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As a Matter of Course

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As a Matter of Course

AS A MATTER OF COURSE

by Annie Payson Call

I.

INTRODUCTION.

IN climbing a mountain, if we know the path and take it as a matter of course, we are free to enjoy the beauties of the surrounding country. If in the same journey we set a stone in the way and recognize our ability to step over it, we do so at once, and save ourselves from tripping or from useless waste of time and thought as to how we might best go round it.

There are stones upon stones in every-day life which might be stepped over with perfect ease, but which, curiously enough, are considered from all sides and then tripped upon; and the result is a stubbing of the moral toes, and a consequent irritation of the nervous system. Or, if semi-occasionally one of these stones is stepped over as a matter of course, the danger is that attention is immediately called to the action by admiring friends, or by the person himself, in a way so to tickle the nervous system that it amounts to an irritation, and causes him to trip over the next stone, and finally tumble on his nose. Then, if he is not wise enough to pick himself up and walk on with the renewed ability of stepping over future stones, he remains on his nose far longer than is either necessary or advisable.

These various stones in the way do more towards keeping a nervous system in a chronic state of irritation than is imagined. They are what might perhaps be called the outside elements of life. These once normally faced, cease to exist as impediments, dwindle away, and finally disappear altogether.

Thus we are enabled to get nearer the kernel, and have a growing realization of life itself.

Civilization may give a man new freedom, a freedom beyond any power of description or conception, except to those who achieve it, or it may so bind him body and soul that in moments when he recognizes his nervous contractions he would willingly sell his hope of immortality to be a wild horse or tiger for the rest of his days.

These stones in the way are the result of a perversion of civilization, and the cause of much contraction and unnecessary suffering.

There is the physical stone. If the health of the body were attended to as a matter of course, as its cleanliness is attended to by those of us who are more civilized, how much easier life might be! Indeed, the various trippings on, and endeavors to encircle, this physical stone, raise many phantom stones, and the severity of the fall is just as great when one trips over a stone that is not there. Don Quixote was quite exhausted when he had been fighting the windmills. One recognizes over and over the truth spoken by the little girl who, when reprimanded by her father for being fretful, said: “It isn’t me, papa, it’s that banana.”

There is also the over-serious stone; and this, so far from being stepped over or any effort made to encircle it, is often raised to the undue dignity of a throne, and not rested upon. It seems to produce an inability for any sort of recreation, and a scorn of the necessity or the pleasure of being amused. Every one will admit that recreation is one swing of life’s pendulum; and in proportion to the swing in that direction will be the strength of the swing in the other direction, and vice versa.

One kind of stone which is not the least among the self-made impediments is the microscopic faculty which most of us possess for increasing small, inoffensive pebbles to good-sized rocks. A quiet insistence on seeing these pebbles in their natural size would reduce them shortly to a pile of sand which might be easily smoothed to a level, and add to the comfort of the path. Moods are stones which not only may be stepped over, but kicked right out of the path with a good bold stroke. And the stones of intolerance may be replaced by an open sympathy,–an ability to take the other’s point of view,–which will bring flowers in the path instead.

In dealing with ourselves and others there are stones innumerable, if one chooses to regard them, and a steadily decreasing number as one steps over and ignores. In our relations with illness and poverty, so-called, the ghosts of stones multiply themselves as the illness or the poverty is allowed to be a limit rather than a guide. And there is nothing that exorcises all such ghosts more truly than a free and open intercourse with little children.

If we take this business of slipping over our various nerve-stones as a matter of course, and not as a matter of sentiment, we get a powerful result just as surely as we get powerful results in obedience to any other practical laws.

In bygone generations men used to fight and kill one another for the most trivial cause. As civilization increased, self-control was magnified into a virtue, and the man who governed himself and allowed his neighbor to escape unslain was regarded as a hero. Subsequently, general slashing was found to be incompatible with a well-ordered community, and forbearance in killing or scratching or any other unseemly manner of attacking an enemy was taken as a matter of course.

Nowadays we do not know how often this old desire to kill is repressed, a brain-impression of hatred thereby intensified, and a nervous irritation caused which has its effect upon the entire disposition. It would hardly be feasible to return to the killing to save the irritation that follows repression; civilization has taken us too far for that. But civilization does not necessarily mean repression. There are many refinements of barbarity in our civilization which might be dropped now, as the coarser expressions of such states were dropped by our ancestors to enable them to reach the present stage of knives and forks and napkins. And inasmuch as we are farther on the way towards a true civilization, our progress should be more rapid than that of our barbaric grandfathers. An increasingly accelerated progress has proved possible in scientific research and discovery; why not, then, in our practical dealings with ourselves and one another?

Does it not seem likely that the various forms of nervous irritation, excitement, or disease may result as much from the repressed savage within us as from the complexity of civilization? The remedy is, not to let the savage have his own way; with many of us, indeed, this would be difficult, because of the generations of repression behind us. It is to cast his skin, so to speak, and rise to another order of living.

Certainly repression is only apparent progress. No good physician would allow it in bodily disease, and, on careful observation, the law seems to hold good in other phases of life.

There must be a practical way by which these stones, these survivals of barbaric times, may be stepped over and made finally to disappear.

The first necessity is to take the practical way, and not the sentimental. Thus true sentiment is found, not lost.

The second is to follow daily, even hourly, the process of stepping over until it comes to be indeed a matter of course. So, little by little, shall we emerge from this mass of abnormal nervous irritation into what is more truly life itself.

II.

PHYSICAL CARE.

REST, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment, enough of each in proportion to the work done, are the material essentials to a healthy physique. Indeed, so simple is the whole process of physical care, it would seem absurd to write about it at all. The only excuse for such writing is the constant disobedience to natural laws which has resulted from the useless complexity of our civilization.

There is a current of physical order which, if one once gets into it, gives an instinct as to what to do and what to leave undone, as true as the instinct which leads a man to wash his hands when they need it, and to wash them often enough so that they never remain soiled for any length of time, simply because that state is uncomfortable to their owner. Soap and water are not unpleasant to most of us in their process of cleansing; we have to deny ourselves nothing through their use. To keep the digestion in order, it is often necessary to deny ourselves certain sensations of the palate which are pleasant at the time. So by a gradual process of not denying we are swung out of the instinctive nourishment-current, and life is complicated for us either by an amount of thought as to what we should or should not eat, or by irritations which arise from having eaten the wrong food. It is not uncommon to find a mind taken up for some hours in wondering whether that last piece of cake will digest. We can easily see how from this there might be developed a nervous sensitiveness about eating which would prevent the individual from eating even the food that is nourishing. This last is a not unusual form of dyspepsia,–a dyspepsia which keeps itself alive on the patient’s want of nourishment.

Fortunately the process of getting back into the true food-current is not difficult if one will adopt it The trouble is in making the bold plunge. If anything is eaten that is afterwards deemed to have been imprudent, let it disagree. Take the full consequences and bear them like a man, with whatever remedies are found to lighten the painful result. Having made sure through bitter experience that a particular food disagrees, simply do not take it again, and think nothing about it. It does not exist for you. A nervous resistance to any sort of indigestion prolongs the attack and leaves, a brain-impression which not only makes the same trouble more liable to recur, but increases the temptation to eat forbidden fruit. Of course this is always preceded by a full persuasion that the food is not likely to disagree with us now simply because it did before. And to some extent, this is true. Food that will bring pain and suffering when taken by a tired stomach, may prove entirely nourishing when the stomach is rested and ready for it. In that case, the owner of the stomach has learned once for all never to give his digestive apparatus work to do when it is tired. Send a warm drink as a messenger to say that food is coming later, give yourself a little rest, and then eat your dinner. The fundamental laws of health in eating are very simple; their variations for individual needs must be discovered by each for himself.

“But,” it may be objected, “why make all this fuss, why take so much thought about what I eat or what I do not eat?” The special thought is simply to be taken at first to get into the normal habit, and as a means of forgetting our digestion just as we forget the washing of our hands until we are reminded by some discomfort; whereupon we wash them and forget again. Nature will not allow us to forget. When we are not obeying her laws, she is constantly irritating us in one way or another. It is when we obey, and obey as a matter of course, that she shows herself to be a tender mother, and helps us to a real companionship with her.

Nothing is more amusing, nothing could appeal more to Mother Nature’s sense of humor, than the various devices for exercise which give us a complicated self-consciousness rather than a natural development of our physical powers. Certain simple exercises are most useful, and if the weather is so inclement that they cannot be taken in the open air, it is good to have a well-ventilated hall. Exercise with others, too, is stimulating, and more invigorating when there is air enough and to spare. But there is nothing that shows the subjective, self-conscious state of this generation more than the subjective form which exercise takes. Instead of games and play or a good vigorous walk in the country, there are endless varieties of physical culture, most of it good and helpful if taken as a means to an end, but almost useless as it is taken as an end in itself; for it draws the attention to one’s self and one’s own muscles in a way to make the owner serve the muscle instead of the muscle being made to serve the owner. The more physical exercise can be simplified and made objective, the more it serves its end. To climb a high mountain is admirable exercise, for we have the summit as an end, and the work of climbing is steadily objective, while we get the delicious effect of a freer circulation and all that it means. There might be similar exercises in gymnasiums, and there are, indeed, many exercises where some objective achievement is the end, and the training of a muscle follows as a matter of course. There is the exercise-instinct; we all have it the more perfectly as we obey it. If we have suffered from a series of disobediences, it is a comparatively easy process to work back into obedience.

The fresh-air-instinct is abnormally developed with some of us, but only with some. The popular fear of draughts is one cause of its loss. The fear of a draught will cause a contraction, the contraction will interfere with the circulation, and a cold is the natural result.

The effect of vitiated air is well known. The necessity, not only for breathing fresh air when we are quiet, but for exercising in the open, grows upon us as we see the result. To feel the need is to take the remedy, as a matter of course.

The rest-instinct is most generally disobeyed, most widely needed, and obedience to it would bring the most effective results. A restful state of mind and body prepares one for the best effects from exercise, fresh air, and nourishment. This instinct is the more disobeyed because with the need for rest there seems to come an inability to take it, so that not only is every impediment magnified, but imaginary impediments are erected, and only a decided and insistent use of the will in dropping everything that interferes, whether real or imaginary, will bring a whiff of a breeze from the true rest-current. Rest is not always silence, but silence is always rest; and a real silence of the mind is known by very few. Having gained that, or even approached it, we are taken by the rest-wind itself, and it is strong enough to bear our full weight as it swings us along to renewed life and new strength for work to come.

The secret is to turn to silence at the first hint from nature; and sleep should be the very essence of silence itself.

All this would be very well if we were free to take the right amount of rest, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment; but many of us are not. It will not be difficult for any one to call to mind half a dozen persons who impede the good which might result from the use of these four necessities simply by complaining that they cannot have their full share of either. Indeed, some of us may find in ourselves various stones of this sort stopping the way. To take what we can and be thankful, not only enables us to gain more from every source of health, but opens the way for us to see clearly how to get more. This complaint, however, is less of an impediment than the whining and fussing which come from those who are free to take all four in abundance, and who have the necessity of their own especial physical health so much at heart that there is room to think of little else. These people crowd into the various schools of physical culture by the hundred, pervade the rest-cures, and are ready for any new physiological fad which may arise, with no result but more physical culture, more rest-cure, and more fads. Nay, there is sometimes one other result,–disease. That gives them something tangible to work for or to work about. But all their eating and breathing and exercising and resting does not bring lasting vigorous health, simply because they work at it as an end, of which self is the centre and circumference.

The sooner our health-instinct is developed, and then taken as a matter of course, the sooner can the body become a perfect servant, to be treated with true courtesy, and then forgotten. Here is an instinct of our barbarous ancestry which may be kept and refined through all future phases of civilization. This instinct is natural, and the obedience to it enables us to gain more rapidly in other, higher instincts which, if our ancestors had at all, were so embryonic as not to have attained expression.

Nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest,–so far as these are not taken simply and in obedience to the natural instinct, there arise physical stones in the way, stones that form themselves into an apparently insurmountable wall. There is a stile over that wall, however, if we will but open our eyes to see it. This stile, carefully climbed, will enable us to step over the few stones on the other side, and follow the physical path quite clearly.

III.

AMUSEMENTS.

THE ability to be easily and heartily amused brings a wholesome reaction from intense thought or hard work of any kind which does more towards keeping the nervous system in a normal state than almost anything else of an external kind.

As a Frenchman very aptly said: “This is all very well, all this study and care to relieve one’s nerves; but would it not be much simpler and more effective to go and amuse one’s self?” The same Frenchman could not realize that in many countries amusement is almost a lost art. Fortunately, it is not entirely lost; and the sooner it is regained, the nearer we shall be to health and happiness.

One of the chief impediments in the way of hearty amusement is over-seriousness. There should be two words for “serious,” as there are literally two meanings. There is a certain intense form of taking the care and responsibility of one’s own individual interests, or the interests of others which are selfishly made one’s own, which leads to a surface-seriousness that is not only a chronic irritation of the nervous system, but a constant distress to those who come under this serious care. This is taking life _au grand serieux_. The superficiality of this attitude is striking, and would be surprising could the sufferer from such seriousness once see himself (or more often it is herself) in a clear light. It is quite common to call such a person over-serious, when in reality he is not serious enough. He or she is laboring under a sham seriousness, as an actor might who had such a part to play and merged himself in the character. These people are simply exaggerating their own importance to life, instead of recognizing life’s importance to them. An example of this is the heroine of Mrs. Ward’s “Robert Elsmere,” who refused to marry because the family could not get on without her; and when finally she consented, the family lived more happily and comfortably than when she considered herself their leader. If this woman’s seriousness, which blinded her judgment, had been real instead of sham, the state of the case would have been quite clear to her; but then, indeed, there would have been no case at all.

When seriousness is real, it is never intrusive and can never be overdone. It is simply a quiet, steady obedience to recognized laws followed as a matter of course, which must lead to a clearer appreciation of such laws, and of our own freedom in obeying them. Whereas with a sham seriousness we dwell upon the importance of our own relation to the law, and our own responsibility in forcing others to obey. With the real, it is the law first, and then my obedience. With the sham, it is myself first, and then the laws; and often a strained obedience to laws of my own making.

This sham seriousness, which is peculiarly a New England trait, but may also be found in many other parts of the world, is often the perversion of a strong, fine nature. It places many stones in the way, most of them phantoms, which, once stepped over and then ignored, brings to light a nature nobly expansive, and a source of joy to all who come in contact with it. But so long as the “seriousness” lasts, it is quite incompatible with any form of real amusement.

For the very essence of amusement is the child-spirit. The child throws himself heartily and spontaneously into the game, or whatever it may be, and forgets that there is anything else in the world, for the time being. Children have nothing else to remember. We have the advantage of them there, in the pleasure of forgetting and in the renewed strength with which we can return to our work or care, in consequence. Any one who cannot play children’s games with children, and with the same enjoyment that children have, does not know the spirit of amusement. For this same spirit must be taken into all forms of amusement, especially those that are beyond the childish mind, to bring the delicious reaction which nature is ever ready to bestow. This is almost a self-evident truth; and yet so confirmed is man in his sham maturity that it is quite common to see one look with contempt, and a sense of superiority which is ludicrous, upon another who is enjoying a child’s game like a child. The trouble is that many of us are so contracted in and oppressed by our own self-consciousness that open spontaneity is out of the question and even inconceivable. The sooner we shake it off, the better. When the great philosopher said, “Except ye become as little children,” he must have meant it all the way through in spirit, if not in the letter. It certainly is the common-sense view, whichever way we look at it, and proves as practical as walking upon one’s feet.

With the spontaneity grows the ability to be amused, and with that ability comes new power for better and really serious work.

To endeavor with all your might to win, and then if you fail, not to care, relieves a game of an immense amount of unnecessary nervous strain. A spirit of rivalry has so taken hold of us and become such a large stone in the way, that it takes wellnigh a reversal of all our ideas to realize that this same spirit is quite compatible with a good healthy willingness that the other man should win–if he can. Not from the goody-goody motive of wishing your neighbor to beat,–no neighbor would thank you for playing with him in that spirit,–but from a feeling that you have gone in to beat, you have done your best, as far as you could see, and where you have not, you have learned to do better. The fact of beating is not of paramount importance. Every man should have his chance, and, from your opponent’s point of view, provided you were as severe on him as you knew how to be at the time, it is well that he won. You will see that it does not happen again.

Curious it is that the very men or women who would scorn to play a child’s game in a childlike spirit, will show the best known form of childish fretfulness and sheer naughtiness in their way of taking a game which is considered to be more on a level with the adult mind, and so rasp their nerves and the nerves of their opponents that recreation is simply out of the question.

Whilst one should certainly have the ability to enjoy a child’s game with a child and like a child, that not only does not exclude the preference which many, perhaps most of us may have for more mature games, it gives the power to play those games with a freedom and ease which help to preserve a healthy nervous system.

If, however, amusement is taken for the sole purpose of preserving a normal nervous system, or for returning to health, it loses its zest just in proportion. If, as is often the case, one must force one’s self to it at first, the love of the fun will gradually come as one ignores the first necessity of forcing; and the interest will come sooner if a form of amusement is taken quite opposite to the daily work, a form which will bring new faculties and muscles into action.

There is, of course, nothing that results in a more unpleasant state of ennui than an excess of amusement. After a certain amount of careless enjoyment, life comes to a deadly stupid standstill, or the forms of amusement grow lower. In either case the effect upon the nervous system is worse even than over-work.

The variety in sources of amusement is endless, and the ability to get amusement out of almost anything is delightful, as long as it is well balanced.

After all, our amusement depends upon the way in which we take our work, and our work, again, depends upon the amusement; they play back and forth into one another’s hands.

The man or the woman who cannot get the holiday spirit, who cannot enjoy pure fun for the sake of fun, who cannot be at one with a little child, not only is missing much in life that is clear happiness, but is draining his nervous system, and losing his better power for work accordingly.

This anti-amusement stone once removed, the path before us is entirely new and refreshing.

The power to be amused runs in nations. But each individual is in himself a nation, and can govern himself as such; and if he has any desire for the prosperity of his own kingdom, let him order a public holiday at regular intervals, and see that the people enjoy it.

IV.

BRAIN IMPRESSIONS.

THE mere idea of a brain clear from false impressions gives a sense of freedom which is refreshing.

In a comic journal, some years ago, there was a picture of a man in a most self-important attitude, with two common mortals in the background gazing at him. “What makes him stand like that?” said one. “Because,” answered the other, “that is his own idea of himself.” The truth suggested in that picture strikes one aghast; for in looking about us we see constant examples of attitudinizing in one’s own idea of one’s self. There is sometimes a feeling of fright as to whether I am not quite as abnormal in my idea of myself as are those about me.

If one could only get the relief of acknowledging ignorance of one’s self, light would be welcome, however given. In seeing the truth of an unkind criticism one could forget to resent the spirit; and what an amount of nerve-friction might be saved! Imagine the surprise of a man who, in return for a volley of abuse, should receive thanks for light thrown upon a false attitude. Whatever we are enabled to see, relieves us of one mistaken brain-impression, which we can replace by something more agreeable. And if, in the excitement of feeling, the mistake was exaggerated, what is that to us? All we wanted was to see it in quality. As to degree, that lessens in proportion as the quality is bettered. Fortunately, in living our own idea of ourselves, it is only ourselves we deceive, with possible exceptions in the case of friends who are so used to us, or so over-fond of us, as to lose the perspective.

There is the idea of humility,–an obstinate belief that we know we are nothing at all, and deserve no credit; which, literally translated, means we know we are everything, and deserve every credit. There is the idea, too, of immense dignity, of freedom from all self-seeking and from all vanity. But it is idle to attempt to catalogue these various forms of private theatricals; they are constantly to be seen about us.

It is with surprise unbounded that one hears another calmly assert that he is so-and-so or so-and-so, and in his next action, or next hundred actions, sees that same assertion entirely contradicted. Daily familiarity with the manifestations of mistaken brain-impressions does not lessen one’s surprise at this curious personal contradiction; it gives one an increasing desire to look to one’s self, and see how far these private theatricals extend in one’s own case, and to throw off the disguise, as far as it is seen, with a full acknowledgment that there may be–probably is–an abundance more of which to rid one’s self in future. There are many ways in which true openness in life, one with another, would be of immense service; and not the least of these is the ability gained to erase false brain-impressions.

The self-condemnatory brain-impression is quite as pernicious as its opposite. Singularly enough, it goes with it. One often finds inordinate self-esteem combined with the most abject condemnation of self. One can be played against the other as a counter-irritant; but this only as a process of rousing, for the irritation of either brings equal misery. I am not even sure that as a rousing process it is ever really useful. To be clear of a mistaken brain-impression, a man must recognize it himself; and this recognition can never be brought about by an unasked attempt of help from another. It is often cleared by help asked and given; and perhaps more often by help which is quite involuntary and unconscious. One of the greatest points in friendly diplomacy is to be open and absolutely frank so far as we are asked, but never to go beyond. At least, in the experience of many, that leads more surely to the point where no diplomacy is needed, which is certainly the point to be aimed at in friendship. It is trying to see a friend living his own idea of himself, and to be obliged to wait until he has discovered that he is only playing a part. But this very waiting may be of immense assistance in reducing our own moral attitudinizing.

How often do we hear others or find ourselves complaining of a fault over and over again! “I know that is a fault of mine, and has been for years. I wish I could get over it.” “I know that is a fault of mine,”–one brain-impression; “it has been for years,”–a dozen or more brain-impressions, according to the number of years; until we have drilled the impression of that fault in, by emphasizing it over and over, to an extent which daily increases the difficulty of dropping it.

So, if we have the habit of unpunctuality, and emphasize it by deploring it, it keeps us always behind time. If we are sharp-tongued, and dwell with remorse on something said in the past, it increases the tendency in the future.

The slavery to nerve habit is a well-known physiological fact; but nerve habit may be strengthened negatively as well as positively. When this is more widely recognized, and the negative practice avoided, much will have been done towards freeing us from our subservience to mistaken brain-impressions.

Let us take an instance: unpunctuality-for example, as that is a common form of repetition. If we really want to rid ourselves of the habit, suppose every time we are late we cease to deplore it; make a vivid mental picture of ourselves as being on time at the next appointment; then, with the how and the when clearly impressed upon our minds, there should be an absolute refusal to imagine ourselves anything but early. Surely that would be quite as effective as a constant repetition of the regret we feel at being late, whether this is repeated aloud to others, or only in our own minds. As we place the two processes side by side, the latter certainly has the advantage, and might be tried, until a better is found.

Of course we must beware of getting an impression of promptness which has no ground in reality. It is quite possible for an individual to be habitually and exasperatingly late, with all the air and innocence of unusual punctuality. It would strike us as absurd to see a man painting a house the color he did not like, and go on painting it the same color, to show others and himself that which he detested. Is it not equally absurd for any of us, through the constant expression of regret for a fault, to impress the tendency to it more and more upon the brain? It is intensely sad when the consciousness of evil once committed has so impressed a man with a sense of guilt as to make him steadily undervalue himself and his own powers.

Here is a case where one’s own idea of one’s self is seventy-five per cent below par; and a gentle and consistent encouragement in raising that idea is most necessary before par is reached.

And par, as I understand it, is simple freedom from any fixed idea of one’s self, either good or bad.

If fixed impressions of one’s self are stones in the way, the same certainly holds good with fixed impressions of others. Unpleasant brain-impressions of others are great weights, and greater impediments in the way of clearing our own brains. Suppose So-and-so had such a fault yesterday; it does not follow that he has not rid himself of at least part of it to-day. Why should we hold the brain-impression of his mistake, so that every time we look at him we make it stronger? He is not the gainer thereby, and we certainly are the losers. Repeated brain-impressions of another’s faults prevent our discerning his virtues. We are constantly attributing to him disagreeable motives, which arise solely from our idea of him, and of which he is quite innocent. Not only so, but our mistaken impressions increase his difficulty in rising to the best of himself. For any one whose temperament is in the least sensitive is oppressed by what he feels to be another’s idea of him, until he learns to clear himself of that as well as of other brain-impressions.

It is not uncommon to hear one go over and over a supposed injury, or even small annoyances from others, with the reiterated assertion that he fervently desires to forget such injury or annoyances. This fervent desire to forgive and forget expresses itself by a repeated brain-impression of that which is to be forgiven; and if this is so often repeated in words, how many times more must it be repeated mentally! Thus, the brain-impression is increased until at last forgetting seems out of the question. And forgiving is impossible unless one can at the same time so entirely forget the ill-feeling roused as to place it beyond recall.

Surely, if we realized the force and influence of unpleasant brain-impressions, it would be a simple matter to relax and let them escape, to be replaced by others that are only pleasant It cannot be that we enjoy the discomfort of the disagreeable impressions.

And yet, so curiously perverted is human nature that we often hear a revolting story told with the preface, “Oh, I can’t bear to think of it!” And the whole story is given, with a careful attention to detail which is quite unnecessary, even if there were any reason for telling the story at all, and generally concluded with a repetition of the prefatory exclamation. How many pathetic sights are told of, to no end but the repetition of an unpleasant brain-impression. How many past experiences, past illnesses, are gone over and over, which serve the same worse than useless purpose,–that of repeating and emphasizing the brain-impression.

A little pain is made a big one by persistent dwelling upon it; what might have been a short pain is sometimes lengthened for a lifetime. Similarly, an old pain is brought back by recalling a brain-impression.

The law of association is well known. We all know how familiar places and happenings will recall old feelings; we can realize this at any time by mentally reviving the association. By dwelling on the pain we had yesterday we are encouraging it to return to-morrow. By emphasizing the impression of an annoyance of to-day we are making it possible to suffer beyond expression from annoyances to come; and the annoyances, the pains, the disagreeable feelings will find their old brain-grooves with remarkable rapidity when given the ghost of a chance.

I have known more than one case where a woman kept herself ill by the constant repetition, to others and to herself, of a nervous shock. A woman who had once been frightened by burglars refused to sleep for fear of being awakened by more burglars, thus increasing her impression of fear; and of course, if she slept at all, she was liable at any time to wake with a nervous start. The process of working herself into nervous prostration through this constant, useless repetition was not slow.

The fixed impressions of preconceived ideas in any direction are strangely in the way of real freedom. It is difficult to catch new harmonies with old ones ringing in our ears; still more difficult when we persist in listening at the same time to discords.

The experience of arguing with another whose preconceived idea is so firmly fixed that the argument is nothing but a series of circles, might be funny if it were not sad; and it often is funny, in spite of the sadness.

Suppose we should insist upon retaining an unpleasant brain-impression, only when and so long as it seemed necessary in order to bring a remedy. That accomplished, suppose we dropped it on the instant. Suppose, further, that we should continue this process, and never allow ourselves to repeat a disagreeable brain-impression aloud or mentally. Imagine the result. Nature abhors a vacuum; something must come in place of the unpleasantness; therefore way is made for feelings more comfortable to one’s self and to others.

Bad feelings cause contraction, good ones expansion. Relax the muscular contraction; take a long, free breath of fresh air, and expansion follows as a matter of course. Drop the brain-contraction, take a good inhalation of whatever pleasant feeling is nearest, and the expansion is a necessary consequence.

As we expand mentally, disagreeable brain-impressions, that in former contracted states were eclipsed by greater ones, will be keenly felt, and dropped at once, for the mere relief thus obtained.

The healthier the brain, the more sensitive it is to false impressions, and the more easily are they dropped.

One word by way of warning. We never can rid ourselves of an uncomfortable brain-impression by saying, “I will try to think something pleasant of that disagreeable man.” The temptation, too, is very common to say to ourselves clearly, “I will try to think something pleasant,” and then leave “of that disagreeable man” a subtle feeling in the background. The feeling in the background, however unconscious we may be of it, is a strong brain-impression,–all the stronger because we fail to recognize it,–and the result of our “something pleasant” is an insidious complacency at our own magnanimous disposition. Thus we get the disagreeable brain-impression of another, backed up by our agreeable brain-impression of ourselves, both mistaken. Unless we keep a sharp look-out, we may here get into a snarl from which extrication is slow work. Neither is it possible to counteract an unpleasant brain-impression by something pleasant but false. We must call a spade a spade, but not consider it a component part of the man who handles it, nor yet associate the man with the spade, or the spade with the man. When we drop it, so long as we drop it for what it is worth, which is nothing in the case of the spade in question, we have dropped it entirely. If we try to improve our brain-impression by insisting that a spade is something better and pleasanter, we are transforming a disagreeable impression to a mongrel state which again brings anything but a happy result.

Simply to refuse all unpleasant brain-impressions, with no effort or desire to recast them into something that they are not, seems to be the only clear process to freedom. Not only so, but whatever there might have been pleasant in what seemed entirely unpleasant can more truly return as we drop the unpleasantness completely. It is a good thing that most of us can approach the freedom of such a change in imagination before we reach it in reality. So we can learn more rapidly not to hamper ourselves or others by retaining disagreeable brain-impressions of the present, or by recalling others of the past.

V.

THE TRIVIALITY OF TRIVIALITIES.

LIFE is clearer, happier, and easier for us as things assume their true proportions. I might better say, as they come nearer in appearance to their true proportions; for it seems doubtful whether any one ever reaches the place in this world where the sense of proportion is absolutely normal. Some come much nearer than others; and part of the interest of living is the growing realization of better proportion, and the relief from the abnormal state in which circumstances seem quite out of proportion in their relation to one another.

Imagine a landscape-painter who made his cows as large as the houses, his blades of grass waving above the tops of the trees, and all things similarly disproportionate. Or, worse, imagine a disease of the retina which caused a like curious change in the landscape itself wherein a mountain appeared to be a mole-hill, and a mole-hill a mountain.

It seems absurd to think of. And, yet, is not the want of a true sense of proportion in the circumstances and relations of life quite as extreme with many of us? It is well that our physical sense remains intact. If we lost that too, there would seem to be but little hope indeed. Now, almost the only thing needed for a rapid approach to a more normal mental sense of proportion is a keener recognition of the want. But this want must be found first in ourselves, not in others. There is the inclination to regard our own life as bigger and more important than the life of any one about us; or the reverse attitude of bewailing its lack of importance, which is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first. Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial friends,–all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the question an occasional bird’s-eye view of the world in general. Even objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem to concern us most immediately.

One’s own life is important; one’s own family and friends are important, very, when taken in their true proportion. One should surely be able to look upon one’s own brothers and sisters as if they were the brothers and sisters of another, and to regard the brothers and sisters of another as one’s own. Singularly, too, real appreciation of and sympathy with one’s own grows with this broader sense of relationship. In no way is this sense shown more clearly than by a mother who has the breadth and the strength to look upon her own children as if they belonged to some one else, and upon the children of others as if they belonged to her. But the triviality of magnifying one’s own out of all proportion has not yet been recognized by many.

So every trivial happening in our own lives or the lives of those connected with us is exaggerated, and we keep ourselves and others in a chronic state of contraction accordingly.

Think of the many trifles which, by being magnified and kept in the foreground, obstruct the way to all possible sight or appreciation of things that really hold a more important place. The cook, the waitress, various other annoyances of housekeeping; a gown that does not suit, the annoyances of travel, whether we said the right thing to so-and-so, whether so-and-so likes us or does not like us,–indeed, there is an immense army of trivial imps, and the breadth of capacity for entertaining these imps is so large in some of us as to be truly encouraging; for if the domain were once deserted by the imps, there remains the breadth, which must have the same capacity for holding something better. Unfortunately, a long occupancy by these miserable little offenders means eventually the saddest sort of contraction. What a picture for a new Gulliver!–a human being overwhelmed by the imps of triviality, and bound fast to the ground by manifold windings of their cobweb-sized thread.

This exaggeration of trifles is one form of nervous disease. It would be exceedingly interesting and profitable to study the various phases of nervous disease as exaggerated expressions of perverted character. They can be traced directly and easily in many cases. If a woman fusses about trivialities, she fusses more when she is tired. The more fatigue, the more fussing; and with a persistent tendency to fatigue and fussing it does not take long to work up or down to nervous prostration. From this form of nervous excitement one never really recovers, except by a hearty acknowledgment of the trivialities as trivialities, when, with growing health, there is a growing sense of true proportion.

I have seen a woman spend more attention, time, and nerve-power on emphasizing the fact that her hands were all stained from the dye on her dress than a normal woman would take for a good hour’s work. As she grew better, this emphasizing of trivialities decreased, but, of course, might have returned with any over-fatigue, unless it had been recognized, taken at its worth, and simply dropped. Any one can think of example after example in his own individual experience, when he has suffered unnecessary tortures through the regarding of trifling things, either by himself or by some one near him. With many, the first instance will probably be to insist, with emphasis and some feeling, that they are _not_ trivialities.

Trivialities have their importance _when given their true proportion_. The size of a triviality is often exaggerated as much by neglect as by an undue amount of attention. When we do what we can to amend an annoyance, and then think no more about it until there appears something further to do, the saving of nervous force is very great. Yet, so successful have these imps of triviality come to be in their rule of human nature that the trivialities of the past are oftentimes dwelt upon with as much earnestness as if they belonged to the present.

The past itself is a triviality, except in its results. Yet what an immense screen it is sometimes to any clear understanding or appreciation of the present! How many of us have listened over and over to the same tale of past annoyances, until we wonder how it can be possible that the constant repetition is not recognized by the narrator! How many of us have been over and over in our minds past troubles, little and big, so that we have no right whatever to feel impatient when listening to such repetitions by others! Here again we have, in nervous disease, the extreme of a common trait in humanity. With increased nervous fatigue there is always an increase of the tendency to repetition. Best drop it before it gets to the fatigue stage, if possible.

Then again there are the common things of life, such as dressing and undressing, and the numberless every-day duties. It is possible to distort them to perfect monstrosities by the manner of dwelling upon them. Taken as a matter of course, they are the very triviality of trivialities, and assume their place without second thought.

When life seems to get into such a snarl that we despair of disentangling it, a long journey and change of human surroundings enable us to take a distant view, which not uncommonly shows the tangle to be no tangle at all. Although we cannot always go upon a material journey, we can change the mental perspective, and it is this adjustment of the focus which brings our perspective into truer proportions. Having once found what appears to be the true focus, let us be true to it. The temptations to lose one’s focus are many, and sometimes severe. When temporarily thrown off our balance, the best help is to return at once, without dwelling on the fact that we have lost the focus longer than is necessary to find it again. After that, our focus is better adjusted and the range steadily expanded. It is impossible for us to widen the range by thinking about it; holding the best focus we know in our daily experience does that Thus the proportions arrange themselves; we cannot arrange the proportions. Or, what is more nearly the truth, the proportions are in reality true, to begin with. As with the imaginary eye-disease, which transformed the relative sizes of the component parts of a landscape, the fault is in the eye, not in the landscape; so, when the circumstances of life are quite in the wrong proportion to one another, in our own minds, the trouble is in the mental sight, not in the circumstances.

There are many ways of getting a better focus, and ridding one’s self of trivial annoyances. One is, to be quiet; get at a good mental distance. Be sure that you have a clear view, and then hold it. Always keep your distance; never return to the old stand-point if you can manage to keep away.

We may be thankful if trivialities annoy us as trivialities. It is with those who have the constant habit of dwelling on them without feeling the discomfort that a return to freedom seems impossible.

As one comes to realize, even in a slight degree, the triviality of trivialities, and then forget them entirely in a better idea of true proportion, the sense of freedom gained is well worth working for. It certainly brings the possibility of a normal nervous system much nearer.

VI.

MOODS.

RELIEF from the mastery of an evil mood is like fresh air after having been several hours in a close room.

If one should go to work deliberately to break up another’s nervous system, and if one were perfectly free in methods of procedure, the best way would be to throw upon the victim in rapid sequence a long series of the most extreme moods. The disastrous result could be hastened by insisting that each mood should be resisted as it manifested itself, for then there would be the double strain,–the strain of the mood, and the strain of resistance. It is better to let a mood have its way than to suppress it. The story of the man who suffered from varicose veins and was cured by the waters of Lourdes, only to die a little later from an affection of the heart which arose from the suppression of the former disease, is a good illustration of the effect of mood-suppression. In the case cited, death followed at once; but death from repeated impressions of moods resisted is long drawn out, and the suffering intense, both for the patient and for his friends.

The only way to drop a mood is to look it in the face and call it by its right name; then by persistent ignoring, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, finally drop it altogether. It takes a looser hold next time, and eventually slides off entirely. To be sure, over-fatigue, an attack of indigestion, or some unexpected contact with the same phase in another, may bring back the ghost of former moods. These ghosts may even materialize, unless the practice of ignoring is at once referred to; but they can ultimately be routed completely.

A great help in gaining freedom from moods is to realize clearly their superficiality. Moods are deadly, desperately serious things when taken seriously and indulged in to the full extent of their power. They are like a tiny spot directly in front of the eye. We see that, and that only. It blurs and shuts out everything else. We groan and suffer and are unhappy and wretched, still persistently keeping our eye on the spot, until finally we forget that there is anything else in the world. In mind and body we are impressed by that and that alone. Thus the difficulty of moving off a little distance is greatly increased, and liberation is impossible until we do move away, and, by a change of perspective, see the spot for what it really is.

Let any one who is ruled by moods, in a moment when he is absolutely free from them, take a good look at all past moody states, and he will see that they come from nothing, go to nothing, and, are nothing. Indeed, that has been and is often done by the moody person, with at the same time an unhappy realization that when the moods are on him, they are as real as they are unreal when he is free. To treat a mood as a good joke when you are in its clutches, is simply out of the question. But to say, “This now is a mood. Come on, do your worst; I can stand it as long as you can,” takes away all nerve-resistance, until the thing has nothing to clutch, and dissolves for want of nourishment. If it proves too much for one at times, and breaks out in a bad expression of some sort, a quick acknowledgment that you are under the spell of a bad mood, and a further invitation to come on if it wants to, will loosen the hold again.

If the mood is a melancholy one, speak as little as possible under its influence; go on and do whatever there is to be done, not resisting it in any way, but keep busy.

This non-resistance can, perhaps, be better illustrated by taking, instead of a mood, a person who teases. It is well known that the more we are annoyed, the more our opponent teases; and that the surest and quickest way of freeing ourselves is not to be teased. We can ignore the teaser externally with an internal irritation which he sees as clearly as if we expressed it. We can laugh in such a way that every sound of our own voice proclaims the annoyance we are trying to hide. It is when we take his words for what they are worth, and go with him, that the wind is taken out of his sails, and he stops because there is no fun in it. The experience with a mood is quite parallel, though rather more difficult at first, for there is no enemy like the enemies in one’s self, no teasing like the teasing from one’s self. It takes a little longer, a little heartier and more persistent process of non-resistance to cure the teasing from one’s own nature. But the process is just as certain, and the freedom greater in result.

Why is it not clear to us that to set our teeth, clench our hands, or hold any form of extreme tension and mistaken control, doubles, trebles, quadruples the impression of the feeling controlled, and increases by many degrees its power for attacking us another time? Persistent control of this kind gives a certain sort of strength. It might be called sham strength, for it takes it out of one in other ways. But the control that comes from non-resistance brings a natural strength, which not only steadily increases, but spreads on all sides, as the growth of a tree is even in its development.

“If a man takes your cloak, give him your coat also; if one compel you to go a mile, go with him twain.” “Love your enemies, do good to them that hurt you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.” Why have we been so long in realizing the practical, I might say the physiological, truth of this great philosophy? Possibly because in forgiving our enemies we have been so impressed with the idea that it was our enemies we were forgiving. If we realized that following this philosophy would bring us real freedom, it would be followed steadily as a matter of course, and with no more sense that we deserved credit for doing a good thing than a man might have in walking out of prison when his jailer opened the door. So it is with our enemies the moods.

I have written heretofore of bad moods only. But there are moods and moods. In a degree, certainly, one should respect one’s moods. Those who are subject to bad moods are equally subject to good ones, and the superficiality of the happier modes is just as much to be recognized as that of the wretched ones. In fact, in recognizing the shallowness of our happy moods, we are storing ammunition for a healthy openness and freedom from the opposite forms. With the full realization that a mood is a mood, we can respect it, and so gradually reach a truer evenness of life. Moods are phases that we are all subject to whilst in the process of finding our balance; the more sensitive and finer the temperament, the more moods. The rhythm of moods is most interesting, and there is a spice about the change which we need to give relish to these first steps towards the art of living.

It is when their seriousness is exaggerated that they lose their power for good and make slaves of us. The seriousness may be equally exaggerated in succumbing to them and in resisting them. In either case they are our masters, and not our slaves. They are steady consumers of the nervous system in their ups and downs when they master us; and of course retain no jot of that fascination which is a good part of their very shallowness, and brings new life as we take them as a matter of course. Then we are swung in their rhythm, never once losing sight of the point that it is the mood that is to serve us, and not we the mood.

As we gain freedom from our own moods, we are enabled to respect those of others and give up any endeavor to force a friend out of his moods, or even to lead him out, unless he shows a desire to be led. Nor do we rejoice fully in the extreme of his happy moods, knowing the certain reaction.

Respect for the moods of others is necessary to a perfect freedom from our own. In one sense no man is alone in the world; in another sense every man is alone; and with moods especially, a man must be left to work out his own salvation, unless he asks for help. So, as he understands his moods, and frees himself from their mastery, he will find that moods are in reality one of Nature’s gifts, a sort of melody which strengthens the harmony of life and gives it fuller tone.

Freedom from moods does not mean the loss of them, any more than non-resistance means allowing them to master you. It is non-resistance, with the full recognition of what they are, that clears the way.

VII.

TOLERANCE.

WHEN we are tolerant as a matter of course, the nervous system is relieved of almost the worst form of persistent irritation it could have.

The freedom of tolerance can only be appreciated by those who have known the suffering of intolerance and gained relief.

A certain perspective is necessary to a recognition of the full absurdity of intolerance. One of the greatest absurdities of it is evident when we are annoyed and caused intense suffering by our intolerance of others, and, as a consequence, blame others for the fatigue or illness which follows. However mistaken or blind other people may be in their habits or their ideas, it is entirely our fault if we are annoyed by them. The slightest blame given to another in such a case, on account of our suffering, is quite out of place.

Our intolerance is often unconscious. It is disguised under one form of annoyance or another, but when looked full in the face, it can only be recognized as intolerance.

Of course, the most severe form is when the belief, the action, or habit of another interferes directly with our own selfish aims. That brings the double annoyance of being thwarted and of rousing more selfish antagonism.

Where our selfish desires are directly interfered with, or even where an action which we know to be entirely right is prevented, intolerance only makes matters worse. If expressed, it probably rouses bitter feelings in another. Whether we express it openly or not, it keeps us in a state of nervous irritation which is often most painful in its results. Such irritation, if not extreme in its effect, is strong enough to keep any amount of pure enjoyment out of life.

There may be some one who rouses our intolerant feelings, and who may have many good points which might give us real pleasure and profit; but they all go for nothing before our blind, restless intolerance.

It is often the case that this imaginary enemy is found to be a friend and ally in reality, if we once drop the wretched state of intolerance long enough to see him clearly.

Yet the promptest answer to such an assertion will probably be, “That may be so in some cases, but not with the man or woman who rouses my intolerance.”

It is a powerful temptation, this one of intolerance, and takes hold of strong natures; it frequently rouses tremendous tempests before it can be recognized and ignored. And with the tempest comes an obstinate refusal to call it by its right name, and a resentment towards others for rousing in us what should not have been there to be roused.

So long as a tendency to anything evil is in us, it is a good thing to have it roused, recognized, and shaken off; and we might as reasonably blame a rock, over which we stumble, for the bruises received, as blame the person who rouses our intolerance for the suffering we endure.

This intolerance, which is so useless, seems strangely absurd when it is roused through some interference with our own plans; but it is stranger when we are rampant against a belief which does not in any way interfere with us.

This last form is more prevalent in antagonistic religious beliefs than in anything else. The excuse given would be an earnest desire for the salvation of our opponent. But who ever saved a soul through an ungracious intolerance of that soul’s chosen way of believing or living? The danger of loss would seem to be all on the other side.

One’s sense of humor is touched, in spite of one’s self, to hear a war of words and feeling between two Christians whose belief is supposed to be founded on the axiom, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Without this intolerance, argument is interesting, and often profitable. With it, the disputants gain each a more obstinate belief in his own doctrines; and the excitement is steadily destructive to the best health of the nervous system.

Again, there is the intolerance felt from various little ways and habits of others,–habits which are comparatively nothing in themselves, but which are monstrous in their effect upon a person who is intolerant of them.

One might almost think we enjoyed irritated nerves, so persistently do we dwell upon the personal peculiarities of others. Indeed, there is no better example of biting off one’s own nose than the habit of intolerance. It might more truly be called the habit of irritating one’s own nervous system.

Having recognized intolerance as intolerance, having estimated it at its true worth, the next question is, how to get rid of it. The habit has, not infrequently, made such a strong brain-impression that, in spite of an earnest desire to shake it off, it persistently clings.

Of course, the soil about the obnoxious growth is loosened the moment we recognize its true quality. That is a beginning, and the rest is easier than might be imagined by those who have not tried it.

Intolerance is an unwillingness that others should live in their own way, believe as they prefer to, hold personal habits which they enjoy or are unconscious of, or interfere in any degree with our ways, beliefs, or habits.

That very sense of unwillingness causes a contraction of the nerves which is wasteful and disagreeable. The feeling rouses the contraction, the contraction more feeling; and so the Intolerance is increased in cause and in effect. The immediate effect of being willing, on the contrary, is, of course, the relaxation of such contraction, and a healthy expansion of the nerves.

Try the experiment on some small pet form of intolerance. Try to realize what it is to feel quite willing. Say over and over to yourself that you are quite willing So-and-so should make that curious noise with his mouth. Do not hesitate at the simplicity of saying the words to yourself; that brings a much quicker effect at first. By and by we get accustomed to the sensation of willingness, and can recall it with less repetition of words, or without words at all. When the feeling of nervous annoyance is roused by the other, counteract it on the instant by repeating silently: “I am quite willing you should do that,–do it again.” The man or woman, whoever he or she may be, is quite certain to oblige you! There will be any number of opportunities to be willing, until by and by the willingness is a matter of course, and it would not be surprising if the habit passed entirely unnoticed, as far as you are concerned.

This experiment tried successfully on small things can be carried to greater. If steadily persisted in, a good fifty per cent of wasted nervous force can be saved for better things; and this saving of nervous force is the least gain which comes from a thorough riddance of every form of intolerance.

“But,” it will be objected, “how can I say I am willing when I am not?”

Surely you can see no good from the irritation of unwillingness; there can be no real gain from it, and there is every reason for giving it up. A clear realization of the necessity for willingness, both for our own comfort and for that of others, helps us to its repetition in words. The words said with sincere purpose, help us to the feeling, and so we come steadily into clearer light.

Our very willingness that a friend should go the wrong way, if he chooses, gives us new power to help him towards the right. If we are moved by intolerance, that is selfishness; with it will come the desire to force our friend into the way which we consider right. Such forcing, if even apparently successful, invariably produces a reaction on the friend’s part, and disappointment and chagrin on our own.

The fact that most great reformers were and are actuated by the very spirit of intolerance, makes that scorning of the ways of others seem to us essential as the root of all great reform. Amidst the necessity for and strength in the reform, the petty spirit of intolerance intrudes unnoticed. But if any one wants to see it in full-fledged power, let him study the family of a reformer who have inherited the intolerance of his nature without the work to which it was applied.

This intolerant spirit is not indispensable to great reforms; but it sometimes goes with them, and is made use of, as intense selfishness may often be used, for higher ends. The ends might have been accomplished more rapidly and more effectually with less selfish instruments. But man must be left free, and if he will not offer himself as an open channel to his highest impulses, he is used to the best advantage possible without them.

There is no finer type of a great reformer than Jesus Christ; in his life there was no shadow of intolerance. From first to last, he showed willingness in spirit and in action. In upbraiding the Scribes and Pharisees he evinced no feeling of antagonism; he merely stated the facts. The same firm calm truth of assertion, carried out in action, characterized his expulsion of the money-changers from the temple. When he was arrested, and throughout his trial and execution, it was his accusers who showed the intolerance; they sent out with swords and staves to take him, with a show of antagonism which failed to affect him in the slightest degree.

Who cannot see that, with the irritated feeling of intolerance, we put ourselves on the plane of the very habit or action we are so vigorously condemning? We are inviting greater mistakes on our part. For often the rouser of our selfish antagonism is quite blind to his deficiencies, and unless he is broader in his way than we are in ours, any show of intolerance simply blinds him the more. Intolerance, through its indulgence, has come to assume a monstrous form. It interferes with all pleasure in life; it makes clear, open intercourse with others impossible; it interferes with any form of use into which it is permitted to intrude. In its indulgence it is a monstrosity,–in itself it is mean, petty, and absurd.

Let us then work with all possible rapidity to relax from contractions of unwillingness, and become tolerant as a matter of course.

Whatever is the plan of creation, we cannot improve it through any antagonistic feeling of our own against creatures or circumstances. Through a quiet, gentle tolerance we leave ourselves free to be carried by the laws. Truth is greater than we are, and if we can be the means of righting any wrong, it is by giving up the presumption that we can carry truth, and by standing free and ready to let truth carry us.

The same willingness that is practised in relation to persons will be found equally effective in relation to the circumstances of life, from the losing of a train to matters far greater and more important. There is as much intolerance to be dropped in our relations to various happenings as in our relations to persons; and the relief to our nerves is just as great, perhaps even greater.

It seems to be clear that heretofore we have not realized either the relief or the strength of an entire willingness that people and things should progress in their own way. How can we ever gain freedom whilst we are entangled in the contractions of intolerance?

Freedom and a healthy nervous system are synonymous; we cannot have one without the other.

VIII.

SYMPATHY.

SYMPATHY, in its best sense, is the ability to take another’s point of view. Not to mourn because he mourns; not to feel injured because he feels injured. There are times when we cannot agree with a friend in the necessity for mourning or feeling injured; but we can understand the cause of his disturbance, and see clearly that his suffering is quite reasonable, _from his own point of view_. One cannot blame a man for being color-blind; but by thoroughly understanding and sympathizing with the fact that red _must_ be green as he sees it, one can help him to bring his mental retina to a more normal state, until every color is taken at its proper value.

This broader sort of sympathy enables us to serve others much more truly.

If we feel at one with a man who is suffering from a supposed injury which may be entirely his own fault, we are doing all in our power to confirm him in his mistake, and his impression of martyrdom is increased and protracted in proportion. But if, with a genuine comprehension of his point of view, however unreal it may be in itself, we do our best to see his trouble in an unprejudiced light, that is sympathy indeed; for our real sympathy is with the man himself, cleared from his selfish fog. What is called our sympathy with his point of view is more a matter of understanding. The sympathy which takes the man for all in all, and includes the comprehension of his prejudices, will enable us to hold our tongues with regard to his prejudiced view until he sees for himself or comes to us for advice.

It is interesting to notice how this sympathy with another enables us to understand and forgive one from whom we have received an injury. His point of view taken, his animosity against us seems to follow as a matter of course; then no time or force need be wasted on resentment.

Again, you cannot blame a man for being blind, even though his blindness may be absolutely and entirely selfish, and you the sufferer in consequence.

It often follows that the endeavor to get a clear understanding of another’s view brings to notice many mistaken ideas of our own, and thus enables us to gain a better standpoint It certainly helps us to enduring patience; whereas a positive refusal to regard the prejudices of another is rasping to our own nerves, and helps to fix him in whatever contraction may have possessed him.

There can be no doubt that this open sympathy is one of the better phases of our human intercourse most to be desired. It requires a clear head and a warm heart to understand the prejudices of a friend or an enemy, and to sympathize with his capabilities enough to help him to clearer mental vision.

Often, to be sure, there are two points of view, both equally true. But they generally converge into one, and that one is more easily found through not disputing our own with another’s. Through sympathy with him we are enabled to see the right on both sides, and reach the central point.

It is singular that it takes us so long to recognize this breadth of sympathy and practise it. Its practice would relieve us of an immense amount of unnecessary nerve-strain. But the nerve-relief is the mere beginning of gain to come. It steadily opens a clearer knowledge and a heartier appreciation of human nature. We see in individuals traits of character, good and bad, that we never could have recognized whilst blinded by our own personal prejudices. By becoming alive to various little sensitive spots in others, we are enabled to avoid them, and save an endless amount of petty suffering which might increase to suffering that was really severe.

One good illustration of this want of sympathy, in a small way, is the waiting-room of a well-known nerve-doctor. The room is in such a state of confusion, it is such a mixture of colors and forms, that it would be fatiguing even for a person in tolerable health to stay there for an hour. Yet the doctor keeps his sensitive, nervously excited patients sitting in this heterogeneous mass of discordant objects hour after hour. Surely it is no psychological subtlety of insight that gives a man of this type his name and fame: it must be the feeding and resting process alone; for a man of sensitive sympathy would study to save his patients by taking their point of view, as well as to bring them to a better physical state through nourishment and rest.

The ability to take a nervous sufferer’s point of view is greatly needed. There can be no doubt that with that effort on the part of friends and relatives, many cases of severe nervous prostration might be saved, certainly much nervous suffering could be prevented.

A woman who is suffering from a nervous conscience writes a note which shows that she is worrying over this or that supposed mistake, or as to what your attitude is towards her. A prompt, kind, and direct answer will save her at once from further nervous suffering of that sort. To keep an anxious person, whether he be sick or well, watching the mails, is a want of sympathy which is also shown in many other ways, unimportant, perhaps, to us, but important if we are broad enough to take the other’s point of view.

There are many foolish little troubles from which men and women suffer that come only from tired nerves. A wise patience with such anxieties will help greatly towards removing their cause. A wise patience is not indulgence. An elaborate nervous letter of great length is better answered by a short but very kind note.

The sympathy which enables us to understand the point of view of tired nerves gives us the power to be lovingly brief in our response to them, and at the same time more satisfying than if we responded at length.

Most of us take human nature as a great whole, and judge individuals from our idea in general. Or, worse, we judge it all from our own personal prejudices. There is a grossness about this which we wonder at not having seen before, when we compare the finer sensitiveness which is surely developed by the steady effort to understand another’s point of view. We know a whole more perfectly as a whole if we have a distinct knowledge of the component parts. We can only understand human nature en masse through a daily clearer knowledge of and sympathy with its individuals. Every one of us knows the happiness of having at least one friend whom he is perfectly sure will neither undervalue him nor give him undeserved praise, and whose friendship and help he can count upon, no matter how great a wrong he has done, as securely as he could count upon his loving thought and attention in physical illness. Surely it is possible for each of us to approach such friendship in our feeling and attitude towards every one who comes in touch with us.

It is comparatively easy to think of this open sympathy, or even practise it in big ways; it is in the little matters of everyday life that the difficulty arises. Of course the big ways count for less if they come through a brain clogged with little prejudices, although to some extent one must help the other.

It cannot be that a man has a real open sympathy who limits it to his own family and friends; indeed, the very limit would make the open sympathy impossible. One is just as far from a clear comprehension of human nature when he limits himself by his prejudices for his immediate relatives as when he makes himself alone the boundary.

Once having gained even the beginning of this broader sympathy with others, there follows the pleasure of freedom from antagonisms, keener delight in understanding others, individually and collectively, and greater ability to serve others; and all these must give an impetus which takes us steadily on to greater freedom, to clearer understanding, and to more power to serve and to be served.

Others have many experiences which we have never even touched upon. In that case, our ability to understand is necessarily limited. The only thing to do is to acknowledge that we cannot see the point of view, that we have no experience to start from, and to wait with an open mind until we are able to understand.

Curiously enough, it is precisely these persons of limited experience who are most prone to prejudice. I have heard a man assert with emphasis that it was every one’s _duty_ to be happy, who had apparently not a single thing in life to interfere with his own happiness. The duty may be clear enough, but he certainly was not in a position to recognize its difficulty. And just in proportion with his inability to take another’s point of view in such difficulty did he miss his power to lead others to this agreeable duty.

There are, of course, innumerable things, little and big, which we shall be enabled to give to others and to receive from others as the true sympathy grows.

The common-sense of it all appeals to us forcibly.

Who wants to carry about a mass of personal prejudices when he can replace them by the warm, healthy feeling of sympathetic friendship? Who wants his nerves to be steadily irritated by various forms of intolerance when, by understanding the other’s point of view, he can replace these by better forms of patience?

This lower relief is little compared with the higher power gained, but it is the first step up, and the steps beyond go ever upward. Human nature is worth knowing and worth loving, and it can never be known or loved without open sympathy.

Why, we ourselves are human nature!

Many of us would be glad to give sympathy to others, especially in little ways, but we do not know how to go to work about it; we seem always to be doing the wrong thing, when our desire is to do the right. This comes, of course, from the same inability to take the other’s point of view; and the ability is gained as we are quiet and watch for it.

Practice, here as in everything else, is what helps. And the object is well worth working for.

IX.

OTHERS.

HOW to live at peace with others is a problem which, if practically solved, would relieve the nervous system of a great weight, and give to living a lightness and ease that might for a time seem weirdly unnatural. It would certainly decrease the income of the nerve-specialists to the extent of depriving those gentlemen of many luxuries they now enjoy.

Peace does not mean an outside civility with an inside dislike or annoyance. In that case, the repressed antagonism not only increases the brain-impression and wears upon the nervous system, but it is sure to manifest itself some time, in one form or another; and the longer it is repressed, the worse will be the effect. It may be a volcanic eruption that is produced after long repression, which simmers down to a chronic interior grumble; or it may be that the repression has caused such steadily increasing contraction that an eruption is impossible. In this case, life grows heavier and heavier, burdened with the shackles of one’s own dislikes.

If we can only recognize two truths in our relations with others, and let these truths become to us a matter of course, the worst difficulties are removed. Indeed, with these two simple bits of rationality well in hand, we may safely expect to walk amicably side by side with our dearest foe.

The first is, that dislike, nine times out often, is simply a “cutaneous disorder.” That is, it is merely an irritation excited by the friction of one nervous system upon another. The tiny tempests in the tiny teapots which are caused by this nervous friction, the great weight attached to the most trivial matters of dispute, would touch one’s sense of humor keenly if it were not that in so many cases these tiny tempests develop into real hurricanes. Take, for example, two dear and intimate friends who have lived happily together for years. Neither has a disposition which is perfect; but that fact has never interfered with their friendship. Both get over-tired. Words are spoken which sound intensely disagreeable, even cruel. They really express nothing in the world but tired nerves. They are received and misinterpreted by tired nerves on the other side. So these two sets of nerves act and react upon one another, and from nothing at all is evolved an ill-feeling which, if allowed to grow, separates the friends. Each is fully persuaded that his cutaneous trouble has profound depth. By a persistent refusal of all healing salves it sometimes sinks in until the disease becomes really deep seated. All this is so unnecessary. Through the same mistake many of us carry minor dislikes which, on account of their number and their very pettiness, are wearing upon the nerves, and keep us from our best in whatever direction we may be working.

The remedy for all these seems very clear when once we find it. Recognize the shallow-ness of the disorder, acknowledge that it is a mere matter of nerves, and avoid the friction. Keep your distance. It is perfectly possible and very comfortable to keep your distance from the irritating peculiarities of another, while having daily and familiar relations with him or her. The difficulty is in getting to a distance when we have allowed ourselves to be over-near; but that, too, can be accomplished with patience. And by keeping a nervous distance, so to speak, we are not only relieved from irritation, but we find a much more delightful friendship; we see and enjoy the qualities in another which the petty irritations had entirely obscured from our view. If we do not allow ourselves to be touched by the personal peculiarities, we get nearer the individual himself.

To give a simple example which would perhaps seem absurd if it had not been proved true so many times: A man was so annoyed by his friend’s state of nervous excitability that in taking a regular morning walk with him, which he might have enjoyed heartily, he always returned fagged out He tried whilst walking beside his friend to put himself in imagination on the other side of the street The nervous irritation lessened, and finally ceased; the walk was delightful, and the friend–never suspected!

A Japanese crowd is so well-bred that no one person touches another; one need never jostle, but, with an occasional “I beg your pardon,” can circulate with perfect ease. In such a crowd there can be no irritation.

There is a certain good-breeding which leads us to avoid friction with another’s nervous system. It must, however, be an avoidance inside as well as outside. The subterfuge of holding one’s tongue never works in the end. There is a subtle communication from one nervous system to another which is more insinuating than any verbal intercourse. Those nearest us, and whom we really love best, are often the very persons by whom we are most annoyed. As we learn to keep a courteous distance from their personal peculiarities our love grows stronger and more real; and an open frankness in our relation is more nearly possible. Strangely enough, too, the personal peculiarities sometimes disappear. It is possible, and quite as necessary, to treat one’s own nervous system with this distant courtesy.

This brings us to the second simple truth. In nine cases out of ten the cause of this nervous irritation is in ourselves. If a man loses his temper and rouses us to a return attack, how can we blame him? Are we not quite as bad in hitting back? To be sure, he began it. But did he? How do we know what roused him? Then, too, he might have poured volleys of abuse upon us, and not provoked an angry retort, if the temper had not been latent within us, to begin with. So it is with minor matters. In direct proportion to our freedom from others is our power for appreciating their good points; just in proportion to our slavery to their tricks and their habits are we blinded to their good points and open to increased irritation from their bad ones. It is curious that it should work that way, but it does. If there is nothing in us to be roused, we are all free; if we are not free, it is because there is something in us akin to that which rouses us. This is hard to acknowledge. But it puts our attitude to others on a good clean basis, and brings us into reality and out of private theatricals; not to mention a clearing of the nervous system which gives us new power.

There is one trouble in dealing with people which does not affect all of us, but which causes enough pain and suffering to those who are under its influence to make up for the immunity of the rest. That is, the strong feeling that many of us have that it is our duty to reform those about us whose life and ways are not according to our ideas of right.

No one ever forced another to reform, against that other’s will. It may have appeared so; but there is sure to be a reaction sooner or later. The number of nervous systems, however, that have been overwrought by this effort to turn others to better ways, is sad indeed. And in many instances the owners of these nervous systems will pose to themselves as martyrs; and they are quite sincere in such posing. They are living their own impressions of themselves, and wearing themselves out in consequence. If they really wanted right for the sake of right, they would do all in their power without intruding, would recognize the other as a free agent, and wait. But they want right because it is their way; consequently they are crushed by useless anxiety, and suffer superfluously. This is true of those who feel themselves under the necessity of reforming all who come in touch with them. It is more sadly true of those whose near friends seem steadily to be working out their own destruction. To stand aside and be patient in this last case requires strength indeed. But such patience clears one’s mind to see, and gives power to act when action can prove effective. Indeed, as the ability to leave others free grows in us, our power really to serve increases.

The relief to the nervous system of dropping mistaken responsibility cannot be computed. For it is by means of the nervous system that we deal with others; it is the medium of our expression and of our impression. And as it is cleared of its false contractions, does it not seem probable that we might be opened to an exquisite delight in companionship that we never knew before, and that our appreciation of human nature would increase indefinitely?

Suppose when we find another whose ways are quite different from ours, we immediately contract, and draw away with the feeling that there is nothing in him for us. Or suppose, instead, that we look into his ways with real interest in having found a new phase of human nature. Which would be the more broadening process on the whole, or the more delightful? Frequently the contraction takes more time and attention than would an effort to understand the strange ways. We are almost always sure to find something in others to which we can respond, and which awakens a new power in us, if only a new power of sympathy.

To sum it all up, the best way to deal with others seems to be to avoid nervous friction of any sort, inside or out; to harbor no ill-will towards another for selfishness roused in one’s self; to be urged by no presumptive sense of responsibility; and to remember that we are all in the same world and under the same laws. A loving sympathy with human nature in general, leads us first to obey the laws ourselves, and gives us a fellow-feeling with individuals which means new strength on both sides.

To take this as a matter of course does not seem impossible. It is simply casting the skin of the savage and rising to another plane, where there will doubtless be new problems better worth attention.

X.

ONE’S SELF.

TO be truly at peace with one’s self means rest indeed.

There is a quiet complacency, though, which passes for peace, and is like the remarkably clear red-and-white complexion which indicates disease. It will be noticed that the sufferers from this complacent spirit of so-called peace shrink from openness of any sort, from others or to others. They will put a disagreeable feeling out of sight with a rapidity which would seem to come from sheer fright lest they should see and acknowledge themselves in their true guise. Or they will acknowledge it to a certain extent, with a pleasure in their own humility which increases the complacency in proportion. This peace is not to be desired. With those who enjoy it, a true knowledge of or friendship with others is as much out of the question as a knowledge of themselves. And when it is broken or interfered with in any way, the pain is as intense and real as the peace was false.

The first step towards amicable relations with ourselves is to acknowledge that we are living with a stranger. Then it sometimes happens that through being annoyed by some one else we are enabled to recognize similar disagreeable tendencies in ourselves of which we were totally ignorant before.

As honest dealing with others always pays best in the end, so it is in all relations with one’s self. There are many times when to be quite open with a friend we must wait to be asked. With ourselves no such courtesy is needed. We can speak out and done with it, and the franker we are, the sooner we are free. For, unlike other companions, we can enjoy ourselves best when we are conspicuous only by our own absence!

It is this constant persistence in clinging to ourselves that is most in the way; it increases that crown of nervous troubles, self-consciousness, and makes it quite impossible that we should ever really know ourselves. If by all this, we are not ineffable bores to ourselves, we certainly become so to other people.

It is surprising, when once we come to recognize it, how we are in an almost chronic state of posing to ourselves. Fortunately, a clear recognition of the fact is most effectual in stopping the poses. But they must be recognized, pose by pose, individually and separately stopped, _and then ignored_, if we want to free ourselves from ourselves entirely.

The interior posing-habit makes one a slave to brain-impressions which puts all freedom out of the question. To cease from such posing opens one of the most interesting gates to natural life. We wonder how we could have obscured the outside view for so long.

To find that we cannot, or do not, let ourselves alone for an hour in the day seems the more surprising when we remember that there is so much to enjoy outside. Egotism is immensely magnified in nervous disorders; but that it is the positive cause of much nervous trouble has not been generally admitted.

Let any one of us take a good look at the amount of attention given by ourselves to ourselves. Then acknowledge, without flinching, what amount of that attention is unnecessary; and it will clear the air delightfully, for a moment at any rate.

The tendency to refer everything, in some way or another, to one’s self; the touchiness and suspicion aroused by nothing but petty jealousy as to one’s own place; the imagined slights from others; the want of consideration given us,–all these and many more senseless irritations are in this over-attention to self. The worries about our own moral state take up so great a place with many of us as to leave no room for any other thought. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a woman worrying so over her faults that she has no time to correct them. Self-condemnation is as great a vanity as its opposite. Either in one way or another there is the steady temptation to attend to one’s self, and along with it an irritation of the nerves which keeps us from any sense of real freedom.

With most of us there is no great depth to the self-disease if it is only stopped in time. When once we are well started in the wholesome practice of getting rid of ourselves, the process is rapid. A thorough freedom from self once gained, we find ourselves quite companionable, which, though paradoxical, is without doubt a truth.

“That freedom of the soul,” writes Fenelon, “which looks straight onward in its path, losing no time to reason upon its steps, to study them, or to dwell upon those already taken, is true simplicity.” We recognize a mistake, correct it, go on and forget. If it appears again, correct it again. Irritation at the second or at any number of reappearances only increases the brain-impression of the mistake, and makes the tendency to future error greater.

If opportunity arises to do a good action, take advantage of it, and silently decline the disadvantage of having your attention riveted to it by the praise of others.

A man who is constantly analyzing his physical state is called a hypochondriac. What shall we call the man who is constantly analyzing his moral state? As the hypochondriac loses all sense of health in holding the impression of disease, so the other gradually loses the sense of wholesome relation to himself and to others.

If a man obeyed the laws of health as a matter of course, and turned back every time Nature convicted him of disobedience, he would never feel the need of self-analysis so far as his physical state was concerned. Just so far as a man obeys higher laws as a matter of course, and uses every mistake to enable him to know the laws better, is morbid introspection out of the question with him.

“Man, know thyself!” but, being sure of the desire to know thyself, do not be impatient at slow progress; pay little attention to the process, and forget thyself, except when remembering is necessary to a better forgetting.

To live at real peace with ourselves, we must surely let every little evil imp of selfishness show himself, and not have any skulking around corners. Recognize him for his full worthless-ness, call him by his right name, and move off. Having called him by his right name, our severity with ourselves for harboring him is unnecessary. To be gentle with ourselves is quite as important as to be gentle with others. Great nervous suffering is caused by this over-severity to one’s self, and freedom is never accomplished by that means. Many of us are not severe enough, but very many are too severe. One mistake is quite as bad as the other, and as disastrous in its effects.

If we would regard our own state less, or careless whether we were happy or unhappy, our freedom from self would be gained more rapidly.

As a man intensely interested in some special work does not notice the weather, so we, if we once get hold of the immense interest there may be in living, are not moved to any depth by changes in the clouds of our personal state. We take our moods as a matter of course, and look beyond to interests that are greater. Self may be a great burden if we allow it. It is only a clear window through which we see and are seen, if we are free. And the repose of such freedom must be beyond our conception until we have found it. To be absolutely certain that we know ourselves at any time is one great impediment to reaching such rest. Every bit of self-knowledge gained makes us more doubtful as to knowledge to come. It would surprise most of us to see how really unimportant we are. As a part of the universe, our importance increases just in proportion to the laws that work through us; but this self-importance is lost to us entirely in our greater recognition of the laws. As we gain in the sensitive recognition of universal laws, every petty bit of self-contraction disappears as darkness before the rising of the sun.

XI.

CHILDREN.

WORK for the better progress of the human race is most effective when it is done through the children; for children are future generations. The freedom in mature life gained by a training that would enable the child to avoid nervous irritants is, of course, greatly in advance of most individual freedom to-day. This real freedom is the spirit of the kindergarten; but Frobel’s method, as practised to-day, does not attack and put to rout all those various nervous irritants which are the enemies of our civilization. To be sure, the teaching of his philosophy develops such a nature that much pettiness is thrown off without even being noticed as a snare; and Frobel helps one to recognize all pettiness more rapidly. There are, however, many forms of nervous irritation which one is not warned against in the kindergarten, and the absence of which, if the child is taught as a matter of course to avoid them, will give him a freedom that his elders and betters (?) lack. The essential fact of this training is that it is only truly effectual when coming from example rather than precept.

A child is exquisitely sensitive to the shortcomings of others, and very keen, as well as correct, in his criticism, whether expressed or unexpressed. In so far as a man consents to be taught by children, does he not only remain young, but he frees himself from the habit of impeding his own progress. This is a great impediment, this unwillingness to be taught by those whom we consider more ignorant than ourselves because they have not been in the world so long. Did no one ever take into account the possibility of our eyes being blinded just because they had been exposed to the dust longer? Certainly one possible way of clearing this dust and avoiding it is to learn from observing those who have had less of it to contend with. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that no training of any child could be effectual to a lasting degree unless the education was mutual. When Frobel says, “Come, let us live with our children,” he does not mean, Come, let us stoop to our children; he means, Let us be at one with them. Surely a more perfect harmony in these two great phases of human nature–the child and the man–would be greatly to the advantage of the latter.

Yet, to begin at the beginning, who ever feels the necessity of treating a baby with respect? How quickly the baby would resent intrusive attentions, if it knew how. Indeed, I have seen a baby not a year old resent being transferred from one person to another, with an expression of the face that was most eloquent. Women seem so full of their sense of possession of a baby that this eloquence is not even observed, and the poor child’s nervous irritants begin at a very early age. There is so much to be gained by keeping at a respectful nervous distance from a baby, that one has only to be quiet enough to perceive the new pleasure once, to lose the temptation to interfere; and imagine the relief to the baby! It is, after all, the sense of possession that makes the trouble; and this sense is so strong that there are babies, all the way from twenty to forty, whose individuality is intruded upon so grossly that they have never known what freedom is; and when they venture to struggle for it, their suffering is intense. This is a steadily increasing nervous contraction, both in the case of the possessed and the possessor, and perfect nervous health is not possible on either side. To begin by respecting the individuality of the baby would put this last abnormal attitude of parent and child out of the question. Curiously enough, there is in some of the worst phases of this parent-child contraction an external appearance of freedom which only enhances the internal slavery. When a man, who has never known what it was in reality to give up a strong will, prides himself upon the freedom he gives to his child, he is entangling himself in the meshes of self-deception, and either depriving another of his own, or ripening him for a good hearty hatred which may at any time mean volcanoes and earthquakes to both.

This forcible resentment of and resistance to the strong will of another is a cause of great nervous suffering, the greater as the expression of such feeling is repressed. Severe illness may easily be the result.

To train a child to gain freedom from the various nervous irritants, one must not only be gaining the same freedom one’s self, but must practise meeting the child in the way he is counselled to meet others. One must refuse to be in any way a nervous irritant to the child. In that case quite as much instruction is received as given. A child, too, is doubly sensitive; he not only feels the intrusion on his own individuality, but the irritable or self-willed attitude of another in expressing such intrusion.

Similarly, in keeping a respectful distance, a teacher grows sensitive to the child, and again the help is mutual, with sometimes a balance in favor of the child.

This mistaken, parent-child attitude is often the cause of severe nervous suffering in those whose only relation is that of friendship, when one mind is stronger than the other. Sometimes there is not any real superior strength on the one side; it is simply by the greater gross-ness of the will that the other is overcome. This very grossness blinds one completely to the individuality of a finer strength; the finer individual succumbs because he cannot compete with crowbars, and the parent-child contraction is the disastrous result. To preserve for a child a normal nervous system, one must guide but not limit him. It is a sad sight to see a mother impressing upon a little brain that its owner is a naughty, naughty boy, especially when such impression is increased by the irritability of the mother. One hardly dares to think how many more grooves are made in a child’s brain which simply give him contractions to take into mature life with him; how many trivial happenings are made to assume a monstrous form through being misrepresented. It is worth while to think of such dangers, such warping influences, only long enough to avoid them.

A child’s imagination is so exquisitely alive, his whole little being is so responsive, that the guidance which can be given him through happy brain-impressions is eminently practicable. To test this responsiveness, and feel it more keenly, just tell a child a dramatic story, and watch his face respond; or even recite a Mother-Goose rhyme with all the expression at your command. The little face changes in rapid succession, as one event after another is related, in a way to put a modern actor to shame. If the response is so quick on the outside, it must be at least equally active within.

One might as well try to make a white rose red by rouging its petals as to mould a child according to one’s own idea of what he should be; and as the beauty and delicacy of the rose would be spoiled by the application of the pigment, so is the baby’s nervous system twisted and contracted by the limiting force of a grosser will.

Water the rose, put it in the sun, keep the insect enemies away, and then enjoy it for itself. Give the child everything that is consistent with its best growth, but neither force the growth nor limit it; and stand far enough off to see the individuality, to enjoy it and profit by it. Use the child’s imagination to calm and strengthen it; give it happy channels for its activity; guide it physically to the rhythm of fresh air, nourishment, and rest; then do not interfere.

If the man never turns to thank you for such guidance, because it all came as a matter of course, a wholesome, powerful nervous system will speak thanks daily with more eloquence than any words could ever express.

XII.

ILLNESS.

AS far as we make circumstances guides and not limitations, they serve us. Otherwise, we serve them, and suffer accordingly. Just in proportion, too, to our allowing circumstances to be limits do we resist them. Such resistance is a nervous strain which disables us physically, and of course puts us more in the clutches of what appears to be our misfortune. The moment we begin to regard every circumstance as an opportunity, the tables are turned on Fate, and we have the upper hand of her.

When we come to think of it, how much common-sense there is in making the best of every “opportunity,” and what a lack of sense in chafing at that which we choose to call our limitations! The former way is sure to bring a good result of some sort, be it ever so small; the latter wears upon our nerves, blinds our mental vision, and certainly does not cultivate the spirit of freedom in us.

How absurd it would seem if a wounded man were to expose his wound to unnecessary friction, and then complain that it did not heal! Yet that is what many of us have done at one time or another, when prevented by illness from carrying out our plans in life just as we had arranged. It matters not whether those plans were for ourselves or for others; chafing and fretting at their interruption is just as absurd and quite as sure to delay our recovery. “I know,” with tears in our eyes, “I ought not to complain, but it is so hard,” To which common-sense may truly answer: “If it is hard, you want to get well, don’t you? Then why do you not take every means to get well, instead of indulging first in the very process that will most tend to keep you ill?” Besides this, there is a dogged resistance which remains silent, refuses to complain aloud, and yet holds a state of rigidity that is even worse than the external expression. There are many individual ways of resisting. Each of us knows his own, and knows, too, the futility of it; we do not need to multiply examples.

The patients who resist recovery are quite as numerous as those who keep themselves ill by resisting illness. A person of this sort seems to be fascinated by his own body and its disorders. So far from resisting illness, he may be said to be indulging in it He will talk about himself and his physical state for hours. He will locate each separate disease in a way to surprise the listener by his knowledge of his own anatomy. Not infrequently he will preface a long account of himself by informing you that he has a hearty detestation of talking about himself, and never could understand why people wanted to talk of their diseases. Then in minute detail he will reveal to you his brain-impression of his own case, and look for sympathetic response. These people might recover a hundred times over, and they would never know it, so occupied are they in living their own idea of themselves and in resisting Nature.

When Nature has knocked us down because of disobedience to her laws, we resist her if we attempt at once to rise, or complain of the punishment. When the dear lady would hasten our recovery to the best of her ability, we resist her if we delay progress by dwelling on the punishment or chafing at its necessity.

Nature always tends towards health. It is to prevent further ill-health that she allows us to suffer for our disobedience to her laws. It is to lead us back to health that she is giving the best of her powers, having dealt the deserved punishment. The truest help we can give Nature is not to think of our bodies, well or ill, more than is necessary for their best health.

I knew a woman who was, to all appearances, remarkably well; in fact, her health was her profession. She was supposed to be a Priestess of Health. She talked about and dwelt upon the health of her body until one would have thought there was nothing in the world worth thinking of but a body. She displayed her fine points in the way of health, and enjoyed being questioned with regard to them. This woman was taken ill. She exhibited the same interest, the same pleasure, in talking over and dwelling upon her various forms of illness; in fact, more. She counted her diseases. I am not aware that she ever counted her strong points of health.

This illustration is perhaps clear enough to give a new sense of the necessity for forgetting our bodies. When ill use every necessary remedy; do all that is best to bring renewed health. Having made sure you are doing all you can, forget; don’t follow the process. When, as is often the case, pain or other suffering puts forgetting out of the question, use no unnecessary resistance, and forget as soon as the pain is past Don’t strengthen the impression by talking about it or telling it over to no purpose. Better forego a little sympathy, and forget the pain sooner.

It is with our nerves that we resist when Nature has punished us. It is nervous strain that we put into a useless attention to and repetition of the details of our illness. Nature wants all this nerve-force to get us well the faster; we can save it for her by not resisting and by a healthy forgetting. By taking an illness as comfortably as possible, and turning our attention to something pleasant outside of ourselves, recovery is made more rapidly.

Many illnesses are accompanied by more or less nervous strain, and its natural control will assist nature and enable medicines to work more quickly. The slowest process of recovery, and that which most needs the relief of a wholesome non-resistance, is when the illness is the result entirely of over-worked nerves. Nature allows herself to be tried to the utmost before she permits nervous prostration. She insists upon being paid in full, principal and interest, before she heals such illness. So severe is she in this case that a patient may appear in every way physically well and strong weeks, nay, months, before he really is so. It was the nerves that broke down last, and the nerves are the last to be restored. It is, however, wonderful to see how much more rapid and certain recovery is if the patient will only separate himself from his nervous system, and refuse all useless strain.

Here are some simple directions which may help nervous patients, if considered in regular order. They can hardly be read too often if the man or woman is in for a long siege; and if simply and steadily obeyed, they will shorten the siege by many days, nay, by many weeks or months, in some cases.

Remember that Nature tends towards health. All you want is nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest, and patience.

All your worries and anxieties now are tired nerves.

When a worry appears, drop it. If it appears again, drop it again. And so continue to drop it if it appears fifty or a hundred times a day or more.

If you feel like crying, cry; but know that it is the tired nerves that are crying, and don’t wonder why you are so foolish,–don’t feel ashamed of yourself.

If you cannot sleep, don’t care. Get all the rest you can without sleeping. That will bring sleep when it is ready to come, or you are ready to have it.

Don’t wonder whether you are going to sleep or not. Go to bed to rest, and let sleep come when it pleases.

Think about everything in Nature. Follow the growing of the trees and flowers. Remember all the beauties in Nature you have ever seen.

Say Mother-Goose rhymes over and over, trying how many you can remember.

Read bright stories for children, and quiet novels, especially Jane Austen’s.

Sometimes it helps to work on arithmetic.

Keep aloof from emotions.

Think of other people.

Never think of yourself. Bear in mind that nerves always get well in waves; and if you thought yourself so much better,–almost well, indeed,–and then have a bad time of suffering, don’t wonder why it is, or what could have brought it on. Know that it is part of the recovery-process; take it as easily as you can, and then ignore it.

Don’t try to do any number of things to get yourself well; don’t change doctors any number of times, or take countless medicines. Every doctor knows he cannot hurry your recovery, whatever he may say, and you only retard it by being over-anxious to get strong. Drop every bit of unnecessary muscular tension.

When you walk, feel your feet heavy, as if your shoes were full of lead, and think in your feet.

Be as much like a child as possible. Play with children as one of them, and think with them when you can.

As you begin to recover, find something every day to do for others. Best let it be in the way of house-work, or gardening, or something to do with your hands.

Take care of yourself every day as a matter of course, as you would dress or undress; and be sure that health is coming. Say over and over to yourself: Nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest, PATIENCE.

When you are well, and resume your former life, if old associations recall the unhappy nervous feelings, know that it is only the associations; pay no attention to the suffering, and work right on. Only be careful to take life very quietly until you are quite used to being well again.

An illness that is merely nervous is an immense opportunity, if one will only realize it as such. It not only makes one more genuinely appreciative of the best health, and the way to keep it, it opens the sympathies and gives a feeling for one’s fellow-creatures which, having once found, we cannot prize too highly.

It would seem hard to believe that all must suffer to find a delicate sympathy; it can hardly be so. To be always strong, and at the same time full of warm sympathy, is possible, with more thought. When illness or adverse circumstances bring it, the gate has been opened for us.

If illness is taken as an opportunity to better health, not to more illness, our mental attitude will put complaint out of the question; and as the practice spreads it will as surely decrease the tendency to illness in others as it will shorten its duration in ourselves.

XIII.

SENTIMENT _versus_ SENTIMENTALITY.

FREEDOM from sentimentality opens the way for true sentiment.

An immense amount of time, thought, and nervous force is wasted in sentimentalizing about “being good.” With many, the amount of talk about their evils and their desire to overcome them is a thermometer which indicates about five times that amount of thought Neither the talk nor the thought is of assistance in leading to any greater strength or to a more useful life; because the talk is all talk, and the essence of both talk and thought is a selfish, morbid pleasure in dwelling upon one’s self. I remember the remark of a young girl who had been several times to prayer-meeting where she heard the same woman say every time that she “longed for the true spirit of religion in her life.” With all simplicity, this child said: “If she longs for it, why doesn’t she work and find it, instead of coming every week and telling us that she longs?” In all probability the woman returned from every prayer-meeting with the full conviction that, having told her aspirations, she had reached the height desired, and was worthy of all praise.

Prayer-meetings in the old, orthodox sense are not so numerous as they were fifty years ago; but the same morbid love of telling one’s own experiences and expressing in words one’s own desires for a better life is as common as ever.

Many who would express horror at these public forms of sentimentalizing do not hesitate to indulge in it privately to any extent. Nor do they realize for a moment that it is the same morbid spirit that moves them. It might not be so pernicious a practice if it were not so steadily weakening.

If one has a spark of real desire for better ways of living, sentimentalizing about it is a sure extinguisher if practised for any length of time.

A woman will sometimes pour forth an amount of gush about wishing to be better, broader, nobler, stronger, in a manner that would lead you, for a moment, perhaps, to believe in her sincerity. But when, in the next hour, you see her neglecting little duties that a woman who was really broad, strong, and noble would attend to as a matter of course, and not give a second thought to; when you see that although she must realize that attention to these smaller duties should come first, to open the way to her higher aspirations, she continues to neglect them and continues to aspire,–you are surely right in concluding that she is using up her nervous system in sentimentalizing about a better life; and by that means is doing all in her power to hinder the achievement of it.

It is curious and very sad to see what might be a really strong nature weakening itself steadily with this philosophy and water. Of course it reaches a maudlin state if it continues.

His Satanic Majesty must offer this dose, sweetened with the sugar of self-love, with intense satisfaction. And if we may personify that gentleman for the sake of illustration, what a fine sarcastic smile must dwell upon his countenance as he sees it swallowed and enjoyed, and knows that he did not even have to waste spice as an ingredient! The sugar would have drowned the taste of any spice he could supply.

There is not even the appearance of strength in sentimentalizing.

Besides the sentimentalizing about ourselves in our desire to live a better life, there is the same morbid practice in our love for others; and this is quite as weakening. It contains, of course, no jot of real affection. What wholesome love there is lives in spite of the sentimentalizing, and fortunately is sometimes strong enough on one side or the other to crowd it out and finally exterminate it.

It is curious to notice how often this sham sentiment for others is merely a matter of nerves. As an instance we can take an example, which is quite true, of a woman who fancied herself desperately fond of another, when, much to her surprise, an acute attack of toothache and dentist-fright put the “affection” quite out of her head. In this case the “love” was a nervous irritant, and the toothache a counter-irritant. Of course the sooner such superficial feeling is recognized and shaken off, the nearer we are to real sentiment.

“But,” some one will say, “how are we to know what is real and what is not? I would much rather live my life and get more or less unreality than have this everlasting analyzing.” There need be no abnormal analyzing; that is as morbid as the other state. Indulge to your heart’s content in whatever seems to you real, in what you believe to be wholesome sentiment. But be ready to recognize it as sham at the first hint you get to that effect, and to drop it accordingly.

A perfectly healthy body will shed germs of disease without ever feeling their presence. So a perfectly healthy mind will shed the germs of sentimentality. Few of us are so healthy in mind but that we have to recognize a germ or two and apply a disinfectant before we can reach the freedom that will enable us to shed the germs unconsciously. A good disinfectant is, to refuse to talk of our own feelings or desires or affections, unless for some end which we know may help us to more light and better strength. Talking, however, is mild in its weakening effect compared with thinking. It is better to dribble sham sentiment in words over and over than to think it, and repress the desire to talk. The only clear way is to drop it from our minds the moment it appears; to let go of it as we would loosen our fingers and drop something disagreeable from our hands.

A good amount of exercise and fresh air helps one out of sentimentalizing. This morbid mental habit is often the result of a body ill in some way or another. Frequently it is simply the effect of tired nerves. We help others and ourselves out of it more rapidly by not mentioning the sentimentalizing habit, but by taking some immediate means towards rest, fresh air, vigorous exercise, and better nourishment.

Mistakes are often made and ourselves or others kept an unnecessary length of time in mental suffering because we fail to attribute a morbid mental state to its physical cause. We blame ourselves or others for behavior that we call wicked or silly, and increase the suffering, when all that is required is a little thoughtful care of the body to cause the silly wickedness to disappear entirely.

We are supposed to be indulging in sickly sentiment when we are really suffering from sickly nerves. An open sympathy will detect this mistake very soon, and save intense suffering by an early remedy.

Sentiment is as strengthening as sentimentality is weakening. It is as strong, as clear, and as fine in flavor as the other is sickly sweet. No one who has tasted the wholesome vigor of the one could ever care again for the weakening sweetness of the other, however much he might have to suffer in getting rid of it. True sentiment seeks us; we do not seek it. It not only seeks us, it possesses us, and runs in our blood like the new life which comes from fresh air on top of a mountain. With that true sentiment we can feel a desire to know better things and to live them. We can feel a hearty love for others; and a love that is, in its essence, the strongest of all human loves. We can give and receive a healthy sympathy which we could never have known otherwise. We can enjoy talking about ourselves and about “being good,” because every word we say will be spontaneous and direct, with more thought of law than of self. This true sentiment seeks and finds us as we recognize the sham and shake it off, and as we refuse to dwell upon our actions and thoughts in the past or to look back at all except when it is a necessity to gain a better result.

We are like Orpheus, and true sentiment is our Eurydice with her touch on our shoulder; the spirits that follow are the sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know sentimentality only as a name.

XIV.

PROBLEMS.

THERE are very few persons who have not I had the experience of giving up a problem in mathematics late in the evening, and waking in the morning with the solution clear in their minds. That has been the experience of many, too, in real-life problems. If it were more common, a great amount of nervous strain might be saved.

There are big problems and little, real and imaginary; and some that are merely tired nerves. In problems, the useless nervous element often plays a large part. If the “problems” were dropped out of mind with sufferers from nervous prostration, their progress towards renewed health might be just twice as rapid. If they were met normally, many nervous men and women might be entirely saved from even a bowing acquaintance with nervous prostration. It is not a difficult matter, that of meeting a problem normally,–simply let it solve itself. In nine cases out of ten, if we leave it alone and live as if it were not, it will solve itself. It is at first a matter of continual surprise to see how surely this self-solution is the result of a wholesome ignoring both of little problems and big ones.

In the tenth case, where the problem must be faced at once, to face it and decide to the best of our ability is, of course, the only thing to do. But having decided, be sure that it ceases to be a problem. If we have made a mistake, it is simply a circumstance to guide us for similar problems to come.

All this is obvious; we know it, and have probably said it to ourselves dozens of times. If we are sufferers from nervous problems, we may have said it dozens upon dozens of times. The trouble is that we have said it and not acted upon it. When a problem will persist in worrying us, in pulling and dragging upon our nerves, an invitation to continue the worrying until it has worked itself out is a great help towards its solution or disappearance.

I remember once hearing a bright woman say that when there was anything difficult to decide in her life she stepped aside and let the opposing elements fight it out within her. Presumably she herself threw in a little help on one side or the other which really decided the battle. But the help was given from a clear standpoint, not from a brain entirely befogged in the thick of the fight.

Whatever form problems may take, however important they may seem, when they attack tired nerves they must be let alone. A good way is to go out into the open air and so identify one’s self with Nature that one is drawn away in spite of one’s self. A big wind will sometimes blow a brain clear of nervous problems in a very little while if we let it have its will. Another way out is to interest one’s self in some game or other amusement, or to get a healthy interest in other people’s affairs, and help where we can.

Each individual can find his own favorite escape. Of course we should never shirk a problem that must be decided, but let us always wait a reasonable time for it to decide itself first. The solving that is done for us is invariably better and clearer than any we could do for ourselves.

It will be curious, too, to see how many apparently serious problems, relieved of the importance given them by a strained nervous system, are recognized to be nothing at all. They fairly dissolve themselves and disappear.

XV.

SUMMARY.

THE line has not been clearly drawn, either in general or by individuals, between true civilization and the various perversions of the civilizing process. This is mainly because we do not fairly face the fact that the process of civilization is entirely according to Nature, and that the perversions which purport to be a direct outcome of civilization are, in point of fact, contradictions or artificialities which are simply a going-over into barbarism, just as too far east is west.

If you suggest “Nature” in habits and customs to most men nowadays, they at once interpret you to mean “beastly,” although they would never use the word.

It is natural to a beast to be beastly: he could not be anything else; and the true order of his life as a beast is to be respected. It is natural to a man to govern himself, as he possesses the power of distinguishing and choosing, With all the senses and passions much keener, and in their possibilities many degrees finer, than the beasts, he has this governing power, which makes his whole nervous system his servant just in so far as through this servant he loyally obeys his own natural laws. A man in building a bridge could never complain when he recognized that it was his obedience to the laws of mechanics which enabled him to build the bridge, and that he never could have arbitrarily arranged laws that would make the bridge stand. In the same way, one who has come to even a slight recognition of the laws that enable him to be naturally civilized and not barbarously so, steadily gains, not only a realization of the absolute futility of resisting the laws, but a growing respect and affection for them.

It is this sham civilization, this selfish refinement of barbarous propensities, this clashing of nervous systems instead of the clashing of weapons, which has been largely, if not entirely, the cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the so-called civilized world. It is not confined to nervous prostration; if there is a defective spot organically, an inherited tendency to weakness, the nervous irritation is almost certain to concentrate upon it instead of developing into a general nervous break-down.

With regard to a cure for all this, no superficial remedy, such as resting and feeding, is going to prove of lasting benefit; any more than a healing salve will suffice to do away with a blood disease which manifests itself by sores on the surface of the skin. No physician would for a moment inveigle himself into the belief that the use of external means alone would cure a skin disease that was caused by some internal disorder. Such skin irritation may be easily cured by the right remedy, whereas an external salve would only be a means of repression, and would result in much greater trouble subsequently.

Imagine a man superficially cured of an illness, and then exposed while yet barely convalescent to influences which produce a relapse. That is what is done in many cases when a patient is rested, and fattened like a prize pig, and then sent home into all the old conditions, with nothing to help him to elude them but a well-fed, well-rested body. That, undeniably, means a great deal for a short period; but the old conditions discover the scars of old wounds, and the process of reopening is merely a matter of time. From all sides complaints are heard of the disastrous results of civilization; while with even a slight recognition of the fact that the trouble was caused by the rudiments of barbarism, and that the higher civilization is the life which is most truly natural, remedies for our nervous disorders would be more easily found.

It is the perversions of the natural process of civilization that do the harm; just as with so-called domesticated flowers there arise coarse abnormal growths, and even diseases, which the wholesome, delicate organism of a wild flower makes impossible.

The trouble is that we do not know our own best powers at all; the way is stopped so effectually by this persistent nervous irritation. With all its superficiality, it is enough to impede the way to the clear, nervous strength which is certainly our inheritance.

After all, what has been said in the foregoing chapters is simply illustrative of a prevalent mental skin-disorder.

If the whole world were suffering from a physical cutaneous irritation, the minds of individuals would be so concentrated on their sensations that no one could know of various wonderful powers in his own body which are now taken as a matter of course. There would be self-consciousness in every physical action, because it must come through, and in spite of, external irritation. Just in so far as each individual one of us found and used the right remedy for our skin-trouble should we be free to discover physical powers that were unknown to our fellow-sufferers, and free to help them to a similar remedy when they were willing to be helped.

This mental skin-disorder is far more irritating and more destructive, and not only leads to, but actually is, in all its forms, a sort of self-consciousness through which we work with real difficulty.

To discover its shallowness and the simplicity of its cure is a boon we can hardly realize until, by steady application, we have found the relief. The discovery and cure do not lead to a millennium any more than the cure of any skin disease guarantees permanent health. For deeper personal troubles there are other remedies. Each will recognize and find his own; but freedom, through and through, can never be found, or even looked for clearly, while the irritation from the skin disease is withdrawing our attention.

“But, friends,Truth is within ourselves: it takes no riseFrom outward things; whatever you may believe,There is an inmost centre in us allWhere truth abides in fulness; and around,Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,This perfect clear perception which is truth.A baffling and perverting carnal meshBlinds it, and makes all error; and TO KNOWRather consists in opening out a wayWhence the imprisoned splendor may escape,Than in effecting entry for a lightSupposed to be without.”

Browning’s “baffling and perverting carnal mesh” might be truly interpreted as a nervous tangle which is nothing at all except as we make it with our own perverted sight.

To help us to move a little distance from the phantom tangle, that it may disappear before our eyes, has been the aim of this book. So by curing our mental skin-disease as a matter of course, and then forgetting that it ever existed, we may come to real life. This no one can find for another, but each has within himself the way.

THE END.

How to Succeed, or Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune

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How to Succeed, or Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune

HOW TO SUCCEED

or

Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune

by Orison Swett Marden

CHAPTER I.

FIRST, BE A MAN.

The great need at this hour is manly men. We want nogoody-goody piety; we have too much of it. We want men who willdo right, though the heavens fall, who believe in God, and whowill confess Him.–REV. W. J. DAWSON.

All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We wanta man! Don’t look so far for this man. You have him at hand.This man–it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!… How toconstitute one’s self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows nothow to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.–ALEXANDER DUMAS.

“I thank God I am a Baptist,” said a little, short Doctor of Divinity, as he mounted a step at a convention. “Louder! louder!” shouted a man in the audience; “we can’t hear.” “Get up higher,” said another. “I can’t,” replied the doctor, “to be a Baptist is as high as one can get.”

But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a _man_.

Rousseau says: “According to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Let him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another, as she pleases, he will be always found in his place.”

“First of all,” replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what he meant to be, “I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing.”

“Hear me, O men,” cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, “I called for men, not pigmies.”

One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.

Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being industrious.

“Nephew,” said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slave trader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with Alexander Pope, “you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world.” “I don’t know how great men you may be,” said the Guinea man, as he looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, “but I don’t like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.”

A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: “I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.”

“The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage,” wrote Voltaire to Helvetius; “these are what we require to be happy.”

Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent, industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a domestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an engineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It is almost impossible to find a really _competent_ person in any department, and oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position fairly well filled.

It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousands of young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. In fact, they murder the English language. They can copy, “parrot like,” and that is about all.

The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It is next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling good material and wasting valuable time.

In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness, but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral breadth.

The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in his dexterity.

“The aim of every man,” said Humboldt, “should be to secure the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.”

Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweep of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.

What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not look upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious, impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can live with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and experience their sensations.

The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling: “Wanted–A Man.”

Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere walking bundle of precedents.

Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one would suspect how he gets his living.

Nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing, crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions. Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business man to a mere money-making career.

Think of a man, the grandest of God’s creations, spending his life-time standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging, deciding.

He stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece of mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he tends.

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say “No,” though all the world say “Yes.”

Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze his other faculties.

Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.

As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she fail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth away from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength, compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before us through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one object in view–the development of the man.

In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the central figure of the created universe–Man. Nature writes this thought upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from every flower; it twinkles in every star.

Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,And let in manhood–let in happiness;Admit the boundless theatre of thoughtFrom nothing up to God … which makes a man!–YOUNG.

CHAPTER II.

SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY.

“The blowing winds are but our servantsWhen we hoist a sail.”

You must come to know that each admirable genius is but asuccessful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all yourown.–EMERSON.

Who waits until the wind shall silent keep,Who never finds the ready hour to sow,Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.–HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

The secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for hisopportunity_ when it comes.–DISRAELI.

Do the best you can where you are; and, when that isaccomplished, God will open a door for you, and a voice willcall, “Come up hither into a higher sphere.”–BEECHER.

Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at adistance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.–CARLYLE.

“When I was a boy,” said General Grant, “my mother one morning found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a neighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letter read from the son of a neighbor, who was then at West Point, stating that he had failed in examination and was coming home. I got the butter, took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of the congressman for our district. ‘Mr. Hamer,’ I said, ‘will you appoint me to West Point?’ ‘No, —- is there, and has three years to serve.’ ‘But suppose he should fail, will you send me?’ Mr. Hamer laughed. ‘If he don’t go through, no use for you to try, Uly.’ ‘Promise me you will give me the chance, Mr. Hamer, anyhow.’ Mr. Hamer promised. The next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughing at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. Now,” said Grant, “it was my mother’s being without butter that made me general and president.” But he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and the promptness to seize it, that urged him upward.

“There is nobody,” says a Roman Cardinal, “whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window.” Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing.

The utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstances will, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, and combine to thwart them at others. Thus much we freely admit; but there is no fatality in these combinations, neither any such thing as “luck” or “chance,” as commonly understood. They come and go like all other opportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon and made the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if they are neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate.

“Charley,” says Moses H. Grinnell to a clerk born in New York City, “take my overcoat tip to my house on Fifth Avenue.” Mr. Charley takes the coat, mutters something about “I’m not an errand boy. I came here to learn business,” and moves reluctantly. Mr. Grinnell sees it, and at the same time one of his New England clerks says, “I’ll take it up.” “That is right, do so,” says Mr. G., and to himself he says, “that boy is smart, he will work,” and he gives him plenty to do. He gets promoted, gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and is soon known as a successful man.

The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life’s picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspire him, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or ands about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from success.

_Zion’s Herald_ says that Isaac Rich, who gave one million and three quarters to found Boston University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, began business thus: at eighteen he went from Cape Cod to Boston with three or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for something to do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much. Soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired a wheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six iron forks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. He was at the oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o’clock in the morning, wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and began business. He sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at a good profit. In that same market he continued to deal in oysters and fish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by founding a college. His success was won by industry and honesty.

“Give me a chance,” says Haliburton’s Stupid, “and I will show you.” But most likely he has had his chance already and neglected it.

“Well, boys,” said Mr. A., a New York merchant, to his four clerks one winter morning in 1815, “this is good news. Peace has been declared. Now _we_ must be up and doing. We shall have our hands full, but we can do as much as anybody.”

He was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during the war, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick. He knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season, and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open, would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. His decision therefore was instantly taken.

“Reuben,” he continued, addressing one of his clerks, “go and collect as many laborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you find Mr.—-, the rigger, and Mr.—-, the sailmaker, and tell them I want them immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and to-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you can, and hire them to work for me.” And Mr. A. himself sallied forth to provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o’clock that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river, clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in large squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. The roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers’ mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife, sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before night the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days, their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and everything ready for them to go to sea.

Thus Mr. A. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports. Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors spoke depreciatingly of his “good luck.” But, as the writer from whom we get the story says, Mr. A. was equal to his opportunity, and this was the secret of his good fortune.

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward, she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money to purchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamond bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred dollars, but did not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets, in power to do good.

In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young man who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving at Sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they were all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mines had been taken up by others and sold to the government.

The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-two dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines where he thought he could get rich.

Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and try some more remunerative business.

He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the oil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the man who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.

A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. “I should think it would be a good thing,” said the friend, “to begin by getting up an easier and cheaper chair.”

“I will do it,” he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. He found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture of rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what he has done with what was before thrown away. While this man was dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune awaiting only his ingenuity and industry.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. The safest business is always connected with men’s prime necessities. They must have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. They want comforts, facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education, culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune.

But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything merely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a human want, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing, don’t touch it.

A selfish vocation never pays. If it belittles the manhood, blights the affections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivels the soul, don’t touch it. Choose that occupation, if possible, which will be the most helpful to the largest number.

It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on which they made their fortune.

One of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life is the lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. A keen, cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty. An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could ill afford to get another pair, said to himself, “I will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather.” He succeeded in doing so and now he is a very rich man.

An observing barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented “clippers” and became very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out the clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to wash before. He invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. A man who was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, “There must be some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;” he invented gold filling for teeth.

The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his famous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made in an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed.

Opportunities? They crowd around us. Forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the God-given powers within him.

There is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye to discover it.

First find out what the people need and then supply that want. An invention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent office at Washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism; not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world, and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled for years mid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. These men did not study the wants of humanity. A. T. Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would not purchase. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which people did not want.

The first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needs to do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him, according to the Boston _Herald_. Whatever he may have been at home, it counts for nothing until he has done something that makes known the quality of the stuff that is in him. If he shirks work, however humble it may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. But the youth who comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid of doing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in finding remunerative employment. The people who seem so indifferent to employing young people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers, but they look for qualities of character and service in actual work before they manifest confidence or give recognition. It is the youth who is deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has been tested his promotion is only a question of time. It is the same with young women. There are seemingly no places for them where they can earn a decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there is room enough for them, and progress is rapid. What the city people desire most is to find those who have ability to take important places, and the question of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once into the question of what the young persons have brought with them from home. It is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhood which are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl is determined by the amount of energetic character that has been developed in the early years at home. Take up the experience of every man or woman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and it has been the sterling qualities of the home training that have constituted the success of later years.

Don’t think you have no chance in life because you have no capital to begin with. Most of the rich men of to-day began poor. The chances are you would be ruined if you had capital. You can only use to advantage what has become a part of yourself by your earning it. It is estimated that not one rich man’s son in ten thousand dies rich. God has given every man a capital to start with; we are born rich. He is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only God could equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism of his body and mind. It is individual effort that has accomplished everything worth accomplishing in this world. Money to start with is only a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, would only make your fall all the more certain.

CHAPTER III.

HOW DID HE BEGIN?

There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day,using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began lifeas poor boys.–SETH LOW.

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soulwithin us, but it is the north wind that lashes men intoVikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls themto lotus dreams.–OUIDA.

‘Tis a common proof,That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder–SHAKESPEARE.

“Fifty years ago,” said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturer and philanthropist of Pawtucket, R. I., “I persuaded my father to let me leave my home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and, dressed in our Sunday clothes, father and I started for Worcester. Our object was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in the Worcester County _Gazette_ as follows:

BOY WANTED.

WANTED IMMEDIATELY.–At the _Gazette_ Office, a well disposedboy, able to do heavy rolling. Worcester, May 7.

“The financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year, thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in the employer’s family. These conditions were accepted, and I began work the next day. The _Gazette_ was an ordinary four-page sheet. I soon learned what ‘heavy rolling’ meant for the paper was printed on a ‘Washington’ hand-press, the edition of about 2000 copies requiring two laborious intervals of about ten hours each, every week. The printing of the outside was generally done Friday and kept me very busy all day. The inside went to press about three or four o’clock Tuesday afternoon, and it was after three o’clock on Wednesday morning before I could go to bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had the laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of stairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody’s servant. I was abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office, build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on the editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer’s devil; but when I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run the press, I got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task, with all its decorations. That was my first success, and from that day to this I have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, and never used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was in prospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of my abilities and character. If some young men are easily discouraged, I hope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. It is a long, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must lay your course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage of all favoring circumstances.”

“Don’t go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace.” Horace Greeley looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy they were, and replied: “You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help him all I can.” He had spent but six dollars for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterrett of the Erie _Gazette_ for substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo, rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the Hudson in a barge, and reached New York, just as the sun was rising, August 18, 1831.

