
 actuality of this mental control, and be- 
 lieving, use it. We must demonstrate 
 its existence in our own experience. We 
 must learn its use by using. 
 
 [94] 
 
FRICTION 
 
FRICTION 
 
 WHAT is it that wears out 
 and breaks down machin- 
 ery? Friction. What is 
 it that wears out and 
 breaks down lives? Friction. Fric- 
 tion retards action, reduces product 
 and wastes power. It wears, destroys, 
 kills. 
 
 Friction is the most constant problem 
 in mechanics. It is the most destruc- 
 tive element in life. Literally, friction 
 applies only to physical objects. Fig- 
 uratively and metaphorically, it applies 
 to life and to individual and social rela- 
 tionships. 
 
 As applied to life it is so apt a figure 
 of speech that we do not realize that it 
 is one until our attention is called to it. 
 We speak of friction in an organization, 
 or between individuals, or in our own 
 life and realize that it is so wearing, 
 wasteful and needless that it seems the 
 very same thing as the friction of me- 
 chanics. We have learned many devices 
 for reducing friction in mechanics. We 
 
 [97] 
 
FEICTION" 
 
 practice very few for reducing it in hu- 
 man life. 
 
 The greatest cause of friction in ma- 
 chinery is a failure to clean the machin- 
 ery of the dirt it accumulates. The 
 greatest cause of friction in life is fail- 
 ure to keep our minds free from their 
 own worries and cares. 
 
 Few lives wear out from overwork, 
 but many do from the friction of fear 
 and fret and worry. To the individual 
 there is a double loss. He suffers the 
 wearing pain of friction and loses the 
 buoyancy and resiliency of life. 
 
 In ordering our lives so as to get the 
 best out of them whether to us that 
 best is success in business, personal 
 happiness and content, or influence and 
 leadership over others, nothing is so im- 
 portant as to avoid hurtful friction. I 
 say hurtful friction, because in life as 
 in mechanics, there is a necessary and 
 a useful friction. The friction between 
 our shoes and the floor enables us to 
 stand up. Without friction belting in 
 machinery would be useless. Without 
 friction we could grasp nothing and the 
 race would starve to death and be de- 
 stroyed from sheer inability to carry on 
 
 [98] 
 
FRICTION 
 
 the simplest and most ordinary opera- 
 tions. So in life there is a necessary 
 and useful friction. The friction of one 
 mind upon another has a stimulating and 
 wholesome effect. And out of the fric- 
 tion which emulation and wholesome 
 rivalry and strong influences produce, 
 there comes the best zest in life, and 
 most of the progress. 
 
 The friction to avoid is the unneces- 
 sary friction. Such friction as in me- 
 chanics would be caused by putting sand 
 in gearings or in journals. We call that 
 sabotage when it is done to destroy the 
 machinery by the workmen whom the 
 machinery serves. But in life we, our- 
 selves, are guilty of most of the sabotage 
 which wears us out. 
 
 I am going to speak of some of the 
 causes of friction which have lined the 
 shores of time with the junk of business 
 and mental wrecks. I speak first of 
 anger, malice and hate. The damage 
 these do is pure sabotage. They are 
 coarse, destructive sand thrown into the 
 gearing of that most wonderful mechan- 
 ism, the mind. They abrade and tear it. 
 They not only interfere with its work- 
 
 [99] 
 
FEICTION 
 
 ings, but they destroy its power to work 
 well. 
 
 Nearly as bad, perhaps quite as bad, 
 are fear, fret and irritability. They de- 
 stroy in a measure commercially cal- 
 culable. 
 
 Then there is the finer sand and dirt 
 of bad habits of mind such as lack of 
 concentration, or of continuity, or the 
 clogging up of the machinery by the 
 mere accumulation of details. 
 
 It is safe to say that the average man 
 or woman could increase their mental 
 power thirty percent by the elimination 
 of friction. The mere statement of this 
 fact proves that very thoughtful, sys- 
 tematic and thorough effort should be 
 made to avoid friction in every relation. 
 The effort should be first to avoid it in 
 one's self. Never permit anything to 
 worry or irritate you. Simply make it 
 a business principle that you will not 
 be worried, that you will not be irri- 
 tated, that you will not fret or worry, 
 and above all, that you will not allow 
 fear, anger, malice or hatred to enter 
 your mind. Situations will arise and col- 
 lisions occur which will test this deter- 
 mination. Give to each as it arises, the 
 
 [100] 
 
best thought that you possess. Never 
 answer on the impulse of the moment, 
 nor decide on a course of action while 
 in an irritated mood. If necessary lay 
 the matter under consideration aside, 
 and take it up twenty-four hours later 
 when a good night's sleep and a calmer 
 state of the faculties will enable you to 
 see the matter in a different and a truer 
 light, and to handle it more wisely and 
 effectively. When you are tempted to 
 take exceptions and be irritated over 
 what seems to be an injustice or is un- 
 satisfactory in any sense, put yourself 
 in the other person's place and consider 
 from their point of view. To be just 
 requires reason and thought. 
 
 * * The man who is in the coolest mood, 
 the most collected mood, the mood most 
 free of either thought or care, the man 
 who is in the least hurry, the man who 
 throws over-board all anxiety as to re- 
 sults, the man who is not too eager, who 
 can lie back in his chair and make a joke 
 or laugh at one when millions are tremb- 
 ling in the balance, who keeps all his re- 
 serve force until it is needed that is 
 the man who can play the best hand in 
 your game, and make the best bargain." 
 
 [101] 
 
The contentment of mind that we get 
 from our work is, itself a matter of great 
 value. It enables us to see everything 
 in a cheerful, promising, encouraging 
 light. It enables us to be interested in 
 everything about us, and to forget our 
 business cares at night because of the 
 consciousness that when the day's work 
 has been well done the morrow will find 
 us able to do that day's work equally 
 well. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken particularly 
 of friction and its effect on ourselves, 
 but it is not confined to its effect on our- 
 selves. It affects others. Its influence 
 extends in ever widening circles. In our 
 contact and dealings with associates and 
 employes there should be care to avoid 
 friction. This does not mean that there 
 shall not be a holding up to a high stand- 
 ard of performance; indeed that is one 
 of the best ways to avoid friction. 
 
 Too much play in machinery causes 
 not only a loss of power and effective- 
 ness, but increases friction. Every well 
 balanced person can be developed to 
 greater possibilities by an equitable, just 
 management, expecting and requiring 
 fulfillment of duty. Laxity or permit- 
 
 [102] 
 
FRICTION 
 
 ting poor methods means disappoint- 
 ment, fretting and discontent friction. 
 It means more, for before this fault can 
 be corrected stringent measures have to 
 be employed, and this in itself may cause 
 friction. The fastest horse, if he is ex- 
 cited or irritated may lose the race. No 
 one can do their best except when they 
 have the full control of their faculties; 
 and no one can have the full control of 
 their faculties when they are worrying, 
 discontented or impatient. 
 
 It takes an even, quiet, steady course 
 to produce the best results. Over stimu- 
 lation is injurious, under stimulation is 
 depressing. In either even the result 
 to be obtained is not easily possible, and 
 the friction which comes from an unsuc- 
 cessful and disappointing effort takes 
 away a further element of strength from 
 the best powers of the individual. 
 
