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. [Sidenote: A Process for "Making Good"] 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. 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._ [Sidenote: Inadequacy of Body Training] 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."