Title: Psychology and Achievement
Author: Warren Hilton
Release date: October 19, 2004 [eBook #13791]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Lest in the text of these volumes credit may not always have been given where credit is due, grateful acknowledgment is here made to Professor Hugo Münsterberg, Professor Walter Dill Scott, Dr. James H. Hyslop, Dr. Ernst Haeckel, Dr. Frank Channing Haddock, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, Professor Morton Prince, Professor F.H. Gerrish, Mr. Waldo Pondray Warren, Dr. J.D. Quackenbos, Professor C.A. Strong, Professor Paul Dubois, Professor Joseph Jastrow, Professor Pierre Janet, Dr. Bernard Hart and Professor G.M. Whipple, of the indebtedness to them incurred in the preparation of this work.
Chapter
I. ATTAINMENT OF MIND CONTROL
THE MAN OF TOMORROW
THE DOLLARS AND CENTS OF MENTAL WASTE
THE MEANS TO NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT
A PROCESS FOR "MAKING GOOD"
INADEQUACY OF BODY TRAINING
INADEQUACY OF BUSINESS SPECIALIZATION
FUTILITY OF ADVICE IN BUSINESS
THE WHY AND THE HOW
FUNDAMENTAL TRAINING FOR EFFICIENCY
THE VIRUS OF FAILURE
PRACTICAL FORMULAS FOR EVERY DAY
YOUR UNDISCOVERED RESOURCES
MAN'S MIND MACHINE
ABJURING MYSTICISMS
PSYCHOLOGY, PHYSIOLOGY AND RELATIONSHIPS
ABODE AND INSTRUMENT OF MIND
MANNER OF HANDLING MENTAL PROCESSES
FUNDAMENTAL LAWS AND PRACTICAL METHODS
SPECIAL BUSINESS TOPICS
A STEP BEYOND COLLEGIATE PSYCHOLOGY
THE ETERNAL LAWS OF INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT
HOW TO MASTER OUR METHODS
II. TWO LAWS OF SUCCESS-ACHIEVEMENT
III. RELATION OF MIND ACTIVITY TO BODILY
ACTIVITY
IV. INTROSPECTIVE EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY
V. PHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY
VI. THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The men of the nineteenth century have harnessed the forces of the outer world. The age is now at hand that shall harness the energies of mind, new-found in the psychological laboratory, and shall put them at the service of humanity.
Are you fully equipped to take a valiant part in the work of the coming years?
The greatest of all eras is at hand! Are you increasing your fitness to appreciate it and take part in it, or are you merely passing your time away?
Take careful note for a week of the incidents of your daily life—your methods of work, habits of thought, modes of recreation. You will discover an appalling waste in your present random methods of operation.
How many foot-pounds of energy do you suppose you annually dump into the scrap-heap of wasted effort? What does this mean to you in dollars and cents? In conscious usefulness? In peace and happiness?
Individual mental efficiency is an absolute prerequisite to any notable personal achievement or any great individual success. Your mental energies are the forces with which you must wage your battles in this world.
Are you prepared to direct and deploy these forces with
masterful control and strategic skill? Are you prepared to use all
your reserves of mental energy in the crises of your career?
Individual mental efficiency is an absolute prerequisite to any
notable personal achievement or any great individual success. Your
mental energies are the forces with which you must wage your
battles in this world. Are you prepared to direct and deploy these
forces with masterful control and strategic skill? Are you prepared
to use all your reserves of mental energy in the crises of your
career?
A Mighty and Intelligent Power resides within you. Its marvelous
resources are just now coming to be recognized.
Recent scientific research has revealed, beyond the world of the
senses and beyond the domain of consciousness, a wide and hitherto
hidden realm of human energies and resources.
These are mental energies and resources. They are phases of the
mind, not of the "mind" of fifty years ago, but of a "mind" of
whose operations you are unconscious and whose marvelous breadth
and depth and power have but recently been revealed to the world by
scientific experiment.
Thus in many fairly independent ways we are brought around to
this same idea of a common structure underlying all the many
seeming diversities manifested by what we call matter.
In this Basic Course of Reading we shall lay before you
in simple and clear-cut but scientific form the proof that you have
at your command mental powers of which you have never before
dreamed.
And we shall give you such specific directions for the use of
these new-found powers, that whatever your environment, whatever
your business, whatever your ambition, you need but follow our
plain and simple instructions in order to do the thing you want to
do, to be the man you want to be, or to get the thing you want to
have.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The time is ripe for a real analysis of these important
problems,—a serious and scientific analysis with a clear and
practical exposition of facts and principles and rules for
conduct.
Men and women must be fundamentally trained so that they can
look deep into their own minds and see where the screw is loose,
where oil is needed, and so readjust themselves and their living
for a greater efficiency.
The embittered, the superstitious, the prejudiced, all those who
scorpion-like sting themselves with the virus of failure, must be
given an antidote of understanding that will repair their deranged
mental machinery.