 There is no royal road to harmonious 
 relations. It is a road of thoughtful 
 management and consideration, and of 
 firm, even rigid requirement that each 
 one's duty be performed. Any careless- 
 ness which destroys harmony is a crime. 
 Any laxity that permits careless, inef- 
 fective or poor methods is a vice. 
 
 [103] 
 
FBICTIOET 
 
 If you have ever kept company with a 
 rapid walker and had to trot every mo- 
 ment or two in order to keep apace, you 
 know the friction and irritation of such 
 a walk. Business furnishes an exact 
 parallel. Methods can be taught just 
 as thoroughly as gaits. Nagging but ir- 
 ritates and inflames and is a product 
 of neglect of proper methods at some 
 prior time. 
 
 Mere contact with a well balanced per- 
 son will tend to calm and settle a nat- 
 urally irritable person. The oportunity 
 for a cheerful, peaceful, resolute, quiet, 
 influence in business is great. Every 
 one with whom you come in contact 
 should be made to feel this influence, 
 to know you for a person character- 
 istically strong in this direction. Some 
 one has said that the control and direc- 
 tion of ourselves is two-thirds of the 
 victory in controlling and influencing 
 others. 
 
 The mind free from worry and friction 
 has always a reserve force. The char- 
 acter of thought, the method of contact 
 and influence which we exert have dis- 
 tinct value. It influences others to gain 
 or loss, to enthusiasm or depression, to 
 
 [104] 
 
FBICTION 
 
 achievement or failure. Its influence is 
 far wider than either the pleasantness 
 or unpleasantness of the association, the 
 sunshine or happiness it inspires, the 
 content or the discontent it engenders. 
 It shapes the whole character of our 
 business, the whole nature of our rela- 
 tions, the character of those we come 
 in contact with, and our own character. 
 
 To avoid friction in ourselves we must 
 not only cast out the causes of friction, 
 but develop our minds into effective 
 working conditions. Friction is least in 
 well designed and well constructed ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 To avoid friction in our business it 
 should be well organized, and then it 
 should be lubricated with the oil of 
 suavity. 
 
 [105] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 GIEAT businesses are not the re- 
 sult of chance or accident; 
 they are created by an intense 
 and sustained desire. 
 It is not often possible to see the end 
 from the beginning, but that is no rea- 
 son for not making a beginning. Few 
 great businesses ever took the exact 
 shape their creators pictured for them 
 at the start. Usually they are bigger 
 and better and broader than their crea- 
 tors pictured, because vision usually 
 broadens with the power to achieve. 
 When you have found the end of a thread 
 you may not be able to know how many 
 twists and turns it will take before it 
 is finally unravelled, or how long it will 
 be; but if you keep a firm hold on one 
 end and follow it up, be the entangle- 
 ment ever so intricate, you will finally 
 unravel it. 
 
 There is no conception so great but 
 that if the effort to achieve it is followed 
 up as the mind conceives it, it will be 
 accomplished. 
 
 [109] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 The mind is the architect who first 
 draws the outlines of the structure and 
 then fills them in. To have a desire and 
 not to supply it constantly with material 
 which develops that desire into a sub- 
 stantial reality, is like drawing the first 
 outlines of a magnificent structure, but 
 doing nothing further with it. It is 
 building air castles. 
 
 The desire I speak of as the creative 
 force in great businesses is that intense 
 and sustained desire, broadening and 
 strengthening, which is supported by the 
 conviction of the possibility of its reali- 
 zation, and a determination to realize it. 
 It is a desire in which you keep pushing 
 on step by step to a greater unfolding. 
 It is like determining on a journey, and 
 proceeding resolutely along the road. 
 Every step brings the end of the journey 
 nearer. Each step is essential to its 
 achievement. 
 
 It is essential to such creation, of 
 course, that back of the desire there shall 
 be the potential qualities of leadership. 
 There must be strength to support aims 
 and purposes, resolution and persist- 
 ence; the power to shape a course and 
 to know that constant activity and the 
 
 [110] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 pushing of the business are essential to 
 achievement at every step; that the de- 
 velopment of each element and each part 
 of the business is essential to the accom- 
 plishment of the whole. To push one's 
 business, to develop one's purpose con- 
 ceived in the mind and resolutely deter- 
 mined on, means a steadfast application 
 to it, and the bringing to bear upon it 
 with concentration and resolution every 
 mental force that one possesses. But 
 to have resolutely in mind a purpose is 
 to have made the first and greatest step 
 toward it. 
 
 The difference between those who 
 achieve mediocre success and those who 
 rise high above it is in this mental reso- 
 lution, this development of a purpose, 
 this pushing of a business. 
 
 It is not necessary to the creation of 
 a great business that you understand and 
 realize at the beginning the complicated 
 problems that you will have to meet and 
 master. But it is essential that you recog- 
 nize the necessity of doing each thing 
 as it arises to be done, and doing that 
 thing well, doing it the best within your 
 power. Whether a man is a master of 
 mechanics or of men, he became so by 
 
 [111] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 learning one thing at a time. The man 
 who now controls great interests may 
 have seen the time when he had only the 
 slightest knowledge of the interests he 
 now so easily directs. 
 
 I have repeatedly said that the ex- 
 ercise of a faculty increases its power. 
 Thus as you exercise the faculties called 
 out and required in building your busi- 
 ness, their power to meet conditions 
 grows. 
 
 Having resolved on your business, now 
 proceed to push it and push it with every 
 hour that you devote to business. Do 
 it thoughtfully; put into it every mental 
 force that you have at your control. 
 The constant association, the high re- 
 solve with the efforts that sustain and 
 back it up, give you added strength for 
 the problems and duties of tomorrow. 
 
 Having once resolved upon or desired 
 a calling, a vocation, a business, you will 
 naturally be drawn to it. There is a 
 direct force that carries you towards 
 the object of your desire. Every day 
 you are both consciously and uncon- 
 sciously working to an end. And if the 
 end is the building of your business, ris- 
 ing in your business, making yourself 
 
 [112] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 a leader among leaders, then every day 
 will find you doing those things which 
 advance you step by step in that direc- 
 tion. With the heart set on a purpose, 
 with a love for it, with a constant asso- 
 ciation with it in thought, there comes 
 that direction of effort that exercises all 
 tact, and all intelligence, that application 
 of abilities which in due time will make 
 you master of the situation. 
 
 Feel yourself a leader believe your- 
 self to be one, and you put yourself in 
 the attitude and current that draws to 
 you everything that contributes to that 
 end. Dare to aim high. Dare to dis- 
 play the grit, the adhesion to purpose, 
 the constant pursuing of methods which 
 shape toward the ends you have selected. 
 You may not reach exactly the point 
 where you aim. I have said that few 
 great businesses shape themselves ex- 
 actly as they were first conceived. But 
 you will come close and effectively to 
 your aim. 
 
 Have confidence in yourself. Eemem- 
 ber that what others have done you can 
 do. Bemember that the first effort to- 
 wards success is the formation in the 
 mind of a desire for success, of a deter- 
 
 [113] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 mination to succeed, of a resolve that you 
 can and will succeed, and that you have 
 the genius for labor, patience, persist- 
 ence; and that you have a sincere and 
 loving heart in the enterprise. 
 