For days Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of buildings and asking if they wanted “a hand;” but “no” was the invariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was an escaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that printers were wanted at “West’s Printing-office.” He was at the door at five o’clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven. The latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for the Polyglot Testament on which help was needed, but said: “Fix up a case for him and we’ll see if he _can_ do anything.” When the proprietor came in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when his first day’s work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the largest and most correct day’s work that had then been done. In ten years Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the _New Yorker_, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeley started _The Log Cabin_, which reached the then fabulous circulation of ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money. His next venture was the New York _Tribune_, price one cent. To start it he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the first number. It was difficult to give them all away. He began with six hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six weeks. The demand for the _Tribune_ grew faster than new machinery could be obtained to print it. It was a paper whose editor always tried to be _right_.

At the World’s Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it well and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as it could be done. Young Gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying, paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece, frequently taking his pay in board. Thus he laid the foundation for the business career in which he became so rich.

Fred. Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his master’s debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he would become President of the United States. He saw his mother but two or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn. He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled from slavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New York and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was made agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts. While traveling from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. He was sent to Europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several Englishmen, who gave him $750, with which he purchased his freedom. He edited a paper in Rochester, N. Y., and afterward conducted the _New Era_ in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District of Columbia. He became the first colored man in the United States, the peer of any man in the country, and died honored by all in 1895.

“What has been done can be done again,” said the boy with no chance who became Lord Beaconsfield, England’s great prime minister. “I am not a slave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome greater obstacles.” Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemed against him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became prime minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, who was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lower classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the House of Commons, he simply said, “The time will come when you shall hear me.” The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will, swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.

“I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day,” said William Cobbett. “The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchase candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that I could get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that I could call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the _farthing_ I had to give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was _twopence a week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on a Friday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when I pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.

“If I, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome this task,” he added, “is there, can there be in the world, a youth to find any excuse for its non-performance?”

“I have talked with great men,” Lincoln told his fellow-clerk and friend, Greene, according to _McClure’s Magazine_, “and I do not see how they differ from others.”

He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to debating clubs. “Practicing polemics,” was what he called the exercise.

He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and asked his advice.

“If you are going before the public,” Mr. Graham told him, “you ought to do it.”

But where could he get a grammar? There was but one in the neighborhood, Mr. Graham said, and that was six miles away.

Without waiting for more information the young man rose from the breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rare copy of Kirkham’s Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries. From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friend Greene to “hold the book” while he recited, and when puzzled by a point he would consult Mr. Graham.

Lincoln’s eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered.

“Well,” Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, “if that’s what they call science, I think I’ll go at another.”

He had made another discovery–that he could conquer subjects.

The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore and hungry, called at a tavern in Concord, N. H., and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called there again, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionaire bankers of the world. Bishop Fowler says: “It is one of the greatest encouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industry reach the highest stations.”

Greeley’s father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the near side, said: “Ah! that boy will never get along in the world. He’ll never know enough to come in when it rains.”

He was too poor to wear stockings. But Horace persevered, and became one of the greatest editors of his century.

Handel’s father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument in the house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it in the attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal without detection, until he surprised the great players and composers of Europe by his wonderful knowledge of music. He was very practical in his work, and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the demand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest work, “The Messiah,” was composed in Dublin for the benefit of poor debtors who were imprisoned there. The influence of this masterpiece was tremendous. It was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformed the wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story of redemption, in sound.

A. T. Stewart began life as a teacher in New York at $300 a year. He soon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved a success almost without precedent. Honesty, one price, cash on delivery, and business on business principles were his invariable rules. Absolute regularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years he made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the law forbids a merchant to occupy that position. He offered to resign, or to give the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as long as he should remain in office. President Grant declined to accept such an offer.

Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes. “I supplicate you,” he writes to Moestlin, “if there is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans.” He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served anyone who would pay him.

Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, without either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown, or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia, for $66,000? His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for $350,000. Think of Michael Angelo working for six florins a month, and eighteen years on St. Peter’s for nothing!

Dr. Johnson was so afflicted with king’s-evil that he lost the use of one eye. The youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates, as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near the street. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to send him to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had to leave. He returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent. He conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitude of a true hero.

Ichabod Washburn, a poor boy born near Plymouth Rock, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Worcester, Mass., and was so bashful that he scarcely dared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he would make the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means to manufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no good wire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly of making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn, however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became the standard everywhere. At one time he made 250,000 yards of iron wire daily, consuming twelve tons of metal, and requiring the services of seven hundred men. He amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave away a large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitable institutions.

John Jacob Astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. His capital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions,–to be honest, to be industrious and not to gamble. Two years later he reached New York, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board. Soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on his own account. By giving personal attention to every purchase and sale, roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic to sell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leading fur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortune expanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; at sixty his millions owned him. He invested in land, becoming in time the richest owner of real estate in America. Generous to his family, he seldom gave much for charity. He once subscribed fifty dollars for some benevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, “We did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars.” “Ah!” chuckled the rich furrier, “William has a rich father. Mine was poor.”

Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went to enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: “Monday, June 18, headache, 40 pages Cuvier’s ‘Theory of the Earth,’ 64 pages of French, 11 hours’ forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10 lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours’ forging. Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours’ forging.” He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became eminent as the “Learned Blacksmith,” and for his noble work in the service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boy with no chance acquired great learning: “It is enough to make one who has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame.”

“I was born in poverty,” said Vice-President Henry Wilson. “Want sat by my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month’s schooling each year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In the first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylight and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six dollars for the month’s work! Each of these dollars looked as large to me as the moon looks to-night.”

“Many a farmer’s son,” says Thurlow Weed, “has found the best opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while tending ‘sap-bush.’ Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we would always lay in a good stock of ‘fat-pine’ by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all subsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able to borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet.”

“That fellow will beat us all some day,” said a merchant, speaking of John Wanamaker and his close attention to his work. What a prediction to make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had _the indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him_, and you could not keep him down. General Grant said to George W. Childs, “Mr. Wanamaker could command an army.” His great energy, method, industry, economy, and high moral principle, attracted President Harrison, who appointed him Postmaster-General.

Jacques Aristide Boucicault began his business life as an employé in a dry goods house in a small provincial town in France. After a few years he went to Paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in 1853 he became a partner and later the sole proprietor of the Bon Marché, then only a small shop, which became under his direction the most unique establishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combined philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one who worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of employment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished free tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employés; a provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage portion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years of service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden death in 1877, his only son carried forward his father’s projects until he, too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued and extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. So well did this family lay the foundations of a building covering 108,000 square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of a business employing 3600 persons with sales amounting to nearly $20,000,000 annually, that every department is still conducted with all its former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders. They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit, their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is still sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded.

When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all his property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher, newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer’s devil, he started the New York _Herald_. In all his literary work up to this time he had tried to imitate Franklin’s style; and, as is the fate of all imitators, he utterly failed.

He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He first showed the material he was made of in the “Salutatory,” of the _Herald_, viz., “Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life. We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from President down to constable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered.”

Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats a druggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, the artist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descartes were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey was a butcher’s son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy, who was an apprentice to an apothecary.

Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant, Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money scrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of a brewer.

John Wanamaker’s first salary was $1.25 per week. A. T. Stewart began his business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon in a California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York _World_, once acted as stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, Cyrus Field was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errand boy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in a Pittsburg telegraph office at $3 a week. C. P. Huntington sold butter and eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. Whitelaw Reid was once a correspondent of a newspaper in Cincinnati at $5 per week. Adam Forepaugh was once a butcher in Philadelphia.

Sarah Bernhardt was a dressmaker’s apprentice. Adelaide Neilson began life as a child’s nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utility actress in the provinces. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poor people.

Mr. W. O. Stoddard, in his “Men of Business,” tells a characteristic story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make from the timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had just then been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he had saved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousand cords of wood to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a net profit of $2600. He used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, as Mr. Stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar.

It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, that reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But the printer’s boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the _third time_ the “_Cocker’s Arithmetic_,” _which had baffled him at school_, and _ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure_. He then mastered a work upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thus tasted “the inexhaustible charm of mathematics.” He pursued a similar course, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, at length, he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boy of sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his brother’s paper were thought to have been written by some of the most learned men in the colony.

Henry Clay, the “mill-boy of the slashes,” was one of seven children of a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where he was drilled only in the “three R’s.” But he used every spare moment to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among self-made men.

The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles, disadvantages and discouragements.

It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler’s bench nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love to benighted India;–these are the cases and examples of true success.

CHAPTER IV.

OUT OF PLACE.

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to beborn with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employmentand happiness.–EMERSON.

The art of putting the right man in the right place is perhapsthe first in the science of government, but the art of findinga satisfactory position for the discontented is the mostdifficult.–TALLEYRAND.

It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all themisfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in orderto be equally distributed among the whole species, those whonow think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the sharethey are already possessed of, before that which would fall tothem by such a division.–ADDISON.

I was born to other things.–TENNYSON.

How many a rustic Milton has passed by,Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,In unremitting drudgery and care!How many a vulgar Cato has compelledHis energies, no longer tameless then,To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.–SHELLEY.

“But I’m good for something,” pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. “You are good for nothing as a salesman,” said his employer. “I am sure I can be useful,” said the youth. “How? Tell me how.” “I don’t know, sir, I don’t know.” “Nor do I,” said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. “Only don’t put me away, sir, don’t put me away. Try me at something besides selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell.” “I know that, too,” said the principal; “that is what is wrong.” “But I can make myself useful somehow,” persisted the young man; “I know I can.” He was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but an eminent accountant.

“Out of an art,” says Bulwer, “a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile–at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor.”

A man out of place is like a fish out of water. Its fins mean nothing, they are only a hindrance. The fish can do nothing but flounder out of its element. But as soon as the fins feel the water, they mean something. Fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, not because, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it, but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion.

A man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of his place. If he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth, not a manly growth. Nature abhors the slightest perversion of natural aptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soul into this world.

A man out of place is not half a man. He feels unmanned, unsexed. He cannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected.

You can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which have natural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will only make themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions to win. How many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculous by trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laugh at them. The effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them by unnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same efforts along the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings in their line.

“Jonathan,” said Mr. Chace, when his son told of having nearly fitted himself for college, “thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday morning.” It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop to work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United States Senator from Rhode Island.

Galileo was sent to the university at Pisa at seventeen, with the strict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring study of philosophy or literature. But when he was eighteen he discovered the great principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in the cathedral.

John Adams’ father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son the art, gave him some “uppers” to cut out by a pattern which had a three-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. The future statesman followed the pattern, hole and all.

There is a tradition that Tennyson’s first poems were published at the instigation of his father’s coachman. His grandfather gave the lad ten shillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. As he handed it to him, he said; “There, that’s the first money you ever earned by your poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last.”

Murillo’s mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had already laid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. His mother was shocked on returning from church one day to find that the child had taken down the sacred family picture, “Jesus and the Lamb,” and had painted his own hat on the Saviour’s head, and had changed the lamb into a dog.

The poor boy’s home was broken up, and he started out on foot and alone to seek his fortune. All he had was courage and determination to make something of himself. He not only became a famous artist, but a man of great character.

“Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned,” says Thackeray, “have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for dunces,–those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard grew.”

“In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon the town of Sidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up: but I need not tell you the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.”

How many Dame Partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk of life!

The young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element she has never before seen. Then,

“With archéd neckBetween her white wings mantling proudly, rowsHer state with oary feet.”

What a wretched failure was that of Haydon the painter. He thought he failed through the world’s ingratitude or injustice, but his failure was due wholly to his being out of place. His bitter disappointments at his half successes were really pitiable because to him they were more than failures. He had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through life under the delusion that he was an artist.

“If it is God’s will to take any of my children by death, I hope it may be Isaac,” said the father of Dr. Isaac Barrow. “Why do you tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?” asked John Wesley’s father. “Because,” replied his mother, “if I had told him but nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and remember.”

A man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost the buoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in his place as his breath. He is industrious, but he works mechanically and without heart. It is to support himself and family, _not because he cannot help it_. Dinner time does not come two hours before he realizes it; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinking of his salary.

If a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic, fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All his faculties give their consent to his work; say “yes” to his occupation. He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker’s bench; no stifling of exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman’s study, composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep.

To be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. We can’t cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents of your life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anything else. Will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painter any more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a race horse. When the powers are not used along the line of their strength they become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. Self-respect, enthusiasm and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success is impossible.

Scott was called the great blockhead while in Edinburgh College. Grant’s mother called the future General and President, “Useless Grant,” because he was so unhandy and dull.

Erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everything before him at the bar. Had he remained in the navy he would probably never have been heard from. When elected to Parliament, his lofty spirit was chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of Pitt, whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. But he was again out of his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tongue faltered from a consciousness of being out of his place.

Gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer, before he got into a railroad office where he “struck his gait.”

When extracts from James Russell Lowell’s poem at Harvard were shown his father at Rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, “James promised me when I left home, that he would give up poetry and stick to books. I had hoped that he had become less flighty.” The world is full of people at war with their positions.

Man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his own individuality, and not when he is trying to be somebody else. All attempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in all creation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only to ruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated. There is no strength off the lines of our own individuality.

Anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of a great man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who is himself.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT SHALL I DO?

No man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents,nor a good one who mistook them.–SWIFT.

Blessed is he who has found his work,–let him ask no otherblessing.–CARLYLE.

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your lineof talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you willsucceed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand timesworse than nothing. –SYDNEY SMITH.

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom,and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.–BEECHER.

I am glad to thinkI am not bound to make the world go round;But only to discover and to do,With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.–JEAN INGELOW.

“Do that which is assigned you,” says Emerson, “and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all these.”

“I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must,” said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the man who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other of the overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain call–that is, his love for it, and his fidelity to it–are the imperious factors of his career. If a man enters a profession simply because his grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a day laborer. In the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; in the other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from its place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express.

Lowell said: “It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not, that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in the rough.”

“The age has no aversion to preaching as such,” said Phillips Brooks, “it may not listen to your preaching.” But though it may not listen to your preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see stars through your telescope. It has a use for every person, and it is his business to find out what that use is.

The following advertisement appeared several times in a paper without bringing a letter:

“WANTED.–Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent totake charge of any department in a printing and publishinghouse. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies.Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship,geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had someexperience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form asmall class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them inthe higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would beinvaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass ortenor singer in a choir.”

At length there appeared this addition to the notice:

“P.S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less thanthe usual rates.”

This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no more.

Don’t wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary.

“He that hath a trade,” says Franklin, “hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.”

_Follow your bent._ You cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. Beware of “a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection.” Nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.

Your talent is your _call_. Your legitimate destiny speaks in your character.

If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every faculty of your being.

If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of your experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenial vocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge, which is your true capital.

There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own peculiar part in life. A very few–the geniuses, we call them–have this marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life.

A man’s business does more to make him than anything else. It hardens his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man’s shoes, do a man’s work, bear a man’s part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No man feels himself a man who is not doing a man’s business. A man without employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain must know how to do a man’s work, think a man’s thoughts, mark out a man’s path, and bear a man’s weight of character and duty before they constitute a man.

Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people look upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living. What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great school of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; that which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry, harmony and beauty, all the God-given faculties within us! How we shrink from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the unfolding of life’s great possibilities into usefulness and power, as the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower.

“Girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack of purpose in life,” says Rena L. Miner. “You show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; your alertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problems have become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothers thus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it be the graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma, for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, ‘dead to further activity,’ or, ‘sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her.’

“Crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, make up the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence. If forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind a counter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while the young men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, to professorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law, physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties and obstacles like nebulæ in their wake.–You girls, satisfied with mediocrity, have an eye mainly for the ‘main chance’–marriage. If you marry wealthy,–which is marrying well according to the modern popular idea,–you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society, leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you, and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you are true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew, scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,–a purpose sufficiently potent to convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creative force which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their central sun. Choose some one course or calling, and master it in all its details, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crowns you, it can but add new glory to your labor.”

Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of “girls who are mother’s right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,–girls who have a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won’t wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don’t wear a high hat to the theatre, or lacerate their feet with high heels and endanger their health with corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good girls,–girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl of ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts,–girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other people’s ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell of summer showers.”

CHAPTER VI.

WILL YOU PAY THE PRICE?

The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.–EMERSON.

All desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price.–JUVENAL.

There is no royal path which leads to geometry.–EUCLID.

There is no road to success but through a clear, strongpurpose. A purpose underlies character, culture, position,attainment of whatever sort.–T. T. MUNGER.

Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is notaction; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whoselaw of improvement is not energy.–E. B. HALL.

“We have but what we make, and every goodIs locked by nature in a granite hand,Sheer labor must unclench.”

“Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!” exclaimed an enthusiastic young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. “Dream on canvas!” growled the master, “it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you must learn to put on canvas that make your dream.”

“There is but one method of attaining excellence,” said Sydney Smith, “and that is hard labor.”

“If only Milton’s imagination could have conceived his visions,” says Waters, “his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them. If only Newton’s mind could reach out to the secrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliest toil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night’s dreams, but, like coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished like a night’s phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence.”

Salvini contributes the following to the _Century_ as to his habits of study before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: “I imposed upon myself a new method of study. While I was busying myself with the part of Saul, I read and reread the Bible, so as to become impregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color. When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the Venetian Republic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied the passions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor did I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better to master that sublime character. I did not concern myself about a superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of greater or less accentuation of certain phrases with a view to win passing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me–an infinite sea on which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling in with reefs.”

His method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinion in quotation-marks. He speaks of characters with which, his name is not always associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, I think, in the main.

Many years ago a little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a class beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of previous instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but all his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. The boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had studied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to mastering the elementary principles of these books. This boy was soon at the head of his class and the pride of Harrow. The statue of that boy, Sir William Jones, stands to-day in St. Paul’s Cathedral; for he lived to be the greatest Oriental scholar of Europe.

“What is the secret of success in business?” asked a friend of Cornelius Vanderbilt. “Secret! there is no secret about it,” replied the commodore; “all you have to do is to attend to your business and go ahead.” If you would adopt Vanderbilt’s method, know your business, attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from business perils.

“Work or starve,” is nature’s motto,–and it is written on the stars and the sod alike,–starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. It is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. “Nothing for nothing,” is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, we shall be nerveless and powerless by necessity.

The mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of their characters and success. “Work! work! work!” was the motto of Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark upon the world. Voltaire’s motto was “Toujours au travail” (always at work). Scott’s maxim was “Never be doing nothing.” Michael Angelo was a wonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his work as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom that he might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. His favorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it, bearing this inscription: “Ancora imparo” (still I’m learning). Even after he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the Belvidere, to examine the statues with his hands. Cobden used to say, “I’m working like a horse without a moment to spare.” It was said that Handel, the musician, did the work of a dozen men. Nothing ever daunted him. He feared neither ridicule nor defeat. Lord Palmerston worked like a slave, even in his old age. Being asked when he considered a man in his prime, he replied, “Seventy-nine,” that being his own age. Humboldt was one of the world’s great workers. In summer he arose at four in the morning for thirty years. He used to say work was as much of a necessity as eating or sleeping. Sir Walter Scott was a phenomenal worker. He wrote the “Waverley Novels” at the rate of twelve volumes a year. He averaged a volume every two months during his whole working life. What an example is this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnest life! Edmund Burke was one of the most prodigious workers that ever lived.

George Stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coal while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associates thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to learn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve his mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the engine’s fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good, practical, common-sense education.

Garibaldi’s father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, because the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse’s father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the Mystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make a painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did not study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston in London, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his sphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heard Professor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when the thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest, until he flashed over the wire the first message, “What hath God wrought!” on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington: this was May 24, 1844.

William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world. Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He left his eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K., who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father, amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is now.

Mr. C. P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His father was a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it off for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust and nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a hardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in the construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr. Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. He always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any road in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men of all the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner, strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he never knew what it was to be tired.

Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N. Y. He finally associated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower of money of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any other millionaire. He can nearly always control ten millions or more at call. He has never speculated in stocks to any extent. Mr. Sage’s word is as good as any bond. He has no taste for ordinary diversions, except driving.

Philip D. Armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, was born on a farm near Watertown, N. J. He became fired with a desire to see the “Boundless West.” His mind seemed to run to hogs, and with a financial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune in transporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there were so few of them and so many to eat them. He could now purchase every hog in the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two.

Mrs. Hetty Green is probably the richest woman in the world. Her fortune has grown from the little industry of her father in New Bedford, Mass. She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman of great ability and courage. She once took with her five millions of dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her banker on Wall street.

The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work, self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. John D. Rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. He seems as unvarying in his method and system as the laws of the universe. Jay Gould did not use wine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. Mr. Huntington does not even drink coffee, while William Waldorf Astor merely takes a sip of wine for courtesy’s sake. Not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco, and not one of them is profane. Very rich men are almost always honest in their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. William Waldorf Astor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world, but John D. Rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. The whole wealth of Croesus was little more than the income of this modern Croesus for one year. Mr. Rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millions of capital stock in the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Company is one of the best managed corporations in the world.

Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed, weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic, landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarked a hundred and one careworn exiles.

To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. The contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the famous vessel that bore Cæsar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble freight compared with that of the Mayflower. Though landed by a treacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they sought neither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty and opportunity.

A lady once asked Turner the secret of his great success.

“I have no secret, madam, but hard work.”

“This is a secret that many never learn, and they don’t succeed because they fail to learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.”

See Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting, amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nor discouragement could induce him to swerve a hair’s breadth from his purpose. He could wait, even while a world scoffed.

“Mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity,” says Addison; “the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser.”

Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her great conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work, that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced by idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. Even Cicero, Rome’s great orator, said, “All artisans are engaged in a disgraceful occupation;” and Aristotle said, “The best regulated states will not permit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one who lives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life of virtue. Some were born to be slaves.” But, fortunately there came a mightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life and example forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it from disgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, and significance to labor.

Christ did not say, “Come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolent and ye lazy;” but “Come all ye that _labor_ and are _heavy laden_.”

Columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectual hero. He went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors to undertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spirit already discerned in the far-off seas. He first tried his own countrymen at Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal, and submitted his project to John II., who laid it before his council. It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the king endeavored to steal Columbus’s idea. A fleet was sent forth in the direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms and winds, it returned to Lisbon after four days’ voyaging.

Columbus returned to Genoa, and again renewed his propositions to the Republic, but without success. Nothing discouraged him. The finding of the New World was the irrevocable object of his life. He went to Spain, and landed at the town of Palos, in Andalusia. He went by chance to a convent of Franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little bread and water. The prior gratefully received the stranger, entertained him, and learned from him the story of his life. He encouraged him in his hopes, and furnished him with an admission to the Court of Spain, then at Cordova. King Ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming to a decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisest men at Salamanca. Columbus had to reply, not only to the scientific arguments laid before him, but to citations from the Bible. The Spanish clergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to the faith. The earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there was a new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended from Adam. _Columbus was considered a fool._

Still bent on his idea, he wrote to the King of England, then to the King of France, without effect. At last, in 1492, Columbus was introduced by Louis de Saint Angel to Queen Isabella of Spain. The friends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force and conviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him.

Lord Ellenborough was a great worker. He had a very hard time in getting a start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry until success came to him. When he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, he had this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might be tempted to relax his efforts: “Read or Starve.”

Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show you in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail, trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address, common sense, and other marketable qualities. The farmer respects his savings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all the solemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length of time he rose at six o’clock each morning to oversee his labors, that he patiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying and selling. To the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate that he was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, and his self-respect is fostered thereby.

The barrister’s brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge, of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period of hope-deferred brieflessness.

A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album. Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. “But it took you only five minutes,” objected the rich man. “Yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes.”

“I prepared that sermon,” said a young sprig of divinity, “in half an hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it.” “In that,” said an older minister, “your hearers are at one with you, for they also thought nothing of it.”

Virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then they have lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more.

Seven years Virgil is said to have expended in the composition of the Georgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of an ordinary newspaper. Tradition reports that he was in the habit of composing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day in polishing them. Campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line a week, he did very well indeed; but Moore thought that if a poet did his duty, he could get a line done every day.

What an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as raw recruits! Many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buy success. Their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or fired by the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming Astors or Girards, Stewarts or Wanamakers, Vanderbilts or Goulds, Lincolns or Garfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their own fortune in the magic metropolis. But what are you willing to pay for “success,” as you call it, young man? Do you realize what that word means in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray at thirty and die of old age at forty,–where the race of life has become so intense that the runners are treading on the heels of those before them; and “woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?” Do you know that only two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success, and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the rest will sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they have given up the struggle.

There are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves and achieve independence. They are like summer vines, which never grow even ligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger shrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in the grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. It will be found that the first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit of resolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, is mastered. Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggish energies in motion. Poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value as an incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable.

CHAPTER VII.

FOUNDATION STONES.

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation shouldbe made.–CICERO.

How great soever a genius may be, … certain it is that hewill never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the fullinfluence he is capable of, unless to his own experience headds that of other men and other ages.–BOLINGBROKE.

It is for want of the little that human means must add to thewonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by farthe greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race,perishes undeveloped and unknown.–EDWARD EVERETT.

If any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining adollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to hisway through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander aschance may dictate.–HORACE GREELEY.

What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend onwhat we already are; and what we are will be the result ofprevious years of self-discipline.–H. P. LIDDON.

Learn to labor and to wait.–LONGFELLOW.

“What avails all this sturdiness?” asked an oak tree which had grown solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled by winds. “Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored in rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far above singing birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; I am set as a mark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for no appetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered in the morning for some poor man’s table, than to be a hundred-year oak, good for nothing.”

While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. It died in sadness, saying as it fell, “Weary ages for nothing have I lived.”

The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk and root form the knees of a stately ship, bearing the country’s flag around the world. Other parts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountain storms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murky threat of scowling hurricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, or wrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, or fashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. Thus the tree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. It voyaged the world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It held upon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps of patriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. It swayed the limbs of age by the chimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old, unwearied tempests that once surged about its mountain life. All its early struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard and beautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental.

“Sir, you have been to college, I presume?” asked an illiterate but boastful exhorter of a clergyman. “Yes, sir,” was the reply. “I am thankful,” said the former, “that the Lord opened my mouth without any learning.” “A similar event,” retorted the clergyman, “happened in Balaam’s time.”

Why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies all subjects that appear to him useless? Would he not erase every thing which taxed his pleasure and freedom? Would he not obey the call of his blood, rather than the advice of his teacher? Ignorant men who have made money tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will come over the sea to him whether he knows where China is or not; what difference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not? Why waste time learning geometry or algebra? Who keeps accounts by these? Learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudge the time and money spent in education. They want cheap and rapid transit through college for their children. Veneer will answer every practical purpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine will do.

It is said that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biography who diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found 15,142 names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of successful men, and 5326, or more than one-third of them, were college-educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained a success worthy of mention, and but one in 10,000 of those not so educated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times the chances for success that others had. Medical records, it is said, show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the United States are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons. Less than four per cent. of the lawyers were college-bred, yet they furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one per cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of success that their fellow men of business had. In brief, the college-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success than those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six per cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman, thirty-three per cent.; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent.; the educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. You should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is possible for you to obtain.

Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden mysteries of a successful life.

“I do not remember,” said Beecher, “a book in all the depths of learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated.”

“You are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time,” said one of Vanderbilt’s young friends; “we are having our fun while we are young, for when will we if not now?” But Cornelius was either earning more money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at home asleep, recruiting for the next day’s labor and preparing for a large harvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When he entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was thirty-five or forty million dollars.

“The spruce young spark,” says Sizer, “who thinks chiefly of his mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and acquiring fortune.”

“When a man has done his work,” says Ruskin, “and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now–though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done there.”

“On to Berlin,” was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, to the astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two and rolled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two French armies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded the streets of captured Paris.

But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to see that it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and a lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were favorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men. And such were the German leaders,–William, strong, upright, warlike, “every inch a king;” Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of administrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics; and, above all, Von Moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies by telegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moves chessmen against a stupid opponent.

Said Captain Bingham: “You can have no idea of the wonderful machine that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with the different nations. And every officer’s place in the scheme is laid out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take such a train and go to such a place at a moment’s notice. When the Franco-Prussian War was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at midnight and told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who aroused him, ‘Go to pigeonhole No. —- in my safe and take a paper from it and telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.’ He then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the morning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the war, but Von Moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said, ‘General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren’t you afraid of the situation? I should think you would be busy.’ ‘Ah,’ replied Von Moltke, ‘all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, and everything that can be done now has been done.'”

“A rare man this Von Moltke!” exclaims Professor Wells; “one who made himself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modern world. Of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his own merit. He yielded to no temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, nor to the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for he constantly worked to the limit of human endurance. He was ready for every emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready by painstaking labor, before the opportunity came. His favorite motto was, ‘_Help yourself and others will help you_.’ Hundreds of his age in the Prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and diligence.

“The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six years at school to himself before he was ready for his task. Though born with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man when, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowa and drove her out of Germany. Four years later the silent, modest soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote France, and changed the map of Europe. Glory and the field-marshal’s baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon was beaten by such men as he. All Louis Napoleons have been, and always will be. Opportunity always finds out frauds. It does not make men, but shows the world what they have made of themselves.”

Sir Henry Havelock joined the army of India in his twenty-eighth year, and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himself fitted to command and skillful to plan. During those four and thirty years of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march to Lucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier.

Farragut,

“The viking of our western climeWho made his mast a throne,”

began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years old before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the great test of his life came, the reserve of half a century’s preparation made him master of the situation.

Alexander Hamilton said, “Men give me credit for genius. All the genius I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought.” The law of labor is equally binding on genius and mediocrity.

“Fill up the cask! fill up the cask!” said old Dr. Bellamy when asked by a young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. “Fill up the cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream. But if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all.”

“The merchant is in a dangerous position,” says Dr. W. W. Patton, “whose means are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavy deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. And he only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in the bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according to the necessities of the case.”

They say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the piles beneath the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac’s, to get a foundation, than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since been lodged in it.

Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground, unseen, and unappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. The rivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who tramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest waving above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure of a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day.

C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, the foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to the roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent echo clear up through to the finial. The body is in that respect like an old Stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music is outcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which its strings are strung. It is a very pleasant delusion that what we call the higher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centered kind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn all dependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but it is a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. Climb high as we like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it is probable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicate throb of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, be discovered to have its connections with the rather material affair that we know as the body.

Lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papers that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim’s Progress, Life of Washington and Life of Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, Æsop’s Fables; he read them over and over again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows, after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could not afford to buy!

“I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this busy city of New York for over thirty years,” said Dr. Cuyler, “and I find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time dropping to the rear–to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher of charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln’s homely maxim of ‘pegging away’ have achieved the solidest success.”

It is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve it who do not attain it. There is no failure in this country for those whose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest calling industriously, unselfishly, and purely. If one desires to succeed, he must pay the price, work.

No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty, grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception, strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire.

It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association of genius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians–men of the most imposing and brilliant talents–have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and arrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains.

Even the great genius, Lord Bacon, left large quantities of material entitled “Sudden thoughts set down for use.” John Foster was an indefatigable worker. “He used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him.” Chalmers was asked in London what Foster was doing. “Hard at it” he said, “at the rate of a line a week.”

When a young lawyer, Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $50 the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his client was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on account of the poverty of his client, only charged $15, thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time. Years after, as he was passing through New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. Webster saw in a moment that it was just like the blacksmith’s case, an intricate question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him simple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of Charles II., he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that Burr asked, in great surprise: “Mr. Webster, have you been consulted before in this case?”

“Most certainly not. I never heard of your case till this evening.”

“Very well,” said Burr, “proceed.” And when he had finished, Webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he had spent for his early client.

What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the “History of the United States;” a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;” a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteen minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a Field’s untiring perseverance, spending years and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless “Creation” and the “Last Judgment,” refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Titian, spending seven years on the “Last Supper;” a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating “Paradise Lost” in a world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his “Vanity Fair” was refused by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret, whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men who can work and wait.

That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means of it will he become what he ought to become,–man, in the highest sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. “One step in knowledge,” says Bulwer, “is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to Heaven.”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.

Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.–EMERSON.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquerthem.–WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendousdifficulties.–SPURGEON.

The rugged metal of the mineMust burn before its surface shine.–BYRON.

When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lenswhich opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs notelescope could do.–BEECHER.

No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.–JOHN NEAL.

“Kites rise against, not with, the wind.”

Then welcome each rebuff,That turns earth’s smoothness rough,Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.–BROWNING.

“What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!” said one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. “Tut, you blockhead,” replied the other, “gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman.” Just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors.

“Life,” says a philosopher, “refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks, that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building, whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of defeat–these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God’s quarry and on God’s anvil for a nobler life to come.” Only the muscle that is used is developed.

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things,” said Beecher. “Far up the mountain side lies a block of granite, and says to itself, ‘How happy am I in my serenity–above the winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest, age after age, and nothing disturbs me.’

“Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death.

“By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, ‘What does this mean?’ Then the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the valley. ‘Ah!’ it exclaims as it falls, ‘why this rending?’ Then come saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing, it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it is chiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the top-stone on some monument of the country’s glory.”

“It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would follow.”

“Do you wish to live without a trial?” asks a modern teacher. “Then you wish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your own strength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into deep water and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. Difficulties are God’s errands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of God’s confidence. We should reach after the highest good.”

Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain–until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. “Friction is a very good thing,” remarked a passenger.

There is a beautiful tale of Scandinavian mythology. A hero, under the promise of becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls to perform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn of Thor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle with a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all. But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatest forces of nature. He raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, he drank the sea. Nature, like the God of nature, wrestles with us as a friend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles with us that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. Every greatest and highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by this terrible wrestling with nature.

A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dramatic authors who meet once a month and dine together. Their number has no fixed limit, only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. An eminent dramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months. His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. Some of the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. Dumas, Jr., Zola and Offenbach have all filled the chair and presided at the monthly dinner. These dinners are given on the last Friday of the month, and are said to be extraordinarily hilarious.

“I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man,” said George Macdonald of Milton, “and so blinded him that he might be able to write it.”

“Returned with thanks” has made many an author. Failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sand which annoys it.

“Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of the storm wind is to the eagle,–a force against him that lifts him higher.”

“I do not see,” says Emerson, “how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power.”

“Adversity is a severe instructor,” says Edmund Burke, “set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as He loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.”

Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their victory.

“Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if the truth were known,” said Albion Tourgée. “Grant’s failure as a subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to.”

“What is defeat?” asked Wendell Phillips. “Nothing but education.” And a life’s disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new era, a broader life for man.

“To make his way at the bar,” said an eminent jurist, “a young man must live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a young lawyer so much good as to be half starved.”

We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the very power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.

“Obstacles,” says Mitchell, “are great incentives. I lived for whole years upon Virgil and found myself well off.” Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry.

Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his ambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The great object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. I always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It is not natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when they can be helped.

Quentin Matsys was a blacksmith at Antwerp. When in his twentieth year he wished to marry the daughter of a painter. The father refused his consent. “Wert thou a painter,” said he, “she should be thine; but a blacksmith–never!” “_I will be_ a painter,” said the young man. He applied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time he produced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. He gained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose ere long to a high rank in his profession.

Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. Sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen every minutest fibre from pith to bark.

The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling. Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far and wide for support.

Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only the district school, the Sunday school, and a few books. Remove wealth and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boy in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German nurses; gratify every wish. Place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to Harvard. Give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him travel extensively.

The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has “no chance in life,” and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a cruel Providence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet again as men, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from the sapling of the forest. If you think there is no difference, place each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea.

The athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carries the skill and muscle which give him his reputation.

The lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill in after life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearness of perception with which you learn your lessons. The school was your gymnasium. You do not carry away the Greek and Latin text-books, the geometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athlete carries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill and the power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful.

“It is in me, and it _shall_ come out!” And it did. For Richard Brinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazing statesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderately successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was his defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it took hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that of so many others.

Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing criticism of his first book, “Hours of Idleness,” published when he was but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, “There is scarce an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron reached.” In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott, Southey and Campbell. Many an orator like “stuttering Jack Curran,” or “Orator Mum,” as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and abuse.

Where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yields nothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supported without incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physical and intellectual development.

The most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come from the same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of the world.

The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a penny and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes Mexico with her mineral wealth poor, and New England with its granite and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden.

The law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simple and well known. It is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman, strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. It inexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, to like them, and so to survive them.

As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert in pursuing his prey.

Benjamin Franklin ran away and George Law was turned out of doors. Thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and skill to overcome difficulties.

Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually “turn out,” while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to “come out.”

From an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. “Robinson Crusoe” was written in prison. The “Pilgrim’s Progress” appeared in Bedford Jail. The “Life and Times” of Baxter, Eliot’s “Monarchia of Man,” and Penn’s “No Cross, No Crown,” were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote “The History of the World” during his imprisonment of thirteen years. Luther translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg. For twenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death. His works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not burn.

Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. Don’t run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for acquaintances.

This is the crutch age. “Helps” and “aids” are advertised everywhere. We have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are all worked out in “explanations” and “keys.” Our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. “Short roads” and “abridged methods” are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man’s relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world’s drudgery and emancipate him from Eden’s curse.

CHAPTER IX.

DEAD IN EARNEST.

It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. Whatmade Demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that heappeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wishedto inspire. The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by theexaggerations of party spirit, was often compared toDemosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness,which made up for the want of almost every grace, both ofmanner and style.–ANON.

Twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any helpof learning, should conquer the world to the cross.–STEPHEN CARNOCK.

For his heart was in his work, and the heartGiveth grace unto every art.–LONGFELLOW.

He did it with all his heart and prospered.–II. CHRONICLES.

The only conclusive evidence of a man’s sincerity is that hegives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things elseare comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes agift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that thetruth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.–LOWELL.

“The emotions,” says Whipple, “may all be included in the single word ‘enthusiasm,’ or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power from the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs.”

“Columbus, my hero,” exclaims Carlyle, “royalist sea-king of all! It is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am told), are not there on thy behalf! Meseems _they_ have other work than floating thee forward:–and the huge winds, that sweep from Ursa Major to the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, the possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;–how much wilt thou swallow down? There shall be a depth of silence in thee, deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silence unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my world-soldier, thou of the world marine-service,–thou wilt have to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler’s arms, shall embrace it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on,–to new Americas, or whither God wills!”

With what concentration of purpose did Washington put the whole weight of his character into the scales of our cause in the Revolution! With what earnest singleness of aim did Lincoln in the cabinet, Grant in the field, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war?

The power of Phillips Brooks, at which men wondered, lay in his tremendous earnestness.

“No matter what your work is,” says Emerson, “let it be yours; no matter if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.” Again, he says: “God will not have His works made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.”

“I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important question,” said Henry Clay; “but on such occasions I seem to be unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of surrounding objects.”

“I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other people,” said Livingstone, “that I had forgotten that I have one of my own until a savage auditor asked me if I felt the influence of the religion I was advocating.”

“Well, I’ve worked hard enough for it,” said Malibran when a critic expressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up three octaves from low D; “I’ve been chasing it for a month. I pursued it everywhere,–when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on.”

“People smile at the enthusiasm of youth,” said Charles Kingsley; “that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it.”

“Should I die this minute,” said Nelson at an important crisis, “want of frigates would be found written on my heart.”

Said Dr. Arnold, the celebrated instructor: “I feel more and more the need of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. It is painful to me to be always on the surface of things. Not that I wish for much of what is called religious conversation. That is often apt to be on the surface. But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, that a man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it opens my heart with as fresh a sympathy as when I was twenty years younger.”

Archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by the king in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyed with silver. While considering the best method of detecting any fraud, he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the water that overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered the method of obtaining the bulk of the crown compared with an equally heavy mass of pure gold. Excited by the discovery, he ran through the streets undressed, crying, “I have found it.”

Equally celebrated is his remark, “Give me where to stand and I will move the world.”

His only remark to the Roman soldier who entered his room while engaged in geometrical study, was, “Don’t step on my circle.”

Refusing to follow the soldier to Marcellus, who had captured the city, he was killed on the spot. He is said to have remarked, “My head, but not my circle.”

“Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world,” says Emerson, “is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They did they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men and conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. The Caliph Omar’s walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it than another man’s sword.”

Horace Vernet’s enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew no bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the Mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute to swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a great artist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. He promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to the latter’s horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound, painted his death agony.

Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of whom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. He shunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to college many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into oblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him to undertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in his little church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned the lamps, swept the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire, baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of his ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until he blossomed out into America’s greatest pulpit orator.

When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not wake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings which he dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-book with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. Le Brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the house. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections.

Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would die for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fit for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night.

Confucius said that “he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he forgot his food;” and that, “in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his sorrows;” and that “he did not even perceive that old age was coming on.”

“That boy tries to make himself useful,” said an employer of the errand boy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful that promotes us in life.

Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a bookseller’s shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiry he found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one of the most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first book in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he had fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor lad was so thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan them to him out of pity, read them and return them.

The _Youth’s Companion_ says that Mr. Edison in his new biography–his “Life and Inventions”–describes the accidental method by which he discovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accident that happens only to a certain kind of man.

“I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone,” Mr. Edison says, “when the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the point, and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk.

“I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words ‘Halloo! Halloo!’ into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard a faint ‘Halloo! Halloo!’ in return.

“I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They laughed at me. That’s the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger.”

It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry it out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many young children, it had difficulty with certain sounds–in the present case with aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison’s biographers say, but the statement is somewhat exaggerated:

“He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or seven months on a stretch, dinning the word ‘Spezia,’ for example, into the stubborn surface of the wax. ‘Spezia,’ roared the inventor, ‘Pezia’ lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained.

“The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. To hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors, patiently reiterating:

Mary had a little lamb,A little lamb, _lamb_, LAMB,

and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things.”

Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never “bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward.”

Dickens’ characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night until properly portrayed in his stories.

At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap literature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not be dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the _Penny Magazine_, which acquired a circulation of 200,000 the first year. Knight projected the _Penny Cyclopedia_, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, _Half-Hours With the Best Authors_, and other useful books at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by cheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his ashes.

Demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorous effort to preserve their independence against the designs of an ambitious and artful prince, and Philip had just reason to say he was more afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of the Athenians.

Horace Greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to show himself until he started the _Tribune_, into which he poured his whole individuality, life and soul.

Emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. He finally came to himself and said: “If a single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will come round to him in the end.” “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not.” “The man that stands by himself the universe stands by him also.” “Take Michael Angelo’s course, ‘to confide in one’s self and be something of worth and value.'” “None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

Many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like Bunyan and Milton and Dickens and George Eliot and Scott and Emerson, they would write their own lives in their MSS., if they would write about things they have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. It is life thoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carry their very iron particles into the blood. The real heaven has never been outdone by the ideal.

Neither poverty nor misfortune could keep Linnæus from his botany.

The English and Austrian armies called Napoleon the one-hundred-thousand-man. His presence was considered equal to that force in battle.

The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches–that there is always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man’s life an answer.

CHAPTER X.

TO BE GREAT, CONCENTRATE.

Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, andthen stick to it.–FRANKLIN.

“He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither.”

None sends his arrow to the mark in view,Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue.–COWPER.

He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea,that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing allhis aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life.–BATE.

The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at atime.–CECIL.

The power of concentration is one of the most valuable ofintellectual attainments.–HORACE MANN.

The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in onedirection.–EMERSON.

Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to geniusand art.–CICERO.

“It puffed like a locomotive,” said a boy of the donkey engine; “it whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn’t go anywhere.”

The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff and pull, but they don’t go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no controlling purpose.

The great secret of Napoleon’s power lay in his marvelous ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the enemy’s ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemy like an avalanche until he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of concentration there is in that man’s life! He was such a master of himself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail as well as upon an empire.

When Napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark. He had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the bull’s eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went.

The sun’s rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burning glass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. There are plenty of men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon one point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake.

This power to bring all of one’s scattered forces into one focal point makes all the difference between success and failure. The sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in a burning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor.

Sir James Mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. He excited in everybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose in his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men have ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central, all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things.

“To encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention,” said a friend of John C. Calhoun, “he stated that to this end he had early subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and had persisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control over it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased, without wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit, when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it until he was satisfied with its examination.”

“My friend laughs at me because I have but one idea,” said a learned American chemist; “but I have learned that if I wish ever to make a breach in a wall, I must play my guns continually upon one point.”

“It is his will that has made him what he is,” said an intimate friend of Philip D. Armour, the Chicago millionaire. “He fixes his eye on something ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left he never sees it. He goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, and overtakes it at last. He never gives up what he undertakes.”

While Horace Greeley would devote a column of the New York _Tribune_ to an article, Thurlow Weed would treat the same subject in a few words in the Albany _Evening Journal_, and put the argument into such shape as to carry far more conviction.

“If you would be pungent,” says Southey, “be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams–the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.”

“The only valuable kind of study,” said Sydney Smith, “is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannæ, and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own study or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal’s weather-beaten face and admiring the splendor of his single eye.”

“Never study on speculation,” says Waters; “all such study is vain. Form a plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be useful some day!”

“I resolved, when I began to read law,” said Edward Sugden, afterward Lord St. Leonard, “to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never go on to a second reading till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of the competitors read as much in a day as I did in a week; but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection.”

“Very often,” says Sidney Smith, “the modern precept of education is, ‘Be ignorant of nothing.’ But my advice is, have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of all things.”

“Lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well,” is a prayer recommended by Paxton Hood to an overworked man.

“Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life,” said Edward Bulwer Lytton, “and as much about the world as if I had never been a student, have said to me, ‘When do you get time to write all your books? How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?’ I shall surprise you by the answer I made. The answer is this–I contrive to do so much work by never doing too much at a time. A man to get through work well must not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow. Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till I had left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say that I have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of my time. I have traveled much and I have seen much; I have mixed much in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all this, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much special research. And what time do you think, as a general rule, I have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? Not more than three hours a day; and, when Parliament is sitting, not always that. But then, during these three hours, I have given my whole attention to what I was about.”

“The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life. Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our might we attain.”

“One great cause of failure of young men in business,” says Carnegie, “is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments. The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or corporation can manage a business-man’s capital as well as he can manage it himself. The rule, ‘Do not put all your eggs in one basket,’ does not apply to a man’s life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket, is the true doctrine–the most valuable rule of all.”

“A man must not only desire to be right,” said Beecher, “he must _be_ right. You may say, ‘I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball.’ Providence won’t. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.”

The ruling idea of Milton’s life and the key to his mental history is his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. As every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become Lord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the dream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing brilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthful literary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. He not only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into the pursuit of place, profit, honor–the thorns which spring up and smother the wheat–but carried out his dream in its integrity in old age. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home, travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service, the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the schooling which was to make a poet.

Bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life “to snatch Germany from Austrian oppression,” and to gather round Prussia, in a North German Confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion, manners and interest “were in harmony with those of Prussia.” “To attain this end,” he once said in conversation, “I would brave all dangers–exile, the scaffold itself. What matter if they hang me, provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to the Prussian throne?”

It is related of Greeley that, when he was writing his “American Conflict,” he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, to prevent constant interruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Bible house, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in the afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever.

Cooper Institute is the evening school which Peter Cooper, as long ago as 1810, resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as an apprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. Through all his career in various branches of business he never lost sight of this object; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased that it brought nearer the realization of his dream.

“See a great lawyer like Rufus Choate,” says Dr. Storrs, “in a case where his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. He saw long ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it were sympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven; the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feels that he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now concentrates his power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly the principles, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and more intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the pleader’s purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, ‘He surpassed himself.’ It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering energy to the mind.”

“The foreman of the jury, however,” said Whipple, “was a hard-hearted, practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with an incapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radically differing from his own. Mr. Choate’s argument, as far as the facts and the law were concerned, was through in an hour. Still he went on speaking. Hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak with constantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, without any seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and arguments which he had already urged. The truth was, as I gradually learned, that he was engaged in a hand-to-hand–or rather in a brain-to-brain and a heart-to-heart–contest with the foreman, whose resistance he was determined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours with defiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. ‘You fool!’ was the burden of the advocate’s ingenious argument. ‘You rascal!’ was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman’s incredulous face. But at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at the end the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of the advocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart, and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. The verdict was ‘Not guilty.'”

“He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.”

It is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man can dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of a viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; too many friends make others. The exactions of “society,” the balls, parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given and attended by the _beau monde_, constitute a most wasting species of dissipation. Others, again, fritter away all their time and strength in political agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idling with music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting or fasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. But the man of concentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good or bad. He has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but puts in as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment of some definite good.

CHAPTER XI.

AT ONCE.

Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuitof 500,000,000 miles back to the solstice at the appointedmoment without the loss of one second–no, not the millionthpart of a second–for ages and ages of which it traveled thatimperial road.–EDWARD EVERETT.

Despatch is the soul of business.–CHESTERFIELD.

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act ofclear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person’s money ashis time.–HORACE MANN.

By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never.–CERVANTES.

The greatest thief this world has ever produced isprocrastination, and he is still at large.–H. W. SHAW.

“Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!” says H. C. Bowen. “How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty!”

“Nothing commends a young man so much to his employers,” says John Stuart Blackie, “as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of his business. And no wonder. On each man’s exactitude depends the comfortable and easy going of his machine. If the clock goes fitfully nobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chain of another man’s work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able to rely on you.”

“The whole period of youth,” said Ruskin, “is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies–not a moment of which, once passed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron.”

“To-morrow, didst thou say?” asked Cotton. “Go to–I will not hear of it. To-morrow! ‘t is a sharper who stakes his penury against thy plenty–who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes and promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow!_ it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool’s calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those that own it. ‘Tis fancy’s child, and folly is its father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic visions of the evening.” Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success could say: “I have spent all my life in the pursuit of to-morrow, being assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me.”

“I give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction,” said Dr. Fitch, “that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will never be respected or successful in life.”

“If a man has no regard for the time of other men,” said Horace Greeley, “why should he have for their money? What is the difference between taking a man’s hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars.”

A man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keep his word unless he _does_ keep his time.

When the Duchess of Sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, the queen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her own watch, saying, “I am afraid your’s does not keep good time.”

“Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary,” replied Washington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow.

“I have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else,” said Franklin to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse.

One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures, teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits, and is an expensive investment at any price. Wear threadbare clothes if you must, but never carry an inaccurate watch.

“Five minutes behind time” has ruined many a man and many a firm.

“He who rises late,” says Fuller, “must trot all day, and shall scarcely overtake his business at night.”

Some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a nobleman apologized to George III. for being late, and said, “better late than never,” the king replied, “No, I say, _better never than late_.”

“Better late than never” is not half so good a maxim as “Better never late.”

If Samuel Budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he would apologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. Punctuality is contagious. Napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute. What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a disagreeable task.

“A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends,” said Hamilton. “At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gave them work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so much that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval.”

Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements.

“How,” asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, “do you accomplish so much and in so short a time?” “When I have anything do, I go and do it,” was the reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail–even if he have the better judgment.

When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied: “Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day.”

Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: “Nothing is more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until to-morrow what can be done to-day.”

Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the neck of the day’s work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: “Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed–I mean what the women call dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it.”

Frederick the Great had a maxim: “Time is the only treasure of which it is proper to be avaricious.”

Leibnitz declared that “the loss of an hour is the loss of a part of life.”

Napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarter hours that won battles. The value of minutes has been often recognized, and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and change during the last few minutes available must have been struck with how much could be done in these short periods of time.

At the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carrying passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a second you are carried twenty-nine yards. In one twenty-ninth of a second you pass over one yard. Now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but one twenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated.

The father of the Webster brothers, before going away to be gone for a week, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them that after it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what they pleased. The boys looked the field over on Monday morning and concluded they could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play the first three days. Thursday morning they went to the field, but it looked so much larger than it did on Monday morning, that they decided they could not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all, they would not touch it. When the angry father returned, he called Ezekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. “What have you been doing?” said the stern father. “Nothing, father.” “And what have you been doing, Daniel?” “Helping Zeke, sir.”

How many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days “helping Zeke!”

“Remember the world was created in six days,” said Napoleon to one of his officers. “Ask for whatever you please except time.”

Railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. No matter who is late they leave right on the minute.

It is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running, hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the time arrives the train will leave.

Factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on the minute. The higher the state of civilization the prompter is everything done. In countries without railroads, as in Eastern countries, everything is behind time. Everybody is indolent and lazy.

The world knows that the prompt man’s bills and notes will be paid on the day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit, for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness will shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man who has a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything he does. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the banks are closed. Everybody he meets suffers more or less from his malady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease.

“You will never find time for anything,” said Charles Buxton; “if you want time you must make it.”

The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat. “Too late,” is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that “one to-day is worth two to-morrows.”

Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor atonement. _It is the true avenger._ Your enemy may become your friend,–your injurer may do you justice,–but Time is inexorable, and has no mercy.

Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio:Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.‘Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more preciousThan all the crimson treasures of life’s fountain.O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, likeThe good old patriarch upon record,Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.–NATHANIEL COTTON.

CHAPTER XII.

THOROUGHNESS.

Doing well depends upon doing completely.–PERSIAN PROVERB.

He who does well will always have patrons enough.–PLAUTUS.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, ormake a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build hishouse in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to hisdoor.–EMERSON.

I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; ifit be wrong, leave it undone.–GILPIN.

No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is themark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one. * * * Like aturnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody’s way, but stopsnobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks intoeverything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in thefire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that arehe only burns his fingers.–COLTON.

“Make me as good a hammer as you know how,” said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built; “six of us have come to work on the new church, and I’ve left mine at home.” “As good a one as I know how?” asked David Maydole, doubtfully, “but perhaps you don’t want to pay for as good a one as I know how to make.” “Yes, I do,” said the carpenter, “I want a good hammer.”

It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than those for his men. “I can’t make any better ones,” said Maydole; “when I make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for.”

The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grown very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word “Maydole” stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce. Character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world.

“Yes,” said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, “I have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years.” “Well,” replied the great historian, “by this time you ought to make a pretty good hammer.”

“No, I can’t,” was the reply, “I can’t make a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer that’s made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer. If folks don’t want to pay me what they’re worth, they’re welcome to buy cheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I’m ready any time to go back to my blacksmith’s shop, where I worked forty years ago, before I thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow by bellows, now I have one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watching the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows what she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammered out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of an experienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is no shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery in manufacturing them; now I know that a perfect tool can’t be made by machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand.”

“In telling this little story,” said Parton, “I have told thousands of stories. Take the word ‘hammer’ out of it, and put ‘glue’ in its place, and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you can make the true history of every great business in the world which has lasted thirty years.”

“We have no secret,” said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria Iron Works, employing seven thousand men, at Johnstown, Pa. “We always try to beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we’ve got, and we don’t care who knows it.”

“I don’t try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a machine,” said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass., to a customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, “Whitin make.” Put thoroughness into your work: it pays.

“The accurate boy is always the favored one,” said President Tuttle. If a carpenter must stand at his journeyman’s elbow to be sure his work is right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper’s columns, he might as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way.

“Mr. Girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?” asked one John Smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker and attracted attention by his activity.

“Assistance–work–ah? You want work?” “Yes sir; it’s a long time since I’ve had anything to do.”

“Very well, I shall give you some. You see dem stone yondare?” “Yes, sir.” “Very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?” “Yes sir.” “And when you done, come to me at my bank.”

Smith finished his task, reported to Mr. Girard, and asked for more work. “Ah, ha, oui. You want more work? Very well; you shall go place dem stone where you got him. Understandez? You take him back.” “Yes, sir.”

Again Smith performed the work and waited on Mr. Girard for payment. “Ah, ha, you all finish?” “Yes, sir.” “Very well; how much money shall I give you?” “One dollar, sir.” “Dat is honest. You take no advantage. Dare is your dollar.” “Can I do anything else for you?” “Oui, come here when you get up to-morrow. You shall have more work.”

Smith was punctual, but for the third time, and yet again for the fourth, he was ordered to “take dem stone back again.” When he called for his pay in the evening Stephen Girard spoke very cordially. “Ah, Monsieur Smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and do it, ask no questions, you do not interfere. You got one vife?” “Yes, sir.” “Ah, dat is bad. Von vife is bad. Any little chicks?” “Yes, sir, five living.”

“Five? Dat is good; I like five. I like you, Monsieur Smit; you like to work; you mind your business. Now I do something for your five little chicks. There: take these five pieces of paper for your five little chicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, and your little chicks shall never want five more.” In a few years Mr. Smith became one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants of Philadelphia.

It is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the early formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done, or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature finishes every little leaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly and perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even the flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever behold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of form and outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the same completeness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen’s garden. “Perfection to the finish” is a motto which every youth should adopt.

“How did you attain such excellence in your profession?” was asked of Sir Joshua Reynolds. “By observing one simple rule, namely, to make each picture the best,” he replied.

The discipline of being exact is uplifting. Progress is never more rapid than it is when we are studying to be accurate. The effort educates all the powers. Arthur Helps says: “I do not know that there is anything except it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident of education, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods of inaccuracy.”

Too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-hearted way, and do their work in a slipshod manner. The consequence is that they inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of their superiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. There is a loose, perfunctory method of doing one’s work that never merits advance, and very rarely wins it. Instead of buckling to their task with all the force they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers, their rule apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum of work. The principle of Strafford, the great minister of Charles I., is indicated by his motto, the one word “Thorough.” It was said of King Hezekiah, “In every work that he began, he did it with all his heart and prospered.”

The stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it. He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And by-and-by the master says, “Well done,” and takes it away and gives him another block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of these few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, one day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know what they were for, but the architect did. And as he stands looking at his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, he says: “I am glad I did it well.” And every day as he passes that way, he says to himself exultingly, “I did it well.” He did not draw the design, nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of his work: but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced.

Work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. We often see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases in youth. All about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things. It is true that children often become tired of things which they begin with enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children about finishing what they undertake. A boy, for instance, will start out in the morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after a few minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing. He soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. No sooner does he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than he makes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was to play ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else.

One watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand, one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood. The same may be said of the example we individually set to those around us.

“Whatever I have tried to do in life,” said Dickens, “I have tried with all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely.”

It is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for a shoemaker to make bad shoes.

A traveler, recently returned from Jerusalem, found, in conversation with Humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets and houses of Jerusalem as he was himself. On being asked how long it was since he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: “I have never been there; but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared myself.”

So noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of George Washington, that a barrel of flour marked “George Washington, Mount Vernon,” was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India ports.

Pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose work on conic sections, at sixteen, Descartes refused to believe could be produced at that age, is considered to have fixed the French language, as Luther did the German, by his writings. None of his provincial letters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eight quarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of a single letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times.

The night the Tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the course north by west, sixty-seven degrees. He had taken account of eddies and currents. The second officer, overlooking these, ordered the helmsman to make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the ship around so gently that the captain wouldn’t know it. Hence her destruction.

Rev. Mr. Maley, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church, had the habit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. His brethren at conference told him that this habit was growing on him, and rendering him unpopular in the ministry. Mr. Maley heard them patiently, and then said: “Brethren, I am aware of the truth of all you have said, and have shed barrels of tears over it.”

There is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong.

CHAPTER XIII.

TRIFLES.

In the elder days of ArtBuilders wrought with greatest careEach minute and unseen part,For the gods see everywhere.–LONGFELLOW.

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear,Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,And trifles, life.–YOUNG.

The smallest hair throws its shadow.–GOETHE.

He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little.–ECCLESIASTES.

It is the little rift within the lute,That by and by will make the music mute,And ever widening slowly silence all.–TENNYSON.

“A pebble in the streamlet scantHas turned the course of many a river:A dewdrop on the baby plantHas warped the giant oak forever.”

It is the close observation of little things which is thesecret of success in business, in art, in science, and in everypursuit of life.–SMILES.

“Only!–But then the onlysMake up the mighty all.”

“My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,” said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, “Because I have neglected nothing.”

“Do little things now,” says a Persian proverb; “so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to be done.” God will take care of the great things if we do not neglect the little ones.

A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly fifty applicants presented themselves to him. Out of the whole number he in a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. “I should like to know,” said a friend, “on what ground you selected that boy, who had not a single recommendation?” “You are mistaken,” said the gentleman, “he had a great many. He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door after him, showing that he was careful. He gave up his seat instantly to that lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. He took off his cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly and respectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. He picked up the book which I had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it on the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; and he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showing that he was honest and orderly. When I talked to him, I noticed that his clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his teeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, I noticed that his finger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like that handsome little fellow’s, in the blue jacket. Don’t you call those letters of recommendation? I do; and I would give more for what I can tell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fine letters he can bring me.”

“Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests,” seems to be one of the great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world below as the telescope above. All of nature’s laws govern the smallest atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.

“I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit,” said a gentleman to Michael Angelo. “But,” said the sculptor, “I have retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb, etc.” “But they are trifles!” exclaimed the visitor. “It may be so,” replied the great artist, “but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.” That infinite patience which made Michael Angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more vital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success and failure.

“Of what use is it?” people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. “What is the use of a child?” replied Franklin; “it may become a man.”

In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery. Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. “How is this, Dick?” asked Mr. Peel one day; “the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean.” “Ay, that they be,” replied Dick Ferguson. “How do you manage it, Dick?” “Why, you see, Meester Peel,” said the workman, “it is sort o’ secret! If I tow’d ye, yo’d be as wise as I am.” “That’s so,” said Mr. Peel, smiling; “but I’d give you something to know. Could you make all the looms work as smoothly as yours?” “Ivery one of ’em, meester,” replied Dick. “Well, what shall I give you for your secret?” asked Mr. Peel, and Dick replied, “Gi’ me a quart of ale every day as I’m in the mills, and I’ll tell thee all about it.” “Agreed,” said Mr. Peel, and Dick whispered very cautiously in his ear, “Chalk your bobbins!” That was the whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomely rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the world millions of dollars.

The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little things. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will, unimportant acts often repeated,–things seemingly of small account,–these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature. Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in stone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novice might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark.

The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The crude settlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length commanded the world.

Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them, would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through.

Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important vegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants.

It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the terrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One noble heroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin’s whole career was changed by a torn copy of Cotton Mather’s Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stone to throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker’s life. As he raised the stone something within him said, “Don’t do it,” and he didn’t. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said “don’t.” She told him it was conscience. Small things become great when a great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grew crooked, answered, “Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow.”

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. His name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.

We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river’s edge to find their food.

The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.

Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra’s had been an inch shorter Mark Antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn’s fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave a nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack the proudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Staël.

It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people.

The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident–the building of a fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France, owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge was made.

A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month for eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir John Moore’s life sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink while bearing despatches.

“You do no work,” said the scissors to the rivet. “Where would your work be,” said the rivet to the scissors, “if I didn’t keep you together?”

Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million–once in a lifetime–may do a heroic action.

We call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. Presumptuous that we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?

CHAPTER XIV.

COURAGE.

Quit yourselves like men.–1 SAMUEL iv. 9.

Cowards have no luck.–ELIZABETH KULMAN.

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every daysurmount a fear.–EMERSON.

To dare is better than to doubt,For doubt is always grieving;‘Tis faith that finds the riddles out;The prize is for believing.–HENRY BURTON.

–WalkBoldly and wisely in that light thou hast;There is a hand above will help thee on.–BAILEY’S FESTUS.

“Have hope! Though clouds environ now,And gladness hides her face in scorn,Put thou the shadow from thy brow–No night but hath its morn.”

“Our enemies are before us,” exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylæ. “And we are before them,” was the cool reply of Leonidas. “Deliver your arms,” came the message from Xerxes. “Come and take them,” was the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: “You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows.” “Then we will fight in the shade,” replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.

“The hero,” says Emerson, “is the man who is immovably centred.”

Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch and told them, there was earth and water enough.

“Bring back the colors,” shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating. “No,” cried the ensign, “bring up the men to the colors.” “To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare,” was Danton’s noble defiance to the enemies of France.

Shakespeare says: “He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hives because the bees have stings.”

“It is a bad omen,” said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. “Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare venture now upon the sea.” So he returned to his house; but his young son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or three years before. The first land that they saw was probably Labrador, a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland, or the land of flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came to an island which they named Vinland, on account of the abundance of delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here where the city of Newport, R. I., stands, they spent many months, and then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.

“Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold of Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to the wind!”

Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at thirty-three. Julius Cæsar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of the whole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and Germany at thirty. Condé was only twenty-two when he conquered at Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college. Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navy before he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his death wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained the battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror of Mexico; at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India. Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at Cannæ, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the Republic of Rome; and Napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he out-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of Austria.

Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. George Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five. Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability.

“Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed,” said a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington’s head. “You are right,” replied the Iron Duke, “and but for my sense of duty I should have retreated in my first fight.” That first fight, on an Indian field, was one of the most terrible on record.

Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded by the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: “Well, then, we must cut our way out.”

When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. “Call a posse,” said the judge, “and arrest him.” But they also shrank with fear from the ruffian. “Call me, then,” said Jackson; “this court is adjourned for five minutes.” He left the bench, walked straight up to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped his weapons, afterward saying: “There was something in his eye I could not resist.”

Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate whenever an opportunity presented. “Go to Lincoln,” people would say, when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; “he’s not afraid of any cause, if it’s right.”

Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with little education and no influential friends. When at last he had begun the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained him as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long train of disaster; to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; to support Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press; and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right.

“Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized.” To determine to do anything is half the battle. “To think a thing is impossible is to make it so.” “Courage is victory, timidity is defeat.”

Don’t waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached. Don’t fool with a nettle! Grasp with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.

Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. “No great deed is done,” says George Eliot, “by falterers who ask for certainty.”

A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such constant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity on it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from its fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to suffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger. Then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, in disgust, said, “Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouse it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal.” And the poor creature again became a mouse.

Young Commodore Oliver H. Perry, not twenty-eight years old, was intrusted with the plan to gain control of Lake Erie. With great energy Perry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns, and conquered Commodore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with six vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in naval battles before this.

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasible projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth by a cowardly imagination. A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to escape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised.

One of Napoleon’s drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon’s little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austrians for seventy-two hours; the Austrians’ position enabled them to sweep the bridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must hold to win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant (who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum so vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible French onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French army was advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself from this drum. This boy’s heroic act was represented in stone on the front of the Pantheon of Paris.

Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: “My lads, you must not fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy’s ranks.”

Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book caught his attention and interested him. He found it to be a short letter from D’Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and read: “Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine with increasing clearness on your path.” “That maxim,” he said, “was my greatest master in mathematics.”

Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied by a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept away by the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer.

“Captain,” said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly, “You don’t wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strong string, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, and I promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the shore or I will perish in the attempt.”

Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seen like a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of cord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackened and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent pull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reached the shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued.

In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury, Conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. The whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were denied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall’s own friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and stones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and the opposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radically wrong.

Staunch old Admiral Farragut–he of the true heart and the iron will–said to another officer of the navy, “Dupont, do you know why you didn’t get into Charleston with your ironclads?” “Oh, it was because the channel was so crooked.” “No, Dupont, it was not that.” “Well, the rebel fire was perfectly horrible.” “Yes, but it wasn’t that.” “What was it, then?” “_It was because you didn’t believe you could go in._”

“I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me _how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always went straight forward and _did it_.” So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.

There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in the invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow. When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. “Colfax does not drink,” sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. “You are right,” said the Vice-President, “I dare not.”

A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: “I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must drink it in water. It is ‘Our Mothers.'” The men were so affected and ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.

When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of Grant’s make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine, the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that night.

Don’t be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody’s pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious “of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style.” It takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say “No” squarely when those around you say “Yes.” It takes courage to do your duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask your true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for what you really are.

CHAPTER XV.

WILL-POWER.

In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bringa thorough will to do it.–W. HUMBOLDT.

It is firmness that makes the gods on our side.–VOLTAIRE.

Stand firm, don’t flutter.–FRANKLIN.

People do not lack strength they lack will.–VICTOR HUGO.

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out ofcountenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.–JEREMY COLLIER.

When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious tosee how the space clears around a man and leaves him room andfreedom.–JOHN FOSTER.

“Do you know,” asked Balzac’s father, “that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?” “Very well,” replied his son, “_I will be a king._” After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won success as an author.

“Why do you repair that magistrate’s bench with such great care?” asked a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. “Because I wish to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,” replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years later.

“_I will be marshal of France and a great general_,” exclaimed a young French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He became a successful general and a marshal of France.

“There is so much power in faith,” says Bulwer, “even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies.”

There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of Webster’s Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail.

“Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?” asked John Hunter. “He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man never fails.”

“Circumstances,” says Milton, “have rarely favored famous men. They have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles.”

“We have a half belief,” said Emerson, “that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man _who is a match for events_,–one who never found his match,–against whom other men being dashed are broken,–one who can give you any odds and beat you.”

The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal.

At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not abated.

In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: “My situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive.” But his will defied circumstances and he rose above them. For two years he lived on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollar of it with his pen.

His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four, when Minister to Berlin, was lamented by the learned and great of all countries.

We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.

At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect. “It _shall_ succeed!” he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying over the papers when he went back. “They are very cruel,” she said. “They don’t understand.” “I’ll make them understand,” he replied cheerfully. “It was a fight for six years,” he said afterward. “Poverty, sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the _dogged determination_ that it should succeed.” It did succeed. The invention was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy man.

Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies,–“There shall be no Alps,” he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. “Impossible,” said he, “is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. “I made my generals out of mud,” he said.

To think we are able is almost to be so–to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of Suwarrow’s character lay in his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, he preached it up as a system.

Before Pizarro, D’Almagro and De Luque obtained any associates or arms or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one of the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. The people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and were shocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the service and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.

At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated; but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move, Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men, renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s, or Von Moltke’s? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?

A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the superior of circumstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; and though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles, once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.

What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place bounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn; but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated with his principles, to all lands. _The world always listens to a man with a will in him._ You might as well snub the sun as such men as Bismarck and Grant.

Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when despondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctor who can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. So he is the greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated skyGives us free scope; and only backward pullsOur slow designs when we ourselves are dull.”

“How much I could do if I only tried.”

CHAPTER XVI.

GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he thatruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.–BIBLE.

The first and best of victories is for a man to conquerhimself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the mostshameful and vile.–PLATO.

The worst education which teaches self-denial is better thanthe best which teaches everything else and not that.–JOHN STERLING.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.–SENECA.

The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge,must originate in self and be self-directed.–THOMAS J. MORGAN.

The foes with which they waged their strifeWere passion, self and sin;The victories that laureled life,Were fought and won within.–EDWARD H. DEWART.

“I’ll sign it after awhile,” a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly urged by his wife to sign the pledge; “but I don’t like to break off at once, the best way is to get used to a thing.” “Very well, old man,” said his wife, “see if you don’t fall into a hole one of these days, with no one to help you out.”

Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. “Didn’t I tell you so?” she asked. “It’s lucky I was in hearing or you might have drowned.” He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the water again. This was repeated until he screamed: “Look here, you’re doing that on purpose, I know you are.” “Well, now, I am,” admitted the wife. “Don’t you remember telling me it’s best to get used to a thing by degrees? I’m afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find it wholesome.” Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to sign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warned him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she would leave him there.

A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage, bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear him to pieces. Sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought to be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of “the devil in solution,” and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to the passion which he thought dead.

When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon’s Essays, his favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend the meaning. “The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation,” said he. “I had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and with God’s help I was enabled to hold by the determination.”

In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday $450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The times would not be so “hard” for the workmen if the saloons did not take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of wages, and to include an increase of savings.

How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a youthful life: “For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;” “golden chances for beer;” “magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little sensual enjoyment;” “for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife, lovely children, for drink;” “for sale, cheap, all the magnificent possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a thousand at the gambling table;” “for exchange, bright prospects, a brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty degeneration of the heart, for Bright’s disease, for a drunkard’s liver.”

With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment’s sleep, he fought the fearful battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the sunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him. Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile, gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he looked at it and said, “You are a _weed_, and I am a _man_. I’ll master you if I die for it;” and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.

There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns–a crop that lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.

“Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable,” says Walter Scott, “and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.”

Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said, “I thought I had a better use for my head.”

Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest. Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life’s voyage cultivate this one great virtue, “self-control.” There is nothing so important to a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he does not have it, he will fail.

“The first and best of victories,” says Plato, “is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”

“Silence,” says Zimmerman, “is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.”

“He is a fool who cannot be angry,” says English, “but he is a wise man who will not.”

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that “we should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?” and then he follows with the profound truth that “our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.” If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.

The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door. His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more; and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that “so much thunder must needs produce a shower.” Alcibiades, his friend, talking with him about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, “I have so accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the noise of carriages in the street.”

It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid–in a word, wise to the last.

“It is not enough to have great qualities,” says La Rochefoucauld; “we should also have the management of them.” No man can call himself educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.

“You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury,” said Eardley Wilmot; “I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it would be Godlike to forgive it.”

“He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive–these are strong men, the spiritual heroes.”

To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the “sweet by and by,” when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.

But self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strong feelings may prove but runaway horses. He who would command others must first learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learn to be submissive to the still small voice within. Discipline the passions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. Deny yourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. Shame and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion rather than the esteem of others. Too many yield in the perpetual conflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites and aspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Voices unheard by those around us whisper “Don’t,” but too often self-respect is lost, the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. Such battles must be fought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by that Heaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulder to the wheel.

No man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression than Edmund Burke. He possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquil judgment, nor the rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, under the impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to his country and to Europe, even while he rendered noble service to the cause of commercial freedom, to Ireland, and to America.

Burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms at another’s expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made a hundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. But Burns could no more control his appetite than his tongue.

“Thus thoughtless follies laid him lowAnd stained his name.”

Xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he was going to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thing he could find in the market. The philosopher and his guests sat down the next day at the table. They had nothing but tongue–four or five courses of tongue–tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in that way, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant, “Didn’t I tell you to get the best thing in the market?” He said, “I did get the best thing in the market. Isn’t the tongue the organ of sociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ of worship?” Then Xanthus said, “To-morrow I want you to get the worst thing in the market.” And on the morrow the philosopher sat at the table, and there was nothing there but tongue–four or five courses of tongue–tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape–and the philosopher again lost his patience, and said, “Didn’t I tell you to get the worst thing in the market?” The servant replied, “I did; for isn’t the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of lying?”

“I can reform my people,” said Peter the Great, “but I cannot reform myself.” He forbade all Russians to wear beards, and to quell the insurrection which resulted, he had 8000 revolters beheaded. With a hatchet he began the ghastly work. He had his own son beheaded.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the highest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old “knight-errantry” consisted in defending the innocence of men and protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But the truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the innocence and the chastity of others against one’s self. We should all be posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergencies in life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure our manhood and our strength. Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer and soldier who would walk up to the cannon’s mouth without a tremor in battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor. Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a fellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. We all have tender spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not study his weaknesses.

“Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. This combination Washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish rashness, and in his passion no injustice. Besides, whatever violence there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. He never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in ‘ruling his spirit’ showed himself greater than in ‘taking a city.’

“It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,–amid the distracted counsels and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,–he never once lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. The contagion of fear and doubt and despair could not touch him. He did not seem susceptible to the common influences which affect men. His soul poised on its own centre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for seven years on his noble breast. The ingratitude and folly of those who should have been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortune never provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error.”

Horace Mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future, with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to the vision of youth. Then is he summoned to make his choice between truth and treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity and profligacy; between moral life and moral death. And as he doubts or balances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles to rise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of God a spectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? Within him are the appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall the beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious of the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill his immortal desires? Because he has a few animal wants that must be supplied, shall he become all animal,–an epicure and an inebriate,–and blasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism,–“the Chief End of Man?”–to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? Because it is the law of self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law of religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he, therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race, forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers?

The strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strict discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots of his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with his character. He is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport of impulse. He is the commander of himself and heads his ship due north even in the wildest tempests of passion. He is never the slave of his strongest desire.

A noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are as teachable as Latin and Greek, while they are infinitely more essential to happiness. We are very largely the creatures of our wills. By constantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everything hopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day toward all that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen to the discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directing the thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon form habits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious and well-rounded life. We are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws of its formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habit about us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish and degrading things of life. In fact, the only real happiness and unalloyed satisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. It is the great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them is safe. It is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, to admit friends and exclude enemies.

“I call that mind free,” says Channing, “which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man’s, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free which through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.”

CHAPTER XVII.

STICK.

Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue,_par excellence_, of Man against Destiny, of the One againstthe World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this isthe courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a socialview–its importance to races and institutions–cannot be tooearnestly inculcated.–BULWER.

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out ofcountenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.–JEREMY COLLIER.

To bear is to conquer fate.–CAMPBELL.

The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, thethought that never wanders,–these are the masters of victory.–BURKE.

Let us, then, be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.–LONGFELLOW.

“How long did it take you to learn to play?” asked a young man of Geradini. “Twelve hours a day for twenty years,” replied the great violinist. Layman Beecher’s father, when asked how long it took him to write his celebrated sermon on the “Government of God,” replied, “About forty years.”

“If you will study a year I will teach you to sing well,” said an Italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped for with study; “if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in Italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet.”

Perceiving that Caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, a teacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge, provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course of instruction given. The first year the master gave nothing but the scales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. The second year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditions of the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to a change from such monotonous drill. The fifth year the teacher introduced chromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when Caffarelli looked for something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: “Go, my son, I can teach you nothing more. You are the first singer of Italy and of the world.” The _mastery_ of scales and diatonics gave him power to sing anything.

“Keep at the helm,” said President Porter; “steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Strike out. Assume your own position. Put potatoes in a cart, over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom.”

“Never depend upon your genius,” said John Ruskin, in the words of Joshua Reynolds; “if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you have none, industry will supply the deficiency.”

“The only merit to which I lay claim,” said Hugh Miller, “is that of patient research–a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself.”

Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say: “White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs, but he must know how to use them.” It took fifty years of constant, hard practice to bring him to his full mastery.

“How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!” exclaims Carlyle. “Not a difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us.”

Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything great. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannot disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. He will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his nature. He could almost as easily stop breathing.

It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man. Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man who persists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no keeping him down. “Does he keep at it, is he persistent?” is the question which the world asks of a man.

Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail.

“How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it,” said Dickens. “I will only add to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success.”

“I am sorry to say that I don’t think this is in your line,” said Woodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in Parliament. “You had better have stuck to your former pursuits.” With head on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, “It is in me, and it shall come out of me.” From the same man came that harangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the best speech ever made in the House of Commons.

“The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first,” said William Wirt, “will do neither.” The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend–who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.

Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years incessantly on his “Analogy,” and even then was so dissatisfied that he wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. Virgil worked eleven years on the Æneid. The note-books of great men like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was twenty-five years writing his “Esprit de Louis,” yet you can read it in sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his “Wealth of Nations.” A rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. “But your five hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three lines will live forever,” replied Euripides.

Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted twice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means and extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the world.

Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers and all but one refused it. Addison’s first play, Rosamond, was hissed off the stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of stern stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it did.

David Livingstone said: “Those who have never carried a book through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I would rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another book.”

“For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone,” says Robert Dale Owen, “I examined more than a hundred and fifty volumes.”

Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his book as many as fifty times.

It is said of one of Longfellow’s poems that it was written in four weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down. Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as many as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson’s pieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his “Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;” Gibbon on his “Decline and Fall,” twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his “Commentary,” twenty-six years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his “Frederick the Great.”

A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are prepared. George Eliot read 1000 books before she wrote “Daniel Deronda.” Allison read 2000 before he completed his history. It is said of another that he read 20,000 and wrote only two books.

Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed in two columns of an ordinary newspaper.

“Generally speaking,” said Sydney Smith, “the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility,–overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men,–thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind.”

Malibran said: “If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all the world knows my failure.” Constant, persistent struggle she found to be the price of her marvelous power.

“If I am building a mountain,” said Confucius, “and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed.”

“Young gentlemen,” said Francis Wayland, “remember that nothing can stand day’s work.”

America will never produce any great art until our resources are developed and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned the art of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artist spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting as did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Think of an American sculptor spending years and years upon a single masterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned the secret of working and waiting.

“The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil,” said the great David Wilkie, “was persevering industry.”

The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his ambition or desire.

“The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an ordinary advertisement,” says a French writer. “The second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion he purchases.”

The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not remuneration for the few minutes’ labor of giving advice, but for the mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client will frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a hundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books, but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care, there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned.

We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt’s plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation; tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning’s speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities.

“Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art,” said Reynolds, “must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed.”

“If you work hard two weeks without selling a book,” wrote a publisher to an agent, “you will make a success of it.”

“Know thy work and do it,” said Carlyle; “and work at it like a Hercules. One monster there is in the world–an idle man.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

SAVE.

If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether naturemade him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollarsand see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer andcommand, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use itas opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he willimmediately begin to spend it in gratifying his rulingpropensity.–PARTON.

The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay,Provides a home from which to run away.–YOUNG.

Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thoushalt sell thy necessaries.

For age and want save while you may:No morning sun lasts a whole day.–FRANKLIN.

Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, neverspeculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may needas a provision against the workhouse.–BULWER.

“What do you do with all these books?” “Oh, that library is my ‘one cigar a day,'” was the response. “What do you mean?” “Mean! Just this: when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I’d just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that others would have spent in smoke, and I thought I’d try and do the same. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day.” “Yes.” “Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-cent cigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books–the books you see there.” “Do you mean to say that those books cost no more than that? Why there are dollars’ worth of them.” “Yes, I know there are. I had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me to ‘be a man.’ I put by the money I have told you of, which of course at five cents a day amounted to $18.25 a year or $109.50 in six years. I keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship cigar-money; and if you’d done as I did, you would by this time have saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides.”

If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving of one dollar a week from the date of one’s majority would give him one thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life. “What maintains one vice would bring up two children.”

Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race? Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a young man who should follow Franklin’s example.

Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when President of the United States. He understood that without economy none can be rich, and with it none need be poor.

Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and errors.

Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of living beyond one’s means.

“We are ruined,” says Colton, “not by what we really want, but by what we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy.”

“I hope that there will not be another sale,” exclaimed Horace Walpole, “for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left.” A woman once bought an old door-plate with “Thompson” on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don’t need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. “Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths.”

Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get chairs “to match,” then sideboards, carpets, and tables, “to correspond” with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned for the furniture, and a new one was built “to correspond” with the sofa and _et ceteras_: “thus,” added my friend, “running up an outlay of $30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a fine ‘establishment’ a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity.”

Cicero said: “Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue.” Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. “Here’s something wonderfully cheap; let’s buy it.” “Have you any use for it?” “No, not at present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time.”

“Annual income,” says Macawber, “twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen six, result–happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result–misery.”

“Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable,” says Horace Greeley; “but debt is infinitely worse than them all.”

“If I had but fifty cents a week to live on,” said Greeley, “I’d buy a peck of corn and parch it before I’d owe any man a dollar.”

To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that which will contribute most to their enrichment.

Economizing “in spots” or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be done by management.

Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much of the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and heroes.

Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus increasing his pennies to dollars.

The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, “Mr. Speaker, I have found it.” And then, in the stillness which followed this strange outburst, he added, “I have found the Philosopher’s stone: it is _Pay as you go_.”

In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for that day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of 1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United States, remarks, pathetically, that here, “where the markets rival the best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live. There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal.”

There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress’ bill, and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions. _Punch_, in speaking of this “one idea” class of people, says, “They are like a man who bought a penny herring for his family’s dinner, and then hired a coach and four to take it home.” I never knew a man to succeed by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on plainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.

“I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold,” says Rev. William Marsh, “the one word, savings bank.”

Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of the palaces on Beacon street.

“Nature uses a grinding economy,” says Emerson, “working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow’s creation; not a superfluous grain of sand for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her general stock. Last summer’s flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces, that the parts may be used again for other creations.”

“So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them,” says Bulwer. “With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man’s help; I may at least have ‘my crust of bread and liberty.’ But with £5000 a year I may dread a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with £5000 a year I purchase the worst evils of poverty–terror and shame; I may so well manage my money, that with £100 a year I purchase the best blessings of wealth: safety and respect.”

CHAPTER XIX.

LIVE UPWARD.

“Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,And this thy last deed ere the judgment day.”

If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.–PUBLIUS SYRUS.

What is a man,If his chief good, and market of his time,Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.Sure He, that made us with such large discourse,Looking before, and after, gave us notThat capability and godlike ReasonTo rust in us unused.–SHAKESPEARE.

Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. Itis heaven’s own incentive to make purpose great and achievementgreater.–ANONYMOUS.

“Not failure, but low aim, is crime.”

“Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever itmay be; neither let anyone go before thee in welldoing.”

O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude, in scornFor miserable aims that end with self,In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,And with their mild persistence urge man’s searchTo vaster issues.–GEORGE ELIOT.

“Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires,” said Napoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; “but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ is the death of a God.”

“No true man can live a half life,” says Phillips Brooks, “when he has genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher half, must haunt him.”

“Ideality,” says Horace Mann, “is only the _avant courier_ of the mind; and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow.”

“If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon,” writes Bulwer, “what stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?–who has not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?–who has braved the present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his hopes?”

“If I live,” wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, “all blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business.”

I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the fact.

“Show me a contented slave,” says Burke, “and I will show you a degraded man.”

“They truly are faithful,” says one writer, “who devote their entire lives to amendment.”

General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: “I believe that the labor expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United States, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities.”

“The real benefactors of mankind,” says Emerson, “are the men and women who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money, who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on being’s banquet.”

“Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves,” said Beecher, “as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right method of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher than we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and not upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the command to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity, but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone which they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface, they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the whole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that he is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well in his present place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower.”

Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare too much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don’t waste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.

Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vase from the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. A dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon refused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they were refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at last the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that the contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, our faith, our ambition, our aspiration.

A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us with aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Live upward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life’s mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and have their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its own fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, no farce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of duties than the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning which we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm of disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glory will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain, power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere mockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uproot selfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near a vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.

Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless, lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love brings out the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what magic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is entirely transformed.

Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint. He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even kingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled many a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation, aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the life in its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what your hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reach higher than does the heart.

But do not strive to reach impossible goals. It is wholly in your power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a king. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers of England are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if a thousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? While such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot hope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to their capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope to become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwin was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his life to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He said that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such things.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You _must_ take it. The only choice is _how_.

“When I found I was black,” said Dumas, “I resolved to live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin.”

In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves of which are the skeleton stanzas of “Excelsior,” which he was evidently evolving as he trudged from house to house.

“Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth,” said Plato, “I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can; and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost of my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm, surpasses all contests here.”

“Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?” asked Thoreau. “If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,–that it was a vain endeavor?”

“O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever,” exclaimed Phillips Brooks, “what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills.”

Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enough now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We must habitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heights to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don’t let the maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of your high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by step up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Though we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing, and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed, if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the ladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. A high standard is absolutely necessary.

CHAPTER XX.

“SAND.”

I shall show the cinders of my spiritsThrough the ashes of my chance.–SHAKESPEARE.

Perseverance is a virtueThat wins each god-like act, and plucks successE’en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.–WILLIAM HARVARD.

Never say “Fail” again.–RICHELIEU.

It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows theblood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the “beefinessof the fellow,” as Oxford men say; it is the one march morethat wins the campaign; the five minutes’ more persistentcourage that wins the fight. Though your force be less thananother’s, you equal and out-master your opponent if youcontinue it longer and concentrate it more.–SMILES.

“I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereignmind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes ofcompanions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates nojot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives atits port.”

“Well done, Tommy Brooks!” exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad failure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize.

“And now tell me,” said she, “how you learned the poem so well.”

“Please, ma’am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do it,” said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher said: “You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things as snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?”

“I saw it crawl up the wall little by little,” replied the boy. “It did not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would do the same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did not give up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I had learned the whole poem.”

“I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck,” said Addison. “There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with a good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a-fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. Another with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at everything but his own business. Another who steadily followed his trade, as steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest and constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment,–he lacked discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations, by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. A man never has good luck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. But when I see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in the forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck,–for the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler.”

“You have a difficult subject,” said Anthony Trollope at Niagara Falls, to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. “All subjects are difficult,” was the reply, “to a man who desires to do well.” “But yours, I fear, is impossible,” said Trollope. “You have no right to say so till I have finished my picture,” protested the artist.

“Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a writer.” When her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a story sent to James T. Fields, editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, with the above message, Miss Alcott said, “Tell him I _will_ succeed as a writer, and some day I shall write for the _Atlantic_.” Not long after she sent an article to the _Atlantic_ and received a check for $50. With the money she said she bought “a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself.” Her father was calling upon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the _Atlantic_, and said, “I want to read to you Emerson’s fine poem upon Thoreau’s flute.” Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, “My daughter Louisa wrote that.”

“Men talk as if victory were something fortunate,” says Emerson. “_Work is victory._ Wherever work is done victory is obtained. _There is no chance and no blanks._ You want but one verdict; if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. But if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near.”

“Young gentlemen,” said Francis Wayland, “remember that nothing can stand day’s work.”

Alexander the Great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a long campaign, “Go home and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer the world alone.”

“We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons,” said the cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawn by Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London. “Private persons!” exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier’s remark; “I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are.” Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such a trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the balance, as he said “the law gave him the right to do,” put them into a little canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth, thousandth note. When a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting, and proceeded to fill another. In seven hours he had changed £21,000, and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the tellers so busily in changing $1,050,000 worth of notes that no one else could receive attention. The bankers laughed, but the next morning Rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry away the gold, remarking, “These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I have sworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notify them that I have enough to employ them for two months.” The smiles faded from the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of $55,000,000 in gold which they did not hold. Next morning notice was given in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild’s bills as well as its own.

“Well,” said Barnum to a friend in 1841, “I am going to buy the American Museum.” “Buy it!” exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the showman had not a dollar; “what do you intend buying it with?” “Brass,” was the prompt reply, “for silver and gold have I none.”

Every one interested in public entertainments in New York knew Barnum, and knew the condition of his pocket; but Francis Olmstead, who owned the Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of “a good showman, who would do as he agreed,” and accepted a proposition to give security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint a money-taker at the door, and credit Barnum toward the purchase with all above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support his wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to the arrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses to a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmstead happened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found Barnum eating for dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. “Is this the way you eat your dinner?” he asked.

“I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the Sabbath; and I intend never to eat another until I get out of debt.” “Ah! you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,” said Mr. Olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder. He was right, for in less than a year Barnum had paid every cent out of the profits of the establishment.

A noted philosopher said: “The favors of fortune are like steep rocks; only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit.” Lord Campbell, who became Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England and amassed a large fortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. A little observation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most in the world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the men who are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone and stamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can always be relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, of ordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. But with persistent and untiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens and reap the prizes of life. It is the men and women who keep everlastingly at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they ever accomplish anything great, they must do it by common drudgery and persistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. Those who believe themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thus fritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything in proportion to their high promise. Often the men who promise the most pay the least.

Mrs. Frank Leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless attic while striving to pay her husband’s obligations. She has fought her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire debt. She manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. She has developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed.

A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. “Oh, by getting up every time I fell down,” he replied.

The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress.

“It is all very well,” said Charles J. Fox, “to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial.”

It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told. All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had yielded to the mutiny. It was all in those three days. But what days!

“Often defeated in battle,” said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, “he was always successful in war.” He might have said the same of Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs of any kind.

One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again and again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.

Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. He earned corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint of milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. He worked his way through Wesleyan University, and took a three years’ post-graduate course at Yale.

Oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! This it was that enabled Franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office with a book in his hand. It helped Locke to live on bread and water in a Dutch garret. It enabled Gideon Lee to go barefoot in the snow, half starved and thinly clad. It sustained Lincoln and Garfield on their hard journeys from the log cabin to the White House.

The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. It often cowes enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one’s undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer,” said Harriet Beecher Stowe, “never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.”

“Never despair,” says Burke, “but if you do, work on in despair.”

Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees which were smiting together, he said, “You may well shake; you would shake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you.”

“Go it, William!” an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in the midst of a fight; “at him again!–never say ‘die’!”

A striking incident is related of the early experience of George Law, who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers and capitalists of New York City. When he was a young man he went to New York, poor and friendless. One day he was walking along the streets, hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed a new building in course of erection. Through some accident one of the hod carriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. Young Law, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man’s place, and the place was given him. He went to work, and this was how one of the wealthiest and shrewdest New York business men got his start.

See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the House of Commons, he simply says, “The time will come when you will hear me.” The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.

If impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have been found somewhere between the birth and the death of Kitto, that deaf pauper and master of Oriental learning. But Kitto did not find them there. In the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted away. Kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if he had to subsist like the Hottentots. He told him that he would sell his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise about twelve shillings. He said he could live upon blackberries, nuts and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. Here was real grit. What were impossibilities to such a resolute will? Patrick Henry voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the Revolution when he said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Look at Garrison reading this advertisement in a Southern paper: “Five thousand dollars will be paid for the head of W. L. Garrison by the Governor of Georgia.” Behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him through the streets of Boston by a rope. He is hurried to jail. See him return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at which he was interrupted. Note this heading in the _Liberator_, the type of which he set himself in an attic on State Street, in Boston: “I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” Was Garrison heard? Ask a race set free largely by his efforts. Even the gallows erected in front of his own door did not daunt him. He held the ear of an unwilling world with that burning word “freedom,” which was destined never to cease its vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave.

At a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled from an open-air platform. “You had better run, Stephen,” said she; “they are coming.” “But who will take care of you?” asked Foster. “This gentleman will take care of me,” she replied, calmly laying her hand within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon the platform. “Wh–what did you say?” stammered the astonished rowdy, as he looked at the little woman; “yes, I’ll take care of you, and no one shall touch a hair of your head.” With this he forced a way for her through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so effective that the audience offered no further violence, and even took up a collection of twenty dollars to repay Mr. Foster for the damage his clothes had received when the riot was at its height.

“Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up,” says Cobden; “labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor turns out at six o’clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on chance; labor, on character.”

There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are looking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struck by lightning as by accidental luck. There is, perhaps, an element of luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men; but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved. Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. Two pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy. One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But let both persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will be found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and industry.

Lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: “Oh, there is no alternative but to keep pegging away.”

“It is in me and it shall come out,” said Sheridan, when told that he would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in Parliament. He became known as one of the foremost orators of his day.

It takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope even of victory. To contest every inch of ground with as much persistency and enthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage.

The world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his fate; who dies, if need be, at his post.

President Chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned.

Henry Fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest Postmaster-General England ever had.

Prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of America’s greatest historians. Francis Parkman put grit in place of health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in his line. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears, hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed, most of the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck. You cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. He will make stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to success.

Grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have no chance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence and real grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fight their way to their own loaf. Mr. Mifflin, who has recently become the head of the celebrated publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., is a notable example of persistency, push and grit. After graduating at Harvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged to work for a living, to get a position at the Riverside Press in Cambridge. He called upon the late Mr. Houghton and asked him for a situation. Mr. Houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, even if he had, he did not believe that a graduate from Harvard who had money and who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottom and do the necessary drudgery, for boy’s pay. Mr. Mifflin protested that he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to do anything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn the business. But Mr. Houghton would not give him any encouragement. Again and again Mr. Mifflin came to the Riverside Press, and pressed his suit, but to no purpose. Mr. Mifflin persuaded his father to intercede for him, but Mr. Houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be very unwise for his son to attempt it. But young Mifflin was determined not to give up. Finally, Mr. Houghton, out of admiration for his persistence and pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for $5 a week.

Young Mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed so much pluck and determination, that Mr. Houghton soon called him into the office and raised his pay to $9 a week from the time he began. Although the young man lived in Boston, he was always at the Riverside Press in Cambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after all the others had gone. Mr. Houghton happened to go in late one night, after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find Mr. Mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. Of course such a young man would be advanced. These are the boys who become the heads of firms.

It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with the traveler, that secures what all so much desire–SUCCESS.

Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Only once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of yourself; others will think better of you. The world in its very heart admires the stern, determined doer.

CHAPTER XXI.

ABOVE RUBIES.

The best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor isby allopathic doses of Peter-Cooperism.–TALMAGE.

In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is neversurmounted, love is never outgrown.–EMERSON.

“One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs.”

Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids:Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.–YOUNG.

He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for thewhole world.–LUCAN.

Wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him.–AFRICAN PROVERB.

The spirit of a single mindMakes that of multitudes take one direction,As roll the waters to the breathing wind.–BYRON.

“No, say what you have to say in her presence, too,” said King Cleomenes of Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away his little daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo sat at her father’s feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, “Papa, come away–come, or this strange man will make you do wrong.” The king went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood, Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought a tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closest scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as a jest. “Let me take it,” said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it all over, she exclaimed, “There must be some writing underneath the wax!” They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from the Grecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host to conquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kings assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which is said to have shaken the earth as it marched.

“I fear John Knox’s prayers more than an army of ten thousand men,” said Mary, Queen of Scotland.

“The man behind the sermon,” said William M. Evarts, “is the secret of John Hall’s power.” In fact if there is not a man with a character behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence.

Thackeray says, “Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men’s faces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trusting such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a ‘promise to pay’ in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another man’s indorsement.” _Character is credit._

In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various bank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank said: “We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening, $470,000.” While other banks were badly “run,” the confidence in the City Bank under Mr. Taylor’s management was such that people had deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks. Character gives confidence.

“There is no such thing as a small country,” said Victor Hugo. “The greatness of a people is no more affected by the number of its inhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by his height.”

“It is the nature of party in England,” said John Russell, “to ask the assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of character.”

“A handful of good life,” says George Herbert, “is worth a bushel of learning.”

“I have read,” Emerson says, “that they who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said.” It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter’s genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch’s heroes do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in the narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that which we call character,–a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. What others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishes by some magnetism. “Half his strength he puts not forth.” His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. “O Iole! how didst thou know that Hercules was a god?” “Because,” answered Iole, “I was content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horses in the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did.”

“Show me,” said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, “the sword with which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels.” “Ah,” replied Amru, “the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor heavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet.” So one hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value.

“No man throws away his vote,” says Francis Willard, “when he places it in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which elected Lincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutions never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of to-morrow.”

“O sir, we are beaten,” exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan’s army, retreating before the victorious Early. “No, sir,” replied the indignant Sheridan; “you are beaten, but this army is not beaten.” Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a command to charge once more. The lines paused, turned,–

“And with the ocean’s mighty swing,When heaving to the tempest’s wing,They hurled them on the foe;”

and the Confederate army was wildly routed.

When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote to George Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon: “We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be more efficacy in it than in many an army.” Character is power.

When Pope Paul IV. heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with a sigh, “Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in–riches? No! Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin! With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of both worlds.”

Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii, a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The child had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones–a short distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors and fell dead. After the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hot water fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. Those who ran out of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed, while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise, but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell upon them. The Pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of her house when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the child in her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by the sulphur, she fell forward, at which moment the shower of ashes began to fall, and quickly buried mother and child. The hot water afterward changed into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to such a degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. A short time ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquid plaster-of-Paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, and then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus one touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. _The arms and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could only result from illness._ Of the mother only the right arm was preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her body was consumed. _But the right hand still clasped the legs of the child_; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were two gold rings–one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. This touching illustration of _a mother’s love_ now rests in the museum of the celebrated city.

“I was sitting with Grant once,” says General Fisk, “when a major-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said: ‘Boys, I have a good story to tell you. I believe there are no ladies present.’ Grant said, ‘No, but there are gentlemen present.'”

Mr. George W. Childs, in referring to this trait, said:

“Another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. I never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not be repeated in the presence of women.”

The writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer to impure stories. On one occasion, when Grant formed one of a dinner-party of American gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted into references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said, “Gentlemen, please excuse me; I will retire.”

When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man, and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him.

Wellington said that Napoleon’s presence in the French army was equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and Richter said of the invincible Luther, “His words were half battles.”

“I know no great men,” says Voltaire, “except those who have rendered great services to the human race.” Men are measured by what they do; not by what they seem or possess.

Francis Horner, of England, was a man of whom Sydney Smith said, that “the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead.” The valuable and peculiar light in which Horner’s history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight, possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired, beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous sixpence. By office? He held but one; and that for only a few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merely by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the competition and jealousies of public life.

A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make whether you did what was right or what was wrong?

At a large dinner-party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War, it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When the papers were opened everyone of them contained the name of Florence Nightingale.

Professor Blackie, of the University of Edinburgh, said to a class of young men: “Money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense, we certainly must be damned.” It has been said that “when poverty is your inheritance, virtue must be your capital.”

“Hence it was,” said Franklin, speaking of the influence of his known integrity of character, “that I had so much weight with my fellow-citizens. I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my point.”

When a man’s character is gone, all is gone. All peace of mind, all complacency in himself is fled forever. He despises himself. He is despised by his fellow-men. Within is shame and remorse; without neglect and reproach. He is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is so even though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. It is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced to beggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetual slavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and the evils of a conscious worthlessness of character.

The time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it will be esteemed more honorable to have been John Pounds, putting new and beautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while he mended his father’s shoes, than to have sat upon the British throne. The time now is when, if Queen Victoria, in one of her magnificent progresses through her realms, were to meet that more than American queen, Miss Dix, in her “circumnavigation of charity” among the insane, the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the ruler over more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to the angel whom God has sent to the maniac.

“At your age,” said to a youth an old man who had honorably held many positions of trust and responsibility, “both position and wealth appear enduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts but character.”

Several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-made men. They each admitted that they belonged to that class, except a certain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in the repast. The host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him, said: “All at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is an exception.” The bishop promptly replied, “I am not made yet,” and the reply contained a profound truth. So long as life lasts, with its discipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so long our characters are being shaped and fixed.

Milton said: “He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life an heroic poem.” We are responsible for our thoughts, and unless we could command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible.

Charles Kingsley has well said: “Let any one set his heart to do what is right and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhaps even with the print of the martyr’s crown of thorns.”

Said James Martineau: “God insists on having a concurrence between our practice and our thoughts. If we proceed to make a contradiction between them, He forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not rise to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will.”

“When I say, in conducting your understanding,” says Sidney Smith, “love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life–what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you–which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world–that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud?”

The Arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont, the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned his three sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them three urns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and the third of clay. The king bade the eldest of his sons choose among the urns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatest price. The eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word “Empire.” He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose the amber vase whereon was written the word “Glory.” He opened it and found it contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in the world. The third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; he found it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word “God.” “Which of these vases weighs the most?” asked the king of the courtiers. The men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; the poets and conquerors, the amber one; the sages that it was the empty vase, because a single letter of the name God weighs more than the entire globe. We are of the opinion of the sages. We believe the greatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity they contain.

“Although genius always commands admiration,” says Smiles, “character most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect, as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired, the latter are followed.

“Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one’s duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day existence. The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best and last the longest. We can always better understand and appreciate a man’s real character by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those who are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman. Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence of character.

“On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood.

“Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest in it–though they may not become rich in this world’s goods–will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. Without principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to drift hither and thither with every wind that blows.”

What a contrast is afforded by the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon sought office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in the mammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for which he sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of the worthless; covered with shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity, of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men was adviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort of majesty when morally compared with the official director of his conscience. Both More and Bacon served each a great purpose for the world. More illustrated the beauty of holiness; Bacon expounded the infinitude of science. Bacon became the prophet of intellect; More, the martyr of conscience. The one pours over our understandings the light of knowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue.

All have read of the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossal staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king’s legs are as short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince’s ability to enjoy the pleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper.

“All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius, beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. The richest man on earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like Milton, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all the physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep which the tired laborer gets without price. Let no man, then, call himself a proprietor. He owns but the breath as it traverses his lips and the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may be deprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs to another.”

“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths:In feelings, not in figures on a dial.We should count time by heart-throbs. He most livesWho thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best;And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest.”

CHAPTER XXII.

MORAL SUNSHINE.

I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwisevery well.–SIDNEY SMITH.

The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.–WHIPPLE.

This one sits shivering in fortune’s smile,Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath;This other, gnawed by hunger, all the whileLaughs in the teeth of death.–T. B. ALDRICH.

There is no real life but cheerful life.–ADDISON.

Next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can leastspare.–AGNES STRICKLAND.

Joy in one’s work is the consummate tool.–PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Joy is the mainspring in the wholeOf endless Natures calm rotation.Joy moves the dazzling wheels that rollIn the great timepiece of Creation.–SCHILLER.

“He is as stiff as a poker,” said a friend of a man who could never be coaxed or tempted to smile. “Stiff as a poker,” exclaimed another, “why he would set an example to a poker.”

Even Christians are not celebrated for entering into the _joy_ of their Lord.

We are told that “Pascal would not permit himself to be conscious of the relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, however much he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because he forced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount of aliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at the time, or his utter want of appetite. He wore a girdle armed with iron spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshless ribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. He was annoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that they had just seen a beautiful woman. He rebuked a mother who permitted her own children to give her their kisses. Toward a loving sister, who devoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness of manner for the _express purpose_, as he acknowledged, of revolting her sisterly affection.”

And all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment was inconsistent with religion.

We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents the free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stops the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body. Scrofula and consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. That “fatal murmur” which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the first stages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some great misfortune or sorrow. Victims of suicide are almost always in a depressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy, dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief.

“Mirth is God’s medicine,” says a wise writer; “everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety–all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.” It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel anything but a pleasant rocking motion.

