TWO LAWS OF SUCCESS-ACHIEVEMENT
[Sidenote: The One-Man Business Corporation]
As a working unit you are a kind of one-man business corporation made up
of two departments, the mental and the physical.
Your mind is the executive office of this personal corporation, its
directing "head." Your body is the corporation's "plant." Eyes and ears,
sight and smell and touch, hands and feet--these are the implements, the
equipment.
We have undertaken to teach you how to acquire a perfect mastery of your
own powers and meet the practical problems of your life in such a way
that success will be swift and certain.
[Sidenote: Business and Bodily Activity]
First of all it is necessary that you should accept and believe two
well-settled and fundamental laws.
I. _All human achievement comes about through bodily activity._
II. _All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the
mind._
Give the first of these propositions but a moment's thought. You can
conceive of no form of accomplishment which is not the result of some
kind of bodily activity. One would say that the master works of poetry,
art, philosophy, religion, are products of human effort furthest
removed from the material side of life, yet even these would have
perished still-born in the minds conceiving them had they not found
transmission and expression through some form of bodily activity. You
will agree, therefore, that the first of these propositions is so
self-evident, so axiomatic, as neither to require nor to admit of formal
proof.
The second proposition is not so easily disposed of. It is in fact so
difficult of acceptance by some persons that we must make very plain its
absolute validity. Furthermore, its elucidation will bring forth many
illuminating facts that will give you an entirely new conception of the
mind and its scope and influence.
[Sidenote: The Enslaved Brain]
Remember, when we say "mind," we are not thinking of the brain. The
brain is but one of the organs of the body, and, by the terms of our
proposition as stated, is as much the slave of the mind as is any other
organ of the body. To say that the mind controls the body presupposes
that mind and body are distinct entities, the one belonging to a
spiritual world, the other to a world of matter.
That the mind is master of the body is a settled principle of science.
But we realize that its acceptance may require you to lay aside some
preconceived prejudices. You may be one of those who believe that the
mind is nothing more nor less than brain activity. You may believe that
the body is all there is to man and that mind-action is merely one of
its functions.
[Sidenote: First Step Toward Self-Realization]
If so, we want you nevertheless to realize that, while as a matter of
philosophic speculation you retain these opinions, you may at the same
time for practical purposes regard the mind as an independent causal
agency and believe that it can and does control and determine and
_cause_ any and every kind of bodily activity. We want you to do this
because this conclusion is at the basis of a practical system of mental
efficiency and because, as we shall at once show you, it is capable of
proof by the established methods of physical science.
RELATION OF MIND ACTIVITY TO BODILY ACTIVITY