The conscientious but foolish business man who is worrying
himself into failure and an early grave must be taught the
physiological effects of ideas and given a new standard of
values.
The profligate must be lured from his emotional excesses and
debaucheries, not by moralizings, but by showing him just how these
things fritter his energies and retard his progress.
It must be made plain to the successful promoter, to the rich
banker, how a man may be a financial success and yet a miserable
failure so far as true happiness is concerned, and how by
scientific self-development he can acquire greater riches within
than all his vaults of steel will hold.
This Basic Course of Reading offers just such an analysis
and exposition of fundamental principles. It furnishes definite and
scientific answers to the problems of life. It will reveal to you
unused or unintelligently used mental forces vastly greater than
those now at your command.
We go even further, and say that this Basic Course of
Reading provides a practicable formula for the everyday use of
these vast resources. It will enable you to acquire the magical
qualities and still more magical effects that spell success and
happiness, without straining your will to the breaking point and
making life a burden. It will give you a definite prescription like
the physician's, "Take one before meals," and as easily compounded,
which will enable you to be prosperous and happy.
In the development of one's innate resources, such as powers of
observation, imagination, correct judgment, alertness,
resourcefulness, application, concentration, and the faculty of
taking prompt advantage of opportunities, the study of the mental
machine is bound to be the first step. It must be the ultimate
resource for self-training in efficiency for the promoter with his
appeal to the cupidity and imaginations of men as surely as for the
artist in his search for poetic inspiration.
No man can get the best results from any machine unless he
understands its mechanism. We shall draw aside the curtain and show
you the mind in operation.
The mastery of your own powers is worth more to you than all the
knowledge of outside facts you can crowd into your head. Read and
study and practice the teachings of this Basic Course, and
they will make you in a new sense the master of yourself and of
your future.
In this Basic Course of Reading we shall begin by giving
you a thorough understanding of certain mental operations and
processes.
We shall lead your interest away from "vague mysticisms" and
emphasize such phases of scientific psychological theory as bear
directly on practical achievement.
We shall give you a practical working knowledge of concentrative
mental methods and devices. We shall clear away the mysteries and
misapprehensions that now envelop this particular field.
In the present volume we shall begin with a discussion of
certain aspects of the relation between the mind and the body.
However we look at it, it is impossible to understand the mind
without some knowledge of the bodily machine through which the mind
works. The investigation of the mind and its conditions and
problems is primarily the business of psychology, which seeks to
describe and explain them. It would seem to be entirely distinct
from physiology, which seeks to classify and explain the facts of
bodily structure and operation. But all sciences overlap more or
less. And this is particularly true of psychology, which deals with
the mind, and physiology, which deals with the body.
It is the mind that we are primarily interested in. But every
individual mind resides within, or at least expresses itself
through, a body. Upon the preservation of that body and upon the
orderly performance of its functions depend our health and comfort,
our very lives.
Then, too, considered merely as part of the outside world of
matter, man's body is the physical fact with which he is most in
contact and most immediately concerned. It furnishes him with
information concerning the existence and operations of other minds.
It is in fact his only source of information about the outside
world.
First of all, then, you must form definite and intelligent conclusions concerning the relations between the mind and the body.
This will be of value in a number of ways. In the first place,
you will understand the bodily mechanism through which the mind
operates, and a knowledge of this mechanism is bound to enlighten
you as to the character of the mental processes themselves.
In the second place, it is worth while to know the extent of the
mind's influence over the body, because this knowledge is the first
step toward obtaining bodily efficiency through the mental control
of bodily functions. And, finally, a study of this bodily mechanism
is of very great practical importance in itself, for the body is
the instrument through which the mind acts in its relations with
the world at large.
From a study of the bodily machine, we shall advance to a
consideration of the mental processes themselves, not after the
usual manner of works on psychology, but solely from the standpoint
of practical utility and for the establishment of a scientific
concept of the mind capable of everyday use.
The elucidation of every principle of mental operation will be
accompanied by illustrative material pointing out just how that
particular law may be employed for the attainment of specific
practical ends. There will be numerous illustrative instances and
methods that can be at once made use of by the merchant, the
musician, the salesman, the advertiser, the employer of labor, the
business executive.
In this way this Basic Course of Reading will lay a firm
and broad foundation, first, for an understanding of the methods
and devices whereby any man may acquire full control and direction
of his mental energies and may develop his resources to the last
degree; second, for an understanding of the psychological methods
for success in any specific professional pursuit in which he may be
particularly interested; and third, for an understanding of the
methods of applying psychological knowledge to the industrial
problems of office, store and factory.
The first of these—that is to say, instruction in methods
for the attainment of any goal consistent with native
ability—will follow right along as part of this Basic
Course of Reading. The second and third—that is to say,
the study of special commercial and industrial topics—are
made the subject of special courses supplemental to this Basic
Course and for which it can serve only as an introduction.
