140 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
"Young man, before 1 answer your question will you please define
your term , success. '')''
After waiting until he saw that 1 was somewhat embarrassed by
this request, he continued: "By success you make reference to my
money, do you not?" 1 assured him that money was the term by which
most people measured success, and he then said: "Oh, well, if you
wish to know how 1 got my money-if that is what you call success
-I will answer your question by saying that we have a Master Mind
here in our business, and that mind is made up of more than a score
of men who constitute my personal staff of superintendents and man-
agers and accountants and chemists and other necessary types. No one
person in this group is the Master Mind of which 1 speak, but the
sum total of all the minds in the group, coordinated, organized, and
directed to a difinite end in a spirit of harmonious Cooperation, is the
power that got my money for me. No two minds in the group are
exactly alike, but each man in the group does the thing that he is
supposed to do and he does it better than any other person in the
world could do ie'
Then and there, the seed out of which this course has since been
developed was sown in my mind. But that seed did not take root or
germinate until later. This interview marked the beginning of years
of research which led, finally, to the discovery of the principle of psy-
chology described in the introductory lesson as the Master Mind.
1 heard all that Mr. Carnegie had said, but it took the knowledge
gained from many years of subsequent contact with the business
world to enable me to assimilate what he said and to dearly grasp and
understand the principle behind it-which was nothing more nor less
than the principle of organized iffort upon which this course on the Law
of Success is founded.
Carnegie's group of men constituted a Master Mind and that mind
was so well-organized, so well-coordinated, so powerful, that it could
have accumulated millions of dollars for Mr. Carnegie in practically any
sort of endeavor of a commercial or industrial nature. The steel business