The Habit Of Doing More Than Paid For

Of this small group of faithful ones who gave me encouragement at a time when it was badly needed, perhaps one man should have the fullest credit, and this man is Edwin C. Barnes, a business associate of Thomas A. Edison. Mr. Barnes became interested in my chosen work nearly twenty years ago, and I owe it to him to state here that had it not been for his unwavering faith in the soundness of the Law of Success philosophy I would have yielded to the persuasion of my friends and sought the way of least resistance via the salary route.

This would have saved me much grief and an almost endless amount of criticism, but it would have wrecked the hopes of a life-time, and in the end I would in all probability have lost, also, the finest and most desirable of all things, HAPPINESS! for I have been extremely happy in my work, even during the periods when the remuneration it brought me could be measured by nothing but a mountain of debts which I could not for the moment pay.

Perhaps this may explain, to some extent, why the subject of slavery through debt was so extensively emphasized in Lesson Four, on the Habit of Saving.

We want that lesson to "sink in." Edwin Barnes not only believed in the soundness of the Law of Success philosophy, but his own financial success had demonstrated, as had also his close business relationship with the greatest inventor on earth, that he had the right to speak with authority on the subject of the laws through which success may be achieved. I began my work of research with the belief that success could be attained, by anyone with reasonable intelligence and a real desire to succeed, by following certain (then by me unknown) rules of procedure. I wanted to know what these rules were and how they could be applied.

Mr. Barnes believed as I did. Moreover, he was in a position to know that the astounding achievements of his business associate, Mr. Edison, came about entirely through the application of some of the principles which later were tested and included as a part of this philosophy.

From his way of thinking it seemed that the accumulation of money, enjoying peace of mind and finding happiness could be brought about by the application of never-varying laws which anyone might master and apply. That was my belief, also. That belief has now been transformed into not merely a provable, but a PROVED reality, as I hope every student of this course will have reason to understand when the course shall have been mastered.