Napoleon Hill Golden Rules three, how to develop character through autosuggestion. This brings
us to an appropriate place at which to explain the method through which your author
has literally made himself over during a period of approximately five years. Before we
go into these details, let us remind you of the common tendency of human
beings to doubt that which they do not understand, and all that they cannot
prove to their own satisfaction, either by similar experiences of their own or by
observation. Let us also remind you that this is no age for a doubting
Thomas. Your author, while a comparatively young man, has nevertheless seen the
birth of some of the world's greatest inventions, the uncovering, as it were,
of some of the so called hidden secrets of nature, and he is
well within the bounds of accuracy when he reminds you that during the last sixty
years, science has lifted the curtains that separated us from the light of truth
and brought into use more tools of culture, development and progress than had been
discovered in all the previous history of the human race. Within comparatively recent years,
we have seen the birth of the incandescent electric light, the typesetting machine,
the printing press, the X ray, the telephone, the automobile,
the airplane, the submarine, the wireless telegraphy, and myriad other organized forces
which serve mankind and tend to separate him from the animal instincts of the dark
ages out of which he has risen. As these lines are being written,
we are informed that Thomas A. Edison is at work on a contrivance which
he believes will enable the departed spirits of men to communicate with us here on
Earth. If such a thing is possible, and if the announcement should come
from East Orange, New Jersey, tomorrow morning, that Edison has completed his
machine and communicated with the spirits of departed men. This writer, for one,
would not scoff at the statement. If we did not accept it as
true until we had seen proof. We would at least hold an open mind
on the subject, because we have witnessed enough of the impossible during the past
thirty years to convince us that there is but little that is strictly impossible when
the human mind sets itself to a task with that grim determination that knows no
defeat. If modern history informs us correctly, the best railroad men in the
country scoffed at the idea that Westinghouse could stop a train by jamming air on
the brakes. But those same men lived to see a law passed in the
New York legislature compelling railroad companies to use this foolish contrivance. And if it
had not been for that law, the present speed of railroad trains and the
safety with which we may travel would not be possible. We are reminded to
state also that had the illustrious Napoleon bonaparte not scoffed at Robert Fulton's request for
an interview, the French capital might be sitting on English soil to day,
and France might be the mistress over all of the British Empire. Fulton sent
word to Napoleon that he had invented a steam engine that would carry a boat
against the wind. But Napoleon, never having seen such a contrivance, sent
back word that he had no time to fool with cranks, and furthermore,
ships could not sail against the wind because ships never had been sailed that way.
Well within the memory of your author, a bill was introduced in Congress
asking for an appropriation with which to experiment with an airplane which Samuel Pierpont Langley
had worked out, but the appropriation was promptly denied, and Professor Langley was
scoffed at as being an impractical dreamer and a crank. No one had ever
seen a man fly a machine in the air, and no one believed it
could be done. But we are becoming a bit more liberal in our viewpoint
concerning powers which we do not understand, at least those of us who do
not wish to become the laughing stock of later generations. Are we felt impelled
to remind you of these impossibilities of the past which turned out to be realities,
before taking you behind the curtains of our own life and displaying for your
benefit certain principles which we have reason to believe will be hard for the uninitiated
to accept until they have been try ride out, and proved sound. We
will now proceed to unfold to you the most astonishing, and we might well
say, the most miraculous experience of our entire past, an experience which is
related solely for the benefit of those who are earnestly seeking ways and means to
develop in themselves those qualities which constitute positive character. When we first commenced to
understand the principle of auto suggestion several years ago, we adopted a plan for
making practical use of it in developing certain qualities which we admired in certain men
who are familiar characters in history. Viz. Just before going to sleep at
night, we made it a practice to close our eyes and see in our
imagination. Please get this clearly fixed in your mind. What we saw was
deliberately placed in our mind as instructions or as a direct command to our subconscious
mind, and as a blueprint for it to build by through our imagination,
and was in no way attributed to anything occult or in a field of uncharted
phenomena. A large council tables standing on the floor in front of us,
we then pictured in our imagination certain men seated around that table, those men
from whose characters and lives we wished to appropriate certain qualities to be deliberately built
into our own character through the principle of auto suggestion. For example, some
of the men whom we selected to take an imaginary place at the imaginary council
table were Lincoln, emmer Son, Socrates, Aristotle, Napoleon, Jefferson,
Albert Hubbard, the man from Galilee, and Henry Ward Beecher, the well
known English horator. Our purpose was to impress our subconscious mind through auto suggestion,
with the thought that we were developing certain qualities which we admired most in
each of these and in other great men. Night after night, for an
hour or more at a time, we went through this imaginary meeting at the
council table. As a matter of fact, we continue the practice to this
day, adding a new character to the council table as often as we find
someone from whom we wished to take certain qualities through emulation. From Lincoln.
We wanted the qualities for which he was most noted, earnestness of purpose,
a fair sense of justice toward all, both friends and foes alike, an
ideal which had for its object the uplift of the masses, the common people,
the courage to break precedence and to establish new ones when circumstances demanded it.