“I have told you,” said Southey, “of the Spaniard who always put on spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might look larger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my enjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, I pack them in as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.” We all know the power of good cheer to magnify everything.

Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and desolation of almost perpetual winter, that “Iceland is the best land the sun shines upon.”

“You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?” was asked of an old man. “No,” was the reply, “I am on the sunny side; for I am on the side nearest to glory.”

A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.

“Bishop Fénelon is a delicious man,” said Lord Peterborough; “I had to run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian.”

Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than–“To be happy, the person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty.”

Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.

“We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of being pleasant.”

“If a word or two will render a man happy,” said a Frenchman, “he must be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another man’s candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.”

The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one who will of all things meet life’s experiences with a sweet temper. It is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why it must be due to her or his total depravity.

Some things she should not do; she shouldn’t dose herself, or study up her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is a safe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with–moderation in study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good, simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The average girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of the lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest, and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp with younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves.

“It is not work that kills men,” says Beecher; “it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.”

Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets–that is, makes more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it is hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment, ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in discomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simply astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a sharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be always hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty, harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. But even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner they will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road.

About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and that which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten of your neighbor’s.

It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces.

“Every man we meet looks as if he’d gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty of it on hand,” said a French lady driving in New York.

The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come; then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year, etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day’s work at a time. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the trouble in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes.

“As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends primarily on cheerfulness,” says E. P. Whipple, “and as every duty, whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art.”

Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away from temptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomy theology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrines are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the fields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy, romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day.

Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and Latimer walks with a face shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow’s spirits, and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes.

“Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches,” said Emerson, “and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.”

In answer to the question, “How shall we overcome temptation,” a noted writer said, “Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the second, and cheerfulness is the third.” A habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner with grace.

We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold, more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance fills the air with the odors of Paradise.

“It is from these enthusiastic fellows,” says an admirer, “that you hear–what they fully believe, bless them!–that all countries are beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high, all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his country trip, after a hard year’s work, he has always found the cosiest of nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views, and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. He has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he could not get his teeth through it.”

“He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory,” says Izaak Walton, “the fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and hear what they have seen.”

Of Lord Holland’s sunshiny face, Rogers said: “He always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen.”

But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!–oh, for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, which throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little things, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest Izaak Walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burst out into such grateful little talks as this: “Let us, as we walk home under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And that our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for it, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been free from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a new blessing.”

The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully, but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding woe. “Ah,” says he, “you will never succeed; these things always fail.”

The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the body of a victim, is melancholy.

The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death.

The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and the ill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is very observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the world for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which the Greeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and fasting does undoubtedly produce this.

“I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret,” said Addison. “He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection. ‘It gives lustre to the sun,’ said he, ‘and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single ray dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.’ Then I found his great secret was Content.”

My crown is in my heart, not on my head:Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.–SHAKESPEARE.

Yet, with a heart that’s ever kind,A gentle spirit gay,You’ve spring perennial in your mind,And round you make a May.–THACKERAY.

CHAPTER XXIII.

HOLD UP YOUR HEAD.

Thoroughly to believe in one’s own self, so one’s self werethorough, were to do great things.–TENNYSON.

If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith inone’s own power.–MARIE EBNER-ESCHENBACH.

Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest,the greatest quality of true manliness.–KOSSUTH.

It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trustthyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept theplace that divine Providence has found for you, the society ofyour contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men havealways done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but theintegrity of our own mind.–EMERSON.

This above all,–to thine own self be true;And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.–SHAKESPEARE.

“Yes,” said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young girl, “I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife is starving; but that doesn’t give you the right to come into my house without knocking to ask questions.”

Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that she always went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the door and liveried servants. “It gives me authority,” she said. “They listen to my words with more respect.”

The Fräulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken sailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. “I too,” she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came to her door, “I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christ died. We are brother and sister, and will help each other.”

An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums, applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave to sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque paupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on the ground that “a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded before the world.”

The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the intercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, who take up the work of “slumming,” intent upon elevating and reforming the needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings.

“But I am not derided,” said Diogenes, when some one told him he was derided. “Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are discomposed by it.”

Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the wolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him.

“O God, assist our side,” prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a general in the Prussian service, before going into battle. “At least, avoid assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me.”

“If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is,” said Schelling, “he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow.” A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them. “Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men,” said Kossuth; “but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness.” Froude wrote: “A tree must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be built.”

“I think he is a most extraordinary man,” said John J. Ingalls, speaking of Grover Cleveland. “While the Senate was in session to induct Hendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as he sat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of the vice-president’s stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed view of him.

“I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the democracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and I looked him over with a good deal of curiosity.

“There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his rule over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of Erie County, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had been mayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. The little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the Republican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected, and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of nearly 200,000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him for president and he was elected.

“There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit to Washington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutely nothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but a stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life.

“The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of American citizenship.

“But the most marvelous exhibition of the man’s nerve and of the absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After the proceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the east end of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between the buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him. In this position he stood until the applause which greeted him had subsided, when he began his address.

“I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I was amazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural address making him President of the United States as coolly and as unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the most remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld.”

Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you, but never when you do not believe in yourself.

“Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!” exclaimed a physician on finding the old anatomist at the dissecting table. “Yes, doctor, and you’ll find it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone.”

“Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years,” said Kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great success for half a century. “This makes me tremble for the Austrian monarchy after my death.”

“Isn’t it beautiful that I can sing so?” asked Jenny Lind, naïvely, of a friend.

“My Lord,” said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, “I am sure that I can save this country and that nobody else can.” He did save it.

What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his place in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his books or not. “I may well wait a century for a reader since God has waited six thousand years for an observer like myself.” “Fear not,” said Julius Cæsar to his pilot frightened in a storm, “thou bearest Cæsar and his good fortunes.”

When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one month the most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, and appointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, but respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, “One bad general is better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by tact.” This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms.

Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account published, remarking, “I had rather be the descendant of an honest man than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle of Montenotte.”

When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed that he should be recognized only as general, he said, “They cannot prevent me from being myself.”

An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of the age, adding, “I think Wellington.” To which the Emperor replied, “He has not yet measured himself against me.”

“Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market,” said Washington Irving; “but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.”

“Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears.”

“You may deceive all the people some of the time,” said Lincoln, “some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.” We cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?

“Self-reliance is a grand element of character,” says Michael Reynolds. “It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world’s memory.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

BOOKS AND SUCCESS.

Ignorance is the curse of God,Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.–SHAKESPEARE.

Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, theother perpetual.–SOCRATES.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take itaway from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the bestinterest.–FRANKLIN.

My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchangefor the treasures of India.–GIBBON.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid downat my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, Iwould spurn them all.–FÉNELON.

Who of us can tellWhat he had been, had Cadmus never taughtThe art that fixes into form the thought,–Had Plato never spoken from his cell,Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?–BULWER.

When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishesinto vapid civility and common-place, these only continue theunaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with thattrue friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.–WASHINGTON IRVING.

“Do you want to know,” asks Robert Collyer, “how I manage to talk to you in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature. There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopædia came along–the first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society with the greatest delight.

“There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: ‘I notice thou’s fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.’ It was Irving’s ‘Sketch Book.’ I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was ‘as them that dream.’ No such delight had touched me since the old days of Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming, mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink, and fought the devil with a finer fire.”

“In education,” says Herbert Spencer, “the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of self-made men.”

“My books,” said Thomas Hood, “kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon. The associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves.”

“When I get a little money,” said Erasmus, “I buy books, and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.”

“Hundreds of books read once,” says Robertson, “have passed as completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit.”

“This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you,” says Trollope, “is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there is no alloy.”

The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang and flourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone into oblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over and changed the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy. Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who catered to men’s depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. The Bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard.

“Read Plutarch,” said Emerson, “and the world is a proud place peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around us who will not let us sleep.”

“There is no business, no avocation whatever,” says Wyttenbach, “which will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time, every day, to the studies of his youth.”

“All the sport in the park,” said Lady Jane Grey, “is but a shadow of that pleasure I find in Plato.”

“In the lap of Eternity,” said Heinsius, “among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness.”

“Death itself divides not the wise,” says Bulwer. “Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phædo. May Homer live with all men forever!”

“When a man reads,” says President Porter, “he should put himself into the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes, in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book.”

“Reading is to the mind,” says Addison, “what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed.”

“There is a world of science necessary in choosing books,” said Bulwer. “I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.”

“When I served when a young man in India,” said a distinguished English soldier and diplomatist; “when it was the turning point in my life; when it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing, hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me.”

“Books,” says E. P. Whipple, “are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.”

“As a rule,” said Benjamin Disraeli, “the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”

“You get into society, in the widest sense,” says Geikie, “in a great library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride, but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility. You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority; for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one’s feelings by any discriminations.” Sir William Waller observed, “In my study, I am sure to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools.” “It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge,” says Webster, “that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests.”

“At this hour, five hundred years since their creation,” says De Quincey, “the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the modernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of Ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom.”

“There is no Past so long as Books shall live,” says Lytton.

“No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he might live and die among his books,” says Geikie. “No wonder Petrarch was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his desk. Buckle’s last words, ‘My poor book!’ tell a passion that forgot death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open or read, is altogether pathetic.”

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading,” says Mary Wortley Montagu; “nor any pleasure so lasting.” Good books elevate the character, purify the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading.

Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely, companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow.

“Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy,” said Rev. J. A. James, “a school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God on my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I received during those fifteen minutes.”

Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their words would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men’s lives in the nineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparison with the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on the American continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ, when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence He wields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touches all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other hand who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men buried long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible examples, live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then, is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being.

Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law’s hand upon the jewelry of our minds.

“Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never become too familiar,” says George W. Cable. “The friendship of trees is a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but a mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to be only its insensible depository.

“The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions are simply the vibrations of our soul.

“The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to believe a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful, and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is a playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a gymnasium also.”

Cotton Mather’s “Essay to do Good” read by the boy Franklin influenced the latter’s whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in hand and to make notes of all they read.

James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail. Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of “blood and thunder” stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other bloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous acts.

Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the influence of Marryat’s novels. Abbott’s “Life of Napoleon,” read at the age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was fourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying influence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prison in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring to many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said that he discovered that “all these boys, without exception, had been in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals” which were published for the alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. There is not a police court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be found. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused in this generation by the influence of bad books.

In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental fancy, the “Arabian Nights,” and he has told us with what mingled desire and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and enchantments.

Beecher said that Ruskin’s works taught him the secret of seeing, and that no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the world in the same way after reading him. Samuel Drew said, “Locke’s ‘Essay on the Understanding’ awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form a resolution to abandon the groveling views I had been accustomed to maintain.” An English tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation, said he should not have made it so good if he had not read Carlyle. The lives of Washington and Henry Clay, which Lincoln borrowed from neighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabin fire, inspired his life. In his early manhood he read Paine’s “Age of Reason,” and Volney’s “Ruins,” which so influenced his mind that he wrote an essay to prove the unreliability of the Bible. These two books nearly unbalanced his moral character. But, fortunately, the books which fell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. The trend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has been determined by a single book. The books which we read early in life are those which influence us most. When Garfield was working for a neighbor he read “Sinbad the Sailor” and the “Pirate’s Own Book.” These books revealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept him from going to sea. He was fascinated with the sea life which these books pictured to his young imagination. The “Voyages of Captain Cook” led William Carey to go on a mission to the heathen. “The Imitation of Christ” and Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying” determined the character of John Wesley. “Shakespeare and the Bible,” said John Sharp, “made me Archbishop of York.” The “Vicar of Wakefield” awakened the poetical genius in Goethe.

“I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo,” said Lowell. “I seem to go behind Shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand. Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faerie, and I am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine of a previous and long-agone experience.”

“Who gets more enjoyment out of eating,” asks Amos R. Wells, “the pampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads of sugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer, trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a long two miles with her father’s dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail? And who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiated fiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments of countless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the same old situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots–she or the girl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know all about the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about his friends, and then about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in which they all lived, then about the Socratic legacy to the ages? Why, will that girl ever be done with the feast? Can you not see, looking down on her joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, who has ordered all history and ordained that the truth He fashions shall be stranger always than the fiction man contrives? Take the word of a man who has made full trial of both. Solid reading is as much more interesting and attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative than frivolous living.”

“I solemnly declare,” said Sidney Smith, “that but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for the fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in the mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched! Upon something it must act and feed–upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life–what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you–which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world–that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, _and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud_?”

Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? Spurgeon and Beecher, Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker, Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their greatest efforts at a moment’s notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need a little recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across the Atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renowned Liverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; fly over to London, take a run through the British Museum and see the wonderful collection from all nations; go through the National Art Gallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take a run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit Oxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip to Paris, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep at one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo (which a rich and ignorant person offered to buy if they would give him a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand Opera House, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildings were demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elysée, pass under the triumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect the famous palace of Louis XIV., upon which he spent perhaps $100,000,000.

Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter the Parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, of Gladstone, of Bright, of O’Connor; they will admit me to the floor of the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a Demosthenes.

“No matter how poor I am,” says Channing; “no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom,–I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”

“With the dead there is no rivalry,” says Macaulay. “In the dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant; Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; no difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet.”

“Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life,” says Alexander H. Everett. “Reject it as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience.”

The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-reading disease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels they read, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they read for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their memory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectual food. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything but cheap, trashy, sensational novels.

The passive reception of other men’s thoughts is not education. Beware of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It is emasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined to go and do something and be something in the world.

The great difference between the American graduate and the graduates from the English universities is that the latter have not read many books superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has a smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same is largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of everything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and indifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading, “something to read” that will take up the attention, kill time on the railroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantial books, older books, books which have established their right to exist. They are not so eager for “recent publications.”

Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr. Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a notebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace books. We cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. It is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find for future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make our own whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons is an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habit of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many a strong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot too strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in the future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold advantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we call genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books.

How many poor boys and girls who thought they had “no chance” in life have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd, Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others.

You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the axe. Bacon says: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.”

CHAPTER XXV.

RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.–EPH. iv. I.

Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in anuncovetous spirit.–SELDEN.

Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is topossess it.–REYNOLDS.

Rich, from the very want of wealth,In heaven’s best treasures, peace and health.–GRAY.

Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in itsnature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more hewants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.–FRANKLIN.

There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity,piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takeswith him beyond death, when he leaves this world.–BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.

“It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is betterthan rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to becompared to it.”

“Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful,unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless,selfish life.”

I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, tofeel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feelthat I can do without his riches, that I cannot bebought–neither by comfort, neither by pride,–and although Ibe utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he isthe poor man beside me.–EMERSON.

“I don’t want such things,” said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; “and besides,” said the stoic, “you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you; mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied.”

“Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!” exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at a country fair.

“One would think,” said Boswell, “that the proprietor of all this (Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy.” “Nay, sir,” said Johnson, “all this excludes but one evil, poverty.”

“What property has he left behind him?” people ask when a man dies; but the angel who receives him asks, “What good deeds hast thou sent before thee?”

“What is the best thing to possess?” asked an ancient philosopher of his pupils. One answered, “Nothing is better than a good eye,”–a figurative expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, “A good companion is the best thing in the world;” a third chose a good neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: “A good heart is better than them all.” “True,” said the master; “thou hast comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and will easily see what is fit to be done by him.”

“My kingdom for a horse,” said Richard III. of England amid the press of Bosworth Field. “My kingdom for a moment,” said Queen Elizabeth on her death-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship of friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth and development here and of preparation for future life.

Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison, with her diamond ring: “Oh, keep me innocent; make others great.”

“These are my jewels,” said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from school. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wife of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its crop of men.

“I will take away thy treasures,” said a tyrant to a philosopher. “Nay, that thou canst not,” was the retort; “for, in the first place, I have none that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and my heart is there.”

Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are they are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry a perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. When we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or that they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extract honey from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes even gloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physician and more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They are welcome everywhere.

We make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe, faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestones dotting the way. Are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants of our little worlds? We should fill them with the true, the beautiful and the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating.

“Genius,” says Whipple, “may almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.” It is the men of talent who make money out of the work of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatest works have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond the reach of appreciation before appreciation came.

There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and thither, select the largest and ripest ear,–the value of the gift to be in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose. She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering, but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to the other side without having selected any.

A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart. He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest souls that ever went out of it.

Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his fellow lawyers called him “perversely honest.” Nothing could induce him to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred dollars, he returned the money, saying: “Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on.” “But you have earned that money,” said the lady. “No, no,” replied Lincoln, “that would not be right. I can’t take pay for doing my duty.”

Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts and the nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could stay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparative few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies of our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of rewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great men and women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal because they give time and thought to higher things.

King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy. His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsically far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.

The “beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy and barbarism of the world,” was richer far than Croesus and added more wealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds.

An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. “I shall never forget,” said he, “the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to be dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discovering that the bag contained pearls.”

It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark determines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr. Hunter said: “No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one.” Artists cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, the bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and tell the story of his life.

Who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a Lincoln, a Grant, a Florence Nightingale, a Childs; a millionaire of ideas with Emerson, with Lowell, with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth; a millionaire of statesmanship with a Gladstone, a Bright, a Sumner, a Washington?

Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. Some are rich in integrity and character.

“Who is the richest of men?” asked Socrates. “He who is content with the least, for contentment is nature’s riches.”

“Do you know, sir,” said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, “that I am worth a million sterling?” “Yes,” said the irritated but calm-spirited respondent, “I do; and I know that it is all you are worth.”

A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife, “My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the sheriff.” After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face and asked, “Will the sheriff sell you?” “Oh, no.” “Will the sheriff sell me?” “Oh, no.” “Then do not say we have lost everything. All that is most valuable remains to us–manhood, womanhood, childhood. We have lost but the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortune if our hearts and hands are left us.”

“We say a man is ‘made’,” said Beecher. “What do we mean? That he has got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to his higher feelings, giving force to his nature? That his affections are like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits? That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak to him, and bring him their delights? That his understanding is opened, so that he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its treasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that he holds sweet commerce with Heaven? O, no–none of these things. He is cold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive; but–he is worth five hundred thousand dollars!

“And we say a man is ‘ruined.’ Are his wife and children dead? O, no. Have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? O, no. Has he lost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? O, no; it is as sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost his property, and he is ruined. The _man_ ruined! When shall we learn that ‘a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth?'”

“How is it possible,” asks an ancient philosopher, “that a man who has nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?”

“You are a plebeian,” said a patrician to Cicero. “I am a plebeian,” replied the great Roman orator; “the nobility of my family begins with me, that of yours will end with you.” No man deserves to be crowned with honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no better for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he worships no god but gold.

Why should I scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion of this earth? This is my world now; why should I envy others its mere legal possession? It belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. I need not envy the so-called owners of estates in Boston and New York. They are merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition for me. For a few pennies for railroad fare whenever I wish I can see and possess the best of it all. It has cost me no effort, it gives me no care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns, the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for me whenever I feel a desire to look upon them. I do not wish to carry them home with me, for I could not give them half the care they now receive; besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and I should be worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. I have much of the wealth of the world now. It is all prepared for me without any pains on my part. All around me are working hard to get things that will please me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. The little I pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than it would cost to care for the least of all I use. Life and landscape are mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. What more do I want? All the ages have been working for me; all mankind are my servants. I am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task in this land of opportunity.

There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of money. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more families in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together. Instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. Almost every square foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period (some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined through the madness for treasure. Read the pages of our historian Prescott, and you will see that the whole anti-Puritan history of America resolves itself into an awful slaughter for gold. Discoveries were only side issues.

Speak, history, who are life’s victors? Unroll thy long scroll and say, have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother’s rights? And has he lost in life’s great race who stopped “to raise a fallen child, and place him on his feet again,” or to give a fainting comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost who halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Is there no one to sing the pæan of the conquered who fell in the battle of life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave them to see it?

“We have yet no man who has leaned _entirely_ on his character, and eaten angel’s food,” said Emerson; “who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for _universal aims_, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”

At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap literature. He believed that a paper might be instructive and not be dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the “Penny Magazine,” which acquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. Knight projected the “Penny Cyclopedia,” the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” “Half-Hours with the Best Authors,” and other useful works at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. He died in poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his ashes.

How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent! “Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”

“No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger,” says Beecher. “It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he _is_, not according to what he _has_.”

If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us miserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich.

Howe’er it be, it seems to me,‘Tis only noble to be good.Kind hearts are more than coronets,And simple faith than Norman blood.–TENNYSON.

Be noble! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.–LOWELL.

Toasts and Forms of Public Address

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Toasts and Forms of Public Address

TOASTS AND FORMS OF PUBLIC ADDRESS FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO SAY THE RIGHT THING IN THE RIGHT WAY

by William Pittenger

INTRODUCTION

The author of this manual has at various intervals prepared several treatises relating to the art of speech. Their wide circulation is an indication of the demand for works upon this subject. They were intended to embrace the principles which govern speech-making in the forum, in the pulpit, or at the bar. While these do not differ essentially from the principles applicable to occasions where the object is only entertainment, yet there are certain well-defined differences which it is the purpose of this little volume to point out. We hope thus to render the same service to a person who is called upon to offer or respond to a toast in a convivial assembly, as the author’s previous volumes rendered to those preparing to speak upon subjects of a serious and practical nature.

That help is needed, and may be afforded, no one will deny. A novice called upon to participate in the exercises of a public banquet, an anniversary, or other entertainment, unless he has an experienced friend to give him a few hints or advice, is apt to be dismayed. He does not even know how to make a start in the work of preparation, and his sense of inability and fear of blundering go far to confuse and paralyze whatever native faculty he may have. A book like this comes to him at such a time as reinforcements to a sorely pressed army in the very crisis of a battle. As he reads, some ideas which seem practical, flash upon him. He learns what others before him have done. If he is to offer a toast, he examines the list furnished in this volume, finding one perhaps that pleases him, or one is suggested which is better adapted to his purpose than any in the book, and he wonders at the stupidity of the author in omitting it. Soon he becomes quite interested in this suggested toast, and compares it with those in the list to find out wherein it differs. Thus gradually and unconsciously he has prepared himself for the part he is to perform.

Or if invited to respond to a toast, he passes through a similar experience. He may find the outline of a speech on that very topic; he either uses it as it is printed or makes an effort to improve it by abridgment or enlargement. Next he looks through the treasury of anecdotes, selects one, or calls to mind one he has read elsewhere which he considers better. He then studies both of them in their bearings on the subject upon which he is to speak, and longs for the hour to arrive, when he will surprise and delight his friends by his performance. He rises to speak conscious that he knows a great deal, not only about the toast assigned to him, but about other toasts as well–feels that he has something to say which, at least, will fill in the time, and save him from confusion and discredit. He even hopes to win applause by means of the stories and happy turns with which his speech is interspersed.

He has thus satisfactorily taken the first step toward becoming a ready and entertaining after-dinner speaker. The sense of knowing how to do what is expected of him has a wonderfully quieting effect upon his nerves; and thus the study of this book will greatly add to the confidence of a speaker, and the effectiveness of his delivery. Whatever graces of manner he possesses will become available, instead of being subverted by an overmastering fear.

It is not easy to mention all the uses of such a manual. One who has been accustomed to speaking, but fears he is getting into a rut, can turn to this text-book and find something which is _not_ so distressingly his own, that his friends expect him to parade it before them on all occasions.

He may glance over the outline of a speech altogether new and strange to him, and endeavor to adapt it to his own use; or he may weave together fragments of several speeches, or take the framework of one and construct upon it a speech which will enable him to make a new departure. A writer sometimes, after years of practice, finds it difficult to begin the composition of some simple reception or commemorative address; but the reading of a meagre outline, not one word or idea of which may be directly used, serves to break the spell of intellectual sloth or inertia, and starts him upon his work briskly and hopefully.

The field covered by the present volume is not entirely unoccupied. One of the earliest publications in this line is an anonymous English work, very dignified and conservative. The speeches it furnishes are painstaking, but a trifle heavy, and savor so much of English modes of expression, as well as thought and customs, as to be poorly adapted to this country. Two works have appeared in this country, also, one being intended apparently for wine parties only; the other, while containing a number of gem-like little speeches, fails to give the aid which is sought by the ordinary tyro, and is calculated rather to discourage him; giving him the impression that it is more difficult to become an acceptable after-dinner speaker than he had ever supposed. While a few of the best things in the latter volume are availed of, a different method is pursued in the present work. Outlines of speeches are preferred to those which are fully elaborated; and the few plain rules, by which a thing so informal and easy as an after-dinner speech may be produced, are so illustrated as to make their application almost a matter of course. Good-humor and brevity, an outline and a story–what more is needed, unless it be that serene self-confidence which enables a speaker to say even foolish and absurd things, with the assurance that all goes down at a public dinner? What if you are not the most brilliant, humorous, and stirring speaker of the evening? Aim to fill your place without discredit; observe closely those who make a great success; the next time you may have a better outline or more telling story, and become, before you know it, the leader of the evening.

It is not intended to give rules or directions for the order either of drinking or feasting. That field is fully occupied. But the custom of making addresses at the close of a feast has, been so thoroughly established, and so frequent are these occasions, that a gentleman is not fully equipped for a place in society, if he cannot gracefully offer or respond to a toast, or preside at a gathering where toasts or other forms of after-dinner speaking are expected. It is the aim of this manual to help the beginner in this field.

AFTER-DINNER SPEECHES–ANCIENT AND MODERN

An idea of the real meaning of after-dinner speaking may be obtained from the feudal feasts of earlier times. The old lord or baron of the Middle Ages partook of his principal meal in the great hall of his castle, surrounded by guests, each being assigned his place in formal order and with no small degree of ceremony. This hall was the main feature of the castle. There all the family and guests met on frequent festal occasions, and after the feasting and the hour of ceremony and more refined entertainment was over, retired to rest in comparatively small and humble apartments adjoining, though sometimes they would simply wrap their cloaks about them, and lie down to sleep on the rushes that littered the floor of the great hall.

After the “rage of hunger was appeased”–which then, as in our day, and back even as far as the time of the ancient Greeks, was the first business in order–came the social hour, which meant much to the dwellers in those dull, comfortless old barracks–for the great castles of that day were little better than barracks. The chief gave the signal for talk, music, or story, previous to which, any inquiries or conversation, other than the briefest question and answer about the food or other necessary things, would have been considered inappropriate and disrespectful. There probably was present some guest, who came under circumstances that awakened the strongest curiosity or who had a claim upon his entertainer. Such a guest was placed at the board in a position corresponding to his rank.

After resting and partaking of the repast, it was pertinent to hear what account he could give of himself, and courtesy permitted the host to levy an intellectual tax upon him, as a contribution to the joy of the hour. Seated at the head of the table the chief, or, in his absence, a representative, made the opening speech–the address of welcome, to use the term familiar to ourselves. This might be very brief or at considerable length; it might suggest inquiries of any of the company or merely pledge an attentive and courteous hearing to whatever the guest might utter; it might refer to the past glory of the castle and its lord, or vaunt its present greatness and active occupation.

But whatever form it might take it was sure to consist–as addresses of welcome in all ages have done–of two words, by dexterously using which, any man can make a good speech of this character. These two words are “We” and “You;” and all else not connected with these is irrelevant and useless. They do not constitute two parts of the same speech but ordinarily play back and forth, like a game of battledore. Who “we” are; what “we” have done; how “we” saw “you;” what “we” have heard of “you;” how great and good “you” are thought to be; the joy at “your” coming; what “we” now want to learn of “you;” what “we” wish “you” to do; how “we” desire a longer stay or regret the need of an early departure–all is a variation of the one theme–“we” and “you.”

The old Baron probably said all of this and much more in a lordly way, occupying a longer or shorter time, without ever dreaming that he was making a speech. It was his ordinary after-dinner talk to those whom chance or fortune brought within his walls. Or, if he prided himself upon being a man of few words, scorning these as fit only for women and minstrels, he would simply remind the guest that he was now at liberty to give such an account of himself, and to prefer such requests as seemed agreeable to him.

The guest was then expected to respond, though this by no means was the rule. The host might wish first to call out more of his own intellectual treasures. This he would do by having other occupants of the castle speak further words of welcome, or would call upon a minstrel to sing a song or relate some deed of chivalry.

When the guest at last rises to speak, it is still the two pronouns with slightly changed emphasis that play a conspicuous part. The “we” may become “I;” but this is no essential change. Where “I” or “we” have been; what “I” have done, suffered, or enjoyed; how and why “I” came here; how glad “I” am to be here; what “I” have known and heard of “you;” how “we” may help each other; what great enterprises “we” can enter upon; how thankful for the good cheer and good words “we” hear.

In the baronial hall, which foreshadowed the family fireside of later days, the drinking was free and copious whilst the other portions of the entertainment were of a general character and quite protracted. Mirth, song, the rude jest, anecdotes of the chase or of a battle, or a rehearsal of the experiences of every-day life, were all in place. Sometimes, the guests, overpowered by their libations, are said to have fallen under the table and to have slumbered there till surprised by the pale morning light. There was little need of ceremony in such feasts, and there is little need of formality or constraint in the far different festal occasions of the present time.

When no guest, either by chance or invitation came to the castle, less variety could be given to the after-dinner entertainment, and many expedients were required to pass the long hours that sometimes hung heavily on their hands. Then the use of “Toasts” became an important feature. The drinking also was expected to arouse interest, but if it went on in silence and gloom or amid the buzz of trivial conversation in different parts of the hall the unity of the hour was marred and the evening was voted dull–the lord himself then having no more honor than his meanest vassal. But the toast–no matter how it originated–remedied all this. A compliment and a proverb, a speech and a response, however rude, fixed the attention of every one at the table, and enabled the lord to retain the same leadership at the feast that he had won in the chase or in battle. He might himself propose a toast of his own choice or give another permission to propose it. He might then designate some humorous or entertaining clansman to respond; he might either stimulate or repress the zeal of the guests, and give unity to each part of the entertainment and to the whole feast. For these reasons the toast rose into popularity, and is now often used–possibly it might be said generally used if our own country alone be considered–even when no drinking at all is indulged in.

Let us now take a look at an after-dinner hour of the present day; one of the very latest and most approved pattern. The contrast will not be without interest and value. The fare at the dinner is always inviting. The company is large. Good speakers are secured in advance. Each is given an appropriate toast, either to propose or respond to. Suppose it is a New England society celebrating Forefathers’ Day in New York. The chairman (who is usually the president of the society) rises, and by touching a bell, rapping on the table, or in some other suitable manner, attracts all eyes to himself. He then asks the meeting to come to order, or if he prefers the form, to give attention. Then he utters a few graceful commonplaces, and calls upon a guest to offer the leading toast–not always the chief or most interesting one. When one is reached in which there is a lively interest, some distinguished person such as Chauncey M. Depew, the prince of after-dinner speakers, comes to the front. We give an outline of one of his addresses on Forefathers’ Day, delivered December 22d, 1882, in response to the toast, “The Half Moon and the Mayflower.”

In reading this address the “We” and “You” cannot fail to be noted. Mr. Depew said he did not know why he should be called upon to celebrate his conquerors. The Yankees had overcome the Dutch, and the two races are mingled. The speaker then introduced three fine stories–one at the expense of the Dutch who are slow in reaching their ends. A tenor singer at the church of a celebrated preacher said to Mr. Depew, “You must come again, the fact is the Doctor and myself were not at our best last Sunday morning.” The second related to the inquisitiveness of a person who expressed himself thus to the guide upon the estate of the Duke of Westminster: “What, you can’t tell how much the house cost or what the farm yields an acre, or what the old man’s income is, or how much he is worth? Don’t you Britishers know anything?” The third story, near the close, set off Yankee complacency. A New England girl mistook the first mile-stone from Boston for a tombstone, and reading its inscription “1 M. from Boston,” said “I’m from Boston; how simple; how sufficient.”

The serious part of the discourse was a rapid statement of the principles represented by the Dutch pioneer ship “Half Moon” and the Pilgrim “Mayflower;” the elements of each contributed to national character and progress. (For speech in full see _Depew’s Speeches_, Vol. I.)

Other toasts and responses followed; eloquence and humor mingled until the small hours of the night. Probably not one of that pleased and brilliant assemblage for a moment thought that they were doing at this anniversary what their old, barbaric ancestors did nightly, while resting after a border foray or Viking sea raid.

THE VALUE OF A GOOD STORY AND HOW TO INTRODUCE IT.

No matter how inexperienced a speaker may be or how stammering his utterance, if he can tell a good story, the average dinner party will pronounce him a success, and he will be able to resume his seat with a feeling of satisfaction. The efforts often made to bring in an entertaining story or a lively anecdote are sometimes quite amusing, but if they come in naturally the effect will unquestionably be happy. Almost any story, by using a little skill, can be adapted to nearly every occasion that may arise. We may mention a few among which a speaker can scarcely fail to find something to serve his purpose.

It is necessary always to be thoroughly familiar with the story and to understand its exact point. No matter how deliberately or with what difficulty you approach that part of your speech where the fun is to be introduced–yet, when that point _is_ reached there must be no hesitation. It is well to memorize carefully the very words which express the pun, or the flash of wit or humor which is the climax of the story. The story itself may be found in such a manual as this, or in some volume of wit and humor.

There is no disadvantage in using wit gathered from any source, if it has not been so often used as to be completely worn out. When a good story is found anywhere and fully memorized and all its bearings and fine points thoroughly understood, there are two ways of getting it before an audience. The direct way is to say frankly that you have read a story and will tell it. This will answer very nicely when called upon for a speech. Few festive audiences are unwilling to accept a story for a speech, and a proposal to compromise on such terms is very likely in itself to bring applause. But the story in this case should be longer than if it is given as part of a speech. If, however, it should prove a failure, your performance will make a worse impression than when a poor story is introduced into a speech, although the story may only feebly illustrate any portion of it.

For these as well as other reasons most persons will prefer to make an address, even if it be very brief, and will endeavor to make the story fit into it. All stories that suggest diffidence, modesty, backwardness, or unwillingness to undertake great things, can be introduced to show how reluctant the speaker is to attempt a speech, and if these characteristics are only slightly referred to in the story it may still be used effectively and will leave a favorable impression.

If a topic, a toast, or a sentiment is given for a response, any of them may suggest a story; and after a good story has been told–one that has real point–it will be better to stop without making any attempt at application or explanation.

A great help is often found in the utterances of previous speakers. If these have done well, they may be complimented, and the compliment so contrived as to lead directly up to the story that is lying in wait; or something being said with which you heartily agree–however slight a portion of the address it may be–this harmony of views can be used in the same manner. On the other hand, if you disagree with any of the speakers, the mere reference to it will excite a lively interest. If this difference is used, not as the basis of a serious argument, but only to drag in a story illustrating the disagreement, the story will nevertheless appear to be very appropriate.

If you happen to be the first speaker, you are by no means without resources. You can then imagine what other speakers are going to say, and if you can slip in a humorous or good-natured hit at the expense of some of the prominent speakers, it will be, highly relished. If you describe what they are likely to say it will be enjoyed, while if you should happen to mention the very opposite this will be set down as your intention. You may even describe the different speakers, and be reminded of things that will bring in the prepared story very appropriately.

The writer once knew of a very dull speaker, who scored a great success in a popular meeting, by describing the eloquent speaker who was to follow. He began by telling how he was accustomed when a boy to take a skiff and follow in the wake of a steamer, to be rocked in its waves, but once getting before the huge vessel his boat was swept away, and he was nearly drowned. This unfortunately was his situation now, and he was in danger of being swept aside by the coming flood of eloquence. But he asked who is this coming man? It was the first time he had heard of him–then followed the story he had been trying to work in–a story wherein the eloquent man was described as “one who could give seventeen good reasons for anything under heaven.” The story was a great success. In dumb show, the speaker he referred to begged for mercy. This only delighted the audience still more, and when the dull speaker finished it was admitted that, for once, he had escaped being stupid or commonplace. He had also forced upon the next speaker the necessity of removing the unpleasant effects of the jokes made at his expense, a task that required all his cleverness.

The manner of introduction by the chairman, his name or general position, the appearance of any one of the guests, the lateness or earliness of the hour, events of the day that attract interest, the nature of the entertainment or assemblage–all of these will offer good hooks by which to draw in the story. But let the story be good and thoroughly mastered. Of course the work of adaptation will be much easier if you have several stories in reserve. A story must not be repeated so often that it becomes known as belonging to you, for then a preceding speaker might get a laugh on you by telling it as yours, leaving you bankrupt.

Jones and Smith once rode several miles in a carriage, together, to a town where both were to make addresses. Jones was quite an orator; Smith had a very retentive memory. Jones asked Smith about his speech, but Smith professed not to have fully decided upon his topic, and in turn asked Jones the same question. Jones gave a full outline of his speech, Smith getting him to elaborate it by judicious inquiries as to how he would apply one point and illustrate another. The ride thus passed pleasantly for both parties. Smith was called upon to speak first, and gave with telling effect what he had gathered from Jones, to the delight of everybody, but poor Jones, who listened in utter consternation, and had not strength enough left even to reclaim his stolen property.

If your speech is to be a story it is especially advisable to have a reserve on hand, for stories are easily copied and apt to be long remembered. Care also must be taken that the story is not one with which persons generally are familiar. A gentleman was in the habit of telling a story which has already been quoted, the point of which lies in the phrase “I’m from Boston.” Some of his more intimate companions, in self-defense, would exclaim when he proposed a story, “Is it a mile from Boston?”

The definition of the toast itself or of any of the words in the sentiment which is the speaker’s topic may be made the occasion for drawing in the illustrative story.

The manner of ending a good story is also worthy of careful study. When an audience is applauding a palpable “hit,” it does not seem an appropriate time to stop and take one’s seat; but it often is the best course. To do this appears so abrupt that the novice is apt to make a further effort to finish up the subject till he has finished up his audience as well. An attempt to fully discuss a topic, under such circumstances, is not successful once in a hundred times. The best course is to follow an apt story by some proverb, a popular reference, or a witty turn, and then to close. But no abruptness will be disliked by your hearers half so much, as the utterance of a string of commonplaces, after you have once secured their attention. The richness of the dessert should come at the close, not at the beginning, of the oratorical feast.

THE PURPOSE OF AFTER-DINNER SPEAKING

Briefly stated, it is to bring into one focus the thought of an assembly. While the good things of the table may be satisfactory, and conversation free and spontaneous, there is yet need of some expedient for making all thought flow in one channel, and of blending the whole company into a true unity. There is one way, and only one, of doing this–the same that is used to produce unity of action and thought in any assembly, for whatever purpose convened. When the destinies of empires are at stake, when great questions that arise among men are to be solved, the art of speech must be called into play. So after a good dinner has been enjoyed, the same potent agency finds a field, narrower, indeed, but scarcely less operative. And this object–of causing a whole assembly to think the same thoughts and turn their attention to a common topic–is often well attained even when the speeches do not aspire to great excellence or pretension to eloquence.

A commonplace illustration will make our meaning clear. Suppose a great reception, where many rooms are filled with invited guests. There is conversation, but only by groups of two or three persons; refreshments are served; larger groups begin to gather around prominent persons, but there is the same diversity of sentiment and purpose that is to be found in a chance crowd in a public park. The guests are not in one place, with one accord. But now, on some pretext, the power of public speech is evoked; perhaps a toast is offered and responded to, or a more formal address of welcome or congratulation, or anything else suitable to the occasion. The subject and the manner of introduction are not material, so that the living, speaking man is brought face to face with his fellows; at once, instead of confusion and disorder, all is order and harmony. The speaker may hesitate in the delivery of his message, but his very embarrassment will in some instances contribute to harmonize the thought of the assembly even more powerfully than a more pretentious address. But a good and appropriate speech will indelibly fix the thought, and be far more satisfactory.

Where no particular kind of address is indicated by the nature of the assemblage, stories and humor will generally be highly appreciated. A good story has some of the perennial interest that surrounds a romance, and if it is at the same time humorous, an appeal is made to another sentiment, universal in the human breast. If people thrill with interest in unison, or laugh or cry together for a time, or merely give attention to the same thoughts, there will arise a sense of fellowship and sympathy which is not only enjoyable, but is the very purpose for which people are invited to assemblies.

More ordinary after-dinner speeches succeed by the aid of humorous stories than by all other means combined. In a very ingenious book of ready-made speeches the turning point of nearly every one depends upon a pun or other trick of speech. While this is carrying the idea a little too far, still it fairly indicates the importance placed upon sallies of wit or humor as a factor in speech-making. The fellowship that comes from laughing at the same jokes and approving the same sentiments may not be the most intimate or the most enduring, but it is often the only kind possible, and should be prized accordingly.

The chief use of toasts is to call out such speeches, and thus lead the thought of the assembly along pleasant and appropriate channels–all prearranged, yet apparently spontaneous.

A long speech is selfish and unpardonable. It wearies the guests, destroys variety, and crowds others out of the places to which they have been assigned and are entitled. When the speaking is over, the company will have been led to contemplate the same themes, and will have rejoiced, sympathized, and laughed in unison.

SOME A B C DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING SPEECHES, TOASTS, AND RESPONSES

1. Do not be afraid or ashamed to use the best helps you can get. Divest yourself of the idea that all you need is to wait till a toast is proposed and your name called, and then to open your mouth and let the eloquence flow forth. The greatest genius in the world _might_ succeed in that way, but would not be likely to venture it. Use a book and study your subject well.

2. Generally, it is not well to memorize word for word either what you have written or obtained from a book, unless it is a pun or a story where the effect depends upon verbal accuracy. But be sure to memorize toasts, sentiments, and titles absolutely. To know the substance of your speech well, with one or two strong points in it, is better than to have a flowery oration weighing down your memory.

3. If you are a novice (and these directions are given to no others), do not aim to make a great speech, but to say a few things modestly and quietly. A short and unassuming speech by a beginner is sure of applause. Eloquence, if you have it in you, will come later through practice and familiarity with your subject.

4. If you can’t remember or find a good story, invent one! Perhaps you have scruples as to the latter. But a story is not a lie; if so, what would become of the noble tribe of novel-writers! Mark Twain gives a very humorous account of the way in which he killed his conscience. Probably many speakers who retail good things might make confession in the same direction.

But why is it not as reputable to invent one’s own story as to tell the story some one else has invented? Does the second telling improve its morality? Rather give heed to the quality of the story. This, and not its origin, is the really important matter to consider.

5. Success in after-dinner speaking is difficult or easy to attain according to the way you go about it. If you think you must startle, rouse, and electrify your hearers, or, worse still, must instruct them in something _you_ think important, but about which they care nothing, your efforts are likely to be attended by a hard and bitter experience. But if, when a prospective speech-occasion looms up, you will reflect upon the sentiment you wish to propose, or will get a friend to do a little planning and suggest the easiest toast or topic, and then attempt to say just a little, you will probably come off with flying colors.

6. When you rise, do not be in a hurry. A little hesitation has a better effect than too much promptness and fluency, and a little stammering or hesitation, it may be added, will have no bad effect. In beginning, your manner can without disadvantage be altogether lost sight of, and if you have something to say the substance of which is good, and has been carefully prearranged, you will be able to give utterance to it in some form; grammatical mistakes or mispronunciation, where there is no affectation, as well as an occasional repetition, will rarely be noticed.

7. Above all, remember it may be assumed that your hearers are your friends, and are ready to receive kindly what you have to say. This will have a wonderfully steadying effect on your nerves. And if your speech consists only of two or three sentences slowly and deliberately uttered, they will at least applaud its brevity, and give you credit for having filled your place on the programme respectably.

It has been often said that Americans are greatly ahead of the English in general speech-making, but in pleasant after-dinner talking and addresses they are much inferior. Probably this was once true, but if so, it is true no longer. The reason of any former deficiency was simply want of practice, without which no speech-making can be easy and effective. But the importance of this kind of oratory is now recognized, and, with proper efforts to cultivate and master it, Americans are taking the same high rank as in other forms of intellectual effort. Lowell and Depew are acknowledged as peers of any “toast-responder” or “after-dinner orator” the world has ever seen. One of the chief elements of their charm consists in the good stories they relate. Whoever has a natural faculty, be it ever so slight, as a storyteller, will, if he gathers up and appropriates the good things that he meets with, soon realize that he is making rapid progress in this delightful field, and that he gains much more than mere pleasure by his acquisitions.

The best entertainments are not those which merely make a display of wealth and luxury. Quiet, good taste, and social attractions are far better. The English wit, Foote, describes a banquet of the former character. “As to splendor, as far as it went, I admit it: there was a very fine sideboard of plate; and if a man could have swallowed a silversmith’s shop, there was enough to satisfy him; but as to all the rest, the mutton was white, the veal was red, the fish was kept too long, the venison not kept long enough; to sum up all, everything was cold except the ice, and everything sour except the vinegar.” Excellence in the quality of the viands is not to be disregarded in the choicest company. A celebrated scholar and wit was selecting some of the choicest delicacies on the table, when a rich friend said to him, “What! do philosophers love dainties?” “Why not?” replied the scholar; _”do you think all the good things of this world were made only for blockheads?”_

HOLIDAY SPEECHES

FOURTH OF JULY

At a Fourth of July banquet, or celebration, toast may be offered to “The Flag,” to “The Day,” to “Independence,” to “Our Revolutionary Fathers,” to “The Nation,” to any Great Man of the Past, to “Liberty,” to “Free Speech,” to “National Greatness,” to “Peace,” to “Defensive War,” to any of the States, to “Washington” or “Lafayette,” to “Our Old Ally, France,” to any of the “Patriotic Virtues,” to “The Army and The Navy,” to the “Memory of any of the Battles by Land or Sea.” Appropriate sentiments for any of these may easily be devised or may be found in the miscellaneous list in this volume. “The Constitution and the Laws” or something similar should not be omitted.

SOME ITEMS THAT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE IN RESPONDING TO THESE TOASTS.

Their order and character will depend upon the special topic.

Our present prosperity–the greatness and resources of our country as compared with those of the Revolutionary epoch–the slow growth of the colonies–the rapid growth of the States and the addition of new States continually–what was gained by independence–did we do more than simply prevent tyranny–the advantages an independent country possesses over a colony, such as Canada–the perils of independence and the responsibility of power–the romantic early history of the country–the wars that preceded the Revolutionary conflict–the character of the struggle–the slenderness of our resources compared with the mighty power of Britain–our ally, France–what that nation gained and lost by joining in our quarrel–the memories of Washington and Lafayette–the principles at stake in the Revolution–the narrow view our fathers took of the issue at first, and the manner in which they were led first to independence and then to nationality–some phases of the struggle–its critical points–Trenton and Valley Forge–Saratoga and Yorktown–our responsibilities and duties–the questions of that day enumerated and compared with the burning questions of the present day (which we do not enumerate here, but which the speaker may describe or even argue if the nature of his audience, or time at his disposal permits)–the future greatness of the nation–the probability of the acquisition of new territory.

Laughable incidents either from history or illustrations from any source, must not be forgotten, for if the speech be more than a few minutes long they are absolutely indispensable.

OUTLINE OF A SPEECH IN RESPONSE TO THE TOAST “THE DAY WE CELEBRATE”

The Fourth of July has been a great day ever since 1776. Before that year the Fourth of this month came and went like other days. But then a great event happened: an event which made a great difference to the entire world; the boundaries of many countries would be very different to-day if the important event of that day had not transpired. It was a terrible blow to the foes of humanity and even to many weak-kneed friends. The exhortation of one of the signers of the Declaration on that day, “We must all hang together,” with the grim but very reasonable rejoinder, “If we do not, we will assuredly hang separately.” The bloodshed and suffering which followed and which seem to be the only price at which human liberty and advancement can be procured. We had to deal with our old friends the English very much as the peace-loving Quaker did with the pirate who boarded his ship; taking him by the collar Broad-brim dropped him over the ship’s side into the water, saying, “Friend, thee has no business on this ship.” We have shown that we own and can navigate the ship of State ourselves, and now we are willing to welcome here not only John Bull but all nations of the world when they have any friendly business with us.

The gunpowder that has been consumed. First, during the Revolutionary war and the second war with England; and then the powder that has been exploded by small and large boys in the hundred and odd Fourths that have followed.

OUTLINE OF A SPREAD-EAGLE SPEECH IN A FOREIGN LAND

We are so far from home that we can’t hear the eagle scream or see the lightning in his eye. Only from the almanac do we know that this is the day of all days on which he disports himself. He was a small bird when born, more than a hundred years ago, but has grown lively till his wings reach from ocean to ocean, and it only requires a little faith to see him stretch himself clear over the Western Hemisphere and the adjacent islands. Other birds despised him on the first great Fourth, but these birds of prey, vultures, condors and such like, with crows, as well as the smaller Republican eagles born since, are humble enough to him now. The British lion himself having been so often scratched and clawed by this fowl, has learned to shake his mane and wag his tail rather amiably in our eagle’s presence, even if he has to give an occasional growl to keep his hand in. We are proud of this bird, though we are far from home, and to-day send our heartiest good wishes across the sea to the land we love the best.

OUTLINE OF A RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, “OUR COUNTRY”

The field here is very wide. All the history of the country is appropriate, but can only be glanced at, though a good speech might be made by dwelling at length on some romantic incident in its history. The size and richness of the country from the green pine forests of Maine to the golden orange groves of California; or the prophecy of the manifest greatness of coming destiny. Here the old but laughable story can be brought in easily about the raw Irishman who saw a pumpkin for the first time, and was told that it was a mare’s egg, and generously given one. He had the misfortune, however, to drop it out of his cart, when it rolled down-hill, struck a stump, burst and frightened a rabbit, which bounded away followed by Pat, shouting: “Shtop my colt; sure and if he is so big and can run so fast now, when just born, what a rousing horse he will be when grown up!”

But our country has more than merely a vast area. She has made advances in science, art, literature, and culture of all kinds, and is destined to play a chief part in the drama of the world’s progress.

* * * * *

MEMORIAL DAY

The celebration of this day has become general and has assumed a special and beautiful character. It might have been feared that angry passions engendered by civil strife would predominate, but the very reverse of this is true. Kindness and charity, tender memories of the sacrifices of patriotism, the duty of caring for the living and of avoiding all that might lead again to the sad necessity of war, are the sentiments nearly always inculcated.

The following are a few of the toasts that may be given at celebrations, or banquets, or at the exercises that form a part of the annual decorating of soldiers’ graves:

The Martyred Dead–the Regiments locally represented–the Army and Navy–any Dead Soldier especially prominent–the Union Forever–the Whole Country–Victory always for the Right–the Surviving Soldiers and Sailors–Unbroken Peace–the Commander-in-Chief, and other officers locally honored–any special battle whose field is near at hand–the Flag with all its Stars undimmed.

SKETCH OF A SPEECH IN RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, “OUR HONORED DEAD”

Time in its rapid flight tests many things. Thirty years ago the Southern Confederacy, like a dark cloud full of storm and thunderings, covered the Southern heavens. Statesmen planned, preachers prayed, women wept, and armies as brave as ever formed in line fought, for its establishment. Blood flowed freely, and the roar of battle filled the whole land. Many wise men thought it would continue for ages, but lo! it has disappeared. Nothing remains to its adherents but a memory–mournful, pathetic, and bitter.

How different with the Old Flag that we love. It had been tested before, but this was its supreme trial. It had been victorious in several wars. It had sheltered new and expanding States, it had fostered higher forms of civilization, and represented peoples and interests that were complex and varied; but in our Civil War it was assailed as never before. The test was crucial, but nobly was it borne. Men died in ranks as the forest goes down before the cyclone. What sharp agony in death, and what long-continued suffering and bereavement this implies. But the result was decisive–a strengthening of the power and grandeur of the nation that sometimes seems to be only too great and unquestioned.

We have no wish by any word of ours to revive bitter feeling or stir up strife. This hallowed day has been from the first a peacemaker. Men, standing with uncovered heads in the presence of the dead, do not care to utter words of reproach for the irrevocable past. We, wearing the blue, can say to the scarred veteran wearers of the gray: “You fought well for the lost cause. But the case was fairly tried in the awful court of war. It took four years for the jury to agree, but the verdict has been given–a verdict against your cause–and there is no higher court and no appeal. There is no resurrection for the dead Confederacy; but we can offer you something better–an equal part in the life and destiny of the most glorious nation time has yet produced.” And on their side the gray can reply, in the words of Colonel Grady, the eloquent orator of the South, in his speech at Atlanta: “We can now see that in this conflict loss was gain, and defeat real and substantial victory; that everything we hoped for and fought for, in the new government we sought to establish, is given to us in greater measure in the old government our fathers founded.”

We do not meet on these Memorial Days to weep for the dead, as we did while wounds were yet fresh. Time has healed the scars of war, and we can calmly contemplate the great lesson of patriotic devotion, and rejoice that the nation to which we belong produced men noble enough to die for that which they valued so much. Neither do I care to say anything of human slavery, the institution that died and was buried with the Confederacy. I had enough to say about it while it was living. Let the dead past bury its dead.

But we are here to foster patriotism, in view of the most tremendous sacrifice ever willingly made by a people on the altar of nationality. That the sacrifices of the Civil War deserve this rank will appear from the fact that they were made–in the main–by volunteers. We were not fighting directly to defend our altars and our fires; we were not driven to arms to repel an invading foe; we were not hurried to the field by king or noble; but in the first flush of manhood we offered ourselves to preserve unimpaired the unity, the purity, the glory of our nation. So far as I have turned over the leaves of the volume of time, I have found nothing in all the past like this. Therefore, standing before the highest manifestation of earthly patriotism, viewing it crowned in all the glory of self-sacrifice, by a faithfulness which was literally in the case of hundreds of thousands “unto death,” we ask: “What is there that justifies a nation in exacting or accepting (when freely offered) such tribute of the life-blood of its people?”

The two things of inestimable value which our government furnishes and which we ought to preserve even with life itself, if the sacrifice is needed, are liberty and law, or rather liberty _in_ law. The old world gave law, without which human society cannot exist. But it was accompanied with terrible suffering–as when “order reigned in Warsaw.” Such law came from masters, and made the mass of the people slaves. We have an equal perfection of law, order, subordination, but it rises side by side with liberty The people govern themselves–not in one form of government alone but in affairs national, State, county, down to the smallest school district and a thousand voluntary societies. In each the methods by which the people’s will may be made supreme in designated affairs are clearly defined, so that the whole of united human effort is brought under the dominion of law, even such things as general education, and yet each affair is in the hands of the people directly concerned. For thousands of years the principles of our complex and wonderful system of co-ordinated government have been growing up till they have reached their fullest perfection on our soil, and we breathe their beneficence as we breathe the air of heaven. Men are willing to die by the tens of thousands that this liberty under law may not perish from the world.

… Comrades and Citizens:–We move forward to new issues and new responsibilities. Grave dangers are now upon us. God grant that they may not need to be met and settled in the rude shock of war. The time for wisdom, for clear-sighted patriotism is–_now_. Labor and capital, the foundations of law and order; the complex civilization of a nation which now talks by lightning, and is hurled by steam over plains and mountains, and which, doubtless, will soon fly through the air–all these are to be settled by the men now on the stage of action. We cannot do better than to tell you, to settle them in the spirit of the men whose great sacrifices we to-day commemorate.

OUTLINE OF A SPEECH BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, ON A DECORATION [MEMORIAL] DAY.

This is one of the most interesting of national celebrations, appealing not to pride, but to tender personal memories. But we must not give ourselves up wholly to sadness or mourning. The story of issues and results must be told.

Why did our heroes die? On account of the cancer of slavery and the resulting doctrine of State Rights. Nationality and liberty, the opposite view. The former was the party of action, and, therefore, though in a minority, it was bolder and more determined. But the shell of materialism dropped from the North, and it was aroused with electric energy when Sumter was fired on; there was no passion, only such fervid resolve to preserve our nation as the world never before saw. The struggle over, there were no State trials, no prisons nor scaffolds, and the Republic, though bleeding at every pore, said to the conquered enemy, “Come and share fully with us all the blessings of our preserved institutions,” and thus won a second victory greater than the first.

The wonderful intelligence of the volunteer–story of Napoleon’s soldier–“Dead on the field of honor.”

The Grand Army of the elect–the heroes of history, some of whom are enumerated–the actual value to a nation of such heroism. To-day all that belongs to the strife is forgiven, but its lessons are too noble and precious ever to be forgotten. We can all, North and South, read with enthusiasm the story of each varied and romantic campaign.

The Confederate women first began decorating the graves of their dead with flowers, and did not pass by the Union graves near their late foes. This touched the heart of the nation as nothing else could have done, and enmity melted away, and the observance of the day has become universal.

The two great national heroes–Washington, with his wise, foresighted “Farewell Address;” Lincoln, with his gentle spirit, his martyr death, and his tender words, “With malice towards none, with charity for all.” Washington the Founder, Lincoln the Preserver.

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WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY

APPROPRIATE TOASTS

To Washington–to The Great Men of Revolutionary Times–to The Great Man who could not do what many modern Politicians can do–_tell a lie_–to The Childless Father of Eighty Millions of people–to The American Model Statesman–to The Greatest of Good Men and the Best of Great Men.

THOUGHTS FOR A SPEECH IN RESPONSE TO THE TOAST “WASHINGTON: GREAT AS A SOLDIER, GREATER AS A STATESMAN, GREATEST AS A PURE PATRIOT”

Indian, French, and English enemies. He had to make the armies with which he conquered. He was always a safe commander, but full of enterprise also–his character made the Union of the States and the Constitution possible. His character the best inheritance of the American people. Other men as great, possibly in some instances greater in a single field–his greatness shown in the wide union of the noblest kinds of greatness, all in harmony.

HUMOROUS RESPONSE BY BENJAMIN F. BUTLER TO THE TOAST, “OUR FOREFATHERS”

“While venerating their lofty patriotism, may we emulate them in their republican simplicity of manners.” He declared that a great deal had been said at one time and another about the democratic simplicity of our forefathers. Suppose that the gentlemen of the present day should go back to some of the customs of the forefathers. Suppose a man should go to a ball nowadays in the costume in which Thomas Jefferson, “that great apostle of democratic simplicity,” once appeared in Philadelphia. What a sensation he would create with his modest (?) costume of velvet and lace, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver shoe-buckles, and powdered wig. “Even the great father of his country had a little style about him,” said the speaker. “It was a known fact that he never went to Congress when he was President unless he went in a coach and six, with a little cupid on the box bearing a wreath of flowers. The coach must be yellow and the horses white, and then the President’s secretary usually followed in a coach drawn by four horses. When Washington ascended the steps to enter the doors, he always stopped for a moment and turned slowly around to allow an admiring people to see the father of their country. Oh! our forefathers were saturated with modesty and simplicity. The people of the present day have retrograded greatly from the simplicity of their Revolutionary ancestors. I can remember when it was impossible, years before the war, to hold a night session of Congress. It was impossible because the members of Congress attended dinners, and lingered over their wine. They attended dinners very like the one we have just enjoyed, and yet there is not a man in this company who is unfitted to attend to any public or private duties that might demand his attention. Yes, it is true that we have departed from the old customs, but we have advanced and not retrograded. The world has changed, but it has changed for the better. It is growing better every day, and don’t let anybody forget it.”

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CHRISTMAS

APPROPRIATE TOASTS

The Day of Good-will–to The Cold Weather without and the Warm Hearts within–to The Christmas Tree, which grows in a Night and is plucked in the Morning by the gladdest of fingers–to The Day in which Religion gives sweetness to Social Life–Christmas Gifts; may they bless the Giver not less than the Receiver–to The Oldest of our Festivals, which grows mellower and sweeter with the passage of the centuries–to St. Nicholas [or Santa Claus], the only saint Protestants worship–to A Merry Day that leaves no heart-ache–to A Good Christmas, may sleighing, gifts, and feasting crowd out all gambling and drunkenness.

SPEECH-THOUGHTS

The good cheer enjoyed on this merriest day of the year. How the little people look forward to it. It comes to the older ones as a joy, and yet tender and sad with the memories of other Christmases. The religious and the secular elements of the day. The countries where it is most observed. The long contest between the two days, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The compromise that Massachusetts and Virginia, New England and the South, have unanimously agreed upon; namely, to keep both days.

SELECTED OUTLINE OP AN EFFECTIVE LITTLE CHRISTMAS SPEECH

The speaker assumes that the observance of the day is becoming obsolete, and that there are persons who wish it to die out. The assumption, though rather strained, affords the opportunity to demolish this man of straw. “All other kings may go, but no one can spare King Christmas, or St. Nicholas, his prime minister. School-rooms and nurseries would rebel. And plum pudding is too strongly entrenched in Church and State to be dislodged. Washington Irving, with his _Sketch Book_, would protest. Best argument of all is the worth of the Christmas entertainments. Here’s to the Festival of Festivals, and long may its honors be done by such hosts as entertain us to-day.”

THANKSGIVING

Coming at the beginning of the farmer’s rest, when the harvest is all gathered, this is a very joyous festival, and more than any other abounds in family reunions. Any toast therefore is appropriate which tells of the harvest, of fertility, of the closing year, of the family pride and traditions, of pleasure to young and old. At dinner, turkey and mince or pumpkin pie will of course be served, and these national favorites must not be forgotten by the toastmaker.

This day, too, has an official and governmental flavor given to it by the State and national proclamations which fix the date and invite its observance. Usually, these enumerate the blessings enjoyed by the whole country during the year, and suggest topics peculiarly fitting for toasts. It is perhaps not too much to say that Thanksgiving is distinctly _the_ American Festival, and should be honored accordingly.

TOASTS

To The Inventor of Pumpkin Pie–to Peace with all Nations–to The Rulers of our Country–to The Farmer–to Full Stomachs and Merry Hearts–to their Excellencies, the President and the Governor; may we obey all their commands as willingly as when they tell us to feast–Abounding Plenty; may we always remember the Source from which our benefits come–Our two National Fowls, the American Eagle and the Thanksgiving Turkey; may the one give us peace for all our States and the other a piece for all our plates–The Turkey and the Eagle; we love to have the one soar high, but wish the other to roost low–The Great American Birds; may we have them where we love them best, the Turkeys on our tables and the Eagles in our pockets.

THOUGHTS FOR A THANKSGIVING SPEECH

The manner in which the day was first instituted. The sore struggles and the small beginnings of that day compared with the greatness and abounding prosperity of the present. The warfare between Christmas and Thanksgiving, the one being thought the badge of popery and prelacy. The Battle of the Pies, pumpkin and mince, terminating in a treaty of peace and alliance; and now we can enjoy the nightmare by feasting on both combined! The national blessings of the year; the poorest have more now than kings and emperors had five hundred years ago. Exemption from wars. Internal peace. Willingness and habit of settling every domestic dispute by the ballot, and not the bullet. The increasing tendency to arbitrate between nations, thus avoiding the horrors of war. The beneficence of our government and the ease with which its operations rest upon our shoulders. The wonderful progress of science and invention, and the manner in which these have added to the comfort of all the people.

SELECTED OUTLINE FOE A THANKSGIVING SPEECH

Why we ought to be grateful to the old Puritans, with all their faults. Their unsuccessful warfare on plum pudding, which, like truth, “crushed to earth,” rose again. Their discovery and enshrining of Turkey. On this day the Nation gathers as a family at the Thanksgiving board, and from all parts of the world the wanderers come home to the family feast. The duty of Happiness, joined to gratitude, is emphasized this day. The closing toast, “The Federal Eagle and the Festal Turkey; may we always have peace under the wings of the one, and be able to obtain a piece from the breast of the other.”

PRESENTATION ADDRESSES

Giving a present is a kind and graceful act, and should be accompanied by a simple, short, and unaffected speech. “Take this” would have the merit of brevity, but would fail in conveying any information as to _who_ gave, why they gave _to the recipient_, and why _that_ present was selected rather than another, and why _the speaker_ was chosen to make the presentation. All of these items form a part of nearly every presentation address, whilst some of them belong to all.

The novice will find much help in preparing his proposed speech by selecting a few items that are generally appropriate; afterward he can include anything which his own genius or wishes may suggest.

He may say that an abler speaker might have been selected for the pleasant duty, but not one who could enter into it more heartily or with more good wishes. He can refer to any circumstance which, if told briefly, will show why he has been selected, notwithstanding his reluctance or sense of unworthiness; or why he is pleased that the selection has fallen upon him. Such reference is usually effective.

Then the nature of the gift may be described. Here is an easy field for a little pleasantry. If a watch, it can be said, “Your friends are growing a little suspicious of you, and, after due deliberation, they have determined to a place _a watch_ upon you.” If a cane is the article in hand, then the painful duty of administering punishment for offenses by _caning_ is in order. A ring will afford an opportunity for many verbal plays. The ring of friends about the recipient, the true ring of a bell, or of an uncracked vase, a political ring–any of these can be made to lead up to the little hoop of gold. The fineness of the material, its sterling and unvarying value, the inscription on it, any specialty in its form–all these will be found rich in suggestion. Silverware of any kind may also be considered as to the form of the article, the use to which it is to be put, and the purity of the metal. Hardly any article can be thought of which will not allow some pleasant puns or _bon mots_. If a book is given, we bring the person “to book,” and the book to him. Job wished that his enemy might write a book; we, more charitable, wish our friend to read a book, and now offer him a good one for the purpose. The author or the title will, if closely examined, yield some matter for play on words.

The army presents of sword or banner, while usually more serious, do not forbid the same kind of badinage.

But this should form only a small portion of the speech, and consist merely of two or three well-studied sentences, to be uttered slowly, so that their double meaning may have time to sink in, and appear also as if they were just thought of. A good anecdote should be introduced at this point. It must be short, tinged with humor, and, if it succeeds in arousing the attention of the hearers, it will be of great value. If it is very appropriate or highly illustrative, these qualities will compensate for humor. Indeed, a felicitous anecdote will make the whole speech a success, if the speech is not continued too long afterward. Better suffer the extreme penalty of reading every anecdote in this volume, and of searching for hours in other fields, than fail to get the right one; but if unsuccessful invent one for the occasion!

The good qualities of the recipient must not be overlooked, especially those in recognition of which the present is given. If anything in the nature of the present itself can be made symbolic of these assumed good or great qualities, it will be a happy circumstance. And while flattery should not be excessive or too palpable, it is seldom indeed that a large dose of “pleasant things” will not be well received by all parties on such an occasion.

The expression of kindly feeling and good wishes always affords a favorable opportunity for closing. Perhaps, however, a more striking conclusion can be made by taking advantage of the very moment when the present is handed over to the recipient, accompanying this act with a hearty wish for its long retention and its happy use in the manner its nature indicates. Wishing a ring to be worn as a memento of friendship, a watch to mark the passage of happy hours, a cane not to be needed for support, but only as a treasured ornament, a sword to be worn with honor and only to be unsheathed at the call of duty or of patriotism, etc.

The reception of a gift is more easy than the presentation, but is at the same time more embarrassing. The reception is easier, because the essential part of the response is to say “Thank you,” which are very easy words to utter if the givers are real friends and the present is an appropriate one. It is more embarrassing because it is always harder to receive a favor gratefully than to give one. If the gift is a surprise, there is no harm in saying so, though if it is not a surprise, it is not advisable to tell an untruth about it. The recipient may say he is embarrassed, and his embarrassment–whether real or feigned–will create sympathy for him. Besides, he can ask for indulgence with more grace than the preceding speaker, as he is supposed to be taken by surprise. He may be so overcome with emotion as to break down altogether, and yet he will be loudly applauded.

A still stronger reason for this disparity is that the speaker representing the givers has been selected, probably out of a large company, to make his speech, and is thus expected to do it well; but the receiver occupies _his_ position for a reason that has no connection whatever with his speech-making powers. If he succeeds in expressing his gratitude and goodwill to those who have been so generous he will have served the essential purpose of his speech; but if, in addition, he can gather up the points made in the presentation speech, assenting to its general principles, accepting the humorous charges for which he is to be watched, caned, stoned (when a diamond or other stone is given), or put to the sword, and gently deprecates the serious flattery offered, he will be regarded as doing exceedingly well. One phrase he will not be likely to omit, unless “he loses his head” altogether–“When I look upon this, I will always remember the feelings of this hour, the kind words uttered, the appreciation shown.” This word “appreciation.” with the reiteration of thanks, will make a very fitting conclusion.

ADDRESSES OF WELCOME

In our country the number of voluntary associations that visit similar associations, or meet at special times and places is very large. Often such associations are furnished with free board and lodging by the people of the place where the assemblage occurs. Facilities for assemblage and enjoyment are offered and other privileges tendered that are highly appreciated. Religious bodies, church and philanthropic societies, military and fire companies, athletic and social clubs, various orders and educational societies, political bodies, these form only a small proportion of the endless number of organizations convening and gathering at different centres, gatherings which serve to keep all parts of our country in close touch.

It is needless to furnish model speeches for each of these, for the same general line of remark is adapted to all. The changes of illustration demanded by the character of the association to be welcomed, and for which responses are to be made, will be readily understood, and a little study of the name and character of the place of meeting will make the necessary local allusions quite easy. The welcome and response for a fire company, or a baseball club, will not differ much from that for a Christian Endeavor Society. A few general hints and a little investigation by the novice will put him on the right track in either case.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME

A clear statement about those who extend the welcome and of those who are to be welcomed is appropriate. This may be expanded advantageously by giving a few of the characteristics of each, greater latitude being allowed in complimenting those who are welcomed than those who entertain. It is bad taste to spend more time in telling our guests how good and great we are than in expressing the exalted opinion we have of them for their noble work, their great fame, or their high purpose; or in declaring the pleasure we feel and the honor we have in entertaining them. The warmth of the welcome extended should be expressed in the fullest manner, and as this is the central purpose of the whole address, it will bear _one repetition_. A good illustrative story, brief but pointed, may be worked in somewhere, perhaps in connection with a modest depreciation of our own fitness or ability adequately to express the strong feelings of those we represent, though if one can be found having a connection with the visitors themselves, it will be still better. What we wish our visitors to do while with us may also be appropriately referred to. If there are places of interest for them to visit, work for them to do, or special entertainments provided,–here is additional matter for remark. All these items may be run through in a few minutes, and then the address should close. The most bungling and formal welcome, if short, will be enjoyed more and be more applauded than the most graceful and eloquent one unduly prolonged. Should however, in spite of this warning, more “filling in” be desired of an appropriate character, it may be found almost without limit in setting forth the claim of the cause which both the visitors and the entertainers represent–athletic sports, religion, benevolence, education, or what not.

ADDRESS IN RESPONSE

This may be still more brief than the address of welcome. To say that the reception is hearty, that it gives pleasure and is gratefully received and appreciated, is all that is essential. An invitation to return the visit should not be forgotten, if circumstances are such that it can be appropriately made. Then the speaker has an opportunity to review any portion of the preceding speech and express his indorsement of any of the assertions made. He should not dissent from them, unless this dissent can be made the means of a little adroit flattery by placing a higher estimate upon the entertainers and their services than their own speaker has done, or by modestly disclaiming some of the praise that has been given. The novice must avoid being carried too far by this fascinating review, both as to the quantity and the quality of the disagreement.

A closing sentence may be, “Allow me once more, most heartily, to thank you for this generous welcome to–your homes–your headquarters–to the hospitalities of your city,” as the case may be.

WEDDING AND OTHER ANNIVERSARIES

Another wide field for the oratory of entertainment is to be found in the various celebrations that mark the passage of specific or notable portions of time–centennial, semi-centennial, and quadrennial; likewise weddings, annual, tin, paper, crystal, silver, and golden. The speeches for these differ widely in character. They may take the form of congratulatory addresses, of toasts and responses, or more formal addresses. All dedications come in the same category. Generally the shorter intervals call for light and humorous speeches, while the longer ones demand something more grave and thoughtful.

The following speech and response for a wooden (fifth) wedding anniversary is taken from a volume of ready made speeches. It is a fine example of that wit and play upon words which is never more suitable or more highly appreciated than on such an occasion.

SPEECH FOR A WOODEN WEDDING

If it is a good maxim not to halloo till you are out of the woods, our kind host and hostess must be very quiet this evening, for it seems to me that they are in the thick of it. If their friends had been about to burn them alive instead of to wish them joy on their fifth wedding-day, they could scarcely have brought a greater quantity of combustible material to the sacrifice. What shall we say to them on this ligneous occasion? Of course, we must congratulate them on their willingness to renew their matrimonial vows after five years of double-blessedness. In this age of divorce it is something worthy of note, that a pair who have been one and inseparable for even so short a period as the twentieth part of a century, should stand up proudly before the world and propose to strengthen the original compact with a new one. They look as happy and contented as if they had never heard of Chicago, or seen those tempting little advertisements in the newspapers that propose to separate man and wife with immediate dispatch for a reasonable consideration. Instead of going to court to cut the nuptial bond in twain, it appears that they have been _courting_ for five years with the view of being remarried this evening. Vaccination, it is said, wears out in seven years, but matrimony, we see, in this instance, at least, takes a stronger hold of the parties inoculated as time rolls on; and although in this case they are willing to go through the operation again, it is not for the sake of making assurance doubly sure, but in order to enjoy marriage as a luxury. With this happy specimen of a wooden wedding before them our young unmarried friends will see that they can go into the _joinery_ business with but little risk of getting into the wrong box. In fact, it is because connubial bliss beats every other species of felicity all hollow that we have met this evening to requite it with hollow-ware. In the name of all their friends I affectionately congratulate the doubly-married pair on their past happiness and future prospects, and hope they may live to celebrate their fiftieth wedding day and receive a _golden_ reward.

BRIDEGROOM IN REPLY

“For self and partner”–as men associated in business sometimes conclude their letters–I offer to you and all our friends who have obliged us with their presence, the thanks of the firm which renews its articles of partnership this evening. We welcome you heartily to our home, well knowing that your kind wishes are not like–your useful and elegant tokens of remembrance–_hollow-ware_. When Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, Macbeth was conquered, and it seems to me that you have come almost as well provided with timber as Macduff and Malcolm were. Your articles, however, although of wood, are not of the Burn ’em kind, and I am not such a Dunce inane as to decline accepting them. Indeed, my wife, who, notwithstanding her matrimonial vows, has a _single eye_–to housekeeping–would not permit me to refuse them were I so inclined. She knows their value better than I do, and with the assistance of her kitchen cabinet will, I have no doubt, employ them usefully.

The speech closes with thanks and good wishes in return.

TOASTS

A toast may be given either with or without sentiment attached, and in either case a response equally fitting; but in the former the subject is narrowed and defined by the nature of the sentiment. Yet the speaker need not hold himself closely to the sentiment, which is often made rather a point of departure even by the ablest speakers. Indeed, the latitude accorded to after-dinner speeches is very great, and a sentiment which gives unity and direction to the speech made in response to it is, on that account, of great value.

To illustrate these points we will take the toast “Our Flag.” A speech in response would be practically unlimited in scope of treatment. Anything patriotic, historical or sentimental, which brings in some reference to the banner, would be appropriate. But let this sentiment be added: “May the justness and benevolence which it represents ever charm the heart, as its beauty charms the eye,” and the outline of a speech is already indicated. Has our nation always been just and kind? Where and how have these qualities been most strikingly manifested? Why have we seemed sometimes to come short of them, and how should such injustice or harsh dealing be remedied, with as much rhetorical admixture of the waving folds and the glittering stars as the speaker sees fit to employ.

From these considerations may be deduced the rule that when the proposer of a toast wishes to leave the respondent the freedom of the whole subject he will give the toast alone, or accompanied by a motto of the most non-committal character. But if he wishes to draw him out in a particular direction he will put the real theme in the sentiment that follows the toast.

SENTIMENTS SUGGESTED BY A TOAST

Years ago a speaker provoked a controversy (maliciously and with no good excuse) which scarcely came short of blows, by proposing as a toast the name of a general of high rank, but who was unfortunate in arms. He was a candidate for office. Added to the toast was the sentiment, “May his political equal his military victories.” This was in bad taste, indeed, but it shows the use that can be made of the sentiment, when added to a toast, in fixing attention in a certain direction.

The number of sentiments suggested by the common and standard toasts is unlimited. Take the toast “Home,” as an example.

Home: The golden setting in which the brightest jewel is “Mother.”

Home: A world of strife shut out, and a world of love shut in.

Home: The blossoms of which heaven is the fruit.

Home: The only spot on earth where the fault and failings of fallen humanity are hidden under a mantle of charity.

Home: An abode wherein the inmate, the superior being called man, can pay back at night, with fifty per cent. interest, every annoyance that he has met with in business during the day.

Home: The place where the great are sometimes small, and the small often great.

Home: The father’s kingdom; the child’s paradise; the mother’s world.

Home: The jewel casket containing the most precious of all jewels–domestic happiness.

Home: The place where you are treated best and grumble most.

Home: It is the central telegraph office of human love, into which run innumerable wires of affection, many of which, though extending thousands of miles, are never disconnected from the one great terminus.

Home: The centre of our affections, around which our hearts’ best wishes twine.

Home: A little sheltered hollow scooped out of the windy hill of the world.

Home: A place where our stomachs get three good meals daily and our hearts a thousand.

MISCELLANEOUS TOASTS

These might be multiplied indefinitely, but a sufficient number are given to serve as hints to the person who is able to make his own toasts, yet seeks a little aid to lift him out of the common rut.

Marriage: The happy estate which resembles a pair of shears; so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

Marriage: The gate through which the happy lover leaves his enchanted ground and returns from paradise to earth.

Woman: The fairest work of the great Author; the edition is large, and no man should be without a copy.

Woman: She needs no eulogy; she speaks for herself.

Woman: The bitter half of man. (A sour bachelor’s toast.)

Wedlock: May the single all be married and all the married be happy. Love to one, friendship to many, and good-will to all.

The Lady we love and the Friend we trust.

May we have the unspeakable good Fortune to win a true heart, and the Merit to keep it.

Friendship: May its bark never founder on the rocks of deception.

Friendship: May its lamp ever be supplied by the oil of truth and fidelity.

Unselfish Friendship: May we ever be able to serve a friend, and noble enough to conceal it.

Firm Friendship: May differences of opinion only cement it.

May we have more and more Friends and Need them less and less.

May our Friend in sorrow never be a Sorrowing friend.

Active Friendship: May the hinges of friendship never grow rusty.

To our Friends: Whether absent on land or sea.

Our Friends: May the present have no burdens for them and futurity no terrors.

Our Friends: May we always have them and always know their value.

Friends: May we be richer in their love than in wealth, and yet money be plenty.

A Friend: May we never want one to cheer us, or a home to welcome him.

Good Judgment: May opinions never float in the sea of ignorance.

Careful Kindness: May we never crack a joke or break a reputation.

Enduring Prudence: May the pleasures of youth never bring us pain in old age.

Deliverance in Trouble: May the sunshine of hope dispel the clouds of calamity.

Successful Suit: May we court and win all the Daughters of Fortune except the eldest–Miss Fortune.

Here’s a Health to Detail, Retail, and Curtail–indeed, all the tails but tell-tales.

The Coming Millennium: When great men are honest and honest men are great.

Our Merchant: May he have good trade, well paid. May the Devil cut the toes of all our foes, That we may know them by their limping.

May we Live to learn well and Learn to live well.

A Placid Life: May we never murmur without cause, and never have cause to murmur.

May we never lose our Bait when we Fish for compliments.

A Better Distribution of Money: May Avarice lose his purse and Benevolence find it.

May Care be a stranger and Serenity a familiar friend to every honest heart.

May Fortune recover her eyesight and be able to distribute her gifts more wisely and equally.

May Bad Example never attract youthful minds.

May Poverty never come to us without rich compensations and hope of a speedy departure.

Our Flag: The beautiful banner that represents the precious _mettle_ of America.

American Eagle, The: The liberty bird that permits no liberties.

American Eagle, The: May she build her nest in every rock peak of this continent.

American Valor: May no war require it, but may it be always ready for every foe.

American People, The: May they live in peace and grow strong in the practice of every virtue.

Our Native Land: May it ever be worthy of our heartiest love, and continue to draw it forth without stint.

(A spread-eagle toast.) The Boundaries of Our Country: East, by the Rising Sun; north, by the North Pole; west, by all Creation; and south, by the Day of Judgment.

Our Lakes and Rivers: Navigable waters that unite all the States and render the very thought of their separation absurd.

Our Sons and Daughters: May they be honest as brave and modest as fair.

America and the World: May our nation ever enjoy the blessings of the widest liberty, and be ever ready to promote the liberties of mankind.

Discontented Citizens: May they speedily leave their country for their country’s good.

America:

“Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee.”

The Patriot:

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land; Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand?”

Our Country: Whether bounded by Canada or Mexico, or however otherwise bounded and described; be the measurement more or less, still Our Country; to be cherished in our hearts and defended by our lives.

Our Country: In our intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; and if not, may we ever be true patriots enough to get her into the right at any cost.

Our Country: May we render due reverence and love to the common mother of us all.

The Ship of State:

“Nail to the mast her holy flag; Set every threadbare sail; And give her to the God of Storms, The lightning and the gale.”

Columbia: My country, with all thy faults, I love thee still.

Webster’s Motto: Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

True Patriotism: May every American be a good citizen in peace, a valiant soldier in war.

Our Country: May our love of country be without bounds and without a shadow of fear.

Our Statesmen: May they care less for party and for personal ambition than for the nation’s welfare.

Failure to Treason: May he who would destroy his country for a mess of pottage never get the pottage!

The Penalty of Treason: May he who would uproot the tree of Liberty be the first one crushed by its fall.

The Nation: May it know no North, no South, no East, no West, but only one broad, beautiful, glorious land.

America:

Dear Country, our thoughts are more constant to thee, Than the steel to the star and the stream to the sea.

Our Revolutionary Fathers: May their sons never disgrace their parentage.

Our Town: The best in the land; let him that don’t like it leave it.

The Tree of Liberty: May every American citizen help cultivate it and eat freely of its fruit.

The Emigrant: May the man that doesn’t love his native country speedily hie him to one that he can love.

The American Eagle: It is not healthful to try to deposit salt on his venerable tail.

California: The land of golden rocks and golden fruits.

Ohio: The second Mother of Presidents.

Vermont: A State of rocks, but producing men, women, maple sugar, and horses.

“The first are strong, the last are fleet, The second and third are exceedingly sweet, And all are uncommonly hard to beat.”

Texas: The biggest of States, and one of the very best.

New York: Unrivalled if numbers in city and State be the test.

Our Navy: May it always be as anxious to preserve peace as to uphold the honor of the flag in war.

Our Army: May it ever be very small in peace, but grow to mighty dimensions and mightier achievement in war.

Our Country: May the form of liberty never be used to subvert the principles of true freedom.

Our Voters: May they always have a standard to try their rulers by, and be quick to punish or reward justly.

Fortune: A divinity to fools, a helper to wise men.

The Present: Anticipation may be very agreeable but participation is more practical.

The Present Opportunity: We may lay in a stock of pleasures for use in memory, but they must be kept carefully to prevent mouldering.

Philosophy: It may conquer past or present pain but toothache, while it lasts, laughs at philosophy.

Our Noble Selves: Why not toast ourselves and praise ourselves since we have the best means of knowing all the good in ourselves?

Charity: A link from the chain of gold that angels forge.

Our Harvests: May the sunshine of plenty dispel the clouds of care.

Virtue: May we have the wit to discover what is true and the fortitude to practice what is good.

Our Firesides: Our heads may not be sharpened at colleges, but our hearts are graduates of the hearths.

The True Medium: Give us good form, but not formality.

The Excesses of Youth: They are heavy drafts upon old age, payable with compound interest about thirty years from date.

The Best of Good Feeling: May we never feel want nor want feeling.

Our Incomes: May we have a head to earn and hearts to spend.

Forbearance: May we have keen wit, but never make a sword of our tongues to wound the reputation of others.

Wit: A cheap and nasty commodity when uttered at the expense of modesty and courtesy.

Cheerfulness and Fortitude: May we never give way to melancholy, but always be merry at the right places.

Generosity: May we all be as charitable and indulgent as the Khan of Tartary, who, when he has dined on milk and horseflesh, makes proclamation that all the kings and emperors of earth have now his gracious permission to dine.

Economy: The daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Independence.

Fidelity and Forgiveness: May our injuries be written in sand and our gratitude for benefits in rock.

A Good Memory: May it always be used as a storehouse and never as a lumber-room.

A Health to Our Dearest: May their purses always be heavy and their hearts always be light.

The Noblest Qualities: Charity without ostentation and religion without bigotry.

Discernment of Character: May Flattery never be permitted to sit in the parlor while Plain and Kindly Dealing is kicked out into the woodshed.

False Friends: May we never have friends who, like shadows, keep close to us in the sunshine only to desert us in a cloudy day or in the night.

A Competence: May we never want bread to make a toast or a good cook to prepare it.

The Man we Love: He who thinks most good and speaks least ill of his neighbors.

Human Nature as the Best Study: He who is learned in books alone may know how some things ought to be, but he who reads men learns how things are.

Metaphysics the Noblest of the Sciences: “When a mon wha’ kens naething aboot ony subject, takes a subject that nae mon kens onything aboot and explains it to anither mon still more ignorant–that’s Metaphysics.”

The Deeds of Men: The best interpreters of their motives.

Love and Affection: The necessary basis for a happy life.

Charity: A mantle of heavenly weaving used to cover the faults of our neighbors.

Charitable Allowances: May our eyes be no keener when we look upon the faults of others than when we survey our own.

Cheerful Courage: “May this be our maxim whene’er we are twirled, A fig for the cares of this whirl-a-gig world.”

A Golden Maxim: To err is human, to forgive divine.

Prudence in Speech: The imprudent man reflects upon what he has said, the wise man upon what he is going to say.

Thought and Speech: It is much safer to always think what we say than always to say what we think.

Everybody: May no one now feel that he has been omitted.

Fame: The great undertaker who pays little attention to the living but makes no end of parade over the dead.

The Chatterbox: May he give us a few brilliant flashes of silence.

Discretion in Speech: May we always remember the manner, the place, and the time.

A Happy Future: May the best day we have seen be worse than the worst that is to come.

HUMOROUS TOASTS.

To a Fat Friend: May your shadow never grow less.

May every Hair of your head be as a shining Candle to light you to glory.

Long Life to our Friends: May the chicken never be hatched that will scratch on their graves.

Confusion to the Early Bird: May it and the worm both be picked up.

The Nimble Penny: May it soon grow into a dime and then swell into a dollar.

To a Sovereign: not the kind that sits on a throne, but the one that lies in our pocket.

Our Land: May we live happy in it and never be sent out of it for our country’s good.

Three Great Commanders: May we always be under the orders of General Peace, General Plenty, and General Prosperity.

The Three Best Doctors: May Doctor Quiet, Doctor Diet, and Doctor Good Conscience ever keep us well.

The Health of that wise and good Man who kept a Dog and yet did his own barking!

Here’s to the health of —-: The old bird that was not caught with chaff.

The Health of those we Love the beet; Our noble selves.

MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESSES

Every year new occasions arise that point to a new order of celebrations. Until recently there were no centennial celebrations. Once inaugurated these suggested semi-centennial and quarter-century ones, and as the country advanced in years there came the bi-centennial and ter-centennial. And the attention of the civilized globe was called to our fourth-centennial by the unrivalled and wonderful display at the World’s Exhibition in Chicago.

In this chapter are given outlines of a miscellaneous character, some original and some selected.

OUTLINE OF CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW’S ADDRESS AT THE CENTENNIAL OF CAPTURE OF ANDRÉ

This is a good model for the semi-centennial or centennial of any noted event.

Being in the open air the speaker referred to the grand scenery, almost the same as one hundred years before.

Effect on the nation’s heart of such Revolutionary commemorations.

Small events influence the currents of history. Thermopylæ and its 300; _the three plain farmers who preserved American liberty_.

The orator then sketched compactly but vividly the critical situation of 1780, and tells at length the story of Arnold’s treason, its frustration by the capture of André and his pathetic fate. This “one romance of the Revolution” is a thrilling tale, and all adornment is given to it. The account of the struggle to save André’s life gives the interest of controversy, as does the defense of Washington’s course. The anecdote and the illustrative parallel are both supplied by the case of Captain Nathan Hale, executed by the English as an American spy. The address closes with a fitting tribute to André’s three captors, whose modest monument marked the spot, and a very effective quotation of William of Orange’s heroic oath at his coronation, “I will maintain.”

OUTLINE OF SPEECH BY GOVERNOR FORAKER AT THE DEDICATION OF OHIO’S MONUMENT TO THE ANDREWS RAIDERS, AT CHATTANOOGA

Why this monument and this dedication. The story of the raid, the suffering of the raiders, and heroism of those who died.

The controversial part covered two points–the military value of the raid, and the manner in which the raiders had been treated by the enemy while prisoners.

The illustrative setting was the historic background of Chattanooga and the contrasts of war and peace.

OUTLINE OF ADDRESS BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW AT DINNER ON THE 70TH BIRTHDAY OF JOHN JAY

Not on the programme–pleasantry with Mr. Choate (President) about his railroad fees. Mr. Choate wants it made the rule for all ex-presidents of the club to have a dinner on their 70th birthday. This will help them to live at least that long, as Gladstone and Bismarck, when they had an object, have lived on in spite of the doctors!

Depew, a native of the same county as three generations of Jays. Services of the Revolutionary Jay.

_The Anecdote_.–General Sherman yesterday told a beautiful young girl–Generals always interested in beautiful young girls–that he would be willing to throw away all he was doing or had done to start at her time of life again. But the nation could not permit that, nor could it in the case of John Jay–closing words of tribute and esteem to the guest of the evening.

OUTLINE OF ADDRESS BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW AT THE RECEPTION TO HENRY M. STANLEY BY THE LOTUS CLUB

The speaker jests about his own locks whitened by the cares of railroading, and the raven hair of the reporters–where do they get their dye?

Stanley’s lecture fee, $250.–Lotus Club gets one for only the price of a dinner!

Stanley a great artist in his descriptions as well as a great traveler.

Americans a nation of travelers.–This makes railroads prosperous! What some reporters have done.

The motive makes heroism.–Livingstone the missionary–his rescue by Stanley.

The civilized Africa of the future with Stanley for its Columbus.

SPEECHES AT A DINNER GIVEN TO THE RELIGIOUS PRESS

Toast.–“The Religious Press and Literature.”

First, what are sound views of literature; second, what is a religious paper? The speaker used two illustrations bound in one. A great book is the Nilometer which measures intellectual life as the original Nilometer measured the life and fertility of the land of Egypt. A description of the rise of the Nile and of the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, as such a measurer of the life of the Middle Ages, made up the speech.

Toast.–“Religious Press and Questions of the Day.”

Eternity begins _here_. The paper must show on which side of any question the right lies. It should go even further than this. It should cover a wider range of topics and aim to secure the attention of the general public to the questions it discusses and so entitle it to circulate more widely.

Toast.–“Should Religious Papers Make Money?”

If I may make the paying papers, anybody may make the others. Money losing–soon comes, _hic jacet_. Money making proves usefulness and renders the issue of a paper possible. Letter from the oldest editor of New York in which he says the editor is under life sentence to hard labor.

Toast.–“The Religious Paper and Scholarship.”

He laments that he has no letter from an editor to read (like the last speaker), and tells a story of a Methodist, on request, praying for rain; and when a terrible storm came, the man who asked, was heard to murmur: “How these Methodists do exaggerate.” This was to show the excellence of the dinner. Two other stories were used by the speaker, about the length and discursiveness of his talk. The people need and will read deep, accurate, and scholarly productions. There ought to be a general paper for such. Something has been done in that direction by two religious papers.

The speaker treated his topic by giving a semi-humorous review of the preceding speeches. He showed how denominational traits affected each item in the work of the paper. He did not make just the kind of a paper _he_ liked best, for some people were of the same taste as Artemus Ward, who always ordered _hash_ at a restaurant, because he then knew what he was getting! The speaker also referred ironically to the mistaken idea that church papers could not pay, and gave striking instances to the contrary. He concluded that denominational papers may be as successful in their line as those purely undenominational and independent.

RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, “THE NAVY: OUR COUNTRY’S BEST WALL OF DEFENSE”

1. The disasters which different ports of our country have experienced from invading forces during three great wars. No foe now on this continent which we need fear–our enemies, if any, will come by sea.

2. The defense by fortified harbors cannot be relied on, for when one place is defended another may be attacked, and the coast-line is so great that an unguarded spot may be found. But our glorious navy will seek the foe at any and every point.

3. Past glory of the Navy. Paul Jones in the Revolutionary War singeing John Bull’s beard at his own fireside. 1812. The ships of iron that kept the Confederate States engirdled and forbade outside meddling with domestic troubles.

4. The Navy, by showing the world that we are impregnable, should be the best promoter of a solid peace.

RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, “GENERAL JACKSON: A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH, BUT A DIAMOND”

1. The hero of New Orleans, though rough, was a strong and great man. Stories about him always popular. His indorsing State papers “O.K.” when he approved them, and saying that these letters meant “_oll korrect_.” The victor and the spoils.

2. His connection with great questions, such as the currency and nullification. Popularity with his own party.

3. Proved to be a great commander by the manner in which he used his very slender resources at the battle of New Orleans–the backwoods riflemen and the breastworks of cotton.

RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, “THE WORKING MAN: MAY HE LOVE HIS WORK AND HAVE PLENTY OF IT, WITH GOOD WAGES PROMPTLY PAID”

1. For a healthy man a reasonable amount of work is no misfortune, but a blessing. Idleness is a curse, and leads to all kinds of evil. (See story in Anecdote No. 21 at end of this volume–of the tramp who earned seventy-five cents and quit work because he feared that he could not bear the curse of riches! Not many of us have this kind of fear.)

2. Toil with pen and brain as real, and may be as exhausting as with the hand and foot.

3. But to defraud a workman of one cent of his earnings is a peculiarly atrocious crime. How this may be done indirectly. All persons who believe in this toast should deal justly and fairly, and try to hold others to the same rule.

4. The true workman wants work and fair play; not patronage and flattery, but sympathy and friendship.

A NOMINATING SPEECH

The great conventions that nominate candidates for the Presidency of the United States furnish examples on the largest scale of the nominating speech. But officers of societies of almost any character may be nominated in addresses that are very similar. The following outline of a speech of general character may be easily modified to suit any case in which such help is desired.

_Mr. Chairman_: It gives me great pleasure to place before you, the name of a candidate who is so well qualified and so fully deserving of this honor, and of every other, that may be conferred upon him, as —-. In giving him your votes, you can make no mistake. [Here state previous offices held, or trusts filled, or other evidences of fitness for the post in view.] In addition, I am happy to state that he represents [here name locality, section, class, or opinion, being careful to adduce only those which will be pleasing to the persons whose votes are sought.] On his behalf, I can promise faithful service, and the prompt discharge of every duty. Others may have as much zeal for the cause: some may have as long a training for the duties of this office; a few may possibly have as legitimate a claim upon any honors or rewards in your gift, but where else can you find such a combination of claims?

The illustrative anecdote will naturally be of the candidate himself, of his popularity, availability, or other good quality, or of some person or element strongly supporting him.

SPEECH ACCEPTING A NOMINATION

1. An honor of which any man must be deeply sensible as well as proud. The importance or high character of the body making the nomination.

2. The degree of surprise felt that the candidate should be preferred to so many worthy competitors. W by the honor is especially prized, and the reasons, if any; why the candidate would have preferred a different selection.

3. The motives which make him willing to bear the burdens entailed by this nomination.

4. The hope of being able to support his competitors for other offices, or other terms of this office.

5. With all his sense of unworthiness, the candidate dares not set up his judgment against that of the honorable body which has named him, for the office of —-, and he therefore bows to their decision and gratefully accepts the [unexpected?] honor conferred upon him. Should the people–not for his sake, but for the sake of the cause represented–have the intelligence and good judgment [of which there is not a shadow of doubt?] to indorse the nomination, he will exert all the power he possesses, to faithfully fill the position their choice has bestowed upon him.

SPEECH IN A POLITICAL CANVASS

No form of speech is so easy as a political address in a hot campaign. The people know enough of the general argument in advance, to appreciate a strong statement of it, or the addition of new items. They already have much of that interest in the theme that other classes of speakers must first seek to arouse. The tyro makes his feeble beginnings in the sparsely settled portions of the country, but the polished orator is welcomed by large audiences at the centres of population, and wins money, fame, and possibly a high office. Americans have many opportunities of hearing good speeches of this character, and not only become competent judges, but learn to emulate such examples.

1. A bright story, a personal incident, a local “hit,” or, best of all, a quick, shrewd caricature of some feature of the opposing party, will gain attention and half win the battle. A speaker was once called upon to make an address after a political opponent had taken his seat. This man at one time strongly indorsed a measure to which his own party was bitterly opposed. The measure was defeated notwithstanding his opposition, and he was obliged to sanction his party’s action. The audience being familiar with this, the speaker referred to it by saying: “Oh! _he_ approves, does he! Imagine a kicked, cuffed, pounded, and dragged across a road, bracing himself at every step, but forced over at last and tied to a post; then imagine _that mule_ straightening himself up and saying, ‘Thank Heaven, we crossed that road, didn’t we?’ It was difficult to move the mule, he was obstinate, but it made no difference. My opponent was obstinate too, but what did it avail!”

2. The criticism of our opponents’ platform or principles. Their fallacies, mistakes, and misrepresentations.

3. Their history. How they have carried out all their bad and dangerous doctrines, but have slurred over and allowed to drop out of sight their promises of good.

4. The contrast. Plain statement [and there is nothing more effective in a speech than a plain, dear, and condensed statement] of the opposing issues.

5. The man. [The personal element in a canvas nearly always overshadows political doctrine, except when a new party or new measure is rising into prominence.] Our men brilliant, able, safe. Our opponents the opposite. [Public character only should be criticized. Gossip, scandal, slander are abominable, and seldom well received by any audience. Poison, the assassin’s dagger, and the spreading of infamous stories do not belong to honorable warfare.]

SPEECH AFTER A POLITICAL VICTORY. SELECTED

1. We are masters of the field. Completeness of victory [told in military language].

2. Sympathy for the defeated. We will treat their leaders with Good Samaritan generosity, but we invite the rank and file to enlist with us, unless they prefer to go home and pray for better luck next time.

3. Only by joining us can they get a nibble at the spoils. Probably they will, for many of them are men of seven principles–five loaves and two fishes. The “cohesive power of public plunder.”

4. We must not be careless after victory, but reorganize, be vigilant, keep our powder dry. The “outs” are hungry, and an enemy will fight terribly for rations. “Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.”

5. Now let us all rejoice over the defeat of a party many of whose members we respect personally, but which, as a whole, we regard as an immense nuisance.

SPEECH AFTER A POLITICAL DEFEAT. SELECTED

My Political Brethren: You seem to be in the dumps! Don’t like the figures; wish they were a cunningly devised fable. How did it happen? Big vote and intolerable cheating cooked our goose. But we are india-rubber and steel springs, and no amount of hard usage can take the fight out of us.

Let our opponents laugh! We are not savage–would not hurt a hair of their heads personally, but politically will skin them alive next time. But we prefer to convert them, and hope they will hear our speakers as often as possible before the next election.

A CHAIRMAN’S OR PRESIDENT’S SPEECH

At a public meeting some one interested in the object for which it has convened calls the assembly to order. After securing attention he proposes the name of some person as chairman or president. When the nomination is seconded he takes the vote and announces the election. It will then be in order for the person chosen to take a position facing the assembly and to make a brief speech.

“Ladies and Gentlemen: I have no wish to disparage your judgment, although I think it might have been exercised to better advantage by electing some of the able persons I see before me. But I thank you for this honor, which I appreciate the more highly and accept the more readily because of say deep interest in the question of —-, which is now before us. First, however, please nominate a secretary.”

When, however, the president or chairman elected is himself a prime mover in the business for which the meeting is called, it will be perfectly proper for him to extend his speech, upon accepting the chair, by stating clearly but briefly the object of the meeting; or, if he prefers, he may ask some one in whose powers of plausible and persuasive statement he has confidence to do this in his place. Formal argument is not advisable in the opening speech; but the best argument consists in giving a compact statement and ample information. In this way the cause may be half won by the chairman’s speech or the speech of his proxy.

A GENERAL OUTLINE FOE ALL OCCASIONS

_The Introduction_. The speaker’s modesty or inability, the lateness of the hour, the merit of preceding speeches, the literary treats that are to follow, the character of the dinner, personal allusion to the president or to the audience–_but not all of these in one address_.

_The Discussion_. Here refer to the toast or theme–be sure to put in a humorous anecdote. Make it as appropriate as possible, but don’t fail to bring it in. Get up a short controversy: set up a man of straw if you can find nobody else, and then make an onslaught upon him; but _be sure he has no friends in the audience_!

_Conclusion_. A graceful compliment to some one, a reference to an expected speaker, or a word indicating the part of your subject of which you will not treat, or give a _very_ quick summary of what you have already said.

ILLUSTRATIVE AND HUMOROUS ANECDOTES

With a number of the following anecdotes a few suggestions are given as to the manner in which they may be used. The habit of thinking how a good story may be brought into an address should be formed, after which these hints will be superfluous. At the outset they may help to form the habit.

1. INDEPENDENCE OF A MONOPOLY

[A good illustration of complete independence. It can be used as a humorous description of a monopoly or as a compliment to a man who has complete control of his own affairs.]

An inquisitive passenger on a railroad recently had the following dialogue:

“Do you use the block system on this road?” inquired the passenger.

“No, sir,” replied the conductor, “we have no use for it.”

“Do you use the electric or pneumatic signals?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you a double track?”

“No.”

“Well, of course, you have a train dispatcher, and run all trains by telegraph?”

“No.”

“I see you have no brakeman. How do you flag the rear of your train if you are stopped from any cause between stations?”‘

“We don’t flag.”

“Indeed! What a way to run a railroad! A man takes his life in his hand when he rides on it. This is criminally reckless!”

“See here, mister! If you don’t like this railroad you can get off and walk. I am president of this road and its sole owner. I am also board of directors, treasurer, secretary, general manager, superintendent, paymaster, trackmaster, general passenger agent, general freight agent, master mechanic, ticket agent, conductor, brakeman, and boss. This is the Great Western Railroad of Kentucky, six miles long, with termini at Harrodsburg and Harrodsburg Junction. This is the only train on the road of any kind, and ahead of us is the only engine. We never have collisions. The engineer does his own firing, and runs the repair shop and round-house all by himself. He and I run this railway. It keeps us pretty busy, but we’ve always got time to stop and eject a sassy passenger. So you want to behave yourself and go through with us, or you will have your baggage set off here by the haystack!”

2. EXPLANATION

[To ridicule extravagant explanations that do not explain–or unreasonable pretensions to antiquity.]

An old Scotch lady, who had no relish for modern church music, was expressing her dislike to the singing of an anthem in her own church one day, when a neighbor said: “Why, that is a very old anthem! David sang that anthem to Saul.” To this the old lady replied: “Weel, weel! I noo for the first time understan’ why Saul threw his javelin at David when the lad sang for him.”

3. RIDING A HOBBY

[To illustrate hobby-riding–very appropriate where many toasts and speeches run in one line.]

A boy in Buffalo, N. Y., who was asked to write out what he considered an ideal holiday dinner _ménu_, evolved the following:

Furst Corse. Mince pie. Second Corse. Pumpkin pie and turkey. Third Corse. Lemon pie, turkey, and cranberries Fourth Corse. Custard pie, apple pie, chocolate cake and plum pudding. Dessert. Pie.

4. HOBSON’S CHOICE

[Suitable caricature for any one who tries to make merit of doing what he cannot help.]

“If my employer does not retract what he said to me this morning I shall leave his store.” “Why, what did he say?” “He told me to look for another place.”

5. WHEN TO BE SILENT

[A silent guest might tell this to show that he had found a way to be of greatest service at a banquet.]

Mrs. Penfield–“My husband has found a way by which he says I am of the greatest help to him in his literary work.”

Mrs. Hillaire–“How nice that must be for you, my dear! But how are you able to do it?”

Mrs. Penfield–“As soon as I see him at his desk I go into another room and keep perfectly quiet until he has finished.”

6. PAYING FOR YOUR WHISTLE

[Would be a good answer to one who gave a compliment, and tried in that way to shove off a speech or other duty upon the one complimented.]

McSwatters–“It’s very funny.”

Mrs. McSwatters–“What is?”

McSwatters–“Why, when the doctor treats me I always have to pay for it.”

7. GOOSE-CHASE

[Would come in well after several had declined to speak, the goose being the one who finally consents and tells the story.]

A lady had been looking for a friend for a long time without success. Finally, she came upon her in an unexpected way. “Well,” she exclaimed, “I’ve been on a perfect wild-goose chase all day long, but, thank goodness, I’ve found you at last.”

8. THE PERPLEXED SAGE

[To show that the chairman may safely confide in his own power to manage such poor material as the person who tells the story assumes himself to be.]

“And now what is it?” asked the sage, as the young man timidly approached. “Pray, tell me,” asked the youth, “does a woman marry a man because of her confidence in the man, or because of her confidence in her ability to manage him?” For once the sage had to take the question under advisement.

9. QUICK THOUGHT

[The following illustrates the advantages of a happy retort, the importance of a felicitous phrase, or of quick thought and ready speech. It might be said that the preceding speaker was as ready as:]

When Napoleon (then a student at Brienne) was asked how he would supply himself with provisions in a closely-invested town, he answered, without a moment’s hesitation, “From the enemy,” which so pleased the examiners that they passed him without further questions.

10. [The Russian General Suvaroff is said to have promoted one of his sergeants for giving substantially the same answer.]

The Emperor Paul, of Russia, was so provoked by the awkwardness of an officer on review that he ordered him to resign at once and retire to his estate. “But he has no estate,” the commander ventured. “Then give him one!” thundered the despot, whose word was law, and the man gained more by his blunders than he could have done by years of the most skillful service.

