The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran

psychology of the subject, it is all with one object in view: right action at the right time. Nothing can take the place of patient, plodding industry; ideas expressed in action; zeal, will-power, faith and energy translated into work.

      Helen Wilmans says most truly: “Money comes from doing.”

      WALLACE D. WATTLES’

      PRACTICAL IDEAS

      In a little pamphlet, “How to Get What You Want” Mr. Wallace D. Wattles gives some very valuable and pertinent advice on Money Making, as well as on other lines of success. We summarize a few of his most practical teachings:

      The cause of success is always in the person who succeeds ; all minds are formed of the same essential elements, and contain the same faculties, the difference in men is the degree of their development; it is certain, therefore, that you can succeed if you can find out the cause of success, develop it to sufficient strength and apply it properly in your work; you can develop any power to an unlimited extent, therefore you can develop enough success power to succeed; you must develop special faculties to be used in your own special work; you must choose for a business the one which will call for the use of your strongest faculties, and then develop these strongest faculties to the highest point possible; success depends not alone or chiefly on the possession of these special faculties which are only the tools of success but more upon the power which uses the tools; this something in the person which causes him to use his special faculties successfully we call Active Power-Consciousness; it is poise and more than poise, it is faith and more than faith, it is what you feel when you know you can do a thing and know how to do the thing ; you must learn how to create this Power-Consciousness so you will know you can do what you want to do ; you must not only believe you can succeed, but must also know you can succeed; and the sub-conscious mind must know you can succeed as well as the objective mind; people may think objectively they can succeed, but sub-consciously doubt that they will and the sub-conscious doubt will thwart success: the sub-conscious mind must be thoroughly impregnated with the knowledge that you have the power and know how to use it and will use it.

      Repeated affirmations for a month, especially just before sleep, of such statements as the following will help you create the sub-conscious knowledge of success: “I can succeed:” “I am successful:” “what others have done I can do:” “I can do what I want to do;” “I can have what I want to have.”

      To get more you must make the best constructive use of what you have: progress depends on the perfection of your use of what you have; the squirrel by jumping, through the law of evolution, in time obtains wings; you will never have wings if you only jump half as far as you can. Every person who does one thing perfectly is instantly presented with an opportunity of doing some larger thing; the law is that wherever an organization has more life than can find expression by functioning on a given plane, its surplus life lifts it to the next higher plane; live for the future now but do not live in the future now ; get more business, more friends, better position by using constructively what you have now; concentrate all your constructive energies on the use of what you have today; make every transaction, experience (even the adverse ones) a stepping stone to nobler things ; remember it is the surplus of life (ability) on one plane which, under evolution, prepares for the next higher plane; make friends by taking a real interest in every one you meet; fill perfectly every present relation and be ready in advance for the promotion sure to come.

      How Helen Wilmans Conquered Poverty

      “Lives of great men” and of great women as well, “all remind us, we can make our lives sublime.” No truth in words impresses us so strongly as the truth in a life. Helen Wilmans’ life story is a Bible of Revelations for the age in which we live full of the new thought, the new theology and the divinest inspiration.

      Mrs. Wilmans declares that fear is at the bottom of poverty fear of others and distrust of self. She declares: “I have known poverty most thoroughly. I was held in a belief of its power all through the earlier part of my life; I looked to others as my superiors, I was ready to take a place beneath them; I was tortured day and night by actual want.”

      “Then my reasoning powers began to awaken, first on the subject of religion, then on other things and my mind broke its fetters so I began to see the light. I threw off a hundred beliefs considered essential to salvation. I slowly acquired a measure of individuality that enabled me to stand alone.”

      Read the story of her life; it is thrilling and most instructively interesting. A farmer’s wife, the farm mortgaged and then sold, in poverty, all her possessions in a valise, without money, securing a ride to a town five miles distant, whence with $10 borrowed money, wrenched by mental force from a shoemaker, she proceeds to ‘Frisco, spends her capital, fasts three days, refuses though hungry any work or job, save what she has set her heart upon, newspaper work, which at last she secures it at $6.00 a week then loses gains another place.

      Then one day she throws down her pen and marches out of the office, determined to serve others no longer, she stands alone in the sleet and snow of the street, her sole capital 25 cents and her own self-reliance, and resolves to found a newspaper of her own. She goes home and the boarding housekeeper, suspicious of her early return, asks:

      “Have you been discharged by the chief?” “No,” she answers, “I have discharged the chief.”

      “Is your bread and butter assured?” he asks.

      “My bread and butter are assured,” she answers.

      “How?” he asks.

      “I am going to found a paper and it is a success before it is born. Listen and I’ll read you my first editorial.”

      Then she read him her editorial on “I”, and he sat listening to the burning enthusiasm and the ringing clarion tones of freedom and aggressiveness, till his soul was on fire and his face illuminated and he cried out: “I’ll gamble on you. I have $20,000 in the bank. You can draw on every dollar if you like.”

      She refused, but asked him to wait for a short time for her board bill. Three days later when $7.00 came in, they danced with joy around the table till the dishes were scattered and broken. Then followed more subscriptions, donations, appreciation, larger hopes, plans, courage and success.

      She conquered poverty by conquering fear, learning of, and trusting in herself and daring to say, “I can and I will.”

      Planning

      One great secret of success in life is careful, wise and prudent planning of our labors in advance. Perhaps in no one thing does the successful man surpass the unsuccessful more than in the ability to foresee the future, prepare and arrange his plans to meet its exigencies and to so direct his labors to avoid loss of time, money and energy, and make all his work bear directly on the attainment of his great purpose in life.

      All great generals Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, Wellington, Grant have excelled in ability to lay out practical plans of campaign and, in a multitude of great battles, the victory has been won more largely by skillful, bold and decisive planning than by the use of superior force.

      What is the chief thing in good Planning? We answer that the first essential is knowledge. Take the general about to engage the enemy’s forces in battle. What does he need especially for the formation of his plans of battle? Chiefly knowledge. He needs to know fully the forces arrayed against him; he needs to know accurately the forces at his command; he needs to know the weak and strong points of both armies ; he needs to know every foot of the ground over which the battle may rage; and, in short, the more complete and accurate his knowledge, the better plan of battle can he lay out and the greater his prospect of success.

      The architect before building must know the nature of the site, quality of material, figure out the cost, take into account the element of time and weather, and, in short, build his structure completely in mind before he builds it in mortar, as the successful general must fight out in the mental arena his battle before he successfully fights the enemy.

      So every young person in planning his life work needs, especially, knowledge. First, he needs to know himself, physically, intellectually and morally,