 Court the position you aim for. Direct 
 both thought and action toward it as 
 you would toward the man or woman 
 for whom you had a great affection. In 
 an affair of the heart there would be 
 no grumbling, you would not use harsh 
 words, you would not find fault, but you 
 would see in the object of your affection 
 all that was beautiful. You would ad- 
 mire, respect and love it. Give to the 
 accomplishment of your business pur- 
 pose the same kindly consideration. It 
 needs to be courted. It needs to be 
 developed. This aim of yours is your 
 destiny if you make it so, but not your 
 fate. You must work it out. 
 
 Having set your aim, remain steadfast 
 to it. Be faithful to your resolution. 
 Eemember that steady plodding in one 
 direction makes headway. But that run- 
 ning hither and thither both fatigues and 
 perplexes. It takes away the power to 
 direct effort, or to effect purpose. Keep 
 your mind clear. Do not destroy its 
 
 [114] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 clearness with fretfulness, hesitancy, 
 doubt, wavering or vacillation. Teach 
 your mind to rely on itself, to feel that 
 when once it has reached a conclusion 
 the matter is settled, and that there is 
 left no opening for doubt or any disturb- 
 ing element of any kind, or vacillation. 
 All discussion or question regarding it 
 is forever put behind you. 
 
 The head of the credit department of 
 one of the greatest mercantile establish- 
 ments in the world once told me that it 
 was only possible for him to successfully 
 direct his department by deciding each 
 question of credit that came before him 
 with the best judgment he could bring 
 to bear on it at the time, and then re- 
 garding the decision as final, putting it 
 behind him as something settled forever. 
 To have done otherwise would have 
 made every decision, no matter upon 
 what good judgment it was based, the 
 source of harassing doubts and fears 
 which would quickly have worn him out, 
 and rendered him incapable of sound 
 judgment. 
 
 It is the athlete with the best nerves, 
 not the strongest muscles, who wins. 
 The nervous, irritable fretful race-horse 
 
 [115] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 is unreliable. It is just so with business 
 men. A cool, quiet, balanced brain, not 
 easily disturbed, gets the best results. 
 Not only do people have confidence in 
 the self-controlled man, but the power 
 of self-control is itself the foundation of 
 self-reliance. It is a known quantity. 
 It inspires confidence. People place de- 
 pendence on it, as on the settled and 
 known propositions of life. No one can 
 calculate on uncertainties. No one de- 
 pends or relies on them. But every- 
 body relies on that which is solid, un- 
 movable, unchanging, known. As you 
 rely on these qualities in others, so you 
 rely on them in yourself and that is the 
 most important thing of the two. 
 
 Having thus mentally determined upon 
 your course and freed your mind from 
 all uncertainties, you are now in a posi- 
 tion to build your business with a clear, 
 active brain free from every purpose 
 except the absolute progress of your 
 business. 
 
 It is not a difficult matter to build 
 business if all the mental forces can be 
 concentrated upon the work in hand. It 
 is the unsettling elements, such as worry 
 and indecision that detract. Keen, vig- 
 
 [116] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 orous, long-continued labor in the push- 
 ing of one's plans do not wear one out. 
 They increase one's power, and though 
 they may bring healthful fatigue, they 
 only give sweetness to rest, and piquancy 
 to recreation. The recuperative powers 
 are not only able to replace what has 
 been consumed, but to give increased 
 strength through their exercise. And 
 thus each day's work develops in the 
 mind the capacity for larger work to- 
 morrow. It is this growth of capacity 
 that makes possible the realization of 
 great plans. It is this power of capacity 
 to develop that relieves great projects 
 from ridicule. It is not the sudden in- 
 spiration of genius that is depended on 
 to accomplish. It is the daily, deter- 
 mined resolution that every hour shall 
 find occupation, and every day its cen- 
 tral aim further advanced. 
 
 It is just as possible for you to build 
 your business every day as it is for you 
 to perform other daily exercises. Many 
 of the best things accomplished are those 
 in which every step forward has been 
 made without precise knowledge of what 
 the next step was going to be. You 
 simply know that you mean to push your 
 
 [117] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 business, that you mean to go forward, 
 and you assure yourself by knowing that 
 the step you are taking leads you for- 
 ward, and you will be satisfied to take 
 that step firmly, confidently. We do not 
 need to know how many steps there are 
 to the top of Bunker Hill Monument to 
 get there. But we must take one step 
 at a time and one step after another, 
 without turning back. 
 
 Our conception of the possibilities of 
 our mental forces and what they can 
 achieve is so limited and so far below 
 the highest rational point at which they 
 could be held, that we are much more 
 likely to dwarf our desires than that 
 they should run beyond us. For, every- 
 day, businesses are growing to a magni- 
 tude exceeding anything of the past ; de- 
 veloped, built up pushed to these di- 
 mensions by the very same processes by 
 which small businesses are being built 
 up into large ones. It is the habit of 
 each day, making one step in advance 
 that will steadily mount you to any 
 height which, you yourself, conceive for 
 yourself. 
 
 Let a man give to his business but 
 eight hours a day of cool, concise and 
 
 [118] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 concentrated thought and he will exer- 
 cise a tremendous power for its advance- 
 ment. Start out in the morning with a 
 determination to make every moment 
 of the day a moment of pressure in push- 
 ing your business, and you will be aston- 
 ished to find out how much more. you 
 have done that day than you have on 
 other days when your effort was put 
 forth in an indefinite, indecisive, uncer- 
 tain way, lacking positiveness and power. 
 Handle every subject that arises with 
 earnest clearness and concentration of 
 mind, giving it the best thought you can 
 bring to bear on it ; dispatch it and start 
 another part of the business along the 
 road, each one in its proper order and 
 you will be surprised to find at the end 
 of a few days how firmly you have your 
 business in hand, and how much time 
 you have for studying larger plans and 
 larger advancement. 
 
 In this position you are absolute 
 leader. You may draw to yourself all 
 the forces, all the plans, all the assist- 
 ance that have ever been conceived or 
 suggested by others. It is your business 
 to do so. But in this you will not be a 
 parasite, living wholly on others. You 
 
 [119] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 will be generating from within yourself 
 that something with which you will re- 
 pay them by developing their forces and 
 their strength, and you will give them 
 in return that which you add to them 
 for that which you have attracted from 
 them. 
 
 When you are confident, determined, 
 pushing, bouyant, hopeful; when your 
 courage is resolute and determined, you 
 influence all the people about you, your 
 associates and your employes, and you 
 inspire the same elements in them. They 
 feel that you are a leader, that you are 
 a force which it is safe to follow. It re- 
 acts on yourself. It is the unseen force 
 that pushes your business, that pushes 
 the business of everyone about you and 
 starts those activities which would never 
 see life without this spirit. 
 
 Business cannot be pushed by the mere 
 treadmill of application. To push a busi- 
 ness you must be expanding and increas- 
 ing that business in your mind. Every 
 great enterprise has been gone over 
 again and again, detail by detail in the 
 mind of the man who is making it grow, 
 and each time it is gone over it has as- 
 sumed a little more definite shape until 
 
 [120] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 finally it has taken form and stimulative 
 action and becomes a reality. A great 
 accomplishment is but the crystallization 
 of the mental concept of that accomplish- 
 ment which preceded it. 
 
 Every successful man lives ahead of 
 his project; that is to say, he forms his 
 business before it is evident to the world. 
 Whatever is done today was thought and 
 planned out and done mentally before. 
 And it was the sticking to that mental 
 plan that brought about success. 
 