11. [The anger of an actor took the same turn as that of the Czar.]

Colley Cibber once missed his “cue,” and the confusion that followed spoiled the best passage of Betterton, who was manager as well as actor. He rushed behind the scenes in a towering passion, and exclaimed, “Forfeit, Master Colley; you shall be fined for such stupidity!” “It can’t be done,” said a fellow-actor, “for he gets no salary.” “Put him down for ten shillings a week and fine him five!” cried the furious manager.

12. INSIGNIFICANT THINGS

[The need of accuracy, or how insignificant things sometimes change the meaning, is shown by the following.]

A merchant of London wrote his East India factor to send him 2 or 3 apes; but he forgot to write the “r” in “or,” and the factor wrote that he had sent 80, and would send the remainder of the 2 0 3 as soon as they could be gathered in.

13. A very well-known writer had a similar experience. He was selling copies of his first literary venture, and telegraphed to the publisher to send him “three hundred books at once.” He answered. “Shall I send them on an emigrant train, or must they go first-class? Had to scour the city over to get them. You must be going into the hotel business on a great scale to need so many Cooks.” I was bewildered; but all was explained when a copy of the dispatch showed that the telegraph clerk had mistaken the small “b” for a capital “C.”

14. MAKING AN EXCUSE; OR, JOHNNY PEEP

[A guest pleading to be excused from a speech or a song might say that he wanted to be accounted as “Johnny Peep” in the following story which Allan Cunningham tells of Robert Burns.]

Strolling one day in Cumberland the poet lost his friends, and thinking to find them at a certain tavern he popped his head in at the door. Seeing no one there but three strangers, he apologized, and was about to retire, when one of the strangers called out, “Come in, Johnny Peep.” This invitation the convivial poet readily accepted, and spent a very pleasant time with his newly-found companions. As the conversation began to flag, it was proposed that each should write a verse, and place it, together with two-and-six pence, under the candlestick, the best poet to take the half-crowns, while the unsuccessful rhymers were to settle the bill among them. According to Cunningham, Burns obtained the stakes by writing:

“Here am I, Johnny Peep; I saw three sheep, And these three sheep saw me. Half-a-crown apiece Will pay for their fleece, And so Johnny Peep goes free.”

15. STERN LOGIC

[Probably this boy would have seen the necessity of avoiding such rich banquets as this.]

“Say, ma, do they play base-ball in heaven?”

“Why, no, my dear; of course not. Why do you ask?”

“Huh! Well, you don’t catch me being good and dying young then; that’s all.”

16. MISTAKEN BREVITY

[“Brevity is the soul of wit;” and calculation and economy are very commendable; but they may be carried to extremes. This may be used when the last speaker has closed a little abruptly.]

This is the message the telegraph messenger handed a young man from his betrothed “Come down as soon as you can; I am dying. Kate.”

Eight hours later he arrived at the summer hotel, to be met on the piazza by Kate herself.

“Why, what did you mean by sending me such a message?” he asked.

“Oh!” she gurgled, “I wanted to say that I was dying to see you, but my ten words ran out, and I had to stop.”

17. CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

Breslau, a celebrated juggler, being at Canterbury with his troupe, met with such bad success that they were almost starved. He repaired to the church wardens, and promised to give a night’s takings to the poor if the parish would pay for hiring a room, etc. The charitable bait took, the benefit proved a bumper, and the next morning the church wardens waited upon the wizard to touch the receipts. “I have already disposed of dem,” said Breslau; “de profits were for de poor. I have kept my promise, and given de money to my own people, who are de poorest in dis parish!”

“Sir!” exclaimed the church wardens, “this is a trick.”

“I know it,” replied the conjurer; “I live by my tricks.”

18. CHARITY; OR, A GOOD WORD FOR EVERY ONE–EVEN THE DEVIL.

[It is well to feel charitably and kindly at all times, but especially at a dinner party.]

A friend said to a Scotchman who was celebrated for possessing these amiable qualities, “I believe you would actually find something to admire in Satan himself.” The canny Scot replied, “Ah! weel, weel, we must a’ admit, that auld Nick has great energy and perseverance.”

[If the chairman has been very persistent in calling out reluctant speakers, the foregoing would be a good story to turn the laugh upon him.]

19. INGENIOUS REASON

[The Scotchman referred to in the last anecdote was as ingenious in finding a reason as the boy mentioned in the following:]

“Can you suggest any reason why I should print your poem?” said the overbearing editor.

The dismal youth looked thoughtful, and then replied:

“You know I always inclose a stamp for the return of rejected manuscript?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you print it you can keep the stamp.”

20. AMBIGUITY OF WORDS

[The equivocal use of words in our language.]

Recently a west-bound train on the Fitchburg (Mass.) Railroad had just left the town of Athol When the conductor noticed among the new passengers a young man of intelligent appearance. He asked for the young man’s fare, and the latter handed him a ticket to Miller’s Falls and with it a cent. For a moment the conductor suspected a joke, but a look at the passenger’s face convinced him to the contrary.

“What is this cent for?” the conductor asked.

“Why, I see,” answered the young fellow, “that the ticket isn’t good unless it is stamped, and as I don’t happen to have a stamp with me I give you the cent instead. You can put it on, can’t you?”

The good-natured conductor handed back the coin with a smile, remarking that it was a small matter, and he would see that it was all right.

21. USELESS REGRET

[Persons who pretend to regret something without making a real effort to better it are hit off by this anecdote.]

A father called his son rather late in the morning, and finding him still abed, indignantly demanded: “Are you not _ashamed_ to be caught asleep this time of day?”

“Yes, rather,” returned the ingenious youth, “but I’d ruther _be ashamed_ than git up.”

22. NO HAPPINESS IN WEALTH

[The great advantage of being fully adapted to one’s situation and contented with it.]

There are people who cannot hold their heads under the influence of sudden riches. They immediately begin to degenerate. They have become so used to humble circumstances that wealth is a curse. Here is a case:

A tramp, for some mysterious reason, had accepted an offer to work about the place, for which he was to receive his meals, sundry old clothes, and 25 cents a day in cash. For the first two or three days he did very well, and he was paid 50 cents on account. He did not spend the money, but he began to grow listless and sad, and at the end of the week he interviewed his employer.

“You’ve been very kind to me, sir,” he said, “and I want to thank you for what you have done.”

“That’s all right,” was the reply. “I’m glad to be able to help you.”

“I know that, sir, and I appreciate it, but I shall have to give it all up, sir.”

“What’s that for? Don’t I pay you enough?”

“Oh! yes, sir; that isn’t it. I have 75 cents left, sir, but I find that money doesn’t bring happiness, sir, and I guess I’ll resign and go back to the old ways, sir. Wealth is a curse to some people, sir, and I fancy I belong to that class. Good-bye, sir.” And he shambled off down the path and struck the highway.

23. SHORT BUT POINTED

[Splendid for a speaker called up rather late in the evening–even if he should make a short speech afterward.]

Being nobody in particular, a Mr. Bailey was placed last on the list of the speakers. The chairman introduced several speakers whose names were not on the list, and the audience were tired out when he said, “Mr. Bailey will now give you his address.”

“My address,” said Mr. Bailey, rising, “is No. 45 Loughboro Park, Brixton Road, and I wish you all good night.”

24. REASONING IN A CIRCLE

[This is very common, as in the case of the heroine of this story.]

The director of a Chicago bank tells how his wife overdrew her account at the bank one day last month. “I spoke to her about it one evening,” said he, “and told her she ought to adjust it at once. A day or two afterward I asked her if she had done what I suggested. ‘Oh! yes,’ she answered. ‘I attended to that matter the very next morning after you spoke about it. I sent the bank my check for the amount I had overdrawn.'”

25. EXTREME ECONOMY

[Economy is a great virtue, but it should not be extreme.]

An old lady of Massachusetts was famed in her native township for health and thrift. To an acquaintance who was once congratulating her upon the former she said:

“We be pretty well for old folks, Josiah and me. Josiah hasn’t had an ailin’ time for fifty years, ‘cept last winter. And I ain’t never suffered but one day in my life, and that was when I took some of the medicine Josiah had left over, so’s how it shouldn’t be wasted.”

26. SENSIBLE TO THE LAST

[How we commend those who take our standards and help us.]

A story is told of a late Dublin doctor, famous for his skill and also his great love of money. He had a constant and profitable patient in an old shopkeeper in Dame Street. This old lady was terribly rheumatic and unable to leave her sofa. During the doctor’s visit she kept a £1 note in her hand, which duly went into Dr. C.’s pocket. One morning he found her lying dead on the sofa. Sighing deeply, the doctor approached, and taking her hand in his, he saw the fingers closed on his fee. “Poor thing,” he said as he pocketed it, “sensible to the last.”

27. FISHING FOR A COMPLIMENT

[Fishing for compliments is sometimes dangerous.]

A well-known Congressman, who was a farmer before he went into politics, was doing his district not long ago, and in his rambles he saw a man in a stumpy patch of ground trying to get a plow through it. He went over to him, and after a brief salutation he asked the privilege of making a turn or two with the plow. The native shook his head doubtfully as he looked at his visitor’s store clothes and general air of gentleman of elegant leisure, but he let him take the plow. The Congressman sailed away with it in fine style, and plowed four or five furrows before the owner of the field could recover his surprise. Then he pulled up and handed the handles over to the original holder.

“By gravy, mister,” said the farmer, admiringly, “air you in the aggercultural business?”

“No,” laughed the statesman.

“Y’ain’t selling plows?”

“No.”

“Then what in thunder air you?”

“I’m the member of Congress from this district.”

“Air you the man I voted for and that I’ve been reading about in the papers doin’ legislatin’ and sich in Washington?”

“Yes.”

“Well, by hokey, mister,” said the farmer, as he looked with admiration over the recently-plowed furrows, “ef I’d a had any idea that I was votin’ fer a waste of sich good farmin’ material I’d voted fer the other candidate as shore as shootin’.”

28. BEYOND EXPRESSION

[When called on for a speech one may answer the chairman in the words of this lady:]

She was in her room when some people came to call. Her husband received the company, and after awhile said to his daughter, who was playing about the room:

“Go up-stairs and tell your mamma that Mr. and Mrs. Blank have come to call.”

The child went, and after a while returned and began to play again.

“Did you tell your mamma that Mr. and Mrs. Blank are here?” asked the father.

“Oh! yes.”

“And what did she say?”

The little girl looked up, and after a moment’s hesitation, exclaimed:

“She said–well, she said, ‘O dear!'”

29. THE TOAST OF THE EVENING

[The comment upon this incident by the editor is not less amusing than the speech.]

It is not always a pleasant thing to be called upon suddenly to address a public meeting of any sort, as is amusingly illustrated by the following speech at the opening of a free hospital by one who was certainly not born an orator:

“Gentlemen–ahem–I–I–I rise to say–that is, I wish to propose a toast, which I think you’ll all say–ahem–I think, at least, that this toast is, as you’ll say, the toast of the occasion. Gentlemen, I belong to a good many of these things, and I say, gentlemen, that this hospital requires no patronage–at least, what I mean is, you don’t want any recommendation. You’ve only got to be ill–got to be ill.”

“Now, gentlemen, I find by the report” (turning over the leaves in a fidgety way) “that from the year seventeen–no eighteen–no, ah, yes, I’m right–eighteen hundred and fifty–no, it’s a ‘3’–thirty-six–eighteen hundred and thirty-six, no less than one hundred and ninety-three millions–no! ah!” (to a committeeman at his side) “Eh? oh, yes, thank you–yes–one hundred and ninety-three thousand–two millions–no” (after a close scrutiny at the report) “two hundred and thirty-one–one hundred and ninety-three thousand, two hundred and thirty-one! Gentlemen, I beg to propose–success to this admirable institution!”

To what the large and variously stated figures referred no one in the audience ever felt positive, but all agreed, as he had said they would, that this was the toast of the evening.

30. BEE LINE

[He knew how to escape from more than one kind of fire.]

A soldier on guard in South Carolina during the war was questioned as to his knowledge of his duties.

“You know your duty here, do you, sentinel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, now, suppose they should open on you with shells and musketry, what would you do?”

“Form a line, sir.”

“What! one man form a line?”

“Yes, sir; form a bee-line for camp, sir.”

31. VENTRILOQUISM

[“Take the good the Gods provide.”]

At Raglan Castle, said Mr. Ganthony, the ventriloquist, I gave an entertainment in the open air, and throwing my voice up into the ivy-covered ruins, said: “What are you doing there?”

To my amazement a boy answered: “I climbed up ‘ere this mornin’ just to see the folk and ‘ear the music; I won’t do no harm.”

I replied: “Very well, stay there, and don’t let any one see you, do you hear?”

The reply came: “Yes, muster, I ‘ear.”

This got me thunders of applause. I made up my mind to risk it, so I bowed, and the boy never showed himself.

32. A SLIGHT MISTAKE

[Orders should be strictly obeyed.]

A celebrated German physician, according to a London paper, was once called upon to treat an aristocratic lady, the sole cause of whose complaint was high living and lack of exercise. But it would never have done to tell her so. So his medical advice was:

“Arise at five o clock, take a walk in the park for one hour, then drink a cup of tea, then walk another hour, and take a cup of chocolate. Take breakfast at eight.”

Her condition improved visibly, until one fine morning the carriage of the baroness was seen to approach the physician’s residence at lightning speed. The patient dashed up to the doctor’s house, and on his appearing on the scene she gasped out:

“O doctor! I took the chocolate first!”

“Then drive home as fast as you can,” directed the astute disciple of Æsculapius, rapidly writing a prescription, “and take this emetic. The tea must be underneath.”

The grateful patient complied. She is still improving.

33. PRESENCE OF MIND

[A fine story to illustrate the value (money value) of presence of mind.]

A witty person whom Bismarck was commissioned by the Emperor to decorate with the Iron Cross of the first class, discomfited the Chancellor’s attempt to chaff him. “I am authorized,” said Bismarck, “to offer you one hundred thalers instead of the cross.” “How much is the cross worth?” asked the soldier. “Three thalers.” “Very well, then, your highness, I’ll take the cross and ninety-seven thalers.” Bismarck was so surprised and pleased by the ready shrewdness of the reply that he gave the man both the cross and the money.

34. JOKE ON A DUDE

[A good story for one who has some power of personation, for the dudes get little sympathy.]

A crowded car ran down the other evening. Within was a full-blown, eye-glassed, drab-gaitered dude, apparently satisfied that he was jammed in among an admiring community. On the rear platform a cheery young mechanic was twitting the conductor and occasionally making a remark to a fresh passenger. Everybody took it in good part as a case of inoffensive high spirits, all but the dude, who evinced a strong disgust.

When the young man called out to an old gentleman, “Sit out here, guvinor, on the back piazza,” or to another, “Don’t crowd there; stay where the breezes blow,” the dude looked daggers, and at last, grabbing the conductor’s elbow and indicating the young man by a nod of the head, evidently entered a protest. Every one saw it. So did the young man, and he gathered his wits together like a streak to finish that dude. He did it all with an imperturbable good humor and seriousness which would carry conviction to the most doubting.

“Well, I never!” he began, poking his head inside the doorway with an air of comic surprise. “Jes’ to see you a-sitting there, dressed up like that. Catch on to them gaiters, will you? Ain’t you got the nerve to go up and down Broadway fixed up like that, and your poor father and mother workin’ hard at home? Ain’t you ‘shamed o’ yourself, and your father a honest, hard-workin’ driver, and your mother a decent, respectable washwoman? Y’ ain’t no good, or you wouldn’t have gev up your place, and I think I’ll go look after it myself and put a decent man in it.”

He stepped off the car as if bent on doing this at once, and the dude, unable to resist the ridicule of the situation or defend the attack, hastily stepped off after him.

35. NEWSPAPER REPORTER

[Equally good for a missionary meeting or a gathering of newspaper men.]

A young journalist was requested to write something about the Zenana Mission. He assured the readers of the paper that among the many scenes of missionary labor, none had of late attracted more attention than the Zenana Mission, and assuredly none was more deserving of this attention. Comparatively few years had passed since Zenana had been opened up to British trade, but already, owing to the devotion of a handful of men and women, the nature of the inhabitants had been almost entirely changed. The Zenanese, from being a savage people, had become, in a wonderfully short space of time, practically civilized; and recent travelers to Zenana had returned with the most glowing accounts of the continued progress of the good work in that country. He then branched off into the “laborer-worthy-of-his-hire” side of this great work, and the question was aptly asked if the devoted laborers in that remote vineyard were not deserving of support. Were civilization and Christianity to be snatched from the Zenanese just when both were within their grasp? So on for nearly half a column the writer meandered in the most orthodox style, just as he had done scores of times before when advocating certain missions. Some one who found him the next day running his finger down the letter Z, in the index to the “Handy Atlas,” with a puzzled look upon his face, knew he had had a letter from the editor.

36. HOW A WOMAN PROPOSED

[A variation of the old and always pleasing theme.]

They were dining off fowl in a restaurant. “You see,” he explained, as he showed her the wishbone, “you take hold here. Then we must both make a wish and pull, and when it breaks the one who has the bigger part of it will have his or her wish granted.” “But I don’t know what to wish for,” she protested. “Oh! you can think of something,” he said. “No, I can’t,” she replied; “I can’t think of anything I want very much.” “Well, I’ll wish for you,” he exclaimed. “Will you, really?” she asked. “Yes.” “Well, then, there’s no use fooling with the old wishbone,” she interrupted, with a glad smile, “you can have me.”

37. LUCKY ANSWER

[Certainly Thompson would be a lawyer, ready for any emergency.]

In times past there was in a certain law school an aged and eccentric professor. “General information” was the old gentleman’s hobby. He held it as incontrovertible that if a young lawyer possessed a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, combined with an equal amount of common sense, he would be successful in life. So every year the professor put on his examination papers a question very far removed from the subject of criminal law. One year it was, “How many kinds of trees are there in the college yard?” the next, “What is the make-up of the present English cabinet?”

Finally the professor thought he had invented the best question of his life. It was, “Name twelve animals that inhabit the polar regions.” The professor chuckled as he wrote this down. He was sure he would “pluck” half the students on that question and it was beyond a doubt that that opprobrious young loafer Thompson would fail. But when the professor read the examination papers, Thompson, who had not answered another question, was the only man who had solved the polar problem. This was Thompson’s answer: “Six seals and six polar bears.” Thompson got his degree with distinction.

38. DOUBLE EDUCATION

A young doctor, wishing to make a good impression upon a German farmer, mentioned the fact that he had received a double education, as it were. He had studied homoeopathy, and was also a graduate of a “regular” medical school. “Oh! dot vas noding,” said the farmer, “I had vonce a calf vot sucked two cows, and he made nothing but a common schteer after all.”

39. REMNANTS

[This and the preceding have a little spice of ill-nature, and while enjoyable must be applied carefully.]

Wife–“Such a dream as I had last night, dear!”

Husband–“May I hear about it?”

“Well, yes; I dreamed I was in a great establishment where they sold husbands. They were beauties; some in glass cases and marked at fearful prices, and others were sold at less figures. Girls were paying out fortunes, and getting the handsomest men I ever saw. It was wonderful.”

“Did you see any like me there, dear?”

“Yes; just as I was leaving I saw a whole lot like you lying on the remnant counter.”

40. INDIRECT AND DIRECT

[The following instances show that it is necessary to heed indirect as well as direct meanings.]

Mr. Callon, M. P. for Louth, Ireland, a stanch opponent of the Sunday Closing and Permissive Bill and personally a great benefactor to the Revenue, replying to the Irish Attorney-General, said: “The facts relied on by the learned gentleman are very strange. Now, Mr. Speaker, _I swallow a good deal_. [‘Hear, hear,’ ‘Quite true,’ ‘Begorra, you can,’ and roars of laughter.] I repeat, _I can swallow a great deal_ [‘Hear, hear,’ and fresh volleys of laughter], but I can’t swallow that.” A few nights before, in a debate which had to do with the Jews, Baron de Worms had just remarked, “_We owe much to the Jews_,” when there came a feeling groan from a well-known member in his back corner, “_We do_.”

41. AN UNMARRIED MAN’S WIFE

At a dinner at Delmonico’s, after the bottle had made its tenth round, one of the company proposed this toast: “To the man whose wife was never vixenish to him!” A wag of an old bachelor jumped up and said: “Gentlemen, as I am the only _unmarried_ man at this table, I suppose that that toast was intended for me.”

42. A DILEMMA

“I am no good unless I strike,” said the match. “And you lose your head every time you do strike,” said the box.

43. COURAGEOUS GIRL

[The following is a good instance of an elaborate story and a sharp retort.]

It is not always safe to presume upon the timidity or ignorance of folks. The most demure may be the most courageous. A gentleman who attempted to play a practical joke in order to test the courage of a servant, was nonplused in a very unexpected way. Here is his story:

I am very particular about fastening the doors and windows of my house. I do not intend to leave them open at night as an invitation to burglars to enter. You see, I was robbed once in that way last year, and I never mean to be again; so when I go to bed I like to be sure that every door and window is securely fastened.

Last winter my wife engaged a big, strong country girl, and the new-comer was very careless about the doors at night. On two or three occasions I came down-stairs to find a window up or the back door unlocked. I cautioned her, but it did her no good. I therefore determined to frighten her. I got some false whiskers, and one night about eleven o’clock I crept down the back-stairs to the kitchen, where she was. She had turned down the gas, and was in her chair by the fire fast asleep, as I could tell by her breathing, but the moment I struck a match she awoke.

I expected a great yelling and screaming, but nothing of the sort took place. She bounced out of her seat with a “You villain!” on her lips, seized a chair by the back, and before I had made a move she hit me over the head, forcing me to my knees. I tried to get up, tried to explain who I was, but in vain. Before I could get out of the room she struck me again, and it was only after I had tumbled up the back-stairs that she gave the alarm. Then she came up to my room, rapped at the door, and coolly announced:

“Mr. —-, please get up. I’ve killed a burglar.”

44. MORAL SUASION

“What are your usual modes of punishment?” was among the questions submitted to a teacher in rural district in Ohio. Her answer was, “I try moral suasion first, and if that does not work I use capital punishment.”

As it was a neighborhood where moral suasion had not been a success, and the children were scarce the committee took no risks.

45. CUTE BOY

The teacher in geography was putting the class through a few simple tests:

“On which side of the earth is the North Pole?” he inquired.

“On the north side,” came the unanimous answer.

“On which side is the South Pole?”

“On the south side?”

“Now, on which side are the most people?”

This was a poser, and nobody answered. Finally, a very young scholar held up his hand.

“I know,” he said, hesitatingly, as if the excess of his knowledge was too much for him.

“Good for you,” said the teacher, encouragingly; “tell the class on which side the most people are.”

“On the outside,” piped the youngster, and whatever answer the teacher had in her mind was lost in the shuffle.

46. PERPLEXED

Bob–“Hello! I’m awfully glad to see you!” Dick–“I guess there must be some mistake. I don’t owe you anything, and I am not in a condition to place you in a position to owe me anything!”

47. BEN FRANKLIN’S OYSTERS

Benjamin Franklin was not unlike other boys in his love for sophomoric phrases. It is related that one day he told his father that he had swallowed some acephalus molluscus, which so alarmed him that he shrieked for help. The mother came in with warm water, and forced half a gallon down Benjamin’s throat with the garden pump, then held him upside down, the father saying, “If we don’t get those things out of Bennie he’ll be poisoned sure.” When Benjamin was allowed to get his breath he explained that the articles referred to were oysters. His father was so indignant that he whipped him for an hour for frightening the family. Franklin never afterward used a word with two syllables when a monosyllable would do.

48. FAMILY AFFAIRS

“Newlywed seems to find particular delight in parading his little family affairs before the eyes of his acquaintances,” “Does he? What are they? Scandals?” “Nop, twins.”

49. A BURGLAR’S EXPERIENCE

A New York paper prints this extract from the reminiscences of a retired burglar:

“I think about the most curious man I ever met,” said the retired burglar, “I met in a house in eastern Connecticut, and I shouldn’t know him, either, if I should meet him again unless I should hear him speak. It was so dark where I met him that I never saw him at all. I had looked around the house down-stairs, and actually hadn’t seen a thing worth carrying off. It was the poorest house I ever was in, and it wasn’t a bad-looking house on the outside, either. I got up-stairs and groped around a little, and finally turned into a room that was darker than Egypt. I had not gone more than three steps in this room when I heard a man say:

“‘Hello, there.’

“‘Hello,’ says I.

“‘Who are you?’ says the man; ‘burglar?’

“And I said yes; I did do something in that line occasionally.

“‘Miserable business to be in, ain’t it?’ said the man. His voice came from a bed over in the corner of the room, and I knew he hadn’t even sat up.

“And I said, ‘Well, I dunno. I got to support my family some way.’

“‘Well, you’ve just wasted a night here,’ says the man. ‘Did you see anything down-stairs worth stealing?’

“And I said no, I hadn’t.

“‘Well, there’s less up-stairs,’ says the man; and then I heard him turn over and settle down to go to sleep again. I’d like to have gone over there and kicked him, but I didn’t. It was getting late, and I thought, all things considered, that I might just as well let him have his sleep out.”

50. HITTING A LAWYER

“Have you had a job to-day, Tim?” inquired a well-known legal gentleman of the equally well-known, jolly, florid-faced old drayman, who, rain or shine, summer or winter, is rarely absent from his post.

“Bedad, I did, sor.”

“How many?”

“Only two, sor.”

“How much did you get for both?”

“Sivinty cints, sor.”

“Seventy cents! How in the world do you expect to live and keep a horse on seventy cents a day?”

“Some days I have half a dozen jobs, sor. But bizness has been dull to-day, sor. On’y the hauling of a thrunk for a gintilman for forty cints an’ a load av furniture for thirty cints; an’ there was the pots an’ the kittles, an’ there’s no telling phat; a big load, sor.”

“Do you carry big loads of household goods for thirty cents?”

“She was a poor widdy, sor, an’ had no more to give me. I took all she had, sor; an’ bedad, sor, a lyyer could have done no better nor that, sor.”

51. CUTTING SHORT A PRAYER

Many a spiritual history is condensed into a miniature in the following:

Two fishermen–Jamie and Sandy–belated and befogged on a rough water, were in some trepidation lest they should never get ashore again. At last Jamie said:

“Sandy, I’m steering, and I think you’d better put up a bit of a prayer.”

Sandy said: “I don’t know how.”

Jamie said: “If you don’t I’ll just chuck ye overboard.”

Sandy began: “O Lord, I never asked onything of Ye for fifteen year, and if Ye’ll only get us safe back I’ll never trouble Ye again.”

“Whist, Sandy,” said Jamie, “_the boat’s touched shore; don’t be beholden to onybody_.”

52. UNREMITTING KINDNESS

Jerrold was asked if he considered a man kind who remitted no funds to his family when away. “Oh! yes. _Unremitting kindness_,” said he.

53. AMUSING BLUNDER

One of the passengers on board the ill-fated “Metis” at the time of the disaster was an exceedingly nervous man, who, while floating in the water, imagined how his friends would acquaint his wife of his fate. Saved at last, he rushed to the telegraph office and sent this message: “Dear P—-, I am saved. _Break it gently to my wife._”

54. COMPLIMENT TO A LADY

[How nicely this might fit into a ladies’ party.]

Sidney Smith, the cultivated writer and divine, who, when describing his country residence, declared that he lived twelve miles from a lemon, was told by a beautiful girl that a certain pea in his garden would never come to perfection. “Permit me then,” said he, taking her by the hand, “_to lead perfection to the pea_.”

55. TOO SLIM

[The great evil of mixing religion and politics are well set forth in the following incident:]

“Gabe,” said the governor to an old colored man, “I understand that you have been ousted from your position of Sunday-school superintendent.”

“Yes, sah, da figured aroun’ till da got me out. II was all a piece of political work, though; and I doan see why de law of de lan’ doan prevent de Sunday-schools an’ churches from takin’ up political matters!”

“How did politics get you out?”

“Yer see, some time ago, when I was a candidate for justice ob de peace, I gin’ a barbecue ter some ob my frien’s. De udder day da brung up de fack an’ ousted me.”

“I don’t see why the fact that you gave a barbecue to your friends should have caused any trouble.”

“Neider does myse’f, boss; but yer see da said dat I stole de hogs what I barbecued. De proof wa’nt good, an’ I think dat da done wrong in ackin’ upon sech slim testimony. Da said dat I cotch de hogs in a corn fid’. I know dat wan’t true, ‘case it was a wheat fid’ whar I cotch ’em.”

56. A FAST-DAY TOAST

On one of the fast-days–a cold, bleak one, too–Father Foley, a popular and genial priest, on his way from a distant visitation, dropped in to see Widow O’Brien, who was as jolly as himself, and equally as fond of the creature comforts, and, what is better, well able to provide them. As it was about dinner-time, his reverence thought he would stay and have a “morsel” with the old dame; but what was his horror to see served up in good style a pair of splendid roast ducks!

“Oh! musha, Mistress O’Brien, what have ye there?” he exclaimed, in well-feigned surprise.

“Ducks, yer riverence.”

“Ducks! roast ducks! and this a fast-day of the holy Church!”

“Wisha! I never thought of that; but why can’t we eat a bit of duck, yer riverence?”

“Why? Because the Council of Trint won’t lave us–that’s why.”

“Well, well, now, but I’m sorry fur that, fur I can only give ye a bite of bread and cheese and a glass of something hot. Would that be any harrum, sir?”

“Harrum! by no manes, woman. Sure we must live any way, and bread and cheese is not forbid!”

“Nayther whiskey punch?”

“Nayther that.”

“Well, thin, yer riverence, would it be any harrum fur me to give a toast?”

“By no manes, Mrs. O’Brien. Toast away as much as ye like, bedad!”

“Well, thin, _here’s to the Council of Trint, fur if it keeps us from atin’, it doesn’t keep us from drinkin’_!”

57. THE SUN STANDING STILL

James Russell Lowell, when concluding an after-dinner speech in England, made a happy hit by introducing the story of a Methodist preacher at a camp-meeting, of whom he had heard when he was young. He was preaching on Joshua ordering the sun to stand still: “My hearers,” he said, “there are three motions of the sun; the first is the straightforward or direct motion of the sun, the second is the retrograde or backward motion of the sun, and the third is the motion mentioned in our text–‘the sun stood still.’ Now, gentlemen, I do not know whether you see the application of that story to after-dinner oratory. I hope you do. The after-dinner orator at first begins and goes straight forward–that is the straightforward motion of the sun; next he goes back and begins to repeat himself a little, and that is the retrograde or backward motion of the sun; and at last he has the good sense to bring himself to an end, and that is the motion mentioned in our text of the sun standing still.”

58. NEUTRALIZING POISON

Col. John H. George, a New Hampshire barrister, tells a good story on himself. Meeting an old farmer recently whom he had known in his youth, the old fellow congratulated the Colonel on his youthful appearance.

“How is it you’ve managed to keep so fresh and good-looking all these years?” quoth he.

“Well,” said George, “I’ll tell you. I’ve always drank new rum and voted the Democratic ticket.”

“Oh! yes,” said the old man, “_I see how it is; one pizen neutralizes the other!_”

59. GENERAL BUTLER AND THE SPOONS

While General Butler was delivering a speech in Boston during an exciting political campaign, one of his hearers cried out: “How about the spoons, Ben?” Benjamin’s good eye twinkled merrily as he looked bashfully at the audience, and said: “Now, don’t mention that, please. _I was a Republican when I stole those spoons._”

60. MAKING MOST OF ONE’S CAPITAL

[One should always make the most of his capital, as this orator did.]

“Fellow-citizens, my competitor has told you of the services he rendered in the late war. I will follow his example, and I shall tell you of mine. He basely insinuates that I was deaf to the voice of honor in that crisis. The truth is, I acted a humble part in that memorable contest. When the tocsin of war summoned the chivalry of the country to rally to the defense of the nation, I, fellow-citizens, animated by that patriotic spirit that glows in every American’s bosom, hired a substitute for that war, and the bones of that man, fellow-citizens, now lie bleaching in the valley of the Shenandoah!”

61. MEETING HALF-WAY

[But the following man could get even more out of an unpromising situation.]

“Now, I want to know,” said a man whose veracity had been questioned by an angry acquaintance, “just why you call me a liar. Be frank, sir; for frankness is a golden-trimmed virtue. Just as a friend, now, tell me why you called me a liar.”

“Called you a liar because you are a liar,” the acquaintance replied.

“That’s what I call frankness. Why, sir, if this rule were adopted over half of the difficulties would be settled without trouble, and in our case there would have been trouble but for our willingness to meet each other half-way.”

62. UNFORTUNATE MISTAKE

Judge —-, who is now a very able Judge of the Supreme Court of one of the great States of this Union, when he first “came to the bar,” was a very blundering speaker. On one occasion, when he was trying a case of replevin, involving the right of property to a lot of hogs, he addressed the jury as follows:

“Gentlemen of the jury, there were just twenty-four hogs in that drove–just twenty-four, gentlemen–_exactly twice as many as there are in that jury-box_!” The effect can be imagined.

63. TAKEN AT HIS WORD

A pretentious person said to the leading man of a country village, “How would a lecture by me on Mount Vesuvius suit the inhabitants of your village?” “Very well, sir; very well, indeed,” he answered; “a lecture by you on Mount Vesuvius would suit them a great deal better than a lecture by you in this village.”

64. BRAGGING VETERANS

In warning veterans against exaggerating, a gentleman at a Washington banquet related the following anecdote of a Revolutionary veteran, who, having outlived nearly all his comrades, and being in no danger of contradiction, rehearsed his experience thuswise: “In that fearful day at Monmouth, although entitled to a horse, I fought on foot. With each blow I severed an Englishman’s head from his body, until a huge pile of heads lay around me, great pools of blood on either side, and my shoes were so full of the same dreadful fluid that my feet slipped beneath me. Just then I felt a touch upon my shoulder, and, looking up, who should I behold but the great and good Washington himself! Never shall I forget the majesty and dignity of his presence, as, pressing his hand upon me, he said, ‘My young friend, restrain yourself, and for heaven’s sake do not make a slaughter-house of yourself.'”

65. EXCHANGING MINDS

Heinrich Heine, the German poet, apologizing for feeling dull after a visit from a professor said: “I am afraid you find me very stupid. The fact is, Dr. —- called upon me this morning, and _we exchanged our minds_.”

66. BUYING A LAWYER

[The willingness to pay full value for an article is a trait of character always appreciated.]

Lawyer B—- called at the office of Counselor F—-, who has had considerable practice in bankruptcy, and said: “See here, F—-, I want to know what the practice is in such and such a case in bankruptcy.”

F—-, straightening himself up and looking as wise as possible, replied: “Well, Mr. B—-, I generally get paid for telling what I know.”

B—- put his hand into his pocket, drew forth half a dollar, handed it to F—-, and said: “Here, tell me _all_ you know, and _give me the change_.”

67. WOULD NOT SAVE IT

In the old town of W—-, in the Pine-tree State, lived one of those unfortunate lords of creation who had, in not a very long life, put on mourning for three departed wives. But time assuages heart-wounds, as well as those of the flesh. In due time a fourth was inaugurated mistress of his heart and house. He was a very prudent man, and suffered nothing to be wasted. When the new mistress was putting things in order, while cleaning up the attic she came across a long piece of board, and was about launching it out of the window, when little Sadie interposed, and said: “Oh! don’t, mamma! _that is the board papa lays out his wives on, and he wants to save it!_” Nevertheless, _out it went_.

68. WIDOW OUTWITTED

In a Western village a charming, well-preserved widow had been courted and won by a physician. She had children. The wedding-day was approaching, and it was time the children should know they were to have a new father. Calling one of them to her, she said: “Georgie, I am going to do something before long that I would like to talk about with you.”

“Well, ma, what is it!”

“I am intending to marry Dr. Jones in a few days, and–”

“Bully for you, ma! _Does Dr. Jones know it?_”

Ma caught her breath, but failed to articulate a response.

69. TOO KIND

[Where can we find a more touching manifestation of mutual benevolence than the following.]

In New Jersey reside two gentlemen, near neighbors and bosom friends, one a clergyman, Dr. B—-, the other a “gentleman of means” named Wilson. Both were passionately fond of music, and the latter devoted many of his leisure hours to the study of the violin. One fine afternoon our clerical friend was in his study, deeply engaged in writing, when there came along one of those good-for-nothing little Italian players, who planted himself under his study window, and, much to his annoyance, commenced scraping away on a squeaky fiddle. After trying in vain for about fifteen minutes to collect his scattered thoughts, the Doctor descended to the piazza in front of the house, and said to the boy:

“Look here, sonny, you go over and play awhile for Mr. Wilson. Here is ten cents. He lives in that big white house over yonder. He plays the violin, and likes music better than I do.”

“Well,” said the boy, taking the “stamp,” “_I would, but he just gave me ten cents to come over and play for you!_”

70. NOT FOOLED TWICE

San Francisco boasts of a saloon called the Bank Exchange, where the finest wines and liquors are dispensed at twenty-five cents a glass, with lunches thrown in free. A plain-looking person went in one morning and called for a brandy cocktail, and wanted it _strong_. Mr. Parker, as is usual with him, was very considerate, and mixed the drink in his best style, setting it down for his customer. After the cocktail had disappeared the man leaned over the bar and said that he had no change about him then, but would have soon, when he would pay for the drink. Parker politely remarked that he should have mentioned the fact before he got the drink; when his customer remarked: “I tried that on yesterday morning with one of your men, but he would not let me have the whiskey, so you could not play that dodge on me again!” This was too good for Parker, and he told the customer he was welcome to his drink, and was entitled to his hat in the bargain, if he wanted it.

71. BITING SARCASM

Standing on the steps at the entrance to one of the grand hotels at Saratoga, a young gentleman, in whom the “dude” species was strongly developed, had been listening with eager attention to the bright things which fell from the lips of the well-known wit and orator, Emory A. Storrs.

At last our exquisite exclaimed: “Er–Mr. Storrs,–I–er–wish, oh! how I–er–_wish_! that I had your–er–cheek.”

Mr. Storrs instantly annihilated him with: “It is a most fortunate dispensation of Providence that you have not. For, _with my cheek and your brains_, you would be kicked down these steps in no time!”

72. INCORRIGIBLE NEIGHBOR

A lady in California had a troublesome neighbor, whose cattle overrun her ranch, causing much damage. The lady bore the annoyance patiently, hoping that some compunction would be felt for the damage inflicted. At last she caught a calf which was making havoc in her garden, and sent it home with a child, saying, “Tell Mrs. A. that the calf has eaten nearly everything in the garden, and I have scarcely a cabbage left.”

The feelings of the injured lady may be imagined when she received this reply: “The cabbage nearly all eaten! Well, I must get over and borrow some before it is all gone!”

73. DISGUSTED OFFICER

Some years since a party of Indians drove off all the live-stock at Fort Lancaster. A few days afterward Captain —- was passing through the post, and stopped a couple of days for rest. While there an enthusiastic officer took him out to show him the trail of the bad Indians, how they came, which way they went, etc. After following the trail for some distance the Captain turned to his guide and exclaimed: “Look here; if you want to find any Indians, you can find them; _I haven’t lost any_, and am going back to camp.”

74. IRATE PRISONER

A man arrested for stealing chickens was brought to trial. The case was given to the jury, who brought him in guilty, and the judge sentenced him to three months’ imprisonment. The jailer was a jovial man, fond of a _smile_, and feeling particularly good on that particular day, considered himself insulted when the prisoner looking around his cell told him it was dirty, and not fit for a hog to be put in. One word brought on another, till finally the jailer told the prisoner if he did not behave himself he would put him out. To which the prisoner replied: “I will give you to understand, sir, I have as good a right here as you have!”

75. TRUTHFUL PRISONER

The eccentric old King of Prussia, father of Frederick the Great, while visiting the Potsdam prison, was much interested in the professions of innocence the prisoners made. Some blamed their conviction on the prejudice of judges; others, upon the perjury of witnesses or the tricks of bad companions. At length he accosted a sturdy, closely-fettered prisoner with the remark, “I suppose you are innocent, too.”

“No, your Majesty,” was the unexpected response. “I am guilty, and richly deserve all I get.”

“Here, you turnkey,” thundered the monarch, “come and turn out this rascal, quick, before he corrupts this fine lot of innocent and abused people that you have about you.”

76. RULING PASSION

There are persons now living in Bennington who remember old Billy B—-, of whom it might be said he furnished an example of the “ruling passion strong in death.” When very ill, and friends were expecting an early demise, his nephew and a man hired for the occasion had butchered a steer which had been fattened; and when the job was completed the nephew entered the sick-room, where a few friends were assembled, when, to the astonishment of all, the old man opened his eyes, and turning his head slightly, said, in a full voice, drawing out the words:

“What have you been doing?”

“Killing the steer,” was the reply.

“What did you do with the hide?”

“Left it in the barn; going to sell it by-and-by.”

“Let the boys drag it around the yard a couple of times; it will make it weigh heavier.”

And the good old man was gathered unto his fathers.

77. BAD SPECULATION

[This is told of bears, rattlesnakes, etc., as well as Indians.]

At a recent festive occasion a gentleman who was making a few remarks was repeatedly interrupted by another one of the company. He bore it patiently at first, but finally said that it reminded him of a story he had heard. He said that a man, whom business had called away a short distance from his home in the city, thought he would pay his way back again by purchasing a number of hogs and driving them home. He did so, but when he and the hogs arrived at their destination the market for the latter had fallen considerably in price, and the hogs had also lost weight on the journey. It was remarked to him that he had made rather a bad speculation. “Yes–well, yes,” he answered reflectively. “Yes–but then, you see, _I had their company all the way_!”

78. SATISFIED WITH HIS SITUATION

[The following may not be strictly true, but it well illustrates that there is always a lower depth in misfortune, and–that Western roads are often somewhat muddy.]

Some years ago, when riding along one of the almost impassable roads in the far West, I observed a dark-looking object lying in the middle of the road, and my natural curiosity impelled me to dismount and examine it. It proved to be a hat, somewhat muddy and dilapidated, but emphatically a hat. On lifting it up, to my surprise I found that it covered a head–a human head–which protruded sufficiently out of the mud to be recognizable as such. I ventured to address the evidently wide-awake head, and remarked that it seemed to be in a pretty bad sort of a fix.

“Wa’al, yes!” the lips replied; “you’re about right thar, stranger; _but then I ain’t anyway near as bad off as the horse that’s under me_!”

79. A GOOD WORD FOR THE DEVIL

A conference preacher one day went into the house of a Wesleyan Reformer, and saw the portraits of three expelled ministers suspended from the walls.

“What!” said he, “have you got them hanging there?”

“Oh! yes,” was the answer; “they are there.”

“Ah! well; but one is wanted to complete the set.”

“Pray, who is that?”

“Why, the devil, to be sure.”

“Ah!” said the Reformer, “but he is not yet expelled from the Conference.”

80. MARRYING A WIDOW

In Cadiz, Ohio, a preacher was summoned to the hotel to make an expectant couple one. In the course of the preliminary inquiries the groom was asked if he had been married before, and admitted that he had been–three times. “And is this lady a widow,” was also asked, but he responded promptly and emphatically, “No, sir; _I never marry widows_.”

81. A GOOD SALE

Several years ago there resided in Saratoga County a lawyer of considerable ability and reputation, but of no great culture, who had an unusually fine taste in paintings and engravings–the only evidence of refinement he ever exhibited. A clergyman of the village in which he lived, knowing his fondness for such things, introduced to him an agent of a publishing house in the city who was issuing a pictorial Bible in numbers. The specimen of the style of work exhibited to the lawyer was a very beautiful one, and he readily put down his name for a copy. But in the progress of the publication the character of the engravings rapidly deteriorated, much to the disgust of the enlightened lawyer. The picture of Joseph, very indifferently done, provoked him beyond endurance, and seizing several of the numbers he sallied forth to reproach the parson for leading him into such a bad bargain. “Look at these wretched scratches,” said he, turning the pages over, “and see how I have been imposed upon! Here is a portrait of Joseph, whom his brethren sold to the Egyptians for twenty pieces of silver; and let me tell you, parson, _if Joseph looked like that it was a mighty good sale_!”

82. TRIUMPHS OF MEDICINE

A priest was called upon by a superstitious parishioner, who asked him to do something for her sick cow. He disclaimed knowing anything about such matters, but could not put her off. She insisted that if he would only say some words over the cow, the animal would surely recover. Worn out with importunity, he seized his book in desperation, walked around the four-legged patient several times, repeating in a sonorous voice the Latin words, which mean, “If you die, you die; and if you live, you live,” and rushed off disgusted. But the woman was delighted, and sooth to say the cow quickly recovered.

But in time the good man himself was taken sick, and grew rapidly worse. His throat was terribly swollen, and all medical aid was exhausted. The word passed around the parish that the priest must die. When Bridget heard the peril of her favorite pastor she was inspired by a mighty resolve. She hurried to the sick-room, entered against the protest of the friends who were weeping around, and with out a word to any one with her strong hands dragged his reverence’s bed to the middle of the floor, and with the exact copy of his very gestures and voice marched around the bed, repeating the sonorous and well-remembered Latin phrase, “If you die, you die; and if you live, you live.” The priest fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and in his struggle for breath and self-control the gathering in his throat broke and his life was saved!

Mighty are the triumphs of medicine!

83. TIT FOR TAT

An old fellow in a neighboring town, who is original in all things, especially in excessive egotism, and who took part in the late war, was one day talking to a crowd of admiring listeners, and boasting of his many bloody exploits, when he was interrupted by the question:

“I say, old Joe, how many of the enemy did you kill during the war?”

“How many did I kill sir? _how many_ enemies did I kill? Well, I don’t know just ‘zactly _how_ many; but I know this much–I killed as many o’ them _as they did o’ me_!”

84. SLEEPING ON TOP

During a homeward trip of the “Henry Chauncey,” from Aspinwall, the steerage passengers were so numerous as to make them uncomfortable. As for sleeping accommodation, it was aptly described by a Californian, who approached the captain, and said:

“I should like to have a sleeping-berth, if you please.”

“Why, where have you been sleeping these last two nights since we left?”

“Wa’al, I’ve been sleeping a-top of a sick man; _but he’s better now, and won’t stand it no longer_!”

85. SAMBO AND THE LAWYER

In a Macon (Ga.) court the other day a lawyer was cross-examining a negro witness, and was getting along fairly well until he asked the witness what his occupation was. “I’se a carpenter, sah.” “What kind of a carpenter?” “They calls me a jackleg carpenter, sah.” “What is a jackleg carpenter?” “He is a carpenter who is not a first-class carpenter, sah.” “Well, explain fully what you understand a jackleg carpenter to be,” insisted the lawyer. “Boss, I declare I dunno how ter splain any mo’ ‘cept to say hit am jes’ the same difference ‘twixt you an’ a fust-class lawyer.”

86. SIXTY-CENT NAP

On board a train in the West an eccentric preacher wanted a sleeping-berth, but had only sixty cents, while the lowest price was a dollar. Naturally he did not get on very fast with the porter; but after wearing out the patience of that functionary in vain efforts to stretch the sixty cents, the conductor was sent for. All proposals to borrow, to pledge an old Waterbury watch, and other financial expedients failed; but the circle was squared when the preacher said, “I’ll lie down, and _when I have slept sixty cents worth, you send that bed-shaker to rout me out_.” The procession started for the sleeper amid the hilarity of the passengers, but the tradition is that he slept the whole night through and far into the morning.

87. PREFERRED TO WALK

A great traveler once found himself on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He was at once beset by boatmen, who wanted to take him out to sail on the waters where Christ had walked. He yielded to their importunities, and returned to the shore in about an hour. But his devout meditations were greatly disturbed when he was told that the charge was $10. With energy he declared that it was robbery, that it was not worth so much to sail all over their little lake, and demanded, “What makes you charge so dreadfully?” “Why,” said the innocent boatman, “because dese ese de lake were de Saviour walked on de water.” “Walked! walked! did He? Well, if the boatmen of that day charged as you fellows do, I should think He _would_ walk.”

88. HORACE GREELEY’S JOKE

On one occasion a person, who wished to have a little fun at the expense of his constituency, said in a group where Horace Greeley was standing: “Mr. Greeley and I, gentlemen, are old friends. We have drunk a good deal of brandy and water together.” “Yes,” said Mr. Greeley, “that is true enough. You drank the brandy, and I drank the water.”

89. DOCTORS AND DEADHEADS

Fifty years ago the principal avenue of Detroit had a toll-gate close to the entrance of the Elmwood Cemetery road. As this cemetery had been laid out some time previous to the construction of the plank road, it was arranged that all funeral processions should be allowed to pass along the latter toll-free. One day as a well-known physician stopped to pay his toll, he observed to the gate-keeper:

“Considering the benevolent character of our profession, I think you ought to let physicians pass free of charge.”

“No, no, doctor,” replied the man; “we can’t afford that. You send too many ‘deadheads’ through here as it is.”

The story traveled, and the two words became associated.

90. BOOMING A TOWN

They tell a story of a man who came into Omaha one day, and wanted to trade his farm for some city lots. “All right,” replied the real-estate agent, “get into my buggy, and I’ll drive you out to see some of the finest residence sites in the world–water, sewers, paved streets, cement sidewalks, electric light, shade trees, and all that sort of thing,” and away they drove four or five miles into the country. The real-estate agent expatiated upon the beauty of the surroundings, the value of the improvements made and projected, the convenience of the location, the ease and speed with which people who lived there could reach town, and the certainty of an active demand for such lots in the immediate future. Then, when he was breathless, he turned to his companion, and asked:

“Where’s your farm?”

“We passed it coming out here,” was the reply. “It’s about two miles nearer town.”

91. ATHLETIC NURSE

Young Wife–“Why, dear, you were the stroke oar at college, weren’t you?”

Young Husband–“Yes, love.”

“And a prominent member of the gymnastic class?”

“I was leader.”

“And quite a hand at all athletic exercises?”

“Quite a hand? My gracious! I was champion walker, the best runner, the head man at lifting heavy weights, and as for carrying–why, I could shoulder a barrel of flour and–”

“Well, love, just please carry the baby for a couple of hours, I’m tired.”

92. TOO PREMATURE

[Anything rather premature may be illustrated by the following:]

A spring bird that had taken time by the forelock flew across the lawn near this city one day last week. His probable fate is best described in this pathetic verse, author unknown:

“The first bird of spring Essayed for to sing; But ere he had uttered a note He fell from the limb, A dead bird was him, The music had friz in his throat.”

93. A BEWILDERED IRISHMAN

The poet Shelley tells an amusing story of the influence that language “hard to be understood” exercises on the vulgar mind. Walking near Covent Garden, London, he accidentally jostled against an Irish navvy, who, being in a quarrelsome mood, seemed inclined to attack the poet. A crowd of ragged sympathizers began to gather, when Shelley, calmly facing them, deliberately pronounced:

“I have put my hand into the hamper, I have looked on the sacred barley, I have eaten out of the drum. I have drunk and am well pleased. I have said, ‘Knox Ompax,’ and it is finished.”

The effect was magical, the astonished Irishman fell back; his friends began to question him. “What barley?” “Where’s the hamper?” “What have you been drinking?” and Shelley walked away unmolested.

94. OBEYING ORDERS

When General Sickles, after the second battle of Bull Run, assumed command of a division of the Army of the Potomac, he gave an elaborate farewell dinner to the officers of his old Excelsior Brigade.

“Now, boys, we will have a family gathering,” he said to them, as they assembled in his quarters. Pointing to the table, he continued: “Treat it as you would the enemy.”

As the feast ended, an Irish officer was discovered by Sickles in the act of stowing away three bottles of champagne in his saddle-bags.

“What are you doing, sir,” gasped the astonished General.

“Obeying orders, sir,” replied the captain, in a firm voice: “You told us to treat the dinner as we would the enemy, and you know, General, what we can’t kill we capture.”

95. A SPEECH FROM THE REAR PLATFORM

An Irish street-car conductor called out shrilly to the passengers standing in the aisle:

“Will thim in front plaze to move up, so that thim behind can take the places of thim in front, an’ lave room for thim who are nayther in front nor behind?”

96. A WAY OUT OF IT

“What’s the matter with you,” asked a gentleman of a friend whom he met. “You looked puzzled and worried.”

“I am,” said the friend. “Maybe you can help me out”

“Well, what is it?”

“I am subject at intervals,” said the friend, “to the wildest craving for beefsteak and onions. It has all the characteristics of a confirmed drunkard’s craving for rum. This desire came upon me a few minutes ago, and I determined to gratify it. Then suddenly I remembered that I had promised to call this evening on some ladies, and I must keep that promise. Yet my stomach is shouting for beefsteak and onions, and I am wavering between duty and appetite.”

“Can’t you wait until after the call?” asked the gentleman, solicitously.

“Never,” said the friend, earnestly.

“Can’t you postpone the call?”

“Impossible,” declared the friend.

“Well,” said the gentleman, “I’ll tell you what to do: go to John Chamberlin’s café; order your beefsteak and onions, and eat them. When you get your bill it will be so big that it will _quite take your breath away_.”

97. THE EXTENT OF SCIENCE

“And now,” said the learned lecturer on geology who had addressed a small but deeply attentive audience at the village hall, “I have tried to make these problems, abstruse as they may appear, and involving in their solution the best thoughts, the closest analysis, and the most profound investigations of our noblest scientific men for many years; I have tried, I say, to make them seem comparatively simple and easily understood, in the light of modern knowledge. Before I close this lecture I shall be glad to answer any questions that may occur to you as to points that appear to need clearing up or that may have been overlooked.”

There was a silence of a few moments, and then an anxious-looking man in the rear of the hall rose up.

“I would take it as a favor,” he said, “if you could tell me whether science has produced as yet any reliable and certain cure for warts.”

98. WHAT’S IN A NAME?

One of the managers of a home for destitute colored children tells a funny story about the institution. She went out there to see how things were getting along, and found a youngster as black as the inside of a coal mine tied to a bed-post, with his hands behind him.

“What is that boy tied up there for?” she demanded of the attendant.

“For lying, ma’am. He is the worstist, lyingest nigger I ever seen.”

“What’s his name?

“George Washington, ma’am,” was the paralyzing reply.

99. STILL ROOM FOR RESEARCH

“What is this new substance I hear so much about?” asked the eminent scientist’s wife.

“What new substance, my dear?”

“The element in the air that has just been detected.”

“Oh! that, my dear,” he answered, beaming over his spectacles with the good nature of superior wisdom, “is known as argon!”

“Oh!”

“Yes; its discovery is one of the most remarkable triumphs of the age. It has revolutionized some of the old theories, or at least it will revolutionize them before it gets through.”

“What is it?”

“It’s–er–a–did you say, what is it?”

“I said that.”

“Well–ahem–you see, we haven’t as yet discovered much about it except its name.”

100. HE WAS “‘PISCOPAL”

An Episcopal clergyman passing his vacation in Indiana met an old farmer who declared that he was a “‘Piscopal.”

“To what parish do you belong?” asked the clergyman.

“Don’t know nawthin’ ’bout enny parish,” was the answer.

“Well, then,” continued the clergyman, “what diocese do you belong to?”

“They ain’t nawthin’ like that ’round here,” said the farmer.

“Who confirmed you, then?” was the next question.

“Nobody,” answered the farmer.

“Then how are you an Episcopalian?” asked the clergyman.

“Well,” was the reply, “you see it’s this way: Last winter I went down to Arkansas visitin’, and while I was there I went to church, and it was called ‘Piscopal, and I he’rd them say ‘that they left undone the things what they’d oughter done and they had done some things what they oughten done,’ and I says to myself, says I: ‘That’s my fix exac’ly, and ever since I considered myself a ‘Piscopalian.”

The clergyman shook the old fellow’s hand, and laughingly said:

“Now I understand, my friend, why the membership of our church is so large.”

101. JOHNNY’S EXCUSE

A little girl brought a note to her school-teacher one morning, which read as follows. “Dear teacher, please excuse Johnny for not coming to school today. He is dead.” Johnny was excused.

Thought-Culture or Practical Mental Training

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Thought-Culture or Practical Mental Training

THOUGHT-CULTURE or PRACTICAL MENTAL TRAINING

by William Walker Atkinson

CHAPTER I.

THE POWER OF THOUGHT

In other volumes of this series we have considered the operations of the human mind known as Will, Memory, etc. We now approach the consideration of those mental activities which are concerned with the phenomena of _thought_–those activities which we generally speak of as the operation of the intellect or reason.

What is thought? The answer is not an easy one, although we use the term familiarly almost every hour of our waking existence. The dictionaries define the term “Thought” as follows: “The act of thinking; the exercise of the mind in any way except sense and perception; serious consideration; deliberation; reflection; the power or faculty of thinking; the mental faculty of the mind; etc.” This drives us back upon the term, “to think” which is defined as follows: “To occupy the mind on some subject; to have ideas; to revolve ideas in the mind; to cogitate; to reason; to exercise the power of thought; to have a succession of ideas or mental states; to perform any mental operation, whether of apprehension, judgment, or illation; to judge; to form a conclusion, to determine; etc.”

Thought is an operation of the intellect. The intellect is: “that faculty of the human soul or mind by which it receives or comprehends the ideas communicated to it by the senses or by perception, or other means, as distinguished from the power to feel and to will; the power or faculty to perceive objects in their relations; the power to judge and comprehend; also the capacity for higher forms of knowledge as distinguished from the power to perceive and imagine.”

When we say what we “think,” we mean that we exercise the faculties whereby we compare and contrast certain things with other things, observing and noting their points of difference and agreement, then classifying them in accordance with these observed agreements and differences. In _thinking_ we tend to classify the multitude of impressions received from the outside world, arranging thousands of objects into one general class, and other thousands into other general classes, and then sub-dividing these classes, until finally we have found mental pigeon-holes for every conceivable idea or impression. We then begin to make inferences and deductions regarding these ideas or impressions, working from the known to the unknown, from particulars to generalities, or from generalities to particulars, as the case may be.

It is this faculty or power of thought–this use of the intellect, that has brought man to his present high position in the world of living things. In his early days, man was a much weaker animal than those with whom he was brought into contact. The tigers, lions, bears, mammoths, and other ferocious beasts were much stronger, fiercer, and fleeter than man, and he was placed in a position so lacking of apparent equal chance of survival, that an observer would have unhesitatingly advanced the opinion that this weak, feeble, slow animal must soon surely perish in the struggle for existence, and that the “survival of the fittest” would soon cause him to vanish from the scene of the world’s activities. And, so it would have been had he possessed no equipment other than those of the other animals; viz., strength, natural weapons and speed. And yet man not only survived in spite of these disadvantages, but he has actually conquered, mastered and enslaved these other animals which seemed likely to work his destruction. Why? How?

This feeble animal called _man_ had within him the elements of a new power–a power manifested in but a slight degree in the other animals. He possessed an intellect by which he was able to deduce, compare, infer–reason.

His lack of natural weapons he overcame by borrowing the idea of the tooth and claw of the other animals, imitating them in flint and shaping them into spears; borrowing the trunk of the elephant and the paw of the tiger, and reproducing their blow-striking qualities in his wooden club. Not only this but he took lessons from the supple limbs and branches of the trees, and copied the principle in his bow, in order to project its minature spear, his arrow. He sheltered himself, his mate and his young, from the fury of the storm, first by caves and afterwards by rude houses, built in inaccessible places, reached only by means of crude ladders, bridges, or climbing poles. He built doors for his habitations, to protect himself from the attacks of these wild enemies–he heaped stones at the mouth of his caves to keep them out. He placed great boulders on cliffs that he might topple them down on the approaching foe. He learned to hurl rocks with sure aim with his strong arm. He copied the floating log, and built his first rude rafts, and then evolved the hollowed canoe. He used the skins of animals to keep him warm–their tendons for his bowstrings. He learned the advantages of cooperation and combined effort, and thus formed the first rudiments of society and social life. And finally–man’s first great discovery–he found the art of fire making.

As a writer has said: “For some hundreds of years, upon the general plane of self-consciousness, an ascent, to the human eye gradual but from the point of view of cosmic evolution rapid, has been made. In a race large-brained, walking-erect, gregarious, brutal, but king of all other brutes, man in appearance but not in fact, was from the highest simple-consciousness born the basic human faculty, self-consciousness and its twin, language. From these and what went with these, through suffering, toil and war; through bestiality, savagery, barbarism; through slavery, greed, effort, through conquests infinite, through defeats overwhelming, through struggle unending; through ages of aimless semi-brutal existence, through subsistence on berries and roots; through the use of the casually found stone or stick; through life in deep forests, with nuts and seeds, and on the shores of waters with mollusks, crustaceans and fish for food; through that greatest, perhaps, of human victories, the domestication and subjugation of fire; through the invention and art of bow and arrow; through the training of animals and the breaking of them to labor; through the long learning which led to the cultivation of the soil; through the adobe brick and the building of houses therefrom; through the smelting of metals and the slow birth of the arts which rest upon these; through the slow making of alphabets and the evolution of the written work; in short, through thousands of centuries of human life, of human aspiration, of human growth, sprang the world of men and women as it stands before us and within us today with all its achievements and possessions.”

The great difference between thought as we find it in man, and its forms among the lower animals lies in what psychologists have called “progressive thought.” The animals advance but little in their thinking processes but rest content with those of their ancestors–their thought seems to have become set or crystallized during the process of their evolution. The birds, mammals and the insects vary but little in their mental processes from their ancestors of many thousand years ago. They build their nests, or dens, in almost precisely the same manner as did their progenitors in the stone-age. But man has slowly but steadily progressed, in spite of temporary set-backs and failures. He has endeavored to progress and improve. Those tribes which fell back in regard to mental progress and advancement, have been left behind in the race, and in many cases have become extinct. The great natural law of the “survival of the fittest” has steadily operated in the life of the race. The “fittest” were those best adapted to grapple with and overcome the obstacles of their environment, and these obstacles were best overcome by the use of the intellect. Those tribes and those individuals whose intellect was active, tended to survive where others perished, and consequently they were able to transmit their intellectual quality to their descendants.

Halleck says: “Nature is constantly using her power to kill off the thoughtless, or to cripple them in life’s race. She is determined that only the fittest and the descendants of the fittest shall survive. By the ‘fittest’ she means those who have thought and whose ancestors have thought and profited thereby. Geologists tell us that ages ago there lived in England bears, tigers, elephants, lions and many other powerful and fierce animals. There was living contemporaneous with them a much weaker animal, that had neither the claws, the strength, nor the speed of the tiger. In fact this human being was almost defenceless. Had a being from another planet been asked to prophesy, he would undoubtedly have said that this helpless animal would be the first to be exterminated. And yet every one of those fierce creatures succumbed either to the change of climate, or to man’s inferior strength. The reason was that man had one resource denied to the animals–the power of progressive thought. The land sank, the sea cut off England from the mainland, the climate changed, and even the strongest animals were helpless. But man changed his clothing with the changing climate. He made fires; he built a retreat to keep off death by cold. He thought out means to kill or to subdue the strongest animals. Had the lions, tigers or bears the power of progressive thought, they could have combined, and it would have been possible for them to exterminate man before he reached the civilized stage…. Man no longer sleeps in caves. The smoke no longer fills his home or finds its way out through the chinks in the walls or a hole in the roof. In traveling, he is no longer restricted to his feet or even to horses. For all this improvement man is indebted to _thought_. That has harnessed the very vibrations of the ether to do his bidding.”

And thus we see that man owes his present place on earth to his Thought-Culture. And, it certainly behooves us to closely consider and study the methods and processes whereby each and every man may cultivate and develop the wondrous faculties of the mind which are employed in the processes of Thought. The faculties of the Mind, like the muscles of the body, may be developed, trained and cultivated. The process of such mental development is called “THOUGHT-CULTURE,” and forms the subject of this book.

CHAPTER II.

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT

It was formerly considered necessary for all books on the subject of thought to begin by a recital of the metaphysical conceptions regarding the nature and “thingness” of Mind. The student was led through many pages and endless speculation regarding the metaphysical theories regarding the origin and inner nature of Mind which, so far from establishing a fixed and definite explanation in his mind, rather tended toward confusing him and giving him the idea that psychology was of necessity a speculative science lacking the firm practical basis possessed by other branches of science. In the end, in the words of old Omar, he “came out the door through which he went.”

But this tendency has been overcome of late years, and writers on the subject pass by all metaphysical conceptions regarding the nature of Mind, and usually begin by plunging at once into the real business of psychology–the business of the practical study of the mechanism and activities of the mind itself. As some writer has said, psychology has no more concern with the solution of the eternal riddle of “What is Mind?” than physics with the twin-riddle of “What is Matter?” Both riddles, and their answers, belong to entirely different branches and fields of thought than those concerned with their laws of operation and principles of activity. As Halleck says: “Psychology studies the phenomena of mind, just as physics investigates those of matter.” And, likewise, just as the science of physics holds true in spite of the varying and changing conceptions regarding the nature of matter, so does the science of psychology hold true in spite of the varying and changing conceptions regarding the nature of Mind.

Halleck has well said: “If a materialist should hold that the mind was nothing but the brain, and that the brain was a vast aggregation of molecular sheep herding together in various ways, his hypothesis would not change the fact that sensation must precede perception, memory and thought; nor would the laws of the association of ideas be changed, nor would the fact that interest and repetition aid memory cease to hold good. The man who thought his mind was a collection of little cells would dream, imagine, think and feel; so also would he who believed his mind to be immaterial. It is very fortunate that the same mental phenomena occur, no matter what theory is adopted. Those who like to study the puzzles as to what mind and matter really are must go to metaphysics. Should we ever find that salt, arsenic and all things else are the same substance with a different molecular arrangement, we should still not use them interchangeably.”

For the purposes of the study of practical psychology, we may as well lay aside, if even for the moment, our pet metaphysical conceptions and act as if we knew nothing of the essential nature of Mind (and indeed Science in truth does _not_ know), and confine ourselves to the phenomena and manifestations of Mind which, after all, is the only way in which and by which we can know anything at all about it. As Brooks says: “The mind can be defined only by its activities and manifestations. In order to obtain a definition of the mind, therefore, we must observe and determine its various forms of activity. These activities, classified under a few general heads and predicated of the unseen something which manifests them, will give us a definition of mind.”

The act of consciousness determines the existence of Mind in the person experiencing it. No one can be conscious of thought and, at the same time, deny the existence of mind within himself. For the very act of denial, in itself, is a manifestation of thought and consequently an assertion of the existence of mind. One may assert the axiom: “I think, therefore, I have a mind;” but he is denied the privilege of arguing: “I think, therefore, I have no mind.” The mind has an ultimate and final knowledge of its own existence.

The older view of Mind is that it is a something higher than matter which it uses for its manifestation. It was held to be unknowable in itself and to be studied only through its manifestations. It was supposed to involve itself, to become involved, in some way in matter and to there manifest itself in an infinitude of forms, degrees, and variations. The materialistic view, which arose into prominence in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, held, on the contrary, that Mind was merely an activity or property of Matter–a function of matter akin to extension and motion. Huxley, voicing this conception said: “We have no knowledge of any thinking substance apart from an extended substance…. We shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat.” But, Huxley, himself, was afterwards constrained to acknowledge that: “How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about by the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the _jinnee_ when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.”

The most advanced authorities of the day, are inclined to the opinion that both Matter and Mind are both differing aspects of some one fundamental Something; or, as some of the closest thinkers state it, both are probably two apparently differing manifestations or emanations of an Underlying Something which, as Spencer says: “transcends not only our reason but also our imagination.” The study of philosophy and metaphysics serves an important purpose in showing us _how much we do not know_, and why we do not know–also in showing us the fallacy of many things we had thought we did know–but when it comes to telling us the real “why,” actual cause, or essential nature of _anything_, it is largely a disappointment to those who seek fundamental truths and ultimate reasons. It is much more comfortable to “abjure the ‘Why’ and seek the ‘How'”–if we can.

Many psychologists classify the activities of the mind into three general divisions; _viz._, (1) Thinking; (2) Willing; (3) Feeling. These divisions, which result from what is known as “the tri-logical classification,” were first distinctly enunciated by Upham although Kant had intimated it very plainly. For many years before the favored division was but two-fold the line of division being between the _cognitive_, or knowing, activities, and the _conative_, or acting, activities, generally known as the Understanding and the Will, respectively. It took a long time before the authorities would formally recognize the great field of the Feelings as forming a class by themselves and ranking with the Understanding and the Will. There are certain sub-divisions and shadings, which we shall notice as we proceed, some of which are more or less complex, and which seem to shade into others. The student is cautioned against conceiving of the mind as a thing having several compartments or distinct divisions. The classification does not indicate this and is only intended as a convenience in analyzing and studying the mental activities and operations. The “I” which feels, thinks and acts is the same–one entity.

As Brooks well says: “The mind is a self-conscious activity and not a mere passivity; it is a centre of spiritual forces, all resting in the background of the ego. As a centre of forces, it stands related to the forces of the material and spiritual universe and is acted upon through its susceptibilities by those forces. As a spiritual activity, it takes the impressions derived from those forces, works them up into the organic growth of itself, converts them into conscious knowledge and uses these products as means to set other forces into activity and produce new results. Standing above nature and superior to its surroundings, it nevertheless feeds upon nature, as we may say, and transforms material influences into spiritual facts akin to its own nature. Related to the natural world and apparently originating from it, it yet rises above this natural world and, with the crown of freedom upon its brow, rules the natural obedient to its will.”

In this book, while we shall fully and unquestionably recognize the “tri-logical classification” of the activities of the Mind into the divisions of Thinking, Willing and Feeling, respectively, nevertheless, we shall, for convenience, use the term “Thought” in its broadest, widest and most general sense, as: “The power or faculty of thinking; the mental faculty; the mind,” rather than in its narrower and particular sense of: “the understanding or cognitive faculty of the mind.” Accordingly, we shall include the cultivation of the mental activities known as Attention, Perception, Imagination, etc., together with the strictly cognitive faculties, under the general term of Thought-Culture.

CHAPTER III.

PHASES OF THOUGHT

We have seen that the Mind is that something within us which Thinks, Feels and Wills. There are various phases of these three forms of activity. These phases have often been called “the faculties of the mind,” although many authorities decry the use of this term, holding that it gives an impression of _several parts or divisions_ of the mind, separate and distinct from each other, whereas these phases are merely the several _powers or forms of activity_ of the Mind. Every manifestation of mental activity falls under one of the three before-mentioned general forms, i.e., Thinking, Feeling and Willing, respectively. Every manifestation of mental activity is either that of the Intellect, the Feelings, or the Will. Let us consider the first of these three general forms of mental activity–the Intellect.

The _Intellect_ is defined as: “That faculty or phase of the human mind by which it receives or comprehends the ideas communicated to it by the senses or by perception, or other means, as distinguished from the power to feel and to will; the power or faculty to perceive objects in their relations; the power to judge and comprehend; also the capacity for higher forms of knowledge as distinguished from the power to perceive and imagine.” The term itself is derived from the Latin term _intellectus_, the primary meaning of which is “to choose between,” which primary meaning will give the true essential meaning of the term in its present usage; namely, the faculty or phase of the mind by which we “choose between” things or by which we _decide_.

The phase or faculty of Intellect concerns itself with Thinking, in the particular and narrower sense of that term. Its products are _thoughts_, _mental images_ and _ideas_. An _idea_ or _mental image_ is a mental conception of anything, as for instance our conception which we express by the terms, _man_, _animal_, _house_, _etc._ Sometimes the word _idea_ is used to express merely the abstract or generalized conception of the thing, as, for instance, _Man_ in the sense of “all men;” while _mental image_ is used in the sense of the mental conception of some one particular thing, as a “_a man_;” it being held that no mental image can be had of a generalization. A _thought_ is held to be a mental product arising from a combination of two or more ideas or mental images, as for instance: “A horse is an animal;” “a man is a biped;” etc.

The Intellect is held to embrace and include a number of minor phases or faculties, such as Perception, Understanding, Imagination, Memory, Reason and Intuition, which are explained as follows:

_Perception_ is that faculty of the Mind which interprets the material presented to it by the senses. It is the power whereby we gain our knowledge of the external world, as reported to us by the channels of sense. Through Perception we are able to form ideas and mental images, which in turn lead to thoughts. The objects of which we become conscious through Perception are called _percepts_, which form the bases of what we call _concepts_, or ideas.

_Understanding_ is that faculty of the Mind by the means of which we are able intelligently to compare the objects presented to it by Perception, and by which we separate them into parts by analysis, or to combine them into greater classes, or wholes, by synthesis. It produces ideas, both abstract and general; also concepts of truths, laws, principles, causes, etc. There are several sub-phases of Understanding, which are known as: Abstraction, Conception or Generalization, or Judgment and Reasoning, respectively, which are explained as follows:

_Abstraction_ is that faculty of the Mind which enables it to abstract, or draw off, and consider apart from an object, a particular _quality_ or _property_ of an object, thus making of the quality or property a distinct object of thought apart from the original object. Thus are the _abstract ideas_ of _sweetness_, _color_, _hardness_, _courage_, _beauty_, etc., which we have abstracted or _drawn off_ from their original associations, either for the purpose of putting them out of sight and consideration, or else to view and consider them by themselves. No one ever tasted “sweetness” although one may have tasted _sweet things_; no one ever saw “red,” although one may have seen _red things_; no one ever saw, heard, tasted or felt “courage” in another, although one may have seen _courageous people_. Abstract ideas are merely the mental conception of _qualities_ or _properties_ divorced from their associated objects by Abstraction.

_Conception_ or Generalization is that faculty of the Mind by which it forms and groups together several particular ideas in the form of _a general idea_. By the processes of Conception we form _classes_ or _generalizations_ from particular ideas arising from our _percepts_. First, we _perceive_ things; then we _compare_ them with each other; then we abstract their particular qualities, which are not common to the several objects; then we _generalize_ them according to their resemblances; then we _name_ the generalized concept. From these combined processes we form a Concept, or _general idea_ of the class of things to which the particular things belong. Thus from subjecting a number of cows to this process, we arrive at the general Concept of “Cow.” This general Concept includes all the qualities and properties _common to all cows_, while omitting those which are not common to the class. Or, we may form a concept of Napoleon Bonaparte, by combining his several qualities and properties and thus form a _general idea_ of the man.

_Judgment_ is that faculty of the Mind whereby we determine the agreement or disagreement between two concepts, ideas, or objects of thought, by comparing them with each other. From this comparison arises the judgment, which is expressed in the shape of a logical _proposition_: “The horse is an animal;” or “the horse is not a cow.” Judgment is also used in forming a concept, in the first place, for we must _compare qualities_ before we can form a _general idea_.

_Reasoning_ is that faculty of the Mind whereby we compare two Judgments, one with the other, and from the comparison deduce a third Judgment. This is a form of indirect or mediate comparison, whereas the Judgment is a form of immediate or direct comparison. From this process of Reasoning arises a result which is expressed in what is called a Syllogism, as for instance: “All dogs are animals; Carlo is a dog; therefore, Carlo is an animal.” Or expressed in symbols: “A equals C; and B equals C;” therefore, “A equals B.” Reasoning is of two kinds or classes; _viz._, Inductive and Deductive, respectively. We have explained these forms of Reasoning in detail in another volume of this series.

_The Feelings_ are the mental faculties whereby we experience emotions or feelings. Feelings are the experiencing of the agreeable or disagreeable nature of our mental states. They can be defined only in their own terms. If we have never experienced a feeling, we cannot understand the words expressing it. Feelings result in what are called emotion, affection and desire. An emotion is the simple feeling, such as joy, sorrow, etc. An affection is an emotion reaching out toward another and outside object, such as envy, jealousy, love, etc. A desire is an emotion arising from the _want_ of some lacking quality or thing, and the inclination to possess it.

_Memory_ is the faculty of the Mind whereby we retain and reproduce, or consciously revive any kind of past mental experience. It has two sub-phases; _viz._, Retention and Recollection, respectively. It manifests in the storing away of mental images and ideas, and in the reproduction of them at a later period of time, and also of the recognition of them as objects of past experience.

_Imagination_ is the faculty of the Mind whereby we represent (_re-pre-sent_) as a mental image some previously experienced idea, concept or image. Its activities are closely allied and blended with those of the Memory. It has the power not only of reproducing objects already perceived but also another power of _ideal creation_ whereby it _creates_ new combinations from the materials of past experience. It is a faculty, the importance of which is but little understood by the majority of men. Inasmuch as the mental image must always precede the material manifestation, the cultivation of the Imagination becomes a matter of great importance and worthy of the closest study.

_Intuition_ is the faculty of the Mind whereby it evolves what have been called Primary Truths or Primary Ideas. By Primary Ideas are meant the ideas of Space, Time, Cause, Identity, etc. By Primary Truths are meant the so-called “Self-Evident Truths” of geometry, mathematics and logic. Under the head of Intuition are also sometimes included the activities of the Subconscious or Superconscious regions of the mind, of which we have spoken in detail in a volume under that name of this series. Some authorities hold to the older idea of “Innate Ideas” by which is meant that every human being is born with the knowledge of certain fundamental truths, unconnected with any experience. Others hold that these ideas are simply the result of the experience of the race, transmitted to us as “germ ideas” which must grow by experience and exercise.

* * * * *

That each and every faculty of the Mind may be strengthened and developed by Culture and Exercise is now held to be a fact by nearly every authority worthy of that name. Just as the physical muscle may be cultivated by the proper methods, so may the mental faculties be strengthened and cultivated by the appropriate methods and means. Inasmuch as the majority of the race are deficient in the development of one or more of the leading mental faculties, it becomes a matter of great interest and importance that all should acquaint themselves with the means whereby their deficiencies may be corrected and remedied. We shall now proceed to the consideration of Thought-Culture in general, and then to the consideration of the culture of each particular general faculty, in detail.

CHAPTER IV.

THOUGHT-CULTURE

Thought-Culture is based upon two general scientific facts which may be stated as follows:

I. The brain centres of thought may be developed by exercise. While we do not assert that the brain and the mind are identical, it is nevertheless a scientific truth that “the brain is the organ of the mind” and that one of the first requisites for a good mind is a good brain. It has been proven by experiment that the brain-cells concerned in special mental activities multiply in proportion to the active use of the special faculties employed in the mental operation. It has also been ascertained that disuse of special faculties of the mind tends to cause a process akin to atrophy in the brain-cells concerned in the particular activity, so that it becomes difficult to think clearly along those particular lines after a long period of disuse. Moreover, it is known that the education and mental culture of a child is accompanied by an increase and development of the brain-cells connected with the particular fields of thought in which the child is exercised.

There is a close analogy between the exercise of the brain-cells and the exercise of the muscles of the body. Both respond to reasonable exercise; both are injured by overwork; both degenerate by disuse. As Brooks says: “The mind grows by its own inherent energies. Mental exercise is thus the law of mental development. As a muscle grows strong by use, so any faculty of the mind is developed by its proper use and exercise. An inactive mind, like an unused muscle, becomes weak and unskilful. Hang the arm in a sling and the muscle becomes flabby and loses its vigor and skill; let the mind remain inactive and it acquires a mental flabbiness that unfits it for any severe or prolonged activity. An idle mind loses its tone and strength like an unused muscle; the mental powers go to rust through idleness and inaction. To develop the faculties of the mind and secure their highest activity and efficiency, there must be a constant and judicious exercise of these faculties. The object of culture is to stimulate and direct the activity of the mind.”

Experiments conducted by scientists upon dogs have shown that in the case of dogs specially trained to unusual mental activity, there has been a corresponding increase of the number of active brain-cells in the particular parts of the brain concerned with those mental activities. Microscopic examination of the brain tissues showed the greatest difference between the brain structure of the trained dogs and untrained ones of the same brood. So carefully were the experiments conducted that it was possible to distinguish between the dogs trained in one set of activities from those trained in another. Biologists have demonstrated the correctness of the brain-cell development theory beyond reasonable doubt, and ordinary human experience also adds its testimony in its favor.

In view of the above, it will be seen that by intelligent exercise and use any and all faculties of the mind may be developed and cultivated, just as may any special muscle of the body. And this exercise can come only from actual use of the faculties themselves. Development must come from within and not from without. No system of outward stimulation will develop the faculties of the mind–they may be cultivated only by an exercise in their own particular field of work. The only way to exercise any particular faculty of thought is to _think_ through that faculty.

II. Not only are the brain-cells developed by exercise, but it also appears to be a fact that the mind appears actually to be _nourished_ by knowledge of the outside world of things. The raw material of thought is taken into the mind and there is digested by the thought-processes, and is afterward actually _assimilated_ by the mind in a manner strikingly similar to the processes of the physical organs of nutrition. A mind to be at its best must be supplied with a normal amount of mental nourishment. Lacking this, it tends to become weak and inefficient. And, likewise, if its owner is a mental glutton and furnishes too much nourishment, particularly of a rich kind, there is a tendency toward “mental dyspepsia” and indigestion–the mind, unable to assimilate the mental food furnished it, is inclined to rebel. Moreover, if the mind be supplied with mental food of only one kind–if the mind is confined to one narrow field of thought–it weakens and the mental processes become impaired. In many ways is this curious analogy apparent.

Not only does the mind need development, but it also needs intelligent cultivation. For it may be _developed_ by improper objects of thought just as well as by the proper ones. A rich field will grow tares and weeds as well as good grain or fruit. Thought-culture should not be confined to the _development of a strong and active mind_, but should be also extended to the _cultivation of a wise and intelligent mind_. Strength and Wisdom should be combined. Moreover there should be sought a harmonious and normal development. A one-sided, mental development is apt to produce a “crank,” while a development in unhealthy mental fields will produce an abnormal thinker tending dangerously near to the line of insanity. Some “one-idea” men have great mental power and development, but are nevertheless unbalanced and impractical. And insane persons often have strongly developed minds–developed abnormally.

Some authorities, holding special theories regarding the nature of mind, hold that Thought-Culture is merely a _training_ of the faculties rather than a _creation_ of new mental power, inasmuch as the mind cannot be built up from the outside. This is a curious combination of truth and error. It is true that the mind cannot be built up from outside material, in the sense of creating _new mind_, but it is also true that in every mind there is the potentiality of growth and development. Just as the future oak is said to be in the acorn, so are the potentialities of mind-growth in every mind waiting for nourishment from outside and the proper cultivation. Brooks has well stated this, as follows: “The culture of the mind is not creative in its character; its object is to develop existing possibilities into realities. The mind possesses innate powers which may be awakened into a natural activity. The design of culture is to aid nature in improving the powers she has given. No new power can be created by culture; we can increase the activity of these powers, but cannot develop any new activities. Through these activities new ideas and thoughts may be developed, and the sum of human knowledge increased; but this is accomplished by a high activity of the natural powers with which the mind is endowed, and not by the culture of new powers. The profound philosopher uses the same faculties that the little child is developing in the games of the nursery. The object of culture is to arouse the powers which nature has given us into a normal activity and to stimulate and guide them in their unfolding.”

In connection with the objection above mentioned, it may be said that while the development of the mind must come from within itself, rather than from without, nevertheless, in order to develop, it must have the nourishing material from the outside world in order to grow. Just as the body can grow from within only by the aid of nourishment from outside, so the mind, while growing from within, needs the material for thought which can come only from without itself. Thought requires “things” upon which to exercise itself–and upon which it is nourished. Without these outside objects, it can have no exercise and can receive no nourishment. Thought consists in the perception, examination and comparison of _things_, and the consequent building up new combinations, arrangements and syntheses. Therefore, the perceptive faculties are most necessary to Thought, and their culture is most necessary in the general work of Thought-Culture.

It must not be lost sight of that in Thought-Culture there is necessary a variety of exercises and forms of nourishment. What will develop one faculty will exert but a faint effect upon others. Each needs its own particular kind of exercise–each its particular kind of mental nourishment. While it is true that there is a certain benefit gained by the entire mind from an exercise of any of its parts, this effect is but secondary in importance. A man well developed mentally has been developed in each faculty, each in its own way. The faculty of perception requires objects of perception; the faculty of imagination requires objects of imagination; the faculty of reasoning requires objects of reasoning; and so on, each requiring objects of exercise and nourishment of its own kind–in its own class. In some persons some of the faculties are well developed while others are deficient. It follows that in such a case the weak faculties should be developed first, that they be brought up to the general standard. Then a further general development may be undertaken if desired. Moreover, in general development, it will be found that certain faculties will respond more readily to the cultivation given, while others will be slow to respond. In such cases wisdom dictates that a greater degree of exercise and nourishment be given to the slower and less responsible faculties, while the more responsive be given but a lighter development. In Thought-Culture as in physical culture, the less developed and slower responding parts should be given special attention.

* * * * *

In the following chapters we shall point out the methods and exercises calculated to develop the several faculties of the mind to the best advantage, in each case giving general advice along the lines of the cultivation of the particular faculty which will serve as general instruction regarding its culture. The student should carefully study the entire work before he attempts to specialize in the development of any particular faculty. The particular work may be aided by an acquaintance with the entire field of Thought-Culture for many of the faculties shade into each other in their activities and are always more or less interdependent. For, be it remembered, the mind is a _whole_, and not a mere aggregation of many parts. To understand the parts, one must study the whole–to understand the whole, one must study the parts.

CHAPTER V.

ATTENTION

Attention is not a faculty of the mind in the same sense as perception, abstraction, judgment, etc., but is rather in the nature of an act of will concerned in the focusing of the consciousness upon some object of thought presented or represented to the mind. In some respects it bears a resemblance to Abstraction, inasmuch as it sets aside some particular object for the consideration of the consciousness, to the exclusion of other objects. Wayland explains attention as a condition of mind in which the consciousness is excited and directed by an act of the will. Hamilton says: “Consciousness may be compared to a telescope; Attention is the pulling out and pressing in of the tubes in accommodating the focus of the eye;” and also that: “An act of attention, that is an act of concentration, seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain contraction of the pupil is requisite to every exertion of vision…. Attention then is to consciousness what the contraction of the pupil is to sight, or to the eye of the mind what the microscope or telescope is to the bodily eye…. It constitutes the better half of all intellectual power.”

Brodie says that: “It is Attention, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference which exists between minds of different individuals.” Butler says: “The most important intellectual habit that I know of is the habit of attending exclusively to the matter in hand…. It is commonly said that genius cannot be infused by education, yet this power of concentrated attention, which belongs as a part of his gift to every great discoverer, is unquestionably capable of almost indefinite augmentation by resolute practice.” And Beattie says: “The force wherewith anything strikes the mind is generally in proportion to the degree of attention bestowed upon it.”

Realizing the importance of attention, the student will naturally wish to cultivate the power of bestowing it when necessary. The first role in the cultivation of the attention is that the student shall carefully acquire _the habit of thinking of or doing but one thing at a time_. This first rule may seem easy, but in practice it will be found very difficult of observance, so careless are the majority of us in our actions and thinking. Not only will the trouble and care bestowed upon the acquiring of this habit of thought and action be well repaid by the development of the attention, but the student will also acquire a facility for accomplishing his tasks quickly and thoroughly. As Kay says: “There is nothing that contributes more to success in any pursuit than that of having the attention concentrated on the matter in hand; and, on the contrary, nothing is more detrimental than when doing one thing to have the mind taken up with something else.” And as Granville says: “A frequent cause of failure in the faculty of attention is striving to think of more than one thing at a time.” Kay also well says: “If we would possess the power of attention in a high degree, we must cultivate the habit of attending to what is directly before the mind, to the exclusion of all else. All distracting thoughts and feelings that tend to withdraw the mind from what is immediately before it are therefore to be carefully avoided. This is a matter of great importance, and of no little difficulty. Frequently the mind, in place of being concentrated on what is immediately before it, is thinking of something else–something, it may be, that went before or that may come after, or something quite alien to the subject.”

The following principles of the application of the attention have been stated by the authorities:

I. The attention attaches more readily to interesting than to uninteresting things.

II. The attention will decline in strength unless there is a variation in the stimulus, either by a change of object or the developing of some new attribute in the object.

III. The attention, when tired by continuous direction toward some unvarying object, may be revived by directing it toward some new object or in allowing it to be attracted and held by some passing object.

IV. The attention manifests in a two-fold activity; _viz._ (1) the concentration upon some one object of thought; and (2) the shutting out of outside objects. Thus, it has its positive and negative sides. Thus, when a man wishes to give his undivided attention to one speaker in a crowd of speaking individuals, he acts positively in focusing his consciousness upon the selected individual, and negatively by refusing to listen to the others.

V. The attention is not a faculty, but a means of using any faculty with an increased degree of efficiency.

VI. The degree of attention possessed by an individual is an indication of his power of using his intellect. Many authorities have held that, in cases of genius, the power of concentrated attention is usually greatly developed. Brooks says: “Attention is one of the principal elements of genius.” Hamilton says: “Genius is a higher capacity of attention.” Helvetius says: “Genius is nothing but protracted attention.” Chesterfield says: “The power of applying our attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object is a sure mark of superior genius.”

The attention may be cultivated, just as may be the various faculties of the mind, by the two-fold method of Exercise and Nourishment; that is, by using and employing it actively and by furnishing it with the proper materials with which to feed its strength. The way to exercise the attention is _to use it frequently_ in every-day life. If you are listening to a man speaking, endeavor to give to him your undivided attention, and, at the same time, to shut out from your consciousness every other object. In working, we should endeavor to use the attention by concentrating our interest upon the particular task before us to the exclusion of all else. In reading, we should endeavor to hold our minds closely to the text instead of hastily glancing over the page as so many do.

Those who wish to cultivate their attention should take up some line of study in which it is necessary to fasten the attention firmly for a time. A half-hour’s study in this way is worth more than hours of careless reading so far as the cultivation of the attention is concerned. Mathematics is most valuable in the direction of developing the power of attention. Gibbon says: “After a rapid glance on the subject and distribution of a new book, I suspend the reading of it which I only resume after having myself examined the subject in all its relations.”

Some writers have held that the attention may be developed by the practice of selecting the voice of one person speaking among a crowd of speakers, and deliberately shutting out the other sounds, giving the whole attention to the particular speaker; or, in the same manner, selecting one singer in a church choir or band of singers; or one musical instrument in an orchestra; or one piece of machinery making sounds in a room filled with various machines, etc. The practice of so doing is held to strengthen one’s powers of concentration and attention.

Draper says: “Although many images may be simultaneously existing upon the retina, the mind possesses the power of singling out any one of them and fastening attention upon it, just as among a number of musical instruments simultaneously played, one, and that perhaps the feeblest, may be selected and its notes exclusively followed.” And as Taylor says: “In a concert of several voices, the voices being of nearly equal intensity, regarded merely as organic impressions on the auditory nerve, we select one, and at will we lift out and disjoin it from the general volume of sound; we shut off the other voices–five, ten and more–and follow this one alone. When we have done so for a time, we freely cast it off and take up another.” Carpenter says: “The more completely the mental energy can be brought into one focus and all distracting objects excluded, the more powerful will be the volitional effort.”

Many authorities hold that the attention may be best applied and exercised by analyzing an object mentally, and then considering its parts one by one by a process of abstraction. Thus, as Kays says: “An apple presents to us form, color, taste, smell, etc., and if we would obtain a clear idea of any one of these, we must contemplate it by itself and compare it with other impressions of the same kind we have previously experienced. So in viewing a landscape, it is not enough to regard it merely as a whole, but we must regard each of its different parts individually by itself if we would obtain a clear idea of it. We can only obtain a full and complete knowledge of an object _by analyzing it and concentrating the attention upon its different parts, one by one_.” Reid says: “It is not by the senses immediately, but rather by the power of _analyzing and abstraction_, that we get the most simple and the most distinct notions of objects of sense.” And, as Brown says: “It is scarcely possible to advance even a single step in intellectual physics without the necessity of performing _some sort of analysis_.” In all processes requiring analysis and examination of parts, properties or qualities, the attention is actively employed. Accordingly, it follows that such exercises are best adapted to the work of developing and cultivating the attention itself. Therefore, as a parting word we may say: _To develop and cultivate the power of attention and concentration, (1) Analyze; (2) Analyze; and (3) Analyze. Analyze everything and everybody with which or whom you come in contact._ There is no better or shorter rule.

The student will also find that the various directions and the advice which we shall give in the succeeding chapters, regarding the cultivation of the various faculties, are also adapted to the development of the attention, for the latter is brought into active play in them. And, likewise, by developing the attention, one may practice the future exercises with greater effect.

CHAPTER VI.

PERCEPTION

In preceding chapters we have seen that in the phase of mental activity in which the Intellect is concerned, the processes of which are known as “Thought” in the narrower sense of the term, there are several stages or steps involving the use of several faculties of the mind. The first of these steps or stages is called _Perception_.

Many persons confuse the idea of Sensation and Perception, but there is a clear distinction between them. Sensations arise from nerve action–from the stimulation of nerve substance–which gives rise to a peculiar effect upon the brain, which results in an elementary form of consciousness. An authority says: “Sensation is the peculiar property of the nervous system in a state of activity, by which impressions are conveyed to the brain or sensorium. When an impression is made upon any portion of the bodily surface by contact, heat, electricity, light, or any other agent, the mind is rendered conscious of this by sensation. In the process there are three stages–reception of the impression at the end of the sensory nerve, the conduction of it along the nerve trunk to the sensorium, and _the change it excites in the sensorium itself, through which is produced sensation_.”

Just why and how this nerve action is translated into consciousness of an elementary kind, science is unable to explain. Our knowledge is based in a great part, or entirely, upon impressions which have been received over the channel of the senses–sensations of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling and touch. Many authorities hold that all of the five senses are modifications of the sense of touch, or feeling; as for instance, the impression upon the organs of sight is really in the nature of a delicate touch or feeling of the light-waves as they come in contact with the nerves of vision, etc. But, although sensations give us the raw materials of thought, so to speak, they are not _knowledge_ in themselves. Knowledge arises from the operation of Perception upon this raw material of Sensation.

But yet, Sensation plays a most active part in the presentation of the raw material for the Perceptive faculties, and must not be regarded as merely a physiological process. It may be said to be the connecting link between the physical and the mental activities. As Ziehen says: “It follows that the constitution of the nervous system is an essential factor in determining the quality of sensation. This fact reveals the obvious error of former centuries, first refuted by Locke, though still shared by naive thought today, that the objects about us themselves are colored, warm, cold, etc. As external to our consciousness, we can only assume matter, vibrating with molecular motion and permeated by vibrating particles of ether. The nervous apparatus selects only certain motions of matter or of ether, which they transform into that form of nerve excitation with which they are familiar. It is only this nerve excitation that we perceive as red, warm or hard.”

Passing from Sensation to Perception, we see that the latter interprets the reports of the former. Perception translates into consciousness the impressions of Sensation. Perception, acting through one or more of the mental faculties, gives us _our first bit of real knowledge_. Sensation may give us the impression of a small moving thing–Perception translates this into the thought of _a cat_. Sensation is a mere _feeling_–Perception is the _thought_ arising from that feeling. A Percept is the product of Perception, or in other words, our _idea_ gained through Perception. The majority of our percepts are complex, being built up from a number of minor percepts; as for instance, our percept of _a peach_ is built up from our minor percepts of the form, shape, color, weight, degree of hardness, smell, taste, etc., of the peach, each sense employed giving minor percepts, the whole being combined in the conscious as the whole percept of that particular peach.

Brooks says: “All knowledge does not come directly from perception through the senses, however. We have a knowledge of external objects, and we have a knowledge that transcends this knowledge of external objects. Perception is the _immediate_ source of the first kind of knowledge, and the _indirect_ source of the second kind of knowledge. This distinction is often expressed by the terms _cause_ and _occasion_. Thus perception is said to be the _cause_ of our knowledge of objects, since it is the immediate source of such knowledge. Perception is also said to be the _occasion_ of the ideas and truths of intuition; for, though in a sense necessary to these ideas, it is not the source of them. Perception also furnishes the understanding with materials out of which it derives ideas and truths beyond the field of sense. As thus attaining a knowledge of external objects, affording material for the operations of the understanding, and furnishing the occasion for the activity of the intuitive power, _perception may be said to lie at the basis of all knowledge_.”

Perception is of course manifest in all persons. But it varies greatly in degree and power. Moreover, it may be developed and cultivated to a great degree. As Perception is an interpretation of the impression of the senses, we often confuse the cultivation of Perception with the development of the senses themselves. Two persons of equally perfect sense of sight may vary greatly in their degree of Perception of sight impressions. One may be a most careless observer, while the other may be a very close observer and able to distinguish many points of interest and importance in the object viewed which are not apparent to the first observer. Cultivation of Perception is cultivation of the _mental background of the senses_, rather than of the sense organs themselves. The Perception accompanying each sense may be developed and cultivated separately from that accompanying the others.

The majority of persons are very careless observers. They will _see_ things without _perceiving_ the qualities, properties, characteristics, or parts which together make up those things. Two persons, possessed of equal degrees of eyesight, will walk through a forest. Both of them will _see_ trees. To one of them there will be but trees perceived; while to the other there will be a perception of the different species of trees, with their varying bark, leaves, shape, etc. One perceives simply a “pile of stone,” which to the perception of another will be recognized as granite, marble, etc. Brooks says: “Very few persons can tell the difference between the number of legs of a fly and of a spider; and I have known farmers’ boys and girls who could not tell whether the ears of a cow are in front of her horns, above her horns, below her horns, or behind her horns.” Halleck says of a test in a schoolroom: “Fifteen pupils were sure that they had seen cats climb trees and descend them. There was a unanimity of opinion that the cats went up head first. When asked whether the cats came down head or tail first, the majority were sure that the cats descended as they were never known to do. Anyone who had ever noticed the shape of the claws of any beast of prey could have answered that question without seeing an actual descent. Farmers’ boys, who have often seen cows and horses lie down and rise, are seldom sure whether the animals rise with their fore or hind feet first, or whether the habit of the horse agrees with that of the cow in this respect.”

Brooks well says: “Modern education tends to the neglect of the culture of the perceptive powers. In ancient times people studied nature much more than at present. Being without books, they were compelled to depend upon their eyes and ears for knowledge; and this made their senses active, searching and exact. At the present day, we study books for a knowledge of external things; and we study them too much or too exclusively, and thus neglect the cultivation of the senses. We get our knowledge of the material world second-hand, instead of fresh from the open pages of the book of nature. Is it not a great mistake to spend so much time in school and yet not know the difference between the leaf of a beech and of an oak; or not be able to distinguish between specimens of marble, quartz, and granite? The neglect of the culture of the perceptive powers is shown by the scholars of the present time. Very few educated men are good observers; indeed, the most of them are sadly deficient in this respect…. They were taught to think and remember; but were not taught to use their eyes and ears. In modern education, books are used too much like spectacles, and the result is the blunting of the natural powers of perception.”

The first principle in the Cultivation of Perception is the correct use of the Attention. The intelligent control of voluntary attention is a prerequisite to clear and distinct perception. We have called your attention to this matter in the preceding chapter. Halleck says: “A body may be imaged on the retina without insuring perception. There must be an effort to concentrate the attention upon the many things which the world presents to our senses…. Perception, to achieve satisfactory results, must summon the will to its aid to concentrate the attention. Only the smallest part of what falls upon our senses at any time is actually perceived.”

The sense of sight is perhaps the one of the greatest importance to us, and accordingly the cultivation of Perception with regard to impressions received through the eye is the most important for the ordinary individual. As Kay says: “To see clearly is a valuable aid even to thinking clearly. In all our mental operations we owe much to sight. To recollect, to think, to imagine, is to see internally,–to call up more or less visual images of things before the mind. In order to understand a thing it is generally necessary to see it, and what a man has not seen he cannot properly realize or image distinctly to his mind…. It is by the habitual direction of our attention to the effects produced upon our consciousness by the impressions made upon the eye and transmitted to the sensorium that our sight, like our other senses, is trained.” Bain says: “Cohering trains and aggregates of the sensations of sight make more than any other thing, perhaps more than all other things put together, the material of thought, memory and imagination.” Vinet says: “The child, and perhaps the man as well, only knows well what is shown him, and the image of things is the true medium between their abstract idea and his personal experience.” This being the case, advice concerning the Cultivation of Perception must needs be directed mainly to the cultivation of the perception of sight-impressions.

Brooks says: “We should acquire the habit of observing with attention. Many persons look at objects with a careless, inattentive eye. We should guard against the habit of careless looking. We should fix the mind upon the object before us; we should concentrate the attention upon that upon which we are looking. Attention, in respect to Perception, has been compared to a burning glass; hold the sun-glass between the sun and a board and the concentrated rays will burn a hole through the latter. So attention concentrates the rays of perceptive power and enables the mind to penetrate below the surface of things.”

The best authorities agree in the idea that the Perception may be best cultivated by acquiring the habit of examining things in detail. And, that this examination in detail is best manifested by examining the parts going to make up a complex thing, separately, rather than examining the thing as a whole. Halleck says regarding this point: “To look at things intelligently is the most difficult of all arts. The first rule for the cultivation of accurate perception is: Do not try to perceive the whole of a complex object at once. Take the human face for example. A man holding an important position to which he had been elected offended many people because he could not remember faces, and hence failed to recognize individuals the second time he met them. His trouble was in looking at the countenance as a whole. When he changed his method of observation, and noticed carefully the nose, mouth, eyes, chin and color of hair, he at once began to find recognition easier. He was no longer in danger of mistaking A for B, since he remembered that the shape of B’s nose was different, or the color of his hair at least three shades lighter. This example shows that another rule can be formulated: Pay careful attention to details…. To see an object merely as an undiscriminated mass of something in a certain place is to do no more than a donkey accomplishes as he trots along.”

Brooks says regarding the same point: “To train the powers of observation we should practice observing minutely. We should analyze the objects which we look at into their parts, and notice these parts. Objects present themselves to us as wholes; our definite knowledge of them is gained by analysis, by separating them into the elements which compose them. We should therefore give attention to the details of whatever we are considering; and thus cultivate the habit of observing with minuteness…. It is related of a teacher that if, when hearing a class, some one rapped at the door, he would look up as the visitor entered and from a single glance could tell his appearance and dress, the kind of hat he wore, kind of necktie, collar, vest, coat, shoes, etc. The skillful banker, also, in counting money with wondrous rapidity, will detect and throw from his pile of bills the counterfeits which, to the ordinary eye, seem to be without spot or blemish.”

One of the best methods of developing and cultivating the faculty of Perception is to take up some study in which the perceptive faculties _must be_ employed. Botany, physics, geology, natural history give splendid exercise in Perception, providing the student engages in actual experimental work, and actual observation, instead of confining himself to the textbooks. A careful scientific study and examination of _any kind of objects_, in a manner calculated to bring out the various points of resemblance and difference, will do most to develop the Perception. Training of this kind will develop these powers to a high degree, in the case of small children.

Drawing is also a great help to the development of Perception. In order to draw a thing correctly we must of necessity examine it in detail; otherwise we will not be able to draw it correctly. In fact, many authorities use the test of drawing to prove the degree of attention and Perception that the student has bestowed upon an object which he has been studying. Others place an object before the pupil for a few minutes, and then withdraw it, the pupil then being required to draw the object roughly but with attention to its leading peculiarities and features. Then the object is again placed before the pupil for study, and he is then again required to draw from memory the additional details he has noticed in it. This process is repeated over and over again, until the pupil has proved that he has _observed_ every possible detail of interest in the object. This exercise has resulted in the cultivation of a high degree of perception in many students, and its simplicity should not detract from its importance. Any person may practice this exercise by himself; or, better still, two or more students may combine and endeavor to excel each other in friendly rivalry, each endeavoring to discover the greatest number of details in the object considered. So rapidly do students improve under this exercise, that a daily record will show a steady advance. Simple exercises in drawing are found in the reproduction, from memory, of geography maps, leaves of trees, etc.

Similar exercises may be found in the practice of taking a hasty look at a person, animal or building, and then endeavoring to reproduce in writing the particular points about the person or thing observed. This exercise will reveal rapid progress if persisted in. Or, it may be varied by endeavoring to write out the contents of a room through which one has walked.

The majority of our readers remember the familiar story of Houdin, who so cultivated the faculty of Perception that he was able to pass by a shop-window and afterward state in detail every object in the window. He acquired this power by gradual development, beginning with the observation of a single article in the window, then two, then three and so on. Others have followed his method with great success. Speaking of Houdin’s wonderful Perception, Halleck says: “A wide-awake eagle would probably see more of a thing at one glance than would a drowsy lizard in a quarter of an hour. Extreme rapidity of Perception, due to careful training, was one of the factors enabling Houdin and his son to astonish everybody and to amass a fortune. He placed a domino before the boy, and instead of allowing him to count the spots, required him to give the sum total at once. This exercise was continued until each could give instantaneously the sum of the spots on a dozen dominoes. The sum was given just as accurately as if five minutes had been consumed in adding.” Houdin, in his Memoirs relating the above facts regarding his own methods, states with due modesty, that many women far excel him in this respect. He says: “I can safely assert that a lady seeing another pass at full speed in a carriage will have had time to analyze her toilette from her bonnet to her shoes, and be able to describe not only the fashion and quality of the stuffs, but also say if the lace be real or only machine made.”

There are a number of games played by children which tend to the cultivation of the Perception, and which might well be adapted for the use of older people. These games are based on the general principle of the various participants taking a brief view of a number of objects displayed in one’s hand, on a table, in a box, etc., and then stating what he or she has seen. There will be noticed a wonderful difference in the degree of Perception manifested by the various participants. And, equally interesting will be the degrees of progress noted after playing this game over several times, allowing time for rest between the series of games. It is a fact well known in police circles that thieves often train boys in this way, following this course by another in which the lads are expected to take in the contents of a room, the windows, locks, etc., at a glance. They are then graduated into spies looking out the details of the scenes of future robberies.

