cts of the universe cease to be of advantage to the Ego, the
fault is in the machine. It is not the solar system that has gone wrong,
but the human machine. Second great principle, therefore: '_In case of
friction, the machine is always at fault_.'

You can control nothing but your own mind. Even your two-year-old babe
may defy you by the instinctive force of its personality. But your own
mind you can control. Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which
nothing harmful can enter except by your permission. Your own mind has
the power to transmute every external phenomenon to its own purposes. If
happiness arises from cheerfulness, kindliness, and rectitude (and who
will deny it?), what possible combination of circumstances is going to
make you unhappy so long as the machine remains in order? If
self-development consists in the utilisation of one's environment (not
utilisation of somebody else's environment), how can your environment
prevent you from developing? You would look rather foolish without it,
anyway. In that noddle of yours is everything necessary for development,
for the maintaining of dignity, for the achieving of happiness, and you
are absolute lord over the noddle, will you but exercise the powers of
lordship. Why worry about the contents of somebody else's noddle, in
which you can be nothing but an intruder, when you may arrive at a
better result, with absolute certainty, by confining your activities to
your own? 'Look within.' 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' 'Oh,
yes!' you protest. 'All that's old. Epictetus said that. Marcus Aurelius
said that. Christ said that.' They did. I admit it readily. But if you
were ruffled this morning because your motor-omnibus broke down, and
you had to take a cab, then so far as you are concerned these great
teachers lived in vain. You, calling yourself a reasonable man, are
going about dependent for your happiness, dignity, and growth, upon a
thousand things over which you have no control, and the most exquisitely
organised machine for ensuring happiness, dignity, and growth, is
rusting away inside you. And all because you have a sort of notion that
a saying said two thousand years ago cannot be practical.

You remark sagely to your child: 'No, my child, you cannot have that
moon, and you will accomplish nothing by crying for it. Now, here is
this beautiful box of bricks, by means of which you may amuse yourself
while learning many wonderful matters and improving