 Important plans should be talked over 
 often, but only with those whose interest 
 and motives are like your own. It is 
 said that James J. Hill talked out and 
 planned out his first great transconti- 
 nental railroad long before he ever 
 owned a mile of railroad of any kind. 
 
 No business should be allowed to 
 worry and harass. Whenever a business 
 fags you out there is something wrong 
 with it. Either you are not in harmony 
 with your business, or you are gathering 
 to yourself forces and influences which 
 are hostile to your best interests. 
 
 Make your mind your partner in busi- 
 ness. Love your business. Live with it. 
 Feel with it, and make it a beautiful 
 
 [121] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 ideal in your mind, and be as careful in 
 shaping everything for its advancement 
 and perfection as you would if you were 
 an artist in making every stroke of the 
 brush add to the element of beauty in 
 the picture. Guard your mind from any 
 invasion of forces which are opposed 
 to success, which are detrimental to it, 
 which hold it down. Associate with good 
 people, get the atmosphere of progress 
 about you. Associate with those who 
 repel those mental attitudes that are not 
 aggressive and progressive. 
 
 Eemember that business does not grow 
 by chance. Growth is the consequence 
 of mental force exercised daily in push- 
 ing forward your plans. From this men- 
 tal force proceeds every action, thought 
 and direction which governs and controls 
 the actual operations, and even the de- 
 tails of your business. Do not shirk re- 
 sponsibility. Eemember that you are 
 the architect of your own fortune, that 
 your business success, your mental reach, 
 your achievements, and the achievements 
 of those about you depend upon the reso- 
 lution and aim of your mind, and upon 
 the pushing of your business plans every 
 hour of your business day. Eemember 
 
 [122] 
 
BUSINESS BUILDING 
 
 that this brings not only the greatest 
 progress, but the greatest rest, the 
 greatest recreation, the greatest natural 
 development any human being is cap- 
 able of. 
 
 Success does not mean the mere ac- 
 cumulation of money. That is but a part 
 of the success of which I speak. There 
 is a success greater than the mere ac- 
 cumulation of money. It is the accom- 
 plishment of a worthy purpose, the de- 
 velopment of yourself and your asso- 
 ciates, the creation in yourself of the 
 qualities of leadership. It includes a 
 broadened vision. 
 
 [123] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 THEBE is no element so import- 
 ant in a successful business or 
 a successful life as enthusiasm. 
 Yet it is an element often not 
 thoroughly understood, or very accur- 
 ately measured. It is rarely given the 
 degree of importance to which it is en- 
 titled ; it is often neglected altogether. 
 
 Enthusiasm is faith in action. "Faith 
 believeth all things." Enthusiasm puts 
 that belief to the test. The enthusiast 
 believes that the thing can be done; he 
 has faith to believe that it ought to be 
 done; he has enthusiasm to do it. 
 
 To the unthinking enthusiasm is but 
 the foam on the deeply stirred waters. 
 In truth, it is the striving of the waters 
 themselves. It is the very life of effort. 
 It is to effort what fire is to coal, what 
 steam is to the engine, what a lighted 
 fuse is to a charge of dynamite the 
 vital force which brings action. 
 
 It is enthusiasm which gives sparkle 
 to the eye, light to the countenance, 
 spring and action to the step, certainty 
 
 [127] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 to the effort, and force and vigor to the 
 movement. 
 
 Enthusiasm gives character and vital- 
 ity to desire. It is the difference be- 
 tween wish and determination; between 
 the inanimate body and the living, act- 
 ing human being. 
 
 Enthusiasm is the inspiration of ef- 
 fort; the power that brings success. It 
 is the inward power through which the 
 artist conceives an ideal and reaches it. 
 It is that power within himself which en- 
 ables the actor to live in his part. It is 
 the irresistible force which sweeps and 
 sways and carries you when you hear a 
 grand piece of music, or a wonderful 
 song, or a great oration. It is the genius 
 of life. It is that which makes the dif- 
 ference between the animate, living, 
 moving, acting, accomplishing forces, 
 and the dead forces of nature which have 
 no movement of their own, which have 
 no spirit, which have no life. 
 
 The difference between work and en- 
 thusiastic work is the difference between 
 failure and success. It is the difference 
 between work without aim, purpose and 
 determination, and work permeated by 
 faith, purpose and vigor. 
 
 [128] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 The monotonous, indifferent, spiritless 
 talk that fails to convince, fails because 
 it lacks faith, sincerity and purpose 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 It is enthusiasm that convinces and 
 inspires to action. Like begets like ; en- 
 thusiasm engenders enthusiasm. It is 
 as positive as the law of gravitation. It 
 is as far-reaching as the human mind, 
 as potent and forceful as imagination 
 can conceive; it is a power which car- 
 ries everything before it. 
 
 It is enthusiasm directed to useful 
 ends, supported by worthy purposes, and 
 carried by a strong and noble intent 
 which has accomplished all that is great 
 in art or science, in religion, in reform, 
 even in business and the prosaic utilities 
 of life, which may be as noble and grand 
 as the other achievements. 
 
 Enthusiasm is both an inspiring and 
 a sustaining power. No great thing has 
 been accomplished without it, and no 
 great thing but represents the noble en- 
 thusiasm usually clearly traceable, of 
 some lofty soul. Our nation exists be- 
 cause of the patriotic enthusiasm of its 
 founders; the church was built in the 
 holy enthusiasm of the Fathers. The 
 
 [129] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 steam engine, the ocean cable, the tele- 
 graph, the aeroplane and every triumph 
 of man over the forces of nature is a 
 monument to the patient, persistent, 
 overcoming enthusiasm of some man or 
 set of men. The freedom, the democ- 
 racy, the progress of the world all bear 
 tribute to enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, faith 
 in action, the impelling, sustaining and 
 accomplishing power of fidelity to truth 
 and themselves made Washington the 
 Father of his Country and Lincoln its 
 Savior, as it was the steadfast, unyield- 
 ing element which carried Grant and his 
 compatriots through the days of trial, 
 danger and uncertainty. 
 
 It was enthusiasm that enabled Soc- 
 rates to die like a philosopher; Zoroaster, 
 farther back than memory, to live as a 
 great teacher; Confucius to implant en- 
 during ideals in the lives of an ancient 
 people. It was through enthusiasm that 
 Mohammed became the prophet of Ara- 
 bia, and in our time, of two hundred 
 millions of the human race. It was faith, 
 enthusiasm, that made Buddha the light 
 of Asia, and Jesus Christ the light of 
 the world. 
 
 [130] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 Enthusiasm generates a deep-seated 
 impulse. Sometimes enthusiasts are 
 called cranks; but, after all, enthusiasm 
 means resolution and confidence in one 's 
 ability to carry the task on to success. 
 It means the possession of an element 
 which attracts and holds everything that 
 aids and strengthens purpose, as cer- 
 tainly and universally as the magnetic 
 influence, or the law of gravitation. 
 
 Enthusiasm means the conviction 
 which is every day added to and be- 
 comes larger with every succeeding hour 
 and every added thought. It is the ele- 
 ment that a writer has said "either 
 makes or breaks one's fortune. " By 
 the thoughtless, enthusiasm is sometimes 
 sneered at as a "hobby;" but as an old 
 educator says, "I believe in making a 
 hobby of everything I go at, for that 
 means success." 
 
