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. TWO LAWS OF SUCCESS-ACHIEVEMENT CHAPTER II TWO LAWS OF SUCCESS-ACHIEVEMENT [Sidenote: The One-Man Business Corporation] 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. [Sidenote: Business and Bodily Activity] 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.