In our volume of this series, devoted to the consideration of the Memory, we have related a number of exercises and methods, similar to those given above, by which the Perception may be cultivated. Perception plays a most important place in memory, for upon the clearness of the percepts depends to a great degree the clearness of the impressions made upon the memory. So close is the connection between Memory and Perception that the cultivation of one tends to develop the other. For instance, the cultivation of the Memory necessitates the sharpening of the Perception in the direction of obtaining clear original impressions; while the cultivation of Perception naturally develops the Memory by reason of the fact that the latter is used in testing and proving the clearness and degree of Perception. This being the case, those who find that the exercises and methods given above are too arduous may substitute the simple exercise of remembering as many details as possible of things they see. This effort to impress the memory will involuntarily bring into action the perceptive faculties in the acquirement of the original impressions, so that in the end the Perception will be found to have developed.

Teachers and those having to do with children should realize the great value of the cultivation of Perception in the young, and thus establishing valuable habits of observation among them. The experience and culture thus acquired will prove of great value in their after life. As Brooks well says on this subject: “Teachers should appreciate the value of the culture of the perceptive powers, and endeavor to do something to afford this culture. Let it be remembered that by training the powers of observation of pupils, we lead them to acquire definite ideas of things, enable them to store their minds with fresh and interesting knowledge, lay the foundation for literary or business success, and thus do much to enhance their happiness in life and add to the sum of human knowledge.”

CHAPTER VII.

REPRESENTATION

Sensation and Perception, as considered in the preceding chapter, are what are called by psychologists “Processes of Presentation.” By Presentation is meant the direct offering to the consciousness of mental images or objects of thought. If there were no faculty of the mind capable of retaining and _re_-presenting to the consciousness the impression or record of Perception, we could never progress in knowledge, for each percept would be new each time it was presented and there would be no recognition of it as having been previously perceived, nor would there be any power to voluntarily recall any percept previously acquired. In short, we would be without that power of the mind called Memory.

But, fortunately for us as thinkers, we possess the power of Representation; that is, of reproducing past perceptions and experiences in the shape of _mental images_ or pictures, “in the mind’s eye,” so to speak, which relieves us of the necessity of directly and immediately perceiving an object each time we desire or are required to think of it. The processes whereby this becomes possible are called the processes of Representation, for the reason that by them past experiences of Perception are _re_-presented to the consciousness.

The subject of Representation is closely bound up with that of Memory. Strictly speaking, Representation may be said to be one phase of Memory; Association of Ideas another; and the authorities prefer to treat the whole subject under the general head of Memory. We have written a work on “Memory” which forms one of the volumes of the present series, and we have no intention, or desire, to repeat here the information given in that work. But we must consider the subject of Representation at this point in order to maintain the logical unity of the present general subject of Thought-Culture. The student will also notice, of course, the close relation between the processes of Representation and those of the Imagination, which we shall consider in other chapters of this work.

Memory has several phases, the usual classification of which is as follows: (1) Impression; (2) Retention; (3) Recollection; (4) Representation, and (5) Recognition. Each phase requires the operation of special mental processes. _Impression_ is the process whereby the impressions of Perception are recorded or stamped upon the subconscious field of mentality, as the impress of the die upon the wax. _Retention_ is the process whereby the subconsciousness _retains_ or holds the impressions so received. _Recollection_ is the process by which the mind _re-collects_ the impressions retained in the subconsciousness, bringing them again into consciousness as objects of knowledge. _Representation_ is the process whereby the impressions so re-collected are _pictured or imaged_ in the mind. _Recognition_ is the process whereby the mind _recognizes_ the mental image or picture so re-presented to it as connected with its past experience.

As we have stated, we have considered the general subject of Memory in another volume of this series and, therefore, shall not attempt to enter into a discussion of its general subject at this place. We shall, accordingly, limit ourselves here to a brief consideration of the phase of Representation and its cultivation.

Representation, of course, depends upon the preceding phases of Memory known as Impression, Retention and Recollection. Unless the Impression is clear; unless the Retention is normal, there can be no Representation. And unless one _recollects_ there can be no Representation. Recollection (which is really a re-collection of percepts) must precede Representation in the shape of mental images or pictures. Recollection re-collects the mental materials out of which the image is to be constructed. But, as Brooks says: “It is not to be assumed that knowledge is retained as a picture; but that it is _recreated_ in the form of a picture or some other mental product when it is recalled.” The process is analogous to the transmutation of the sound-waves entering the receiver of a telephone, into electrical-waves which are transmitted to the receiver, where they are in turn re-transmuted to sound-waves which enter the ear of the listener. It will be seen at once that there is the closest possible relation between the processes of Representation and those of Memory–in fact, it is quite difficult to draw a clear line of division between them. Some make the distinction that Representation furnishes us with an exact reproduction of _the past_; while Imagination combines our mental images into _new products_. That is, Representation merely _reproduces_; while Imagination _creates_ by forming new combinations; or Representation deals with a reproduction of the Actual; while Imagination deals with the Ideal.

Wundt speaking of this difficult distinction says: “Psychologists are accustomed to define _memory images_ as ideas which _exactly reproduce_ some previous perception, and _fancy images_ as ideas consisting of a combination of elements taken from a whole number of perceptions. Now memory images in the sense of this definition simply do not exist…. Try, for instance, to draw from memory some landscape picture which you have only once seen, and then compare your copy with the original. You will expect to find plenty of mistakes and omissions; but you will also invariably find that you have put in a great deal which was not in the original, but which comes from landscape pictures which you have seen somewhere else.”

While we generally speak of Representation _picturing_ the recollected percepts, still, we must not make the mistake of supposing that it is concerned with, or limited to, only mental pictures. We are able to _represent_ not only visual percepts but also sounds, smells, tastes or feelings, often so vividly that they appear as almost actually existent. We may also even _represent_, symbolically the processes of reasoning, mathematical operations, etc. In short nearly, if not all experiences which are possible in Presentation are also possible in Representation.

The phase of Representation, in the processes of Memory, is of course subject to the general laws of the Cultivation of Memory which we have stated in detail in our previous volume on that subject. But there are some special points of development and cultivation which may be considered briefly in this place. In the first place the importance of Attention and clear Perception, as necessary precedents for clear Representation, may be emphasized. In order to form clear mental images of a thing we must have perceived it clearly in the first place. The advice regarding the use of the Attention and Perception given in preceding chapters need not be repeated here, but special attention should be directed toward them in connection with the processes of Representation. If we wish to cultivate the Representative faculties, we must begin by cultivating the Presentative faculties.

Then again we must remember what we have said elsewhere about the facts of development through (1) Use; and (2) Nourishment, in all mental faculties. We must begin to _use_ the faculties of Representation in order to exercise them. We must give them _nourishment_ in the shape of objects of mental food. That is to say we must furnish these faculties with _materials_ with which they may grow and develop, and with exercise in order to strengthen the mental-muscle and also to give the faculties the opportunity to “acquire the knack.” The exercises and methods recommended in our chapter on Perception will furnish good _material_ for the Representative faculties’ growing requirements. By _perceiving_ the details of things, one is able to reproduce clear mental images of them. In studying an object, always carry in your mind the fact that you wish to _reproduce_ it in your mind later. In fact, if you have the opportunity, let your mind “repeat it to itself” as soon as possible after the actual occurrence and experience. Just as you often murmur to yourself, or else write down, the name of a person or place which you have just heard, in order that you may recollect it the better thereafter, so it will be well for you to “mentally repeat” to yourself the experiences upon which you wish to exercise your Representative faculties.

As to the matter of development and cultivation by Use, we would advise that you begin gradually to train your mind to _reproduce_ the experiences of the day or week or month, at intervals, until you feel that you are developing a new power in that direction. Tonight, if you try you will find that you can reproduce but a very small part of today’s happenings with any degree of clearness. How clearly can you image the places you have been, the appearances of the people you have met, the various details of persons and things which you perceived during the experiences of the day? Not very clearly, we dare say. Try again, and you will find that you will be able to add new details. Keep it up until you feel tired or think that you have exhausted all the possibilities of the task. Tomorrow, try it again, and you will find that the second day’s experiences are more clearly reproduced in your mind. Each day should find you a little more advanced, until you get to a place where the normal degree of power is attained, when the advance will be slower.

Then, at the end of the week, review its experiences. Do the same the following week. At the end of the month, take a hasty mental trip over the month’s experiences. And so on. Exercise, in moderation, along these lines will work wonders for you. Not only will it develop the Representation, but your powers of observation and your general memory will be found to be improved. And, moreover, in “chewing the mental cud” you will think of many things of interest and importance in connection with your work, etc., and your general mental efficiency will be increased for the faculties of the mind are interdependent and share benefits with each other.

CHAPTER VIII.

ABSTRACTION

As we have seen, the first stage or step in the process of Thought is that called Perception, which we have considered in the preceding chapter. Perception, as we have seen, is the process by which we gain our first knowledge of the external world as reported to us by the channels of sense. The Perceptive faculties interpret the material which is presented to us by the senses. Following upon Perception we find the processes resulting from the exercise of the group of faculties which are classified under the general head of Understanding.

Understanding is the faculty, or faculties, of the mind by means of which we intelligently examine and compare the various _percepts_, either separating them by analysis, or else combining them by synthesis, or both, and thus securing our general ideas, principles, laws, classes, etc. There are several sub-phases of Understanding which are known to psychologists and logicians as: (1) Abstraction; (2) Conception or Generalization; (3) Judgment, and (4) Reasoning, respectively. In this chapter we shall consider the first of these sub-phases or steps of Understanding, which is known as “Abstraction.”

Abstraction is that faculty of the mind by which we abstract or “draw off,” and then consider apart, the particular qualities, properties, or attributes of an object, and thus are able to consider _them_ as “things” or objects of thought. In order to form _concepts_ or general ideas, from our _percepts_ or particular ideas, we must consider and examine two common points or qualities which go to make up _differences and resemblances_. The special examination or consideration of these common points or qualities result in the exercise of Abstraction. In the process of Abstraction we mentally “draw away” a quality of an object and then consider it as a distinct object of thought. Thus in considering a flower we may _abstract_ its qualities of fragrance, color, shape, etc., and think of these as things independent of the flower itself from which they were derived. We think of _redness_, _fragrance_, etc., not only in connection with the particular flower but as _general qualities_. Thus the qualities of redness, sweetness, hardness, softness, etc., lead us to the abstract terms, _red_, _sweet_, _hard_, _soft_, _etc._ In the same way courage, cowardice, virtue, vice, love, hate, etc., are abstract terms. No one ever saw one of these things–they are known only in connection with objects, or else as “abstract terms” in the processes of Thought. They may be known as qualities, and expressed as predicates; or they may be considered as abstract things and expressed as nouns.

In the general process of Abstraction we first draw off and set aside all the qualities which are _not common_ to the general class under consideration, for the concept or general idea must comprise only the qualities common to its class. Thus in the case of the general idea of horse, size and color must be abstracted as non-essentials, for horses are of various colors and sizes. But on the other hand, there are certain qualities which _are common to all horses_, and these must be abstracted and used in making up the concept or general idea.

So, you see, in general Abstraction we form two classes: (1) the unlike and not-general qualities; and (2) the like or common qualities. As Halleck says: “In the process of Abstraction, we draw our attention away from a mass of confusing details, unimportant at the time, and attend only to qualities common to the class. Abstraction is little else than centering the power of attention on some qualities to the exclusion of others…. While we are forming concepts, we abstract or draw off certain qualities, either to leave them out of view or to consider them by themselves. Our dictionaries contain such words as purity, whiteness, sweetness, industry, courage, etc. No one ever touched, tasted, smelled, heard, or saw purity or courage. We do not, therefore, gain our knowledge of these through the senses. We have seen pure persons, pure snow, pure honey; we have breathed pure air, tasted pure coffee. From all these different objects we have abstracted the only like quality, the quality of being pure. We then say we have an idea of _purity_, and that idea is an abstract one. It exists only in the mind which formed it. No one ever saw _whiteness_. He may have seen white clouds, snow, cloth, blossoms, houses, paper, horses, but he never saw _whiteness_ by itself. He simply abstracted that quality from various white objects.”

In Abstraction we may either (1) abstract a quality and set it aside and apart from the other qualities under consideration, as being non-essential and not necessary; or we may (2) abstract a quality and hold it in the mind as essential and necessary for the concept which we are forming. Likewise, we may abstract (1) all the qualities of an object _except one_, and set them aside that we may consider the _one_ quality by itself; or we may (2) abstract the one particular quality and consider it to the exclusion of all its associated qualities. In all of these aspects we have the same underlying process of considering a quality apart from its object, and apart from its associated qualities. The mind more commonly operates in the direction of abstracting one quality and viewing it apart from object and associated qualities.

The importance of correct powers of Abstraction is seen when we realize that all concepts or general ideas are but combinations of abstract qualities or ideas. As Halleck says: “The difference between an _abstract idea_ and a _concept_ is that a concept may consist of a bundle of abstract ideas. If the class contains more than one common quality, so must the concept; it must contain as many of these abstracted qualities as are common to the class. The concept of the class _whale_ would embody a large number of such qualities.” As Brooks says: “If we could not abstract, we could not _generalize_, for abstraction is a condition of generalization.” The last-mentioned authority also cleverly states the idea as follows: “The products of Abstraction are _abstract ideas_, that is, ideas of qualities in the abstract. Such ideas are called _Abstracts_. Thus my idea of some particular color, or hardness, or softness, is an abstract. Abstract ideas have been wittily called ‘the ghosts of departed qualities.’ They may more appropriately be regarded as the spirits of which the objects from which they are derived are the bodies. In other words, they are, figuratively speaking, ‘the disembodied spirits of material things.'”

The cultivation of the faculty of Abstraction depends very materially, in the first place, upon the exercise of Attention and Perception. Mill holds that Abstraction is primarily a result of Attention. Others hold that it is merely the mental process by which the attention is directed exclusively to the consideration of one of several qualities, properties, attributes, parts, etc. Hamilton says: “Attention and Abstraction then are only the same process viewed in different relations. They are, as it were, the positive and negative poles of the same act.” The cultivation of Attention is really a part of the process of the cultivation of the faculty of Abstraction. Unless the Attention be directed toward the object and its qualities we will be unable to perceive, set aside, and separately consider the abstract quality contained within it. In this process, as indeed in all other mental processes, Attention is a prerequisite. Therefore, here, as in many other places, we say to you: “Begin by cultivating Attention.”

Moreover, the cultivation of the faculty of Abstraction depends materially upon the cultivation of Perception. Not only must we _sense_ the existence of the various qualities in an object, but we must also _perceive_ them in consciousness, just as we perceive the object itself. In fact, the perception of the object is merely a perception of its various qualities, attributes and properties, for the object itself is merely a composite of these abstract things, at least so far as its perception in consciousness is concerned. Try to think of _a horse_, without considering its qualities, attributes and properties, and the result is merely _an abstract horse_–something which belongs to the realm of unreality. Try to think of _a rose_ without considering its color, odor, shape, size, response to touch, etc., and you have simply _an ideal rose_ which when analyzed is seen to be a _nothing_. Take away the qualities, properties and attributes of anything, and you have left _merely a name_, or else a transcendental, idealistic, something apart from our world of sense knowledge. Thus it follows that in order to _know_ the qualities of a thing in order to classify it, or to form a general idea of it, we _must_ use the Perception in order to interpret or translate the sense-impressions we have received regarding them. Consequently the greater our power of Perception the greater must be the possibility of our power of Abstraction.

Beyond the cultivation, use and exercise of the Attention and the Perception, there are but few practical methods for cultivating the faculty of Abstraction. Of course, _exercise_ of the faculty will develop it; and _the furnishing of material for its activities_ will give it the “nourishment” of which we have spoken elsewhere. Practice in distinguishing the various qualities, attributes and properties of objects will give a valuable training to the faculty.

Let the student take any object and endeavor to analyze it into its abstract qualities, etc. Let him try to discover qualities hidden from first sight. Let him make a list of these qualities, and write them down; then try to add to the list. Two or more students engaging in a friendly rivalry will stimulate the efforts of each other. In children the exercise may be treated as a game. _Analysis of objects into their component qualities, attributes and qualities–the effort to extract as many adjectives applicable to the object_–this is the first step. The second step consists in _transforming these adjectives into their corresponding nouns_. As for instance, in a rose we perceive the _qualities_ which we call “redness,” “fragrance,” etc. We speak of the rose as being “red” or “fragrant”–then we think of “redness,” or “fragrance” as abstract qualities, or things, which we express as nouns. Exercise and practice along these lines will tend to cultivate the faculty of Abstraction. By knowing qualities, we know the things possessing them.

CHAPTER IX.

ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS

Having formed general ideas, or Concepts, it is important that we associate them with other general ideas. In order to fully _understand_ a general idea we must know its associations and relations. The greater the known associations or relations of an idea, the greater is our degree of understanding of that idea. If we simply know many thousands of separated general ideas, without also knowing their associations and relations, we are in almost as difficult a position as if we merely knew thousands of individual percepts without being able to classify them in general concepts. It is necessary to develop the faculty of associating ideas into groups, according to their relations, just as we group particular ideas in classes. The difference, however, is that these group-ideas do not form classes of a genus, but depend solely upon associations of several kinds, as we shall see in a moment.

Halleck says: “All ideas have certain definite associations with other ideas, and they come up in groups. There is always an association between our ideas, although there are cases when we cannot trace it…. Even when we find no association between our ideas, we may be sure that it exists…. An idea, then, never appears in consciousness unless there is a definite reason why this idea should appear in preference to others.” Brooks says: “One idea or feeling in the mind calls up some other idea or feeling with which it is in some way related. Our ideas seem, as it were, to be tied together by the invisible thread of association, so that as one comes out of unconsciousness, it draws another with it. Thoughts seem to exist somewhat in clusters like the grapes of a bunch, so that in bringing out one, we bring the entire cluster with it. The law of association is thus the tie, the thread, the golden link by which our thoughts are united in an act of reproduction.”

The majority of writers confine their consideration of Association of Ideas to its relation to Memory. It is true that the Laws of Association play an important part in Memory Culture, but Association of Ideas also form an important part of the general subject of Thought-Culture, and especially in the phase of the latter devoted to the development of the Understanding. The best authorities agree upon this idea and state it positively. Ribot says: “The most fundamental law which regulates psychological phenomena is the Law of Association. In its comprehensive character it is comparable to the law of attraction in the physical world.” Mill says: “That which the law of gravitation is to astronomy, that which the elementary properties of the tissues are to physiology, the Law of Association of Ideas is to psychology.”

There are two general principles, or laws, operative in the processes of Association of Ideas, known as (1) Association by Contiguity; and (2) Association by Similarity, respectively.

Association by Contiguity manifests particularly in the processes of memory. In its two phases of (1) Contiguity of Time; and (2) Contiguity of Space, respectively, it brings together before the field of consciousness ideas associated with each by reason of their time or space relations. Thus, if we remember a certain thing, we find it easy to remember things which occurred immediately before, or immediately after that particular thing. Verbal memory depends largely upon the contiguity of time, as for instance, our ability to repeat a poem, or passage from a book, if we can recall the first words thereof. Children often possess this form of memory to a surprising degree; and adults with only a limited degree of understanding may repeat freely long extracts from speeches they have heard, or even arbitrary jumbles of words. Visual memory depends largely upon contiguity of space, as for instance our ability to recall the details of scenes, when starting from a given point. In both of these forms of association by contiguity the mental operation is akin to that of unwinding a ball of yarn, the ideas, thus associated in the sequence of time or place, following each other into the field of consciousness. Association by Contiguity, while important in itself, properly belongs to the general subject of Memory, and as we have considered it in the volume of this series devoted to the last mentioned subject, we shall not speak of it further here.

Association by Similarity, however, possesses a special interest to students of the particular subject of the culture of the Understanding. If we were compelled to rely upon the association of contiguity for our understanding of things, we would understand a thing merely in its relations to that which went before or came after it; or by the things which were near it in space–we would have to unwind the mental ball of time and space relations in order to bring into consciousness the associated relations of anything. The Association of Similarity, however, remedies this defect, and gives us a higher and broader association. Speaking of Association of Similarity, Kay says: “It is of the utmost importance to us in forming a judgment of things, or in determining upon a particular line of conduct, to be able to bring together before the mind a number of instances of a _similar_ kind, recent or long past, which may aid us in coming to a right determination. Thus, we may judge of the nature or quality of an article, and obtain light and leading in regard to any subject that may be before us. In this way we arrange and classify and reason by induction. _This is known as rational or philosophical association._”

Halleck says: “An eminent philosopher has said that man is completely at the mercy of the association of his ideas. Every new object is seen in the light of its associated ideas…. It is not the business of the psychologist to state what power the association of ideas _ought_ to have. It is for him to ascertain what power it _does_ have. When we think of the bigotry of past ages, of the stake for the martyr and the stoning of witches, we can realize the force of Prof. Ziehen’s statement: ‘We cannot think as we _will_, but we _must_ think as just those associations which happen to be present prescribe.’ While this is not literally true, it may serve to emphasize a deflecting factor which is usually underestimated.”

Locke says: “The connection in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force, to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that, perhaps, there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.” Stewart says: “The bulk of mankind, being but little accustomed to reflect and to generalize, associate their ideas chiefly according to their more obvious relations, and above all to the casual relations arising from contiguity in time and place; whereas, in the mind of a philosopher ideas are commonly associated according to those relations which are brought to light in consequence of particular efforts of attention, such as the relations of cause and effect, or of premises and conclusion. Hence, it must necessarily happen that when he has occasion to apply to use his acquired knowledge, time and reflection will be requisite to enable him to recollect it.”

This Association by Similarity, or the “rational and philosophical association of ideas,” may be developed and cultivated by a little care and work. The first principle is that of _learning the true relations of an idea_–its various logical associations. Perhaps the easiest and best method is that adopted and practiced by Socrates, the old Greek philosopher, often called “the Socratic method”–the Method of Questioning. By questioning oneself, or others, regarding a thing, the mind of the person answering tends to unfold its stores of information, and to make new and true associations. Kays says: “Socrates, Plato, and others among the ancients and some moderns, have been masters of this art. The principle of asking questions and obtaining answers to them may be said to characterize all intellectual effort…. The great thing is to ask the right questions, and to obtain the right answers.” Meiklejohn says: “This art of questioning possessed by Dr. Hodgson was something wonderful and unique, and was to the minds of most of his pupils a truly obstetric art. He told them little or nothing, but showed them how to find out for themselves. ‘The Socratic method,’ he said, ‘is the true one, especially with the young.'”

But this questioning must be done logically, and orderly, and not in a haphazard way. As Fitch says: “In proposing questions it is very necessary to keep in view the importance of arranging them in the exact order in which the subject would naturally develop itself in the mind of a logical and systematic thinker.” A number of systems have been formulated by different writers on the subject, all of which have much merit. The following System of Analysis, designed for the use of students desiring to acquire correct associations, was given in the volume of this series, entitled “Memory,” and is reproduced here because it is peculiarly adapted to the cultivation and development of the faculty of discovering and forming correct associations and relations between ideas:

SYSTEM OF ANALYSIS

When you wish to discover what you really _know_ regarding a thing, ask yourself the following questions about it, examining each point in detail, and endeavoring to bring before the mind _your full knowledge_ regarding that particular point. Fill in the deficiencies by reading some good work of reference, an encyclopedia for instance; or consulting a good dictionary, or both:

I. Where did it come from, or originate?

II. What caused it?

III. What history or record has it?

IV. What are its attributes, qualities or characteristics?

V. What things can I most readily associate with it? What is it most like?

VI. What is it good for–how may it be used–what can I do with it?

VII. What does it prove–what can be deduced from it?

VIII. What are its natural results–what happens because of it?

IX. What is its future; and its natural or probable end or finish?

X. What do I think of it, on the whole–what are my general impressions regarding it?

XI. What do I know about it, in the way of general information?

XII. What have I heard about it, and from whom, and when?

The following “Query Table,” from the same volume, may be found useful in the same direction. It is simpler and less complicated than the system given above. It has well been called a “Magic Key of Knowledge,” and it opens many a mental door:

QUERY TABLE

Ask yourself the following questions regarding the thing under consideration. It will draw out many bits of information and associated knowledge in your mind:

I. What? II. Whence? III. Where? IV. When? V. How? VI. Why? VII. Whither?

Remember, always, that the greater the number of associated and related ideas that you are able to group around a concept, the richer, fuller and truer does that concept become to you. The concept is a _general idea_, and its attributes of “generality” depend upon the associated facts and ideas related to it. The greater the number of the view points from which a concept may be examined and considered, the greater is the degree of knowledge concerning that concept. It is held that everything in the universe is related to every other thing, so that if we knew _all_ the associated ideas and facts concerning a thing, we would not only know that particular thing _absolutely_, but would, besides, know _everything_ in the universe. The chain of Association is infinite in extent.

CHAPTER X.

GENERALIZATION

We have seen that Sensation is translated or interpreted into Perception; and that from the Percepts so created we may “draw off,” or separate, various qualities, attributes and properties by the analytical process we call Abstraction. Abstraction, we have seen, thus constitutes the first step in the process of what is called Understanding. The second step is called Generalization or Conception.

Generalization, or Conception, is that faculty of the mind by which we are able to combine and group together several particular ideas into one general idea. Thus when we find a number of particular objects possessing the same general qualities, attributes or properties, we proceed to _classify_ them by the process of Generalization. For instance, in a number of animals possessing certain general and common qualities we form a concept of a class comprising those particular animals. Thus in the concept of cow, we include _all cows_–we know them to be cows because of their possession of certain general class qualities which we include in our concept of _cow_. The particular cows may vary greatly in size, color and general appearance, but they possess the common general qualities which we group together in our general concept of _cow_. Likewise by reason of certain common and general qualities we include in our concept of “Man,” _all men_, black, white, brown, red or yellow, of all races and degrees of physical and mental development. From this generic concept we may make race concepts, dividing men into Indians, Caucasians, Malays, Negroes, Mongolians, etc. These concepts in turn may be divided into sub-races. These sub-divisions result from an analysis of the great concept. The great concept is built up by synthesis from the individuals, through the sub-divisions of minor concepts. Or, again, we may form a concept of “Napoleon Bonaparte” from the various qualities and characteristics which went to make up that celebrated man.

The product of Generalization or Conception is called a _Concept_. A Concept is expressed in a word, or words, called “A Term.” A Concept is more than a mere _word_–it is _a general idea_. And a Term is more than a mere word–it is _the expression of a general idea_.

A _Concept_ is built up from the processes of Perception, Abstraction, Comparison and Generalization. We must first perceive; then analyze or abstract qualities; then compare qualities; then synthesize or classify according to the result of the comparison of qualities. By perceiving and comparing the qualities of various individual things, we notice their points of resemblance and difference–the points wherein they agree or disagree–wherein they are alike or unlike. Eliminating by abstraction the points in which they differ and are unlike; and, again by abstraction, retaining in consideration the points in which they resemble and are alike; we are able to group, arrange or classify these “_alike things_” into _a class-idea_ large enough to embrace them all. This class-idea is what is known as a General Idea or a Concept. This Concept we give a general name, which is called a Term. In grammar our particular ideas arising from Percepts are usually denoted by proper nouns–our general ideas arising from Concepts are usually denoted by common nouns. Thus “John Smith” (particular; proper noun) and “Man” (general; common noun). Or “horse” (general; common), and “Dobbin” (particular; proper).

It will be seen readily that there must be lower and higher concepts. Every class contains within itself lower classes. And every class is, itself, but a lower class in a higher one. Thus the high concept of “animal” may be analyzed into “mammal,” which in turn is found to contain “horse,” which in turn may be sub-divided into special kinds of horses. The concept “plant” may be sub-divided many times before the concept “rose” is obtained, and the latter is capable of sub-division into varieties and sub-varieties, until at last a particular flower is reached. Jevons says: “We classify things together whenever we observe that they are like each other in any respect and, therefore, think of them together…. In classifying a collection of objects, we do not merely put together into groups those which resemble each other, but we also divide each class into smaller ones in which the resemblance is more complete. Thus the class of _white substances_ may be divided into those which are solid and those which are fluid, so that we get the two minor classes of solid-white, and fluid-white substances. It is desirable to have names by which to show that one class is contained in another and, accordingly, we call the class which is divided into two or more smaller ones, the _Genus_; and the smaller ones into which it is divided, the _Species_.”

Every Genus is a Species of the class next higher than itself; and every Species is a Genus of the classes lower than itself. Thus it would seem that the extension in either direction would be infinite. But, for the purposes of finite thought, the authorities teach that there must be a Highest Genus, which cannot be the Species of a higher class, and which is called the _Summum Genus_. The _Summum Genus_ is expressed by terms such as the following: “Being;” “Existence;” “The Absolute;” “Something;” “Thing;” “The Ultimate Reality,” or some similar term denoting the state of being _ultimate_. Likewise, at the lowest end of the scale we find what are called the Lowest Species, or _Infima Species_. The Infima Species are always _individuals_. Thus we have the _individual_ at one end of the scale; and _The Absolute_ at the other. Beyond these limits the mind of man cannot travel.

There has been much confusion in making classifications and some ingenious plans have been evolved for simplifying the process. That of Jevons is perhaps the simplest, when understood. This authority says: “All these difficulties are avoided in the _perfect logical method of dividing each Genus into two Species, and not more than two, so that one species possesses a particular quality, and the other does not_. Thus if I divide dwelling-houses into those which are made of brick and those which are not made of brick, I am perfectly safe and nobody can find fault with me…. Suppose, for instance, that I divide dwelling-houses as below:

Dwelling-House | –+——+——-+——-+——-+– | | | | | Brick Stone Earth Iron Wood

“The evident objection will at once be made, that houses may be built of other materials than those here specified. In Australia, houses are sometimes made of the bark of gum-trees; the Esquimaux live in snow houses; tents may be considered as canvas houses, and it is easy to conceive of houses made of terra-cotta, paper, straw, etc. All logical difficulties will, however, be avoided _if I never make more than two species at each step_, in the following way:–

Dwelling-House | +—-+—-+ | | Brick Not-Brick | +—-+—-+ | | Stone Not-Stone | +—-+—-+ | | Wooden Not-Wooden | +—-+—-+ | | Iron Not-Iron

“It is quite certain that I must in this division have left a place for every possible kind of house; for if a house is not made of brick, nor stone, nor wood, nor iron, it yet comes under the species at the right hand, which is not-iron, not-wooden, not-stone, and not-brick…. This manner of classifying things may seem to be inconvenient, but it is in reality the only logical way.”

The student will see that the process of Classification is two-fold. The first is by Analysis, in which the Genus is divided into Species by reason of _differences_. The second is by Synthesis, in which individuals are grouped into Species, and Species into the Genus, by reason of _resemblances_. Moreover, in building up general classes, which is known as Generalization, we must first _analyze_ the individual in order to ascertain its _qualities, attributes and properties_, and then _synthesize_ the individual with other individuals possessing like qualities, properties or attributes.

Brooks says of Generalization: “The mind now takes the materials that have been furnished and fashioned by comparison and analysis and unites them into one single mental product, giving us the general notion or concept. The mind, as it were, brings together these several attributes into a bunch or package and then ties a mental string around it, as we would bunch a lot of roses or cigars…. Generalization is an _ascending_ process. The broader concept is regarded as higher than the narrower concept; a concept is considered as higher than percept; a general idea stands above a particular idea. We thus go up from particulars to generals; from percepts to concepts; from lower concepts to higher concepts. Beginning down with particular objects, we rise from them to the general idea of their class. Having formed a number of lower classes, we compare them as we did individuals and generalize them into higher classes. We perform the same process with these higher classes and thus proceed until we are at last arrested in the highest class, that of Being. Having reached the pinnacle of Generalization, we may descend the ladder by reversing the process through which we ascend.”

A Concept, then, is seen to be a _general idea_. It is a general thought that embraces _all the individuals_ of its own class and has in it all that is common to its own class, while it resembles _no_ particular individual of its class in _all_ respects. Thus, a concept of _animal_ contains within itself the minor concepts of _all animals_ and the animal-quality of all animals–yet it differs from the _percept_ of any one particular animal and the minor concepts of minor classes of animals. Consequently a concept or general idea cannot be _imaged_ or mentally pictured. We may picture a percept of any particular thing, but we cannot picture a general idea or concept because the latter does not partake of the _particular_ qualities of any of its class, but embraces all the general qualities of the class. Try to picture the general idea, or concept, of Man. You will find that any attempt to do so will result in the production of merely _a man_–some particular man. If you give the picture dark hair, it will fail to include the light-haired men; if you give it white skin, it will slight the darker-skinned races. If you picture a stout man, the thin ones are neglected. And so on in every feature. It is impossible to form a correct general class picture unless we include every individual in it. The best we can do is to form a sort of _composite_ image, which at the best is in the nature of a symbol representative of the class–an ideal image to make easier the _idea_ of the general class or term.

From the above we may see the fundamental differences between a Percept and a Concept. The Percept is the mental image of a real object–a particular thing. The Concept is merely a _general idea_, or general notion, of the common attributes of a class of objects or things. A Percept arises directly from sense-impressions, while a Concept is, in a sense, a pure thought–an abstract thing–a mental creation–an ideal.

A Concrete Concept is a concept embodying the common qualities of a class of objects, as for instance, the concrete concept of _lion_, in which the general class qualities of all lions are embodied. An Abstract Concept is a concept embodying merely some one quality generally diffused, as for instance, the quality of _fierceness_ in the general class of lions. _Rose_ is a concrete concept; _red_, or _redness_, is an abstract concept. It will aid you in remembering this distinction to memorize Jevons’ rule: “_A Concrete Term is the name of a Thing_; _an Abstract Term is the name of a Quality of a Thing_.”

A Concrete Concept, including all the particular individuals of a class, must also contain all the common qualities of those individuals. Thus, such a concept is composed of the ideas of the particular individuals and of their common qualities, in combination and union. From this arises the distinctive terms known as the _content_, _extension_ and _intension_ of concepts, respectively.

The _content_ of a concept is _all that it includes–its full meaning_. The _extension_ of a concept depends upon its _quantity_ aspect–it is its property of including numbers of individual objects within its content. The _intension_ of a concept depends upon its _quality_ aspect–it is its property of including class or common qualities, properties or attributes within its content.

Thus, the _extension_ of the concept _horse_ covers all individual horses; while its _intension_ includes all qualities, attributes, and properties common to all horses–class qualities possessed by all horses in common, and which qualities, etc., make the particular animals _horses_, as distinguished from other animals.

It follows that the larger the number of particular objects in a class, the smaller must be the number of general class qualities–qualities common to all in the class. And, that the larger the number of common class qualities, the smaller must be the number of individuals in the class. As the logicians express it, “the greater the extension, the less the intension; the greater the intension, the less the extension.” Thus, _animal_ is narrow in intension, but very broad in extension; for while there are many animals there are but very few qualities common to _all_ animals. And, _horse_ is narrower in extension, but broader in intension; for while there are comparatively few horses, the qualities common to all horses are greater.

The cultivation of the faculty of Generalization, or Conception, of course, depends largely upon _exercise_ and _material_, as does the cultivation of every mental faculty, as we have seen. But there are certain rules, methods and ideas which may be used to advantage in developing this faculty in the direction of clear and capable work. This faculty is developed by all of the general processes of thought, for it forms an important part of all thought. But the logical processes known as Analysis and Synthesis give to this faculty exercise and employment particularly adapted to its development and cultivation. Let us briefly consider these processes.

* * * * *

_Logical Analysis_ is the process by which we examine and unfold the meaning of Terms. A Term, you remember, is the verbal expression of a Concept. In such analysis we endeavor to unfold and discover the _quality-aspect_ and the _quantity-aspect_ of the content of the concept. We seek, thereby, to discover the particular general idea expressed; the number of particular individuals included therein; and the properties of the class or generalization. Analysis depends upon division and separation. Development in the process of Logical Analysis tends toward clearness, distinctness, and exactness in thought and expression. Logical Analysis has two aspects or phases, as follows: (1) _Division_, or the separation of a concept according to its _extension_, as for instance the analysis of a genus into its various species; and (2) _Partition_, or the separation of a concept into its component qualities, properties and attributes, as for instance, the analysis of the concept _iron_ into its several qualities of color, weight, hardness, malleability, tenacity, utility, etc.

There are certain rules of Division which should be observed, the following being a simple statement of the same:

I. _The division should be governed by a uniform principle._ For instance it would be illogical to first divide men into Caucasians, Mongolians, etc., and then further sub-divide them into Christians, Pagans, etc., for the first division would be according to the principle of race, and the second according to the principle of religion. Observing the rule of the “uniform principle” we may divide men into races, and sub-races, and so on, without regard to religion; and we may likewise divide men according to their respective religions, and then into minor denominations and sects, without regard to race or nationality. The above rule is frequently violated by careless thinkers and speakers.

II. _The division should be complete and exhaustive._ For instance, the analysis of a genus should extend to every known species of it, upon the principle that _the genus is merely the sum of its several species_. A textbook illustration of a violation of this rule is given in the case of the concept _actions_, when divided into _good-actions_ and _bad-actions_, but omitting the very important species of _indifferent-actions_. Carelessness in observance of this rule leads to fallacious reasoning and cloudy thinking.

III. _The division should be in logical sequence._ It is illogical to skip or pass over intermediate divisions, as for instance, when we divide _animals_ into _horses_, _trout and swallows_, omitting the intermediate division into _mammals_, _fish and birds_. The more perfect the sequence, the clearer the analysis and the thought resulting therefrom.

IV. _The division should be exclusive._ That is, the various species divided from a genus, should be reciprocally exclusive–should exclude one another. Thus to divide _mankind_ into _male_, _men and women_, would be illogical, because the class _male_ includes _men_. The division should be either: “_male and female_;” or else: “men, women, boys, girls.”

The exercise of Division along these lines, and according to these rules, will tend to improve one’s powers of conception and analysis. Any class of objects–any general concept–may be used for practice. A trial will show you the great powers of unfoldment contained within this simple process. It tends to broaden and widen one’s conception of almost any class of objects.

There are also several rules for Partition which should be observed, as follows:

I. _The partition should be complete and exhaustive._ That is, it should unfold the full meaning of the term or concept, so far as is concerned its several general qualities, properties and attributes. But this applies only to the qualities, properties and attributes which are _common_ to the class or concept, and not to the minor qualities which belong solely to the various sub-divisions composing the class; nor to the accidental or individual qualities belonging to the separate individuals in any sub-class. The qualities should be _essential_ and not _accidental_–general, not particular. A famous violation of this rule was had in the case of the ancient Platonic definition of “Man” as: “A two-legged animal without feathers,” which Diogenes rendered absurd by offering a plucked chicken as a “man” according to the definition. Clearness in thought requires the recognition of the distinction between the general qualities and the individual, particular or accidental qualities. Red-hair is an accidental quality of a particular man and not a general quality of the class _man_.

II. _The partition should consider the qualities, properties and attributes_, according to the classification of logical division. That is, the various qualities, properties and attributes should be considered in the form of genus and species, as in Division. In this classification, the rules of Division apply.

It will be seen that there is a close relationship existing between Partition and Definition. Definition is really a statement of the various qualities, attributes, and properties of a concept, either stated in particular or else in concepts of other and larger classes. There is perhaps no better exercise for the cultivation of clear thought and conception than Definition. In order to define, one must exercise his power of analysis to a considerable extent. Brooks says: “Exercises in logical definition are valuable in unfolding our conception. Logical definition, including both the genus and the specific difference, gives clearness, definiteness and adequacy to our conceptions. It separates a conception from all other conceptions by fixing upon and presenting the essential and distinctive property or properties of the conception defined. The value of exercises in logical definition is thus readily apparent.”

If the student will select some familiar term and endeavor to define it correctly, writing down the result, and will then compare the latter with the definition given in some standard dictionary, he will see a new light regarding logical definition. Practice in definition, conducted along these lines, will cultivate the powers of analysis and conception and will, at the same time, tend toward the acquiring of correct and scientific methods of thought and clear expression.

Hyslop gives the following excellent Rules of Logical Definition, which should be followed by the student in his exercises:

“I. A definition should state the essential attributes of the species defined.

“II. A definition must not contain the name or word defined. Otherwise the definition is called _a circulus in definiendo_ (defining in a circle).

“III. The definition must be exactly equivalent to the species defined.

“IV. A definition should not be expressed in obscure, figurative or ambiguous language.

“V. A definition must not be negative when it can be affirmative.”

_Logical Synthesis_ is the exact opposite of Logical Analysis. In the latter we strive to separate and take apart; in the former we strive to bind together and combine the particulars into the general. Beginning with individual things and comparing them with each other according to observed points of resemblance, we proceed to group them into species or narrow classes. These classes, or species, we then combine with similar ones, into a larger class or genus; and then, according to the same process, into broader classes as we have shown in the first part of this chapter.

The process of Synthesis is calculated to develop and cultivate the mind in several directions and exercises along these lines will give a new habit and sense of orderly arrangement, which will be most useful to the student in his every-day life. Halleck says: “Whenever a person is comparing a specimen to see whether it may be put in the same class with other specimens, he is _thinking_. Comparison is an absolutely essential factor of thought, and classification demands comparison. The man who has not properly classified the myriad individual objects with which he has to deal, must advance like a cripple. He, only, can travel with seven-league boots, who has thought out the relations existing between these stray individuals and put them into their proper classes. In a minute a business man may put his hand on any one of ten thousand letters if they are properly classified. In the same way, the student of history, sociology or any other branch, can, if he studies the subjects aright, have all his knowledge classified and speedily available for use…. In this way, we may make our knowledge of the world more minutely exact. We cannot classify without seeing things under a new aspect.”

The study of Natural History, in any or all of its branches, will do much to cultivate the power of Classification. But one may practice classification with the objects around him in his every-day life. Arranging things mentally, into small classes, and these into larger, one will soon be able to form a logical connection between particular ideas and general ideas; particular objects and general classes. The practice of classification gives to the mind a constructive turn–a “building-up” tendency, which is most desirable in these days of construction and development. Regarding some of the pitfalls of classification, Jevons says:

“In classifying things, we must take great care not to be misled by outward resemblances. Things may seem to be very much like each other which are not so. Whales, porpoises, seals and several other animals live in the sea exactly like fish; they have a similar shape and are usually classed among fish. People are said to go whale-fishing. Yet these animals are not really fish at all, but are much more like dogs and horses and other quadrupeds than they are like fish. They cannot live entirely under water and breathe the air contained in the water like fish, but they have to come up to the surface at intervals to take breath. Similarly, we must not class bats with birds because they fly about, although they have what would be called wings; these wings are not like those of birds and in truth bats are much more like rats and mice than they are like birds. Botanists used at one time to classify plants according to their size, as trees, shrubs or herbs, but we now know that a great tree is often more similar in its character to a tiny herb than it is to other great trees. A daisy has little resemblance to a great Scotch thistle; yet the botanist regards them as very similar. The lofty growing bamboo is a kind of grass, and the sugarcane also belongs to the same class with wheat and oats.”

Remember that analysis of a genus into its component species is accomplished by a separation according to _differences_; and species are built up by synthesis into a genus because of _resemblances_. The same is true regarding individual and species, building up in accordance to points of resemblance, while analysis or separation is according to points of difference.

The use of a good dictionary will be advantageous to the student in developing the power of Generalization or Conception. Starting with a species, he may build up to higher and still higher classes by consulting the dictionary; likewise, starting with a large class, he may work down to the several species composing it. An encyclopedia, of course, is still better for the purpose in many cases. Remember that Generalization is a prime requisite for clear, logical thinking. Moreover, it is a great developer of Thought.

CHAPTER XI.

JUDGMENT

We have seen that in the several mental processes which are grouped together under the general head of Understanding, the stage or step of Abstraction is first; following which is the second step or phase, called Generalization or Conception. The third step or phase is that which is called Judgment. In the exercise of the faculty of Judgment, we determine the agreement or disagreement between two concepts, ideas, or objects of thought, by comparing them one with another. From this process of comparison arises the Judgment, which is expressed in the shape of a logical Proposition. A certain form of Judgment must be used, however, in the actual formation of a Concept, for we must first compare qualities, and make a judgment thereon, in order to form a general idea. In this place, however, we shall confine ourselves to the consideration of the faculty of Judgment in the strictly logical usage of the term, as previously stated.

We have seen that the expression of a concept is called a Term, which is the _name_ of the concept. In the same way when we compare two terms (expressions of concepts) and pass Judgment thereon, the expression of that Judgment is called a Proposition. In every Judgment and Proposition there must be two Terms or Concepts, connected by a little word “is” or “are,” or some form of the verb “to be,” in the present tense indicative. This connecting word is called the Copula. For instance, we may compare the two terms _horse_ and _animal_, as follows: “A horse is an animal,” the word _is_ being the Copula or symbol of the _affirmative_ Judgment, which connects the two terms. In the same way we may form a _negative_ Judgment as follows: “A horse is not a cow.” In a Proposition, _the term of which something is affirmed_ is called the Subject; and _the term expressing that which is affirmed of the subject_ is called the Predicate.

Besides the distinction between affirmative Judgments, or Propositions, there is a distinction arising from _quantity_, which separates them into the respective classes of _particular_ and _universal_. Thus, “_all_ horses are animals,” is a _universal_ Judgment; while “_some_ horses are black” is a particular Judgment. Thus all Judgments must be either _affirmative_ or _negative_; and also either _particular_ or _universal_. This gives us four possible classes of Judgments, as follows, and illustrated symbolically:

1. Universal Affirmative, as “All A is B.”

2. Universal Negative, as “No A is B.”

3. Particular Affirmative, as “Some A is B.”

4. Particular Negative, as “Some A is not B.”

The Term or Judgment is said to be “_distributed_” (that is, extended universally) when it is used in its fullest sense, in which it is used in the sense of “each and every” of its kind or class. Thus in the proposition “Horses are animals” the meaning is that “_each and every_” horse is an animal–in this case the _subject_ is “distributed” or made universal. But the _predicate_ is _not_ “distributed” or made universal, but remains particular or restricted and implies merely “some.” For the proposition does not mean that the class “_horses_” includes _all_ animals. For we may say that: “_Some_ animals are _not_ horses.” So you see we have several instances in which the “distribution” varies, both as regards the subject and also the predicate. The rule of logic applying in this case is as follows:

1. In _universal_ propositions, the _subject_ is distributed.

2. In _particular_ propositions, the _subject_ is _not_ distributed.

3. In _negative_ propositions, the _predicate_ is distributed.

4. In _affirmative_ propositions, the _predicate_ is _not_ distributed.

A little time devoted to the analysis and understanding of the above rules will repay the student for his trouble, inasmuch as it will train his mind in the direction of logical distinction and judgment. The importance of these rules will appear later.

Halleck says: “Judgment is the power revolutionizing the world. The revolution is slow because nature’s forces are so complex, so hard to be reduced to their simplest forms, and so disguised and neutralized by the presence of other forces. The progress of the next hundred years will join many concepts, which now seem to have no common qualities. If the vast amount of energy latent in the sunbeams, in the rays of the stars, in the winds, in the rising and falling of the tides, is treasured up and applied to human purposes, it will be a fresh triumph for judgment. This world is rolling around in a universe of energy, of which judgment has as yet harnessed only the smallest appreciable fraction. Fortunately, judgment is ever working and silently comparing things that, to past ages, have seemed dissimilar; and it is constantly abstracting and leaving out of the field of view those qualities which have simply served to obscure the point at issue.” Brooks says: “The power of judgment is of great value to its products. It is involved in or accompanies every act of the intellect, and thus lies at the foundation of all intellectual activity. It operates directly in every act of the understanding; and even aids the other faculties of the mind in completing their activities and products.”

The best method of cultivating the power of Judgment is the exercise of the faculty in the direction of making comparisons, of weighing differences and resemblances, and in generally training the mind along the lines of Logical Thinking. Another volume of this series is devoted to the latter subject, and should aid the student who wishes to cultivate the habit of logical and scientific thought. The study of mathematics is calculated to develop the faculty of Judgment, because it necessitates the use of the powers of comparison and decision. Mental arithmetic, especially, will tend to strengthen, and exercise this faculty of the mind.

Geometry and Logic will give the very best exercise along these lines to those who care to devote the time, attention and work to the task. Games, such as chess, and checkers or draughts, tend to develop the powers of Judgment. The study of the definitions of words in a good dictionary will also tend to give excellent exercise along the same lines. The exercises given in this book for the cultivation and development of the several faculties, will tend to develop this particular faculty in a general way, for the exercise of Judgment is required at each step of the way, and in each exercise.

Brooks says: “It should be one of the leading objects of the culture of young people to lead them to acquire the habit of forming judgments. They should not only be led to see things, but to have opinions about things. They should be trained to see things in their relations, and to put these relations into definite propositions. Their ideas of objects should be worked up into thoughts concerning the objects. Those methods of teaching are best which tend to excite a thoughtful habit of mind that notices the similitudes and diversities of objects, and endeavors to read the thoughts which they embody and of which they are the symbols.”

The exercises given at the close of the next chapter, entitled “Derived Judgments,” will give to the mind a decided trend in the direction of logical judgment. We heartily recommend them to the student.

The student will find that he will tend to acquire the habit of clear logical comparison and judgment, if he will memorize and apply in his thinking the following excellent _Primary Rules of Thought_, stated by Jevons:

“I. _Law of Identity_: The same quality or thing is _always_ the same quality or thing, no matter how different the conditions in which it occurs.

“II. _Law of Contradiction_: Nothing can at the same time and place _both_ be and not be.

“III. _Law of Excluded Middle_: Everything must _either_ be, or not be; there is no other alternative or middle course.”

Jevons says of these laws: “Students are seldom able to see at first their full meaning and importance. All arguments may be explained when these self-evident laws are granted; and it is not too much to say that _the whole of logic will be plain to those who will constantly use these laws as their key_.”

CHAPTER XII.

DERIVED JUDGMENTS

As we have seen, a Judgment is obtained by comparing two objects of thought according to their agreement or difference. The next higher step, that of logical Reasoning, consists of the comparing of two ideas through their relation to a third. This form of reasoning is called _mediate_, because it is effected through the _medium_ of the third idea. There is, however, a certain process of Understanding which comes in between this mediate reasoning on the one hand, and the formation of a plain judgment on the other. Some authorities treat it as a form of _reasoning_, calling it _Immediate Reasoning_ or Immediate Inference, while others treat it as a higher form of Judgment, calling it Derived Judgment. We shall follow the latter classification, as best adapted for the particular purposes of this book.

The fundamental principle of Derived Judgment is that ordinary Judgments are often so related to each other that one Judgment may be derived directly and immediately from another. The two particular forms of the general method of Derived Judgment are known as those of (1) Opposition; and (2) Conversion; respectively.

In order to more clearly understand the logical processes involved in Derived Judgment, we should acquaint ourselves with the general relations of Judgments, and with the symbolic letters used by logicians as a means of simplifying the processes of thought. Logicians denote each of the four classes of Judgments or Propositions by a certain letter, the first four vowels–A, E, I and O, being used for the purpose. It has been found very convenient to use these symbols in denoting the various forms of Propositions and Judgments. The following table should be memorized for this purpose:

_Universal Affirmative_, symbolized by “A.” _Universal Negative_, symbolized by “E.” _Particular Affirmative_, symbolized by “I.” _Particular Negative_, symbolized by “O.”

It will be seen that these four forms of Judgments bear certain relations to each other, from which arises what is called opposition. This may be better understood by reference to the following table called the Square of Opposition:

A CONTRARIES E +————————+ |\ / | | \ /S | | C\ /E | | O\ /I | | N\ /R | | T\ /O | S| R\ /T |S U| A\ /C |U B| \ /I |B A| \ /D |A L| \ / |L T| / \ |T E| / D\ |E R| / I\ |R N| /A C\ |N S| /R T\ |S | /T O\ | | /N R\ | | /O I\ | | /C E\ | | / S\ | |/ \ | +————————+ I SUB-CONTRARIES O

Thus, A and E are _contraries_; I and O are _sub-contraries_; A and I, and also E and O are _subalterns_; A and O, and also E and I are _contradictories_.

The following will give a symbolic table of each of the four Judgments or Propositions with the logical symbols attached:

(A) “All A is B.”

(E) “No A is B.”

(I) “Some A is B.”

(O) “Some A is not B.”

The following are the rules governing and expressing the relations above indicated:

I. Of the Contradictories: _One must be true, and the other must be false_. As for instance, (A) “All A is B;” and (O) “Some A is not B;” cannot both be true at the same time. Neither can (E) “No A is B;” and (I) “Some A is B;” both be true at the same time. They are _contradictory_ by nature,–and if one is true, the other must be false; if one is false, the other must be true.

II. Of the Contraries: _If one is true the other must be false; but, both may be false_. As for instance, (A) “All A is B;” and (E) “No A is B;” cannot both be true at the same time. If one is true the other _must_ be false. _But_, both may be _false_, as we may see when we find we may state that (I) “_Some_ A is B.” So while these two propositions are _contrary_, they are not _contradictory_. While, if one of them is _true_ the other must be false, it does not follow that if one is _false_ the other must be _true_, for both _may be false_, leaving the truth to be found in a third proposition.

III. Of the Subcontraries: _If one is false the other must be true; but both may be true_. As for instance, (I) “Some A is B;” and (O) “Some A is not B;” may both be true, for they do not contradict each other. But one or the other must be true–they can not both be false.

IV. Of the Subalterns: _If the Universal (A or E) be true the Particular (I or O) must be true_. As for instance, if (A) “All A is B” is true, then (I) “Some A is B” must also be true; also, if (E) “No A is B” is true, then “Some A is not B” must also be true. The Universal carries the particular within its truth and meaning. But; _If the Universal is false, the particular may be true or it may be false_. As for instance (A) “All A is B” may be false, and yet (I) “Some A is B” may be either true or false, without being determined by the (A) proposition. And, likewise, (E) “No A is B” may be false without determining the truth or falsity of (O) “Some A is not B.”

But: _If the Particular be false, the Universal also must be false_. As for instance, if (I) “Some A is B” is false, then it must follow that (A) “All A is B” must also be false; or if (O) “Some A is not B” is false, then (E) “No A is B” must also be false. But: _The Particular may be true, without rendering the Universal true_. As for instance: (I) “_Some_ A is B” may be true without making true (A) “_All_ A is B;” or (O) “Some A is not B” may be true without making true (E) “No A is B.”

The above rules may be worked out not only with the symbols, as “All A is B,” but also with _any_ Judgments or Propositions, such as “All horses are animals;” “All men are mortal;” “Some men are artists;” etc. The principle involved is identical in each and every case. The “All A is B” symbology is merely adopted for simplicity, and for the purpose of rendering the logical process akin to that of mathematics. The letters play the same part that the numerals or figures do in arithmetic or the _a_, _b_, _c_; _x_, _y_, _z_, in algebra. Thinking in symbols tends toward clearness of thought and reasoning.

_Exercise_: Let the student apply the principles of Opposition by using any of the above judgments mentioned in the preceding paragraph, in the direction of erecting a Square of Opposition of them, after having attached the symbolic letters A, E, I and O, to the appropriate forms of the propositions.

Then let him work out the following problems from the Tables and Square given in this chapter.

1. If “A” is true; show what follows for E, I and O. Also what follows if “A” be _false_.

2. If “E” is true; show what follows for A, I and O. Also what follows if “E” be _false_.

3. If “I” is true; show what follows for A, E and O. Also what follows if “I” be _false_.

4. If “O” is true; show what follows for A, E and I. Also what happens if “O” be _false_.

CONVERSION OF JUDGMENTS

Judgments are capable of the process of Conversion, or _the change of place of subject and predicate_. Hyslop says: “Conversion is the transposition of subject and predicate, or the process of immediate inference by which we can infer from a given preposition another having the predicate of the original for its subject, and the subject of the original for its predicate.” The process of converting a proposition seems simple at first thought but a little consideration will show that there are many difficulties in the way. For instance, while it is a true judgment that “All _horses_ are _animals_,” it is not a correct Derived Judgment or Inference that “All _animals_ are _horses_.” The same is true of the possible conversion of the judgment “All biscuit is bread” into that of “All bread is biscuit.” There are certain rules to be observed in Conversion, as we shall see in a moment.

The Subject of a judgment is, of course, _the term of which something is affirmed_; and the Predicate is _the term expressing that which is affirmed of the Subject_. The Predicate is really an expression of an _attribute_ of the Subject. Thus when we say “All horses are animals” we express the idea that _all horses_ possess the _attribute_ of “animality;” or when we say that “Some men are artists,” we express the idea that _some men_ possess the _attributes_ or qualities included in the concept “artist.” In Conversion, the original judgment is called the Convertend; and the new form of judgment, resulting from the conversion, is called the Converse. Remember these terms, please.

The two Rules of Conversion, stated in simple form, are as follows:

I. Do not change the quality of a judgment. The quality of the converse must remain the same as that of the convertend.

II. Do not distribute an undistributed term. No term must be distributed in the converse which is not distributed in the convertend.

The reason of these rules is that it would be contrary to truth and logic to give to a converted judgment a higher degree of quality and quantity than is found in the original judgment. To do so would be to attempt to make “twice 2” more than “2 plus 2.”

There are three methods or kinds of Conversion, as follows: (1) Simple Conversion; (2) Limited Conversion; and (3) Conversion by Contraposition.

_In Simple Conversion_, there is no change in either quality or quantity. For instance, by Simple Conversion we may convert a proposition by changing the places of its subject and predicate, respectively. But as Jevons says: “It does not follow that the new one will always be true if the old one was true. Sometimes this is the case, and sometimes it is not. If I say, ‘some churches are wooden-buildings,’ I may turn it around and get ‘some wooden-buildings are churches;’ the meaning is exactly the same as before. This kind of change is called Simple Conversion, because we need do nothing but simply change the subjects and predicates in order to get a new proposition. We see that the Particular Affirmative proposition can be simply converted. Such is the case also with the Universal Negative proposition. ‘No large flowers are green things’ may be converted simply into ‘no green things are large flowers.'”

_In Limited Conversion_, the quantity is changed from Universal to Particular. Of this, Jevons continues: “But it is a more troublesome matter, however, to convert a Universal Affirmative proposition. The statement that ‘all jelly fish are animals,’ is true; but, if we convert it, getting ‘all animals are jelly fish,’ the result is absurd. This is because the predicate of a universal proposition is really particular. We do not mean that jelly fish are ‘all’ the animals which exist, but only ‘some’ of the animals. The proposition ought really to be ‘all jelly fish are _some_ animals,’ and if we converted this simply, we should get, ‘some animals are all jelly fish.’ But we almost always leave out the little adjectives _some_ and _all_ when they would occur in the predicate, so that the proposition, when converted, becomes ‘_some_ animals are jelly fish.’ This kind of change is called Limited Conversion, and we see that a Universal Affirmative proposition, when so converted, gives a Particular Affirmative one.”

In Conversion by Contraposition, there is a change in the position of the negative copula, which shifts the expression of the quality. As for instance, in the Particular Negative “Some animals are not horses,” we cannot say “Some horses are not animals,” for that would be a violation of the rule that “no term must be distributed in the converse which is not distributed in the convertend,” for as we have seen in the preceding chapter: “In Particular propositions the _subject_ is _not_ distributed.” And in the original proposition, or convertend, “animals” is the _subject_ of a Particular proposition. Avoiding this, and proceeding by Conversion by Contraposition, we convert the Convertend (O) into a Particular Affirmative (I), saying: “Some animals are not-horses;” or “Some animals are things not horses;” and then proceeding by Simple Conversion we get the converse, “Some things not horses are animals,” or “Some not-horses are animals.”

The following gives the application of the appropriate form of Conversion to each of the several four kind of Judgments or Propositions:

(A) _Universal Affirmative_: This form of proposition is converted by Limited Conversion. The predicate not being distributed in the convertend, it cannot be distributed in the converse, by saying “all.” (“In affirmative propositions the _predicate_ is _not_ distributed.”) Thus by this form of Conversion, we convert “All horses are animals” into “Some animals are horses.” The Universal Affirmative (A) is converted by limitation into a Particular Affirmative (I).

(E) _Universal Negative_: This form of proposition is converted by Simple Conversion. In a Universal Negative _both terms are distributed_. (“In universal propositions, the _subject_ is distributed;” “In negative propositions, the _predicate_ is distributed.”) So we may say “No cows are horses,” and then convert the proposition into “No horses are cows.” We simply convert one Universal Negative (E) into another Universal Negative (E).

(I) _Particular Affirmative_: This form of proposition is converted by Simple Conversion. For _neither term is distributed_ in a Particular Affirmative. (“In particular propositions, the _subject_ is _not_ distributed. In affirmative propositions, the _predicate_ is _not_ distributed.”) And neither term being distributed in the convertend, it must not be distributed in the converse. So from “Some horses are males” we may by Simple Conversion derive “Some males are horses.” We simply convert one Particular Affirmative (I), into another Particular Affirmative (I).

(O) _Particular Negative_: This form of proposition is converted by Contraposition or Negation. We have given examples and illustrations in the paragraph describing Conversion by Contraposition. The Particular Negative (I) is converted by contraposition into a Particular Affirmative (I) which is then simply converted into another Particular Affirmative (I).

There are several minor processes or methods of deriving judgments from each other, or of making immediate inferences, but the above will give the student a very fair idea of the minor or more complete methods.

_Exercise_: The following will give the student good practice and exercise in the methods of Conversion. It affords a valuable mental drill, and tends to develop the logical faculties, particularly that of Judgment. The student should _convert_ the following propositions, according to the rules and examples given in this chapter:

1. All men are reasoning beings. 2. Some men are blacksmiths. 3. No men are quadrupeds. 4. Some birds are sparrows. 5. Some horses are vicious. 6. No brute is rational. 7. Some men are not sane. 8. All biscuit is bread. 9. Some bread is biscuit. 10. Not all bread is biscuit.

CHAPTER XIII.

REASONING

In the preceding chapters we have seen that in the group of mental processes involved in the general process of Understanding, there are several stages or steps, three of which we have considered in turn, namely: (1) Abstraction; (2) Generalization or Conception; (3) Judgment. The _fourth_ step, or stage, and the one which we are now about to consider, is that called Reasoning.

_Reasoning_ is that faculty of the mind whereby we compare two Judgments, one with the other, and from which comparison we are enabled to form a third judgment. It is a form of indirect or mediate comparison, whereas, the ordinary Judgment is a form of immediate or direct comparison. As, when we form a Judgment, we compare two concepts and decide upon their agreement or difference; so in Reasoning we compare two Judgments and from the comparison we draw or produce a new Judgment. Thus, we may reason that the particular dog “Carlo” is an animal, by the following process:

(1) _All_ dogs are animals; (2) Carlo is a dog; therefore, (3) Carlo is an animal. Or, in the same way, we may reason that a whale is not a fish, as follows:

(1) _All_ fish are cold-blooded animals; (2) A whale is _not_ a cold-blooded animal; therefore, (3) A whale is _not_ a fish.

In the above processes it will be seen that the third and final Judgment is derived from a comparison of the first two Judgments. Brooks states the process as follows: “Looking at the process more closely, it will be seen that in inference in Reasoning involves a comparison of relations. We infer the relation of two objects from their relation to a third object. We must thus grasp in the mind two relations and from the comparison of these two relations we infer a third relation. The two relations from which we infer a third, are judgments; hence, Reasoning may also be defined as the process of deriving one judgment from two other judgments. We compare the two given judgments and from this comparison derive the third judgment. This constitutes a single step in Reasoning, and an argument so expressed is called a _Syllogism_.”

The _Syllogism_ consists of three propositions, the first two of which express the grounds or basis of the argument and are called the _premises_; the third expresses the inference derived from a comparison of the other two and is called the _conclusion_. We shall not enter into a technical consideration of the Syllogism in this book, as the subject is considered in detail in the volume of this series devoted to the subject of “Logic.” Our concern here is to point out the natural process and course of Reasoning, rather than to consider the technical features of the process.

Reasoning is divided into two general classes, known respectively as (1) _Inductive Reasoning_; (2) _Deductive Reasoning_.

_Inductive Reasoning_ is the process of arriving at a general truth, law or principle from a consideration of many particular facts and truths. Thus, if we find that a certain thing is true of a great number of particular objects, we may infer that the same thing is true of _all_ objects of this particular kind. In one of the examples given above, one of the judgments was that “all fish are cold-blooded animals,” which general truth was arrived at by Inductive Reasoning based upon the examination of a great number of fish, and from thence assuming that _all_ fish are true to this general law of truth.

_Deductive Reasoning_ is the reverse of Inductive Reasoning, and is a process of arriving at a particular truth from the assumption of a general truth. Thus, from the assumption that “all fish are cold-blooded animals,” we, by Deductive Reasoning, arrive at the conclusion that the particular fish before us must be cold-blooded.

Inductive Reasoning proceeds upon the basic principle that “_What is true of the many is true of the whole_,” while Deductive Reasoning proceeds upon the basic principle that “_What is true of the whole is true of its parts_.”

Regarding the principle of _Inductive Reasoning_, Halleck says: “Man has to find out through his own experience, or that of others, the major premises from which he argues or draws his conclusions. By induction, we examine what seems to us a sufficient number of individual cases. We then conclude that the rest of these cases, which we have not examined, will obey the same general law. The judgment ‘All men are mortal’ was reached by induction. It was observed that all past generations of men had died, and this fact warranted the conclusion that all men living will die. We make that assertion as boldly as if we had seen them all die. The premise, ‘All cows chew the cud,’ was laid down after a certain number of cows had been examined. If we were to see a cow twenty years hence, we should expect to find that she chewed the cud. It was noticed by astronomers that, after a certain number of days, the earth regularly returned to the same position in its orbit, the sun rose in the same place, and the day was of the same length. Hence, the length of the year and of each succeeding day was determined, and the almanac maker now infers that the same will be true of future years. He tells us that the sun on the first of next December will rise at a given time, although he cannot throw himself into the future to verify the conclusion.”

Brooks says regarding this principle: “This proposition is founded on our faith in the uniformity of nature; take away this belief, and all reasoning by induction fails. The basis of induction is thus often stated to be _man’s faith in the uniformity of nature_. Induction has been compared to a ladder upon which we ascend from facts to laws. This ladder cannot stand unless it has something to rest upon; and this something is our faith in the constancy of nature’s laws.”

There are two general ways of obtaining our basis for the process of Inductive Reasoning. One of these is called Perfect Induction and the other Imperfect Induction. Perfect Induction is possible only when we have had the opportunity of examining every particular object or thing of which the general idea is expressed. For instance, if we could examine every fish in the universe we would have the basis of Perfect Induction for asserting the general truth that “all fishes are cold-blooded.” But this is practically impossible in the great majority of cases, and so we must fall back upon more or less Imperfect Induction. We must assume the general law from the fact that it is seen to exist in a very great number of particular cases; upon the principle that “What is true of the many is true of the whole.” As Halleck says regarding this: “Whenever we make a statement such as, ‘All men are mortal,’ without having tested each individual case or, in other words, without having seen every man die, we are reasoning from _imperfect_ induction. Every time a man buys a piece of beef, a bushel of potatoes or a loaf of bread, he is basing his action on inference from imperfect induction. He believes that beef, potatoes and bread will prove nutritious food, although he has not actually tested those special edibles before purchasing them. They have hitherto been found to be nutritious on trial and he argues that the same will prove true of those special instances. Whenever a man takes stock in a new national bank, a manufactory or a bridge, he is arguing from past cases that this special investment will prove profitable. We instinctively believe in the uniformity of nature; if we did not we should not consult our almanacs. If sufficient heat will cause phosphorus to burn today, we conclude that the same result will follow tomorrow if the circumstances are the same.”

But, it will be seen, much care must be exercised in making observations, experiments and comparisons, and in making generalizations. The following general principles will give the views of the authorities regarding this:

Atwater gives the two general rules:

_Rule of Agreement_: “If, whenever a given object or agency is present, without counteracting forces, a given effect is produced, there is a strong evidence that the object or agency is the cause of the effect.”

_Rule of Disagreement_: “If when the supposed cause is present the effect is present, and when the supposed cause is absent the effect is wanting, there being in neither case any other agents present to effect the result, we may reasonably infer that the supposed cause is the real one.”

_Rule of Residue_: “When in any phenomena we find a result remaining after the effects of all known causes are estimated, we may attribute it to a residual agent not yet reckoned.”

_Rule of Concomitant Variations_: “When a variation in a given antecedent is accompanied by a variation of a given consequent, they are in some manner related as cause and effect.”

Atwater says, of the above rules, that “whenever either of these criteria is found, free from conflicting evidence, and especially when several of them concur, the evidence is clear that the cases observed are fair representatives of the whole class, and warrant a valid universal inductive conclusion.”

We now come to what is known as Hypothesis or Theory, which is an assumed general principle–a conjecture or supposition founded upon observed and tested facts. Some authorities use the term “theory” in the sense of “a verified hypothesis,” but the two terms are employed loosely and the usage varies with different authorities. What is known as “the probability of a hypothesis” is the proportion of the number of facts it will explain. The greater the number of facts it will explain, the greater is its “probability.” A Hypothesis is said to be “verified” when it will account for all the facts which are properly to be referred to it. Some very critical authorities hold that verification should also depend upon there being no other possible hypotheses which will account for the facts, but this is generally considered an extreme position.

A Hypothesis is the result of a peculiar mental process which seems to act in the direction of making a sudden anticipatory leap toward a theory, after the mind has been saturated with a great body of particular facts. Some have spoken of the process as almost _intuitive_ and, indeed, the testimony of many discoverers of great natural laws would lead us to believe that the Subconscious region of the mind is most active in making what La Place has called “the great guess” of discovery of principle. As Brooks says: “The forming of hypotheses requires a suggestive mind, a lively fancy, a philosophic imagination, that catches a glimpse of the idea through the form, or sees the law standing behind the fact.”

Thomson says: “The system of anatomy which has immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a flash of anticipation which glanced through his mind when he picked up in a chance walk the skull of a deer, bleached and disintegrated by the weather, and exclaimed, after a glance, ‘It is part of a vertebral column.’ When Newton saw the apple fall, the anticipatory question flashed through his mind, ‘Why do not the heavenly bodies fall like this apple?’ In neither case had accident any important share; Newton and Oken were prepared by the deepest previous study to seize upon the unimportant fact offered to them, and show how important it might become; and if the apple and the deer-skull had been wanting, some other falling body, or some other skull, would have touched the string so ready to vibrate. But in each case there was a great step of anticipation; Oken thought he saw the type of the whole skeleton in a single vertebra, whilst Newton conceived at once that the whole universe was full of bodies tending to fall.”

Passing from the consideration of Inductive Reasoning to that of Deductive Reasoning we find ourselves confronted with an entirely opposite condition. As Brooks says: “The two methods of reasoning are the reverse of each other. One goes from particulars to generals; the other from generals to particulars. One is a process of analysis; the other is a process of synthesis. One rises from facts to laws; the other descends from laws to facts. Each is independent of the other; and each is a valid and essential method of inference.”

_Deductive Reasoning_ is, as we have seen, dependent upon the process of deriving a particular truth from a general law, principle or truth, upon the fundamental axiom that: “What is true of the whole is true of its parts.” It is an analytical process, just as Inductive Reasoning is synthetical. It is a descending process, just as Inductive Reasoning is ascending.

Halleck says of Deductive Reasoning: “After induction has classified certain phenomena and thus given us a major premise, we proceed deductively to apply the inference to any new specimen that can be shown to belong to that class. Induction hands over to deduction a ready-made major premise, _e.g._ ‘_All scorpions are dangerous_.’ Deduction takes this as a fact, making no inquiry about its truth. When a new object is presented, say a possible scorpion, the only troublesome step is to decide whether the object is really a scorpion. This may be a severe task on judgment. The average inhabitant of the temperate zone would probably not care to risk a hundred dollars on his ability to distinguish a scorpion from a centipede, or from twenty or thirty other creatures bearing some resemblance to a scorpion. Here there must be accurately formed concepts and sound judgment must be used in comparing them. As soon as we decide that the object is really a scorpion, we complete the deduction in this way:–‘_All scorpions are dangerous_; _this creature is a scorpion_; _this creature is dangerous_.’ The reasoning of early life must be necessarily inductive. The mind is then forming general conclusions from the examination of individual phenomena. Only after general laws have been laid down, after objects have been classified, after major premises have been formed, can deduction be employed.”

What is called _Reasoning by Analogy_ is really but a higher degree of Generalization. It is based upon the idea that if two or more things resemble each other in many particulars, they are apt to resemble each other in other particulars. Some have expressed the principle as follows: “Things that have some things in common have other things in common.” Or as Jevons states it: “The rule for reasoning by analogy is that if two or more things resemble each other in many points, they will probably resemble each other also in more points.”

This form of reasoning, while quite common and quite convenient, is also very dangerous. It affords many opportunities for making false inferences. As Jevons says: “In many cases Reasoning by Analogy is found to be a very uncertain guide. In some cases unfortunate mistakes are committed. Children are sometimes killed by gathering and eating poisonous berries, wrongly inferring that they can be eaten, because other berries, of a somewhat similar appearance, have been found agreeable and harmless. Poisonous toadstools are occasionally mistaken for mushrooms, especially by people not accustomed to gather them…. There is no way in which we can really assure ourselves that we are arguing safely by analogy. The only rule that can be given is this, _that the more things resemble each other, the more likely is it that they are the same in other respects, especially in points closely connected with those observed_.”

Halleck says: “In argument or reasoning we are much aided by the habit of searching for hidden resemblances. We may here use the term _analogy_ in the narrower sense as a resemblance of ratios. There is analogical relation between autumnal frosts and vegetation on the one hand, and death and human life on the other. Frosts stand in the same relation to vegetation that death does to life. The detection of such a relation cultivates thought. If we are to succeed in argument, we must develop what some call a sixth sense for the detection of such relations…. Many false analogies are manufactured and it is excellent thought training to expose them. The majority of people think so little that they swallow false analogies just as newly-fledged robins swallow small stones dropped into their open mouths…. The study of poetry may be made very serviceable in detecting analogies and cultivating the reasoning powers. When the poet brings clearly to mind the change due to death, using as an illustration the caterpillar body transformed into the butterfly spirit, moving with winged ease over flowing meadows, he is cultivating our apprehension of relations, none the less valuable because they are beautiful.”

There are certain studies which tend to develop the power or faculty of _Inductive Reasoning_. Any study which leads the mind to consider classification and general principles, laws or truth, will tend to develop the faculty of deduction. Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Biology and Natural History are particularly adapted to develop the mind in this particular direction. Moreover, the mind should be directed to an inquiry into the _causes_ of _things_. Facts and phenomena should be observed and an attempt should be made not only to classify them, but also to discover general principles moving them. Tentative or provisional hypotheses should be erected and then the facts re-examined in order to see whether they support the hypotheses or theory. Study of the processes whereby the great scientific theories were erected, and the proofs then adduced in support of them, will give the mind the habit of thinking along the lines of logical induction. The question ever in the mind in Inductive Reasoning is “_Why?_” The dominant idea in Inductive Reasoning is the Search for Causes.

* * * * *

In regard to the pitfalls of Inductive Reasoning–the fallacies, so-called, Hyslop says: “It is not easy to indicate the inductive fallacies, if it be even possible, in the formal process of induction…. It is certain, however, that in respect to the subject-matter of the conclusion in inductive reasoning there are some very definite limitations upon the right to transcend the premises. We cannot infer anything we please from any premises we please. We must conform to certain definite rules or principles. Any violation of them will be a fallacy. These rules are the same as those for material fallacies in deduction, so that the fallacies of induction, whether they are ever formal or not, are at least material; that is they occur whenever equivocation and presumption are committed. There are, then, two simple rules which should not be violated. (1) The subject-matter in the conclusion should be of the same general kind as in the premises. (2) The facts constituting the premises must be accepted and must not be fictitious.”

One may develop his faculty or power of _Deductive Reasoning_ by pursuing certain lines of study. The study of Mathematics, particularly in its branch of Mental Arithmetic is especially valuable in this direction. Algebra and Geometry have long been known to exercise an influence over the mind which gives to it a logical trend and cast. The processes involved in Geometry are akin to those employed in Logical reasoning, and must necessarily train the mind in this special direction. As Brooks says: “So valuable is geometry as a discipline that many lawyers and others review their geometry every year in order to keep the mind drilled to logical habits of thinking.” The study of Grammar, Rhetoric and the Languages, are also valuable in the culture and development of the faculty of Deductive Reasoning. The study of Psychology and Philosophy have value in this connection. The study of Law is very valuable in creating logical habits of thinking deductively.

But in the study of Logic we have possibly the best exercise in the development and culture of this particular faculty. As Brooks well says: “The study of Logic will aid in the development of the power of deductive reasoning. It does this first by showing the method by which we reason. To know how we reason, to see the laws which govern the reasoning process, to analyze the syllogism and see its conformity to the laws of thought, is not only an exercise of reasoning, but gives that knowledge of the process that will be both a stimulus and a guide to thought. No one can trace the principles and processes of thought without receiving thereby an impetus to thought. In the second place, the study of logic is probably even more valuable because it gives practice in deductive thinking. This, perhaps, is its principal value, since _the mind reasons instinctively without knowing how it reasons_. One can think without the knowledge of the science of thinking, just as one can use language correctly without a knowledge of grammar; yet as the study of grammar improves one’s speech, so the study of logic cannot but improve one’s thought.”

The study of the common _fallacies_, such as “Begging the Question,” “Reasoning in a Circle,” etc., is particularly important to the student, for when one realizes that such fallacies exist, and is able to detect and recognize them, he will avoid their use in framing his own arguments, and will be able to expose them when they appear in the arguments of others.

The fallacy of “Begging the Question” consists in assuming as a proven fact something that has not been proven, or is not accepted as proven by the other party to the argument. It is a common trick in debate. The fact assumed may be either the particular point to be proved, or the premise necessary to prove it. Hyslop gives the following illustration of this fallacy: “_Good institutions should be united_; Church and State are good institutions; therefore, Church and State should be united.” The above syllogism seems reasonable at first thought, but analysis will show that the major premise “Good institutions should be united” is a mere assumption without proof. Destroy this premise and the whole reasoning fails.

Another form of fallacy, quite common, is that called “Reasoning in a Circle,” which consists in assuming as proof of a proposition the proposition itself, as for instance, “This man is a rascal, _because he is a rogue_; he is a rogue, _because he is a rascal_.” “We see through glass, _because it is transparent_.” “The child is dumb, _because it has lost the power of speech_.” “He is untruthful, _because he is a liar_.” “The weather is warm, _because it is summer_; it is summer, _because the weather is warm_.”

These and other fallacies may be detected by a knowledge of Logic, and the perception and detection of them strengthens one in his faculty of Deductive Reasoning. The study of the Laws of the Syllogism, in Logic, will give to one a certain habitual sense of stating the terms of his argument according to these laws, which when acquired will be a long step in the direction of logical thinking, and the culture of the faculties of deductive reasoning.

In concluding this chapter, we wish to call your attention to a fact often overlooked by the majority of people. Halleck well expresses it as follows: “Belief is a mental state which might as well be classed under _emotion_ as under thinking, for it combines both elements. Belief is a part inference from the known to the unknown, and part feeling and emotion.” Others have gone so far as to say that the majority of people employ their intellects merely to _prove_ to themselves and others that which they _feel to be true_, or _wish to be true_, rather than to ascertain what is _actually true_ by logical methods. Others have said that “men do not require _arguments_ to convince them; they want only _excuses_ to justify them in their feelings, desires or actions.” Cynical though this may seem, there is sufficient truth in it to warn one to guard against the tendency.

Jevons says, regarding the question of the culture of logical processes of thought: “Monsieur Jourdain, an amusing person in one of Moliere’s plays, expressed much surprise on learning that he had been talking prose for more than forty years without knowing it. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred might be equally surprised on hearing that they had long been converting propositions, syllogizing, falling into paralogisms, framing hypotheses and making classifications with genera and species. If asked if they were logicians, they would probably answer, No. They would be partly right; for I believe that a large number even of educated persons have no clear idea of what logic is. Yet, in a certain way, every one must have been a logician since he began to speak. It may be asked:–If we cannot help being logicians, why do we need logic books at all? The answer is that there are logicians, and _logicians_. All persons are logicians in some manner or degree; but unfortunately many people are bad ones and suffer harm in consequence. It is just the same in other matters. Even if we do not know the meaning of the name, we are all _athletes_ in some manner or degree. No one can climb a tree or get over a gate without being more or less an athlete. Nevertheless, he who wishes to do these actions really well, to have a strong muscular frame and thereby to secure good health and personal safety, as far as possible, should learn athletic exercises.”

CHAPTER XIV.

CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION

From the standpoint of the old psychology, a chapter bearing the above title would be considered quite out of place in a book on Thought-Culture, the Imagination being considered as outside the realm of practical psychology, and as belonging entirely to the idealistic phase of mental activities. The popular idea concerning the Imagination also is opposed to the “practical” side of its use. In the public mind the Imagination is regarded as something connected with idle dreaming and fanciful mental imaging. Imagination is considered as almost synonomous with “Fancy.”

But the New Psychology sees beyond this negative phase of the Imagination and recognizes the positive side which is essentially constructive when backed up with a determined will. It recognizes that while the Imagination is by its very nature _idealistic_, yet these ideals may be made real–these subjective pictures may be materialized objectively. The positive phase of the Imagination manifests in planning, designing, projecting, mapping out, and in general in erecting the mental framework which is afterward clothed with the material structure of actual accomplishment. And, accordingly, it has seemed to us that a chapter on “Constructive Imagination” might well conclude this book on Thought-Culture.

Halleck says: “It was once thought that the imagination should be repressed, not cultivated, that it was in the human mind like weeds in a garden…. In this age there is no mental power that stands more in need of cultivation than the imagination. So practical are its results that a man without it cannot possibly be a good plumber. He must image short cuts for placing his pipe. The image of the direction to take to elude an obstacle must precede the actual laying of the pipe. If he fixes it before traversing the way with his imagination, he frequently gets into trouble and has to tear down his work. Some one has said that the more imagination a blacksmith has, the better will he shoe a horse. Every time he strikes the red-hot iron, he makes it approximate to the image in his mind. Nor is this image a literal copy of the horse’s foot. If there is a depression in that, the imagination must build out a corresponding elevation in the image, and the blows must make the iron fit the image.”

Brodie says: “Physical investigation, more than anything else, helps to teach us the actual value and right use of the imagination–of that wondrous faculty, which, when left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man, the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another continent.”

The Imagination is more than Memory, for the latter merely reproduces the impressions made upon it, while the Imagination gathers up the material of impression and weaves new fabrics from them or builds new structures from their separated units. As Tyndall well said: “Philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience; but we can at all events carry it a long way from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of imagination and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories, even in science, who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed. But bounded and conditioned by cooperant reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer. Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a falling moon was, at the outset, a leap of the imagination.”

Brooks says: “The imagination is a creative as well as a combining power…. The Imagination can combine objects of sense into new forms, but it can do more than this. The objects of sense are, in most cases, merely the materials with which it works. The imagination is a plastic power, moulding the things of sense into new forms to express its ideals; and it is these ideals that constitute the real products of the imagination. The objects of the material world are to it like clay in the hands of the potter; it shapes them into forms according to its own ideals of grace and beauty…. He, who sees no more than a mere combination in these creations of the imagination, misses the essential element and elevates into significance that which is merely incidental.”

Imagination, in some degree or phase, must come before voluntary physical action and conscious material creation. Everything that has been created by the hand of man has first been created in the _mind_ of man by the exercise of the Imagination. Everything that man has wrought has first existed in his mind as an _ideal_, before his hands, or the hands of others, wrought it into material _reality_. As Maudsley says: “It is certain that in order to execute consciously a voluntary act we must have in the mind a conception of the aim and purpose of the act.” Kay says: “It is as serving to guide and direct our various activities that mental images derive their chief value and importance. In anything that we purpose or intend to do, we must first of all have an idea or image of it in the mind, and the more clear and correct the image, the more accurately and efficiently will the purpose be carried out. We cannot exert an act of volition without having in the mind an idea or image of what we will to effect.”

Upon the importance of a scientific use of the Imagination in every-day life, the best authorities agree. Maudsley says: “We cannot do an act voluntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and we cannot know exactly what we are going to do until we have taught ourselves to do it.” Bain says: “By aiming at a new construction, we must clearly conceive what is aimed at. Where we have a very distinct and intelligible model before us, we are in a fair way to succeed; in proportion as the ideal is dim and wavering we stagger and miscarry.” Kay says: “A clear and accurate idea of what we wish to do, and how it is to be effected, is of the utmost value and importance in all the affairs of life. A man’s conduct naturally shapes itself according to the ideas in his mind, and nothing contributes more to his success in life than having a high ideal and keeping it constantly in view. Where such is the case one can hardly fail in attaining it. Numerous unexpected circumstances will be found to conspire to bring it about, and even what seemed at first hostile may be converted into means for its furtherance; while by having it constantly before the mind he will be ever ready to take advantage of any favoring circumstances that may present themselves.”

Simpson says: “A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be such, to the cold and feeble.” Lytton says: “Dream, O youth, dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.” Foster says: “It is wonderful how even the casualities of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. When a firm decisive spirit is recognized it is curious to see how space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.” Tanner says: “To believe firmly is almost tantamount in the end to accomplishment.” Maudsley says: “Aspirations are often prophecies, the harbingers of what a man shall be in a condition to perform.” Macaulay says: “It is related of Warren Hastings that when only seven years old there arose in his mind a scheme which through all the turns of his eventful life was never abandoned.” Kay says: “When one is engaged in seeking for a thing, if he keep the image of it clearly before the mind, he will be very likely to find it, and that too, probably, where it would otherwise have escaped his notice.” Burroughs says: “No one ever found the walking fern who did not have the walking fern in his mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every field he walks through. They are quickly recognized because the eye has been commissioned to find them.”

Constructive Imagination differs from the phases of the faculty of Imagination which are akin to “Fancy,” in a number of ways, the chief points of difference being as follows:

The Constructive Imagination is always exercised in the pursuance of _a definite intent and purpose_. The person so using the faculty starts out with the idea of accomplishing certain purposes, and with the direct intent of thinking and planning in that particular direction. The fanciful phase of the Imagination, on the contrary, starts with no definite intent or purpose, but proceeds along the line of mere idle phantasy or day-dreaming.

The Constructive Imagination _selects its material_. The person using the faculty in this manner abstracts from his general stock of mental images and impressions those particular materials which fit in with his general intent and purpose. Instead of allowing his imagination to wander around the entire field of memory, or representation, he deliberately and voluntarily selects and sets apart only such objects as seem to be conducive to his general design or plan, and which are logically associated with the same.

The Constructive Imagination operates upon the lines of _logical thought_. One so using the faculty subjects his mental images, or ideas, to his _thinking faculties_, and proceeds with his imaginative constructive work along the lines of Logical Thought. He goes through the processes of Abstraction, Generalization or Conception, Judgment and the higher phases of Reasoning, in connection with his general work of Constructive Imagination. Instead of having the objects of thought before him in material form, he has them represented to his mind _in ideal form_, and he works upon his material in that shape.

The Constructive Imagination is _voluntary_–under the control and direction of the will. Instead of being in the nature of a dream depending not upon the will or reason, it is directly controlled not only by reason but also by the will.

The Constructive Imagination, like every other faculty of the mind, may be developed and cultivated by Use and Nourishment. It must be exercised in order to develop its mental muscle; and it must be supplied with nourishment upon which it may grow. Drawing, Composing, Designing and Planning along any line is calculated to give to this faculty the exercise that it requires. The reading of the right kind of literature is also likely to lead the faculty into activity by inspiring it with ideals and inciting it by example.

The mind should be supplied with the proper material for the exercise of this faculty. As Halleck says: “Since the imagination has not the miraculous power necessary to create something out of nothing, the first essential thing is to get the proper perceptional material in proper quantity. If a child has enough blocks, he can build a castle or a palace. Give him but three blocks, and his power of combination is painfully limited. Some persons wonder why their imaginative power is no greater, when they have only a few accurate ideas.” It thus follows that the active use of the Perceptive faculties will result in storing away a quantity of material, which, when represented or reproduced by the Memory, will give to the Constructive Imagination the material it requires with which to build. The greater the general knowledge of the person, the greater will be his store of material for this use. This knowledge need not necessarily be acquired at first hand from personal observation, but may also be in the nature of information acquired from the experience of others and known through their conversation, writings, etc.

The necessity of forming clear concepts is very apparent when we come to exercise the Constructive Imaginative. Unless we have clear-cut ideas of the various things concerned with the subject before us, we cannot focus the imagination clearly upon its task. The general ideas should be clearly understood and the classification should be intelligent. Particular things should be clearly seen in “the mind’s eye;” that is, the power of visualization or forming mental images should be cultivated in this connection. One may improve this particular faculty by either writing a description of scenes or particular things we have seen, or else by verbally describing them to others. As Halleck says: “An attempt at a clear-cut oral description of something to another person will often impress ourselves and him with the fact that our mental images are hazy, and that the first step toward better description consists in improving them.”

Tyndall has aptly stated the importance of visualizing one’s ideas and particular concepts, as follows: “How, for example, are we to lay hold of the physical basis of light since, like that of life itself, it lies entirely without the domain of the senses?… Bring your imaginations once more into play and figure a series of sound-waves passing through air. Follow them up to their origin, and what do you there find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may be the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ-pipe, or it may be a stretched string. Follow in the same manner a train of ether waves to their source, remembering at the same time that your ether is matter, dense, elastic and capable of motions subject to and determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect to find as the source of a series of ether waves? Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating multiple proportion–a numerical ratio in a state of oscillation? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination which is here authoritative, demands as the origin and cause of a series of ether waves a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I think the seeking intellect, when focused so as to give definition without penumbral haze, is sure to realize this image at the last.”

By repeatedly exercising the faculty of Imagination upon a particular idea, we add power and clearness to that idea. This is but another example of the familiar psychological principle expressed by Carpenter as follows: “The continued concentration of attention upon a certain idea gives it a dominant power.” Kay says: “Clearness and accuracy of image is only to be obtained by repeatedly having it in the mind, or by repeated action of the faculty. Each repeated act of any of the faculties renders the mental image of it more clear and accurate than the preceding, and in proportion to the clearness and accuracy of the image will the act itself be performed easily, readily, skillfully. The course to be pursued, the point to be gained, the amount of effort to be put forth, become more and more clear to the mind. It is only from what we have done that we are able to judge what we can do, and understand how it is to be effected. When our ideas or conceptions of what we can do are not based on experience, they become fruitful sources of error.”

Galton says: “There is no doubt as to the utility of the visualizing faculty where it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position and relation of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands.”

Kay says: “If we bear in mind that every sensation or idea must form an image in the mind before it can be perceived or understood, and that every act of volition is preceded by its image, it will be seen that images play an important part in all our mental operations. According to the nature of the ideas or images which he entertains will be the character and conduct of the man. The man tenacious of purpose is the man who holds tenaciously certain ideas; the flighty man is he who cannot keep one idea before him for any length of time, but constantly flits from one to another; the insane man is he who entertains insane ideas often, it may be, on only one or two subjects. We may distinguish two great classes of individuals according to the prevailing character of their images. There are those in whose mind sensory images predominate, and those whose images are chiefly such as tend to action. Those of the former class are observant, often thoughtful, men of judgment and, it may be, of learning; but if they have not also the active faculty in due force, they will fail in giving forth or in turning to proper account their knowledge or learning, and instances of this kind are by no means uncommon. The man, on the other hand, who has ever in his mind images of things to be done, is the man of action and enterprise. If he is not also an observant and thoughtful man, if his mind is backward in forming images of what is presented to it from without, he will be constantly liable to make mistakes.”

Galton says of the faculty of visualization: “Our bookish and wordy education tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions and justness to our generalizations, is starved by lazy disuse, instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on the whole, bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing and using this faculty without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science of education.”

This consideration of the faculty of, and culture of, the Imagination, may appropriately be concluded by the following quotation from Prof. Halleck, which shows the danger of misuse and abuse of this important faculty. The aforesaid well-known authority says: “From its very nature, the imagination is peculiarly liable to abuse. The common practices of day-dreaming or castle-building are both morally and physically unhealthful. We reach actual success in life by slow, weary steps. The day-dreamer attains eminence with one bound. He is without trouble a victorious general on a vast battlefield, an orator swaying thousands, a millionaire with every amusement at his command, a learned man confounding the wisest, a president, an emperor or a czar. After reveling in these imaginative sweets, the dry bread of actual toil becomes exceedingly distasteful. It is so much easier to live in regions where everything comes at the magic wand of fancy. Not infrequently these castle-builders abandon effort in an actual world. Success comes too slow for them. They become speculators or gamblers, and in spite of all their grand castles, gradually sink into utter nonentities in the world of action…. The young should never allow themselves to build any imaginative castle, unless they are willing by hard effort to try to make that castle a reality. They must be willing to take off their coats, go into the quarries of life, chisel out the blocks of the stone, and build them with much toil into the castle walls. If castle-building is merely the formation of an ideal, which we show by our effort that we are determined to attain, then all will be well.”

It will be seen that, in reality, the Cultivation of the Imagination is rather the training and intelligent direction of that faculty, instead of the development of its power. The majority of people have the faculty of Imagination well developed, but to them it is largely an untrained, fanciful self-willed faculty. Cultivation is needed in the direction of bringing it under the guidance of the reason, and control by the will. Thought-Culture in general will do much for the Imagination, for the very processes employed in the development and cultivation of the various other faculties of the mind will also tend to bring the Imagination into subjection and under control, instead of allowing it to remain the wild, fanciful irresponsible faculty that it is in the majority of cases. Use the faculty of Imagination as a faculty of _Thought_, instead of a thing of _Fancy_. Attach it to the _Intellect_ instead of to the _Emotions_. Harness it up with the other faculties of Thought, and your chariot of Understanding and Attainment will reach the goal far sooner than under the old arrangement. Establish harmony between Intellect and Imagination, and you largely increase the power and achievements of both.

FINIS.

Nerves and Common Sense

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Nerves and Common Sense

NERVES AND COMMON SENSE

by Annie Payson Call

CHAPTER I

_Habit and Nervous Strain_

PEOPLE form habits which cause nervous strain. When these habits have fixed themselves for long enough upon their victims, the nerves give way and severe depression or some other form of nervous prostration is the result. If such an illness turns the attention to its cause, and so starts the sufferer toward a radical change from habits which cause nervous strain to habits which bring nervous strength, then the illness can be the beginning of better and permanent health. If, however, there simply is an enforced rest, without any intelligent understanding of the trouble, the invalid gets “well” only to drag out a miserable existence or to get very ill again.

Although any nervous suffering is worth while if it is the means of teaching us how to avoid nervous strain, it certainly is far preferable to avoid the strain without the extreme pain of a nervous breakdown.

To point out many of these pernicious habits and to suggest a practical remedy for each and all of them is the aim of this book, and for that reason common examples in various phases of every-day life are used as illustrations.

When there is no organic trouble there can be no doubt that _defects of character, inherited or acquired, are at the root of all nervous illness._ If this can once be generally recognized and acknowledged, especially by the sufferers themselves, we are in a fair way toward eliminating such illness entirely.

The trouble is people suffer from mortification and an unwillingness to look their bad habits in the face. They have not learned that humiliation can be wholesome, sound, and healthy, and so they keep themselves in a mess of a fog because they will not face the shame necessary to get out of it. They would rather be ill and suffering, and believe themselves to have strong characters than to look the weakness of their characters in the face, own up to them like men, and come out into open fresh air with healthy nerves which will gain in strength as they live.

Any intelligent man or woman who thinks a bit for himself can see the stupidity of this mistaken choice at a glance, and seeing it will act against it and thus do so much toward bringing light to all nervously prostrated humanity.

We can talk about faith cure, Christian Science, mind cure, hypnotism, psychotherapeutics, or any other forms of nerve cure which at the very best can only give the man a gentle shunt toward the middle of the stream of life. Once assured of the truth, the man must hold himself in the clean wholesomeness of it by actively working for his own strength of character _from his own initiative._ There can be no other permanent cure.

I say that strength of character must grow from our own initiative, and I should add that it must be from our own initiative that we come to recognize and actively believe that we are dependent upon a power not our own and our real strength comes from ceasing to be an obstruction to that power. The work of not interfering with our best health, moral and physical, means hard fighting and steady, never-ending vigilance. But it pays–it more than pays! And, it seems to me, this prevailing trouble of nervous strain which is so much with us now can be the means of guiding all men and women toward more solid health than has ever been known before. _But we must work for it!_ We must give up expecting to be cured.

CHAPTER II

_How Women can keep from being Nervous_

MANY people suffer unnecessarily from “nerves” just for the want of a little knowledge of how to adjust themselves in order that the nerves may get well. As an example, I have in mind a little woman who had been ill for eight years–eight of what might have been the best years of her life–all because neither she nor her family knew the straight road toward getting well. Now that she has found the path she has gained health wonderfully in six months, and promises to be better than ever before in her life.

Let me tell you how she became ill and then I can explain her process of getting well again. One night she was overtired and could not get to sleep, and became very much annoyed at various noises that were about the house. Just after she had succeeded in stopping one noise she would go back to bed and hear several others. Finally, she was so worked up and nervously strained over the noises that her hearing became exaggerated, and she was troubled by noises that other people would not have even heard; so she managed to keep herself awake all night.

The next day the strain of the overfatigue was, of course, very much increased, not only by the wakeful night, but also by the annoyance which had kept her awake. The family were distressed that she should not have slept all night; talked a great deal about it, and called in the doctor.

The woman’s strained nerves were on edge all day, so that her feelings were easily hurt, and her brothers and sisters became, as they thought, justly impatient at what they considered her silly babyishness. This, of course, roused her to more strain. The overcare and the feeble, unintelligent sympathy that she had from some members of her family kept her weak and self-centered, and the ignorant, selfish impatience with which the others treated her increased her nervous strain. After this there followed various other worries and a personal sense of annoyance–all of which made her more nervous.

Then–the stomach and brain are so closely associated–her digestion began to cause her discomfort: a lump in her stomach, her food “would not digest,” and various other symptoms, all of which mean strained and overwrought nerves, although they are more often attributed merely to a disordered stomach. She worried as to what she had better eat and what she had better not eat. If her stomach was tired and some simple food disagreed with her all the discomfort was attributed to the food, instead of to the real cause,–a tired stomach,–and the cause back of that,–strained nerves. The consequence was that one kind of wholesome food after another was cut off as being impossible for her to eat. Anything that this poor little invalid did not like about circumstances or people she felt ugly and cried over. Finally, the entire family were centered about her illness, either in overcare or annoyance.

You see, she kept constantly repeating her brain impression of overfatigue: first annoyance because she stayed awake; then annoyance at noises; then excited distress that she should have stayed awake all night; then resistance and anger at other people who interfered with her. Over and over that brain impression of nervous illness was repeated by the woman herself and people about her until she seemed settled into it for the rest of her life. It was like expecting a sore to get well while it was constantly being rubbed and irritated. A woman might have the healthiest blood in the world, but if she cut herself and then rubbed and irritated the cut, and put salt in it, it would be impossible for it to heal.

Now let me tell you how this little woman got well. The first thing she did was to take some very simple relaxing exercises while she was lying in bed. She raised her arms very slowly and as loosely as she could from the elbow and then her hands from the wrist, and stretched and relaxed her fingers steadily, then dropped her hand and forearm heavily, and felt it drop slowly at first, then quickly and quietly, with its own weight. She tried to shut her eyes like a baby going to sleep, and followed that with long, gentle, quiet breaths. These and other exercises gave her an impression of quiet relaxation so that she became more sensitive to superfluous tension.

When she felt annoyed at noises she easily noticed that in response to the annoyance her whole body became tense and strained. After she had done her exercises and felt quiet and rested something would happen or some one would say something that went against the grain, and quick as a wink all the good of the exercises would be gone and she would be tight and strained again, and nervously irritated.

Very soon she saw clearly that she must learn to drop the habit of physical strain if she wanted to get well; but she also learned what was more–far more–important than that: that _she must conquer the cause of the strain or she could never permanently drop it._ She saw that the cause was resentment and resistance to the noises–the circumstances, the people, and all the variety of things that had “made her nervous.”

Then she began her steady journey toward strong nerves and a wholesome, happy life. She began the process of changing her brain impressions. If she heard noises that annoyed her she would use her will to direct her attention toward dropping resistance to the noises, and in order to drop her mental resistance she gave her attention to loosening out the bodily contractions. Finally she became interested in the new process as in a series of deep and true experiments. Of course her living and intelligent interest enabled her to gain very much faster, for she not only enjoyed her growing freedom, but she also enjoyed seeing her experiments work. Nature always tends toward health, and if we stop interfering with her she will get us well.

There is just this difference between the healing of a physical sore and the healing of strained and irritated nerves With the one our bodies are healed, and things go on in them about the same as before. With the other, every use of the will to free ourselves from the irritation and its cause not only enables us to get free from the nervous illness, but in addition brings us new nerve vigor.

When nervous illness is met deeply enough and in the normal way, the result is that the nerves become stronger than ever before.

Often the effect of nervous strain in women is constant talking. Talk–talk–talk, and mostly about themselves, their ailments, their worries, and the hindrances that are put in their way to prevent their getting well. This talking is not a relief, as people sometimes feel. It is a direct waste of vigor. But the waste would be greater if the talk were repressed. The only real help comes when the talker herself recognizes the strain of her talk and “loosens” into silence.

People must find themselves out to get well–really well–from nervous suffering. The cause of nervous strain is so often in the character and in the way we meet circumstances and people that it seems essential to recognize our mistakes in that direction, and to face them squarely before we can do our part toward removing the causes of any nervous illness.

Remember it is not circumstances that keep us ill. It is not people that cause our illness. It is not our environment that overcomes us. It is the way we face and deal with circumstances, with people, and with environment that keeps our nerves irritated or keeps them quiet and wholesome and steady.

Let me tell the story of two men, both of whom were brought low by severe nervous breakdown. One complained of his environment, complained of circumstances, complained of people. Everything and every one was the cause of his suffering, except himself. The result was that he weakened his brain by the constant willful and enforced strain, so that what little health he regained was the result of Nature’s steady and powerful tendency toward health, and in spite of the man himself.

The other man–to give a practical instance–returned from a journey taken in order to regain the strength which he had lost from not knowing how to work. His business agent met him at the railroad station with a piece of very bad news. Instead of being frightened and resisting and contracting in every nerve of his body, he took it at once as an opportunity to drop resistance. He had learned to relax his body, and by doing relaxing and quieting exercises over and over he had given himself a brain impression of quiet and “let go” which he could recall at will. Instead of expressing distress at the bad news he used his will at once to drop resistance and relax; and, to the surprise of his informant, who had felt that he must break his bad news as easily as possible, he said “Anything else?” Yes, there was another piece of news about as bad as the first. “Go on,” answered the man who had been sick with nerves; “tell me something else.”

And so he did, until he had told him five different things which were about as disagreeable and painful to hear as could have been. For every bit of news our friend used his will with decision to drop the resistance, which would, of course, at once arise in response to all that seemed to go against him.

He had, of course, to work at intervals for long afterward to keep free from the resistance; but the habit is getting more and more established as life goes on with him, and the result is a brain clearer than ever before in his life, a power of nerve which is a surprise to every one about him, and a most successful business career.

The success in business is, however, a minor matter. His brain would have cleared and his nerve strengthened just the same if what might be called the business luck had continued to go against him, as it seemed to do for the first few months after his recovery. That everything did go against him for some time was the greatest blessing he could have had. The way he met all the reverses increased his nerve power steadily and consistently.

These two men are fair examples of two extremes. The first one did not know how to meet life. If he had had the opportunity to learn he might have done as well as the other. The second had worked and studied to help himself out of nerves, and had found the true secret of doing it.

Some men, however, and, I regret to say, more women, have the weakening habit so strong upon them that they are unwilling to learn how to get well, even when they have the opportunity. It seems so strange to see people suffer intensely–and be unwilling to face and follow the only way that will lead them out of their torture.

The trouble is we want our own way and nervous health, too, and with those who have once broken down nervously the only chance of permanent health is through learning to drop the strain of resistance when things do not go their way. This is proved over and over by the constant relapse into “nerves” which comes to those who have simply been healed over. Even with those who appear to have been well for some time, if they have not acquired the habit of dropping their mental and physical tension you can always detect an overcare for themselves which means dormant fear–or even active fear in the background.

There are some wounds which the surgeons keep open, even though the process is most painful, because they know that to heal really they must heal from the inside. Healing over on the outside only means decay underneath, and eventual death. This is in most cases exactly synonymous with the healing of broken-down nerves. They must be healed in causes to be permanently cured. Sometimes the change that comes in the process is so great that it is like reversing an engine.

If the little woman whom I mentioned first had practiced relaxing and quieting exercises every day for years, and had not used the quiet impression gained by the exercises to help her in dropping mental resistances, she never would have gained her health.

Concentrating steadily on dropping the tension of the body is very radically helpful in dropping resistance from the mind, and the right idea is to do the exercises over and over until the impression of quiet openness is, by constant repetition, so strong with us that we can recall it at will whenever we need it. Finally, after repeated tests, we gain the habit of meeting the difficulties of life without strain–first in little ways, and then in larger ways.

The most quieting, relaxing, and strengthening of all exercises for the nerves comes in deep and rhythmic breathing, and in voice exercises in connection with it. Nervous strain is more evident in a voice than in any other expressive part of man or woman. It sometimes seems as if all other relaxing exercises were mainly useful because of opening a way for us to breathe better. There is a pressure on every part of the body when we inhale, and a consequent reaction when we exhale, and the more passive the body is when we take our deep breaths the more freely and quietly the blood can circulate all the way through it, and, of course, all nervous and muscular contraction impairs circulation, and all impaired circulation emphasizes nervous contraction.