 No man ever rose very high who was 
 not animated by enthusiasm. No achieve- 
 ment that has bound up the great efforts 
 of a man has ever been free from it. 
 Napoleon said, "I would rather have the 
 enthusiasm of my soldiers and have them 
 half -trained, than have the best fighting 
 machines of Europe without it." 
 
 [131] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 Enthusiasm is an element which noth- 
 ing daunts, which fears nothing, which 
 grows stronger with every difficulty, 
 which expands with every achievement, 
 which is never at rest, which accepts one 
 achievement as but the stepping stone 
 to another and larger. It is that power- 
 ful, irresistible force which finds grati- 
 fication only in achievement. 
 
 To have enthusiasm you must love 
 your business ; you must be in heart and 
 harmony with your undertaking; you 
 must believe in its broad reach; you must 
 have faith in its greatness; and you 
 must realize that your power in the 
 world is subject to some one's control 
 and that this someone should be your- 
 self. What is willed, is already half 
 done, if that will has behind it the reso- 
 lution and heart effort, the earnestness 
 of purpose, the intensity of faith which 
 constitutes enthusiasm a fire that burns 
 brightly and never lowers its flame, il- 
 luminating all that is noble. 
 
 Archdeacon Farrar says of enthu- 
 siasm: "It implies an absorbing, pas- 
 sionate devotion for some good cause. 
 It means the state of those whom St. 
 Paul has described as * fervent' liter- 
 
 [132] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 ally boiling 'in spirit.' It describes 
 the soul of man no longer mean and 
 earthly, but transfigured, uplifted, di- 
 lated by the spirit of God. When a man 
 is an enthusiast for good, he is so be- 
 cause a spirit greater than his own has 
 swept over him, as the breeze wanders 
 over the dead strings of some Aeolian 
 harp, and sweeps the music which slum- 
 bers upon them, now into divine mur- 
 murings, and now into stormy sobs. 
 * * * Without enthusiasm of some 
 noble kind man is dead; without enthu- 
 siasm a nation perishes. Of each man 
 it is true that in proportion to the fire 
 of his enthusiasm is the grandeur of his 
 life; of each nation for the nation is 
 but the reflection of the individual it is 
 true that without enthusiasm it never 
 has the will, much less the power, to 
 undo the heavy burden or to atone for 
 the intolerable wrong. * * * Most 
 of us are drowsing and slumbering in 
 moral acquiescence; the cry of the mis- 
 erable rings in our ears and we heed it 
 not; the wayfarer welters in his blood 
 by the wayside, wounded and half dead, 
 and after one cold glance we carefully 
 pass by on the other side." 
 
 [133] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 The influence of enthusiasm is illim- 
 itable. No one can tell into what im- 
 measurable fields the influence of a single 
 enthusiast can spread; being almost di- 
 vine, the power of enthusiasm is an al- 
 most superhuman power. If it is based 
 on sound, earnest principles radically 
 correct and strongly intrenched, it will 
 command the confidence, trust and sup- 
 port of the worthy and the forceful 
 everywhere. 
 
 When we speak of enthusiasm, it is 
 not of something indefinite, intangible 
 and impossible of measurement ; but we 
 speak of a definite and describable force 
 of tested and measured strength based 
 on solid, practical principles, the force 
 of whose influence, can be made to reach 
 to the accomplishment of any desired 
 good. Peter the Hermit went bare-footed 
 through Europe preaching the Crusade, 
 and the most important and far-reaching 
 activities of the middle ages were set 
 in motion. Clarkson with a small print- 
 ing press and a negro lad, told twenty 
 millions of people that slavery was 
 wrong, and slavery disappeared. It was 
 the tremendous enthusiasm of Hahne- 
 mann that founded the great homeo- 
 
 [134] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 pathic school of medicine. Florence 
 Nightingale, through the power of en- 
 thusiasm, created that revolution in the 
 laws of war represented by the Bed 
 Cross. Father Damien ministering to 
 the lepers of Molokai, by the power of 
 his enthusiastic self-sacrifice focused sci- 
 entific attention on leprosy to such ef- 
 fect that the extinction of this oldest 
 known disease in the world is measur- 
 ably in view. It was the sublime faith 
 and invincible enthusiasm of Columbus 
 that revealed the new world. 
 
 Enthusiasm without solid purpose is 
 as forceless as imperfectly confined 
 steam. Enthusiasm leads to that thor- 
 oughness, that carefulness of campaign- 
 ing which perfects effort. It is a power 
 to achieve, not merely to make attempts. 
 
 All great enthusiasms have had strong 
 material for their basis. They have 
 achieved because they have been sound; 
 because they have been thorough; be- 
 cause they have been true. 
 
 Enthusiasm first makes its appliances, 
 its engines, providing the patience, toil, 
 earnestness and persistence which are 
 necessary for creative achievement. It 
 then turns the steam into the cylinders ; 
 
 [135] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 the wheels begin to turn and the great 
 power stored up is directed to moving 
 the products of the world. It is in much 
 the same way that the forces of the 
 brain are marshalled. And thus ac- 
 complishment expands and reaches out 
 to the limit of our patience, our earnest- 
 ness, our courage and the immovable 
 convictions which are within us. 
 
 It is a frequent wish of youth that 
 it had lived in the romantic and adven- 
 turous past, instead of the prosaic 
 present when battles were to be fought 
 and victories at arms to be won; when 
 some great, noble cause now achieved, 
 needed leaders and soldiers. But the 
 present is no more prosaic than the past, 
 except to prosaic minds. The present 
 has causes that need brave soldiers and 
 gallant leaders, not less noble than those 
 of the past. 
 
 Greatness is not the result of sponta- 
 neous acquisition of power, it is the gen- 
 erating of power within one's self. It 
 is keeping constantly lighted that fire 
 of enthusiasm which carries you over 
 the disheartening days and all the diffi- 
 culties; which makes you search with 
 every dawning day some better under- 
 
 [136] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 standing of yourself, some stronger, 
 closer, abler control and shaping all the 
 forces within you. The difference be- 
 tween a well-trained powerful mind and 
 the one that accomplishes nothing in the 
 world is the difference between their en- 
 thusiasm and development. 
 
 We are apt to look too much to influ- 
 ences beyond, powers external to us, and 
 too little to the things which are within 
 ourselves. Bound up within us there is 
 a genius and a power for achievement, 
 the depth and extent of which depends 
 entirely upon us and our effort. It de- 
 pends upon what we will; and when we 
 say this we mean that every resolution, 
 like every promise, ought to be made 
 good by performance. 
 
 Let us not be mere dreamers, idling 
 away the grand opportunities of life. 
 Let us be men and women of action, of 
 resolution; let us be achievers; let us 
 realize that the world is an open oppor- 
 tunity and that there is no limitation 
 upon us but that which we place on our- 
 selves; that they who have the courage 
 to say "I will," can be both captain of 
 their soul and master of their fate ; and 
 that to be master of one's self and 
 
 [137] 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
 one's fate means the achievement of 
 all that the heart, conscience, nobility 
 and strength of personality desire. 
 
 "If we were to divide the life of most 
 men into twenty equal parts we would 
 find at least nineteen of the parts merely 
 gaps or chasms which are filled neither 
 with pleasure nor business. The most 
 proper thing to fill in the gaps is read- 
 ing of well chosen books." 
 
