If you have any thought that the control of your hidden mental energies is to be acquired by mere hygienic measures, put it from you.  The idea that you may come into the fulness of your powers through mere wholesome living, outdoor sports and bodily exercise is an idea that belongs to an age that is past.  Good health is not necessary to achievement.  It is not even a positive influence for achievement.  It is merely a negative blessing.  With good health you may hope to reach your highest mental and spiritual development free from the harassment of soul-racking pain.  But without good health men have reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their tortured bodies up behind them.

[Sidenote:  Inadequacy of Business Specialization]

Nor does success necessarily follow or require long preparation in a particular field.  The first occupation of the successful man is rarely the one in which he achieves his ultimate triumph.  In the changing conditions of our day, one needs a better weapon than the mere knowledge of a particular trade, vocation or profession. He needs that mastery of himself and others that is the fundamental secret of success in all fields of endeavor.

[Sidenote:  Futility of Advice in Business]

It is well to tell you beforehand that in this Basic Course of Reading we shall be content with no mere cataloguing of the factors that are commonly regarded as essential to success.  We shall do no moralizing.  You will find here no elaboration of the ancient aphorisms, “Honesty is the best policy,” and “Genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains.”

The world has had its fill of mere exhortations to industry, frugality and perseverance.  For some thousands of years men have preached to the lazy man, “Be industrious,” and to the timid man, “Be bold.”  But such phrases never have solved and never can solve the problem for the man who feels himself lacking in both industry and courage.

[Sidenote:  The Why and the How]

It is easy enough to tell the salesman that he must approach his “prospect” with tact and confidence.  But tact and confidence are not qualities that can be assumed and discarded like a Sunday coat.  Industry and courage and tact and confidence are well enough, but we must know the Why and the How of these things.

It is well enough to preach that the secret of achievement is to be found in “courage-faith” and “courage-confidence,” and that the way to acquire these qualities is to assume that you have them.  There is no denying the undoubted fact that men and women have been rescued from the deepest mire of poverty and despair and lifted to planes of happy abundance by what is known as “faith.”  But what is “faith”?  And “faith” in What?  And Why?  And How?

[Sidenote:  Fundamental Training for Efficiency]

Obviously we cannot achieve certain and definite results in this or any other field so long as we continue to deal with materials we do not understand.  Yet that is what all men are doing today.  The elements of truth are befogged in vague and amateurish mysticism, and the subject of individual efficiency when we get beyond mere preaching and moralizing is a chaos of isms.