king, and that
you can mold it as you will simply by the intelligent control of
your own thinking.

[Sidenote: _Running Your Mental Factory_]

In Book I. you learned that--

I. _All human achievement comes about through bodily activity._

II. _All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the
mind._

In this volume you have added to these propositions a third, namely:

III. _The mind is the instrument you must employ for the
accomplishment of any purpose._

Acting on this third postulate, you have begun the consideration
of primary mental operations with a view to evolving methods and
devices for the scientific and systematic employment of the mind
in the attainment of success. You have concluded your study of
the first of the two fundamental processes of the mind, the
Sense-Perceptive Process, and have learned to distinguish between
seeing or hearing or feeling on the one hand and perceiving on
the other.

[Sidenote: _Acquiring Mental Balance_]

Realizing this distinction and applying it to your daily life,
you can at once set to work to acquire mental poise and practical
self-mastery, the essence of personal efficiency.

There never has been a moment in all your life when sense-impressions
were not pouring in upon you from every side, tending to disturb
and annoy you and interfere with your concentration and progress.
Heretofore you have struggled blindly with these distracting
influences, not knowing the elements with which you had to deal
nor how to deal with them.

[Sidenote: _Dissipating Mental Specters_]

But the mask has been torn from the specter of distraction, and
hereafter when irrelevant sights, sounds and other sensations
threaten to interrupt your work, just stop a moment and consider.
So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, nothing
exists in substance and reality outside your mental picture of it.
So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, all matter
is simply thought, and you have never doubted your ability to
dismiss a thought. It is for you, then, here and now, to decide
whether you will harbor sensory pictures that impede your progress
and allow them to harass and dominate you and interfere with the
achievement of your ambition, or whether you will ignore these
intruders and thereby annihilate them.

[Sidenote: _How to Control Your Destiny_]

Success is a variable term. In the last analysis, it means simply
getting the thing that _you_ want