 "He is not only idle who does noth- 
 ing, but he is idle who might be better 
 employ ed." 
 
 "The peculiar train of thought which 
 a man falls into when alone to a degree 
 moulds a man." 
 
 [138] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 THE sailor, going aloft, must 
 ever keep looking higher or 
 lose his poise and sense of 
 security. His safety, his effi- 
 ciency depends upon it. The navigator 
 sailing unknown and uncharted seas 
 keeps the most vigilant lookout ahead. 
 
 Looking Forward is the means of 
 both safety and progress. 
 
 Look forward. Eemember that your 
 origin, what you have achieved, the lim- 
 itations of your calling, your difficulties 
 and failures, are all things of the past. 
 You are not chained to them; you are 
 liberated into a sphere as extensive and 
 broad as ever man faced. You are like 
 the eaglet that is learning to fly; the 
 height of your soaring may be what you 
 make it. 
 
 Do not limit the future by the past, 
 for in the past you were a different 
 person from what you are now. Con- 
 ditions have changed ; you yourself have 
 changed. Your horizon has widened, and 
 a conception and realization of your 
 
 [141] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 powers has come to you and a develop- 
 ment has taken place. You are no longer 
 circumscribed by the limited aims and 
 purposes of your former life; you are 
 abreast with the world's great leading 
 forces. If you will, you are but in the 
 youth of your business ; you have but to 
 perfect your work. 
 
 Have you ever gone back to visit the 
 home and scenes of your childhood? 
 How narrow the streets seem! How 
 dull and unprogressive many of the 
 people who in your childhood seemed 
 to you the very essence of sagacity and 
 business acumen! The house with the 
 cupola that seemed so large, so import- 
 ant, how subdued and small it seems 
 now! The bridge near the school-house 
 that seemed such a massive piece of en- 
 gineering has dwindled almost as much 
 as the rivulet it spans. 
 
 But these things have not changed. It 
 is you who have changed. Your expe- 
 rience has enlarged you. Your mental 
 horizon has widened. You have grown 
 and you have acquired new standards of 
 comparison. 
 
 Go back among old friends. Some of 
 them have grown as you have and you 
 
 [142] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 recognize that they, too, have been look- 
 ing forward. Of others, who in the years 
 that have gone seemed bright, active and 
 capable, you are astonished at their lim- 
 itations. It is not that they have retro- 
 graded. They have simply drawn down 
 the curtains of forward outlook; they 
 stopped where they were. 
 
 There are two aspects of looking for- 
 ward. We look forward in order to ef- 
 fectively plan; and we look forward 
 because we aspire. We only truly look 
 forward when we both plan and aspire. 
 
 Looking Forward enables us to shape 
 o^r course and perfect our plans and 
 our methods. We can give them neither 
 completeness, nor effectiveness other- 
 wise. The architect who constructs a 
 building on plans that have been care- 
 fully laid out in advance knows exactly 
 what is to be done at every point. The 
 difference between looking ahead and an- 
 ticipating and knowing the future of 
 your business, and not doing so, is the 
 difference between building a house with 
 plans and building one without. Con- 
 ceive for a moment an intricate struc- 
 ture being built room by room without 
 any design or intelligent plan beyond 
 
 [143] 
 
LOOKING FORWAKD 
 
 the laying of one brick upon another, the 
 conception extending only as far as the 
 day's work, and you have exactly the 
 process upon which many business peo- 
 ple work. It is not surprising that some 
 people accomplish much more than oth- 
 ers and yet work no harder. They go far 
 and yet have fewer abilities. Their ac- 
 complishment is more complete, yet they 
 have labored less for completeness. 
 
 Ordered results do not come by chance, 
 even in those things where results seem 
 to shape themselves in the rush of 
 chance, as winning a horse race or a 
 hotly contested football game. Aside 
 from practice and preparation, and 
 strength and endurance, the factor of 
 Looking Forward in both its aspects of 
 aspiration and planning is the deter- 
 mining one. I once knew one of the 
 greatest American trainers and drivers 
 of trotting horses. He trained and drove 
 a number of the most famous trotters 
 of the American turf. His victories 
 took place amid the excitement and 
 shouting of thousands of spectators un- 
 der the stress of the tensest interest and 
 excitement. They were achieved in the 
 character of the man and in the looking 
 
 [144] 
 
LOOKING FOKWABD 
 
 forward of his planning and determina- 
 tion. He was a man of precision and 
 coolness, strength of character, and per- 
 sonal force. His habits of life were care- 
 ful and regular, and he neither tampered 
 with his nerve force and poise by the use 
 of liquor or tobacco, nor by speculating 
 or betting. 
 
 " When you are starting, you doubtless 
 make a great effort to get into position," 
 I said to him once. 
 
 "Yes, in some measure," he replied, 
 "but generally speaking, I try to get 
 started and settled down to work. Then 
 I know what the situation is all around 
 me. I take everything into consideration 
 carefully and I work steadily for a given 
 point. There must be no indecision, no 
 nervousness, no lack of direction. Some- 
 times, there is a fortunate chance comes 
 which is not calculated out before, and 
 which I take advantage of. But as a 
 rule, my course is well laid in my own 
 mind very shortly after I get started and 
 I follow that course." 
 
 He has determined to win; he has 
 looked ahead to calculate all the chances ; 
 his course is laid out and he follows it. 
 He has looked ahead but he constantly 
 
 [145] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 looks further ahead, so that he is ready 
 to take advantage of any fortunate 
 chance which may open. 
 
 In football or any other game in 
 which the element of chance seems 
 so predominating, common experience 
 proves that it is still the Looking For- 
 ward that is the determining factor. 
 Aside from superiority of teams or con- 
 testants and often this superiority con- 
 sists in a keener, alerter, more sagacious 
 looking forward it is the power of plan- 
 ning out and of steadily looking forward, 
 taking advantage of the uncalculated, 
 that counts. 
 
 If, then, in such contests as these 
 where chance and fortune are such fac- 
 tors, looking forward is of so much 
 importance, we can understand how im- 
 portant it must be in the more serious 
 game of life. To you, the success of your 
 business, of your affairs, of your course 
 in life, is the most important there can 
 be. You cannot afford to build it with- 
 out planning, nor without regard to ulti- 
 mate results. You do not want in the 
 end a misshapen building, inadequate for 
 your needs, built by adding to a little 
 shack a room on here and another on 
 
 [146] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 there. What you want is something 
 planned, consistent, fit, a structure on 
 good lines of evenly distributed strength, 
 capable of accommodating the business 
 without friction, without unnecessary 
 labor and without any weaknesses. 
 
 Safety, strength, accomplishment, 
 everything desirable and satisfactory 
 requires that in shaping your course, 
 you look forward, you plan, you take 
 into consideration all of the calculated 
 factors and be ready to take advantage 
 of the uncalculated ones which may 
 occur. 
 
 Inseparable from Looking Forward is 
 ambition. It is a part of Looking For- 
 ward. It is the courage to believe that 
 you are capable of great things and of 
 developing yourself for every achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 It is the courage and intelligence to 
 believe enormous responsibilities are 
 with you, to believe that it is necessary 
 for you to achieve some of the world's 
 great purposes. The world generally 
 takes a man at his own estimate of him- 
 self. You may place the estimate of 
 yourself as high as you will, and if you 
 conscientiously and earnestly act on it, 
 
 [147] 
 
LOOKING FOEWABD 
 
 your estimate will not be too high. You 
 will reach that mark in your achieve- 
 ments which you have believed yourself 
 capable of reaching. 
 
