1032 THE PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL INTEGRITY
To make progress in this world you must rely solely upon the
forces within your own mind for your start. After this start has been
made you may turn to others for aid, but the first step must be taken
without outside aid. It will then surprise you to observe how many
willing people you will encounter who will volunteer to assist you.
Success is made up of many facts and factors, chiefly of the seventeen
qualities represented by these seventeen soldiers. To enjoy a well-
rounded success, one must appropriate as many of these seventeen
qualities as may be missing in one's own inherited ability.
When you came into this world you were endowed with certain
inborn traits, the result of millions of years of evolutionary changes,
through thousands of generations of ancestors. You then acquired
many other qualities, according to the nature of your environment
and the teaching you received during early childhood. You are the
sum total of what was inborn, what you have picked up from your
experiences, what you have thought, and what you have been taught.
By the law of chance, one in a million people will have, through
inborn heredity and from knowledge acquired after birth, all of the
seventeen qualities. If you were not fortunate enough to have acquired
all the essentials for success in this way, you must strongly plant the
desire to develop yourself where you are now deficient.
A difinite purpose may be transformed into reality only when
one believes it can be done, and that belief must be backed with
unqualified faith. Perhaps the inexplicable law that turns prayer based
upon faith into reality, also transforms into reality a difinite purpose
that is founded upon belief. It can do no harm if you make your
difinite purpose in life the object of your daily prayer.
Develop in your own mind all of the seventeen qualities and you
will find that the application of faith is not difficult. Master these
seventeen qualities and you will have the power to get whatever you
want in life-without violating the rights of others.