The conclusion which our minds are forced to draw from the facts
presented in this chapter is not doubtful, nor is it difficult to
state. Matter is not now being brought into existence by any means
that we call "natural." And yet the facts of radioactivity very
positively forbid the past eternity of matter. Hence, the
conclusion is syllogistic: matter must have originated at some time
in the past by methods or means which are equivalent to a real
Creation.
In this Basic Course of Reading we shall show you how you
may acquire perfect individual efficiency. And, most remarkable of
all, we shall show you how you may acquire it without that
effort to obtain it, that straining of the will, that struggling
with wasteful inclinations and desires, that is itself the essence
of inefficiency.
The facts and principles set forth in this Basic Course
are new and wonderful and inspiring. They have been established and
attested by world-wide and exhaustive scientific research and
experiment.
You may be a college graduate. You may have had the advantage of
a college course in psychology. But you have probably had no
instruction in the practical application of your knowledge of
mental operations. So far as we are aware, there are few
universities in the world that embrace in their curricula a course
in "applied" psychology. For the average college man this Basic
Course of Reading will be, therefore, in the nature of a
post-graduate course, teaching him how to make practical use of the
psychology he learned at college, and in addition giving him facts
about the mind unknown to the college psychology of a few years
ago.
In these books you will probe deeply into the normal human
mind.
You will see also the fantastic and distorted shape of its
manifestations in disease.
You will learn the Eternal Laws of Individual Achievement.
And you will be taught how to apply them to your own business or
profession.
But mark this word of warning. To comprehend the teachings of
this Basic Course well enough to put them into practice
demands from you careful study and reflection. It requires
persistent application. Do not attempt to browse through the pages
that follow. They are worth all the time that you can put upon
them.
The mind is a complex mechanism. Each element is alone a fitting
subject for a lifetime's study. Do not lose sight of the whole in
the study of the parts.
All the books bear upon a central theme. They will lead you on
step by step. Gradually your conception of your relations to the
world will change. A new realization of power will come upon you.
You will learn that you are in a new sense the master of your fate.
You will find these books, like the petals of a flower, unfolding
one by one until a great and vital truth stands revealed in
full-blown beauty.
To derive full benefit from the Course it is necessary
that you should do more than merely understand each sentence as you
go along. You must grasp the underlying train of thought. You must
perceive the continuity of the argument.
It is necessary, therefore, that you do but a limited amount of
reading each day, taking ample time to reflect on what you have
read.
If any book is not entirely clear to you at first, go over it
again. Persistence will enable any man to acquire a thorough
comprehension of our teachings and a profound mastery of our
methods.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fact is, one's opinion as to whether mind controls body or
body makes mind-action depends altogether upon the point of view.
And the first step for us to take is to agree upon the point of
view we shall assume.
Two points of view are possible. One is speculative, the
other practical.
The speculative point of view is that of the philosopher
and religionist, who ponder the tie that binds "soul" and body in
an effort to solve the riddle of "creation" and pierce the mystery
of the "hereafter."
The practical point of view is that of the modern
practical scientist, who deals only with actual facts of human
experience and seeks only immediate practical results.
The speculative problem is the historical and religious one of
the mortality or immortality of the soul. The practical problem is
the scientific one that demands to know what the mental forces are
and how they can be used most effectively.
There is no especial need here to trace the historical
development of these two problems or enter upon a discussion of
religious or philosophical questions.
Our immediate interest in the mind and its relationship to the
body is not because we want to be assured of the salvation of our
souls after death.
We want to know all we can about the reality and certainty
and character of mental control of bodily functions because of the
practical use we can make of such knowledge in this life, here and
now.
The practical scientist has nothing in common with either
spiritualists, soul-believers, on the one hand, or materialists on
the other. So far as the mortality of the soul is concerned, he may
be either a spiritualist or a materialist. But spiritualism or
materialism is to him only an intellectual pastime. It is not his
trade. In his actual work he seeks only practical results, and so
confines himself wholly to the actual facts of human
experience.
The practical scientist knows that as between two given facts,
and only as between these two, one may be the "cause" of the
other. But he is not interested in the "creative origin" of
material things. He does not attempt to discover "first"
causes.
The practical scientist ascribes all sorts of qualities to
electricity and lays down many laws concerning it without having
the remotest idea as to what, in the last analysis, electricity may
actually be. He is not concerned with ultimate truths. He does his
work, and necessarily so, upon the principle that for all practical
purposes he is justified in using any given assumption as a working
hypothesis if everything happens just as if it were true.
The practical scientist applies the term "cause" to any object
or event that is the invariable predecessor of some other object or
event.
For him a "cause" is simply any object or event that may be
looked upon as forecasting the action of some other object or the
occurrence of some other event.
The point with him is simply this, Does or does not this object
or this event in any way affect that object or that event or
determine its behavior?