 Habits are strong within us. After 
 we have worked hard for a long time on 
 one line the disposition to sag down and 
 wonder whether we shall reach the end 
 we aim for is very natural. It is one of 
 the old habits of narrow thought, nar- 
 row purpose, narrow conception rising 
 up and claiming residence with us. 
 Progress and activity have driven it off, 
 but until new and firm habits, cemented 
 by achievement, have been fixed, we al- 
 ways have that old attitude, that old 
 hesitancy, that old questioning arising 
 before us. Eemember in this connection 
 that there are no forces which can pre- 
 vent our rise except those that are 
 within us. Keep in mind that your men- 
 tal associates may be what you will, and 
 that people who are out of sympathy 
 with you, who have no interest in you 
 or your undertaking detract from your 
 force. Those who are in sympathy with 
 you add to it. The mother knows what 
 it means for her boy to have bad asso- 
 ciates. The boy, however, may not 
 
 [148] 
 
LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 recognize it. It is so with our mental 
 associates. Our thoughts and those 
 mental forces that we associate with may 
 be retarding influences or stimulating 
 ones which exercise an out-reaching, 
 resolute power that never permits us to 
 be daunted, that resolutely sets us in 
 our direction and keeps us steady to our 
 purpose. 
 
 If you look resolutely into the future, 
 uninfluenced by the failures of the past, 
 believing that you can accomplish, res- 
 solving to accomplish, you have set your 
 course. 
 
 Then look well ahead, think well of 
 yourself, believe in your own powers; 
 remember that you have but today's 
 work before you. Tomorrow you will 
 have added strength. If you have the 
 spirit within you, the grit, the resolu- 
 tion and the determination you will not 
 fail in achieving your end. Be ambi- 
 tious, determined to reach a height as 
 great as your intelligence can conceive 
 for you. You will find all along your 
 course that opportunities and plans by 
 which you may achieve, are at your com- 
 mand. You will not find yourself ex- 
 pecting them in vain. At every turn 
 
 [149] 
 
LOOKING FOBWAKD 
 
 you will be anticipating and your road 
 will be pointed out to you. You will 
 know it and you will find within yourself 
 the ability to accomplish that which has 
 been called for. 
 
 Eemember that the people who are 
 achieving greatness all around you are 
 but mortals. They are accomplishing by 
 the same processes that you must adopt. 
 This exercising of mental force is a part 
 of your work. You have been given 
 your brains, your conception and your 
 intelligence in order that you might 
 recognize your possibilities, and that 
 you might train these forces and direct 
 them to a construction adequate to the 
 purpose for which you aim. No force 
 that has been given to you is so subtle, 
 so limitless, and so tremendous in its 
 power as this. 
 
 Experience will constantly teach you 
 that the first and continuous effort 
 should be to look ahead. 
 
 Conceive your range and mentally 
 occupy that position from the start. 
 Your practical achievement of it is but 
 a question of execution. This requires 
 earnestness, cool judgment, patience, 
 persistence and all other governing 
 
 [150] 
 
LOOKING FOKWABD 
 
 forces, just as the detail of a big busi- 
 ness requires constant and able direc- 
 tion. But the first and greatest of all 
 is the conception. It is the purpose per- 
 formed in the mind, the position you 
 have taken for yourself. 
 
 [151] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 EFFECTIVENESS comes f rom within. 
 It is the determination of the 
 individual to so manage, con- 
 trol, discipline and train his 
 own powers as to use and develop them 
 to their highest possibilities. Effective- 
 ness differs from efficiency. Efficiency 
 comes from following a well devised 
 course of action. Effectiveness is the 
 moral and mental force that brings effi- 
 ciency about. It is an impelling force 
 which brings results by creating the con- 
 ditions that produce results. 
 
 Effectiveness is progressive, develop- 
 ing, in its processes. The effective man 
 is a growing man, accomplishing today 
 what he could not have accomplished 
 yesterday because he has increased his 
 capacity, enlarged his powers, by exer- 
 cise and effort. It is lost if exercise and 
 effort are abandoned, if the will and de- 
 termination behind it are lost. 
 
 Effectiveness is a matter of our own 
 will. We secure it because we want it, 
 and go about getting it. Its limit de- 
 pends upon ourselves. 
 
 [155] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 Effectiveness is a habit that grows, 
 but it is also a habit that may be lost. 
 As it grows through the discipline and 
 training of our mental powers and our 
 moral force, our treatment of these will 
 affect it. Good habits of mind are es- 
 sential to the highest effectiveness. The 
 mind must be disciplined not only to 
 work, but to rest, and to do either at 
 the command of the will. Best and 
 change are just as essential as concen- 
 tration. The re-creation of forces is not 
 less important than their exercise. The 
 important and useful thing is that the 
 mind should be so disciplined that 
 whether at rest or at work it is at the 
 command of the will. 
 
 To work without rest is like constantly 
 growing the same crop without change 
 on the same soil; fertility is exhausted. 
 As the fertility of the soil is maintained 
 and increased by the appropriate rota- 
 tion of crops, by rest and by cultivation, 
 so the fertility of the mind is maintained 
 and increased by appropriate rotation 
 of occupation, by rest and by cultivation ; 
 and each is accomplished by systematic, 
 not by haphazard or desultory change. 
 The change must be designed, deter- 
 
 [156] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 mined, made for a purpose, done at the 
 command of an intelligent will. 
 
 Bad habits are easily acquired. Lazy, 
 listless, vain longings destroy the power 
 of concentration, and activity degener- 
 ates into sloth. The ability to co-ordinate 
 and to direct and control the forces of 
 the mind mark the dividing line between 
 high effectiveness and mediocrity. 
 
 Habits of half-training are pernicious ; 
 habits of thoroughness are an essential 
 of effectiveness. It is better to do one 
 thing well than twenty poorly; for it is 
 only through habits of thoroughness that 
 the mind or the body is trained to meet 
 the tests and the crises of life. The 
 army or the navy which neglects gun 
 practice in time of peace will lack effec- 
 tiveness when shots count. 
 
 Effectiveness demands a mind unin- 
 cumbered with the useless and confus- 
 ing; a mind like a battleship must be 
 stripped for action. The diletante mind 
 is ineffective because incumbered with so 
 much that is unserviceable. Action is 
 impeded, directness of purpose is lost. 
 
 Effectiveness, though unseen, is just 
 as absolute as though it were a physical 
 force. The exercise of it tempers and 
 
 [157] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 practices and strengthens it. It grows 
 like a rolling snow-ball. 
 
 Effective men seek other effective men 
 and are sought by them. People with a 
 common interest come together. Ele- 
 ments combine with their affinities, not 
 with their opposites. And the forces of 
 thought attract to them other like forces 
 which increase their volume. 
 
 Men of force, push and determination 
 are attracted to each other. Every con- 
 tact of such men with others like them, 
 every conversation among them, imparts 
 a vigor, or serves as an inspiration to 
 each and strengthens every one. Such 
 men do not associate with the weak, 
 vacillating, uncertain and hesitating. 
 These group themselves together. In 
 human, as in chemical combinations, it 
 is the elements having affinity for each 
 other which come together, creating a 
 new substance, a new organization. 
 