All these qualities which we had so much admired in Lincoln, we set
out to develop in our own character while looking upon that imaginary council table,
by actually commanding our subconscious mind to use the picture, which it saw at
the council table as a plan to build from. We wished to take from
Napoleon the quality of dogged persistency. We wanted his strategic ability to turn adverse
circumstances to good account. We wanted his self confidence in his wonderful ability to
inspire and lead men. We wanted his ability to organize his own faculties and
his fellow workers, because we knew that real power came only through intelligently organized
and properly directed efforts. From Emerson, we wanted that remarkably keen insight into
the future for which he was noted. We wanted his ability to interpret nature's
handwriting as it is manifested in flowing brooks, singing birds, laughing children,
the blue skies, the starry heavens, the green grass, and the beautiful
flowers. We wanted his ability to interpret human emotions, his ability to reason
from cause to effect and inversely, from effect back to cause. We wanted
Albert Hubbard's power of words and his ability to interpret the trend of the times.
We wanted his ability to combine words so they would convey the exact pictures
of the thoughts we created. We wanted his ability to write in a rhythmic
strain that would be unquestioned as to its meaning or its sincerity. We wanted
Beecher's magnetic power to grip the hearts of an audience in public address, his
ability to speak with force and conviction that moved an audience to laughter or to
tears, and made his listeners feel with him mirth and melody, sorrow and
good cheer. As I saw those men sitting there before me, seated around
the imaginary council table, I would direct my attention to each of them for
a few minutes, saying to myself that I was developing those qualities which I
aimed to appropriate from the character before me. If you have tears of grief
to shed for me on account of my ignorance in going through this imaginary role
of character building, get ready to shed them now. If you have words
of condemnation to utter against my practice, utter them now. If you have
a feeling of cynicism which seems to strive for expression in the nature of a
scowling face, give expression to it now. Because I am about to relate
something which ought to and probably will cause you to stop, look and reason
up until the time that I began these imaginary council meetings, I had made
many attempts at public speaking, all of which had been dismal failures. The
very first speech I attempted to deliver, after a week of this practice,
I so impressed my audience that I was invite ight it back for another talk
on the same subject. And from that day until the time of the writing
of these lines, I have been constantly improving. Last year, the demand
for my services as a public speaker became so universal that I toured the greater
portion of the United States, speaking before the leading clubs, civic organizations,
schools, and specially arranged meetings. In the city of Pittsburgh. During the
month of May nineteen twenty, I delivered the Magic Ladder to Success before the
Advertising Club. In my audience were some of the leading businessmen of the United
States, officials from the Carnegie Steel Company, the H. J. Hines
Pickle Company, the Joseph Horn Department Store, and other great industries of the
city. These men were analytical men. Many of them were college and university
graduates. They were men who knew when they heard something that was sound.
At the close of my address, they gave me what several members of the
audience afterward told me was the greatest station ever given a speaker before that club.
Shortly after my return from Pittsburgh, I received a medal from the Associated
Advertising Clubs of the World in memory of that event, engraved as follows in
Appreciation of Napoleon Hill, May twentieth, nineteen twenty. Please do not make
the mistake of interpreting the foregoing as an outburst of egotism. I am giving
you facts, names, dates, and places, and I am doing this
only for the purpose of showing you that the quality which I so greatly admired
in Henry Ward Beecher, I had actually commenced to develop in myself. This
quality was devil op ed around the imaginary council table with my eyes shut,
while looking at an imaginary figure of mister Beecher, seated as a member of
my imaginary board of councilors. The principle through which I developed this ability was
auto suggestion. I filled my mind so full of the thought that I would
equal and even excel Beecher before I stopped that no other result could have been
the outcome. Nor is this the end of my narrative, a narrative which,
by the way, the hundreds of thousands who know me now located in
nearly every city, town, and hamlet throughout the United States, can corroborate.
I began immediately to supplant intolerance with tolerance. I began to emulate the
immortal Lincoln in those wonderful qualities of justice toward all friend and foe alike.
New power began to come, not alone to my spoken words, but to
my pen as well. And I saw, as plainly as I could see
the sun on a clear day, the steady development of that ability to express
myself with force and conviction by the written word, which I had so much
admired in Elbert Hubbard. In speaking of this very point not many months ago,
mister Myers, an official of the Morris Packing Company of Chicago, made
the remark that my editorials in Hill's Golden Rule magazine reminded him very forcefully of
the late Elbert Hubbard, and added that he had just stated to one of
his associates a few days previously that I was not only big enough to fill
Albert Hubbard's shoes, but that I had already outgrown them. Again, I
remind you not to brush these facts aside lightly, or to charge them to
egotism. If I write as well as Hubbard, it is because I have
aspired to do so first, having deliberately made use of auto suggestion, to
charge my mind with the aim and purpose of not only equalling him, but
of excelling him, if possible. I am not unmindful of the fact that
the display of egotism is an unpardonable weakness in either a writer or a speaker,
and no one more readily denounces such shallowness of mind than this writer.
However, I must also remind you that it is not always a sign of
egotism. When a writer refers to his own personal experiences for the purpose of
giving his readers authentic data on a given subject. Sometimes it requires courage to
do so. In this particular case, I would refrain from the free use
of the personal pronoun which has so frequently crept into this narrative, were it
not for the fact that to do so would take away much of the value
of my work. I am relating these personal experiences solely because I know they
are authentic, believing as I do, that it is preferable to run the
risk of being classed as egotistical. Rather than use a hypothetical illustration of the
principle of auto suggestion or right in a third person