To any one who is suffering from “nerves,” in a lesser or greater degree, it could not fail to be of very great help to take half an hour in the morning, lie flat on the back, with the body as loose and heavy as it can be made, and then study taking gentle, quiet, and rhythmic breaths, long and short. Try to have the body so loose and open and responsive that it will open as you inhale and relax as you exhale, just as a rubber bag would. Of course, it will take time, but the refreshing quiet is sure to come if the practice is repeated regularly for a long enough time, and eventually we would no more miss it than we would go without our dinner.

We must be careful after each deep, long breath to rest quietly and let our lungs do as they please. Be careful to begin the breaths delicately and gently, to inhale with the same gentleness with which we begin, and to make the change from inhaling to exhaling with the greatest delicacy possible–keeping the body loose.

For the shorter breaths we can count three, or five, or ten to inhale, and the same number to exhale, until we have the rhythm established, and then go on breathing without counting, as if we were sound asleep. Always aim for gentleness and delicacy. If we have not half an hour to spare to lie quietly and breathe we can practice the breathing while we walk. It is wonderful how we detect strain and resistance in our breath, and the restfulness which comes when we breathe so gently that the breath seems to come and go without our volition brings new life with it.

We must expect to gain slowly and be patient; we must remember that nerves always get well by ups and downs, and use our wills to make every down lead to a higher up. If we want the lasting benefit, or any real benefit at all when we get the brain impression of quiet freedom from these breathing exercises, we must insist upon recalling that impression every time a test comes, and face the circumstances, or the person, or the duty with a voluntary insistence upon a quiet, open brain, rather than a tense, resistant one.

It will come hard at first, but we are sure to get there if we keep steadily at it, for it is really the Law of the Lord God Almighty that we are learning to obey, and this process of learning gives us steadily an enlarged appreciation of what trust in the Lord really is. There is no trust without obedience, and an intelligent obedience begets trust. The nerves touch the soul on one side and the body on the other, and we must work for freedom of soul and body in response to spiritual and physical law if we want to get sick nerves well. If we do not remember always a childlike attitude toward the Lord the best nerve training is only an easy way of being selfish.

To sum it all up–if you want to learn to help yourself out of “nerves” learn to rest when you rest and to work without strain when you work; learn to loosen out of the muscular contractions which the nerves cause; learn to drop the mental resistances which cause the “nerves,” and which take the form of anger, resentment, worry, anxiety, impatience, annoyance, or self-pity; eat only nourishing food, eat it slowly, and chew it well; breathe the freshest air you can, and breathe it deeply, gently, and rhythmically; take what healthy, vigorous exercise you find possible; do your daily work to the best of your ability; give your attention so entirely to the process of gaining health for the sake of your work and other people that you have no mind left with which to complain of being ill, and see that all this effort aims toward a more intelligent obedience to and trustfulness in the Power that gives us life. Wholesome, sustained concentration is in the very essence of healthy nerves.

CHAPTER III

_”You Have no Idea how I am Rushed”_

A WOMAN can feel rushed when she is sitting perfectly still and has really nothing whatever to do. A woman can feel at leisure when she is working diligently at something, with a hundred other things waiting to be done when the time comes. It is not all we have to do that gives us the rushed feeling; it is the way we do what is before us. It is the attitude we take toward our work.

Now this rushed feeling in the brain and nerves is intensely oppressive. Many women, and men too, suffer from it keenly, and they suffer the more because they do not recognize that that feeling of rush is really entirely distinct from what they have to do; in truth it has nothing whatever to do with it.

I have seen a woman suffer painfully with the sense of being pushed for time when she had only two things to do in the whole day, and those two things at most need not take more than an hour each. This same woman was always crying for rest. I never knew, before I saw her, that women could get just as abnormal in their efforts to rest as in their insistence upon overwork. This little lady never rested when she went to rest; she would lie on the bed for hours in a state of strain about resting that was enough to tire any ordinarily healthy woman. One friend used to tell her that she was an inebriate on resting. It is perhaps needless to say that she was a nervous invalid, and in the process of gaining her health she had to be set to work and kept at work. Many and many a time she has cried and begged for rest when it was not rest she needed at all: it was work.

She has started off to some good, healthy work crying and sobbing at the cruelty that made her go, and has returned from the work as happy and healthy, apparently, as a little child. Then she could go to rest and rest to some purpose. She had been busy in wholesome action and the normal reaction came in her rest. As she grew more naturally interested in her work she rested less and less, and she rested better and better because she had something to rest from and something to rest for.

Now she does only a normal amount of resting, but gets new life from every moment of rest she takes; before, all her rest only made her want more rest and kept her always in the strain of fatigue. And what might seem to many a very curious result is that as the abnormal desire for rest disappeared the rushed feeling disappeared, too.

There is no one thing that American women need more than a healthy habit of rest, but it has got to be real rest, not strained nor self-indulgent rest.

Another example of this effort at rest which is a sham and a strain is the woman who insists upon taking a certain time every day in which to rest. She insists upon doing everything quietly and with–as she thinks–a sense of leisure, and yet she keeps the whole household in a sense of turmoil and does not know it. She sits complacently in her pose of prompt action, quietness and rest, and has a tornado all about her. She is so deluded in her own idea of herself that she does not observe the tornado, and yet she has caused it. Everybody in her household is tired out with her demands, and she herself is ill, chronically ill. But she thinks she is at peace, and she is annoyed that others should be tired.

If this woman could open and let out her own interior tornado, which she has kept frozen in there by her false attitude of restful quiet, she would be more ill for a time, but it might open her eyes to the true state of things and enable her to rest to some purpose and to allow her household to rest, too.

It seems, at first thought, strange that in this country, when the right habit of rest is so greatly needed, that the strain of rest should have become in late years one of the greatest defects. On second thought, however, we see that it is a perfectly rational result. We have strained to work and strained to play and strained to live for so long that when the need for rest gets so imperative that we feel we must rest the habit of strain is so upon us that we strain to rest. And what does such “rest” amount to? What strength does it bring us? What enlightenment do we get from it?

With the little lady of whom I first spoke rest was a steadily-weakening process. She was resting her body straight toward its grave. When a body rests and rests the circulation gets more and more sluggish until it breeds disease in the weakest organ, and then the physicians seem inclined to give their attention to the disease, and not to the cause of the abnormal strain which was behind the disease. Again, as we have seen, the abnormal, rushed feeling can exist just as painfully with too much and the wrong kind of rest as with too much work and the wrong way of working.

We have been, as a nation, inclined toward “Americanitis” for so long now that children and children’s children have inherited a sense of rush, and they suffer intensely from it with a perfectly clear understanding of the fact that they have nothing whatever to hurry about. This is quite as true of men as it is of women. In such cases the first care should be not to fasten this sense of rush on to anything; the second care should be to go to work to cure it, to relax out of that contraction–just as you would work to cure twitching St. Vitus’s dance, or any other nervous habit.

Many women will get up and dress in the morning as if they had to catch a train, and they will come in to breakfast as if it were a steamer for the other side of the world that they had to get, and no other steamer went for six months. They do not know that they are in a rush and a hurry, and they do not find it out until the strain has been on them for so long that they get nervously ill from it–and then they find themselves suffering from “that rushed feeling.”

Watch some women in an argument pushing, actually rushing, to prove themselves right; they will hardly let their opponent have an opportunity to speak, much less will they stop to consider what he says and see if by chance he may not be right and they wrong.

The rushing habit is not by any means in the fact of doing many things. It asserts itself in our brains in talking, in writing, in thinking. How many of us, I wonder, have what might be called a quiet working brain? Most of us do not even know the standard of a brain that thinks and talks and lives quietly: a brain that never pushes and never rushes, or, if by any chance it is led into pushing or rushing, is so wholesomely sensitive that it drops the push or the rush as a bare hand would drop a red-hot coal.

None of us can appreciate the weakening power of this strained habit of rush until we have, by the use of our own wills, directed our minds toward finding a normal habit of quiet, and yet I do not in the least exaggerate when I say that its weakening effect on the brain and nerves is frightful.

And again I repeat, the rushed feeling has nothing whatever to do with the work before us. A woman can feel quite as rushed when she has nothing to do as when she is extremely busy.

“But,” some one says, “may I not feel pressed for time when I have more to do than I can possibly put into the time before me ?”

Oh, yes, yes–you can feel normally pressed for time; and because of this pressure you can arrange in your mind what best to leave undone, and so relieve the pressure. If one thing seems as important to do as another you can make up your mind that of course you can only do what you have time for, and the remainder must go. You cannot do what you have time to do so well if you are worrying about what you have no time for. There need be no abnormal sense of rush about it.

Just as Nature tends toward health, Nature tends toward rest–toward the right kind of rest; and if we have lost the true knack of resting we can just as surely find it as a sunflower can find the sun. It is not something artificial that we are trying to learn–it is something natural and alive, something that belongs to us, and our own best instinct will come to our aid in finding it if we will only first turn our attention toward finding our own best instinct.

We must have something to rest from, and we must have something to rest for, if we want to find the real power of rest. Then we must learn to let go of our nerves and our muscles, to leave everything in our bodies open and passive so that our circulation can have its own best way. But we must have had some activity in order to have given our circulation a fair start before we can expect it to do its best when we are passive.

Then, what is most important, we must learn to drop all effort of our minds if we want to know how to rest; and that is difficult. We can do it best by keeping our minds concentrated on something simple and quiet and wholesome. For instance, you feel tired and rushed and you can have half an hour in which to rest and get rid of the rush. Suppose you lie down on the bed and imagine yourself a turbulent lake after a storm. The storm is dying down, dying down, until by and by there is no wind, only little dashing waves that the wind has left. Then the waves quiet down steadily, more and more, until finally they are only ripples on the water. Then no ripples, but the water is as still as glass. The sun goes down. The sky glows. Twilight comes. One star appears, and green banks and trees and sky and stars are all reflected in the quiet mirror of the lake, and you are the lake, and you are quiet and refreshed and rested and ready to get up and go on with your work–to go on with it, too, better and more quietly than when you left it.

Or, another way to quiet your mind and to let your imagination help you to a better rest is to float on the top of a turbulent sea and then to sink down, down, down until you get into the still water at the bottom of the sea. We all know that, no matter how furious the sea is on the surface, not far below the surface it is absolutely still. It is very restful to go down there in imagination.

Whatever choice we may make to quiet our minds and our bodies, as soon as we begin to concentrate we must not be surprised if intruding thoughts are at first constantly crowding to get in. We must simply let them come. Let them come, and pay no attention to them.

I knew of a woman who was nervously ill, and some organs of her body were weakened very much by the illness. She made-up her mind to rest herself well and she did so. Every day she would rest for three hours; she said to herself, “I will rest an hour on my left side, an hour on my right side, and an hour on my back.” And she did that for days and days. When she lay on one side she had a very attractive tree to look at. When she lay on the other she had an interesting picture before her. When she lay on her back she had the sky and several trees to see through a window in front of the bed. She grew steadily better every week–she had something to rest for. She was resting to get well. If she had rested and complained of her illness I doubt if she would have been well to-day. She simply refused to take the unpleasant sensations into consideration except for the sake of resting out of them. When she was well enough to take a little active exercise she knew she could rest better and get well faster for that, and she insisted upon taking the exercise, although at first she had to do it with the greatest care. Now that this woman is well she knows how to rest and she knows how to work better than ever before.

For normal rest we need the long sleep of night. For shorter rests which we may take during the day, often opportunity comes at most unexpected times and in most unexpected ways, and we must be ready to take advantage of it. We need also the habit of working restfully. This habit of course enables us to rest truly when we are only resting, and again the habit of resting normally helps us to work normally.

A wise old lady said: “My dear, you cannot exaggerate the unimportance of things.” She expressed even more, perhaps, than she knew.

It is our habit of exaggerating the importance of things that keeps us hurried and rushed. It is our habit of exaggerating the importance of ourselves that makes us hold the strain of life so intensely. If we would be content to do one thing at a time, and concentrate on that one thing until it came time to do the next thing, it would astonish us to see how much we should accomplish. A healthy concentration is at the root of working restfully and of resting restfully, for a healthy concentration means dropping everything that interferes.

I know there are women who read this article who will say; “Oh, yes, that is all very well for some women, but it does not apply in the least to a woman who has my responsibilities, or to a woman who has to work as I have to work.”

My answer to that is: “Dear lady, you are the very one to whom it does apply!”

The more work we have to do, the harder our lives are, the more we need the best possible principles to lighten our work and to enlighten our lives. We are here in the world at school and we do not want to stay in the primary classes.

The harder our lives are and the more we are handicapped the more truly we can learn to make every limitation an opportunity–and if we persistently do that through circumstances, no matter how severe, the nearer we are to getting our diploma. To gain our freedom from the rushed feeling, to find a quiet mind in place of an unquiet one, is worth working hard for through any number of difficulties. And think of the benefit such a quiet mind could be to other people! Especially if the quiet mind were the mind of a woman, for, at the present day, think what a contrast she would be to other women!

When a woman’s mind is turbulent it is the worst kind of turbulence. When it is quiet we can almost say it is the best kind of quiet, humanly speaking.

CHAPTER IV

_Why does Mrs. Smith get on My Nerves?_

IF you want to know the true answer to this question it is “because you are unwilling that Mrs. Smith should be herself.” You want her to be just like you, or, if not just like you, you want her to be just as you would best like her.

I have seen a woman so annoyed that she could not eat her supper because another woman ate sugar on baked beans. When this woman told me later what it was that had taken away her appetite she added: “And isn’t it absurd? Why shouldn’t Mrs. Smith eat sugar on baked beans? It does not hurt me. I do not have to taste the sugar on the beans; but is it such an odd thing to do. It seems to me such bad manners that I just get so mad I can’t eat!”

Now, could there be anything more absurd than that? To see a woman annoyed; to see her recognize that she was uselessly and foolishly annoyed, and yet to see that she makes not the slightest effort to get over her annoyance.

It is like the woman who discovered that she spoke aloud in church, and was so surprised that she exclaimed: “Why, I spoke out loud in church!” and then, again surprised, she cried: “Why, I keep speaking aloud in church!”–and it did not occur to her to stop.

My friend would have refused an invitation to supper, I truly believe, if she had known that Mrs. Smith would be there and her hostess would have baked beans. She was really a slave to Mrs. Smith’s way of eating baked beans.

“Well, I do not blame her,” I hear some reader say; “it is entirely out of place to eat sugar on baked beans. Why shouldn’t she be annoyed?”

I answer: “Why should she be annoyed? Will her annoyance stop Mrs. Smith’s eating sugar on baked beans? Will she in any way–selfish or otherwise–be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course of life that annoyed her.”

It is the same thing that makes a horse shy. The horse does not say to himself, “There is a large carriage, moving with no horse to pull it, with nothing to push it, with–so far as I can see–no motive power at all. How weird that is! How frightful!”–and, with a quickly beating heart, jump aside and caper in scared excitement. A horse when he first sees an automobile gets an impression on his brain which is entirely out of his ordinary course of impressions–it is as if some one suddenly and unexpectedly struck him, and he shies and jumps. The horse is annoyed, but he does not know what it is that annoys him. Now, when a horse shies you drive him away from the automobile and quiet him down, and then, if you are a good trainer, you drive him back again right in front of that car or some other one, and you repeat the process until the automobile becomes an ordinary impression to him, and he is no longer afraid of it.

There is, however, just this difference between a woman and a horse: the woman has her own free will behind her annoyance, and a horse has not. If my friend had asked Mrs. Smith to supper twice a week, and had served baked beans each time and herself passed her the sugar with careful courtesy, and if she had done it all deliberately for the sake of getting over her annoyance, she would probably have only increased it until the strain would have got on her nerves much more seriously than Mrs. Smith ever had. Not only that, but she would have found herself resisting other people’s peculiarities more than ever before; I have seen people in nervous prostration from causes no more serious than that, on the surface. It is the habit of resistance and resentment back of the surface annoyance which is the serious cause of many a woman’s attack of nerves.

Every woman is a slave to every other woman who annoys her. She is tied to each separate woman who has got on her nerves by a wire which is pulling, pulling the nervous force right out of her. And it is not the other woman’s fault–it is her own. The wire is pulling, whether or not we are seeing or thinking of the other woman, for, having once been annoyed by her, the contraction is right there in our brains. It is just so much deposited strain in our nervous systems which will stay there until we, of our own free wills, have yielded out of it.

The horse was not resenting nor resisting the automobile; therefore the strain of his fright was at once removed when the automobile became an ordinary impression. A woman, when she gets a new impression that she does not like, resents and resists it with her will, and she has got to get in behind that resistance and drop it with her will before she is a free woman.

To be sure, there are many disagreeable things that annoy for a time, and then, as the expression goes, we get hardened to them. But few of us know that this hardening is just so much packed resistance which is going to show itself later in some unpleasant form and make us ill in mind or body. We have got to yield, yield, yield out of every bit of resistance and resentment to other people if we want to be free. No reasoning about it is going to do us any good. No passing back and forth in front of it is going to free us. We must yield first and then we can see clearly and reason justly. We must yield first and then we can go back and forth in front of it, and it will only be a reminder to yield every time until the habit of yielding has become habitual and the strength of nerve and strength of character developed by means of the yielding have been established.

Let me explain more fully what I mean by “yielding.” Every annoyance, resistance, or feeling of resentment contracts us in some way physically; if we turn our attention toward dropping that physical contraction, with a real desire to get rid of the resistance behind it, we shall find that dropping the physical strain opens the way to drop the mental and moral strain, and when we have really dropped the strain we invariably find reason and justice and even generosity toward others waiting to come to us.

There is one important thing to be looked out for in this normal process of freeing ourselves from other people. A young girl said once to her teacher: “I got mad the other day and I relaxed, and the more I relaxed the madder I got!”

“Did you want to get over the anger?” asked the teacher.

“No, I didn’t,” was the prompt and ready answer.

Of course, as this child relaxed out of the tension of her anger, there was only more anger to take its place, and the more she relaxed the more free her nerves were to take the impression of the anger hoarded up in her; consequently it was as she said: the more she relaxed the “madder” she got. Later, this same little girl came to understand fully that she must have a real desire to get over her anger in order to have better feelings come up after she had dropped the contraction of the anger.

I know of a woman who has been holding such steady hatred for certain other people that the strain of it has kept her ill. And it is all a matter of feeling: first, that these people have interfered with her welfare; second, that they differ from her in opinion. Every once in a while her hatred finds a vent and spends itself in tears and bitter words. Then, after the external relief of letting out her pent-up feeling, she closes up again and one would think from her voice and manner–if one did not look very deep in–that she had only kindliness for every one. But she stays nervously ill right along.

How could she do otherwise with that strain in her? If she were constitutionally a strong woman this strain of hatred would have worn on her, though possibly not have made her really ill; but, being naturally sensitive and delicate, the strain has kept her an invalid altogether.

“Mother, I can’t stand Maria,” one daughter says to her mother, and when inquiry is made the mother finds that what her daughter “cannot stand” is ways that differ from her own. Sometimes, however, they are very disagreeable ways which are exactly like the ways of the person who cannot stand them. If one person is imperious and demanding she will get especially annoyed at another person for being imperious and demanding, without a suspicion that she is objecting vehemently to a reflection of herself.

There are two ways in which people get on our nerves. The first way lies in their difference from us in habit–in little things and in big things; their habits are not our habits. Their habits may be all right, and our habits may be all right, but they are “different.” Why should we not be willing to have them different? Is there any reason for it except the very empty one that we consciously and unconsciously want every one else to be just like us, or to believe just as we do, or to behave just as we do? And what sense is there in that?

“I cannot stand Mrs. So-and-so; she gets into a rocking-chair and rocks and rocks until I feel as if I should go crazy!” some one says. But why not let Mrs. So-and-so rock? It is her chair while she is in it, and her rocking. Why need it touch us at all?

“But,” I hear a hundred women say, “it gets on our nerves; how can we help its getting on our nerves?” The answer to that is: “Drop it off your nerves.” I know many women who have tried it and who have succeeded, and who are now profiting by the relief. Sometimes the process to such freedom is a long one; sometimes it is a short one; but, either way, the very effort toward it brings nervous strength, as well as strength of character.

Take the woman who rocks. Practically every time she rocks you should relax, actually and consciously relax your muscles and your nerves. The woman who rocks need not know you are relaxing; it all can be done from inside. Watch and you will find your muscles strained and tense with resistance to the rocking. Go to work practically to drop every bit of strain that you observe. As you drop the grossest strain it will make you more sensitive to the finer strain and you can drop that–and it is even possible that you may seek the woman who rocks, in order to practice on her and get free from the habit of resisting more quickly.

This seems comical–almost ridiculous–to think of seeking an annoyance in order to get rid of it; but, after laughing at it first, look at the idea seriously, and you will see it is common sense. When you have learned to relax to the woman who rocks you have learned to relax to other similar annoyances. You have been working on a principle that applies generally. You have acquired a good habit which can never really fail you.

If my friend had invited Mrs. Smith to supper and served baked beans for the sake of relaxing out of the tension of her resistance to the sugar, then she could have conquered that resistance. But to try to conquer an annoyance like that without knowing how to yield in some way would be, so far as I know, an impossibility. Of course, we would prefer that our friends should not have any disagreeable, ill-bred, personal ways, but we can go through the world without resisting them, and there is no chance of helping any one out of them through our own resistances.

On the other hand a way may open by which the woman’s attention is called to the very unhealthy habit of rocking–or eating sugar on beans–if we are ready, without resistance, to point it out to her. And if no way opens we have at least put ourselves out of bondage to her. The second way in which other people get on our nerves is more serious and more difficult. Mrs. So-and-so may be doing very wrong–really very wrong; or some one who is nearly related to us may be doing very wrong–and it may be our most earnest and sincere desire to set him right. In such cases the strain is more intense because we really have right on our side, in our opinion, if not in our attitude toward the other person. Then, to recognize that if some one else chooses to do wrong it is none of our business is one of the most difficult things to do–for a woman, especially.

It is more difficult to recognize practically that, in so far as it may be our business, we can best put ourselves in a position to enable the other person to see his own mistake by dropping all personal resistance to it and all personal strain about it. Even a mother with her son can help him to be a man much more truly if she stops worrying about and resisting his unmanliness.

“But,” I hear some one say, “that all seems like such cold indifference.” Not at all–not at all. Such freedom from strain can be found only through a more actively affectionate interest in others. The more we truly love another, the more thoroughly we respect that other’s individuality.

The other so-called love is only love of possession and love of having our own way. It is not really love at all; it is sugar-coated tyranny. And when one sugar-coated tyrant’ antagonizes herself against another sugar-coated tyrant the strain is severe indeed, and nothing good is ever accomplished.

The Roman infantry fought with a fixed amount of space about each soldier, and found that the greater freedom of individual activity enabled them to fight better and to conquer their foes. This symbolizes happily the process of getting people off our nerves. Let us give each one a wide margin and thus preserve a good margin for ourselves.

We rub up against other people’s nerves by getting too near to them–not too near to their real selves, but too near, so to speak, to their nervous systems. There have been quarrels between good people just because one phase of nervous irritability roused another. Let things in other people go until you have entirely dropped your strain about them–then it will be clear enough what to do and what to say, or what not to do and what not to say. People in the world cannot get on our nerves unless we allow them to do so.

CHAPTER V

_The Trying Member of the Family_

“TOMMY, don’t do that. You know it annoys your grandfather.”

“Well, why should he be annoyed? I am doing nothing wrong.”

“I know that, and it hurts me to ask you, but you know how he will feel if he sees you doing it, and you know that troubles me.”

Reluctantly and sullenly Tommy stopped. Tommy’s mother looked strained and worried and discontented. Tommy had an expression on his face akin to that of a smouldering volcano.

If any one had taken a good look at the grandfather it would have been very clear that Tommy was his own grandson, and that the old man and the child were acting and reacting upon one another in a way that was harmful to both; although the injury was, of course, worse to the child, for the grandfather had toughened. The grandfather thought he loved his little grandson, and the grandson, at times, would not have acknowledged that he did not love his grandfather. At other times, with childish frankness, he said he “hated him.”

But the worst of this situation was that although the mother loved her son, and loved her father, and sincerely thought that she was the family peacemaker, she was all the time fanning the antagonism.

Here is a contrast to this little story An old uncle came into the family of his nephew to live, late in life, and with a record behind him of whims and crotchets in the extreme. The father and mother talked it over. Uncle James must come. He had lost all his money. There was no one else to look after him and they could not afford to support him elsewhere where he would be comfortable. They took it into account, without offence, that it was probably just as much a cross to Uncle James to come as it was to them to have him. They took no pose of magnanimity such as: “Of course we must be good and offer Uncle James a home,” and “How good we are to do it!” Uncle James was to come because it was the only thing for him to do. The necessity was to be faced and fought and conquered, and they had three strong, self-willed little children to face it with them. They had sense enough to see that if faced rightly it would do only good to the children, but if made a burden to groan over it would make their home a “hornets’ nest.” They agreed to say nothing to the children about Uncle James’s peculiarities, but to await developments.

Children are always delighted at a visit from a relative, and they welcomed their great-uncle with pleasure. It was not three days, however, before every one of the three was crying with dislike and hurt feelings and anger. Then was the time to begin the campaign.

The mother, with a happy face, called the three children to her, and said “Now listen, children. Do you suppose I like Uncle James’s irritability any better than you do?”

“No,” came in a chorus; “we don’t see how you stand it, Mother.”

Then she said: “Now look here, boys, do you suppose that Uncle James likes his snapping any better than we do?”

“If he does not like it why does he do it?” answered the boys.

“I cannot tell you that; that is his business and not yours or mine,” said the mother; “but I can prove to you that he does not like it. Bobby, do you remember how you snapped at your brother yesterday, when he accidentally knocked your house over?”

“Yes!” replied Bobby.

“Did you feel comfortable after it?” “You bet I didn’t,” was the quick reply.

“Well,” answered the mother, “you boys stop and think just how disagreeable it is inside of you when you snap, and then think how it would be if you had to feel like that as much as Uncle James does.”

“By golly, but that would be bad,” said the twelve-year-old.

“Now, boys,” went on the mother, “you want to relieve Uncle James’s disagreeable feelings all you can, and don’t you see that you increase them when you do things to annoy him? His snappish feelings are just like a sore that is smarting and aching all the time, and when you get in their way it hurts as if you rubbed the sore. Keep out of his way when you can, and when you can’t and he snaps at you, say: ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ like gentlemen, and stop doing what annoys him; or get out of his way as soon as you can.”

Uncle James never became less snappish. But the upright, manly courtesy of those boys toward him was like fresh air on a mountain, especially because it had become a habit and was all as a matter of course. The father and mother realized that Uncle James had, unconsciously, made men of their boys as nothing else in the world could have done, and had trained them so that they would grow up tolerant and courteous toward all human peculiarities.

Many times a gracious courtesy toward the “trying member” will discover good and helpful qualities that we had not guessed before. Sometimes after a little honest effort we find that it is ourselves who have been the trying members, and that the other one has been the member tried. Often it is from two members of the family that the trying element comes. Two sisters may clash, and they will generally clash because they are unlike. Suppose one sister moves and lives in big swings, and the other in minute details. Of course when these extreme tendencies are accented in each the selfish temptation is for the larger mind to lapse into carelessness of details, and for the smaller mind to shrink into pettiness, and as this process continues the sisters get more and more intolerant of each other, and farther and farther apart. But if the sister who moves in the big swings will learn from the other to be careful in details, and if the smaller mind will allow itself to be enlarged by learning from the habitually broader view of the other, each will grow in proportion, and two women who began life as enemies in temperament can end it as happy friends.

There are similar cases of brothers who clash, but they are not so evident, for when men do not agree they leave one another alone. Women do not seem to be able to do that. It is good to leave one another alone when there is the clashing tendency, but it is better to conquer the clashing and learn to agree.

So long as the normal course of my life leads me to live with some one who rubs me the wrong way I am not free until I have learned to live with that some one in quiet content. I never gain my freedom by running away. The bondage is in me always, so long as the other person’s presence can rouse it. The only way is to fight it out inside of one’s self. When we can get the co-operation of the other so much the better. But no one’s co-operation is necessary for us to find our own freedom, and with it an intelligent, tolerant kindliness.

“Mother, you take that seat. No, not that one, Mother–the sun comes in that window. Children, move aside and let your grandmother get to her seat.”

The young woman was very much in earnest in seeing that her mother had a comfortable seat, that she had not the discomfort of the hot sun, that the children made way for her so that she could move into her seat comfortably. All her words were thoughtful and courteous, but the spirit and the tone of her words were quite the reverse of courteous. If some listener with his eyes shut had heard the tone without understanding the words he might easily have thought that the woman was talking to a little dog.

Poor “Mother” trotted into her seat with the air of a little dog who was so well trained that he did at once what his mistress ordered. It was very evident that “Mother’s” will had been squeezed out of her and trampled upon for years by her dutiful daughter, who looked out always that “Mother” had the best, without the first scrap of respect for “Mother’s” free, human soul.

The grandchildren took the spirit of their mother’s words rather than the words themselves, and treated their grandmother as if she were a sort of traveling idiot tagged on to them, to whom they had to be decently respectful whenever their mother’s eye was upon them, and whom they ignored entirely when their mother looked the other way.

It so happened that I was sitting next to this particular mother who had been poked into a comfortable seat by her careful daughter. And, after a number of other suggestions had been poked at her with a view to adding to her comfort, she turned to me and in a quaint, confidential way, with the gentle voice of a habitual martyr, and at the same time a twinkle of humor in her eye, she said “They think, you know, I don’t know anything.”

And after that we had a little talk about matters of the day which proved to me that “Mother” had a mind broader and certainly more quiet than her daughter. I studied the daughter with interest after knowing “Mother” better, and her habitual strain of voice and manner were pathetic. By making a care of her mother instead of a companion, she was not only guilty of disrespect to a soul which, however weak it may have been in allowing itself to be directed in all minor matters, had its own firm principles which were not overridden nor even disturbed by the daughter’s dominance. If the daughter had only dropped her strain of care and her habit of “bossing” she would have found a true companion in her mother, and would have been a healthier and happier woman herself.

In pleasant contrast to this is the story of a family which had an old father who had lost his mind entirely, and had grown decrepit and childish in the extreme. The sons and daughters tended him like a baby and loved him with gentle, tender respect. There was no embarrassment for his loss of mind, no thought of being distressed or pained by it, and because his children took their father’s state so quietly and without shame, every guest who came took it in the same way, and there was no thought of keeping the father out of sight. He sat in the living-room in his comfortable chair, and always one child or another was sitting right beside him with a smiling face. Instead of being a trying member of the family, as happens in so many cases, this old father seemed to bring content and rest to his children through their loving care for him.

Very often–I might almost say always–the trying member of the family is trying only because we make her so by our attitude toward her, let her be grandmother, mother, or maiden aunt. Even the proverbial mother-in-law grows less difficult as our attitude toward her is relieved of the strain of detesting everything she does, and expecting to detest everything that she is going to do. With every trying friend we have, if we yield to him in all minor matters we find the settling of essential questions wonderfully less difficult.

A son had a temper and the girl he married had a temper. The mother loved her son with the selfish love with which so many mothers burden their children, and thought that he alone of all men had a right to lose his temper. Consequently she excused her son and blamed her daughter-in-law. If there were a mild cyclone roused between the two married people the son would turn to his mother to hear what a martyr he was and what misfortune he had to bear in having been so easily mistaken in the woman he married. Thus the mother-in-law, who felt that she was protecting her poor son, was really breeding dissension between two people who could have been the best possible friends all their lives.

The young wife very soon became ashamed of her temper and worked until she conquered it, but it was not until her mother-in-law had been out of this world for years that her husband discovered what he had lost in turning away from his wife’s friendship, and it was only by the happy accident of severe illness that he ever discovered his mistake at all, and gained freedom from the bondage of his own temper enough to appreciate his wife.

If, however, the wife had yielded in the beginning not only to her husband’s bad temper but also to the antagonism of her mother-in-law, which was, of course, annoying in many petty ways, she might have gained her husband’s friendship, and it is possible that she might, moreover, have gained the friendship of her mother-in-law.

The best rule with regard to all trying members of the family is to yield to them always in non-essentials; and when you disagree in essentials stick to the principle which you believe to be right, but stick to it without resistance. Believe your way, but make yourself willing that the trying member should believe her way. Make an opportunity of what appears to be a limitation, and, believe me, your trying member can become a blessing to you.

I go further than that–I truly believe that to make the best of life every family should have a trying member. When we have no trying member of our family, and life goes along smoothly, as a matter of course, the harmony is very liable to be spurious, and a sudden test will all at once knock such a family into discord, much to the surprise of every member. When we go through discord to harmony, and once get into step, we are very likely to keep in step:

Be willing, then, make yourself willing, that the trying member should be in the way. Hope that she will stay in your family until you have succeeded in dropping not only all resistance to her being there, but every resistance to her various ways in detail. Bring her annoying ways up to your mind voluntarily when you are away from her. If you do that you will find all the resistances come with them and you can relax out of the strain then and there. You will find that when you get home or come down to breakfast in the morning (for many resistances are voluntarily thrown off in the night) you will have a pleasanter feeling toward the trying member, and it comes so spontaneously that you will be surprised yourself at the absence of the strain of resistance in you.

Believe me when I say this: the yielding in the non-essentials, singularly enough, gives one strength to refuse to yield in principles. But we must always remember that if we want to find real peace, while we refuse to yield in our own principles so long as we believe them to be true, we must be entirely willing that others should differ from us in belief.

CHAPTER VI

_Irritable Husbands_

SUPPOSE your husband got impatient and annoyed with you because you did not seem to enter heartily into the interests of his work and sympathize with its cares and responsibilities and soothe him out of the nervous harassments. Would you not perhaps feel a little sore that he seemed to expect all from you and to give nothing in return? I know how many women will say that is all very well, but the husband and father should feel as much interest in the home and the children as the wife and mother does. That is, of course, true up to a certain point, always in general, and when his help is really necessary in particular. But a man cannot enter into the details of his wife’s duties at home any more than a woman can enter into the details of her husband’s duties at his office.

Then, again, my readers may say: “But a woman’s nervous system is more sensitive than a man’s; she needs help and consolation. She needs to have some one on whom she can lean.” Now the answer to that will probably be surprising, but an intelligent understanding and comprehension of it would make a very radical difference in the lives of many men and women who have agreed to live together for life–for better and for worse.

Now the truth is man’s nervous system is quite as sensitive as a woman’s, but the woman’s temptation to emotion makes her appear more sensitive, and her failure to control her emotions ultimately increases the sensitiveness of her nerves so that they are more abnormal than her husband’s. Even that is not always true The other day a woman sat in tears and distress telling of the hardness of heart, the restlessness, the irritability, the thoughtlessness, the unkindness of her husband. Her face was drawn with suffering. She insisted that she was not complaining, that it was her deep and tender love for her husband that made her suffer so. “But it is killing me, it is killing me,” she said, and one who saw her could well believe it. And if the distress and the great strain upon her nerves had kept on it certainly would have made her ill, if not have actually ended her life with a nervous collapse.

The friend in whom she confided sat quietly and heard her through. She let her pour herself out to the very finish until she stopped because there was nothing more to say. Then, by means of a series of gentle, well-adapted questions, she drew from the wife a recognition–for the first time–of the fact that she really did nothing whatever for her husband and expected him to do everything for her. Perhaps she put on a pretty dress for him in order to look attractive when he came home, but if he did not notice how well she looked, and was irritable about something in the house, she would be dissolved in tears because she had not proved attractive and pleased him. Maybe she had tried to have a dinner that he especially liked; then if he did not notice the food, and seemed distracted about something that was worrying him, she would again be dissolved in tears because he “appreciated nothing that she tried to do for him.”

Now it is perfectly true that this husband was irritable and brutal; he had no more consideration for his wife than he had for any one else. But his wife was doing all in her power to fan his irritability into flame and to increase his brutality. She was attitudinizing in her own mind as a martyr. She was demanding kindness and attention and sympathy from her husband, and because she demanded it she never got it.

A woman can demand without demanding imperiously. There is more selfish demanding in a woman’s emotional suffering because her husband does not do this or that or the other for her sake than there is in a tornado of man’s irritability or anger. You see, a woman’s demanding spirit is covered with the mush of her emotions. A man’s demanding spirit stands out in all its naked ugliness. One is just as bad as the other. One is just as repulsive as the other.

It is a radical, practical impossibility to bring loving-kindness out of any one by demanding it. Loving-kindness, thoughtfulness, and consideration have got to be born spontaneously in a man’s own mind to be anything at all, and no amount of demanding on the part of his wife can force it.

When this little lady of whom I have been writing found that she had been demanding from her husband what he really ought to have given her as a matter of course, and that she had used up all her strength in suffering because he did not give it, and had used none of her strength in the effort to be patient and quiet in waiting for him to come to his senses, she went home and began a new life. She was a plucky little woman and very intelligent when once her eyes were opened. She recognized the fact that her suffering was resistance to her husband’s irritable selfishness, and she stopped resisting.

It was a long and hard struggle of days, weeks, and months, but it brought a very happy reward. When a man is irritable and ugly, and his wife offers no resistance either in anger or suffering, the irritability and ugliness react upon himself, and if there is something better in him he begins to perceive the irritability in its true colors. That is what happened to this man. As his wife stopped demanding he began to give. As his wife’s nerves became calm and quiet his nerves quieted and calmed. Finally his wife discovered that much of his irritability had been roused through nervous anxiety in regard to his business about which he had told her nothing whatever because it “was not his way.”

There is nothing in the world that so strengthens nerves as the steady use of the will to drop resistance and useless emotions and get a quiet control. This woman gained that strength, and to her surprise one day her husband turned to her with a full account of all his business troubles and she met his mind quietly, as one business man might meet another, and without in the least expressing her pleasure or her surprise. She took all the good change in him as a matter of course.

Finally one day it came naturally and easily to talk over the past. She found that her husband from day to day had dreaded coming home. The truth was that he had dreaded his own irritability as much as he had dreaded her emotional demanding. But he did not know it–he did not know what was the matter at all. He simply knew vaguely that he was a brute, that he felt like a brute, and that he did not know how to stop being a brute. His wife knew that he was a brute, and at the same time she felt throughly convinced that she was a suffering martyr. He was dreading to come home and she was dreading to have him come home–and there they were in a continuous nightmare. Now they have left the nightmare far, far behind, and each one knows that the other has one good friend in the world in whom he or she can feel entire confidence, and their friendship is growing stronger and clearer and more normal every day.

It is not the ceremony that makes the marriage: the ceremony only begins it. Marriage is a slow and careful adjustment. A true story which illustrates the opposite of this condition is that of a man and woman who were to all appearances happily married for years. They were apparently the very closest friends. The man’s nerves were excitable and peculiar, and his wife adjusted herself to them by indulging them and working in every way to save him from friction. No woman could stand that constant work of adjustment which was in reality maladjustment, and this wife’s nerves broke down unexpectedly and completely.

When our nerves get weak we are unable to repress resistance which in a stronger state we had covered up. This wife, while she had indulged and protected her husband’s peculiarities, had subconsciously resisted them. When she became ill her subconscious resistance came to the surface. She surprised herself by growing impatient with her husband. He, of course; retorted. As she grew worse he did not find his usual comfort from her care, and instead of trying to help her to get well he turned his back on her and complained to another woman. Finally the friction of the two nervous systems became dangerously intense. Each was equally obstinate, and there was nothing to do but to separate The woman died of a broken heart, and the man is probably insane for the rest of his life.

It was nothing but the mismanagement of their own and each other’s nerves that made all this terrible trouble. Their love seemed genuine at first, and could certainly have grown to be really genuine if they had become truly adjusted. And the saddest part of the whole story is that they were both peculiarly adapted to be of use to their fellow-men. During the first years of their life their home was a delight to all their friends.

Tired nerves are likely to close up a man or make him irritable, complaining, and ugly, whereas the tendency in a woman is to be irritable, complaining, and tearful. Now of course when each one is selfishly looking out for his or her comfort neither one can be expected to understand the other. The man thinks he is entirely justified in being annoyed with the woman’s tearful, irritable complaints, and so he is–in a way. The woman thinks that she has a right to suffer because of her husband’s irritable ugliness, and so she has–in a way. But in the truest way, and the way which appeals to every one’s common sense, neither one has a right to complain of the other, and each one by right should have first made things better and clearer in himself and herself.

Human nature is not so bad–really in its essence it is not bad at all. If we only give the other man a real chance. It is the pushing and pulling and demanding of one human being toward another that smother the best in us, and make life a fearful strain. Of course there is a healthy demanding as well as an unhealthy demanding, but, so far as I know, the healthy demanding can come only when we are clear of personal resistance and can demand on the strength of a true principle and without selfish emotion. There is a kind of gentle, motherly contempt with which some women speak of their husbands, which must get on a man’s nerves very painfully. It is intensely and most acutely annoying. And yet I have heard good women speak in that way over and over again. The gentleness and motherliness are of course neither of them real in such cases. The gentle, motherly tone is used to cover up their own sense of superiority.

“Poor boy, poor boy,” they may say; “a man is really like a child.” So he may be–so he often is childish, and sometimes childish in the extreme. But where could you find greater and more abject childishness than in a woman’s ungoverned emotions?

A woman must respect the manliness of her husband’s soul, and must cling to her belief in its living existence behind any amount of selfish, restless irritability, if she is going to find a friend in him or be a friend to him. She must also know that his nervous system may be just as sensitive as hers. Sometimes it is more sensitive, and should be accordingly respected. Demand nothing and expect nothing, but hold him to his best in your mind and wait.

That is a rule that would work wonderfully if every woman who is puzzled about her husband’s restlessness and lack of interest in home affairs would apply it steadily and for long enough. It is impossible to manufacture a happy, sympathetic married life artificially–impossible! But as each one looks to one’s self and does one’s part fully, and then is willing to wait for the other, the happiness and the sympathy, the better power for work and the joyful ability to play come–they do come; they are real and alive and waiting for us as we get clear from the interferences.

“Why doesn’t my husband like to stay with me when he comes home? Why can’t we have nice, cozy times together?” a wife asks with sad longing in her eyes.

And to the same friend the husband (who is, by the way, something of a pig) says: “I should be glad to stay with Nellie often in the evening, but she will always talk about her worries, and she worries about the family in a way that is idiotic. She is always sure that George will catch the measles because a boy in the next street has them, and she is always sure that our children do not have the advantages nor the good manners that other children have. If it is not one thing it is another; whenever we are alone there is something to complain of, and her last complaint was about her own selfishness.” Then he laughed at what he considered a good joke, and in five minutes had forgotten all about her.

This wife, in a weak, selfish little way, was trying to give her husband her confidence, and her complaint about her own selfishness was genuine. She wanted his help to get out of it. If he had given her just a little gracious attention and told her how impossible it was really to discuss the children when she began the conversation with whining complaint, she would have allowed herself to be taught and their intercourse would have improved. On the other hand, if the wife had realized that her husband came home from the cares of his business tired and nervous, and if she had talked lightly and easily on general subjects and tried to follow his interests, when his nerves were rested and quiet she might have found him ready and able to give her a little lift with regard to the children.

It is interesting and it is delightful to see how, as we each work first to bear our own burdens, we not only find ourselves ready and able to lighten the burdens of others but find others who are helpful to us.

A woman who finds her husband “so restless and irritable” should remember that in reality a man’s nervous system is just as sensitive as a woman’s, and, with a steady and consistent effort to bear her own burdens and to work out her own problems, should prepare herself to lighten her husband’s burdens and help to solve his problems; that is the truest way of bringing him to the place where he will be glad to share her burdens with her as well as his own.

But we want to remember that there is a radical difference between indulging another’s selfishness, and waiting, with patient yielding, for him to discover his selfishness himself, and to act unselfishly from his own free will.

CHAPTER VII

_Quiet vs. Chronic Excitement_

SOME women live in a chronic state of excitement all the time and they do not find it out until they get ill. Even then they do not always find it out, and then they get more ill.

It is really much the same with excitable women as with a man who thinks he must always keep a little stimulant in himself in order to keep about his work. When a bad habit is established in us we feel unnatural if we give the habit up for a moment–and we feel natural when we are in it–but it is poison all the same.

If a woman has a habit of constantly snuffing or clearing her throat, or rocking a rocking chair, or chattering to whoever may be near her she would feel unnatural and weird if she were suddenly wrenched out of any of these things. And yet the poisoning process goes on just the same.

When it seems immaterial to us that we should be natural we are in a pretty bad way and the worst of it is we do not know it.

I once took a friend with me into the country who was one of those women who lived on excitement in every-day life. When she dressed in the morning she dressed in excitement. She went down to breakfast in excitement. She went about the most humdrum everyday affairs excited. Every event in life–little or big–was an excitement to her–and she went to bed tired out with excitement–over nothing.

We went deep in the woods and in the mountains, full of great powerful quiet.

When my friend first got there she was excited about her arrival, she was excited about the house and the people in it, but in the middle of the night she jumped up in bed with a groan of torture.

I thought she had been suddenly taken ill and started up quickly from my end of the room to see what was the trouble.

“Oh, oh,” she groaned, “the quiet! It is so quiet!” Her brain which had been in a whirl of petty excitement felt keen pain when the normal quiet touched it.

Fortunately this woman had common sense and I could gradually explain the truth to her, and she acted upon it and got rested and strong and quiet.

I knew another woman who had been wearing shoes that were too tight for her and that pinched her toes all together. The first time she wore shoes that gave her feet room enough the muscles of her feet hurt her so that she could hardly walk.

Of course, having been cramped into abnormal contraction the process of expanding to freedom would be painful.

If you had held your fist clenched tight for years, or months, or even weeks, how it would hurt to open it so that you could have free use of your fingers.

The same truth holds good with a fist that has been clenched, a foot that has been pinched, or a brain that has been contracted with excitement.

The process leading from the abnormal to the normal is always a painful one. To stay in the abnormal means blindness, constantly limiting power and death.

To come out into a normal atmosphere and into a normal way of living means clearer sight, constantly increasing power, and fresh life.

This habit of excitement is not only contracting to the brain; it has its effect over the whole body. If there is any organ that is weaker than any other the excitement eventually shows itself. A woman may be suffering from indigestion, or she may be running up large doctor’s bills because of either one of a dozen other organic disturbances, with no suspicion that the cause of the whole trouble is that the noisy, excited, strained habits of her life have robbed her body of the vitality it needed to keep it in good running order.

As if an engineer threw his coal all over the road and having no fuel for his engine wondered that it would not run. Stupid women we are–most of us!

The trouble is that many of us are so deeply immersed in the habit of excitement that we do not know it.

It is a healthy thing to test ourselves and to really try to find ourselves out. It is not only healthy; it is deeply interesting.

If quiet of the woods, or, any other quiet place, makes us fidgety, we may be sure that our own state is abnormal and we had better go into the woods as often as possible until we feel ourselves to be a part of the quiet there.

If we go into the woods and get soothed and quieted and then come out and get fussed up and excited so that we feel painfully the contrast between the quiet and our every-day life, then we can know that we are living in the habit of abnormal excitement and we can set to work to stop it.

“That is all very well,” I hear my readers say, “but how are you going to stop living in abnormal excitement when every circumstance and every person about you is full of it and knows nothing else?”

If you really want to do it and would feel interested to make persistent effort I can give you the recipe and I can promise any woman that if she perseveres until she has found the way she will never cease to be grateful.

If you start with the intention of taking the five minutes’ search for quiet every day, do not let your intention be weakened or yourself discouraged if for some days you see no result at all.

At first it may be that whatever quiet you find will seem so strange that it will annoy you or make you very nervous, but if you persist and work right through, the reward will be worth the pains many times over.

Sometimes quieting our minds helps us to quiet our bodies; sometimes we must quiet our bodies first before we can find the way to a really quiet mind. The attention of the mind to quiet the body, of course, reacts back on to the mind, and from there we can pass on to thinking quietly. Each individual must judge for herself as to the best way of reaching the quiet. I will give several recipes and you can take your choice.

First, to quiet the body:–

1. Lie still and see how quietly you can breathe.

2. Sit still and let your head droop very slowly forward until finally it hangs down with its whole weight. Then lift it up very, very slowly and feel as if you pushed it all the way up from the lower part of your spine, or, better still, as if it grew up, so that you feel the slow, creeping, soothing motion all the way up your spine while your head is coming up, and do not let your head come to an entirely erect position until your chest is as high as you can hold it comfortably. When your head is erect take a long, quiet breath and drop it again. You can probably drop it and raise it twice in the five minutes. Later on it should take the whole five minutes to drop it and raise it once and an extra two minutes for the long breath.

When you have dropped your head as far as you can, pause for a full minute without moving at all and feel heavy; then begin at the lower part of your spine and very slowly start to raise it. Be careful not to hold your breath, and watch to breathe as easily and quietly as you can while your head is moving.

If this exercise hurts the back of your neck or any part of your spine, don’t be troubled by it, but go right ahead and you will soon come to where it not only does not hurt, but is very restful.

When you have reached an erect position again stay there quietly–first take long gentle breaths and let them get shorter and shorter until they are a good natural length, then forget your breathing altogether and sit still as if you never had moved, you never were going to move, and you never wanted to move.

This emphasizes the good natural quiet in your brain and so makes you more sensitive to unquiet.

Gradually you will get the habit of catching yourself in states of unnecessary excitement; at such times you cannot go off by yourself and go through the exercises. You cannot even stop where you are and go through them, but you can recall the impression made on your brain at the time you did them and in that way rule out your excitement and gain the real power that should be in its place.

So little by little the state of excitement becomes as unpleasant as a cloud of dust on a windy day and the quiet is as pleasant as under the trees on top of a hill in the best kind of a June day.

The trouble is so many of us live in a cloud of dust that we do not suspect even the existence of the June day, but if we are fortunate enough once or twice even to get to sneezing from the dust, and so to recognize its unpleasantness, then we want to look carefully to see if there is not a way out of it.

It is then that we can get the beginning of the real quiet which is the normal atmosphere of every human being.

But we must persist for a long time before we can feel established in the quiet itself. What is worth having is worth working for–and the more it is worth having, the harder work is required to get it.

Nerves form habits, and our nerves not only get the habit of living in the dust, but the nerves of all about us have the same habit. So that when at first we begin to get into clear air, we may almost dislike it, and rush back into the dust again, because we and our friends are accustomed to it.

All that bad habit has to be fought, and conquered, and there are many difficulties in the way of persistence, but the reward is worth it all, as I hope to show in later articles.

I remember once walking in a crowded street where the people were hurrying and rushing, where every one’s face was drawn and knotted, and nobody seemed to be having a good time. Suddenly and unexpectedly I saw a man coming toward me with a face so quiet that it showed out like a little bit of calm in a tornado. He looked like a common, every-day man of the world, so far as his dress and general bearing went, and his features were not at all unusual, but his expression was so full of quiet interest as to be the greatest contrast to those about him. He was not thinking his own thoughts either–he was one of the crowd and a busy, interested observer.

He might have said, “You silly geese, what are you making all this fuss about, you can do it much better if you will go more easily.” If that was his thought it came from a very kindly sense of humor, and he gave me a new realization of what it meant, practically, to be in the world and not of it.

If you are in the world you can live, and observe, and take a much better part in its workings. If you are of it, you are simply whirled in an eddy of dust, however you may pose to yourself or to others.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Tired Emphasis_

“I AM so tired, so tired–I go to bed tired, I get up tired, and I am tired all the time.”

How many women–how many hundred women, how many thousand women–say that to themselves and to others constantly.

It is perfectly true; they are tired all the time; they do go to bed tired and get up tired and stay tired all day.

If, however, they could only know how very much they increase their fatigue by their constant mental emphasis of it, and if at the same time they could turn their wills in the direction of decreasing the fatigue, instead of emphasizing it, a very large percentage of the tired feeling could be done away with altogether.

Many women would gladly make more of an effort in the direction of rest if they knew how, and I propose in this article to give a prescription for the cure of the tired emphasis which, if followed, will bring happy results.

When you go to bed at night, no matter how tired you feel, instead of thinking how tired you are, think how good it is that you can go to bed to get rested.

It will probably seem absurd to you at first. You may say to yourself: “How ridiculous, going to bed to get rested, when I have only one short night to rest in, and one or two weeks in bed would not rest me thoroughly.”

The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to rest, you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the tired emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the tired.

This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. “What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time,” and staying there you made no effort whatever to get out of it, even though there was dry land right in front of you.

Again you may answer: “But in my tired bog there is no dry land in front of me, none at all.”

I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think–if you will open your eyes–and to open your eyes you must make an effort.

No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do in the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back in the wrong direction.

The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who have learned the right direction for the first time.

To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a very strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets easier, and easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis entirely and have the habit of looking toward rest.

We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must think the meaning of the words and insist upon it: “I am very tired. Yes, of course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get rested.”

There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day when the time comes to rest.

One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is merely in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of resistance, and resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it proportionately.

That is why it is good to say to ourselves: “Yes, I am tired; I am awfully tired. I am willing to be tired.”

When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more emphasis and more meaning, “and I am going to bed to get rested.”

Some one could say just here: “That is all very well for an ordinarily tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too tired even to try it.”

The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to try it, and the more interesting the experiment will be.

Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is always restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired emphasis when we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast it off before we go to meals, and at odd opportunities throughout the day.

The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by the intelligent use of our own wills.

Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at all?

Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where, when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time–or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient.

Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this biggest game of all–this game of life?

We must play it!

Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play it and obey the rules we do not really play at all.

Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and find them out.

Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that do not suit our convenience.

But that never works.

It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play the game in their own way instead of in the game’s way.

It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path just by them, if they will take it.

Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a ditch and complain.

Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have.

CHAPTER IX

_How to be Ill and get Well_

ILLNESS seems to be one of the hardest things to happen to a busy woman. Especially hard is it when a woman must live from hand to mouth, and so much illness means, almost literally, so much less food.

Sometimes one is taken so suddenly and seriously ill that it is impossible to think of whether one has food and shelter or not; one must just be taken care of or die. It does not seem to matter which at the time.

Then another must meet the difficulty. It is the little nagging illnesses that make the trouble–just enough to keep a woman at home a week or ten days or more, and deprive her of wages which she might have been receiving, and which she very much needs.

These are the illnesses that are hard to bear.

Many a woman has suffered through an illness like this, which has dragged out from day to day, and finally left her pale and weak, to return to her work with much less strength than she needs for what is before her.

After forcing herself to work day after day, her strength comes back so slowly, that she appears to go through another illness, on her feet, and “in the harness,” before she can really call herself well again.

There are a few clear points which, if intelligently comprehended, could teach one how to meet an illness, and if persistently acted upon, would not only shorten it, but would lighten the convalescence so that when the invalid returned to her work she would feel stronger than before she was taken ill.

When one is taken with a petty illness, if it is met in an intelligent way, the result can be a good rest, and one feels much better, and has a more healthy appearance, than before the attack.

This effect has been so often experienced that with some people there is a little bit of pleasantry passed on meeting a friend, in the remark: “Why, how do you do; how well you look–you must have been ill!”

If we remember when we are taken ill that nature always tends towards health, we will study carefully to fulfill nature’s conditions in order to cure the disease.

We will rest quietly, until nature in her process toward health has reached health. In that way our illness can be the means of giving us a good rest, and, while we may feel the loss of the energy of which the disease has robbed us, we also feel the good effects of the rest which we have given to organs which were only tired.

These organs which have gained rest can, in their turn, help toward renewing the strength of the organs which had been out of order, and thus we get up from an illness looking so well, and feeling so well, that we do not regret the loss of time, and feel ready to work, and to gradually make up the loss of money.

Of course, the question is, how to fulfill the conditions so that this happy result can be attained.

In the first place, _do not fret._

“But how can I help fretting?” someone will say, “when I am losing money every day, and do not know how many more days I may be laid up?”

The answer to that is: “If you will think of the common sense of it, you can easily see that the strain of fretting is interfering radically with your getting well. For when you are using up strength to fret, you are simply robbing yourself of the vitality which would be used directly in the cure of your illness.”

Not only that, but the strain of fretting increases the strain of illness, and is not only preventing you from getting well, but it is tending to keep you ill.

When we realize that fact, it seems as if it would be an easy matter to stop fretting in order to get well.

It is as senseless to fret about an illness, no matter how much just cause we may feel we have, as it would be to walk west when our destination was directly east.

Stop and think of it. Is not that true? Imagine a child with a pin pricking him, kicking, and screaming, and squirming with the pain, so that his mother–try as carefully as she may–takes five minutes to find the pin and get it out, when she might have done it and relieved him in five seconds, if only the child had kept still and let her.

So it is with us when Mother Nature is working with wise steadiness to find the pin that is making us ill, and to get it out. We fret and worry so that it takes her ten or twenty days to do the good work that she might have done in three.

In order to drop the fretting, we must use our wills to think, and feel, and act, so that the way may be opened for health to come to us in the quickest possible time.

Every contraction of worry which appears in the muscles we must drop, so that we lie still with a sense of resting, and waiting for the healing power, which is surely working within us, to make us well.

_We can do this by a deliberate use of our wills._

If we could take our choice between medicine, and the curative power of dropping anxiety and letting ourselves get well, there would be no hesitancy, provided we understood the alternatives.

I speak of fretting first because it is so often the strongest interference with health.

Defective circulation is the trouble in most diseases, and we should do all we can to open the channels so that the circulation, being free elsewhere, can tend to open the way to greater freedom in the part diseased. The contractions caused by fretting impede the circulation still more, and therefore heighten the disease.

If once, by a strong use of the will, we drop the fretting and give ourselves up entirely to letting nature cure us, then we can study, with interest, to fulfill other necessary conditions. We can give ourselves the right amount of fresh air, of nourishment, of bathing, and the right sort of medicine, if any is needed.

Thus, instead of interfering with nature, we are doing all in our power to aid her; and when nature and the invalid work in harmony, health comes on apace.

When illness brings much pain and discomfort with it, the endeavor to relax out of the contractions caused by the pain, are of the same service as dropping contractions caused by the fretting.

If one can find a truly wise doctor, or nurse, in such an illness as I refer to, get full instructions in just one visit, and then follow those directions explicitly, only one visit will be needed, probably, and the gain from that will pay for it many times over.

This article is addressed especially to those who are now in health.

It is perhaps too much to expect one in the midst of an illness to start at once with what we may call the curative attitude, although it could be done, but if those who are now well and strong will read and get a good understanding of this healthy way of facing an illness, and get it into their subconscious minds, they will find that if at any time they should be unfortunate enough to be attacked with illness, they can use the knowledge to very real advantage, and–what is more–they can, with the right tact, help others to use it also.

To see the common sense of a process and, when we have not the opportunity to use the laws ourselves, to help others by means of our knowledge, impresses our own brains more thoroughly with the truth, especially if our advice is taken and acted upon and thus proved to be true.

It must not be forgotten, however, that to help another man or woman to a healthy process of getting well requires gentle patience and quiet, steady, unremitting tact.

CHAPTER X

_Is Physical Culture good for Girls?_

A NUMBER of women were watching a game of basket-ball played by some high-school girls. In the interim for rest one woman said to her neighbor: “Do you see that girl flat on her back, looking like a very heavy bag of sand?”

“Yes,” the answer was; “what under the sun is she doing that for? She looks heavy and lazy and logy, while the other girls are talking and laughing and having a good time.”

“You wait and watch her play,” responded the first woman. And so they waited and watched, and to the astonishment of the friend the girl who had looked “lazy and logy,” lying flat on her back during the rest-time, was the most active of the players, and really saved the game.

When the game was finished the woman said to her friend with surprise in her voice: “How did you see through that, and understand what that girl was aiming for?”

The answer was: “Well, I know the girl, and both she and I have read Kipling’s ‘The Maltese Cat.’ Don’t you remember how the best polo ponies in that story, when they were off duty, hung their heads and actually made themselves looked fagged, in order to be fresher when the time came to play? And how ‘The Maltese Cat’ scouted the silly ponies who held their heads up and kicked and looked alert while they waited? And don’t you remember the result?”

“No, I never read the story, but I have certainly seen your point prove itself to-day. I shall read it at once. Meanwhile, I want to speak to that clever girl who could catch a point like that and use it.”

“Take care, please, that you do not mention it to her at all,” said the friend. “You will draw her attention back to herself and likely as not make her lose the next game. Points like that have got to be worked on without self-consciousness, not talked about.”

And so the women told the child they were glad that her side won the game and never mentioned her own part in it at all. After all she had only found the law that the more passive you can be when it is time to rest, the more alert you are and the more powerful in activity. The polo pony knew it as a matter of course. We humans have to discover it.

Let us, just for the interest of it, follow that same basket-ball player a little more closely. Was she well developed and evenly trained in her muscles? Yes, very. Did she go to gymnasium, or did she scorn it? She went, twice a week regularly, and had good fun there; but there was just this contrast between her and most of the girls in the class: Jane, as we will call her, went to gymnasium as a means to an end. She found that she got an even development there which enabled her to walk better, to play better, and to work better. In gymnasium she laid her muscular foundation on which to build all the good, active work of her life. The gymnasium she went to, however, was managed in an unusual way except for the chest weights, which always “opened the ball,” the members of the class never knew what work they were to do. Their minds were kept alert throughout the hour and a half. If their attention wavered they tripped or got behind in the exercise, and the mental action which went into the movement of every muscle made the body alive with the healthy activity of a well-concentrated, well-directed mind.

Another point which our young friend learned at gymnasium was to direct her mind only on to the muscles that were needed. Did you ever try to clench your fist so tight that it could not be opened? If not, try it, and relax all over your body while you are keeping your fist tight closed. You will see that the more limp your body becomes the tighter you can keep your fist clenched. All the force goes in that one direction. In this way a moderately strong girl can keep a strong man hard at work for several minutes before he can make any impression on the closed hand. That illustrates in a simple way the fact that the most wholesome concentration is that which comes from dropping everything that interferes–letting the force of mind or body flow only in the direction in which it is to be used.

Many girls use their brains in the wrong way while on the gymnasium floor by saying to themselves, “I cannot do that.” The brain is so full of that thought that the impression an open brain would receive has no chance to enter, and the result is an awkward, nervous, and uncertain movement. If a girl’s brain and muscle were so relaxed that the impression on the one would cause a correct use and movement of the other how easy it would be thereafter to apply the proper tension to the muscle at the proper time without overtaxing the nerves.

Some one has well said that “it is training, not straining, that we want in our gymnasiums.” Only when a girl is trained from this point of view does she get real training.

This basket-ball player had also been taught how to rest after exercise in a way which appealed to her especially, because of her interest which had already been aroused in Kipling’s polo pony. She was taught intelligently that if, after vigorous exercise, when the blood is coursing rapidly all over the body, you allow yourself to be entirely open and passive, the blood finds no interruptions in its work and can carry away the waste matter much more effectually. In that way you get the full result of the exercise. It is not necessary always to lie down to have your body passive enough after vigorous exercise to get the best results. If you sit down after exercise you want to sit without tension. Or if you walk home from gymnasium you want to walk loosely and freely, keeping your chest up and a little in advance, and pushing with the ball of your back foot with a good, rhythmic balance. As this is the best way to sit and the best way to walk–gymnasium or no gymnasium–to look out for a well-balanced sitting and a well-balanced walk directly after vigorous exercise, keeps us in good form for sitting and walking all the time.

I know of a professor in one of our large colleges who was offered also a professorship in a woman’s college, and he refused to accept because he said women’s minds did not react. When he lectured to girls he found that, however attentively they might seem to listen, there was no response. They gave nothing in return.

Of course this is not true of all girls, and of course the gentleman who refused the chair in the woman’s college would agree that it is not true of all girls, but if those who read the anecdote would, instead of getting indignant, just look into the matter a little, they would see how true it is of many girls, and by thinking a little further we can see that it is not at present the girls’ fault. A hundred years ago girls were not expected to think. I remember an anecdote which a very intelligent old lady used to tell me about her mother. Once, when she was a little girl, her mother found some fault with her which the daughter knew to be unjust, and she answered timidly, “But, Mother, I think–”

“Abigail,” came the sharp reminder, “you’ve no business to think.”

One hundred years ago it was only the very exceptional girls who really thought. Now we are gradually working toward the place where every girl will think. And surely it cannot be very long now before the united minds of a class of college girls will have the habit of reacting so that any man will feel in his own brain a vigorous result from lecturing to them.

This fact that a girl’s brain does not react is proved in many ways. Most of the women who come to nerve specialists seem to feel that they are to sit still and be cured, while the men who come respond and do their part much more intelligently–the result being that men get out of “nerves” in half the time and stay out, whereas girls often get out a little way and slump (literally slump) back again before they can be helped to respond truly enough to get well and keep themselves well. This information is given only with an idea of stirring girls up to their best possibilities, for there is not a woman born with a sound mind who is not capable of reacting mentally, in a greater or less degree, to all that she hears, provided she uses her will consciously to form the new habit.

Now this need of intelligent reaction is just the trouble with girls and physical culture. Physical culture should be a means to an end–and that is all, absolutely all. It is delightful and strengthening when it is taught thoughtfully as a means to an end, and I might almost say it is only weakening when it is made an end in itself.

Girls need to react intelligently to what is given them in physical training as much as to what is given them in a lecture on literature or philosophy or botany. How many girls do we know who take physical culture in a class, often simply because it is popular at the time, and never think of taking a long walk in the country–never think of going in for a vigorous outdoor game? How many girls do we know who take physical culture and never think of making life easy for their stomachs, or seeing that they get a normal amount of sleep? Exercise in the fresh air, with a hearty objective interest in all that is going on about us, is the very best sort of exercise that we can take, and physical culture is worse than nothing if it is not taken only as a means to enable us to do more in the open air, and do it better, and gain from it more life.

There is one girl who comes to my mind of whom I should like to tell because she illustrates truly a point that we cannot consider too carefully. She went to a nerve specialist very much broken in health, and when asked if she took plenty of exercise in the open air she replied “Yes, indeed.” And it was proved to be the very best exercise. She had a good horse, and she rode well; she rode a great deal, and not too much. She had interesting dogs and she took them with her. She walked, too, in beautiful country. But she was carrying in her mind all the time extreme resistance to other circumstances of her life. She did not know how to drop the resistance or face the circumstances, and the mental strain in which she held herself day and night, waking or sleeping, prevented the outdoor exercise from really refreshing her. When she learned to face the circumstances then the exercise could do its good work.

On the other hand, there are many forms of nervous resistance and many disagreeable moods which good, vigorous exercise will blow away entirely, leaving our minds so clear that we wonder at ourselves, and wonder that we could ever have had those morbid thoughts.

The mind acts and the body reacts, the body acts and the mind reacts, but of course at the root of it all is the real desire for what is normal, or–alas!–the lack of that desire.

If physical culture does not make us love the open air, if it does not make us love to take a walk or climb a mountain, if it does not help us to take the walk or climb the mountain with more freedom, if it does not make us move along outdoors so easily that we forget our bodies altogether, and only enjoy what we see about us and feel how good it is to be alive–why, then physical culture is only an ornament without any use.

There is an interesting point in mountain-climbing which I should like to speak of, by the way, and which makes it much pleasanter and better exercise. If, after first starting–and, of course, you should start very slowly and heavily, like an elephant–you get out of breath, let yourself stay out of breath. Even emphasize the being out of breath by breathing harder than your lungs started to breathe, and then let your lungs pump and pump and pump until they find their own equilibrium. The result is delightful, and the physical freedom that follows is more than delightful. I remember seeing two girls climbing in the high Rocky Mountains in this way, when other women were going up on ponies. Finally one of the guides looked back, and with an expression of mild astonishment said “Well, you have lungs!” This was a very pleasant proof of the right kind of breathing.

There are many good points for climbing and walking and swimming and all outdoor exercise that can be gained from the best sort of physical culture; and physical culture is good for girls when it gives these points and leads to a spontaneous love for outdoor exercise. But when it results only in a self-conscious pose of the body then it is harmful.

We want to have strong bodies, free for every normal action, with quiet nerves, and muscles well coordinated. Then our bodies are merely instruments: good, clean, healthy instruments. They are the “mechanism of the outside.” And when the mechanism of the outside is well oiled and running smoothly it can be forgotten.

There can be no doubt but that physical culture is good for girls provided it is given and taken with intelligent interest, but it must be done thoroughly to be done to real advantage. As, for instance, the part the shower-bath plays after exercising is most important, for it equalizes the circulation. Physical culture is good for girls who have little or no muscular action in their daily lives, for it gives them the healthiest exercise in the least space of time, and prepares them to get more life from exercise outdoors. It is good for girls whose daily lives are full of activity, because it develops the unused muscles and so rests those that have been overused. Many a hardworking girl has entered the gymnasium class tired and has left it rested.

CHAPTER XI

_Working Restfully_

ONCE met a man who had to do an important piece of scientific work in a given time. He worked from Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock until Monday morning at 10 o’clock without interruption, except for one hour’s sleep and the necessary time it took for nourishment.

After he had finished he was, of course, intensely tired, but instead of going right to bed and to sleep, and taking all that brain strain to sleep with him he took his dog and his gun and went hunting for several hours.

Turning his attention to something so entirely different gave the other part of his brain a chance to recover itself a little. The fresh air revived him, and the gentle exercise started up his circulation, If he had gone directly to sleep after his work, the chances are that it would have taken him days to recover from the fatigue, for nature would have had too much against her to have reacted quickly from so abnormal a strain–getting an entire change of attention and starting up his circulation in the fresh air gave nature just the start she needed. After that she could work steadily while he slept, and he awakened rested and refreshed.

To write from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning seems a stupid thing to do–no matter what the pressure is. To work for an abnormal time or at an abnormal rate is almost always stupid and short sighted.

There are exceptions, however, and it would be good if for those exceptions people knew how to take the best care of themselves. But it is not only after such abnormal work that we need to know how to react most restfully. It is important after all work, and especially for those who have some steady labor for the whole day.

Every one is more or less tired at the end of the day and the temptation is to drop into a chair or lie down on the sofa or to go right to bed and go to sleep. Don’t do it.

Get some entire, active change for your brain, if it is only for fifteen minutes or half an hour. If you live in the city, even to go to walk and look into the shop windows is better than nothing. In that way you get fresh air, and if one knows how to look into shop windows without wanting anything or everything they see there, then it is very entertaining.

It is a good game to look into a shop window for two or three minutes and then look away and see how well you can remember everything in it. It is important always to take shop windows that are out of one’s own line of work.

If you live in the country, a little walk out of doors is pleasanter than in the city, for the air is better; and there is much that is interesting, in the way of trees and sky, and stars, at night.

As you walk, make a conscious effort to look out and about you. Forget the work of the day, and take good long breaths.

When you do not feel like going out of doors, take a story book–or some other reading, if you prefer–and put your mind right on it for half an hour. The use of a really good novel cannot be overestimated. It not only serves as recreation, but it introduces us to phases of human nature that otherwise we would know nothing whatever about. A very great change from the day’s work can be found in a good novel and a very happy change.

If the air in the theaters were fresher and good seats did not cost so much a good play, well acted, would be better than a good novel. Sometimes it freshens us up to play a game after the day’s work is over, and for those who love music there is of course the greatest rest in that. But there again comes in the question of cost.

Why does not some kind soul start concerts for the people where, for a nominal admission, the best music can be heard? And why does not some other kind soul start a theater for the people where, for a very small price of admission, they can see the best plays and see them well acted?

We have public libraries in all our cities and towns, and a librarian in one large city loves to tell the tale of a poor woman in the slums with her door barred with furniture for fear of the drunken raiders in the house, quietly reading a book from the public library.

There are many similar stories to go with that. If we had really good theaters and really good concerts to be reached as simply and as easily as the books in our public libraries, the healthy influence throughout the cities would be proportionately increased. The trouble is that people cater as much to the rich with their ideas of a national theater as the theatrical syndicate itself.

I could not pretend to suggest amusements that would appeal to any or every reader, but I can make my point clear that when one is tired it is healthy to have a change of activity before going to rest.

“Oh,” I hear, “I can’t! I can’t! I am too tired.”

I know the feeling.

I have no doubt the man who wrote for nearly two days had a very strong tendency to go right to bed, but he had common sense behind it, and he knew the result would be better if he followed his common sense rather than his inclination. And so it proved.

It seems very hard to realize that it is not the best thing to go right to bed or to sit and do nothing when one is so tired as to make it seem impossible to do anything else.

It would be wrong to take vigorous physical exercise after great brain or body fatigue, but entire change of attention and gentle exercise is just what is needed, although care should always be taken not to keep at it too long. Any readers who make up their minds to try this process of resting will soon prove its happy effect.

A quotation from a recent daily paper reads, “‘Rest while you work,’ says Annie Payson Call,”–and then the editor adds, “and get fired,” and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation of a very practical truth.

I can easily imagine a woman–especially a tired out and bitter woman–reading directions telling how to work restfully and exclaiming with all the vehemence of her bitterness: “That is all very well to write about. It sounds well, but let any one take hold of my work and try to do it restfully.

“If my employer should come along and see me working in a lazy way like that, he would very soon discharge me. No, no. I am tired out; I must keep at it as long as I can, and when I cannot keep at it any longer, I will die–and there is the end.”

“It is nothing but drudge, drudge for your bread and butter–and what does your bread and butter amount to when you get it?”

There are thousands of women working to-day with bodies and minds so steeped in their fatigue that they cannot or will not take an idea outside of their rut of work. The rut has grown so deep, and they have sunken in so far that they cannot look over the edge.

It is true that it is easier to do good hard work in the lines to which one has been accustomed than to do easy work which is strange. Nerves will go on in old accustomed habits–even habits of tiresome strain–more easily than they will be changed into new habits of working without strain.

The mind, too, gets saturated with a sense of fatigue until the fatigue seems normal, and to feel well rested would–at first–seem abnormal. This being a fact, it is a logical result that an habitually tired and strained mind will indignantly refuse the idea that it can do more work and do it better without the strain.

There is a sharp corner to be turned to learn to work without strain, when one has had the habit of working with it. After the corner is turned, it requires steady, careful study to understand the new normal habit of working restfully, and to get the new habit established.

When once it is established, this normal habit of work develops its own requirements, and the working without strain becomes to us an essential part of the work itself.

For taken as a whole, more work is done and the work is done better when we avoid strain than when we do not. What is required to find this out is common sense and strength of character.

Character grows with practice; it builds and builds on itself when once it has a fair start, and a very little intelligence is needed if once the will is used to direct the body and mind in the lines of common sense.

Intelligence grows, too, as we use it. Everything good in the soul grows with use; everything bad, destroys.

Let us make a distinction to begin with between “rest while you work” and “working restfully.”

“Rest while you work” might imply laziness. There is a time for rest and there is a time for work. When we work we should work entirely. When we rest we should rest entirely.

If we try to mix rest and work, we do neither well. That is true. But if we work restfully, we work then with the greatest amount of power and the least amount of effort.

That means more work and work better done after the right habit is established than we did before, when the wrong habit was established. The difficulty comes, and the danger of “getting fired,” when we are changing our habit.

To obviate that difficulty, we must be content to change our habit more slowly. Suppose we come home Saturday night all tired out; go to bed and go to sleep, and wake Sunday almost more tired than when we went to bed. On Sunday we do not have to go to work.

Let us take a little time for the sole purpose of thinking our work over, and trying to find where the unnecessary strain is.

“But,” I hear some one say, “I am too tired to think.” Now it is a scientific fact that when our brains are all tired out in one direction, if we use our wills to start them working in another direction, they will get rested.

“But,” again I hear, “if I think about my work, why isn’t that using my brain in the same direction?” Because in thinking to apply new principles to work, of which you have never thought before, you are thinking in a new direction.

Not only that, but in applying new and true principles to your work you are bringing new life into the work itself.

On this Sunday morning, when you take an hour to devote yourself to the study of how you can work without getting overtired ask yourself the following questions:–

(1) “What do I resist in or about my work?” Find out each thing that you do resist, and drop the contractions that come in your body, with the intention of dropping the resistances in your mind.

(2) “Do I drop my work at meals and eat quietly?”

(3) “Do I take every opportunity that I can to get fresh air, and take good, full breaths of it?”

(4) “Do I feel hurried and pushed in my work? Do I realize that no matter how much of a hurry there may be, I can hurry more effectively if I drop the strain of the hurry?”

(5) “How much superfluous strain do I use in my work? Do I work with a feeling of strain? How can I observe better in order to become conscious of the strain and drop it?”

These are enough questions for one time! If you concentrate on these questions and on finding the answers, and do it diligently, you will be surprised to see how the true answers will come to you, and how much clearer they will become as you put them into daily practice.

CHAPTER XII

_Imaginary Vacations_

ONCE a young woman who had very hard work to do day after day and who had come to where she was chronically strained and tired, turned to her mother just as she was starting for work in the morning, and in a voice tense with fatigue and trouble, said:–

“Mother, I cannot stand it. I cannot stand it. Unless I can get a vacation long enough at least to catch my breath, I shall break down altogether.”

“Why don’t you take a vacation today?” asked her mother. The daughter got a little irritated and snapped out:—

“Why do you say such a foolish thing as that, Mother? You know as well as I that I could not leave my work to-day.”

“Don’t be cross, dear. Stop a minute and let me tell you what I mean. I have been thinking about it and I know you will appreciate what I have to say, and I know you can do it. Now listen.” Whereupon the mother went on to explain quite graphically a process of pretense–good, wholesome pretense.

To any one who has no imagination this would not or could not appeal.

To the young woman of whom I write it not only appealed heartily, but she tried it and made it work. It was simply that she should play that she had commenced her vacation and was going to school to amuse herself.

As, for instance, she would say to herself, and believe it: “Isn’t it good that I can have a vacation and a rest. What shall I do to get all I can out of it?

“I think I will go and see what they are doing in the grammar school. Maybe when I get there it will amuse me to teach some of the children. It is always interesting to see how children are going to take what you say to them and to see the different ways in which they recite their lessons.”

By the time she got to school she was very much cheered. Looking up she said to herself: “This must be the building.”

She had been in it every school day for five years past, but through the process of her little game it looked quite new and strange now.

She went in the door and when the children said “good morning,” and some of them seemed glad to see her, she said to herself: “Why, they seem to know me; I wonder how that happens?” Occasionally she was so much amused at her own consistency in keeping up the game that she nearly laughed outright. She heard each class recite as if she were teaching for the first time. She looked upon each separate child as if she had never seen him before and he was interesting to her as a novel study.

She found the schoolroom more cheerful and was surprised into perceiving a pleasant sort of silent communication that started up between her pupils and herself.

When school was over she put on her hat and coat to go home, with the sense of having done something restful; and when she appeared to her mother, it was with a smiling, cheerful face, which made her mother laugh outright; and then they both laughed and went out for a walk in the fresh air, before coming in to go to bed, and be ready to begin again the next day.

In the morning the mother felt a little anxious and asked timidly: “Do you believe you can make it work again today, just as well as yesterday?”

“Yes, indeed and better,” said the daughter. “It is too much fun not to go on with it.”

After breakfast the mother with a little roguish twinkle, said: “Well, what do you think you will do to amuse yourself to-day, Alice?”

“Oh! I think–” and then they both laughed and Alice started off on her second day’s “vacation.”

By the end of a week she was out of that tired rut and having a very good time. New ideas had come to her about the school and the children; in fact, from being dead and heavy in her work, she had become alive.

When she found the old tired state coming on her again, she and her mother always “took a vacation,” and every time avoided the tired rut more easily.

If one only has imagination enough, the helpfulness and restfulness of playing “take a vacation” will tell equally well in any kind of work.

You can play at dressmaking–play at millinery–play at keeping shop. You can make a game of any sort of drudgery, and do the work better for it, as well as keep better rested and more healthy yourself. But you must be steady and persistent and childlike in the way you play your game.

Do not stop in the middle and exclaim, “How silly!”–and then slump into the tired state again.

What I am telling you is nothing more nor less than a good healthy process of self-hypnotism. Really, it is more the attitude we take toward our work that tires us than the work itself. If we could only learn that and realize it as a practical fact, it would save a great deal of unnecessary suffering and even illness.

We do not need to play vacation all the time, of course. The game might get stale then and lose its power. If we play it for two or three days, whenever we get so tired that it seems as if we could not bear it–play it just long enough to lift ourselves out of the rut–then we can “go to work again” until we need another vacation.

We need not be afraid nor ashamed to bring back that childlike tendency–it will be of very great use to our mature minds.

If we try to play the vacation game, it is wiser to say nothing about it. It is not a game that we can be sure of sharing profitably either to ourselves or to others.

If you find it works, and give the secret to a friend, tell her to play it without mentioning it to you, even though she shares your work and is sitting in the next chair to you.

Another most healthy process of resting while you work is by means of lowering the pressure.

Suppose you were an engine, whose normal pressure was six hundred pounds, we will say. Make yourself work at a pressure of only three hundred pounds.

The human engine works with so much more strain than is necessary that if a woman gets overtired and tries to lighten her work by lightening the pressure with which she does it, she will find that really she has only thrown off the unnecessary strain, and is not only getting over her fatigue by working restfully, but is doing her work better, too.

In the process of learning to use less pressure, the work may seem to be going a little more slowly at first, but we shall find that it will soon go faster, and better, as time establishes the better habit.

One thing seems singular; and yet it appeals entirely to our common sense as we think of it. There never comes a time when we cannot learn to work more effectively at a lower pressure. We never get to where we cannot lessen our pressure and thus increase our power.

The very interest of using less pressure adds zest to our work, however it may have seemed like drudging before, and the possibility of resting while we work opens to us much that is new and refreshing, and gives us clearer understanding of how to rest more completely while we rest.

All kinds of resting, and all kinds of working, can bring more vitality than most of us know, until we have learned to rest and to work without strain.

CHAPTER XIII

_The Woman at the Next Desk_

IT may be the woman sewing in the next chair; it may be the woman standing next at the same counter; it may be the woman next at a working table, or it may be the woman at the next desk.

Whichever one it is, many a working woman has her life made wretched by her, and it would be a strange thing for this miserable woman to hear and a stranger thing–at first–for her to believe that the woman at the next desk need not trouble her at all.

That, if she only could realize it, the cause of the irritation which annoyed her every day and dragged her down so that many and many a night she had been home with a sick headache was entirely and solely in herself and not at all in the woman who worked next to her, however disagreeable that woman may have been.

Every morning when she wakes the woman at the next desk rises before her like a black specter. “Oh, I would not mind the work; I could work all day happily and quietly and go home at night and rest; the work would be a joy to me compared to this torture of having to live all day next to that woman.”

It is odd, too, and true, that if the woman at the next desk finds that she is annoying our friend, unconsciously she seems to ferret out her most sensitive places and rub them raw with her sharp, discourteous words.

She seems to shirk her own work purposely and to arrange it so that the woman next her must do the work in her place. Then, having done all in her power to give the woman next her harder labor, she snaps out a little scornful remark about the mistakes that have been made.

If she–the woman at the next desk–comes in in the morning feeling tired and irritable herself, she vents her irritability on her companion until she has worked it off and goes home at night feeling much better herself, while her poor neighbor goes home tired out and weak.

The woman at the next desk takes pains to let little disagreeable hints drop about others–if not directly in their hearing at least in ways which she knows may reach them.

She drops hint to others of what those in higher office have said or appeared to think, which might frighten “others” quite out of their wits for fear of their being discharged, and then, where should they get their bread and butter?

All this and more that is frightful and disagreeable and mean may the woman at the next desk do; or she may be just plain, every-day _ugly._

Every one knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so far as I am concerned, if I choose to make her so.

The reason she troubles me is because I resist her. If she hurts my feelings, that is the same thing. I resist her, and the resistance, instead of making me angry, makes me sore in my nerves and makes me want to cry. The way to get independent of her is not to resist her, and the way to learn not to resist her is to make a daily and hourly study of dropping all resistances to her.

This study has another advantage, too; if we once get well started on it, it becomes so interesting that the concentration on this new interest brings new life in itself.

Resistance in the mind brings contraction in the body. If, when we find our minds resisting that which is disagreeable in another, we give our attention at once to finding the resultant contraction in our bodies, and then concentrate our wills on loosening out of the contraction, we cannot help getting an immediate result.

Even though it is a small result at the beginning, if we persist, results will grow until we, literally, find ourselves free from the woman at the next desk.

This woman says a disagreeable thing; we contract to it mind and body. We drop the contraction from our bodies, with the desire to drop it from our minds, for loosening the physical tension reacts upon the mental strain and relieves it.

We can say to ourselves quite cheerfully: “I wish she would go ahead and say another disagreeable thing; I should like to try the experiment again.” She gives you an early opportunity and you try the experiment again, and again, and then again, until finally your brain gets the habit of trying the experiment without any voluntary effort on your part.

That habit being established, _you are free from the woman at the next desk._ She cannot irritate you nor wear upon you, no matter how she tries, no matter what she says, or what she does.

There is, however, this trouble about dropping the contraction. We are apt to have a feeling of what we might call “righteous indignation” at annoyances which are put upon us for no reason; that, so-called, “righteous indignation” takes the form of resistance and makes physical contractions.

It is useless to drop the physical contraction if the indignation is going to rise and tighten us all up again. If we drop the physical and mental contractions we must have something good to fill the open channels that have been made. Therefore let us give our best attention to our work, and if opportunity offers, do a kindness to the woman at the next desk.

Finally, when she finds that her ways do not annoy, she will stop them. She will probably, for a time at first, try harder to be disagreeable, and then after recovering from several surprises at not being able to annoy, she will quiet down and grow less disagreeable.

If we realize the effect of successive and continued resistance upon ourselves and realize at the same time that we can drop or hold those resistances as we choose to work to get free from them, or suffer and hold them, then we can appreciate the truth that if the woman at the next desk continues to annoy us, it is our fault entirely, and not hers.

CHAPTER XIV

_Telephones and Telephoning_

MOST men–and women–use more nervous force in speaking through the telephone than would be needed to keep them strong and healthy for years.

It is good to note that the more we keep in harmony with natural laws the more quiet we are forced to be.

Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore _a strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire as well as a low one._

If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the wire. She would make herself heard.

Patience, gentleness, firmness–a quiet concentration–all tell immeasurably over the telephone wire.

Impatience, rudeness, indecision, and diffuseness blur communication by telephone even more than they do when one is face to face with the person talking.

It is as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of humanity and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to transmit over it such unintelligent bosh.

There are people who feel that if they do not get an immediate answer at the telephone they have a right to demand and get good service by means of an angry telephonic sputter.

The result of this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an impulsive, angry response on her part–which she may be sorry for later on–and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts later to what appears to be the same deficiency.

No one was ever kept steadily up to time by angry scolding. It is against reason.

To a demanding woman who is strained and tired herself, a wait of ten seconds seems ten minutes. I have heard such a woman ring the telephone bell almost without ceasing for fifteen minutes. I could hear her strain and anger reflected in the ringing of the bell. When finally she “got her party” the strain in her high-pitched voice made it impossible for her to be clearly understood. Then she got angry again because “Central” had not “given her a better connection,” and finally came away from the telephone nearly in a state of nervous collapse and insisted that the telephone would finally end her life. I do not think she once suspected that the whole state of fatigue which had almost brought an illness upon her was absolutely and entirely her own fault.

The telephone has no more to do with it than the floor has to do with a child’s falling and bumping his head.

The worst of this story is that if any one had told this woman that her tired state was all unnecessary, it would have roused more strain and anger, more fatigue, and more consequent illness.

Women must begin to find out their own deficiencies before they are ready to accept suggestions which can lead to greater freedom and more common sense.

Another place where science and inhuman humanity do not blend is in the angry moving up and down of the telephone hook.

When the hook is moved quickly and without pause it does not give time for the light before the telephone girl to flash, therefore she cannot be reminded that any one is waiting at the other end.

When the hook is removed with even regularity and a quiet pause between each motion then she can see the light and accelerate her action in getting “the other party.”

I have seen a man get so impatient at not having an immediate answer that he rattled the hook up and down so fast and so vehemently as to nearly break it. There is something tremendously funny about this. The man is in a great hurry to speak to some one at the other end of the telephone, and yet he takes every means to prevent the operator from knowing what he wants by rattling his hook. In addition to this his angry movement of the hook is fast tending to break the telephone, so that he cannot use it at all. So do we interfere with gaining what we need by wanting it overmuch!

I do not know that there has yet been formed a telephone etiquette; but for the use of those who are not well bred by habit it would be useful to put such laws on the first page of the telephone book. A lack of consideration for others is often too evident in telephonic communication.

A woman will ask her maid to get the number of a friend’s house for her and ask the friend to come to the telephone, and then keep her friend waiting while she has time to be called by the maid and to come to the telephone herself. This method of wasting other people’s time is not confined to women alone. Men are equal offenders, and often greater ones, for the man at the other end is apt to be more immediately busy than a woman under such circumstances.

To sum up: The telephone may be the means of increasing our consideration for others; our quiet, decisive way of getting good service; our patience, and, through the low voice placed close to the transmitter, it may relieve us from nervous strain; for nerves always relax with the voice.

Or the telephone may be the means of making us more selfish and self-centered, more undecided and diffuse, more impatient, more strained and nervous.

In fact, the telephones may help us toward health or illness. We might even say the telephone may lead us toward heaven or toward hell. We have our choice of roads in the way we use it.

It is a blessed convenience and if it proves a curse–we bring the curse upon our own heads.

I speak of course only of the public who use the telephone. Those who serve the public in the use of the telephone must have many trials to meet, and, I dare say, are not always courteous and patient. But certainly there can be no case of lagging or discourtesy on the part of a telephone operator that is not promptly rectified by a quiet, decided appeal to the “desk.”

It is invariably the nervous strain and the anger that makes the trouble.

There may be one of these days a school for the better use of the telephone; but such a school never need be established if every intelligent man and woman will be his and her own school in appreciating and acting upon the power gained if they compel themselves to go with science–and never allow themselves to go against it.

CHAPTER XV

_Don’t Talk_

THERE is more nervous energy wasted, more nervous strain generated, more real physical harm done by superfluous talking than any one knows, or than any one could possibly believe who had not studied it. I am not considering the harm done by what people say. We all know the disastrous effects that follow a careless or malicious use of the tongue. That is another question. I simply write of the physical power used up and wasted by mere superfluous words, by using one hundred words where ten will do–or one thousand words where none at all were needed.

I once had been listening to a friend chatter, chatter, chatter to no end for an hour or more, when the idea occurred to me to tell her of an experiment I had tried by which my voice came more easily. When I could get an opportunity to speak, I asked her if she had ever tried taking a long breath and speaking as she let the breath out. I had to insist a little to keep her mind on the suggestion at all, but finally succeeded. She took a long breath and then stopped.

There was perhaps for half a minute a blessed silence, and then what was my surprise to hear her remark: “I–I–can’t think of anything to say.” “Try it again,” I told her. She took another long breath, and again gave up because she could not think of anything to say. She did not like that little game very much, and thought she would not make another effort, and in about three minutes she began the chatter, and went on talking until some necessary interruption parted us.

This woman’s talking was nothing more nor less than a nervous habit. Her thought and her words were not practically connected at all. She never said what she thought for she never thought. She never said anything in answer to what was said to her, for she never listened.

Nervous talkers never do listen. That is one of their most striking characteristics.

I knew of two well-known men–both great talkers–who were invited to dine. Their host thought, as each man talked a great deal and–, as he thought–talked very well, if they could meet their interchange of ideas would be most delightful. Several days later he met one of his guests in the street and asked how he liked the friend whom he had met for the first time at his house.

“Very pleasant, very pleasant,” the man said, “but he talks too much.”

Not long after this the other guest accosted him unexpectedly in the street “For Heaven’s sake, don’t ask me to dine with that Smith again–why, I could not get a word in edgewise.”

Now, if only for selfish reasons a man might realize that he needs to absorb as well as give out, and so could make himself listen in order to be sure that his neighbor did not get ahead of him. But a conceited man, a self-centered man or a great talker will seldom or never listen.

That being the case, what can you expect of a woman who is a nervous talker? The more tired such a woman is the more she talks; the more ill she is the more she talks. As the habit of nervous talking grows upon a woman it weakens her mind. Indeed, nervous talking is a steadily weakening process.

Some women talk to forget. If they only knew it was slow mental suicide and led to worse than death they would be quick to avoid such false protection. If we have anything we want to forget we can only forget it by facing it until we have solved the problem that it places before us, and then working on, according to our best light: We can never really cover a thing up in our minds by talking constantly about something else.

Many women think they are going to persuade you of their point of view by talking. A woman comes to you with her head full of an idea and finds you do not agree with her. She will talk, talk, talk until you are blind and sick and heartily wish you were deaf, in order to prove to you that she is right and you are wrong.

She talks until you do not care whether you are right or wrong. You only care for the blessed relief of silence, and when she has left you, she has done all she could in that space of time to injure her point of view. She has simply buried anything good that she might have had to say in a cloud of dusty talk.

It is funny to hear such a woman say after a long interview, “Well, at any rate, I gave him a good talking to. I guess he will go home and think about it.”

Think about it, madam? He will go home with an impression of rattle and chatter and push that will make him dread the sight of your face; and still more dread the sound of your voice, lest he be subjected to further interviews. Women sit at work together. One woman talks, talks, talks until her companions are so worn with the constant chatter that they have neither head nor nerve enough to do their work well. If they know how to let the chatter go on and turn their attention away from it, so that it makes no impression, they are fortunate indeed, and the practice is most useful to them. But that does not relieve the strain of the nervous talker herself; she is wearing herself out from day to day, and ruining her mind as well as hurting the nerves and dispositions of those about her who do not know how to protect themselves from her nervous talk.

Nervous talking is a disease.

Now the question is how to cure it. It can be cured, but the first necessity is for a woman to know she has the disease. For, unlike other diseases, the cure does not need a physician, but must be made by the patient herself.

First, she must know that she has the disease. Fifty nervous talkers might read this article, and not one of them recognize that it is aimed straight at her.

The only remedy for that is for every woman who reads to believe that she is a nervous talker until she has watched herself for a month or more–without prejudice–and has discovered for a certainty that she is not.

Then she is safe.

But what if she discover to her surprise and chagrin that she is a nervous talker? What is the remedy for that? The first thing to do is to own up the truth to herself without equivocation. To make no excuses or explanations but simply to acknowledge the fact.

Then let her aim straight at the remedy–silence–steady, severe, relaxed silence. Work from day to day and promise herself that for that day she will say nothing but what is absolutely necessary. She should not repress the words that want to come, but when she takes breath to speak she must not allow the sentence to come out of her mouth, but must instead relax all over, as far as it is possible, and take a good, long, quiet breath. The next time she wants to speak, even if she forgets so far as to get half the sentence out of her mouth, stop it, relax, and take a long breath.

The mental concentration necessary to cure one’s self of nervous talking will gather together a mind that was gradually becoming dissipated with the nervous talking habit, and so the life and strength of the mind can be saved.

And, after that habit has been cured, the habit of quiet thinking will begin, and what is said will be worth while.

CHAPTER XVI

_”Why Fuss so Much About What I Eat?”_

I KNOW a woman who insisted that it was impossible for her to eat strawberries because they did not agree with her. A friend told her that that was simply a habit of her mind. Once, at a time when her stomach was tired or not in good condition for some other reason, strawberries had not agreed with her, and from that time she had taken it for granted that she could not eat strawberries. When she was convinced by her friend that her belief that strawberries did not agree with her was merely in her own idea, and not actually true, she boldly ate a plate of strawberries. That night she woke with indigestion, and the next morning she said “You see, I told you they would not agree with me.”

But her friend answered: “Why, of course you could not expect them to agree right away, could you? Now try eating them again to-day.”

This little lady was intelligent enough to want the strawberries to agree with her and to be willing to do her part to adjust herself to them, so she tried again and ate them the next day; and now she can eat them every day right through the strawberry season and is all the better for it.

This is the fact that we want to understand thoroughly and to look out for. If we are impressed with the idea that any one food does not agree with us, whenever we think of that food we contract, and especially our stomachs contract. Now if our stomachs contract when a food that we believe to disagree with us is merely mentioned, of course they would contract all the more when we ate it. Naturally our digestive organs would be handicapped by the contraction which came from our attitude of mind and, of course, the food would appear not to agree with us.

Take, for instance, people who are born with peculiar prenatal impressions about their food. A woman whom I have in mind could not take milk nor cream nor butter nor anything with milk or cream or butter in it. She seemed really proud of her milk-and-cream antipathy. She would air it upon all occasions, when she could do so without being positively discourteous, and often she came very near the edge of discourtesy. I never saw her even appear to make an effort to overcome it, and it is perfectly true that a prenatal impression like that can be overcome as entirely, as can a personally acquired impression, although it may take a longer time and a more persistent effort.

This anti-milk-and-cream lady was at work every day over-emphasizing her milk-and-cream contractions; whereas if she had put the same force into dropping the milk-and-cream contraction she would have been using her will to great advantage, and would have helped herself in many other ways as well as in gaining the ability to take normally a very healthful food. We cannot hold one contraction without having its influence draw us into many others. We cannot give our attention to dropping one contraction without having the influence of that one effort expand us in many other ways. Watch people when they refuse food that is passed them at table; you can see whether they refuse and at the same time contract against the food, or whether they refuse with no contraction at all. I have seen an expression of mild loathing on some women’s faces when food was passed which “did not agree with them,” but they were quite unconscious that their expressions had betrayed them.

Now, it is another fact that the contraction of the stomach at one form of food will interfere with the good digestion of another form. When cauliflower has been passed to us and we contract against it how can we expect our stomachs to recover from that contraction in time to digest perfectly the next vegetable which is passed and which we may like very much? It may be said that we expand to the vegetable we like, and that immediately counteracts the former contraction to the vegetable which we do not like. That is true only to a certain extent, for the tendency to cauliflower contraction is there in the back of our brains influencing our stomachs all the time, until we have actually used our wills consciously to drop it.

Edwin Booth used to be troubled very much with indigestion; he suffered keenly from it. One day he went to dine with some intimate friends, and before the dinner began his hostess said with a very smiling face: “Now, Mr. Booth, I have been especially careful with this dinner not to have one thing that you cannot digest.”

The host echoed her with a hearty “Yes, Mr. Booth, everything that will come to the table is good for your digestion.”

The words made a very happy impression on Mr. Booth. First there was the kind, sympathetic friendliness of his hosts; and then the strong suggestion they had given him that their food would agree with him. Then there was very happy and interesting talk during the whole time that they were at table and afterward. Mr.. Booth ate a hearty dinner and, true to the words of his host and hostess, not one single thing disagreed with him. And yet at that dinner, although care had been taken to have it wholesome, there were served things that under other conditions would have disagreed.

While we should aim always to eat wholesome food, it is really not so much the food which makes the trouble as the attitude we take toward it and the way we test it.

All the contractions which are made by our fussing about food interfere with our circulation; the interference with our circulation makes us liable to take cold, and it is safe to say that more than half the colds that women have are caused principally by wrong eating. Somewhat akin to grandmother’s looking for her spectacles when all the time they are pushed to the top of her head is the way women fuss about their eating and then wonder why it is that they cannot seem to stand drafts.

There is no doubt but that our food should be thoroughly masticated before it goes into our stomachs. There is no doubt but that the first process of digestion should be in our mouths. The relish which we get for our food by masticating it properly is greater and also helps toward digesting it truly. All this cannot be over-emphasized if it is taken in the right way. But there is an extreme which perhaps has not been thought of and for which happily I have an example that will illustrate what I want to prove. I know a woman who was, so to speak, daft on the subject of health. She attended to all points of health with such minute detail that she seemed to have lost all idea of why we should be healthy. One of her ways of over-emphasizing the road to health was a very careful mastication of her food. She chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed, and the result was that she so strained her stomach with her chewing that she brought on severe indigestion, simply as a result of an overactive effort toward digestion. This was certainly a case of “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, and falls on the other.” And it was not unique.

The over-emphasis of “What shall I eat? How much shall I eat? How often shall I eat? When shall I eat? How shall I eat?”–all extreme attention to these questions is just as liable to bring chronic indigestion as a reckless neglect of them altogether is liable to upset a good, strong stomach and keep it upset. The woman who chewed herself into indigestion fussed herself into it, too, by constantly talking about what was not healthful to eat. Her breakfast, which she took alone, was for a time the dryest-looking meal I ever saw. It was enough to take away any one’s healthy relish just to look at it, if he was not forewarned.

Now our relish is one of our most blessed gifts. When we relish our food our stomachs can digest it wholesomely. When we do not our stomachs will not produce the secretions necessary to the most wholesome digestion. Constant fussing about our food takes away our relish. A gluttonous dwelling upon our food takes away our relish. Relish is a delicate gift, and as we respect it truly, as we do not degrade it to selfish ends nor kill it with selfish fastidiousness, it grows upon us and is in its place like any other fine perception, and is as greatly useful to the health of our bodies as our keener and deeper perceptions are useful to the health of our minds.

Then there is the question of being sure that our stomachs are well rested before we give them any work to do, and being sure that we are quiet enough after eating to give our stomachs the best opportunity to begin their work. Here again one extreme is just as harmful as the other. I knew a woman who had what might be called the fixed idea of health, who always used to sit bolt upright in a high-backed chair for half an hour after dinner, and refuse to speak or to be spoken to in order that “digestion might start in properly.” If I had been her stomach I should have said: “Madam, when you have got through giving me your especial attention I will begin my work–which, by the way, is not your work but mine!” And, virtually, that is what her stomach did say. Sitting bolt upright and consciously waiting for your food to begin digestion is an over-attention to what is none of your business, which contracts your brain, contracts your stomach and stops its work.

Our business is only to fulfill the conditions rightly. The French workmen do that when they sit quietly after a meal talking of their various interests. Any one can fulfill the conditions properly by keeping a little quiet, having some pleasant chat, reading a bright story or taking life easy in any quiet way for half an hour. Or, if work must begin directly after eating, begin it quietly. But this feeling that it is our business to attend to the working functions of our stomachs is officious and harmful. We must fulfill the conditions and then forget our stomachs. If our stomachs remind us of themselves by some misbehavior we must seek for the cause and remedy it, but we should not on any account feel that the cause is necessarily in the food we have eaten. It may be, and probably often is, entirely back of that. A quick, sharp resistance to something that is said will often cause indigestion. In that case we must stop resisting and not blame the food. A dog was once made to swallow a little bullet with his food and then an X-ray was thrown on to his stomach in order that the process of digestion might be watched by means of the bullet. When the dog was made angry the bullet stopped, which meant that the digestion stopped; when the dog was over-excited in any way digestion stopped. When he was calmed down it went on again.

There are many reasons why we should learn to meet life without useless resistance, and the health of our stomachs is not the least.

It would surprise most people if they could know how much unnecessary strain they put on their stomachs by eating too much. A nervous invalid had a very large appetite. She was helped twice, sometimes three times, to meat and vegetables at dinner. She thought that what she deemed her very healthy appetite was a great blessing to her, and often remarked upon it, as also upon her idea that so much good, nourishing food must be helping to make her well. And yet she wondered why she did not gain faster.

Now the truth of the matter was that this invalid had a nervous appetite. Not only did she not need one third of the food she ate, but indeed the other two thirds was doing her positive harm. The tax which she put upon her stomach to digest so much food drained her nerves every day, and of course robbed her brain, so that she ate and ate and wept and wept with nervous depression. When it was suggested to her by a friend who understood nerves that she would get better very much faster if she would eat very much less she made a rule to take only one helping of anything, no matter how much she might feel that she wanted another. Very soon she began to gain enough to see for herself that she had been keeping herself ill with overeating, and it was not many days before she did not want a second helping.

Nervous appetites are not uncommon even among women who consider themselves pretty well. Probably there are not five in a hundred among all the well-fed men and women in this country who would not be more healthy if they ate less.

Then there are food notions to be looked out for and out of which any one can relax by giving a little intelligent attention to the task.

“I do not like eggs. I am tired of them.” “Dear, dear me! I ate so much ice cream that it made me ill, and it has made me ill to think of it ever since.”

Relax, drop the contraction, pretend you had never tasted ice cream before, and try to eat a little–not for the sake of the ice cream, but for the sake of getting that knot out of your stomach.

“But,” you will say, “can every one eat everything?”

“Yes,” the answer is, “everything that is really good, wholesome food is all right for anybody to eat.”

But you say: “Won’t you allow for difference of tastes?”

And the answer to that is: “Of course we can like some foods more than others, but there is a radical difference between unprejudiced preferences and prejudiced dislikes.”

Our stomachs are all right if we will but fulfill their most simple conditions and then leave them alone. If we treat them right they will tell us what is good for them and what is not good for them, and if we will only pay attention, obey them as a matter of course without comment and then forget them, there need be no more fuss about food and very much less nervous irritability.

CHAPTER XVII

_Take Care of Your Stomach_

WE all know that we have a great deal to do. Some of us have to work all day to earn our bread and butter and then work a good part of the night to make our clothes. Some of us have to stand all day behind a counter. Some of us have to sit all day and sew for others, and all night to sew for ourselves and our children. Most of us have to do work that is necessary or work that is self-imposed. Many of us feel busy without really being busy at all. But how many of us realize that while we are doing work outside, our bodies themselves have good, steady work to do inside.

Our lungs have to take oxygen from the air and give it to our blood; our blood has to carry it all through our bodies and take away the waste by means of the steady pumping of our hearts. Our stomachs must digest the food put into them, give the nourishment in it to the blood, and see that the waste is cast off.

All this work is wholesome and good, and goes on steadily, giving us health and strength and new power; but if we, through mismanagement, make heart or lungs or stomach work harder than they should, then they must rob us of power to accomplish what we give them to do, and we blame them, instead of blaming ourselves for being hard and unjust taskmasters.

The strain in a stomach necessary to the digesting of too much food, or the wrong kind of food, makes itself felt in strain all through the whole system.