 The power of effectiveness was dis- 
 played by the original John Jacob Astor 
 when he tramped the streets of New 
 York with a basket of apples on his arm 
 offering to one after another, irrespec- 
 tive of the number of discouragements 
 and refusals to purchase that he met. 
 
 [158] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 And it was this same power of effective- 
 ness developed and grown greater which 
 made him one of the master spirits of 
 enterprise of his day. It is this power 
 of effectiveness, this ability to concen- 
 trate all the powers on the purpose in 
 hand, and renew itself with each ob- 
 stacle met that has enabled every great 
 projector and inventor, from Columbus 
 or Eobert Fulton down, to present to 
 one person after another with earnest- 
 ness, courage and faith, the importance 
 and value of their project or invention, 
 until finally they have engaged the at- 
 tention and secured the means by which 
 they have triumphed. 
 
 Effectiveness should be a growing 
 power. Each accomplishment develops 
 strength and ability for larger accom- 
 plishment. That is why the effective 
 man regards minor achievements with 
 small content, looking to the greater 
 achievements which he is able to see and 
 believe are now possible. There was a 
 time when small achievements were just 
 as far ahead of his accomplishment as 
 the larger ones are now. Strength has 
 grown by achievement. 
 
 [159] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 The elements of effectiveness incite 
 the achieving power, the mental control ; 
 and with determination, mental and 
 moral force are constantly increasing 
 themselves. They reach out for their 
 affinities in others. It is not an unusual 
 thing to be hundreds of miles away from 
 some one during the time you are work- 
 ing out a project, or a plan, or an inven- 
 tion, and then suddenly meet that one 
 and have him present to you the very 
 plans you had in your own mind, adding 
 to them ideas which originated with 
 him. He has unconsciously acquired 
 knowledge of your plans, doubtless by 
 this working out of mental control, and 
 in his searchings he has added to your 
 plans when you come in contact with 
 him. The very concentration of two 
 minds on the same subject seems to have 
 transmitted thought to a distance. 
 
 Effectiveness lifts us out of despond- 
 ency, discouragement and difficulties. It 
 is like the good strong team of horses 
 which comes along, hitches on to the 
 wagon that is mired and pulls it out. 
 The effective man, the effective mind 
 is doing this constantly for the weaker, 
 the uninitiated, the beginner, or those 
 
 [160], 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 of limited faith and force. Effectiveness 
 is the inspiration to renew courage. It 
 begins each day with increased resolu- 
 tion, fresh determination and with re- 
 juvenated vigor. The effective man 
 smiles and welcomes the difficulties as 
 they surround him. In effectiveness 
 there is the keen vision, the alert mind, 
 the intuitive perception, the courageous 
 soul, the resolute will, the invincible de- 
 termination all in tune and all in har- 
 mony because attuned by habit and 
 practice, and by the complete discipline 
 of the will. 
 
 In effectiveness there is that rallying 
 power which makes you quick to 'see a 
 wrong position or a weakness, and gives 
 you the power to correct them ; to recog- 
 nize impending defeat and enable you to 
 quickly reorganize your plans and bring 
 victory out of it. Effectiveness is 
 never daunted, because it is the ability 
 to utilize every resource and to command 
 every reserve power. 
 
 Mere industry is not effectiveness. 
 Effectiveness can be neutralized and de- 
 stroyed by doing the things of lesser 
 instead of those of greater value. There 
 is neither gain nor effectiveness in 
 
 [161] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 counting telegraph poles as you speed by 
 on a train, or in adding up the number 
 of seats or the window catches that a 
 car contains. Effectiveness confines it- 
 self to those things of distinct value, 
 occupying itself with them in the order 
 of their importance. 
 
 Effectiveness, above all, avoids occu- 
 pying itself with destructive things. If 
 you spend an hour in despondency, or 
 fretting, worrying over an annoying in- 
 cident, or centering your thoughts on 
 unpleasant sights, you consume force, 
 your powers ; and you attract to yourself 
 those negative elements which make the 
 consumption of mental force double 
 what it would be if directed in a use- 
 ful and purposeful channel. It is like 
 the destructive waste of force due to a 
 hot journal. It is just as necessary for 
 you to spend your energy, your vital 
 force economically as that you spend 
 your money economically. It is essential 
 that you get full value for what you 
 spend. The expenditure of thought and 
 force do not stop when the muscles cease 
 acting. They go on. They are always 
 acting. They are never at rest when 
 awake. This but emphasizes the im- 
 
 [162] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 portance, therefore, of perfect control 
 and discipline of these powers. 
 
 Effectiveness gives you new plans by 
 enabling you to see better combinations 
 of the old plans. It makes you under- 
 stand your own powers. It points out 
 the way for success. It detects weak- 
 nesses, and removes them. It shapes the 
 expenditure of force to the best advant- 
 age. Effectiveness not only conceives 
 new ideas, but generates and marshals 
 forces which will carry them on to suc- 
 cess. 
 
 It is effectiveness which influences 
 people, which inspires their confidence, 
 which attracts them to you, which makes 
 them believe in what you say. The wiles 
 and influence of social entertainments, 
 the lavishing of money, flattery, con- 
 cessions or other appeals to foibles or 
 weaknesses have nothing of that influ- 
 ence which the quiet, silent force of ef- 
 fectiveness has in attracting people to 
 you, and inspiring them with confidence 
 in you, and gaming for you their co- 
 operation and help. The things which 
 they most prize in themselves, the cer- 
 tainties of character, the power of 
 achievement, the factors and elements 
 
 [163] 
 
EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 of success which they desire, they find 
 in you; and, as like attracts like, they 
 are by the very force of effectiveness 
 brought to believe in the possibility of 
 their own success. It is in this way that 
 the effective man duplicates and multi- 
 plies himself through others. 
 
 Effectiveness does not fail to cultivate 
 the minor forces of influence. The cul- 
 tivation of courtesy and suavity of man- 
 ner, and that contact with people which 
 inspires and attracts. Effectiveness 
 recognizes, as some one has put it, 
 "that you can't make faces at the world 
 and succeed," no matter how good your 
 business may be. Effectiveness includes 
 tact, the power and the skill to do the 
 right thing at the right time. 
 
 Effectiveness, the power to accom- 
 plish, set in motion by the desire to 
 accomplish, is what has made the prog- 
 ress of the world, developed all the 
 great inventions, increased the beauty 
 and pleasure of living, bettered civili- 
 zation and developed men. 
 
 Effectiveness is yours if you will have 
 it and are willing to pay the price for 
 it ; and there is no limit to your effective- 
 ness except that which you, yourself set. 
 
 [164] 
 
HERE ENDS THE POWER or MENTAL DEMAND 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS AS WRITTEN BY HERBERT 
 EDWARD LAW, F. C. S. , AND PUBLISHED BY PAUL 
 ELDER AND COMPANY AT THEIR TOMOYE PRESS 
 IN THE CITY OP SAN FRANCISCO, UNDER THE 
 PERSONAL SUPERVISION OF JOHN BERNHARDT 
 SWART, IN THE MONTH OF DECEMBER AND THE 
 YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 C03fi533filb 
 
 336042 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY