PERSONAL MAGNETISM.

Let us understand. You cannot reasonably hope to succeed by merely dreaming about success.

You surely cannot achieve success if you plunge blindly through your career.

You cannot really succeed without possessing some degree of personal magnetism.

When you began reading this article, you certainly possessed a measure of magnetic capacity, either physical or psychic. If you have energetically observed its directions, you have developed both varieties; but, above that, you have also combined them into one living whole, the magnetic personality.

This result has required at least a year of persistent effort. If you have arrived at this point in less time, you should go back and begin where haste first retarded your progress.

Magnetism is a natural growth.

No matter how great may be your ability to read and understand books, that growth, that law, require time as well as intelligent effort. No matter how poor may be your ability in such respect, that growth is absolutely certain if you put reasonable time and genuine effort into its acquisition.

The giant trees of California were once puny saplings. The slow lapse of time has drawn nature into their mighty hearts. Magnetism can no more be acquired by the mere reading an article, or by hurried practice of its directions, than can these giants of the West be produced in the hot-house culture of a northern summer.

Magnetic growth is naturally slow. Its principles, its methods, and the results of its study, have to be deeply sunk into and absorbed and assimilated by the subjective self before the reaction of magnetism in the objective life can obtain. If you have read these lines correctly, you have learned that magnetic growth cannot be hurried. These statements are placed here because, had they appeared at the beginning of our work, the outlook would have seemed, perhaps, discouraging, but more especially because they would not have been understood. You now understand them because you have toiled, and you can afford to smile at such possible discouragement. You have paid an easy price for magnetic power, for the gains discount the pains.

Magnetism and practical life.

The faithful observance of these suggestions has developed many surprises during the time occupied. The growth of magnetism involves intense and continuous concentration of thought upon the psychic field, and it is very likely that you may find it necessary to guard against that danger. The method of so guarding is briefly indicated below.

The sole value of magnetism consists in its practical application to everyday affairs. Success-Magnetism is not an accomplishment merely; it is a practical power. When rightly developed and used, it controls the subjective self in the concrete work of the objective. The definition of the goal you have been seeking now appears:

Success-magnetism is personal magnetism intelligently multiplied into actual life.

The first duty of man is practical sanity.

• Self Help