I knew a woman whose conscience was troubling her very greatly. She was sure she had done many very selfish things for which there was no excuse, and that she herself was greatly to blame for other people’s troubles. This was a very acute attack of conscience, accompanied by a very severe stomach ache. The doctor was called in and gave her an emetic. She threw a large amount of undigested food from her stomach, and after that relief the weight on her conscience was lifted entirely and she had nothing more to blame herself with than any ordinary, wholesome woman must have to look out for every day of her life.

This is a true story and should be practically useful to readers who need it. This woman’s stomach had been given too much to do. It worked hard to do its work well, and had to rob the brain and nervous system in the effort. This effort brought strain to the whole brain, which was made evident in the region of the conscience. It might have come out in some other form. It might have appeared in irritability. It might even have shown itself in downright ugliness.

Whatever the effects are, whether exaggerated conscience, exaggerated anxiety, or irritability, the immediate cause of the trouble in such cases as I refer to is in the fact that the stomach has been given too much to do.

We give the stomach too much to do if we put a great deal of food into it when it is tired. We give it too much to do if we put into it the wrong kind of food. We give it too much to do if we insist upon working hard ourselves, either with body or brain, directly after a hearty meal.

No matter how busy we are we can protect our stomachs against each and all of these three causes of trouble.

If a woman is very tired her stomach must necessarily be very tired also. If she can remember that at such times even though she may be very hungry, her body is better nourished if she takes slowly a cup of hot milk, and waits until she is more rested before taking solid food, than if she ate a hearty meal. It will save a strain, and perhaps eventually severe illness.

If it is possible to rest and do absolutely nothing for half an hour before a meal, and for half an hour after that insures the best work for our digestion. If one is pretty well, and cannot spare the half hour, ten or fifteen minutes will do, unless there is a great deal of fatigue to be conquered.

If it is necessary to work right up to mealtime, let up a little before stopping. As the time for dinner approaches do not work quite so hard; the work will not lose; in the end it will gain–and when you begin work again begin lightly, and get into the thick of it gradually. That gives your stomach a good chance.

If possible get a long rest before the last meal, and if your day is very busy, it is better to have the heartiest meal at the end of it, to take a good rest afterward and then a walk in the fresh air, which may be long or short, according to what other work you have to do or according to how tired you are.

I know many women will say: “But I am tired all the time; if I waited to rest before I ate, I should starve.”

The answer to that is “protect your stomach as well as you can. If you cannot rest before and after each meal try to arrange some way by which you can get rid of a little fatigue.”

If you do this with attention and interest you will find gradually that you are less tired all the time, and as you keep on steadily toward the right path, you may be surprised some day to discover that you are only tired half the time, and perhaps even reach the place where the tired feeling will be the exception.

It takes a good while to get our misused stomachs into wholesome ways, but if we are persistent and intelligent we can surely do it, and the relief to the overstrained stomach–as I have said–means relief to the whole body.

Resting before and after meals amounts to very little, however, if we eat food that is not nourishing.

Some people are so far out of the normal way of eating that they have lost a wholesome sense of what is good for them, and live in a chronic state of disordered stomach, which means a chronic state of disordered nerves and disposition. If such persons could for one minute literally experience the freedom of a woman whose body was truly and thoroughly nourished, the contrast from the abnormal to the normal would make them dizzy. If, however, they stayed in the normal place long enough to get over the dizziness, the freedom of health would be so great a delight that food that was not nourishing would be nauseous to them.

Most of us are near enough the normal to know the food that is best for us, through experience of suffering from food which is not best for us, as well as through good natural instinct.

If we would learn from the normal working of the involuntary action of our organs, it might help us greatly toward working more wholesomely in all our voluntary actions.

If every woman who reads this article would study not to interfere with the most healthy action of her own stomach, her reward after a few weeks’ persistent care would be not only a greater power for work, but a greater power for good, healthy, recuperative rest.

CHAPTER XVIII

_About Faces_

WATCH the faces as you walk along the street! If you get the habit of noticing, your observations will grow keener. It is surprising to see how seldom we find a really quiet face. I do not mean that there should be no lines in the face. We are here in this world at school and we cannot have any real schooling unless we have real experiences. We cannot have real experiences without suffering, and suffering which comes from the discipline of life and results in character leaves lines in our faces. It is the lines made by unnecessary strain to which I refer.

Strange to say the unquiet faces come mostly from shallow feeling. Usually the deeper the feeling the less strain there is on the face. A face may look troubled, it may be full of pain, without a touch of that strain which comes from shallow worry or excitement.

The strained expression takes character out of the face, it weakens it, and certainly it detracts greatly from whatever natural beauty there may have been to begin with. The expression which comes from pain or any suffering well borne gives character to the face and adds to its real beauty as well as its strength.

To remove the strained expression we must remove the strain behind; therefore the hardest work we have to do is below the surface. The surface work is comparatively easy.

I know a woman whose face is quiet and placid. The lines are really beautiful, but they are always the same. This woman used to watch herself in the glass until she had her face as quiet and free from lines as she could get it–she used even to arrange the corners of her mouth with her fingers until they had just the right droop.

Then she observed carefully how her face felt with that placid expression and studied to keep it always with that feeling, until by and by her features were fixed and now the placid face is always there, for she has established in her brain an automatic vigilance over it that will not allow the muscles once to get “out of drawing.”

What kind of an old woman this acquaintance of mine will make I do not know. I am curious to see her–but now she certainly is a most remarkable hypocrite. The strain in behind the mask of a face which she has made for herself must be something frightful. And indeed I believe it is, for she is ill most of the time–and what could keep one in nervous illness more entirely than this deep interior strain which is necessary to such external appearance of placidity.

There comes to my mind at once a very comical illustration of something quite akin to this although at first thought it seems almost the reverse. A woman who constantly talked of the preeminency of mind over matter, and the impossibility of being moved by external circumstances to any one who believed as she did–this woman I saw very angry.

She was sitting with her face drawn in a hundred cross lines and all askew with her anger. She had been spouting and sputtering what she called her righteous indignation for some minutes, when after a brief pause and with the angry expression still on her face she exclaimed: “Well, I don’t care, it’s all peace within.”

I doubt if my masked lady would ever have declared to herself or to any one else that “it was all peace within.” The angry woman was–without doubt–the deeper hypocrite, but the masked woman had become rigid in her hypocrisy. I do not know which was the weaker of the two, probably the one who was deceiving herself.

But to return to those drawn, strained lines we see on the people about us. They do not come from hard work or deep thought. They come from unnecessary contractions about the work. If we use our wills consistently and steadily to drop such contractions, the result is a more quiet and restful way of living, and so quieter and more attractive faces.

This unquietness comes especially in the eyes. It is a rare thing to see a really quiet eye; and very pleasant and beautiful it is when we do see it. And the more we see and observe the unquiet eyes and the unquiet faces the better worth while it seems to work to have ours more quiet, but not to put on a mask, or be in any other way a hypocrite.

The exercise described in a previous chapter will help to bring a quiet face. We must drop our heads with a sense of letting every strain go out of our faces, and then let our heads carry our bodies down as far as possible, dropping strain all the time, and while rising slowly we must take the same care to drop all strain.

In taking the long breath, we must inhale without effort, and exhale so easily that it seems as if the breath went out of itself, like the balloons that children blow up and then watch them shrink as the air leaves them.

Five minutes a day is very little time to spend to get a quiet face, but just that five minutes–if followed consistently–will make us so much more sensitive to the unquiet that we will sooner or later turn away from it as by a natural instinct.

CHAPTER XIX

_About Voices_

I KNEW an old German–a wonderful teacher of the speaking voice–who said “the ancients believed that the soul of the man is here”–pointing to the pit of his stomach. “I do not know,” and he shrugged his shoulders with expressive interest, “it may be and it may not be–but I know the soul of the voice is here–and you Americans–you squeeze the life out of the word in your throat and it is born dead.”

That old artist spoke the truth–we Americans–most of us–do squeeze the life out of our words and they are born dead. We squeeze the life out by the strain which runs all through us and reflects itself especially in our voices. Our throats are tense and closed; our stomachs are tense and strained; with many of us the word is dead before it is born.

Watch people talking in a very noisy place; hear how they scream at the top of their lungs to get above the noise. Think of the amount of nervous force they use in their efforts to be heard.

Now really when we are in the midst of a great noise and want to be heard, what we have to do is to pitch our voices on a different key from the noise about us. We can be heard as well, and better, if we pitch our voices on a lower key than if we pitch them on a higher key; and to pitch your voice on a low key requires very much less effort than to strain to a high one.

I can imagine talking with some one for half an hour in a noisy factory–for instance–and being more rested at the end of the half hour than at the beginning. Because to pitch your voice low you must drop some superfluous tension and dropping superfluous tension is always restful.

I beg any or all of my readers to try this experiment the next time they have to talk with a friend in a noisy street. At first the habit of screaming above the noise of the wheels is strong on us and it seems impossible that we should be heard if we speak below it. It is difficult to pitch our voices low and keep them there. But if we persist until we have formed a new habit, the change is delightful.

There is one other difficulty in the way; whoever is listening to us may be in the habit of hearing a voice at high tension and so find it difficult at first to adjust his ear to the lower voice and will in consequence insist that the lower tone cannot be heard as easily.

It seems curious that our ears can be so much engaged in expecting screaming that they cannot without a positive effort of the mind readjust in order to listen to a lower tone. But it is so. And, therefore, we must remember that to be thoroughly successful in speaking intelligently below the noise we must beg our listeners to change the habit of their ears as we ourselves must change the pitch of our voices.

The result both to speaker and listener is worth the effort ten times over.

As we habitually lower the pitch of our voices our words cease gradually to be “born dead.” With a low-pitched voice everything pertaining to the voice is more open and flexible and can react more immediately to whatever may be in our minds to express.

Moreover, the voice itself may react back again upon our dispositions. If a woman gets excited in an argument, especially if she loses her temper, her voice will be raised higher and higher until it reaches almost a shriek. And to hear two women “argue” sometimes it may be truly said that we are listening to a “caterwauling.” That is the only word that will describe it.

But if one of these women is sensitive enough to know she is beginning to strain in her argument and will lower her voice and persist in keeping it lowered the effect upon herself and the other woman will put the “caterwauling” out of the question.

“Caterwauling” is an ugly word. It describes an ugly sound. If you have ever found yourself in the past aiding and abetting such an ugly sound in argument with another–say to yourself “caterwauling,” “caterwauling,” “I have been ‘caterwauling’ with Jane Smith, or Maria Jones,” or whoever it may be, and that will bring out in such clear relief the ugliness of the word and the sound that you will turn earnestly toward a more quiet way of speaking.

The next time you start on the strain of an argument and your voice begins to go up, up, up–something will whisper in your ear “caterwauling” and you will at once, in self-defense, lower your voice or stop speaking altogether.

It is good to call ugly things by their ugliest names. It helps us to see them in their true light and makes us more earnest in our efforts to get away from them altogether.

I was once a guest at a large reception and the noise of talking seemed to be a roar, when suddenly an elderly man got up on a chair and called “silence,” and having obtained silence he said, “it has been suggested that every one in this room should speak in a lower tone of voice.”

The response was immediate. Every one went on talking with the same interest only in a lower tone of voice with a result that was both delightful and soothing.

I say every one–there were perhaps half a dozen whom I observed who looked and I have no doubt said “how impudent.” So it was “impudent” if you chose to take it so–but most of the people did not choose to take it so and so brought a more quiet atmosphere and a happy change of tone.

Theophile Gautier said that the voice was nearer the soul than any other expressive part of us. It is certainly a very striking indicator of the state of the soul. If we accustom ourselves to listen to the voices of those about us we detect more and more clearly various qualities of the man or the woman in the voice, and if we grow sensitive to the strain in our own voices and drop it at once when it is perceived, we feel a proportionate gain.

I knew of a blind doctor who habitually told character by the tone of the voice, and men and women often went to him to have their characters described as one would go to a palmist.

Once a woman spoke to him earnestly for that purpose and he replied, “Madam, your voice has been so much cultivated that there is nothing of you in it–I cannot tell your real character at all.” The only way to cultivate a voice is to open it to its best possibilities–not to teach its owner to pose or to imitate a beautiful tone until it has acquired the beautiful tone habit. Such tones are always artificial and the unreality in them can be easily detected by a quick ear.

Most great singers are arrant hypocrites. There is nothing of themselves in their tone. The trouble is to have a really beautiful voice one must have a really beautiful soul behind it.

If you drop the tension of your voice in an argument for the sake of getting a clearer mind and meeting your opponent without resistance, your voice helps your mind and your mind helps your voice.

They act and react upon one another with mutual benefit. If you lower your voice in general for the sake of being more quiet, and so more agreeable and useful to those about you, then again the mental or moral effort and the physical effort help one another.

It adds greatly to a woman’s attraction and to her use to have a low, quiet voice–and if any reader is persisting in the effort to get five minutes absolute quiet in every day let her finish the exercise by saying something in a quiet, restful tone of voice.

It will make her more sensitive to her unrestful tones outside, and so help her to improve them.

CHAPTER XX

_About Frights_

HERE are two true stories and a remarkable contrast. A nerve specialist was called to see a young girl who had had nervous prostration for two years. The physician was told before seeing the patient that the illness had started through fright occasioned by the patient’s waking and discovering a burglar in her room.

Almost the moment the doctor entered the sick room, he was accosted with: “Doctor, do you know what made me ill? It was frightful.” Then followed a minute description of her sudden awakening and seeing the man at her bureau drawers.

This story had been lived over and over by the young girl and her friends for two years, until the strain in her brain caused by the repetition of the impression of fright was so intense that no skill nor tact seemed able to remove it. She simply would not let it go, and she never got really well.

Now, see the contrast. Another young woman had a similar burglar experience, and for several nights after she woke with a start at the same hour. For the first two or three nights she lay and shivered until she shivered herself to sleep.

Then she noticed how tightened up she was in every muscle when she woke, and she bethought herself that she would put her mind on relaxing her muscles and getting rid of the tension in her nerves. She did this persistently, so that when she woke with the burglar fright it was at once a reminder to relax.

After a little she got the impression that she woke in order to relax and it was only a very little while before she succeeded so well that she did not wake until it was time to get up in the morning.

The burglar impression not only left her entirely, but left her with the habit of dropping all contractions before she went to sleep, and her nerves are stronger and more normal in consequence.

The two girls had each a very sensitive, nervous temperament, and the contrast in their behavior was simply a matter of intelligence.

This same nerve specialist received a patient once who was positively blatant in her complaint of a nervous shock. “Doctor, I have had a horrible nervous shock. It was horrible. I do not see how I can ever get over it.”

Then she told it and brought the horrors out in weird, over-vivid colors. It was horrible, but she was increasing the horrors by the way in which she dwelt on it.

Finally, when she paused long enough to give the doctor an opportunity to speak, he said, very quietly: “Madam, will you kindly say to me, as gently as you can, ‘I have had a severe nervous shock.'” She looked at him without a gleam of understanding and repeated the words quietly: “I have had a severe nervous shock.”

In spite of herself she felt the contrast in her own brain. The habitual blatancy was slightly checked. The doctor then tried to impress upon her the fact that she was constantly increasing the strain of the shock by the way she spoke of it and the way she thought of it, and that she was really keeping herself ill.

Gradually, as she learned to relax the nervous tension caused by the shock, a true intelligence about it all dawned upon her; the over-vivid colors faded, and she got well. She was surprised herself at the rapidity with which she got well, but she seemed to understand the process and to be moderately grateful for it.

If she had had a more sensitive temperament she would have appreciated it all the more keenly; but if she had had a more sensitive temperament she would not have been blatant about her shock.

CHAPTER XXI

_Contrariness_

I KNOW a woman who says that if she wants to get her father’s consent to anything, she not only appears not to care whether he consents or not, but pretends that her wishes are exactly opposite to what they really are. She says it never fails; the decision has always been made in opposition to her expressed desires, and according to her real wishes. In other words, she has learned how to manage her father.

This example is not unique. Many of us see friends managing other friends in that same way. The only thing which can interfere with such astute management is the difficulty that a man may have in concealing his own will in order to accomplish what he desires. Wilfulness is such an impulsive quantity that it will rush ahead in spite of us and spoil everything when we feel that there is danger of our not getting our own way. Or, if we have succeeded in getting our own way by what might be called the “contrary method,” we may be led into an expression of satisfaction which will throw light on the falseness of our previous attitude and destroy the confidence of the friend whom we were tactfully influencing.

To work the “contrary method” to perfection requires a careful control up to the finish and beyond it. In order never to be found out, we have to be so consistent in our behavior that we gradually get trained into nothing but a common every-day hypocrite, and the process which goes on behind hypocrisy must necessarily be a process of decay. Beside that, the keenest hypocrite that ever lived can only deceive others up to a certain limit.

But what is one to do when a friend can only be reached by the “contrary method”? What is one to do when if, for instance, you want a friend to read a book, you know that the way to prevent his reading it is to mention your desire? If you want a friend to see a play and in a forgetful mood mention the fact that you feel sure the play would delight him, you know as soon as the words are out of your mouth you have put the chance of his seeing the play entirely out of the question? What is one to do when something needs mending in the house, and you know that to mention the need to the man of the house would be to delay the repair just so much longer? How are our contrary-minded friends to be met if we cannot pretend we do not want what we do want in order to get their cooperation and consent?

No one could deliberately plan to be a hypocrite understanding what a hypocrite really is. A hypocrite is a sham–a sham has nothing solid to stand on. No one really respects a sham, and the most intelligent, the most tactful hypocrite that ever lived is nothing but a sham,–_false_ and a sham!

Beside, no one can manage another by the process of sham and hypocrisy without sooner or later being found out, and when he is found out, all his power is gone.

The trouble with the contrary-minded is they have an established habit of resistance. Sometimes the habit is entirely inherited, and has never been seen or acknowledged. Sometimes it has an inherited foundation, with a cultivated superstructure.

Either way it is a problem for those who have to deal with it,–until they understand. The “contrary method” does not solve the problem; it is only a makeshift; it never does any real work, or accomplishes any real end. It is not even lastingly intelligent.

The first necessity in dealing truly with these people is _not to be afraid o f their resistances._ The second necessity, which is so near the first that the two really belong side by side, is _never to meet their resistances with resistances o f our own._

If we combat another man’s resistance, it only increases his tension. No matter how wrong he may be, and how right we are, meeting resistance with resistance only breeds trouble. Two minds can act and react upon one another in that way until they come to a lock which not only makes lasting enemies of those who should have been and could be always friends, but the contention locks up strain in each man’s brain which can never be removed without pain, and a new awakening to the common sense of human intercourse.

If we want a friend to read a book, to go a journey, or to do something which is more important for his own good than either, and we know that to suggest our desire would be to rouse his resistance, the only way is to catch him in the best mood we can, say what we have to say, give our own preference, and at the same time feel and express a willingness to be refused. Every man is a free agent, and we have no right not to respect his freedom, even if he uses that freedom to stand in his own light or in ours. If he is standing in our light and refuses to move, we can move out of his shadow, even though we may have to give up our most cherished desire in order to do so.

If he is standing in his own light, and refuses to move, we can suggest or advise and do whatever in us lies to make the common sense of our opinion clear; but if he still persists in standing in his own light, it is his business, not ours.

It requires the cultivation of a strong will to put a request before a friend which we know will be resisted, and to yield to that resistance so that it meets no antagonism in us. But when it is done, and done thoroughly, consistently, and intelligently, the other man’s resistance reacts back upon himself, and he finds himself out as he never could in any other way. Having found himself out, unless his mulishness is almost past sanity, he begins to reject his habit of resistance of his own accord.

In dealing with the contrary minded, the “contrary method” works so long as it is not discovered; and the danger of its being discovered is always imminent. The upright, direct method is according to the honorable laws of human intercourse, and brings always better results in the end, even though there may be some immediate failures in the process.

To adjust ourselves rightly to another nature and go with it to a good end, along the lines of least resistance, is of course the best means of a real acquaintance, but to allow ourselves to manage a fellow-being is an indignity to the man and worse than an indignity to the mind who is willing to do the managing.

Our humanity is in our freedom. Our freedom is in our humanity. When one, man tries to manage another, he is putting that other in the attitude of a beast. The man who is allowing himself to be managed is classing himself with the beasts.

Although this is a fact so evident on the base of it that it needs neither explanation nor enlargement, there is hardly a day passes that some one does not say to some one, “You cannot manage me in that way,” and the answer should be, “Why should you want to be managed in any way; and why should I want to insult you by trying to manage you at all?”

The girl and her father might have been intelligent friends by this time, if the practice of the “contrary method” had not tainted the girl with habitual hypocrisy, and cultivated in the father the warped mind which results from the habit of resistance, and blind weakness which comes from the false idea that he is always having his own way.

If we want an open brain and a good, freely working nervous system, we must respect our own freedom and the freedom of other people,–for only as individuals stand alone can they really influence one another to any good end.

It is curious to see how the men of habitual resistance pride themselves on being in bondage to no one, not knowing that the fear of such bondage is what makes them resist, and the fear of being influenced by another is one of the most painful forms of bondage in which a man can be.

The men who are slaves to this fear do not stop even to consider the question. They resist and refuse a request at once, for fear that pausing for consideration would open them to the danger of appearing to yield to the will of another.

When we are quite as willing to yield to another as to refuse him, then we are free, and can give any question that is placed before us intelligent consideration, and decide according to our best judgment. No amount of willfulness can force a man to any action or attitude of mind if he is willing to yield to the willful pressure if it seems to him best.

The worse bondage of man to man is the bondage of fear.

CHAPTER XXII

_How to Sew Easily_

IT is a common saying that we should let our heads save our heels, but few of us know the depth of it or the freedom and health that can come from obedience to it.

For one thing we get into ruts. If a woman grows tired sewing she takes it for granted that she must always be tired. Sometimes she frets and complains, which only adds to her fatigue.

Sometimes she goes on living in a dogged state of overtiredness until there comes a “last straw” which brings on some organic disease, and still another “straw” which kills her altogether.

We, none of us, seem to realize that our heads can save not only our heels, but our hearts, and our lungs, our spines and our brains–indeed our whole nervous systems.

Men and women sometimes seem to prefer to go on working–chronically tired–getting no joy from life whatever, rather than to take the trouble to think enough to gain the habit of working restfully.

Sometimes, to be sure, they are so tired that the little extra exertion of the brain required to learn to get rid of the fatigue seems too much for them.

It seems easier to work in a rut of strain and discomfort than to make the effort to get out of the rut–even though they know that by doing so they will not only be better themselves, but will do their work better.

Now really the action of the brain which is needed to help one to work restfully is quite distinct from the action which does the work, and a little effort of the brain in a new direction rests and refreshes the part of the brain which is drudging along day after day, and not only that, but when one has gained the habit of working more easily life is happier and more worth while. If once we could become convinced of that fact it would be a simple matter for the head to learn to save the heels and for the whole body to be more vigorous in consequence.

Take sewing, for instance: If a woman must sew all day long without cessation and she can appreciate that ten or fifteen minutes taken out of the day once in the morning and once in the afternoon is going to save fatigue and help her to do her sewing better, doesn’t it seem simply a lack of common sense if she is not willing to take that half hour and use it for its right purpose? Or, if she is employed with others, is it not a lack of common sense combined with cruelty in her employer if he will not permit the use of fifteen minutes twice a day to help his employees to do their work better and to keep more healthy in the process of working?

It seems to me that all most of us need is to have our attention drawn to the facts in such cases as this and then we shall be willing and anxious to correct the mistakes.

First, we do not know, and, secondly, we do not think, intelligently. It is within our reach to do both.

Let me put the facts about healthy sewing in numerical order:–

First–A woman should never sew nor be allowed to sew in bad air. The more or less cramped attitude of the chest in sewing makes it especially necessary that the lungs should be well supplied with oxygen, else the blood will lose vitality, the appetite will go and the nerves will be straining to bring the muscles up to work which they could do quite easily if they were receiving the right amount of nourishment from air and food.

Second–When our work gives our muscles a tendency steadily in one direction we must aim to counteract that tendency by using exercises with a will to pull them in the opposite way.

If a man writes constantly, to stop writing half a dozen times a day and stretch the fingers of his hand wide apart and let them relax back slowly will help him so that he need not be afraid of writer’s paralysis.

Now a woman’s tendency in sewing is to have her chest contracted and settled down on her stomach, and her head bent forward. Let her stop even twice a day, lift her chest off her stomach, see that the lifting of her chest takes her shoulders back, let her head gently fall back, take a long quiet breath in that attitude, then bring the head up slowly, take some long quiet breaths like gentle sighs, gradually let the lungs settle back into their habitual state of breathing, and then try the exercise again.

If this exercise is repeated three times in succession with quiet care, its effect will be very evident in the refreshment felt when a woman begins sewing again.

At the very most it can only take two minutes to go through the whole exercise and be ready to repeat it.

That will mean six minutes for the three successive times.

Six minutes can easily be made up by the renewed vigor that comes from the long breath and change of attitude. Stopping for the exercise three times a day will only take eighteen–or at the most twenty-minutes out of the day’s work and it will put much more than that into the work in new power.

Third–We must remember that we need not sew in a badly cramped position. Of course the exercises will help us out of the habitually cramped attitude, but we cannot expect them to help us so much unless we make an effort while sewing to be as little cramped as possible.

The exercises give us a new standard of erectness, and that new standard will make us sensitive to the wrong attitude.

We will constantly notice when our chests get cramped and settled down on our stomachs and by expanding them and lifting them, even as we sew, the healthy attitude will get to be second nature.

Fourth–We must sew with our hands and our arms, not with our spines, the backs of our necks, or our legs. The unnecessary strain she puts into her sewing makes a woman more tired than anything else. To avoid this she must get sensitive to the strain, and every time she perceives it drop it; consciously, with a decided use of her will, until she has established the habit of working without strain. The gentle raising of the head to the erect position after the breathing exercise will let out a great deal of strain, and so make us more sensitive to its return when we begin to sew, and the more sensitive we get to it the sooner we can drop it.

I think I hear a woman say, “I have neither the time nor the strength to attend to all this.” My answer is, such exercise will save time and strength in the end.

CHAPTER XXIII

_Do not Hurry_

HOW can any one do anything well while in a constant state of rush? How can any one see anything clearly while in a constant state of rush? How can any one expect to keep healthy and strong while in a constant state of rush?

But most of my readers may say, “I am not in a constant state of rush–I only hurry now and then when I need to hurry.”

The answer to that is “Prove it, prove it.” Study yourself a little, and see whether you find yourself chronically in a hurry or not.

If you will observe yourself carefully with a desire to find the hurry tendency, and to find it thoroughly, in order to eliminate it, you will be surprised to see how much of it there is in you.

The trouble is that all our standards are low, and to raise our standards we must drop that which interferes with the most wholesome way of living.

As we get rid of all the grosser forms of hurry we find in ourselves other hurry habits that are finer and more subtle, and gradually our standards of quiet, deliberate ways get higher; we become more sensitive to hurry, and a hurried way of doing things grows more and more disagreeable to us.

Watch the women coming out of a factory in the dinner hour or at six o’clock. They are almost tumbling over each other in their hurry to get away. They are putting on their jackets, pushing in their hatpins, and running along as if their dinner were running away from them.

Something akin to that same attitude of rush we can see in any large city when the clerks come out of the shops, for their luncheon hour, or when the work of the day is over.

If we were to calculate in round numbers the amount of time saved by this rush to get away from the shop, we should find three minutes, probably the maximum–and if we balance that against the loss to body and mind which is incurred, we should find the three minutes’ gain quite overweighted by the loss of many hours, perhaps days, because of the illness which must be the result of such habitual contraction.

It is safe to predict when we see a woman rushing away from factory or shop that she is not going to “let up” on that rate of speed until she is back again at work. Indeed, having once started brain and body with such an exaggerated impetus, it is not possible to quiet down without a direct and decided use of the will, and how is that decided action to be taken if the brain is so befogged with the habit of hurry that it knows no better standard?

One of the girls from a large factory came rushing up to the kind, motherly head of the boarding house the other day saying:–

“It is abominable that I should be kept waiting so long for my dinner. I have had my first course and here I have been waiting twenty minutes for my dessert.”

The woman addressed looked up quietly to the clock and saw that it was ten minutes past twelve.

“What time did you come in?” she said. “At twelve o’clock.”

“And you have had your first course?”

“Yes.”

“And waited twenty minutes for your dessert?”

“Yes!” (snappishly).

“How can that be when you came in at twelve o’clock, and it is now only ten minutes past?”

Of course there was nothing to say in answer, but whether the girl took it to heart and so raised her standard of quiet one little bit, I do not know.

One can deposit a fearful amount of strain in the brain with only a few moments’ impatience.

I use the word “fearful” advisedly, for when the strain is once deposited it is not easily removed, especially when every day and every moment of every day is adding to the strain.

The strain of hurry makes contractions in brain and body with which it is impossible to work freely and easily or to accomplish as much as might be done without such contractions.

The strain of hurry befogs the brain so that it is impossible for it to expand to an unprejudiced point of view.

The strain of hurry so contracts the whole nervous and muscular systems that the body can take neither the nourishment of food nor of fresh air as it should.

There are many women who work for a living, and women who do not work for a living, who feel hurried from morning until they go to bed at night, and they must, perforce, hurry to sleep and hurry awake.

Often the day seems so full, and one is so pressed for time that it is impossible to get in all there is to do, and yet a little quiet thinking will show that the important things can be easily put into two thirds of the day, and the remaining third is free for rest, or play, or both.

Then again, there is real delight in quietly fitting one thing in after another when the day must be full, and the result at the end of the day is only healthy fatigue from which a good night’s rest will refresh us entirely.

There is one thing that is very evident–a feeling of hurry retards our work, it does not hasten it, and the more quietly we can do what is before us, the more quickly and vigorously we do it.

The first necessity is to find ourselves out–to find out for a fact when we do hurry, and how we hurry, and how we have the sense of hurry with us all the time. Having willingly, and gladly, found ourselves out, the remedy is straight before us.

Nature is on the side of leisure and will come to our aid with higher standards of quiet, the possibilities of which are always in every one’s brain, if we only look to find them.

To sit five minutes quietly taking long breaths to get a sense of leisure every day will be of very great help–and then when we find ourselves hurrying, let us stop and recall the best quiet we know–that need only take a few seconds, and the gain is sure to follow.

_Festina lente_ (hasten slowly) should be in the back of our brains all day and every day.

“‘T is haste makes waste, the sage avers, And instances are far too plenty; Whene’er the hasty impulse stirs, Put on the brake, Festina Lente.”

CHAPTER XXIV

_The Care of an Invalid_

TO take really good care of one who is ill requires not only knowledge but intelligent patience and immeasurable tact.

A little knowledge will go a great way, and we do not need to be trained nurses in order to help our friends to bear their illnesses patiently and quietly and to adjust things about them so that they are enabled to get well faster because of the care we give them.

Sometimes if we have only fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at night to be with a sick friend, we can so arrange things for the day and for the night that we will have left behind us a directly curative influence because our invalid feels cared for in the best way, and has confidence enough to follow the suggestions we have given.

More depends upon the spirit with which we approach an invalid than anything else.

A trained nurse who has graduated at the head of her class and has executive ability, who knows exactly what to do and when to do it, may yet bring such a spirit of self-importance and bustle that everything she does for the invalid’s ease, comfort, and recuperation is counteracted by the unrestful “professional” spirit with which the work is done.

On the other hand, a woman who has only a slight knowledge of nursing can bring so restful and unobtrusive an atmosphere with her that the invalid gains from her very presence.

Overwhelming kindness is not only tiresome and often annoying, but a serious drag on one who is ill.

People who are so busy doing kindnesses seldom consult the invalid’s preferences at all. They are too full of their own selfish kindliness and self-importance.

I remember a woman who was suffering intensely from neuralgia in her face. A friend, proud of the idea of caring for her and giving up her own pleasure to stay in the darkened room and keep the sufferer’s face bathed in hot water, made such a rustling back and forth with her skirts in getting the water that the strain of the constant noise and movement not only counteracted any relief that might have come from the heat, but it increased the pain and made the nervous condition of the patient much worse.

So it is with a hundred and one little “kindnesses” that people try to do for others when they are ill.

They talk to amuse them when the invalids would give all in their power to have a little quiet.

They sit like lumps and say nothing when a little light, easy chatting might divert the invalid’s attention and so start up a gentle circulation which would tend directly toward health.

Or, they talk and are entertaining for a while in a very helpful way, but not knowing when to stop, finally make the patient so tired that they undo all the good of the first fifteen minutes.

They flood the room with light, “to make it look pleasant,” when the invalid longs for the rest of a darkened room; or they draw the shades when the patient longs for the cheerfulness of sunlight.

They fuss and move about to do this or that and the other “kindness” when the sick person longs for absolute quiet.

They shower attentions when the first thing that is desired is to be let alone. One secret of the whole trouble in this oppressive care of the sick is that this sort of caretaker is interested more to please herself and feel the satisfaction of her own benefactions than she is to really please the friend for whom she is caring. Another trouble is common ignorance. Some women would gladly sacrifice anything to help a friend to get well; they would give their time and their strength gladly and count it as nothing, but they do not know how to care for the sick. Often such people are sadly discouraged because they see that they are only bringing discomfort where, with all their hearts, they desire to bring comfort. The first necessity in the right care for the sick is to be quiet and cheerful. The next is to aim, without disturbing the invalid, to get as true an idea as possible of the condition necessary to help the patient to get well. The third is to bring about those conditions with the least possible amount of friction.

Find out what the invalid likes and how she likes it by observation and not by questions.

Sometimes, of course, a question must be asked. If we receive a snappish answer, let us not resent it, but blame the illness and be grateful if, along with the snappishness, we find out what suits our patient best.

If we see her increasing her pain by contracting and giving all her attention to complaining, we cannot help her by telling her that that sort of thing is not going to make her well. But we can soothe her in a way that will enable her to see it for herself.

Often the right suggestion, no matter how good it is, will only annoy the patient and send her farther on in the wrong path; but if given in some gentle roundabout way, so that she feels that she has discovered for herself what you have been trying to tell her, it will work wonders toward her recovery.

If you want to care for the sick in a way that will truly help them toward recovery, you must observe and study,–study and observe, and never resent their irritability.

See that they have the right amount of air; that they have the right nourishment at the right intervals. Let them have things their own way, and done in their own way so far as is possible without interfering with what is necessary to their health.

Remember that there are times when it is better to risk deferring recovery a little rather than force upon an invalid what is not wanted, especially when it is evident that resistance will be harmful.

Quiet, cheerfulness, light, air, nourishment, orderly surroundings, and to be let judiciously alone; those are the conditions which the amateur nurse must further, according to her own judgment and, her knowledge of the friend she is nursing.

For this purpose she must, as I have said, study and observe, and observe and study.

I do not mean necessarily to do all this when she is “off duty,” but to so concentrate when she is attending to the wants of her friend that every moment and every thought will be used to the best gain of the patient herself, and not toward our ideas of her best gain.

A little careful effort of this kind will open a new and interesting vista to the nurse as well as the patient.

CHAPTER XXV

_The Habit of Illness_

IT is surprising how many invalids there are who have got well and do not know it! When you feel ill and days drag on with one ill feeling following another, it is not a pleasant thing to be told that you are quite well. Who could be expected to believe it? I should like to know how many men and women there are who will read this article, who are well and do not know it; and how many of such men and women will take the hint I want to give them and turn honestly toward finding themselves out in a way that will enable them to discover and acknowledge the truth?

Nerves form habits. They actually form habits in themselves. If a woman has had an organic trouble which has caused certain forms of nervous discomfort, when the organic trouble is cured the nerves are apt to go on for a time with the same uncomfortable feelings because during the period of illness they had formed the habit of such discomfort. Then is the time when the will must be used to overcome such habits. The trouble is that when the doctor tells these victims of nervous habit that they are really well they will not believe him. “How can I be well,” they say, “when I suffer just as I did while I was ill?” If then the doctor is fortunate enough to convince them of the fact that it is only the nervous habit formed from their illness which causes them to suffer, and that they can rouse their wills to overcome intelligently this habit, then they can be well in a few weeks when they might have been apparently ill for many months–or perhaps even years.

Nerves form the habit of being tired. A woman can get very much overfatigued at one time and have the impression of the fatigue so strongly on her nerves that the next time she is only a little tired she will believe she is very tired, and so her life will go until the habit of being tired has been formed in her nerves and she believes that she is tired all the time–whereas if the truth were known she might easily feel rested all the time.

It is often very difficult to overcome the habit which the nerves form as a result of an attack of nervous prostration. It is equally hard to convince any one getting out of such an illness that the habit of his nerves tries to make him believe he cannot do a little more every day–when he really can, and would be better for it. Many cases of nervous prostration which last for years might be cured in as many months if the truth about nerve habits were recognized and acted upon.

Nerves can form bad habits and they can form good habits, but of all the bad habits formed by nerves perhaps the very worst is the habit of being ill. These bad habits of illness engender an unwillingness to let go of them. They seem so real. “I do not want to suffer like this,” I hear an invalid say; “if it were merely a habit don’t you think I would throw it off in a minute?”

I knew a young physician who had made somewhat of a local reputation in the care of nerves, and a man living in a far-distant country, who had been for some time a chronic invalid, happened by accident to hear of him. My friend was surprised to receive a letter from this man, offering to pay him the full amount of all fees he would earn in one month and as much more as he might ask if he would spend that time in the house with him and attempt his cure.

Always interested in new phases of nerves, and having no serious case on hand himself at the time, he assented and went with great interest on this long journey to, as he hoped, cure one man. When he arrived he found his patient most charming. He listened attentively to the account of his years of illness, inquired of others in the house with him, and then went to bed and to sleep. In the morning he woke with a sense of unexplained depression. In searching about for the cause he went over his interviews of the day before and found a doubt in his mind which he would hardly acknowledge; but by the end of the next day he said to himself: “What a fool I was to come so far without a more complete knowledge of what I was coming to! This man has been well for years and does not know it. It is the old habit of his illness that is on him; the illness itself must have left him ten years ago.”

The next day–the first thing after breakfast–he took a long walk in order to make up his mind what to do, and finally decided that he had engaged to stay one month and must keep to his promise. It would not do to tell the invalid the truth–the poor man would not believe it. He was self-willed and self-centered, and his pains and discomforts, which came simply from old habits of illness, were as real to him as if they had been genuine. Several physicians had emphasized his belief that he was ill. One doctor–so my friend was told–who saw clearly the truth of the case, ventured to hint at it and was at once discharged. My friend knew all these difficulties and, when he made up his mind that the only right thing for him to do was to stay, he found himself intensely interested in trying to approach his patient with so much delicacy that he could finally convince him of the truth; and I am happy to say that his efforts were to a great degree successful. The patient was awakened to the fact that, if he tried, he could be a well man. He never got so far as to see that he really was a well man who was allowing old habits to keep him ill; but he got enough of a new and healthy point of view to improve greatly and to feel a hearty sense of gratitude toward the man who had enlightened him. The long habit of illness had dulled his brain too much for him to appreciate the whole truth about himself.

The only way that such an invalid’s brain can be enlightened is by going to work very gently and leading him to the light–never by combating. This young physician whom I mention was successful only through making friends with his patient and leading him gradually to appear to discover for himself the fact which all the time the physician was really telling him. The only way to help others is to help them to help themselves, and this is especially the truth with nerves.

If you, my friend, are so fortunate as to find out that your illness is more a habit of illness than illness itself, do not expect to break the habit at once. Go about it slowly and with common sense. A habit can be broken sooner than it can be formed, but even then it cannot be broken immediately. First recognize that your uncomfortable feelings whether of eyes, nose, stomach, back of neck, top of head, or whatever it may be, are mere habits, and then go about gradually but steadily ignoring them. When once you find that your own healthy self can assert itself and realize that you are stronger than your habits, these habits of illness will weaken and finally disappear altogether.

The moment an illness gets hold of one, the illness has the floor, so to speak, and the temptation is to consider it the master of the situation–and yielding to this temptation is the most effectual way of beginning to establish the habits which the illness has started, and makes it more difficult to know when one is well. On the other hand it is clearly possible to yield completely to an illness and let Nature take its course, and at the same time to take a mental attitude of wholesomeness toward it which will deprive the illness of much of its power. Nature always tends toward health; so we have the working of natural law entirely on our side. If the attitude of a man’s mind is healthy, when he gets well he is well. He is not bothered long with the habits of his illness, for he has never allowed them to gain any hold upon him. He has neutralized the effect of the would-be habits in the beginning so that they could not get a firm hold. We can counteract bad habits with good ones any time that we want to if we only go to work in the right way and are intelligently persistent.

It would be funny if it were not sad to hear a man say, “Well, you know I had such and such an illness years ago and I never really recovered from the effects of it,” and to know at the same time that he had kept himself in the effects of it, or rather the habits of his nerves had kept him there, and he had been either ignorant or unwilling to use his will to throw off those habits and gain the habits of health which were ready and waiting.

People who cheerfully turn their hearts and minds toward health have so much, so very much, in their favor.

Of course, there are laws of health to be learned and carefully followed in the work of throwing off habits of illness. We must rest; take food that is nourishing, exercise, plenty of sleep and fresh air–yet always with the sense that the illness is only something to get rid of, and our own healthy attitude toward the illness is of the greatest importance.

Sometimes a man can go right ahead with his work, allow an illness to run its course, and get well without interrupting his work in the least, because of his strong aim toward health which keeps his illness subordinate. But this is not often the case. An illness, even though it be treated as subordinate, must be respected more or less according to its nature. But when that is done normally no bad habits will be left behind.

I know a young girl who was ill with strained nerves that showed themselves in weak eyes and a contracted stomach. She is well now–entirely well–but whenever she gets a little tired the old habits of eyes and stomach assert themselves, and she holds firmly on to them, whereas each time of getting overtired might be an opportunity to break up these evil habits by a right amount of rest and a healthy amount of ignoring.

This matter of habit is a very painful thing when it is supported by inherited tendencies. If a young person overdoes and gets pulled down with fatigue the fatigue expresses itself in the weakest part of his body. It may be in the stomach and consequently appear as indigestion; it may be in the head and so bring about severe headaches, and it may be in both stomach and head.

If it is known that such tendencies are inherited the first thought that almost inevitably comes to the mind is: “My father always had headaches and my grandfather, too. Of course, I must expect them now for the rest of my life.” That thought interpreted rightly is: “My grandfather formed the headache habit, my father inherited the habit and clinched it–now, of course, I must expect to inherit it, and I will do my best to see if I cannot hold on to the habit as well as they did–even better, because I can add my own hold to that which I have inherited from both my ancestors.”

Now, of course, a habit of illness, whether it be of the head, stomach, or of both, is much more difficult to discard when it is inherited than when it is first acquired in a personal illness of our own; but, because it is difficult, it is none the less possible to discard it, and when the work has been accomplished the strength gained from the steady, intelligent effort fully compensates for the difficulty of the task.

One must not get impatient with a bad habit in one’s self; it has a certain power while it lasts, and can acquire a very strong hold. Little by little it must be dealt with–patiently and steadily. Sometimes it seems almost as if such habits had intelligence–for the more you ignore them the more rampant they become, and there is a Rubicon to cross, in the process of ignoring which, when once passed, makes the work of gaining freedom easier; for when the backbone of the habit is broken it weakens and seems to fade away of itself, and we awaken some fine morning and it has gone–really gone.

Many persons are in a prison of bad habits simply because they do not know how to get out–not because they do not want to get out. If we want to help a friend out of the habit of illness it is most important first to be sure that it is a habit, and then to remember that a suggestion is seldom responded to unless it is given with generous sympathy and love. Indeed, when a suggestion is given with lack of sympathy or with contempt the tendency is to make the invalid turn painfully away from the speaker and hug her bad habits more closely to herself. What we can do, however, is to throw out a suggestion here and there which may lead such a one to discover the truth for herself; then, if she comes to you with sincere interest in her discovery, don’t say: “Yes, I have thought so for some time.” Keep yourself out of it, except in so far as you can give aid which is really wanted, and accepted and used.

Beware of saying or doing anything to or for any one which will only rouse resentment and serve to push deeper into the brain an impression already made by a mistaken conviction. More than half of the functional and nervous illnesses in the world are caused by bad habit, either formed or inherited.

Happy are those who discover the fact for themselves and, with the intelligence born from such discovery, work with patient insight until they have freed themselves from bondage. Happy are those who feel willing to change any mistaken conviction or prejudice and to recognize it as a sin against the truth.

CHAPTER XXVI

_What is It that Makes Me so Nervous?_

THE two main reasons why women are nervous are, first, that they do not take intelligent care of their bodies, and secondly, that they do not govern their emotions.

I know a woman who prefers to make herself genuinely miserable rather than take food normally, to eat it normally, and to exercise in the fresh air.

“Everybody is against me,” she says; and if you answer her, “My dear, you are acting against yourself by keeping your stomach on a steady strain with too much unmasticated, unhealthy, undigested food,” she turns a woe-begone face on you and asks how you can be “so material.” “Nobody loves me; nobody is kind to me. Everybody neglects me,” she says.

And when you answer, “How can any one love you when you are always whining and complaining? How can any one be kind to you when you resent and resist every friendly attention because it does not suit your especial taste? Indeed, how can you expect anything from any one when you are giving nothing yourself?” She replies,

“But I am so nervous. I suffer. Why don’t they sympathize?”

“My dear child, would you sympathize with a woman who went down into the cellar and cried because she was so cold, when fresh air and warm sunshine were waiting for her outside?”

This very woman herself is cold all the time. She piles covers over herself at night so that the weight alone would be enough to make her ill. She sleeps with the heat turned on in her room. She complains all day of cold when not complaining of other things. She puts such a strain on her stomach that it takes all of her vitality to look after her food; therefore she has no vitality left with which to resist the cold. Of course she resists the idea of a good brisk walk in the fresh air, and yet, if she took the walk and enjoyed it, it would start up her circulation, give her blood more oxygen, and help her stomach to go through all its useless labor better.

When a woman disobeys all the laws of nervous health how can she expect not to have her nerves rebel? Nerves in themselves are exquisitely sensitive–with a direct tendency toward health.

“Don’t give me such unnecessary work,” the stomach cries. “Don’t stuff me full of the wrong things. Don’t put a bulk of food into me, but chew your food, so that I shall not have to do my own work and yours, too, when the food gets down here.”

And there is the poor stomach, a big nervous centre in close communication with the brain, protesting and protesting, and its owner interprets all these protestations into: “I am so unhappy. I have to work so much harder than I ought. Nobody loves me. Oh, why am I so nervous?”

The blood also cries out: “Give me more oxygen. I cannot help the lungs or the stomach or the brain to do their work properly unless you take exercise in the fresh air that will feed me truly and send me over the body with good, wholesome vigor.”

Now there is another thing that is sadly evident about the young woman who will not take fresh air, nor eat the right food, nor masticate properly the food that she does eat. When she goes out for a walk she seems to fight the fresh air; she walks along full of resistance and contraction, and tightens all her muscles so that she moves as if she were tied together with ropes. The expression of her face is one of miserable strain and endurance; the tone of her voice is full of complaint. In eating either she takes her food with the appearance of hungry grabbing, or she refuses it with a fastidious scorn. Any nervous woman who really wants to find herself out, in order to get well and strong, and contented and happy, will see in this description a reflection of herself, even though it may be an exaggerated reflection.

Did you ever see a tired, hungry baby fight his food? His mother tries to put the bottle to his mouth, and the baby cries and cries, and turns his head away, and brandishes his little arms about, as if his mother were offering him something bitter. Then, finally, when his mother succeeds in getting him to open his mouth and take the food it makes you smile all over to see the contrast: he looks so quiet and contented, and you can see his whole little body expand with satisfaction.

It is just the same inherited tendency in a nervous woman that makes her either consciously or unconsciously fight exercise and fresh air, fight good food and eating it rightly, fight everything that is wholesome and strengthening and quieting to her nerves, and cling with painful tenacity to everything that is contracting and weakening, and productive of chronic strain.

There is another thing that a woman fights: she fights rest. Who has not seen a tired woman work harder and harder, when she was tired, until she has worn herself to a state of nervous irritability and finally has to succumb for want of strength? Who has not seen this same tired woman, the moment she gets back a little grain of strength, use it up again at once instead of waiting until she had paid back her principal and could use only the interest of her strength while keeping a good balance in reserve?

“I wish my mother would not do so many unnecessary things,” said an anxious daughter.

A few days after this the mother came in tired, and, with a fagged look on her face and a fagged tone in her voice, said: “Before I sit down I must go and see poor Mrs. Robinson. I have just heard that she has been taken ill with nervous prostration. Poor thing! Why couldn’t she have taken care of herself?”

“But, mother,” her daughter answered, “I have been to see Mrs. Robinson, and taken her some flowers, and told her how sorry you would be to hear that she was ill.”

“My dear,” said the fagged mother with a slight tone of irritation in her voice, “that was very good of you, but of course that was not my going, and if I should let to-day pass without going to see her, when I have just heard of her illness, it would be unfriendly and unneighborly and I should not forgive myself.”

“But, mother, you are tired; you do need to rest so much.”

“My dear,” said the mother with an air of conscious virtue, “I am never too tired to do a neighborly kindness.”

When she left the house her daughter burst into tears and let out the strain which had been accumulating for weeks.

Finally, when she had let down enough to feel a relief, a funny little smile came through the tears.

“There is one nervously worn-out woman gone to comfort and lift up another nervously worn-out woman–if that is not the blind leading the blind then I don’t know. I wonder how long it will be before mamma, too, is in the ditch?”

This same story could be reversed with the mother in the daughter’s place, and the daughter in the mother’s. And, indeed, we see slight illustrations of it, in one way or the other, in many families and among many friends.

This, then, is the first answer to any woman’s question, “Why am I so nervous?” Because you do not use common sense in taking exercise, fresh air, nourishment, and rest.

Nature tends toward health. Your whole physical organism tends toward health. If you once find yourself out and begin to be sensible you will find a great, vigorous power carrying you along, and you will be surprised to see how fast you gain. It may be some time before Nature gets her own way with you entirely, because when one has been off the track for long it must take time to readjust; but when we begin to go with the laws of health, instead of against them, we get into a healthy current and gain faster than would have seemed possible when we were outside of it, habitually trying to oppose the stream.

The second reason why women are nervous is that they do not govern their emotions. Very often it is the strain of unpleasant emotions that keeps women nervous, and when we come really to understand we find that the strain is there because the woman does not get her own way. She has not money enough.

She has to live with some one she dislikes. She feels that people do not like her and are neglectful of her. She believes that she has too much work to do. She wishes that she had more beauty in her life.

Sometimes a woman is entirely conscious of when or why she fails to get her own way; then she knows what she is fretting about, and she may even know that the fretting is a strain that keeps her tired and nervously irritated. Sometimes a woman is entirely unconscious of what it is that is keeping her in a chronic state of nervous irritability. I have seen a woman express herself as entirely resigned to the very circumstance or person that she was unconsciously resisting so fiercely that her resistance kept her ill half of the time. In such cases the strain is double. First, there is the strain of the person or circumstance chronically resisted and secondly, there is the strain of the pose of saintly resignation. It is bad enough to pose to other people, but when we pose to other people and to ourselves too the strain is twice as bad.

Imagine a nerve specialist saying to his patient, “My dear madam, you really must stop being a hypocrite. You have not the nervous strength to spare for it.” In most cases, I fear, the woman would turn on him indignantly and go home to be more of a hypocrite than ever, and so more nervously ill.

I have seen a woman cry and make no end of trouble because she had to have a certain relative live in the house with her, simply because her relative “got on her nerves.” Then, after the relative had left the house, this same woman cried and still kept on making no end of trouble because she thought she had done wrong in sending “Cousin Sophia” away; and the poor, innocent, uncomplaining victim was brought back again. Yet it never seemed to occur to the nervous woman that “Cousin Sophia” was harmless, and that her trouble came entirely from the way in which she constantly resented and resisted little unpolished ways.

I do not know how many times “Cousin Sophia” may be sent off and brought back again; nor how many times other things in my nervous friend’s life may have to be pulled to pieces and then put together again, for she has not yet discovered that the cause of the nervous trouble is entirely in herself, and that if she would stop resisting “Cousin Sophia’s” innocent peculiarities, stop resisting other various phases of her life that do not suit her, and begin to use her will to yield where she has always resisted, her load would be steadily and happily lifted.

The nervous strain of doing right is very painful; especially so because most women who are under this strain do not really care about doing right at all. I have seen a woman quibble and talk and worry about what she believed to be a matter of right and wrong in a few cents, and then neglect for months to pay a poor man a certain large amount of money which he had honestly earned, and which she knew he needed.

The nervous conscience is really no conscience at all. I have seen a woman worry over what she owed to a certain other woman in the way of kindness, and go to a great deal of trouble to make her kindness complete; and then, on the same day, show such hard, unfeeling cruelty toward another friend that she wounded her deeply, and that without a regret.

A nervous woman’s emotions are constantly side-tracking her away from the main cause of her difficulty, and so keeping her nervous. A nervous woman’s desire to get her own way–and strained rebellion at not getting her own way–bedazzles or befogs her brain so that her nerves twist off into all sorts of emotions which have nothing whatever to do with the main cause. The woman with the troublesome relative wants to be considered good and kind and generous. The woman with the nervous money conscience wants to be considered upright and just in her dealings with others. All women with various expressions of nervous conscience want to ease their consciences for the sake of their own comfort–not in the least for the sake of doing right.

I write first of the nervous hypocrite because in her case the nervous strain is deeper in and more difficult to find. To watch such a woman is like seeing her in a terrible nightmare, which she steadily “sugar-coats” by her complacent belief in her own goodness. If, among a thousand nervous “saints” who may read these words, one is thereby enabled to find herself out, they are worth the pains of writing many times over. The nervous hypocrites who do not find themselves out get sicker and sicker, until finally they seem to be of no use except to discipline those who have the care of them.

The greatest trouble comes through the befogging emotions. A woman begins to feel a nervous strain, and that strain results in exciting emotions; these emotions again breed more emotions until she becomes a simmering mass of exciting and painful emotions which can be aroused to a boiling point at any moment by anything or any one who may touch a sensitive point. When a woman’s emotions are aroused, and she is allowing herself to be governed by them, reason is out of the question, and any one who imagines that a woman can be made to understand common sense in a state like that will find himself entirely mistaken.

The only cure is for the woman herself to learn first how entirely impervious to common sense she is when she is in the midst of an emotional nerve storm, so that she will say, “Don’t try to talk to me now; I am not reasonable, wait until I get quiet.” Then, if she will go off by herself and drop her emotions, and also the strain behind her emotions, she will often come to a good, clear judgment without outside help; or, if not, she will come to the point where she will be ready and grateful to receive help from a clearer mind than her own.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t tell that to Alice,” a young fellow said of his sister. “She will have fits first, and then indigestion and insomnia for six weeks.” The lad was not a nerve specialist; neither was he interested in nerves–except to get away from them; but he spoke truly from common sense and his own experience with his sister.

The point is, to drop the emotions and face the facts. If nervous women would see the necessity for that, and would practice it, it would be surprising to see how their nerves would improve.

I once knew a woman who discovered that her emotions were running away with her and making her nervously ill. She at once went to work with a will, and every time something happened to rouse this great emotional wave she would deliberately force herself to relax and relax until the wave had passed over her and she could see things in a sensible light. When she was unable to go off by herself and lie down to relax, she would walk with her mind bent on making her feet feel heavy. When you drop the tension of the emotion, the emotion has nothing to hold on to and it must go.

I knew another woman who did not know how to relax; so, to get free from this emotional excitement, she would turn her attention at once to figures, to her personal accounts or even to saying the multiplication table. The steady concentration of her mind on dry figures and on “getting her sums right” left the rest of her brain free to drop its excitement and get into a normal state again.

Again it is sometimes owing to the pleasant emotions which some women indulge in to such an extreme that they are made ill. How many times have we heard of women who were “worn to a shred” by the delight of an opera, or a concert, or an exciting play? If these women only knew it, their pleasure would be far keener if they would let the enjoyment pass through them, instead of tightening up in their nerves and trying to hold on to it.

Nature in us always tends toward health, and toward pleasant sensations. If we relax out of painful emotions we find good judgment and happy instincts behind them. If we relax so that pleasant emotions can pass over our nerves they leave a deposit of happy sensation behind, which only adds to the store that Nature has provided for us.

To sum up: The two main reasons why women are nervous are that they do not take intelligent care of their bodies, and that they do not govern their emotions; but back of these reasons is the fact that they want their own way altogether too much. Even if a woman’s own way is right, she has no business to push for it selfishly. If any woman thinks, “I could take intelligent care of my own body if I did not have to work so hard, or have this or that interference,” let her go to work with her mind well armed to do what she can, and she will soon find that there are many ways in which she can improve in the normal care of her body, in spite of all the work and all the interferences.

To adapt an old saying, the women who are overworked and clogged with real interferences should aim to be healthy; and, if they cannot be healthy, then they should be as healthy as they can.

CHAPTER XXVII

_Positive and Negative Effort_

DID you ever have the grip? If you ever have you may know how truly it is named and how it does actually grip you so that it seems as if there were nothing else in the world at the time–it appears to entirely possess you. As the Irishman says, the grip is “the disease that lasts fur a week and it takes yer six weeks ter get over it.” That is because it has possessed you so thoroughly that it must be routed out of every little fiber in your body before you are yourself again, and there are hidden corners where it lurks and hides, and it often has to be actually pulled out of them. Now it has been already recognized that if we relax and do not resist a severe cold it leaves us open so that our natural circulation carries away the cold much more quickly than if we allowed ourselves to be full of resistance to the discomfort and the consequent physical contraction that impeded the circulation and holds the cold in our system.

My point is this–that it is comparatively easy to relax out of a cold. We can do it with only a negative effort, but to relax so that nature in her steady and unswerving tendency toward health can lift us out of the grip is quite another matter. When we feel ourselves entirely in the power of such a monster as that is at its worst, it is only by a very strong and positive effort of the will that we can yield so that nature can guide us into health, and we do not need the six weeks of getting well.

In order to gain this positive sense of yielding away from the disease rather than of letting it hold us, we must do what seems at the time the impossible–we must refuse to give our attention to the pain or discomfort and insist upon giving our attention entirely to yielding out of the contractions which the painful discomforts cause. In other words, we must give up resisting the grip. It is the same with any other disease or any pain. If we have the toothache and give all our attention to the toothache, it inevitably makes it worse; but if we give our attention to yielding out of the toothache contractions, it eases the pain even though it may be that only the dentist can stop it. Once I had an ulcerated tooth which lasted for a week. I had to yield so steadily to do my work during the day and to be able to sleep at all at night that it not only made the pain bearable, but when the tooth got well I was surprised to find how many habitual contractions I had dropped and how much more freedom of action I had before my tooth began to ulcerate. I should not wish to have another ulcerated tooth in order that I might gain more freedom, but I should wish to take every pain of body and mind so truly that when the pain was over I should have gained greater freedom than I had before it began.

You see it is the same with every pain and with every disease. Nature tends toward health and if we make the disease simply a reminder to yield–and to yield more deeply–and to put our positive effort there, we are opening the way for nature to do her best work. If our entire attention is given to yielding and we give no attention whatever to the pain, except as a reminder to yield, the result seems wonderful. It seems wonderful because so few of us have the habit of giving our entire attention to gaining our real freedom.

With most of us, the disease or discomfort is positive, and our effort against it is negative or no effort at all. A negative effort probably protects us from worse evil, but that is all; it does not seem to me that it can ever take us ahead, whereas a positive effort, while sometimes we seem to move upward in very slow stages, often takes us in great strides out of the enemy’s country.

If we have the measles, the whooping cough, scarlet fever–even more serious diseases–and make the disease negative and our effort to free ourselves from it positive, the result is one thousand times worth while. And where the children have the measles and the whooping cough, and do not know how to help nature, the mothers can be positive for the children and make their measles and whooping cough negative. The positive attitude of a mother toward her sick child puts impatience or despair out of the question.

Do not think that I believe one can be positive all at once. We must work hard and insist over and over again before we can attain the positive attitude and having attained it, we have to lose it and gain it again, lose it and gain it again, many times before we get the habit of making all difficulties of mind and body negative, and our healthy attitude toward conquering them positive.

I said “difficulties of mind and body.” I might better have said “difficulties of body, mind and character,” or even character alone, for, after all, when you come to sift things down, it is the character that is at the root of all human life.

I know a woman who is constantly complaining. Every morning she has a series of pains to tell of, and her complaints spout out of her in a half-irritated, whining tone as naturally as she breathes. Over and over you think when you listen to her how useful all those pains of hers would be if she took them as a reminder to yield and in yielding to do her work better. But if one should venture to suggest such a possibility, it would only increase the complaints by one more–that of having unsympathetic friends and being misunderstood. “Nobody understands me–nobody understands me.” How often we hear that complaint. How often in hearing it we make the mental question, “Do you understand yourself?”

You see the greatest impediment to our understanding ourselves is our unwillingness to see what is not good in ourselves. It is easy enough in a self-righteous attitude of what we believe to be humility to find fault with ourselves, but quite another thing when others find fault with us. When we are giving our attention to discomforts and pains in a way to give them positive power, and some one suggests that we might change our aim, then the resistance and resentment that are roused in us are very indicative of just where we are in our character.

Another strong indication of allowing our weaknesses and faults to be positive and our effort against them negative is the destructive habit of giving excuses. If fault is found with us and there is justice in it, it does not make the slightest difference how many things we have done that are good, or how much better we do than some one else does–the positive way is to say “thank you” in spirit and in words, and to aim directly toward freeing ourselves from the fault. How ridiculous it would seem if when we were told that we had a smooch on our left cheek, we were to insist vehemently upon the cleanliness of our right cheek, or our forehead, or our hands, instead of being grateful that our attention should be called to the smooch and taking soap and water and at once washing it off. Or how equally absurd it would be if we went into long explanations as to how the smooch would not have been there if it had not been for so and so, and so and so, or so and so,–and then with all our excuses and explanations and protestations, we let the smooch stay–and never really wash it off.

And yet this is not an exaggeration of what most of us do when our attention is called to defects of character. When we excuse and explain and tell how clean the other side of our face is, we are putting ourselves positively on the side of the smooch. So we are putting ourselves entirely on the side of the illness or the pain or the oppression of difficult circumstances when we give excuses or resist or pretend not to see fault in ourselves, or when we confess faults and are contented about them, or when we give all our attention to what is disagreeable and no attention to the normal way of gaining our health or our freedom.

Then all these expressions of self or of illness are to us positive, and our efforts against them only negative. In such cases, of course, the self possesses us as surely as the grip possesses us when we succumb entirely to all its horrors and make no positive effort to yield out of it. And the possession of the self is much worse, much deeper, much more subtle. When possessed with selfishness, we are laying up in our subconsciousness any number of self-seeking motives which come to the surface disguised and compel us to make impulsive and often foolish efforts to gain our own ends. The self is every day proving to be the enemy of the man or woman whom it possesses.

God leaves us free to obey Him or to choose our own selfish way, and in His infinite Providence He is constantly showing us that our own selfish way leads to death and obedience to Him leads to life. That is, that only in obedience to Him do we find our real freedom. He is constantly showering us with a tender generosity and kindness that seems inconceivable, and sometimes it seems as if more often than not we were refusing to see. Indeed we blind ourselves by making all pains of body and faults of soul positive and our efforts against them negative.

If we had a disagreeable habit which we wanted to conquer and asked a friend to remind us with a pinch every time he saw the habit, wouldn’t it seem very strange if when he pinched us, according to agreement, we jumped and turned on him, rubbing our arm with indignation that he should have pinched? Or would it not be even funnier if we made the pinch merely a reminder to go on with the habit?

The Lord is pinching us in that way all the time, and we respond by being indignant at or complaining at our fate, or reply by going more deeply into our weaknesses of character by allowing them to be positive and the pinches only to emphasize them to us.

One trouble is that we do not recognize that there is an agreement between us and the Lord, or that we recognize and then forget it; and yet there should be–there is–more than an agreement, there is a covenant. And the Lord is steadily, unswervingly doing His part, and we are constantly failing in ours. The Lord in His loving kindness pinches–that is, reminds us–and we in our stupid selfishness do not use His reminders.

As an example of making our faults positive and our effort to conquer them negative, one very common form is found in a woman I know, who has times of informing her friends quite seriously and with apparent regret of her very wrong attitudes of mind. She tells how selfish she is and she gives examples of the absolute selfishness of her thoughts when she is appearing to do unselfish things. She tells of her efforts to do better and confesses what she believes to be the absolute futility of her effort. At first I was quite taken in by these confessions, and attracted by what seemed to be a clear understanding of herself and her own motives, but after a little longer acquaintance with her, made the discovery, which was at first surprising to me, that her confessions of evil came just as much from conceit as if she had been standing at the mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude against them was therefore more than ordinarily negative.

The more common way of being negative while we allow our various forms of selfishness to positively govern us is, first in bewailing a weakness seriously, but constantly looking at it and weeping over it, and in that way suggesting it over and over to our brains so that we are really hypnotizing ourselves with the fault and enforcing its expression when we think we are in the effort to conquer it. Such is our negative attitude.

Now if we are convinced that evil in ourselves has no power unless we give it power, that is the first step toward making our efforts positive and so negativing the evil. If we are convinced that evil in ourselves has not only no power but no importance unless we give it power, that is a step still farther in advance. The next step is to refuse to submit to it and refuse to resist it. That means a positive yielding away from it and a positive attention to doing our work as well as we can do it, whatever that work may be.

There is one way in which people suffer intensely through being negative and allowing their temptations to be positive, and that is in the question of inherited evil. “How can I ever amount to anything with such inheritances? If you could see my father and what he is, and know that I am his daughter, you would easily appreciate why I have no hope for myself,” said a young woman, and she was perfectly sincere in believing that because of her inherited temptations her life must be worthless. It took time and gentle, intelligent reasoning to convince her that not only are no inherited forms of selfishness ours unless by indulging we make them ours, but that, through knowing our inheritances, we are forewarned and forearmed, and the strength we gain from positive effort to free ourselves fully compensates us for what we have suffered in oppression from them. Such is the loving kindness of our Creator.

This woman of whom I am writing awoke to the true meaning of the story of the man who asked, before he went with the Lord Jesus Christ, first to go back and bury his father. The Lord answered, “Let the dead bury their dead, and come thou and follow me.” When we feel that we must be bound down by our inheritances, we are surely not letting the dead bury their dead.

And so let us study the whole question more carefully and learn the necessity of letting all that is sickness and all that is evil be negative to us and our efforts to conquer it be positive; in that way the illness and the evil become less than negative,–they gradually are removed and disappear.

Why, in the mere matter of being tired, if we refuse to let the impression of the fatigue be positive to us, and insist upon being positive ourselves in giving attention to the fact that now we are going to rest, we get rested in half the time,–in much less than half the time. Some people carry chronic fatigue with them because of their steady attention to fatigue.

“I am tired, yes, but _I am going to get rested!”_ That is the sensible attitude of mind.

Nature tends toward health. As we realize that and give our attention to it positively, we come to admire and love the healthy working of the laws of nature, and to feel the vigor of interest in trying to obey them intelligently. Nature’s laws are God’s laws, and God’s laws tend toward the health of the spirit in all matters of the spirit as surely as they tend toward health of body in all natural things. That is a truth that as we work to obey we grow to see and to love with deepening reverence, and then indeed we find that God’s laws are all positive, and that the workings of self are only negative.

CHAPTER XXVIII

_Human Dust_

WHEN we face the matter squarely and give it careful thought, it seems to appear very plainly that the one thing most flagrantly in the way of the people of to-day living according to plain common sense–spiritual common sense as well as material–is the fact that we are all living in a chronic state of excitement. It is easy to prove this fact by seeing how soon most of us suffer from ennui when “there is not anything going on.” It seems now as if the average man or woman whom we see would find it quite impossible to stop and do nothing–for an hour or more. “But,” some one will say, “why should I stop and do nothing when I am as busy as I can be all day long, and have my time very happily full?” Or some one else may say, “How can I stop and do nothing when I am nearly crazy with work and must feel that it is being accomplished?”

Now the answer to that is, “Certainly you should not stop and do nothing when you are busy and happily busy;” or, “Although your work will go better if you do not get ‘crazy’ about it, there is no need of interrupting it or delaying it by stopping to do nothing–but _you should be able to stop and do nothing,_ and to do it quietly and contentedly at any time when it might be required of you.”

No man, woman, or child knows the power, the very great power, for work and play–there is with one who has in the background always the ability to stop and do nothing.

If we observe enough, carefully enough, and quietly enough, to get sensitive to it, we can see how every one about us is living in excitement. I have seen women with nothing important to do come down to breakfast in excitement, give their orders for the day as if they were about running for a fire; and the standard of all those about them is so low that no one notices what a human dust is stirred up by all this flutter over nothing.

A man told me not long ago that he got tired out for the day in walking to his office with a friend, because they both talked so intensely. And that is not an unusual experience. This chronic state of strain and excitement in everyday matters makes a mental atmosphere which is akin to what the material atmosphere would be if we were persistently kicking up a dust in the road every step we took. Every one seems to be stirring up his own especial and peculiar dust and adding it to every one else’s especial and peculiar dust.

We are all mentally, morally and spiritually sneezing or choking with our own dust and the dust of other people. How is it possible for us to get any clear, all-round view of life so long as the dust stirring habit is on us? So far from being able to enlarge our horizon, we can get no horizon at all, and so no perspective until this human dust is laid. And there is just this one thing about it, that is a delight to think of: When we know how to live so that our own dust is laid, that very habit of life keeps us clear from the dust of other people. Not only that, but when we are free from dust ourselves, the dust that the other men are stirring up about us does not interfere with our view of them. We see the men through their dust and we see how the dust with which they are surrounding themselves befogs them and impedes their progress. From the place of no dust you can distinguish dust and see through it. From the place of dust you cannot distinguish anything clearly. Therefore, if one wishes to learn the standards of living according to plain common sense, for body, mind, and spirit, and to apply the principles of such standards practically to their every-day life, the first absolute necessity is to get quiet and to stay quiet long enough to lay the dust.

You may know the laws of right eating, of right breathing, of exercise, and rest–but in this dust of excitement in daily life such knowledge helps one very little. You constantly forget, and forget, and forget. Or, if in a moment of forced acknowledgment to the need of better living, you make up your mind that you will live according to sensible laws of hygiene, you go along pretty well for a few weeks, perhaps even months, and then as you feel better physically, you get whirled off into the excitement again, and before you know it you are in the dust with the rest of the world, and all because you had no background for your good resolutions. You never had found and you did not understand quiet.

Did you ever see a wise mother come into a noisy nursery where perhaps her own children were playing excitedly with several little companions, who had been invited in to spend a rainy afternoon? The mother sees all the children in a great state of excitement over their play, and two or three of them disagreeing over some foolish little matter, with their brains in such a state that the nursery is thick with infantile human dust. What does the wise mother do? Add dust of her own by scolding and fretting and fuming over the noise that the children are making? No–no indeed. She first gets all the children’s attention in any happy way she can, one or two at a time, and then when she has their individual attention to a small degree, she gets their united attention by inviting their interest in being so quiet that they “can hear a pin drop.” The children get keenly interested in listening. The first time they do not hear the pin drop because Johnnie or Mollie moved a little. Mother talks with interest of what a very delightful thing it is to be for a little while so quiet that we can hear a pin drop. The second time something interferes, and the third time the children have become so well focused on listening that the little delicate sound is heard distinctly, and they beg mother to try and see if they cannot hear it again. By this time the dust is laid in the nursery, and by changing the games a little, or telling them a story first, the mother is able to leave a nursery full of quiet, happy children.

Now if we, who would like to live happily and keep well, according to plain common sense, can put ourselves with intelligent humility in the place of these little children and study to be quiet, we will be working for that background which is never failing in its possibilities of increasing light and warmth and the expanse of outlook.

First with regard to a quiet body. Indigestion makes us unquiet, therefore we must eat only wholesome food, and not too much of it, and we must eat it quietly. Poor breathing and poor blood makes us unquiet, therefore we should learn to expand our lungs to their full extent in the fresh air and give the blood plenty of oxygen. Breathing also has a direct effect on the circulation and the brain, and when we breathe quietly and rhythmically, we are quieting the movement of our blood as well as opening the channels so that it can flow without interruption. We are also quieting our brain and so our whole nervous system.

Lack of exercise makes us unquiet, because exercise supplies the blood more fully with oxygen and prevents it from flowing sluggishly, a sluggish circulation straining the nervous system. It is therefore important to take regular exercise.

Want of rest especially makes us unquiet; therefore we should attend to it that we get–as far as possible–what rest we need, and take all the rest we get in the best way. We cannot expect to fulfill these conditions all at once, but we can aim steadily to do so, and by getting every day a stronger focus and a steadier aim we can gain so greatly in fulfilling the standards of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and so much of our individual dust will be laid, that I may fairly promise a happy astonishment at the view of life which will open before us, and the power for use and enjoyment that will come.

Let us see now how we would begin practically, having made up our minds to do all in our power to lay the dust and get a quiet background. We must begin in what may seem a very small way. It seems to be always the small beginnings that lead to large and solidly lasting results. Not only that, but when we begin in the small way and the right way to reach any goal, we can find no short cuts and no seven-league boots.

We must take every step and take it decidedly in order to really get there. We must place one brick and then another, exactly, and place every brick–to make a house that will stand.

But now for our first step toward laying the dust. Let us take half an hour every day and do nothing in it. For the first ten minutes we will probably be wretched, for the next ten minutes we may be more wretched, but for the last five minutes we will get a sense of quiet and at first the dust, although not laid, will cease to whirl. And then–an interesting fact–what seems to us quiet in the beginning of our attempt, will seem like noise and whirlwinds, after we have gone further along. Some one may easily say that it is absurd to take half an hour a day to do nothing in. Or that “Nature abhors a vacuum, and how is it possible to do nothing? Our minds will be thinking of or working on something.”

In answer to this, I might say with the Irishman, “Be aisy, but if you can’t be aisy, be as aisy as you can!” Do nothing as well as you can. When you begin thinking of anything, drop it. When you feel restless and as if you could not keep still another minute, relax and make yourself keep still. I should take many days of this insistence upon doing nothing and dropping everything from my mind before taking the next step. For to drop everything from one’s mind, for half an hour is not by any means an easy matter. Our minds are full of interests, full of resistances. With some of us, our minds are full of resentment. And what we have to promise ourselves to do is for that one-half hour a day to take nothing into consideration. If something comes up that we are worrying about, refuse to consider it. If some resentment to a person or a circumstance comes to mind, refuse to consider it.

I know all this is easier to say than to do, but remember, please, that it is only for half an hour every day-only half an hour. Refuse to consider anything for half an hour. Having learned to sit still, or lie still, and think of nothing with a moderate degree of success, and with most people the success can only be moderate at best, the next step is to think quietly of taking long, gentle, easy breaths for half an hour. A long breath and then a rest, two long breaths and then a rest. One can quiet and soothe oneself inside quite wonderfully with the study of long gentle breaths. But it must be a study. We must study to begin inhaling gently, to change to the exhalation with equal delicacy, and to keep the same gentle, delicate pressure throughout, each time trying to make the breath a little longer.

After we have had many days of the gentle, long breaths at intervals for half an hour, then we can breathe rhythmically (inhale counting five or ten, exhale counting five or ten), steadily for half an hour, trying all the time to have the breath more quiet, gentle and steady, drawing it in and letting it out with always decreasing effort. It is wonderful when we discover how little effort we really need to take a full and vigorous breath. This half hour’s breathing exercise every day will help us to the habit of breathing rhythmically all the time, and a steady rhythmic breath is a great physical help toward a quiet mind.

We can mingle with the deep breathing simple exercises of lifting each arm slowly and heavily from the shoulder, and then letting it drop a dead weight, and pausing while we feel conscious of our arms resting without tension in the lap or on the couch.

But all this has been with relation to the body, and it is the mental and moral dust of which I am writing. The physical work for quiet is only helpful as it makes the body a better instrument for the mind and for the will. A quiet body is of no use if it contains an unquiet mind which is going to pull it out of shape or start it up in agitation at the least provocation. In such a case, the quiet body in its passive state is only a more responsive instrument to the mind that wants to raise a dust. One–and the most helpful way of quieting the mind–is through a steady effort at concentration. One can concentrate; on doing nothing–that is, on sitting quietly in a chair or lying quietly on the bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep quiet, be quiet, keep quiet. That is the form of concentration, that is the way of learning to do nothing to advantage. Then we concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have it gentle, steady, and without strain. In the beginning we must take care to concentrate without strain, and without emotion, use our minds quietly, as one might watch a bird who was very near, to see what it will do next, and with care not to frighten it away.

These are the great secrets of true strengthening concentration. The first is dropping everything that interferes. The second is working to concentrate easily without emotion. They are really one and the same. If we work to drop everything that interferes, we are so constantly relaxing in order to concentrate that the very process drops strain bit by bit, little by little.

An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties, resistances, resentments, and full of all varieties of agitation, going over and over things to try to work out problems that are not in human hands, or complaining and fretting and puzzling because help seems to be out of human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by the agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself–it is an effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping, the unreasonable insistence on its own way of kicking, dust-raising self-will at the back of the mind.

A quiet will, a will that can remain quiet through all emergencies, is not a self-will. It is the self that raises the dust–the self that wants, and strains to get its own way, and turns and twists and writhes if it does not get its own way.

God’s will is quiet. We see it in the growth of the trees and the flowers. We see it in the movement of the planets of the Universe. We see God’s mind in the wonderful laws of natural science. Most of all we see and feel, when we get quiet ourselves, God’s love in every thing and every one.

If we want the dust laid, we must work to get our bodies quiet. We must drop all that interferes with quiet in our minds, and we must give up wanting our own way. We must believe that God’s way is immeasurably beyond us and that if we work quietly to obey Him, He will reveal to us His way in so far as we need to know it, and will prepare us for and guide us to His uses.

The most perfect example we have of a quiet mind in a quiet body, guided by the Divine Will, is in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we study His words and His works, we realize the power and the delicacy of His human life, and we realize–as far as we are capable of realizing–the absolute clearness of the atmosphere about Him. We see and feel that atmosphere to be full of quiet–Divine Human Love.

There is no suffering, no temptation, that any man or woman ever had or ever will have that He did not meet in Himself and conquer. Therefore, if we mean to begin the work in ourselves of finding the quiet which will lay our own dust from the very first, if we have the end in our minds of truer obedience and loving trust, we can, even in the simple beginning of learning to do nothing quietly, find an essence of life which eventually we will learn always to recognize and to love, and to know that it is not ourselves, but it is from the Heavenly Father of ourselves.

Some of us cannot get that motive to begin with; some of us will, if we begin at all, work only for relief, or because we recognize that there is more power without dust than with it, but no one of us is ever safe from clouds of dust unless at the back of all our work there is the desire to give up all self-will for the sake of obeying and of trusting the Divine Will more and more perfectly as time goes on. If we are content to work thoroughly and to gain slowly, not to be pulled down by mistakes or discouragements, but to learn from them, we are sure to be grateful for the new light and warmth and power for use that will come to us, increasing day by day.

CHAPTER XXIX

_Plain Every-day Common Sense_

PLAIN common sense! When we come to sift everything down which will enable us to live wholesome, steady, every-day, interesting lives, plain common sense seems to be the first and the simplest need. In the working out of any problem, whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex. And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense.

When we stop and think a while, the lack of this important quality is quite glaring, and every one who has his attention called to it and recognizes that lack enough to be interested to supply it in his own life, is doing more good toward bringing plain common sense into the world at large than we can well appreciate. For instance, it is only a fact of plain common sense that we should keep rested, and yet how many of us do? How many readers of this article will smile or sneer, or be irritated when they read the above, and say, “It is all very well to talk of keeping rested. How is it possible with all I have to do? or with all the care I have? or with all I have to worry me?”

Now that is just the point–the answer to that question, “How is it possible?” So very few of us know how to do it, and if “how to keep rested though busy” were regularly taught in all schools in this country, so far from making the children self-conscious and over-careful of themselves, it would lay up in their brains ideas of plain common sense which would be stocked safely there for use when, as their lives grew more maturely busy, they would find the right habits formed, enabling them to keep busy and at the same time to keep quiet and rested. What a wonderful difference it would eventually make in the wholesomeness of the manners and customs of this entire nation. And that difference would come from giving the children now a half hour’s instruction in the plain common sense of keeping well rested, and in seeing that such instruction was entirely and only practical.

It has often seemed to me that the tendency of education in the present day is more toward giving information than it is in preparing the mind to receive and use interesting and useful information of all kinds: that is, in helping the mind to attract what it needs; to absorb what it attracts, and digest what it absorbs as thoroughly as any good healthy stomach ever digested the food it needed to supply the body with strength. The root of such cultivation, it seems to me, is in teaching the practical use and application of all that is studied. To be sure, there is much more of that than there was fifty years ago, but you have only to put to the test the minds of young graduates to see how much more of such work is needed, and how much more intelligent the training of the young mind may be, even now.

Take, for instance, the subject of ethics. How many boys and girls go home and are more useful in their families, more thoughtful and considerate for all about them, for their study of ethics in school? And yet the study of ethics has no other use than this. If the mind absorbed and digested the true principles of ethics, so that the heart felt moved to use them, it might–it probably would–make a great change in the lives of the boys and girls who studied it–a change that would surprise and delight their parents and friends.

If the science of keeping rested were given in schools in the way that, in most cases, the science of ethics seems to be given now, the idea of rest would lie in an indigestible lump on the minds of the students, and instead of being absorbed, digested and carried out in their daily lives, would be evaporated little by little into the air, or vomited off the mind in various jokes about it, and other expressions that would prove the children knew nothing of what they were being taught.

But again, I am glad to repeat–if instruction, _practical_ instruction, were given every day in the schools on how to form the habit of keeping rested, it would have a wonderful effect upon the whole country, not to mention where in many individual cases it would actually prevent the breaking out of hereditary disease.

Nature always tends toward health; so strongly, so habitually does nature tend toward health that it seems at times as if the working of natural laws pushed some people into health in spite of chronic antagonism they seem to have against health–one might even say in spite of the wilful refusal of health.

When one’s body is kept rested, nature is constantly throwing off germs of disease, constantly working, and working most actively, to protect the body from anything that would interfere with its perfect health. When one’s body is not rested, nature works just as hard, but the tired body–through its various forms of tension that impede the circulation, prevent the healthy absorption of food and oxygen, and clog the way so that impurities cannot be carried off–interferes with nature’s work and thus makes it impossible for her to keep the machine well oiled. When we are tired, the very fact of being tired makes us more tired, unless we rest properly.

A great deal–it seems to me more than one-half–of the fatigue in the world comes from the need of an intelligent understanding of how to keep rested. The more that lack of intelligence is allowed to grow, the worse it is going to be for the health of the nation. We have less of that plain common sense than our grandfathers and grandmothers. They had less than their fathers and mothers. We need more than our ancestors, because life is more complicated now, than it was then. We can get more if we will, because there is more real understanding of the science of hygiene than our fathers and mothers had before us. Our need now is to use _practically_ the information which a few individuals are able to give us, and especially to teach such practical use to our children.

Let us find out how we would actually go to work to keep rested, and take the information of plain common sense and use it.

To keep rested we must not overwork our body inside or outside. We must keep it in an equilibrium of action and rest.

We overwork our body inside when we eat the wrong food and when we eat too much or not enough of the right food, for then the stomach has more than its share of work to do, and as the effort to do it well robs the brain and the whole nervous system, so, of course, the rest of the body has not its rightful supply of energy and the natural result is great fatigue.

We overwork our body inside when we do not give it its due amount of fresh air. The blood needs the oxygen to supply itself and the nerves and muscles with power to do their work. When the oxygen is not supplied to the blood, the machinery of the body has to work with so much less power than really belongs to it, that there is great strain in the effort to do its work properly, and the effect is, of course, fatigue.

In either of the above cases, both with an overworked stomach and an overworked heart and lungs, the complaint is very apt to be, “Why am I so tired when I have done nothing to get tired?” The answer is, “No, you have done nothing outside with your muscles, but the heart and lungs and the stomach are delicate and exquisite instruments. You have overworked them all, and such overwork is the more fatiguing in proportion to what is done than any other form, except overwork of the brain.” And the overtired stomach and heart and lungs tire the brain, of course.

Of the work that is given to the brain itself to overtire it we must speak later. So much now for that which prevents the body from keeping rested inside, in the finer working of its machinery.

It is easy to find out what and how to eat. A very little careful thought will show us that. It is only the plain common sense of eating we need. It is easy to see that we must not eat on a tired stomach, and if we have to do so, we must eat much less than we ordinarily would, and eat it more slowly. So much good advice is already given about what and how to eat, I need say nothing here, and even without that advice, which in itself is so truly valuable, most of us could have plain common sense about our own food if we would use our minds intelligently about it, and eat only what we know to be nourishing to us. That can be done without fussing. Fussing about food contracts the stomach, and prevents free digestion almost as much as eating indigestible food.

Then again, if we deny ourselves that which we want and know is bad for us, and eat only that which we know to be nourishing, it increases the delicacy of our relish. We do not lose relish by refusing to eat too much candy. We gain it. Human pigs lose their most delicate relish entirely, and they lose much–very much more–than that.

Unfortunately with most people, there is not the relish for fresh air that there is for food. Very few people want fresh air selfishly; the selfish tendency of most people is to cut it off for fear of taking cold. And yet the difference felt in health, in keeping rested, in ease of mind, is as great between no fresh air and plenty of fresh air as it is between the wrong kind of food and enough (and not too much) of the right kind of food.

Why does not the comfort of the body appeal to us as strongly through the supply of air given to the lungs as through that of food given to the stomach? The right supply of fresh air has such wonderful power to keep us rested!

Practical teaching to the children here would, among other things, give them training which would open their lungs and enable them to take in with every breath the full amount of oxygen needed toward keeping them rested. There are so many cells in the lungs of most people, made to receive oxygen, which never receive one bit of the food they are hungry for.

There is much more, of course, very much more, to say about the working of the machinery of the inside of the body and about the plain common sense needed to keep it well and rested, but I have said enough for now to start a thoughtful mind to work.

Now for keeping the body well rested from the outside. It is all so well arranged for us–the night given us to sleep in, a good long day of work and a long night of rest; so the time for rest and the time for work are equalized and it is so happily arranged that out of the twenty-four hours in the day, when we are well, we need only eight hours’ sleep. So well does nature work and so truly that she can make up for us in eight hours’ sleep what fuel we lose in sixteen hours of activity.

Only one-third of the time do we need to sleep, and we have the other two-thirds for work and play. This regular sleep is a strong force in our aim to keep rested. Therefore, the plain common sense of that is to find out how to go to sleep naturally, how to get all the rest out of sleep that nature would give us, and so to wake refreshed and ready for the day.

To go to sleep naturally we must learn how to drop all the tension of the day and literally _drop_ to sleep like a baby. _Let go into sleep_–there is a host of meaning in that expression. When we do that, nature can revive and refresh and renew us. Renew our vitality, bring us so much more brain power for the day, all that we need for our work and our play; or almost all–for there are many little rests during the day, little openings for rest that we need to take, and that we can teach ourselves to take as a matter of course. We can sit restfully at each one of our three meals. Eat restfully and quietly, and so make each meal not only a means of getting nourishment, but of getting rest as well. There is all the difference of illness and health in taking a meal with strain and a sense of rush and pressure of work, and in taking it as if to eat that one meal were the only thing we had to do in the day. Better to eat a little nourishing food and eat it quietly and at leisure than a large meal of the same food with a sense of rush. This is a very important factor in keeping rested.

Then there are the many expected and unexpected times in the day when we can take rest and so _keep rested._ If we have to wait we can sit quietly. Whatever we are doing we can make use of the between times to rest. Each man can find his own “between times.” If we make real use of them, intelligent use, they not only help us to keep rested, they help us to do our work better, if we will but watch for them and use them.

Now the body is only a servant, and in all I have written above, I have only written of the servant. How can a servant keep well and rested if the master drives him to such an extent that he is brought into a state, not where he won’t go, but where he can’t go, and must therefore drop? It is the intelligent master, who is a true disciple of plain common sense, who will train his servant, the body, in the way of resting, eating and breathing, in order to fit it for the maximum of work at the minimum of energy. But if you obey every external law for the health and strength of the body, and obey it implicitly, and to the letter, with all possible intelligence, you cannot keep it healthy if the mind that owns the body is pulling it and twisting it, and _twanging_ on its delicate machinery with a flood of resentment and resistance; and the spirit behind the mind is eager, wretched, and unhappy, because it does not get its own way, or elated with an inflamed egoism because it is getting its own way.

All plain common sense in the way of health for the body falls dead unless followed up closely with plain common sense for the health of the mind; and then again, although when there is “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” the health appears far more permanent than when a mind full of personal resistance tries to keep its body healthy, even that happy combination cannot be really permanent unless there is found back of it a healthy spirit.

But of the plain common sense of the spirit there is more to be said at another time.

With regard to the mind, let us look and see not only that it is not sensible to allow it to remain full of resistance, but is it not positively stupid?

What an important factor it should be in the education of children to teach them the plain common sense needed to keep the mind healthy–to teach them the uselessness of a mental resistance, and the wholesomeness of a clean mind.

If a child worries about his lessons, he is resisting the possibility of failing in his class; let him learn that the worry _interferes_ with his getting his lesson. Teach him how to drop the worry, and he will find not only that he gets the lesson in less time, but his mind is clearer to remember it.

By following the same laws, children could be taught that a feeling of rush and hurry only impedes their progress. The rushed feeling sometimes comes from a nervous unquiet which is inherited, and should be trained out of the child.

But alas! alas! how can a mother or a father train a child to live common sensibly without useless resistance when neither the mother nor the father can do that same themselves. It is not too late for any mother or father to learn, and if each will have the humility to confess to the child that they are learning and help the child to learn with them, no child would or could take advantage of that and as the children are trained rightly, what a start they can give their own children when they grow up–and what a gain there might be from one generation to another! Will it ever come? Surely we hope so.

CHAPTER XXX

_A Summing Up_

GIVE up resentment, give up unhealthy resistance.

If circumstances, or persons, arouse either resentment or resistance in us, let us ignore the circumstances or persons until we have quieted ourselves. Freedom does not come from merely yielding out of resentment or unhealthy resistance, it comes also from the strong and steady focus on such yielding. _Concentration and relaxation are just as necessary one to another to give stability to the nerves of a man–as the centrifugal and centripetal forces are necessary to give stability to the Earth._

As the habit of healthy concentration and relaxation grows within us, our perception clears so that we see what is right to do, and are given the power to do it. As our freedom from bondage to our fellowmen becomes established, our relation to our fellowmen grows happier, more penetrating and more full of life, and later we come to understand that at root it is ourselves–our own resentment and resistance–to which we have been in bondage,–circumstances or other people have had _really_ nothing to do with it. When we have made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our own free will, is always tenderly guiding us.

No one ever really believed anything without experiencing it. We may think we believe all sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any truth be really ours unless we have proved it by living? We do not fully believe it until it runs in our blood–that is–we must see a truth with our minds, love it with our hearts and live it over and over again in our lives before it is ours.

If the reader will think over this little book–he will see that every chapter has healthy yielding at the root of it. It is a constant repetition of the same principle applied to the commonplace circumstances of life, and if the reader will take this principle into his mind, and work practically to live it in his life, he will find the love for it growing in his heart, and with it a living conviction that when truly applied, it always works.

Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to conquer his limitations–and a man to whom his limitations are inevitable.

There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The first comes from the achievement of personal character–the second is born with us–to use or misuse as we prefer.

It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other people, is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to every action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer touch with our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine love of all human nature at the root of it–it is dead when it is merely a matter of good form.

In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding cannot be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious dependence upon the Lord God Almighty.

The Freedom of Life

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The Freedom of Life

THE FREEDOM OF LIFE

by Annie Payson Call

INTRODUCTION

INTERIOR freedom rests upon the principle of non-resistance to all the things which seem evil or painful to our natural love of self. But non-resistance alone can accomplish nothing good unless, behind it, there is a strong love for righteousness and truth. By refusing to resist the ill will of others, or the stress of circumstances, for the sake of greater usefulness and a clearer point of view, we deepen our conviction of righteousness as the fundamental law of fife, and broaden our horizon so as to appreciate varying and opposite points of view. The only non-resistance that brings this power is the kind which yields mere personal and selfish considerations for the sake of principles. Selfish and weak yielding must always do harm. Unselfish yielding, on the other hand, strengthens the will and increases strength of purpose as the petty obstacles of mere self-love are removed. Concentration alone cannot long remain wholesome, for it needs the light of growing self-knowledge to prevent its becoming self-centred. Yielding alone is of no avail, for in itself it has no constructive power. But if we try to look at ourselves as we really are, we shall find great strength in yielding where only our small and private interests are concerned, and concentrating upon living the broad principles of righteousness which must directly or indirectly affect all those with whom we come into contact.

I

The Freedom of Life

I AM so tired I must give up work,” said a young woman with a very strained and tearful face; and it seemed to her a desperate state, for she was dependent upon work for her bread and butter. If she gave up work she gave up bread and butter, and that meant starvation. When she was asked why she did not keep at work and learn to do it without getting so tired, that seemed to her absurd, and she would have laughed if laughing had been possible.

“I tell you the work has tired me so that I cannot stand it, and you ask me to go back and get rest out of it when I am ready to die of fatigue. Why don’t you ask me to burn myself, on a piece of ice, or freeze myself with a red-hot poker?”

“But,” the answer was, “it is not the work that tires you at all, it is the way you do it;” and, after a little soothing talk which quieted the overexcited nerves, she began to feel a dawning intelligence, which showed her that, after all, there might be life in the work which she had come to look upon as nothing but slow and painful death. She came to understand that she might do her work as if she were working very lazily, going from one thing to another with a feeling as near to entire indifference as she could cultivate, and, at the same time, do it well. She was shown by illustrations how she might walk across the room and take a book off the table as if her life depended upon it, racing and pushing over the floor, grabbing the book and clutching it until she got back to her seat, or, how she might move with exaggerated laziness take the book up loosely, and drag herself back again. This illustration represents two extremes, and one, in itself, is as bad as the other; but, when the habit has been one of unnecessary strain and effort, the lazy way, practised for a time, will not only be very restful, but will eventually lead to movement which is quick as well.

To take another example, you may write holding the pen with much more force than is needful, tightening your throat and tongue at the same time, or you may drag your pen along the paper and relieve the tendency to tension in your throat and tongue by opening your mouth slightly and letting your jaw hang loosely. These again are two extremes, but, if the habit has been one of tension, a persistent practice of the extreme of looseness will lead to a quiet mode of writing in which ten pages can be finished with the effort it formerly took to write one.

Sometimes the habit of needless strain has taken such a strong hold that the very effort to work quietly seems so unnatural as to cause much nervous suffering. To turn the corner from a bad habit into a true and wholesome one is often very painful, but, the first pain worked through, the right habit grows more and more easy, until finally the better way carries us along and we take it involuntarily.

For the young woman who felt she had come to the end of her powers, it was work or die; therefore, when she had become rested enough to see and understand at all, she welcomed the idea that it was not her work that tired her, but the way in which she did it, and she listened eagerly to the directions that should teach her to do it with less fatigue, and, as an experiment, offered to go back and try the “lazy way” for a week. At the end of a week she reported that the “lazy way” had rested her remarkably, but she did not do her work so well. Then she had to learn that she could keep more quietly and steadily concentrated upon her work, doing it accurately and well, without in the least interfering with the “lazy way.” Indeed, the better concentrated we are, the more easily and restfully we can work, for concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward our work,–it means dropping everything that interferes, and strained nerves and muscles constitute a very bondage of interference.

The young woman went back to her work for another week’s experiment, and this time returned with a smiling face, better color, and a new and more quiet life in her eyes. She had made the “lazy way” work, and found a better power of concentration at the same time. She knew that it was only a beginning, but she felt secure now in the certain knowledge that it was not her work that had been killing her, but the way in which she had done it; and she felt confident of her power to do it restfully and, at the same time, better than before. Moreover, in addition to practising the new way of working, she planned to get regular exercise in the open air, even if it had to come in the evening, and to eat only nourishing food. She has been at work now for several years, and, at last accounts, was still busy, with no temptation to stop because of overfatigue.

If any reader is conscious of suffering now from the strain of his work and would like to get relief, the first thing to do is to notice that it is less the work that tires him than his way of doing it, and the attitude of his mind toward it. Beginning with that conviction, there comes at first an interest in the process of dropping strain and then a new interest in the work itself, and a healthy concentration in doing the merest drudgery as well as it can be done, makes the drudgery attractive and relieves one from the oppressive fatigue of uninteresting monotony.

If you have to move your whole body in your daily work, the first care should be to move the feet and legs heavily. Feel as if each foot weighed a ton, and each hand also; and while you work take long, quiet breaths,–breaths such as you see a man taking when he is very quietly and soundly sleeping.

If the work is sedentary, it is a help before starting in the morning to drop your head forward very loosely, slowly and heavily, and raise it very slowly, then take a long, quiet breath. Repeat this several times until you begin to feel a sense of weight in your head. If there is not time in the morning, do it at night and recall the feeling while you are dressing or while you are going to work, and then, during your work, stop occasionally just to feel your head heavy and then go on. Very soon you become sensitive to the tension in the back of your neck and drop it without stopping work at all.

Long, quiet breaths while you work are always helpful. If you are working in bad air, and cannot change the air, it is better to try to have the breaths only quiet and gentle, and take long, full breaths whenever you are out-of-doors and before going to sleep at night.

Of course, a strained way of working is only one cause of nervous fatigue; there are others, and even more important ones, that need to be understood in order that we may be freed from the bondage of nervous strain which keeps so many of us from our best use and happiness.

Many people are in bondage because of doing wrong, but many more because of doing right in the wrong way. Real freedom is only found through obedience to law, and when, because of daily strain, a man finds himself getting overtired and irritable, the temptation is to think it easier to go on working in the wrong way than to make the effort to learn how to work in the right way. At first the effort seems only to result in extra strain, but, if persisted in quietly, it soon becomes apparent that it is leading to less and less strain, and finally to restful work.

There are laws for rest, laws for work, and laws for play, which, if we find and follow them, lead us to quiet, useful lines of life, which would be impossible without them. They are the laws of our own being, and should carry us as naturally as the instincts of the animals carry them, and so enable us to do right in the right way, and make us so sure of the manner in which we do our work that we can give all our attention to the work itself; and when we have the right habit of working, the work itself must necessarily gain, because we can put the best of ourselves into it.

It is helpful to think of the instincts of the beasts, how true and orderly they are, on their own plane, and how they are only perverted when the animals have come under the influence of man. Imagine Baloo, the bear in Mr. Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” being asked how he managed to keep so well and rested. He would look a little surprised and say: “Why, I follow the laws of my being. How could I do differently?” Now that is just the difference between man and beast. Man can do differently. And man has done differently now for so many generations that not one in ten thousand really recognizes what the laws of his being are, except in ways so gross that it seems as if we had sunken to the necessity of being guided by a crowbar, instead of steadily following the delicate instinct which is ours by right, and so voluntarily accepting the guidance of the Power who made us, which is the only possible way to freedom.

Of course the laws of a man’s being are infinitely above the laws of a beast’s. The laws of a man’s being are spiritual, and the animal in man is meant to be the servant of his soul. Man’s true guiding instincts are in his soul,–he can obey them or not, as he chooses; but the beast’s instincts are in his body, and he has no choice but to obey. Man can, so to speak, get up and look down on himself. He can be his own father and his own mother. From his true instinct he can say to himself, “you must do this” or “You must not do that.” He can see and understand his tendency to disobedience, and he can force himself to obey. Man can see the good and wholesome animal instincts in himself that lead to lasting health and strength, and he can make them all the good servants of his soul. He can see the tendency to overindulgence, and how it leads to disease and to evil, and he can refuse to permit that wrong tendency to rule him.

Every man has his own power of distinguishing between right and wrong, and his own power of choosing which way he shall follow. He is left free to choose God’s way or to choose his own. Through past and present perversions, of natural habit he has lost the delicate power of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal, and needs to be educated back to it. The benefit of this education is an intelligent consciousness of the laws of life, which not only adds to his own strength of mind and body, but increases immeasurably his power of use to others. Many customs of to-day fix and perpetuate abnormal habits to such an extent that, combined with our own selfish inheritances and personal perversions, they dim the light of our minds so that many of us are working all the time in a fog, more or less dense, of ignorance and bondage. When a man chooses the right and refuses the wrong, in so far as he sees it, he becomes wise from within and from without, his power for distinguishing gradually improves, the fog lifts, and he finds within himself a sure and delicate instinct which was formerly atrophied for want of use.

The first thing to understand without the shadow of a doubt, is that, man is not in freedom when he is following his own selfish instincts. He is only in the appearance of freedom, and the appearance of freedom, without the reality, leads invariably to the worst bondage. A man who loves drink feels that he is free if he can drink as much as he wants, but that leads to degradation and delirium tremens. A man who has an inherited tendency toward the disobedience of any law feels that he is free if he has the opportunity to disobey it whenever he wants to. But whatever the law may be, the results have only to be carried to their logical conclusion to make clear the bondage to which the disobedience leads. All this disobedience to law leads to an inevitable, inflexible, unsurmountable limit in the end, whereas steady effort toward obedience to law is unlimited in its development of strength and power for use to others. Man must understand his selfish tendencies in order to subdue and control them, until they become subject to his own unselfish tendencies, which are the spiritual laws within him. Thus he gradually becomes free,–soul and body,–with no desire to disobey, and with steadily increasing joy in his work and life. So much for the bondage of doing wrong, and the freedom of doing right, which it seems necessary to touch upon, in order to show clearly the bondage of doing right in the wrong way, and the freedom of doing right in the right way.

It is right to work for our daily bread, and for the sake of use to others, in whatever form it may present itself. The wrong way of doing it makes unnecessary strain, overfatigue and illness. The right way of working gives, as we have said before, new power and joy in the work; it often turns even drudgery into pleasure, for there is a special delight in learning to apply one’s self in a true spirit to “drudgery.” The process of learning such true application of one’s powers often reveals new possibilities in work.

It is right for most people to sleep eight hours every night. The wrong way of doing it is to go to sleep all doubled up, and to continue to work all night in our sleep, instead of giving up and resting entirely. The right way gives us the fullest possible amount of rest and refreshment.

It is right to take our three meals a day, and all the nourishing food we need. The wrong way of doing it, is to eat very fast, without chewing our food carefully, and to give our stomachs no restful opportunity of preparation to receive its food, or to take good care of it after it is received. The right way gives us the opportunity to assimilate the food entirely, so that every bit of fuel we put into our bodies is burnt to some good purpose, and makes us more truly ready to receive more.

It is right to play and amuse ourselves for rest and recreation. We play in the wrong way when we use ourselves up in the strain of playing, in the anxiety lest we should not win in a game, or when we play in bad air. When we play in the right way, there is no strain, no anxiety, only good fun and refreshment and rest.

We might go through the narrative of an average life in showing briefly the wonderful difference between doing right in the right way, and doing right in the wrong way. It is not too much to say that the difference in tendency is as great as that between life and death.

It is one thing to read about orderly living and to acknowledge that the ways described are good and true, and quite another to have one’s eyes opened and to act from the new knowledge, day by day, until a normal mode of life is firmly established. It requires quiet, steady force of will to get one’s self out of bad, and well established in good habits. After the first interest and relief there often has to be steady plodding before the new way becomes easy; but if we do not allow ourselves to get discouraged, we are sure to gain our end, for we are opening ourselves to the influence of the true laws within us, and in finding and obeying these we are approaching the only possible Freedom of Life.

II

How to Sleep Restfully

IT would seem that at least one might be perfectly free in sleep. But the habits of cleaving to mistaken ways of living cannot be thrown off at night and taken up again in the morning. They go to sleep with us and they wake with us.

If, however, we learn better habits of sleeping, that helps us in our life through the day. And learning better habits through the day helps us to get more rest from our sleep. At the end of a good day we can settle down more quickly to get ready for sleep, and, when we wake in the morning, find ourselves more ready to begin the day to come.

There are three things that prevent sleep,–overfatigue, material disturbances from the outside, and mental disturbances from, within.

It is not uncommon to hear people say, “I was too tired to sleep”–but it is not generally known how great a help it is at such times not to try to sleep, but to go to work deliberately to get I rested in preparation for it. In nine cases out of ten it is the unwillingness to lie awake that keeps us awake. We wonder why we do not sleep. We toss and turn and wish we could sleep. We fret, and fume, and worry, because we do not sleep. We think of all we have to do on the following day, and are oppressed with the thought that we cannot do it if we do not sleep. First, we try one experiment to see if it will not make us sleep, and when it fails, we try another, and perhaps another. In each experiment we, are watching to see if it will work. There are many things to do, any one of which might help us to sleep, but the watching to see if they will work keeps us awake.

When we are kept awake from our fatigue, the first thing to do is to say over and over to ourselves that we do not care whether we sleep or not, in order to imbue ourselves with a healthy indifference about it. It will help toward gaining this wholesome indifference to say “I am too tired to sleep, and therefore, the first thing for me to do is to get rested in order to prepare for sleep. When my brain is well rested, it will go to sleep; it cannot help it. When it is well rested, it will sleep just as naturally as my lungs breathe, or as my heart beats.”

