The Master Key System vs Think and Grow Rich Compared

Two books from the same tradition often sit side by side on self help shelves. The Master Key System, by Charles Haanel, began as a correspondence course around 1912. Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, appeared in 1937, during the Great Depression. Both teach that thought shapes circumstance. This page compares them, then asks what history can actually say about influence. It follows the 1919 St. Louis edition of the course and a reproduction of the 1937 text of Hill's book, and endorses the claims of neither.

The two books at a glance

• Authors. Haanel was a St. Louis businessman and company president who turned to writing in his forties. Hill was a writer, lecturer and magazine publisher, and historians doubt many of the claims he made about his own life.
• Dates. The course dates from about 1912, with a book edition by about 1916 or 1917. Think and Grow Rich was published in 1937 by The Ralston Society. Wikipedia credits Rosa Lee Beeland, Hill's wife at the time, with a substantial share of the writing and editing.
• Form. Haanel wrote 24 weekly parts in numbered paragraphs, each closing with an exercise. Hill wrote an introduction, thirteen chapters presented as steps, and a closing chapter on fear.
• Promise. Haanel promises mastery of conditions through the creative power of thought. Hill promises riches, starting with a definite sum of money.

Structure

The Master Key course is built like a curriculum. Each part takes up a theme, such as the subconscious or visualization, and assigns a practice for the week. Each exercise builds on the last, which is why a study plan suits the course better than a straight read.

Think and Grow Rich is a ladder of principles. Its introduction opens with the claim that "thoughts are things" and tells how Edwin C. Barnes became a business associate of Thomas Edison. Then come the thirteen steps: desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision, persistence, the power of the master mind, the mystery of sex transmutation, the subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense. A final chapter, "How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear," covers the fears of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death. Hill also says a money-making secret appears in every chapter without being named.

Core ideas compared

Thought

Both books start from the same premise. Haanel's Part One states that "Mind is creative" and that the conditions of life follow from our habitual mental attitude. Hill's introduction opens by calling thoughts powerful things when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence and a burning desire for riches. Haanel treats thought as a universal law. Hill ties it to getting money from the first page.

Desire

Desire is Hill's first step and the engine of his book. He sets out six steps: fix the exact amount of money you want, decide what you will give in return, set a date, make a plan and start at once, write all of this in a statement, and read the statement aloud twice a day while seeing yourself already in possession of the money. Haanel values desire too. Part Seven says "Earnest Desire will bring about Confident Expectation," which must be "reinforced by Firm Demand." But the course never asks the reader to fix a sum, and Part Sixteen warns that wealth should be a means, not an end.

Autosuggestion

Autosuggestion is Hill's third step, the medium, he says, for influencing the subconscious mind, practiced by repeating the written statement of desire. The French pharmacist Émile Coué had already popularized the method, and Haanel's Mental Chemistry discusses Coué. In the Master Key course the word appears only in passing, in a Part Twenty-Four list of methods. Haanel's main tools are affirmation and concentration.

Imagination

Here the books come closest. Hill calls the imagination "the workshop of the mind" and divides it into synthetic and creative imagination. Haanel writes in Part Eight that imagination is the "mental work-shop" of successful men, and in Part Twenty that "Imagination is your workshop." Haanel ties it to his visualization exercises, Hill to business ideas and plans.

The subconscious

Both treat the subconscious mind as a channel to something larger. For Haanel it is part of the Universal Mind, differing only in degree, and Part Fourteen calls it the connecting link between the Universal Mind and the conscious mind. Hill's chapter on the subconscious is headed "The Connecting Link" and calls the subconscious the link between the finite mind of man and what he names Infinite Intelligence. Both explain the connection in the language of vibration, and both mention the ether, a physical theory of the day that has since been abandoned.

Exercises versus steps

The largest practical difference is training. Haanel's course is a graded program of attention: the sitting exercise in Part One, then stilling thought, relaxing the body, letting go of negative emotion, holding a mental picture, and later concentrating on a single idea until nothing else is in mind. The aim is a trained mind, with results expected to follow.

Hill's steps are closer to a goal-setting system. They ask for a definite aim, a deadline, a written plan, decisions reached promptly and changed slowly, persistence after defeat, and an alliance of two or more people working in harmony, which he calls the Master Mind. Several could be practiced without any belief in mental forces. Haanel's exercises make full sense only inside his metaphysics.

Tone and audience

Haanel writes like a lecturer, in numbered paragraphs, drawing on Herbert Spencer, Nikola Tesla, the Bible and analogies from electricity. Hill writes like a salesman telling stories. Think and Grow Rich leans on anecdotes, such as R. U. Darby and his uncle, who quit a Colorado gold mine three feet short of the lost vein, and uses capital letters for emphasis throughout. Haanel treats money as one subject among several. Hill talks about money from first chapter to last.

Evidence base

Neither book offers evidence in the modern sense. Haanel presents his ideas as scientific law, supported by quotations, analogies from electricity and an occasional testimonial letter, such as the one in Part Nine. None of it is tested evidence about the mind.

Hill claims more. He says the book distills the experience of more than 500 wealthy men and a formula passed to him by Andrew Carnegie. That claim has not held up. Apart from Hill's own writing there is no record of the two meeting, and Carnegie's biographer David Nasaw said he found no evidence that they ever did. Besides a brief encounter with Thomas Edison, there are no known records of Hill meeting the famous men he said he interviewed. The book's main source of authority is therefore itself unverified.

What history can and cannot say about influence

It is often said that Hill built his book on Haanel's course. Here is what the documents support.

• A letter. Haanel's 1919 promotional booklet prints a letter of thanks signed with Hill's name and dated April 1919. It appears only in Haanel's own sales material, and no original has been located. Our page on Master Key myths covers it in more depth.
• Shared vocabulary. Both books use "master mind," though Haanel uses it for a mind of the highest order and Hill for a group of people working together. Both call the subconscious a connecting link. Both speak of vibration. And Think and Grow Rich closes by telling readers they now hold "the Master Key that unlocks the door to Life's bountiful riches," which Hill defines as the power to create a burning desire. Haanel, for his part, calls his method "the Master-Key which unlocks the storehouse of Universal Truth."
• No acknowledgment. In the 1937 text we examined, we found no mention of Haanel or of The Master Key System by name.
• A shared tradition. Both books belong to the New Thought tradition, and ideas such as autosuggestion, vibration and the subconscious were not unique to either author.

History can say that Hill's name was attached to praise of the course in 1919, and that his book shares ideas and some striking phrases with it. It cannot say how much of the course Hill read, or whether the resemblance comes from direct borrowing or from the tradition both men drew on.

Which to read

The Master Key course is the more systematic of the two, built around a practice of attention. Think and Grow Rich is by far the better known. Both are best read as historical documents, since their central claim, that thought alone draws money, health and success, has not been shown to work as described. Readers who found Haanel through Rhonda Byrne's The Secret can sample his side in our Master Key System quotes.