CHAPTER III

THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS


[Sidenote: _Sources of Persistence_]

In such instances as we have recounted, men have found that persistent
effort along certain lines has had the effect of making presently
available what would otherwise be simply unused storage batteries of
reserve power. What was the source and inspiration for this persistent
effort?

You will say that it was ambition or patriotism or some similar
semi-emotional influence. And so it was. But what is ambition, what is
patriotism, _what is any desire but a picturing to the mind's eye of
the things desired, an awakening of a mental image_ of the result to
be attained, the reward that is to follow certain efforts? And these
mental pictures coming into consciousness have brought with them their
associated emotions and their associated impulses to muscular action,
impulses appropriate to the picture _and automatically tending to work
its realization_.

These impulses constitute the whole of man's achieving power. They are
the Initiative Energy of all Success.