In order to rest our brains we want to lie quietly, relaxing all our muscles, and taking even, quiet breaths. It is good when we can take long, full breaths, but sometimes that is too fatiguing; and then we must not only take moderately long, breaths, but be careful to have them gentle, quiet, and rhythmic. To make a plan of breathing and follow it keeps the mind steadily concentrated on the breathing, and gives the rest of the brain, which has been working on other things, a chance to relax and find its own freedom and rest. It is helpful to inhale while we count seven, exhale while we count seven, then rest and breathe naturally while we count seven, and to repeat the series of three for seven times; but to be strict with ourselves and see that we only do it seven times, not once more nor once less. Then we should wait a little and try it again,–and so keep on for a number of times, repeating the same series; and we should always be sure to have the air in our bedrooms as fresh as possible. If the breathing is steady and rhythmical it helps very much, and to inhale and exhale over and over for half an hour has a very pleasant, quieting effect–sometimes such exercises make us nervous at first, and, if we are very tired, that often happens; but, if we keep steadily at work, the nervousness disappears and restful quiet follows which very often brings restoring and refreshing sleep.

Another thing to remember–and it is very important–is that an overtired brain needs more than the usual nourishment. If you have been awake for an hour, and it is three hours after your last meal, take half a cup, or a cup of hot milk. If you are awake for another two hours take half a cup more, and so, at intervals of about two. hours, so long as you are awake throughout the night. Hot milk is nourishing and a sedative. It is not inconvenient to have milk by the side of one’s bed, and a little saucepan and spirit lamp, so that the milk can be heated without getting up, and the quiet simple occupation of heating it is sometimes restful in itself.

There are five things to remember to help rest an overtired brain: 1. A healthy indifference to wakefulness. 2. Concentration of the mind on simple things. 3. Relaxation of the body. 4. Gentle rhythmic breathing of fresh air. 5. Regular nourishment. If we do not lose courage, but keep on steadily night after night, with a healthy persistence in remembering and practising these five things, we shall often find that what might have been a very long period of sleeplessness may be materially shortened and that the sleep which follows the practice of the exercises is better, sounder, and more refreshing, than the sleep that came before. In many cases a long or short period of insomnia can be absolutely prevented by just these simple means.

Here is perhaps the place to say that all narcotics are in such cases, absolutely pernicious.

They may bring sleep at the time, but eventually they lose their effect, and leave the nervous system in a state of strain which cannot be helped by anything but time, through much suffering that might have been avoided.

When we are not necessarily overtired but perhaps only a little tired from the day’s work, it is not uncommon to be kept awake by a flapping curtain or a swinging door, by unusual noises in the streets, or by people talking. How often we hear it said, “It did seem hard when I went to bed tired last night that I should have been kept awake by a noise like that–and now this morning, I am more tired than when I went to bed.”

The head nurse in a large hospital said once in distress: “I wish the nurses could be taught to step lightly over my head, so that they would not keep me awake at night.” It would have been a surprise to her if she had been told that her head could be taught to yield to the steps of the nurses, so that their walking would not keep her awake.

It is resistance that keeps us awake in all such cases. The curtain flaps, and we resist it; the door swings to over and over again, and we resist it, and keep ourselves awake by wondering why it does not stop; we hear noises in the street that we am unused to, especially if we are accustomed to sleeping in the stillness of the country, and we toss and turn and wish we were in a quiet place. All the trouble comes from our own resistance to the noise, and resistance is nothing but unwillingness to submit to our conditions.

If we are willing that the curtain should go on flapping, the door go on slamming, or the noise in the street continue steadily on, our brains yield to the conditions and so sleep naturally, because the noise goes through us, so to speak, and does not run hard against our unwillingness to hear it.

There are three facts which may help to remove the resistance which naturally arises at any unusual sound when we are tired and want to get rest.

One is that in almost every sound there is a certain rhythm. If we yield to the sound enough to become sensitive to its rhythm, that, in itself, is soothing, and what before was keeping us awake now helps us to go to sleep. This pleasant effect of finding the rhythm in sound is especially helpful if one is inclined to lie awake while travelling in sleeping cars. The rhythm of sound and motion in sleeping cars and steamers is, in itself, soothing. If you have the habit of feeling as if you could never get refreshing sleep in a sleeping car, first be sure that you have as much fresh air as possible, and then make up your mind that you will spend the whole night, if necessary, in noticing the rhythm of the motion and sound of the cars. If you keep your mind steadily on it, you will probably be asleep in less than an hour, and, when the car stops, you will wake only enough to settle comfortably into the sense of motion when it starts again. It is pleasant to notice the gentleness with which a good engineer starts his train at night. Of course there is a difference in engineers, and some are much more gentle in starting their engines than others, but the delicacy with which the engine is started by the most expert is delightful to feel, and gives us many a lesson on the use of gentle beginnings, with other things besides locomotive engines, and especially in our dealings with each other.

The second fact with regard to yielding, instead of resisting, in order to get to sleep is that listening alone, apart from rhythm, tends to make one sleepy, and this leads us at once to the third fact, that getting to sleep is nothing but a healthy form of concentration.

If true concentration is dropping everything that interferes with fixing our attention upon some wholesome object, it means merely bringing the brain into a normal state which induces sleep when sleep is needed. First we drop everything that interferes with the one simple subject, and then we drop that, and are unconscious.

Of course it may take some time to make ourselves willing to submit to an unusual noise if we have the habit of feeling that we must necessarily be disturbed by it, and, if we can stop the noise, it is better to stop it than to give ourselves unnecessary tasks in non-resistance.

Then again, if we are overtired, our brains are sometimes so sensitive that the effect of any noise is like that of being struck in a sore spot, and then it is much more difficult to bear it, and we can only make the suffering a little less by yielding and being willing that it should go on. I cannot go to sleep while some one is knocking my lame arm, nor can I go to sleep while a noise is hitting my tired brain; but in such cases we can give up expecting to go to sleep, and get a great deal of rest by using our wills steadily not to resist; and sometimes, even then, sleep will come upon us unexpectedly.

With regard to the use of the will, perhaps the most dangerous pitfall to be avoided is the use of drugs. It is not too much to say that they never should be used at all for cases of pure sleeplessness, for with time their power to bring sleep gradually becomes exhausted, and then the patient finds himself worse off than before, for the reactionary effect of the drugs leaves him with exhausted nerves and a weakened will. All the strengthening, moral effect which can be gained from overcoming sleeplessness in wholesome ways is lost by a recourse to drugs, and character is weakened instead of strengthened.

When one has been in the habit of sleeping in the city, where the noise of the street is incessant, a change to the perfect silence of the country will often keep sleep off quite as persistently as noise. So with a man who has been in the habit of sleeping under other abnormal conditions, the change to normal conditions will sometimes keep him awake until he has adjusted himself to them, and it is not uncommon for people to be so abnormal that they resist rhythm itself, such as is heard in the rolling of the sea, or the rushing of a river.

The re-adjustment from abnormal to normal conditions of sleeping may be made surely if we set about it with a will, for we have all nature on our side. Silence is orderly for the night’s rest, and rhythm only emphasizes and enhances the silence, when it is the rhythm of nature.

The habit of resistance cannot be changed in a single day–it must take time; but if the meaning, the help, and the normal power of non-resistance is clearly understood, and the effort to gain it is persistent, not only the power to sleep, but a new sense of freedom may be acquired which is quite beyond the conception of those who are in the daily habit of resistance.

When we lie down at night and become conscious that our arms and our legs and our whole bodies are resting heavily upon the bed, we are letting go all the resistance which has been left stored in our muscles from the activities of the day.

A cat, when she lies down, lets go all resistance at once, because she moves with the least possible effort; but there are very few men who do that, and so men go to their rest with more or less resistance stored in their bodies, and they must go through a conscious process of dropping it before they can settle to sleep as a normal child does, without having to think about how it is done. The conscious process, however, brings a quiet, conscious joy in the rest, which opens the mind to soothing influences, and brings a more profound refreshment than is given even to the child–and with the refreshment new power for work.

One word more about outside disturbances before we turn to those interior ones which are by far the most common preventatives of refreshing sleep. The reader will say: “How can I be willing that the noise should go on when I am not willing?” The answer is, “If you can see clearly that if you were willing, the noises would not interfere with your sleep, then you can find the ability within you to make yourself willing.”

It is wonderful to realize the power we gain by compelling and controlling our desires or aversions through the intelligent use of the will, and it is easier to compel ourselves to do right against temptation than to force ourselves to do wrong against a true conviction. Indeed it is most difficult, if not impossible, to force ourselves to do wrong against a strong sense of right. Behind an our desires, aversions, and inclinations each one of us possesses a capacity for a higher will, the exercise of which, on the side of order and righteousness, brings into being the greatest power in human life. The power of character is always in harmony with the laws of truth and order, and although we must sometimes make a great effort of the will to do right against our inclinations the ease of such effort increases as the power of character increases, and strength of will grows steadily by use, because it receives its life from the eternal will and is finding its way to harmony with that.

It is the lower, selfish will that often keeps us awake by causing interior disturbances.

An actor may have a difficult part to play, and feel that a great deal depends upon his success. He stays awake with anxiety, and this anxiety is nothing but resistance to the possibility of failure. The first thing for him to do is to teach himself to be willing to fail. If he becomes willing to fail, then all his anxiety will go, and he will be able to sleep and get the rest and new life which he needs in order to play the part well. If he is willing to fail, then all the nervous force which before was being wasted in anxiety is set free for use in the exercise of his art.

Looking forward to what is going to happen on the next day, or within a few days, may cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we have a good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expected success or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compel ourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet and receptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake with new power for whatever task or pleasure may lie before us.

Of course we are often kept awake by the sense of having done wrong. In such cases the first thing to do is to make a free acknowledgment to ourselves of the wrong we have done, and then to make up our minds to do the right thing at once. That, if the wrong done is not too serious, will put us to sleep; and if the next day we go about our work remembering the lesson we have learned, we probably will have little trouble in sleeping.

If Macbeth had had the truth and courage to tell Lady Macbeth that both he and she were wicked plotters and murderers, and that he intended, for his part, to stop being a scoundrel, and, if he had persisted in carrying out his good intentions, he would never have “murdered sleep.”

III

Resistance

A MAN once grasped a very hot poker with his hand, and although he cried out with pain, held on to the poker. His friend called out to him to drop it, whereupon the man indignantly cried out the more.

“Drop it? How can you expect me to think of dropping it with pain like this? I tell you when a man is suffering, as I am, he can think of nothing but the pain.”

And the more indignant he was, the tighter he held on to the poker, and the more he cried out with pain.

This story in itself is ridiculous, but it is startlingly true as an illustration of what people are doing every day.

There is an instinct in us to drop every hot poker at once; and probably we should be able to drop any other form of unnecessary disagreeable sensation as soon as possible, if we had not lost that wholesome instinct through want of use. As it is, we must learn to re-acquire the lost faculty by the deliberate use of our intelligence and will.

It is as if we had lost our freedom and needed to be shown the way back to it, step by step. The process is slow but very interesting, if we are in earnest; and when, after wandering in the bypaths, we finally strike the true road, we find our lost faculty waiting for us, and all that we have learned in reaching it is so much added power.

But at present we are dealing in the main with a world which has no suspicion of such instincts or faculties as these, and is suffering along in blind helplessness. A man will drop a hot poker as soon as he feels it burn, but he will tighten his muscles and hold on to a cold in his head so persistently that he only gets rid of it at all because nature is stronger than he is, and carries it off in spite of him.

How common it is to see a woman entirely wrapped up, with a handkerchief held to her nose,–the whole body as tense as it can be,–wondering “Why does it take so long to get rid of this cold?” To get free from a severe cold there should be open and clear circulation throughout the whole body. The more the circulation is impeded, the longer the cold will last. To begin with, the cold itself impedes the circulation; and if, in addition, we offer resistance to the very idea of having a cold, we tighten our nerves and our bodies and thereby impede our circulation still further. It is curious that the more we resist a cold the more we hold on to it, but it is a very evident fact; and so is its logical corollary, that the less we resist it the sooner it leaves us.

It would seem absurd to people who do not understand, to say:–

“I have caught cold, I must relax and let it go through me.”

But the literal truth is that when we relax, we open the channels of circulation in our bodies, and so allow the cold to be carried off. In addition to the relaxing, long, quiet breaths help the circulation still more, and so help the cold to go off sooner.

In the same way people resist pain and hold on to it; when they are attacked with severe pain, they at once devote their entire attention to the sensation of pain, instead of devoting it to the best means of getting relief. They double themselves up tight, and hold on to the place that hurts. Then all the nervous force tends toward the sore place and the tension retards the circulation and makes it difficult for nature to cure the pain, as she would spontaneously if she were only allowed to have her own way.

I once knew a little girl who, whenever she hit one elbow, would at once deliberately rub the other. She said that she had discovered that it took her mind away from the elbow that hurt, and so stopped its hurting sooner. The use of a counterirritant is not uncommon with good physicians, but the counter-irritant only does what is much more effectually accomplished when the patient uses his will and intelligence to remove the original irritant by ceasing to resist it.

A man who was troubled with spasmodic contraction of the throat once went to a doctor in alarm and distress. The doctor told him that, in any case, nothing worse than fainting could happen to him, and that, if he fainted away, his throat would be relieved, because the fainting would relax the muscles of the throat, and the only trouble with it was contraction. Singularly, it did not seem to occur to the doctor that the man might be taught to relax his throat by the use of his own will, instead of having to faint away in order that nature might do it for him. Nature would be just as ready to help us if we were intelligent, as when she has to knock us down, in order that she may do for us what we do not know enough to do for ourselves.

There is no illness that could not be much helped by quiet relaxing on the part of the patient, so as to allow nature and remedial agencies to do their work more easily.

That which keeps relief away in the case of the cold, of pain, and of many illnesses, is the contraction of the nerves and muscles of the body, which impedes the curative power of its healing forces. The contraction of the nerves and muscles of the body is caused by resistance in the mind, and resistance in the mind is unwillingness: unwillingness to endure the distress of the cold, the pain, or the illness, whatever it may be; and the more unwilling we are to suffer from illness, the more we are hindering nature from bringing about a cure.

One of the greatest difficulties in life is illness when the hands are full of work, and of business requiring attention. In many eases the strain and anxiety, which causes resistance to the illness, is even more severe, and makes more trouble than the illness itself.

Suppose, for instance, that a man is taken down with the measles, when he feels that he ought to be at his office, and that his absence may result in serious loss to himself and others. If he begins by letting go, in his body and in his mind, and realizing that the illness is beyond his own power, it will soon occur to him that he might as well turn his illness to account by getting a good rest out of it. In this frame of mind his chances of early recovery will be increased, and he may even get up from his illness with so much new life and with his mind so much refreshed as to make up, in part, for his temporary absence from business. But, on the other hand, if he resists, worries, complains and gets irritable, he irritates his nervous system and, by so doing is likely to bring on any one of the disagreeable troubles that are known to follow measles; and thus he may keep himself housed for weeks, perhaps months, instead of days.

Another advantage in dropping all resistance to illness, is that the relaxation encourages a restful attitude of mind, which enables us to take the right amount of time for recovery, and so prevents either a possible relapse, or our feeling only half well for a long time, when we might have felt wholly well from the time we first began to take up our life again. Indeed the advantages of nonresistance in such cases are innumerable, and there are no advantages whatever in resistance and unwillingness.

Clear as these things must be to any intelligent person whose attention is turned in the right direction, it seems most singular that not in one case in a thousand are they deliberately practised. People seem to have lost their common sense with regard to them, because for generations the desire for having our own way has held us in bondage, and confused our standard of freedom; more than that, it has befogged our sense of natural law, and the result is that we painfully fight to make water run up hill when, if we were to give one quiet look, we should see that better things could be accomplished, and our own sense of freedom become keener, by being content to let the water quietly run down and find its own level.

It is not normal to be ill and to be kept from our everyday use, but it is still less normal for a healthy, intelligent mind to keep its body ill longer than is necessary by resisting the fact of illness. Every disease, though it is abnormal in itself, may frequently be kept within bounds by a certain normal course of conduct, and, if our suffering from the disease itself is unavoidable, by far our wisest course is to stand aside, so to speak, and let it take its own course, using all necessary remedies and precautions in order that the attack may be as mild as possible.

Many readers, although they see the common sense of such non-resistance, will find it difficult to practise it, because of their inheritances and personal habits.

The man who held the hot poker only needed to drop it with his fingers; the man who is taken ill only needs to be willing with his mind and to relax with his nerves in order to hasten his recovery.

A very useful practice is to talk to ourselves so quietly and earnestly as to convince our brains of the true helpfulness of being willing and of the impediment of our unwillingness. Tell the truth to yourself over and over, quietly and without emotion, and steadily and firmly contradict every temptation to think that it is impossible not to resist. If men could once be convinced of the very real and wonderful power they have of teaching their own brains, and exacting obedience from them, the resulting new life and ability for use would make the world much happier and stronger.

This power of separating the clear, quiet common sense in ourselves from the turbulent, willful rebellion and resistance, and so quieting our selfish natures and compelling them to normal behavior, is truly latent in us all. It may be difficult at first to use it, especially in cases of strong, perverted natures and fixed habits, because in such cases our resistances are harder and more interior, but if we keep steadily on, aiming in the right direction,–if we persist in the practice of keeping ourselves separate from our unproductive turbulences, and of teaching our brains what we know to be the truth, we shall finally find ourselves walking on level ground, instead of climbing painfully up hill. Then we shall be only grateful for all the hard work which was the means of bringing us into the clear air of freedom.

There could not be a better opportunity to begin our training in non-resistance than that which illness affords.

IV

Hurry, Worry, and Irritability

PROBABLY most people have had the experience of hurrying to a train with the feeling that something held them back, but not many have observed that their muscles, under such conditions, actually do pull them back.

If any one wants to prove the correctness of this observation let him watch himself, especially if it is necessary for him to go downstairs to get to the station, while he is walking down the steps. The drawing back or contracting of the muscles, as if they were intelligently trying to prevent us from reaching the train on time, is most remarkable. Of course all that impeding contraction comes from resistance, and it seems at first sight very strange that we should resist the accomplishment of the very thing we want to do. Why should I resist the idea of catching a train, when at the same time I am most anxious to do so? Why should my muscles reflect that resistance by contracting, so that they directly impede my progress? It seems a most singular case of a house divided against itself for me to want to take a train, and for my own muscles, which are given me for my command, to refuse to take me there, so that I move toward the train with an involuntary effort away from it. But when the truth is recognized, all this muscular contraction is easily explained. What we are resisting is not the fact of taking the train, but the possibility of losing it. That resistance reflects itself upon our muscles and causes them to contract. Although this is a practical truth, it takes us some time to realize that the fear of losing the train is often the only thing that prevents our catching it. If we could once learn this fact thoroughly, and live from our clearer knowledge, it would be one of the greatest helps toward taking all things in life quietly and without necessary strain. For the fact holds good in all hurry. It is the fear of not accomplishing what is before us in time that holds us back from its accomplishment.

This is so helpful and so useful a truth that I feel it necessary to repeat it in many ways. Fear brings resistance, resistance impedes our progress. Our faculties are paralyzed by lack of confidence, and confidence is the result of a true consciousness of our powers when in harmony with law. Often the fear of not accomplishing what is before us is the only thing that stands in our way.

If we put all hurry, whether it be an immediate hurry to catch a train, or the hurry of years toward the accomplishment of the main objects of our lives,–if we put it all under the clear light of this truth, it will eventually relieve us of a strain which is robbing our vitality to no end.

First, the times that we must hurry should be minimized. In nine cases out of ten the necessity for hurry comes only from our own attitude of mind, and from no real need whatever. In the tenth case we must learn to hurry with our muscles, and not with our nerves, or, I might better say, we must hurry without excitement. To hurry quietly is to most people an unknown thing, but when hurry is a necessity, the process of successive effort in it should be pleasant and refreshing.

If in the act of needful hurry we are constantly teaching ourselves to stop resistance by saying over and over, through whatever we may be doing, “I am perfectly willing to lose that train, I am willing to lose it, I am willing to lose it,” that will help to remove the resistance, and so help us to learn how to make haste quietly.

But the reader will say, “How can I make myself willing when I am not willing?”

The answer is that if you know that your unwillingness to lose the train is preventing you from catching it, you certainly will see the efficacy of being willing, and you will do all in your power toward yielding to common sense. Unwillingness is resistance,–resistance in the mind contracts the muscles, and such contraction prevents our using the muscles freely and easily. Therefore let us be willing.

Of course there, is a lazy, selfish indifference to catching a train, or accomplishing anything else, which leaves the tendency to hurry out of some temperaments altogether, but with that kind of a person we are not dealing now. And such indifference is the absolute opposite of the wholesome indifference in which there is no touch of laziness or selfishness.

If we want to avoid hurry we must get the habit of hurry out of our brains, and cut ourselves off, patiently and kindly, from the atmosphere of hurry about us. The habit gets so strong a hold of the nerves, and is impressed upon them so forcibly as a steady tendency, that it can be detected by a close observer even in a person who is lying on a lounge in the full belief that he is resting. It shows itself especially in the breathing. A wise athlete has said that our normal breathing should consist of six breaths to one minute. If the reader will try this rate of breathing, the slowness of it will surprise him. Six breaths to one minute seem to make the breathing unnecessarily slow, and just double that seems about the right number for ordinary people; and the habit of breathing at this slower rate is a great help, from a physical standpoint, toward erasing the tendency to hurry.

One of the most restful exercises any one can take is to lie at full length on a bed or lounge and to inhale and exhale, at a perfectly even, slow rate, for half an hour. It makes the exercise more restful if another person counts for the breathing, say, ten slowly and quickly to inhale, and ten to exhale, with a little pause to give time for a quiet change from one breath to another.

Resistance, which is the mental source of hurry, is equally at the root of that most harmful emotion–the habit of worrying. And the same truths which must be learned and practised to free ourselves of the one habit are applicable to the other.

Take the simple example of a child who worries over his lessons. Children illustrate the principle especially well, because they are so responsive that, if you meet them quietly with the truth in difficulties of this kind they recognize its value and apply it very quickly, and it takes them, comparatively, a very little time to get free.

If you think of telling a child that the moment he finds himself worrying about his lesson he should close his book and say:

“I do not care whether I get this lesson or not.”

And then, when he has actually persuaded himself that he does not care, that he should open his book and study,–it would seem, at first sight, that he would find it difficult to understand you; but, on the contrary, a child understands more quickly than older people, for the child has not had time to establish himself so firmly in the evil habit.

I have in mind a little girl in whom the habit had begun of worrying lest she should fail in her lessons, especially in her Latin. Her mother sent her to be taught how not to worry. The teacher, after giving her some idea of the common sense of not worrying, taught her quieting exercises which she practised every day; and when one day, in the midst of one of her lessons, Margaret seemed very quiet and restful, the teacher asked:–

“Margaret, could you worry about your Latin now if you tried?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “I am afraid I could.”

Nothing more was said, but she went on with her lessons, and several days after, during the same restful quiet time, the teacher ventured again.

“Now, Margaret, could you worry about your Latin if you tried?”

Then came the emphatic answer, “No, I could not.”

After that the little girl would say:

“With the part of me that worries, I do not care whether I get my Latin or not; with the part of me that does not worry, I want to get my Latin very much; therefore I will stay in the part of me that does not worry, and get my Latin.”

A childish argument, and one that may be entirely incomprehensible to many minds, but to those who do comprehend, it represents a very real and practical help.

It is, in most cases, a grave mistake to, reason with a worry. We must first drop the worry, and then do our reasoning. If to drop the worry seems impossible, we can separate ourselves from it enough to prevent it from interfering with our reasoning, very much as if it were neuralgia. There is never any real reason for a worry, because, as we all know, worry never helps us to gain, and often is the cause of our losing, the things which we so much desire.

Sometimes we worry because we are tired, and in that case, if we can recognize the real cause, we should use our wills to withdraw our attention from the object of worry, and to get all possible rest at once, in the confident belief that rest will make things clear, or at least more clear than they were when we were tired. It would be hard to compute the harm that has been done by kindly disposed people in reasoning with the worry of a friend, when the anxiety is increased by fatigue or illness. To reason with one who is tired or ill and worried, only increases the mental strain, and every effort that is made to reason him out of it aggravates the strain; until, finally, the poor brain, through kindly meant effort, has been worked into an extreme state of irritation or even inflammation. For the same reason, a worried mind should not be laughed at. Worries that are aroused by fatigue or illness are often most absurd, but they are not absurd to the mind that is suffering from them, and to make fun of them only brings more pain, and more worry. Gentle, loving attention, with kindly, truthful answers, will always help. By such attention we are really giving no importance to the worry, but only to our friend, with the hope of soothing and quieting him out of his worries, and when he is rested he may see the truth for himself.

We should deal with ourselves, in such cases, as gently as we would with a friend, excepting that we can tell the truth to ourselves more plainly than we can to most friends.

Worrying is resistance, resistance is unwillingness. Unwillingness interferes with whatever we may want to accomplish. To be willing that this, that, or the other should happen seems most difficult, when to our minds, this, that, or the other would bring disaster. And yet if we can once see clearly that worrying resistance tends toward disaster rather than away from it, or, at the very least, takes away our strength and endurance, it is only a matter of time before we become able to drop our resistance altogether. But it is a matter of time; and, when once we are faced toward freedom, we must be patient and steady, and not expect to gain very rapidly. Theirs is indeed a hard lot who have acquired this habit of worry, and persist in doing nothing to gain their freedom.

“Now I have got something to worry about for the rest of my life,” remarked a poor woman once. Her face was set toward worrying; nothing but her own will could have turned it the other way, and yet she deliberately chose not to use it, and so she was fixed and settled in prison for the rest of her life.

To worry is wicked; it is wickedness of a kind that people often do not recognize as such, and they are not fully responsible until they do; but to prove it to be wicked is an easy matter, when once we are faced toward freedom; and, to get over it, as I have said, is a matter of steady, persistent patience.

As for irritability, that is also resistance; but there are two kinds of irritability,–physical and moral.

There is an irritability that comes when we are hungry, if we have eaten something that disagrees with us, if we are cold or tired or uncomfortable from some other physical cause. When we feel that kind of irritability we should ignore it, as we would ignore a little snapping dog across the street, while at the same time removing its cause as quickly as we can. There is nothing that delights the devil more than to scratch a man with the irritability of hunger, and have him respond to it at once by being ugly and rude to a friend; for then the irritation immediately becomes moral, and every bit of selfishness rushes up to join it, and to arouse whatever there may be of evil in the man. It is simple to recognize this merely physical form of irritability, and we should no more allow ourselves to speak, or act, or even think from it, than we should allow ourselves to walk directly into foul air, when the good fresh air is close to us on the other side.

But moral irritability is more serious; that comes from the soul, and is the result of our wanting our own way. The immediate cause may be some physical disturbance, such as noise, or it may be aroused by other petty annoyances, like that of being obliged to wait for some one who is unpunctual, or by disagreement in an argument. There are very many causes for irritability, and we each have our own individual sensitiveness or antipathy, but, whatever the secondary cause, the primary cause is always the same,–resistance or unwillingness to accept our circumstances.

If we are fully willing to be disturbed, we cease to be troubled by the disturbance; if we are willing to wait, we are not annoyed by being kept waiting, and we are in a better, more quiet humor to help our friend to the habit of promptness, if we are willing that another should differ from us in opinion, we can see more clearly either to convince our friend, if he is wrong,–or to admit that he is right, and that we are wrong. The essential condition of good argument is freedom from personal feeling, with the desire only for the truth,–whether it comes from one party or the other.

Hurry, worry, and irritability all come from selfish resistance to the facts of life, and the only permanent cure for the waste of force and the exhausting distress which they entail, is a willingness to accept those facts, whatever they may be, in a spirit of cheerful and reverent obedience to law.

V

Nervous Fears

TO argue with nervous anxiety, either in ourselves or in others, is never helpful. Indeed it is never helpful to argue with “nerves” at all. Arguing with nervous excitement of any kind is like rubbing a sore. It only irritates it. It does not take long to argue excited or tired nerves into inflammation, but it is a long and difficult process to allay the inflammation when it has once been aroused. It is a sad fact that many people have been argued into long nervous illnesses by would-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue them out of illness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends are apt to lose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired brain which they are trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than they realize. The radical cure for nervous fears is to drop resistance to painful circumstances or conditions. Resistance is unwillingness to endure, and to drop the resistance is to be strongly willing. This vigorous “willingness” is so absolutely certain in its happy effect, and is so impossible that it should fail, that the resistant impulses seem to oppose themselves to it with extreme energy. It is as if the resistances were conscious imps, and as if their certainty of defeat–in the case of their victim’s entire “willingness “–roused them to do their worst, and to hold on to their only possible means of power with all the more determination. Indeed, when a man is working through a hard state, in gaining his freedom from nervous fears, these imps seem to hold councils of war, and to devise new plans of attack in order to take him by surprise and overwhelm him in an emergency. But every sharp attack, if met with quiet “willingness,” brings a defeat for the assailants, until finally the resistant imps are conquered and disappear. Occasionally a stray imp will return, and try to arouse resistance on what he feels is old familiar ground, but he is quickly driven off, and the experience only makes a man more quietly vigilant and more persistently “willing.”

Perhaps one of the most prevalent and one of the hardest fears to meet, is that of insanity,–especially when it is known to be a probable or possible inheritance. When such fear is oppressing a man,–to tell him that he not only can get free from the fear, but free from any possibility of insanity, through a perfect willingness to be insane, must seem to him at first a monstrous mockery; and, if you cannot persuade him of the truth, but find that you are only frightening him more, there is nothing to do then but to be willing that he should not be persuaded, and to wait for a better opportunity. You can show him that no such inheritance can become an actuality, unless we permit it, and that the very knowledge of an hereditary tendency, when wholesomely used, makes it possible for us to take every precaution and to use every true safeguard against it. The presence of danger is a source of strength to the brave; and the source of abiding courage is not in the nerves, but in the spirit and the will behind them. It is the clear statement of this fact that will persuade him The fact may have to be stated many times, but it should never be argued. And the more quietly and gently and earnestly it is stated, the sooner it will convince, for it is the truth that makes us free.

Fear keeps the brain in a state of excitement. Even when it is not consciously felt, it is felt sub-consciously, and we ought to be glad to have it aroused, in order that we may see it and free ourselves, not only from the particular fear for the time being, but from the subconscious impression of fear in general.

Is seems curious to speak of grappling with the fear of insanity, and conquering it by being perfectly willing to be insane, but it is no more curious than the relation of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces to each other. We need our utmost power of concentration to enable us to yield truly, and to be fully willing to submit to whatever the law of our being may require. Fear contracts the brain and the nerves, and interrupts the circulation, and want of free circulation is a breeder of disease. Dropping resistance relaxes the tension of the brain and nerves, and opens the channels for free circulation, and free circulation helps to carry off the tendency to disease. If a man is wholesomely willing to be insane, should such an affliction overtake him, he has dropped all resistance to the idea of insanity, and thus also to all the mental and physical contractions that would foster insanity. He has dropped a strain which was draining his brain of its proper strength, and the result is new vigor to mind and body. To drop an inherited strain produces a great and wonderful change, and all we need to bring it about is to thoroughly understand how possible and how beneficial it is. If we once realize the benefit of dropping the strain, our will is there to accomplish the rest, as surely as it is there to take our hand out of the fire when it burns.

Then there is the fear of contagion. Some people are haunted with the fear of catching disease, and the contraction which such resistance brings induces a physical state most favorable to contagion. There was once a little child whose parents were so full of anxious fears that they attempted to protect him from disease in ways that were extreme and ridiculous. All his toys were boiled, everything he ate or drank was sterilized, and many other precautions were taken,–but along with all the precautions, the parents were in constant fear; and it is not unreasonable to feel that the reflection upon the child of the chronic resistance to possible danger with which he was surrounded, had something to do with the fact that the dreaded disease was finally caught, and that, moreover, the child did not recover. If reasonably healthy conditions had been insisted upon, and the parents had felt a wholesome trust in the general order of things, it would have been likely to make the child more vigorous, and would have tended to increase his capacity for throwing off contagion.

Children are very sensitive, and it is not unusual to see a child crying because its mother is out of humor, even though she may not have spoken a cross word. It is not unusual to see a child contract its little brain and body in response to the fears and contractions of its parents, and such contraction keeps the child in a state in which it may be more difficult to throw off disease.

If you hold your fist as tight as you can hold it for fifteen minutes, the fatigue you will feel when it relaxes is a clear proof of the energy you have been wasting. The waste of nervous energy would be much increased if the fist were held tightly for hours; and if the waste is so great in the useless tightening of a fist, it is still greater in the extended and continuous contraction of brain and nerves in useless fears; and the energy saved through dropping the fears and their accompanying tension can bring in the same proportion a vigor unknown before, and at the same time afford protection against the very things we feared.

The fear of taking cold is so strong in many people that a draught of fresh air becomes a bugaboo to their contracted, sensitive nerves. Draughts are imagined as existing everywhere, and the contraction which immediately follows the sensation of a draught is the best means of preparing to catch a cold.

Fear of accident keeps one in a constant state of unnecessary terror. To be willing that an accident should happen does not make it more likely to happen, but it prevents our wasting energy by resistance, and keeps us quiet and free, so that if an emergency of any kind arises, we are prepared to act promptly and calmly for the best. If the amount of human energy wasted in the strain of nervous fear could be measured in pounds of pressure, the figures would be astonishing. Many people who have the habit of nervous fear in one form or another do not throw it off merely because they do not know how. There are big and little nervous fears, and each and all can be met and conquered,–thus bringing a freedom of life which cannot even be imagined by those carrying the burden of fear, more or less, throughout their lives.

The fear of what people will think of us is a very common cause of slavery, and the nervous anxiety as to whether we do or do not please is a strain which wastes the energy of the greater part of mankind. It seems curious to measure the force wasted in sensitiveness to public opinion as you would measure the waste of power in an engine, and yet it is a wholesome and impersonal way to think of it,–until we find a better way. It relieves us of the morbid element in the sensitiveness to say, “I cannot mind what so-and-so thinks of me, for I have not the nervous energy to spare.” It relieves us still more of the tendency to morbid feeling, if we are wholesomely interested in what others think of us, in order to profit by it, and do better. There is nothing morbid or nervous about our sensitiveness to opinion, when it is derived from a love of criticism for the sake of its usefulness. Such a rightful and wise regard for the opinion of others results in a saving of energy, for on the one hand, it saves us from the mistakes of false and shallow independence, and, on the other, from the wasteful strain of servile fear.

The little nervous fears are countless. The fear of not being exact. The fear of not having turned off the gas entirely. The fear of not having done a little daily duty which we find again and again we have done. These fears are often increased, and sometimes are aroused, by our being tired, and it is well to realize that, and to attend at once carefully to whatever our particular duty may be, and then, when the fear of not having done it attacks us, we should think of it as if it were a physical pain, and turn our attention quietly to something else. In this way such little nagging fears are relieved; whereas, if we allowed ourselves to be driven by them, we might bring on nervous states that would take weeks or months to overcome. These nervous fears attack us again and again in subtle ways, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by them. They are all forms of unwillingness or resistance, and may all be removed by dropping the resistance and yielding,–not to the fear, but to a willingness that the fear should be there.

One of the small fears that often makes life seem unbearable is the fear of a dentist. A woman who had suffered from this fear for a lifetime, and who had been learning to drop resistances in other ways, was once brought face to face with the necessity for going to the dentist, and the old fear was at once aroused,–something like the feeling one might have in preparing for the guillotine,–and she suffered from it a day or two before she remembered her new principles. Then, when the new ideas came back to her mind, she at once applied them and said, “Yes, I am afraid, I am awfully afraid. I am _perfectly willing to be afraid,” _and the ease with which the fear disappeared was a surprise,–even to herself.

Another woman who was suffering intensely from fear as to the after-effects of an operation, had begun to tremble with great nervous intensity. The trembling itself frightened her, and when a friend told her quietly to be willing to tremble, her quick, intelligence responded at once. “Yes,” she said, “I will, I will make myself tremble,” and, by not only being willing to tremble, but by making herself tremble, she got quiet mental relief in a very short time, and the trembling disappeared.

The fear of death is, with its derivatives, of course, the greatest of all; and to remove our resistance to the idea of death, by being perfectly willingly to die is to remove the foundation of all the physical cowardice in life, and to open the way for the growth of a courage which is strength and freedom itself. He who yields gladly to the ordinary facts of life, will also yield gladly to the supreme fact of physical death, for a brave and happy willingness is the characteristic habit of his heart:–

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.”

There is a legend of the Arabs in which a man puts his head out of his tent and says, “I will loose my camel and commit him to God,” and a neighbor who hears him says, in his turn, “I will tie my camel and commit him to God.” The true helpfulness from non-resistance does not come from neglecting to take proper precautions against the objects of fear, but from yielding with entire willingness to the necessary facts of life, and a sane confidence that, whatever comes, we shall be provided with the means of meeting it. This confidence is, in itself, one of the greatest sources of intelligent endurance.

VI

Self-Consciousness

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS may be truly defined as a person’s inability to get out of his own way. There are, however, some people who are so entirely and absolutely self-conscious that everything they do, even though it may appear spontaneous and ingenuous, is observed and admired and approved of by themselves,–indeed they are supported and sustained by their self-consciousness. They are so completely in bondage to themselves that they have no glimpse of the possibility of freedom, and therefore this bondage is pleasant to them.

With these people we have, at present, nothing to do; it is only those who have begun to realize their bondage as such, or who suffer from it, that can take any steps toward freedom. The self-satisfied slaves must stay in prison until they see where they are–and it is curious and sad to see them rejoicing in bondage and miscalling it freedom. It makes one long to see them struck by an emergency, bringing a flash of inner light which is often the beginning of an entire change of state. Sometimes the enlightenment comes through one kind of circumstance, sometimes through another; but, if the glimpse of clearer sight it brings is taken advantage of, it will be followed by a time of groping in the dark, and always by more or less suffering. When, however, we know that we are in the dark, there is hope of our coming to the light; and suffering is nothing whatever after it is over and has brought its good results.

If we were to take away the prop of self-approval entirely and immediately from any one of the habitually self-satisfied people, the probable result would be an entire nervous collapse, or even a painful form of insanity; and, in all changes of state from bondage to freedom, the process is and must be exceedingly slow. No one ever strengthened his character with a wrench of impatience, although we are often given the opportunity for a firm and immediate use of the will which leaves lasting strength behind it. For the main growth of our lives, however, we must be steadily patient, content to aim in the true direction day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. If we fall, we must pick ourselves up and go right on,–not stop to be discouraged for one instant after we have recognized our state as a temptation. Whatever the stone may be that we have tripped over, we have learned that it is there, and, while we may trip over the same stone many times, if we learn our lesson each time, it decreases the possible number of stumbles, and smooths our paths more than we know.

There is no exception to the necessity for this patient, steady plodding in the work required to gain our freedom from self-consciousness. It is when we are aware of our bondage that our opportunity to gain our freedom from it really begins. This bondage brings very real suffering, and we may often, without exaggeration, call it torture. It is sometimes even extreme torture, but may have to be endured for a lifetime unless the sufferer has the clear light by which to find his freedom; and, unfortunately, many who might have the light will not use it because they are unwilling to recognize the selfishness that is at the root of their trouble. Some women like to call it “shyness,” because the name sounds well, and seems to exonerate them from any responsibility with regard to their defect. Men will rarely speak of their self-consciousness, but, when they do, they are apt to speak of it with more or less indignation and self-pity, as if they were in the clutches of something extraneous to themselves, and over which they can never gain control. If, when a man is complaining of self-consciousness and of its interference with his work in life, you tell him in all kindness that all his suffering has its root in downright selfishness, he will, in most cases, appear not to hear, or he will beg the question, and, having avoided acknowledging the truth, will continue to complain and ask for help, and perhaps wonder whether hypnotism may not help him, or some other form of “cure.” Anything rather than look the truth in the face and do the work in himself which, is the only possible road to lasting, freedom. Self-pity, and what may be called spiritual laziness, is at the root of most of the self-torment in the world.

How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to produce an electric burner according to laws of his own devising, and then sat down and pitied himself because the light would not burn, instead of searching about until he had found the true laws of electricity whose application would make the light shine successfully. How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to make water run up hill without providing that it should do so by reaching its own level, and then got indignant because he did not succeed, and wondered if there were not some “cure” by means of which his object might be accomplished. And yet it is no more strange for a man to disobey habitually the laws of character, and then to suffer for his disobedience, and wonder why he suffers.

There is an external necessity for obeying social laws which must be respected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great an internal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our proper self-control and power for use; but we do not recognize that necessity because, while disregarding the laws of character, we can still live without the appearance of doing harm to the community. Social laws can be respected in the letter but not in the spirit, whereas spiritual laws must be accepted by the individual heart and practiced by the individual will in order to produce any useful result. Each one of us must do the required work in himself. There is no “cure,” no help from outside which can bring one to a lasting freedom.

If self-consciousness makes us blush, the more we are troubled the more it increases, until the blushing may become so unbearable that we are tempted to keep away from people altogether; and thus life, so far as human fellowship goes, would become more and more limited. But, when such a limitation is allowed to remain within us, and we make no effort of our own to find its root and to exterminate it, it warps us through and through. If self-consciousness excites us to talk, and we talk on and on to no end, simply allowing the selfish suffering to goad us, the habit weakens our brains so that in time they lose the power of strong consecutive thought and helpful brevity.

If self-consciousness causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we keep away from people, just as the blushing man is tempted to do. In that case, the strain is still in us, in the back of our brains, so to speak–because we have not faced and overcome it.

Stage fright is an intense form of self-consciousness, but the man who is incapable of stage fright lacks the sensitive temperament required to achieve great power as an artist. The man who overcomes stage fright by getting out of his own way, and by letting the character he is playing, or the music he is interpreting, work through him as a clear, unselfish channel receives new power for his work in the proportion that he shuns his own interfering selfishness.

But it is with the self-consciousness of everyday life that we have especially to do now, and with the practical wisdom necessary to gain freedom from all its various discomforts; and, even more than that, to gain the new power for useful service which comes from the possession of that freedom.

The remedy is to be found in obedience to the law of unselfishness, carried out into the field of nervous suffering.

Whatever one may think, however one may try to dodge the truth by this excuse or that, the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain freedom from self-consciousness are absolutely within the individual who suffers. When we once understand this, and are faced toward the truth, we are sure to find our way out, with more or less rapidity, according to the strength with which we use our wills in true obedience.

First, we must be willing to accept the effects of self-consciousness. The more we resist these effects the more they force themselves upon us, and the more we suffer from them. We must be willing to blush, be willing to realize that we have talked too much, and perhaps made ourselves ridiculous. We must be willing to feel the discomforts of self-consciousness in whatever form they may appear. Then–the central point of all–we must know and understand, and not dodge in the very least the truth that the root of self-consciousness is selfishly caring what other people think of us,–and wanting to appear well before them.

Many readers of this article who suffer from self-consciousness will want to deny this; others will acknowledge it, but will declare their inability to live according to the truth; some,–perhaps more than a few,–will recognize the truth and set to work with a will to obey it, and how happily we may look forward to the freedom which will eventually be theirs!

A wise man has said that when people do not think well of us, the first thing to do is to look and see whether they are right. In most cases, even though they way have unkind feelings mingled with their criticism, there is an element of truth in it from which we may profit. In such cases we are much indebted to our critics, for, by taking their suggestions, we are helped toward strength of character and power for use. If there is no truth in the criticism, we need not think of it at all, but live steadily on, knowing that the truth will take care of itself.

We should be willing that any one should think anything of us, so long as we have the strength of a good conscience. We should be willing to appear in any light if that appearance will enhance our use, or is a necessity of growth. If an awkward appearance is necessary in the process of our journey toward freedom, we must not resist the fact of its existence, and should only dwell on it long enough to shun its cause in so far as we can, and gain the good result of the greater freedom which will follow.

It is because the suffering from self-consciousness is often so intense that freedom from it brings, by contrast, so happy and so strong a sense of power.

There is a school for the treatment of stammerers in this country in which the pupils are initiated into the process of cure by being required to keep silence for a week. This would be a most helpful beginning in a training to overcome self-consciousness. We should recognize first that we must be willing to endure the effects of self-consciousness without resistance. Secondly, we should admit that the root of self-consciousness lies entirely in a selfish desire to appear well before others. If, while recognizing these two essential truths and confirming them until they are thoroughly implanted in our brains, we should quietly persist in going among people, the practice of silent attention to others would be of the greatest value in gaining real freedom. The practice of attentive and sympathetic silence might well be followed by people in general far more than it is. The protection of a loving, unselfish silence is very great: a silence which is the result of shunning all selfish, self-assertive, vain, or affected speech; a silence which is never broken for the sake of “making conversation,” “showing off,” or covering selfish embarrassment; a silence which is full of sympathy and interest,–the power of such a silence cannot be overestimated.

If we have the evil habit of talking for the sake of winning approval, we should practise this silence; or if we talk for the sake of calling attention to ourselves, for the sake of winning sympathy for our selfish pains and sorrows, or for the sake of indulging in selfish emotions, nothing can help us more than the habit of loving and attentive silence.

Only when we know how to practise this–in an impersonal, free and quiet spirit, one which is not due to outward repression of any kind–are we able to talk with quiet, loving, helpful speech. Then may we tell the clean truth without giving unnecessary offence, and then may we soothe and rest, as well as stimulate in, wholesome ways; then, also, will our minds open to receive the good that may come to us through the words and actions of others.

VII

The Circumstances of Life

IT is not the circumstances of life that trouble or weigh upon us, it is the way we take them. If a man is playing a difficult game of chess, the more intricate the moves the more thoughtfully he looks over his own and his opponent’s men, and the more fully he is aroused to make the right move toward a checkmate. If, when the game became difficult, the player stopped to be depressed and disheartened, his opponent would probably always checkmate him; whereas, in most cases, the more difficult the game the more thoroughly the players are aroused to do their best, and a difficult game is invariably a good one,–the winner and the loser both feel it to be so,–even though the loser may regret his loss. But–the reader will say–a game of chess is a game only,–neither one’s bread and butter nor one’s life depend upon winning or losing it. If, however, we need to be cool and quiet and trustful for a game, which is merely an amusement, and if we play the game better for being cool and quiet and trustful, why is not a quiet steadiness in wrestling with the circumstances of life itself just as necessary, not only that we may meet the particular problem of the moment truly, but that we may gain all the experience which may be helpful in meeting other difficult circumstances as they present themselves.

We must first convince ourselves thoroughly of the truth that CIRCUMSTANCES, HOWEVER DIFFICULT, ARE ALWAYS–WITHOUT EXCEPTION, OPPORTUNITIES, AND NOT LIMITATIONS.

They are not by any means opportunities for taking us in the direction that our own selfishness would have us go; they are opportunities which are meant to guide us in the direction we most need to follow,–in the ways that will lead us to the greatest strength in the end.

The most unbelieving of us will admit that “there is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may,” and it is in the stupid resistance to having our ends shaped for us that we stop and groan at what we call the limitations of circumstances.

If we were quickly alert to see where circumstances had placed the gate of opportunity, and then steadily persisted in going through it, it would save the loss of energy and happiness which results from obstinately beating our heads against a stone wall where there is no gate, and where there never can be a gate.

Probably there is hardly a reader who will not recall a number of cases in which circumstances appear to have been only limitations to him or to his friends; but if he will try with a willing mind to find the gate of opportunity which was not used, he will be surprised to learn that it was wide open all the time, and might have led him into a new and better country.

The other day a little urchin playing in the street got in the way of a horse, and just saved himself from being run over by a quick jump; he threw up his arms and in a most cheerful voice called out, “It’s all right, only different!” If the horse had run over him, he might have said the same thing and found his opportunity to more that was good and useful in life through steady patience on his bed. The trouble is that we are not willing to call it “all right” unless it is the same,–the same in this case meaning whatever may be identical with our own personal ideas of what is “all right.” That expressive little bit of slang is full of humor and full of common sense.

If, for instance, when we expect something and are disappointed, we could at once yield out of our resistance and heartily exclaim, “it is all right, only different,” how much sooner we should discover the good use in its being different, and how soon we should settle into the sense of its being “all right!” When a circumstance that has seemed to us all wrong can be made, through our quiet way of meeting it, to appear all right, only different, it very soon leads to a wholesome content in the new state of affairs or to a change of circumstances to which we can more readily and happily adjust ourselves.

A strong sense of something’s being “all right” means a strong sense of willingness that it should be just as it is. With that clear willingness in our hearts in general, we can adjust ourselves to anything in particular,–even to very sudden and unexpected changes. It is carrying along with us a background of powerful non-resistance which we can bring to the front and use actively at a moment’s notice.

It seems odd to think of actively using non-resistance, and yet the expression is not as contradictory as it would appear, for the strength of will it takes to attain an habitual attitude of wholesome non-resistance is far beyond the strength of will required to resist unwholesomely. The stronger, the more fixed and immovable the centre, the more free and adaptable are the circumferences of action; and, even though our central principle is fixed and immovable, it must be elastic enough to enable us to change our point of view whenever we find that by so doing we can gain a broader outlook and greater power for use.

To acquire the strength of will for this habitual non-resistance is sometimes a matter of years of practice. We have to compel ourselves to be “willing,” over and over again, at each new opportunity; sometimes the opportunities seem to throng us; and this, truly considered, is only a cause for gratitude.

In life the truest winning often comes first under the guise of failure, and it is willingness to accept failure, and intelligence in understanding its causes, and using the acquired knowledge as a means to a higher end, that ultimately brings true success. If we choose, a failure can always be used as a means to an end rather than as a result in itself.

How often do we hear the complaint, “I could do so well if it were not for my circumstances.” How many people are held down for a lifetime by the habitual belief in circumstances as limitations, and by ignoring the opportunities which they afford.

“So long as I must live with these people I can never amount to anything.” If this complaint could be changed to the resolve: “I will live with these people until I have so adjusted myself to them as to be contented,” a source of weakness would be changed into a source of strength. The quiet activity of mind required to adjust ourselves to difficult surroundings gives a zest and interest to life which we can find in no other way, and adds a certain strength to the character which cannot be found elsewhere. It is interesting to observe, too, how often it happens that, when we have adjusted ourselves to difficult circumstances, we are removed to other circumstances which are more in sympathy with our own, thoughts and ways: and sometimes to circumstances which are more difficult still, and require all the strength and wisdom which our previous discipline has taught us.

If we are alive to our own true freedom, we should have an active interest in the necessary warfare of life. For life is a warfare–not of persons, but of principles–and every man who loves his freedom loves to be in the midst of the battle. Our tendencies to selfish discontent are constantly warring against our love of usefulness and service, and he who wishes to enjoy the full activity of freedom must learn to fight and to destroy the tendencies within himself which stand in the way of his own obedience to law. But he needs, for this, the truthful and open spirit which leads to wise self-knowledge; a quiet and a willing spirit, to make the necessary sacrifice of selfish pride. His quiet earnestness will give him the strength to carry out what his clear vision will reveal to him in the light of truth He will keep his head lifted up above his enemies round about him, so that he may steadily watch and clearly see how best to act. After periods of hard fighting the intervals of rest will be full of refreshment, and will always bring new strength for further activity. If, in the battle with difficult circumstances, we are thrown down, we must pick ourselves up with quick decision, and not waste a moment in complaint or discouragement. We should emphasize to ourselves the necessity for picking ourselves up immediately, and going directly on, over and over again,–both for our own benefit, and the benefit of those whom we have the privilege of helping.

In the Japanese training of “Jiu Jitsu,” the idea seems to be to drop all subjective resistance, and to continue to drop it, until, through the calmness and clearness of sight that comes from quiet nerves and a free mind, the wrestler can see where to make the fatal stroke. When the right time has arrived, the only effort which is necessary is quick, sharp and conclusive. This wonderful principle is often misused for selfish ends, and in such cases it leads eventually to bondage because, by the successful satisfaction of selfish motives, it strengthens the hold of our selfishness upon us; but, when used in an unselfish spirit, it is an ever-increasing source of strength. In the case of difficult circumstances,–if we cease to resist,–if we accept the facts of life,–if we are willing to be poor, or ill, or disappointed, or to live with people we do not like,–we gain a quietness of nerve and a freedom of mind which clears off the mists around us, so that our eyes may see and recognize the gate of opportunity,–open before us.

It is the law of concentration and relaxation. If we concentrate on being willing, on relaxing until we have dropped every bit of resistance to the circumstances about us, that brings us to a quiet and well-balanced point of view, whence we can see clearly how to take firm and decided action. From such action the re-action is only renewed strength,–never painful and contracting weakness. If we could give up all our selfish desires and resistances, circumstances, however difficult, would have no power whatever to trouble us. To reach such absolute willingness is a long journey, but there is a straight path leading nearer and nearer to the happy freedom which is our goal.

Self-pity is one of the states that interferes most effectually with making the right use of circumstances. To pity one’s self is destruction to all possible freedom. If the reader finds himself in the throes of this weakness and is helped through these words to recognize the fact, let him hasten to shun it as he would shun poison, for it is progressively weakening to soul and body. It will take only slight difficulties of any kind to overthrow us, if we are overcome by this temptation.

Imagine a man in the planet Mars wanting to try his fortunes on another planet, and an angel appearing to him with permission to transfer him to the earth.

“But,” the angel says, “of course you can have no idea of what the life is upon the new planet unless you are placed in the midst of various circumstances which are more or less common to its inhabitants.”

“Certainly,” the Martian answers, “I recognize that, and I want to have my experience on this new planet as complete as possible; therefore the more characteristic and difficult my circumstances are the better.” Then imagine the interest that man would have, from the moment he was placed on the earth, in working, his way through, and observing his experience as he worked.

His interest would be alive vivid, and strong, from the beginning until he found himself, with earthly experience completed, ready to return to his friends in Mars. He would never lose courage or be in any way disheartened. The more difficult his earthly problem was, the more it would arouse his interest and vigor to solve it. So many people prefer a difficult problem in geometry to an easy one, then why not in life? The difference is that in mathematics the head alone is exercised, and in life the head and the heart are both brought into play, and the first difficulty is to persuade the head and heart to work together. In the visitor from Mars, of course, the heart would be working with the head, and so the whole man would be centred on getting creditably through his experience and home again. If our hearts and heads were together equally concentrated on getting through our experience for the sake of the greater power of use it would bring,–and, if we could trustfully believe in getting home again, that is, in getting established in the current of ordinary spiritual and natural action, then life would be really alive for us, then we should actually get the scent of our true freedom, and, having once had a taste of it, we should have a fresh incentive in achieving it entirely.

There is one important thing to remember in an effort to be free from the bondage of circumstances which will save us from much unnecessary suffering. This has to do with the painful associations which arise from circumstances which are past and over.

A woman, for example, suffered for a year from nervous exhaustion in her head, which was brought on, among other things, by over-excitement in private theatricals. She apparently recovered her health, and, because she was fond of acting, her first activities were turned in that direction. She accepted a part in a play; but as soon as she began to study all her old head symptoms returned, and she was thoroughly frightened, thinking that she might never be able to use her head again. Upon being convinced, however, that all her discomfort came from her own imagination, through the painful associations connected with the study of her part, she returned to her work resolved to ignore them, and the consequence was that the symptoms rapidly disappeared.

Not uncommonly we hear that a person of our acquaintance cannot go to some particular place because of the painful events which occurred there. If the sufferer could only be persuaded that, when such associations are once bravely faced, it takes a very short time for the painful effects to disappear entirely, much unnecessary and prolonged discomfort would be saved.

People have been kept ill for weeks, months and years, through. holding on to the brain impression of some painful event.

Whether the painful circumstances are little or great, the law of association is the same and, in any case, the brain impression can be dropped entirely, although it may take time and patience to do it. We must often talk to our brains as if we were talking to another person to eliminate the impressions from old associations. Tell your brain in so many words, without emotion, that the place or the circumstance is nothing, nothing whatever,–it is only your idea about it, and the false association can be changed to a true one.

So must we yield our selfish resistances and be ready to accept every opportunity for growth that circumstances offer; and, at the same time, when the good result is gained, throw off the impression of the pain of the process entirely and forever. Thus may we both live and observe for our own good and that of others; and he who is practising this principle in his daily life can say from his heart:–“Now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me.”

VIII

Other People

HOWEVER disagreeable other people may be,–however unjust they may be, however true it may be that the wrong is all on their side and not at all on ours,–whatever we may suffer at their hands,–we can only remedy the difficulty by looking first solely to ourselves and our own conduct; and, not until we are entirely free from resentment or resistance of any kind, and not until we are quiet in our own minds with regard to those who may be oppressing or annoying us, should we make any effort to set them right.

This philosophy is sound and absolutely practical,–it never fails; any apparent failure will be due to our own delinquency in applying it; and, if the reader will think of this truth carefully until he feels able to accept it, he will see what true freedom there is in it,–although it may be a long time before he is fully able to carry it out.

How can I remain in any slightest bondage to another when I feel sure that, however wrong he may be, the true cause of my discomfort and oppression is in myself? I am in bondage to myself, and it is to myself that I must look to gain my freedom. If a friend is rude and unkind to me, and I resent the rudeness and resist the unkindness, it is the resentment and resistance that cause me to suffer. I am not suffering for my friend, I am suffering for myself; and I can only gain my freedom by shunning the resentment and resistance as sin against all that is good and true in friendship. When I am free from these things in myself,–when, as far as I am concerned, I am perfectly and entirely willing that my friend should be rude or unjust, then only am I free from him. It is impossible that he should oppress me, if I am willing that he should be unjust or unkind; and the freedom that comes from such strong and willing non-resistance is like the fresh air upon a mountain. Such freedom brings with it also a new understanding of one’s friend, and a new ability to serve him.

Unless we live a life of seclusion, most of us have more than one friend, or acquaintance, or enemy, with whom we are brought into constant or occasional contact, and by whom we are made to suffer; not to mention the frequent irritations that may come from people we see only once in our lives. Imagine the joy of being free from all this irritability and oppression; imagine the saving of nervous energy which would accompany such freedom; imagine the possibility of use to others which would be its most helpful result!

If we once catch even the least glimpse of this quiet freedom, we shall not mind if it takes some time to accomplish so desirable a result, and the process of achieving it is deeply interesting.

The difficulty at first is to believe that so far as we are concerned, the cause Of the trouble is entirely within, ourselves. The temptation is to think:–

“How can I help resenting behavior like that! Such selfishness and lack of consideration would be resented by any one.”

So any one might resent it, but that is no reason why we should. We are not to make other people’s standards our own unless we see that their standards are higher than ours; only then should we change,–not to win the favor of the other people, but because we have recognized the superior value of their standards and are glad to put away what is inferior for what is better. Therefore we can never excuse ourselves for resentment or resistance because other people resent or resist. There can be no possible excuse for resistance to the behavior of others, and it is safe to say that we must never pit our wills against the wills of other people. If we want to do right and the other man wants us to do wrong, we must pass by his will, pass under it or over it, but never on any account resist it. There has been more loss of energy, more real harm done, through this futile engagement of two personal wills than can ever be computed, and the freedom consequent upon refusing such contact is great in proportion. Obedience to this law of not pitting our wills against the wills of other people leads to new freedom in all sorts of ways,–in connection with little, everyday questions, as to whether a thing is one color or another, as well as in the great and serious problems of life. If, in an argument, we feel confident that all we want is the truth,–that we do not care whether we or our opponents are in the right, as long as we find the right itself,–then we are free, so far as personal feeling is concerned; especially if, in addition, we are perfectly willing that our opponents should not be convinced, even though the right should ultimately prove to be on our side.

With regard to learning how always to look first to ourselves,–first we must become conscious of our own resentment and resistance, then we must acknowledge it heartily and fully, and then we must go to work firmly and steadily to refuse to harbor it. We must relax out of the tension of our resistance with both soul and body; for of course, the resistance contracts the nerves of our bodies, and, if we relax from the contractions in our bodies, it helps us to gain freedom from resistance in our hearts and minds. The same resistance to the same person or the same ideas may return, in different forms, many times over; but all we have to do is to persist in dropping it as often as it returns, even if it be thousands of times.

No one need be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a “mush of concession” through the process of dropping useless resistance, for the strength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of pitting one’s own will against that of another is much greater than the strength we use when we indulge the habit. The two kinds of strength can no more be compared than the power of natural law can be compared to the lawless efforts of human waywardness. For the will that is pitted against the will of another degenerates into obstinacy, and weakens the character; whereas the will that is used truly to refuse useless resistance increases steadily in strength, and develops power and beauty of character. Again, the man who insists upon pitting his will against that of another is constantly blinded as to the true qualities of his opponent. He sees neither his virtues nor his vices clearly; whereas he who declines the merely personal contest becomes constantly clarified in his views, and so helped toward a loving charity for his opponent,–whatever his faults or difficulties may be,–and to an understanding and love of the good in him, which does not identify him with his faults.

When we resent and resist, and are personally wilful, there is a great big beam in our eye, which we cannot see through, or under, or over,–but, as we gain our freedom from all such resistance, the beam is removed, and we are permitted to see things as they really are, and with a truer sense of proportion, our power of use increases.

When a person is arguing with all the force of personal wilfulness, it is both pleasant and surprising to observe the effect upon him if he begins to feel your perfect willingness that he should believe in his own way, and your willingness to go with him, too, if his way should prove to be right. His violence melts to quietness because you give him nothing to resist. The same happy effect comes from facing any one in anger, without resistance, but with a quiet mind and a loving heart. If the anger does not melt–as it often does–it is modified and weakened, and–as far as we are concerned–it cannot touch or hurt us.

We must remember always that it is not the repression or concealment of resentment and resistance, and forbearing to express them, that can free us from bondage to others; it is overcoming any trace of resentment or resistance within our own hearts and minds. If the resistance is in us, we are just as much in bondage as if we expressed it in our words and actions. If it is in us at all, it must express itself in one way or another,–either in ill-health, or in unhappy states of mind, or in the tension of our bodies. We must also remember that, when we are on the way to freedom from such habits of resistance, we may suffer from them for a long time after we have ceased to act from them. When we are turning steadily away from them, the uncomfortable effects of past resistance may linger for a long while before every vestige of them disappears. It is like the peeling after scarlet fever,–the dead skin stays on until the new, tender skin is strong underneath, and after we think we have peeled entirely, we discover new places with which we must be patient. So, with the old habits of resistance, we must, although turning away from them firmly, be steadily patient while waiting for the pain from them to disappear. It must take time if the work is to be done thoroughly,–but the freedom to be gained is well worth waiting for.

One of the most prevalent forms of bondage is caring too much in the wrong way what people think of us. If a man criticises me I must first look to see whether he is right. He may be partly right, and not entirely,–but, whatever truth there is in his criticism, I want to know it in order that I may see the fault clearly myself and remedy it. If his criticism is ill-natured it is not necessarily any the less true, and I must not let the truth be obscured by his ill-nature. All, that I have to do with the ill-nature is to be sorry, on my friend’s account, and help him out of it if he is willing; and there is nothing that is so likely to make him willing as my recognizing the justice of what he says and acting upon it, while, at the same time, I neither resent nor resist his ill-nature. If the man is both ill-natured and unjust,–if there is no touch of what is true in his criticism,–then all I have to do is to cease resenting it. I should be perfectly willing that he should think anything he pleases, while I, so far as I can see, go on and do what is right.

The trouble is that we care more to appear right than to be right. This undue regard for appearances is very deep-seated, for it comes from long habit and inheritance; but we must recognize it and acknowledge it in ourselves, in order to take the true path toward freedom. So long as we are working for appearances we are not working for realities. When we love to be right first, then we will regard appearances only enough to protect what is good and true from needless misunderstanding and disrespect. Sometimes we cannot even do that without sacrificing the truth to appearances, and in such cases we must be true to realities first, and know that appearances must harmonize with them in the end. If causes are right, effects must be orderly, even though at times they may not seem so to the superficial observer. Fear of not being approved of is the cause of great nervous strain and waste of energy; for fear is resistance, and we can counteract that terrified resistance only by being perfectly willing that any one should think anything he likes. When moving in obedience to law–natural and spiritual–a man’s power cannot be overestimated; but in order to learn genuine obedience to law, we must be willing to accept our limitations and wait for them to be gradually removed as we gain in true freedom. Let us not forget that if we are overpleased–selfishly pleased–at the approval of others, we are just as much in bondage to them as if we were angry at their disapproval. Both approval and disapproval are helpful if we accept them for the use they can be to us, but are equally injurious if we take them to feed our vanity or annoyance.

It is hard to believe, until our new standard is firmly established, that only from this true freedom do we get the most vital sense of loving human intercourse and companionship, for then we find ourselves working hand in hand with those who are united to us in the love of principles, and we are ready to recognize and to draw out the best in every one of those about us.

If this law of freedom from others–which so greatly increases our power of use to them and their power of use to us–had not been proved absolutely practical, it would not be a law at all. It is only as we find it practical in every detail, and as obedience to it is proved to be the only sure road to established freedom that we are bound to accept it. To learn to live in such obedience we must be steady, persistent and patient,–teaching ourselves the same truths many times, until a new habit of freedom is established within us by the experience of our daily lives. We must learn and grow in power from every failure; and we must not dwell with pride and complacency on good results, but always move steadily and quietly forward.

IX

Human Sympathy

A NURSE who had been only a few weeks in the hospital training-school, once saw–from her seat at the dinner-table–a man brought into the house who was suffering intensely from a very severe accident. The young woman started up to be of what service she could, and when she returned to the table, had lost her appetite entirely, because of her sympathy for the suffering man. She had hardly begun her dinner, and would have gone without it if it had not been for a sharp reprimand from the superintendent.

“If you really sympathize with that man,” she said, “you will eat your dinner to get strength to take care of him. Here is a man who will need constant, steady, healthy attention for some days to come,–and special care all this afternoon and night, and it will be your duty to look out for him. Your ‘sympathy’ is already pulling you down and taking away your strength, and you are doing what you can to lose more strength by refusing to eat your dinner. Such sympathy as that is poor stuff; I call it weak sentimentality.”

The reprimand was purposely sharp, and, by arousing the anger and indignation of the nurse, it served as a counter-irritant which restored her appetite. After her anger had subsided, she thanked the superintendent with all her heart, and from that day she began to learn the difference between true and false sympathy. It took her some time, however, to get thoroughly established in the habit of healthy sympathy. The tendency to unwholesome sympathy was part of her natural inheritance, along with many other evil tendencies which frequently have to be overcome before a person with a very sensitive nervous system can find his own true strength. But as she watched the useless suffering which resulted in all cases in which people allowed themselves to be weakened by the pain of others, she learned to understand more and more intelligently the practice of wholesome sympathy, and worked until it had become her second nature. Especially did she do this after having proved many times, by practical experience, the strength which comes through the power of wholesome sympathy to those in pain.

Unwholesome sympathy incapacitates one for serving others, whether the need be physical, mental, or moral. Wholesome sympathy not only gives us power to serve, but clears our understanding; and, because of our growing ability to appreciate rightly the point of view of other people, our service can be more and more intelligent.

In contrast to this unwholesome sympathy, which is the cause of more trouble in the world than people generally suppose, is the unwholesome lack of sympathy, or hardening process, which is deliberately cultivated by many people, and which another story will serve to illustrate.

A poor negro was once brought to the hospital very ill; he had suffered so keenly in the process of getting there that the resulting weakness, together with the intense fright at the idea of being in a hospital, which is so common to many of his class, added to the effects of his disease itself, were too much for him, and he died before he had been in bed fifteen minutes. The nurse in charge looked at him and said, in a cold, steady tone:–

“It was hardly worth while to make up the bed.”

She had hardened herself because she could not endure the suffering of unwholesome sympathy, and yet “must do her work.” No one had taught her the freedom and power of true sympathy. Her finer senses were dulled and atrophied,–she did not know the difference between one human soul and another. She only knew that this was a case of typhoid fever, that a case of pneumonia, and another a case of delirium tremens. They were all one to her, so far as the human beings went. She knew the diagnosis and the care of the physical disease,–and that was all. She did the material work very well, but she must have brought torture to the sensitive mind in many a poor, sick body.

Another form of false sympathy is what may be called professional sympathy. Some people never find that out, but admire and get comfort from the professional sympathy of a doctor or a nurse, or any other person whose profession it is to care for those who are suffering. It takes a keen perception or a quick emergency to bring out the false ring of professional sympathy. But the hardening process that goes on in the professional sympathizer is even greater than in the case of those who do not put on a sympathetic veneer. It seems as if there must be great tension in the more delicate parts of the nervous system in people who have hardened themselves, with or without the veneer,–akin to what there would be in the muscles if a man went about his work with both fists tightly clenched all day, and slept with them clenched all night. If that tension of hard indifference could be reached and relaxed, the result would probably be a nervous collapse, before true, wholesome habits could be established, but unfortunately it often becomes so rigid that a healthy relaxation is out of the question. Professional sympathy is of the same quality as the selfish sympathy which we see constantly about us in men or women who sympathize because the emotion attracts admiration and wins the favor of others.

When people sympathize in their selfishness instead of sympathizing in their efforts to get free, the force of selfishness is increased, and the world is kept down to a lower standard by just so much.

A thief, for instance, fails in a well-planned attempt to get a large sum of money, and confides his attempt and failure to a brother thief, who expresses admiration for the sneaking keenness of the plan, and hearty sympathy in the regret for his failure. The first thief immediately pronounces the second thief “a good fellow.” But, at the same time, if either of these apparently friendly thieves could get more money by cheating the other the next day he would not hesitate to do so.

To be truly sympathetic, we should be able so to identify ourselves with the interests of others that we can have a thorough appreciation of their point of view, and can understand their lives clearly, as they appear to themselves; but this we can never do if we are immersed in the fog,–either of their personal selfishness or our own. By understanding others clearly, we can talk in ways that are, and seem to them, rational, and gradually lead them to a higher standard.

If a woman is in the depths of despair because a dress does not fit, I should not help her by telling her the truth about her character, and lecturing her upon her folly in wasting grief upon trifles, when there are so many serious troubles in the world. From her point of view, the fact that her dress does not fit is a grief. But if I keep quiet, and let her see that I understand her disappointment, and at the same time hold my own standard, she will be led much more easily and more truly to see for herself the smallness of her attitude. First, perhaps, she will be proud that she has learned not to worry about such a little thing as a new dress; and, if so, I must remember her point of view, and be willing that she should be proud. Then, perhaps, she will come to wonder how she ever could have wasted anxiety on a dress or a hat, and later she may perhaps forget that she ever did.

It is like leading a child. We give loving sympathy to a child when it breaks its doll, although we know there is nothing real to grieve about There is something for the child to grieve about, something very real to her; but we can only sympathize helpfully with her point of view by keeping ourselves clearly in the light of our own more mature point of view.

From the top of a mountain you can see into the valley round about,–your horizon is very broad, and you can distinguish the details that it encompasses; but, from the valley, you cannot see the top of the mountain, and your horizon is limited.

This illustrates truly the breadth and power of wholesome human sympathy. With a real love for human nature, if a man has a clear, high standard of his own,–a standard which he does not attribute to his own intelligence–his understanding of the lower standards of other men will also be very clear, and he will take all sorts and conditions of men into the region within the horizon of his mind. Not only that, but he will recognize the fact When the standard of another man is higher than his own, and will be ready to ascend at once when he becomes aware of a higher point of view. On the other hand, when selfishness is sympathizing with selfishness, there is no ascent possible, but only the one little low place limited by the personal, selfish interests of those concerned.

Nobody else’s trouble seems worth considering to those who are immersed in their own, or in their selfish sympathy with a friend whom they have chosen to champion. This is especially felt among conventional people, when something happens which disturbs their external habits and standards of life. Sympathy is at once thrown out on the side of conventionality, without any rational inquiry as to the real rights of the case. Selfish respectability is most unwholesome in its unhealthy sympathy with selfish respectability.

The wholesome sympathy of living human hearts sympathizes first with what is wholesome,–especially in those who suffer,–whether it be wholesomeness of soul or body; and true sympathy often knows and recognizes that wholesomeness better than the sufferer himself. Only in a secondary way, and as a means to a higher end, does it sympathize with the painful circumstances or conditions. By keeping our sympathies steadily fixed on the health of a brother or friend, when he is immersed in and overcome by his own pain, we may show him the way out of his pain more truly and more quickly. By keeping our sympathies fixed on the health of a friend’s soul, we may lead him out of selfishness which otherwise might gradually destroy him. In both cases our loving care should be truly felt,–and felt as real understanding of the pain or grief suffered in the steps by the way, with an intelligent sense of their true relation to the best interests of the sufferer himself Such wholesome sympathy is alert in all its perceptions to appreciate different points of view, and takes care to speak only in language which is intelligible, and therefore useful. It is full of loving patience, and never forces or persuades, but waits and watches to give help at the right time and in the right place. It is more often helpful with silence than with words. It stimulates one to imagine what friendship might be if it were alive and wholesome to the very core. For, in such friendship as this, a true friend to one man has the capacity of being a true friend to all men, and one who has a thoroughly wholesome sympathy for one human being will have it for all. His general attitude must always be the same–modified only by the relative distance which comes from variety in temperaments.

In order to sympathize with the best possibilities in others, our own standards must be high and clear, and we must be steadily true to them. Such sympathy is freedom itself,–it is warm and glowing,–while the sympathy which adds its weight to the pain or selfishness of others can really be only bondage, however good it may appear.

X

Personal Independence

IN proportion as every organ of the human body is free to perform its own functions, unimpeded by any other, the body is perfectly healthy and vigorous; and, in proportion as every organ of the body is receiving its proper support from every other, the body as a whole is vigorous, and in the full use of its powers.

These are two self-evident axioms, and, if we think of them quietly for a little while, they will lead us to a clear realization of true personal independence.

The lungs cannot do the work of the heart, but must do their own work, independently and freely; and yet, if the lungs should suddenly say to themselves:

“This is all nonsense,–our depending upon the heart in this way; we must be independent! It is weak to depend upon the other organs of the body!” And if they should repel the blood which the heart pumped into them, with the idea that they could manage the body by themselves, and were not going to be weakly dependent upon the heart, the stomach, or any other organ,–if the lungs should insist upon taking this independent stand, they would very soon stop breathing, the heart would stop beating, the stomach would stop digesting, and the body would die. Or, suppose that the heart should refuse to supply the lungs with the blood necessary to provide oxygen; the same fatal result would of course follow. Or, even let us imagine all the organs of the body agreeing that it is weak to be dependent, and asserting their independence of each other. At the very instant that such an agreement was carried into effect, the body would perish.

Then, on the other hand,–to reverse the illustration,–if the lungs should feel that they could help the heart’s work by attending to the circulation of the blood, if the heart should insist that it could inhale and exhale better than the lungs, and should neglect its own work in order to advise and assist the lungs in the breathing, the machinery of the body would be in sad confusion for a time, and would very soon cease altogether.

This imaginary want of real independence in the working of the different organs of the body can be illustrated by the actual action of the muscles. How often we see a man working with his mouth while writing, when he should be only using his hands; or, working uselessly with his left hand, when what he has to do only needs the right! How often we see people trying to listen with their arms and shoulders! Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, and, in all cases, the false sympathy of contraction in the parts of the body which are not needed for the work in hand comes from a wrong dependence,–from the fact that the pats of the body that are not needed, are officiously dependent upon those that are properly active, instead of minding their own affairs and saving energy for their own work.

The wholesome working of the human organism, is so perfect in its analogy to the healthy relations of members of a community, that no reader should pass it by without very careful thought.

John says:–

“I am not going to be dependent upon any man. I am going to live my own life, in my own way, as I expect other men to live theirs. If they will leave me alone, I will leave them alone,” and John flatters himself that he is asserting his own strength of personality, that he is emphasizing his individuality. The truth is that John is warping himself every day by his weak dependence upon his own prejudices. He is unwilling to look fairly at another main’s opinion for fear of being dependent upon it. He is not only warping himself by his “independence,” which is puffed up with the false appearance of strength, but he is robbing his fellow-men; for he cannot refuse to receive from others without putting it out of his own power to give to others. Real giving and receiving must be reciprocal in spirit, and absolutely dependent upon each other.

It is a curious and a sad study to watch the growing slavery of such “independent” people.

James, on the other hand, thinks he cannot do anything without asking another man’s advice or getting another man’s help; sometimes it is always the same man, sometimes it is one of twenty different men. And so, James is steadily losing the power of looking life in the face, and of judging for himself whether or not to take the advice of others from a rational principle, and of his own free will, and he is gradually becoming a parasite,–an animal which finally loses all its organs from lack of use, so that only its stomach remains,–and has, of course, no intelligence at all. The examples of such men as James are much more numerous than might be supposed. We seldom see them in such flabby dependence upon the will of an individual as would make them conspicuous; but they are about us every day, and in large numbers, in their weak dependence upon public opinion,–their bondage to the desire that other men should think well of them. The human parasites that are daily feeding on social recognition are unconsciously in the process of losing their individuality and their intelligence; and it would be a sad surprise to them if they could see themselves clearly as they really are.

Public opinion is a necessary and true protection to the world as it is, because if it were not for public opinion, many men and women would dare to be more wicked than they are. But that is no reason why intelligent men should order their lives on certain lines just because their neighbors do,–just because it is the custom. If the custom is a good custom, it can be followed intelligently, and because we recognize it as good, but it should not be followed only because our neighbors follow it. Then, if our neighbors follow the custom for the same intelligent reason, it will bring us and them into free and happy sympathy.

Neither should a man hesitate to do right, positively and fearlessly, in the face of the public assertion that he is doing wrong. He should, of course, look himself over many times to be sure that he is doing right, according to his own best light, and he should be willing to change his course of action just as fearlessly if he finds he has made a mistake; but, having once decided, he will respect public opinion much more truly by acting quietly against it with an open mind, than he would if he refused to do right, because he was afraid of what others would think of him. To defy carelessly the opinion of others is false independence, and has in it the elements of fear, however fearless it may seem; but to respectfully ignore it for the sake of what is true, and good, and useful, is sure to enlarge the public heart and to help, it eventually to a clearer charity. Individual dependence and individual independence are absolutely necessary to a well-adjusted balance. It is just as necessary to the individual men of a community as to the individual organs of the body.

It is not uncommon for a person to say:–

“I must give up So-and-so; I must not see so much of him,–I am getting so dependent upon him.”

If the apparent dependence on a friend is due to the fact that he has valuable principles to teach which may take time to learn, but which lead in the end to greater freedom, then to give up such companionship, out of regard for the criticism of others would, of course, be weakness and folly itself. It is often our lot to incur the severest blame for the very weaknesses which we have most entirely overcome.

Many people will say:–

“I should rather be independently wrong than dependently right,” and others will admire them for the assertion. But the truth is, that whenever one is wrong, one is necessarily dependent, either upon man or devil; but it is impossible to be dependently right, excepting for the comparatively short time that we may need for a definite, useful purpose. If a man is right in his mental and moral attitude merely because his friend is right, and not because he wants the right himself, it will only be a matter of time before his prop is taken away, and he will fall back into his own moral weakness. Of course, a man can begin to be right because his friend is right;–but it is because there is something in him which responds to the good in his friend. Strong men are true to their friendships and convictions, in spite of appearances and the clamor of their critics.

True independence is never afraid of appearing dependent, and true dependence leads always to the most perfect independence.

We cannot, really enjoy our own freedom without the growing desire and power to help other people to theirs. Our own love of independence will bring with it an equal love for the independence of our neighbor; and our own love of true dependence–that is, of receiving wise help from any one through whom it may be sent–will give us an equal love for giving help wherever it will be welcome. Our respect for our own independence will make it impossible that we should insist upon trying to give help to others where it is not wanted; and our own respect for true dependence will give us a loving charity, a true respect for those who are necessarily and temporarily dependent, and teach us to help them to their true balance.

We should learn to keep a margin of reserve for ourselves, and to give the same margin to others. Not to come too near, but to be far enough away from every one to give us a true perspective. There is a sort of familiarity that arises sometimes between friends, or even mere acquaintances, which closes the door to true friendship or to real acquaintance. It does not bring people near to one another, but keeps them apart. It is as if men thought that they could be better friends by bumping their heads together.

Our freedom comes in realizing that all the energy of life should come primarily from a love of principles and not of persons, excepting as persons relate to principles. If one man finds another living on principles that are higher than his own, it means strength and freedom for him to cling to his friend until he has learned to understand and live on those principles himself. Then if he finds his own power for usefulness and his own enjoyment of life increased by his friendship, it would indeed be weak of him to refuse such companionship from fear of being dependent. The surest and strongest basis of freedom in friendship is a common devotion to the same fundamental principles of life; and this insures reciprocal usefulness as well as personal independence. We must remember that the very worst and weakest dependence is not a dependence upon persons, but upon a sin,–whether the sin be fear of public opinion or some other more or less serious form of bondage.

The only true independence is in obedience to law, and if, to gain the habit of such obedience, we need a helping hand, it is truly independent for us to take it.

We all came into the world alone, and we must go out of the world alone, and yet we are exquisitely and beautifully dependent upon one another.

A great German philosopher has said that there should be as much space between the atoms of the body, in relation to its size, as there is between the stars in relation to the size of the universe,–and yet every star is dependent upon every other star,–as every atom in the body is dependent upon every other atom for its true life and action. This principle of balance in the macrocosm and the microcosm is equally applicable to any community of people, whether large or small. The quiet study and appreciation of it will enable us to realize the strength of free dependence and dependent freedom in the relation of persons to one another. The more truly we can help one another in freedom toward the dependence upon law, which is the axis of the universe, the more wholesome and perfect will be all our human relations.

XI

Self-control

TO most people self-control means the control of appearances and not the control of realities. This is a radical mistake, and must be corrected, if we are to get a clear idea of self-control, and if we are to make a fair start in acquiring it as a permanent habit.

I am what I am by virtue of my own motives of thought and action, by virtue of what my mind is, what my will is, and what I am in the resultant combination of my mind and will; I am not necessarily what I appear from the outside.

If a man is ugly to me, and I want to knock him down, and refrain from doing so simply because it would not appear well, and is not the habit of the people about me, my desire to knock him down is still a part of myself, and I have not controlled myself until I am absolutely free from that interior desire. So long as I am in hatred to another, I am in bondage to my hatred; and if, for the sake of appearances, I do not act or speak from it, I am none the less at its mercy, and it will find an outlet wherever it can do so without debasing me in the eyes of other men more than I am willing to be debased. The control of appearances is merely outward repression, and a very common instance of this may be observed in the effort to control a laugh. If we repress it, it is apt to assert itself in spite of our best efforts; whereas, if we relax our muscles, and let the sensation go through us, we can control our desire to laugh and so get free from it. When we repress a laugh, we are really holding on to it, in our minds, but, when we control it by relaxing the tension that comes from the desire to laugh, it is as if the sensation passed over and away from us.

It is a well-known fact among surgeons that, if a man who is badly frightened, takes ether, no matter how well he controls his outward behavior, no matter how quiet he appears while the ether is being administered, as soon as he loses control of his voluntary muscles, the fear that has been repressed rushes out in the form of excitement. This is a practical illustration of the fact that control of appearances is merely control of the muscles, and that, even so far as our nervous system goes, it is only repression, and self-repression is not self-control.

If I repress the expression of irritability, anger, hatred, or any other form of evil, it is there, in my brain, just the same; and, in one form or another, I am in bondage to it. Sometimes it expresses itself in little meannesses; sometimes it affects my body and makes me ill; often it keeps me from being entirely well. Of one thing we may be sure,–it makes me the instrument of evil, in one way or another. Repressed evil is not going to lie dormant in us forever; it will rise in active ferment, sooner or later. Its ultimate action is just as certain as that a serious impurity of the blood is certain to lead to physical disease, if it is not counteracted.

Knowing this to be true, we can no longer say of certain people “So-and-so has remarkable self-control.” We can only say, “So-and-so represses his feelings remarkably well: what a good actor he is!” The men who have real self-control do exist, and they are the leaven that saves the race. It is good to know that this habitual repression comes, in many cases, from want of knowledge of the fact that self-repression is not self-control.

But the reader may say, “what am I to do, if I feel angry, and want to hit a man in the face; I am not supposed to hit him am I, rather than to repress my feelings?”

No, not at all, but you are supposed to use your will to get in behind the desire to hit him, and, by relaxing in mind and body, and stopping all resistance to his action, to remove that desire in yourself entirely. If once you persistently refuse to resist by dropping the anger of your mind and the tension of your body, you have gained an opportunity of helping your brother, if he is willing to be helped; you have cleared the atmosphere of your own mind entirely, so that you can understand his point of view, and give him the benefit of reasonable consideration; or, at the very least, you have yourself ceased to be ruled by his evils, for you can no longer be roused to personal retaliation. It is interesting and enlightening to recognize the fact that we are in bondage to any man to the extent that we permit ourselves to be roused to anger or resentment by his words or actions.

When a man’s brain is befogged by the fumes of anger and irritability it can work neither clearly nor quietly, and, when that is the case, it is impossible for him to serve himself or his neighbor to his full ability. If another person has the power to rouse my anger or my irritability, and I allow the anger or the irritability to control me, I am, of course, subservient to my own bad state, and at the mercy of the person who has the power to excite those evil states just in so far as such excitement confuses my brain.

Every one has in him certain inherited and personal tendencies which are obstacles to his freedom of mind and body, and his freedom is limited just in so far as he allows those tendencies to control him. If he controls them by external repression, they are then working havoc within him, no matter how thoroughly he may appear to be master of himself. If he acknowledges his mistaken tendencies fully and willingly and then refuses to act, speak, or think from them, he is taking a straight path toward freedom of life and action.

One great difficulty in the way of self-control is that we do not want to get free from our anger. In such cases we can only want to want to, and if we use the strength of will that is given us to drop our resistance in spite of our desire to be angry we shall be working toward our freedom and our real self-control.

There is always a capacity for unselfish will, the will of the better self, behind the personal selfish will, ready and waiting for us to use it, and it grows with use until finally it overrules the personal selfish will with a higher quality of power. It is only false strength that supports the personal will,–a false appearance of strength which might be called wilfulness and which leads ultimately to the destruction of its owner. Any true observer of human nature will recognize the weakness of mere selfish wilfulness in another, and will keep entirely free from its trammels by refusing to meet it in a spirit of resentment or retaliation.

Real self-control, as compared to repression, is delightful in its physical results, when we have any difficult experience to anticipate or to go through. Take, for instance, a surgical operation. If I control myself by yielding, by relaxing the nervous tension which is the result of MY fear, true self-control then becomes possible, and brings a helpful freedom from, reaction after the trouble is over. Or the same principle can be applied if I have to go through a hard trial with a friend and must control myself for his sake,–dropping resistance in my mind and in my body, dropping resistance to his suffering, yielding my will to the necessities of the situation,–this attitude will leave me much more clear to help him, will show him how to help himself, and will relieve him from the reaction that inevitably follows severe nervous strain. The power of use to others is increased immeasurably when we control ourselves interiorly, and do not merely outwardly repress.

It often happens that a drunkard who is supposed to be “cured,” returns to his habit, simply because he has wanted his drink all the time, and has only been taught to repress his appetite; if he had been steadily and carefully taught real self-control, he would have learnt to control and drop his interior desire, and thus keep permanently free. How often we see intemperance which had shown itself in drink simply turned into another channel, another form of selfish indulgence, and yet the victim will complacently boast of his self-control. An extreme illustration of this truth is shown in the case of a well-known lecturer on temperance. He had given up drink, but he ate like a glutton, and his thirst for applause was so extreme as to make him appear almost ridiculous when he did not receive it.

The opportunities for self-control are, of course, innumerable; indeed they constitute pretty much the whole of life. We are living in freedom and use, real living use, in proportion as we are in actual control of our selfish selves, and led by our love of useful service. In proportion as we have through true self-control brought ourselves into daily and hourly obedience to law, are we in the freedom that properly belongs to our lives and their true uses.

When once we have won our freedom from resistance, we must use that freedom in action, and put it directly to use. Sometimes it will result in a small action, sometimes in a great one; but, whatever it is, it must be done. If we drop the resistance, and do not use the freedom gained thereby for active service, we shall simply react into further bondage, from which it will be still more difficult to escape. Having dropped my antagonism to my most bitter enemy, I must do something to serve him, if I can. If I find that it is impossible to serve him, I can at least be of service to someone else; and this action, if carried out in the true spirit of unselfish service, will go far toward the permanent establishment of my freedom.

If a circumstance which is atrociously wrong in itself makes us indignant, the first thing to do is to drop the resistance of our indignation, and then to do whatever may be within our power to prevent the continuance of such wrong. Many people weaken their powers of service by their own indignation, when, if they would cease their excited resistance, they would see clearly how to remedy the wrong that arouses their antagonism. Action, when accompanied by personal resistance, however effective it may seem, does not begin to have the power that can come from action, without such resistance. As, for instance, when we have to train a child with a perverse will, if we quietly assert what is right to the child, and insist upon obedience without the slightest antagonistic feeling to the child’s naughtiness, we accomplish much more toward strengthening the character of the child than if we try to enforce our idea by the use of our personal will, which is filled with resistance toward the child’s obstinacy. In the latter case, it is just pitting our will against the will of the child, which is always destructive, however it may appear that we have succeeded in enforcing the child’s obedience. The same thing holds true in relation to an older person, with the exception that, with him or her, we cannot even attempt to require obedience. In that case we must,–when it is necessary that we should speak at all,–assert the right without antagonism to what we believe to be their wrong, and without the slightest personal resistance to it. If we follow this course, in most cases our friend will come to the right point of view,–sometimes the result seems almost miraculous,–or, as is often the case, we, because we are wholesomely open-minded, will recognize any mistake in our own point of view, and will gladly modify it to agree with that of our friend.

The trouble is that very few of us feel like working to remedy a wrong merely for the sake of the right, and therefore we must have an impetus of personal feeling to carry us on toward the work of reformation. If we could once be strongly started in obedience to the law from love of the law itself, we should find in that impersonal love a clear light and power for effective action both in the larger and in the smaller questions of life.

There is a popular cry against introspection and an insistence that it is necessarily morbid, which works in direct opposition to true self-control. Introspection for its own sake is self-centred and morbid, but we might as well assert that it is right to have dirty hands so long as we wear gloves, and that it is morbid to want to be sure that our hands are clean under our gloves, as to assert that introspection for the sake of our true spiritual freedom is morbid. If I cannot look at my selfish motives, how am I going to get free from them? It is my selfish motives that prevent true self-control. It is my selfish motives that prompt me to the false control of repression, which is counterfeit and for the sake of appearances alone. We must see these motives, recognize and turn away from them, in order to control ourselves interiorly into line with law. We cannot possibly see them unless we look for them. If we look into ourselves for the sake of freedom, for the sake of our greater power for use, for the sake of our true self-control, what can be more wholesome or what can lead us to a more healthy habit of looking out from ourselves into the lives and interests of others? The farther we get established in motives that are truly unselfish, the sooner we shall get out of our own light, and the wider our horizon will be; and the wider our horizon, the greater our power for use.

There must, of course, be a certain period of self-consciousness in the process of finding our true self-control, but it is for the sake of an end which brings us more and more fully into a state of happy, quiet spontaneity. If we are working carefully for true self-control we shall welcome an unexpected searchlight from another mind. If the searchlight brings into prominence a bit of irritation that we did not know was there, so much the better. How could we free ourselves from it without knowing that it was there? But as soon as we discover it we can control and cast it off. A healthy introspection is merely the use of a searchlight which every one who loves the truth has the privilege of using for the sake of his own growth and wilfulness, and circumstances often turn it full upon us, greatly to our advantage, if we do not wince but act upon the knowledge that it brings. It is possible to acquire an introspective habit which is wholesome and true, and brings us every day a better sense of pro. portion and a clearer outlook.

With regard to the true control of the Pleasurable emotions, the same principle applies.

People often grow intensely excited in listening to music,–letting their emotions run rampant and suffering in consequence a painful reaction of fatigue. If they would learn to yield so that the music could pass over their nerves as it passes over the strings of a musical instrument, and then, with the new life and vigor derived from the enjoyment, would turn to some useful work, they would find a great expansion in the enjoyment of the music as well as a new pleasure in their work.

Real self-control is the subjugation of selfishness in whatever form it may exist, and its entire subordination to spiritual and natural law. Real self-control is not self-centred. In so far as we become established in this true self-control, we are upheld by law and guided by the power behind it to the perfect freedom and joy of a useful life.

XII

The Religion of It

THE religion of it is the whole of it. “All religion has relation to life and the life of religion is to do good.” If religion does not teach us to do good in the very best way, in the way that is most truly useful to ourselves and to other people, religion is absolutely useless and had better be ignored altogether. We must beware, however, of identifying the idea of religion with the men and the women who pervert it. If an electrician came to us to light our house, and the lights would not burn, we would not immediately condemn all electric lighting as bosh and nonsense, or as sentimental theory; we should know, of course, that this especial electrician did not understand his business, and would at once look about to find a man who did, and get him to put our lights in order. If no electrician really seemed to know his business, and we wanted our lights very much, the next thing to do would be to look into the laws of electricity ourselves, and find out exactly where the trouble was, and so keep at work until we had made our own lights burn, and always felt able, if at any time they failed to burn, to discover and remedy the difficulty ourselves. There is not a man or woman who does not feel, at some time, the need of an inner light to make the path clear in the circumstances of life, and especially in dealing with others. Many men and women feel that need all the time, and happy are those who are not satisfied until the need is supplied and they are working steadily in daily practical life, guided by a light that they know is higher than theory. When the light is once found, and we know the direction in which we wish to travel, the path is not by any means always clear and smooth, it is often, full of hard, rough Places, and there are sometimes miles to go over where our light seems dim; but if we have proved our direction to be right, and keep steadily and strongly moving forward, we are always sure to come into open resting places where we can be quiet, gather strength, and see the light more clearly for the next stage of the journey.

“It is wonderful,” some one remarked, “how this theory of non-resistance has helped me; life is quite another thing since I have practised it steadily.” The reply was “it is not wonderful when we realize that the Lord meant what He said when He told us not to resist evil.” At this suggestion the speaker looked up with surprise and said: “Why, is that in the New Testament? Where, in what part of it?” She never had thought of the sermon on the Mount as a working plan, or, indeed, of the New Testament as a handbook of life,–practical and powerful in every detail. If we once begin to use it daily and hourly as a working plan of life, it is marvellous how the power and the efficiency of it will grow on us, and we shall no more be able to get along without it than an electrician can get along without a knowledge of the laws of electricity.

Some people have taken the New Testament so literally that they have befogged themselves entirely with regard to its real meaning, and have put it aside as impracticable; others have surrounded it with an emotional idea, as something to theorize and rhapsodize about, and have befogged themselves in that way with regard to its real power. Most people are not clear about it because of the tradition that has come to us through generations who have read it and heard it read in church, and never have thought of living it outside. We can have a great deal of church without any religion, but we cannot have religion without true worship, whether the worship is only in our individual souls, or whether it is also the function of a church to which we belong, with a building dedicated to the worship of the Lord to which we go for prayer and for instruction. If we could clear ourselves from the deadening effects of tradition, from sentimentality, from nice theory, and from every touch of emotional and spurious peace, and take up the New Testament as if we were reading it for the first time, and then if we could use it faithfully as a working plan for a time, simply as an experiment,–it would soon cease to be an experiment, and we should not need to be told by any one that it is a divine revelation; we would be confident of that in our own souls. Indeed that is the only way any one can ever be sure of revelation; it must come to each of us alone, as if it had never come to any one before; and yet the beauty and power of it is such that it has come to myriads before us and will come to myriads after us in just the same way.

But there is no real revelation for any one until he has lived what he sees to be true. I may talk like an angel and assert with a shining face my confident faith in God and in all His laws, but my words will mean nothing whatever, unless I have so lived my faith that it has been absorbed, into my character and so that the truths of my working plan have become my second nature.

Many people have discovered that the Lord meant what He said when He said: “Resist not evil,” and have proved how truly practical is the command, in their efforts to be willing to be ill, to be willing that circumstances should seem to go against them, to be willing that other people should be unjust, angry, or disagreeable. They have seen that in yielding to circumstances or people entirely,–that is, in dropping their own resistances,–they have gained clear, quiet minds, which enables them to see, to understand, and to practise a higher common sense in the affairs of their lives, which leads to their ultimate happiness and freedom. It is now clear to many people that much of the nervous illness of to-day is caused by a prolonged state of resistance to circumstances or to people which has kept the brain in a strained and irritated state so that it can no longer do its work; and that the patient has to lay by for a longer or a shorter period, according to his ability to drop the resistances, and so allay the irritation and let his brain and nervous system rest and heal.

Then with regard to dealing with others, some of us have found out the practical common sense of taking even injustice quietly and without resistance, of looking to our own faults first, and getting quite free from all resentment and resistance to the behavior of others, before we can expect to understand their point of view, or to help them to more reasonable, kindly action if they are in error. Very few of us have recognized and acknowledged that that was what the Lord meant when He said: “Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

It comes with a flash of recognition that is refreshingly helpful when we think we have discovered a practical truth that works, and then see that it is only another way of putting what has been taught for the last two thousand years.

Many of us understand and appreciate the truth that a man’s true character depends upon his real, interior motives. He is only what his motives are, and not, necessarily, what his motives appear to be. We know that, if a man only controls the appearance of anger and hatred, he has no real self-control whatever. He must get free from the anger itself to be free in reality, and to be his own master. We must stop and think, however, to understand that this is just what the Lord meant when He told us to clean the inside of the cup and the platter, and we need to think more to realize the strength of the warning, that we should not be “whitened sepulchres.”

We know that we are really related to those who can and do help us to be more useful men and women, and to those whom we can serve in the most genuine way; we know that we are wholesomely dependent upon all from whom we can learn, and we should be glad to have those freely dependent upon us whom we can truly serve. It is most strengthening when we realize that this is the true meaning of the Lord’s saying, “For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” That the Lord Himself, with all His strength, was willing to be dependent, is shown by the fact that, from the cross, He said to those who had crucified Him, “I thirst.” They had condemned Him, and crucified Him, and yet He was willing to ask them for drink, to show His willingness to be served by them, even though He knew they would respond only with a sponge filled with vinegar.

We know that when we are in a hard place, if we do the duty that is before us, and keep steadily at work as well as we can, that the hard problem will get worked through in some way. We know that this is true, for we have proved it over and over; but how many people realize that it is because the Lord meant what He said when He told us: to “take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself.”

I am reasoning from the proof of the law to the law itself.

There is no end to the illustrations that we might find proving the spiritual common sense of the New Testament and, if by working first in that way, we can get through this fog of tradition, of sentimentality, and of religious emotion, and find the living power of the book itself, then we can get a more and more clear comprehension of the laws it teaches, and will, every day, be proving their practical power in all our dealings with life and with people. Whether we are wrestling with nature in scientific work, whether we are working in the fine arts, in the commercial world, in the professional world, or are dealing with nations, it is always the same,–we find our freedom to work fully realized only when we are obedient to law, and it is a wonderful day for any human being when he intelligently recognizes and finds himself getting into the current of the law of the New Testament. The action of that law he sees is real, and everything outside he recognizes as unreal. In the light of the new truth, we see that many things which we have hitherto regarded as essential, are of minor importance in their relation to life itself.

The old lady who said to her friend, “My dear, it is impossible to exaggerate the unimportance of things,” had learned what it meant to drop everything that interferes, and must have been truly on her way to the concentration which should be the very central power of all life,–obedience to the two great commandments.

Concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward obedience, it means dropping every thing that interferes. If we drop everything that interferes with our obedience to the two great commandments, and the other laws which are given us all through the New Testament to help us obey, we are steadily dropping all selfish resistance, and all tendency to selfish responsibility; and in that steady effort, we are on the only path which can by any possibility lead us directly to freedom.

XIII

About Christmas

THERE was once a family who had a guest staying with them; and when they found out that he was to have a birthday during his visit they were all delighted at the idea of celebrating it. Days before–almost weeks before–they began to prepare for the celebration. They cooked and stored a large quantity of good things to eat, and laid in a stock of good things to be cooked and prepared on the happy day. They planned and arranged the most beautiful decorations. They even thought over and made, or selected, little gifts for one another; and the whole house was in hurry and confusion for weeks before the birthday came. Everything else that was to be done was postponed until after the birthday; and, indeed, many important things were neglected.

Finally the birthday came, the rooms were all decorated, the table set, all the little gifts arranged, and the guests from outside of the house had all arrived. Just after the festivities had begun a little child said to its mother: “Mamma, where is the man whose birthday it is–“

“Hush, hush,” the mother said, “don’t ask questions.”

But the child persisted, until finally the mother said: “Well, I am sure I do not know, my dear, but I will ask.”

She asked her neighbor, and the neighbor looked surprised and a little puzzled.

“Why,” she said, “it is a celebration, we are celebrating his birthday, and he is a guest in the house.”

Then the mother got interested and curious herself.

“But where is the guest? Where is the man whose birthday it is?” And, this time she asked one of the family. He looked startled at first, and then inquired of the rest of the family.

“Where is the guest whose birthday it is?” Alas I nobody knew. There they were, all excited and trying to enjoy themselves by celebrating his birthday, and he,–some of them did not even know who he was! He was left out and forgotten!

When they had wondered for a little while they immediately forgot again, and went on with their celebrations,–all except the little child. He slipped out of the room and made up his mind to find the man whose birthday it was, and, finally, after a hard search, he found him upstairs in the attic,–lonely and sick.

He had been asked to leave the guestroom, which he had occupied, and to move upstairs, so as to be out of the way of the preparations for his birthday. Here he had fallen ill, and no one had had time to think of him, excepting one of the humbler servants and this little child. They had all been so busy preparing for his birthday festival that they had forgotten him entirely.

This is the way it is with most of us at Christmas time.

Whenever we think of a friend, or even an acquaintance, we think of his various qualities,–not always in detail, but as forming a general impression which we associate with his name. If it is a friend whom we love and admire, we love, especially on his birthday, to dwell on all that is good and true in his character; and at such times, though he may be miles away in body, we find ourselves living with him every hour of the day, and feel his presence, and, from that feeling, do our daily tasks with the greater satisfaction and joy.

Every one in this part of the world, of course, knows whose birthday we celebrate on the twenty-fifth of December. If we imagine that such a man never really existed, that he was simply an ideal character, and nothing more,–if we were to take Christmas Day as the festival of a noble myth,–the ideal which it represents is so clear, so true, so absolutely practical in the way it is recorded in the book of his life, that it would be a most helpful joy to reflect upon it, and to try and apply its beautiful lessons on the day which would especially recall it to our minds.

Or, let us suppose that such a man really did exist,–a man whose character was transcendently clear and true, quiet, steady, and strong,–a man who was full of warm and tender love for all,–who was constantly doing good to others without the slightest display or self-assertion,–a man who was simple and humble,–who looked the whole world in the face and did what was right,–even though the whole respectable world of his day disapproved of him, and even though this same world attested in the most emphatic manner that he was doing what was dangerous and wicked,–a man with spiritual sight so keen that it was far above and beyond any mere intellectual power,–a sight compared to which, what is commonly known as intellectual keenness is, indeed, as darkness unto light; a man with a loving consideration for others so true and tender that its life was felt by those who merely touched the hem of his garment. Suppose we knew that such a man really did live in this world, and that the record of his life and teachings constitute the most valuable heritage of our race,–what new life it would give us to think of him, especially on his birthday,–to live over, so far as we were able, his qualities as we knew them; and to gain, as a result, new clearness for our own everyday lives. The better we knew the man, the more clearly we could think of him, and the more full our thoughts would be of living, practical suggestions for daily work.

But now just think what it would mean to us if we really knew that this humble, loving man were the Creator of the universe–the very God–who took upon Himself our human nature with all its hereditary imperfections; and, in that human nature met and conquered every temptation that ever was, or ever could be possible to man; thus–by self-conquest–receiving all the divine qualities into his human nature, and bringing them into this world within reach of the hearts and minds of all men, to give light and warmth to their lives, and to enable them to serve each other;–if we could take this view of the man’s life and work, with what quiet reverence and joy should we celebrate the twenty-fifth of December as a day set apart to celebrate His birth into the world!

If we ourselves loved a truthful, quiet way of living better than any other way, how would we feel to see our friends preparing to celebrate our birthday with strain, anxiety, and confusion? If we valued a loving consideration for others more than anything else in the world, how would it affect us to see our friends preparing for the festival with a forced sense of the conventional necessity for giving?

Who gives himself with his gift feeds three,– Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me.”

That spirit should be in every Christmas gift throughout Christendom. The most thoughtless man or woman would recognize the truth if they could look at it quietly with due regard for the real meaning of the day. But after having heard and assented to the truth, the thoughtless people would, from force of habit, go on with the same rush and strain.

It is comparatively easy to recognize the truth, but it is quite another thing to habitually recognize your own disobedience to it, and compel yourself to shun that disobedience, and so habitually to obey,–and to obey it is our only means of treating the truth with real respect. When you ask a man, about holiday time, how his wife is, not uncommonly he will say:–

“Oh, she is all tired out getting ready for Christmas.”

And how often we hear the boast:–

“I had one hundred Christmas presents to buy, and I am completely worn out with the work of it.”

And these very women who are tired and strained with the Christmas work, “put on an expression” and talk with emotion of the beauty of Christmas, and the joy there is in the “Christmas feeling.”

Just so every one at the birthday party of the absent guest exclaimed with delight at all the pleasures provided, although the essential spirit of the occasion contradicted directly the qualities of the man whose birthday it was supposed to honor.

How often we may hear women in the railway cars talking over their Christmas shopping:–

“I got so and so for James,–that will do for him, don’t you think so?”

And, when her companion answers in the affirmative, she gives a sigh of relief, as if to say, now he is off my mind!

Poor woman, she does not know what it means to give herself with her gift. She is missing one of the essentials of the true joy of Christmas Day. Indeed, if all her gifts are given in that spirit, she is directly contradicting the true spirit of the day. How many of us are unconsciously doing the same thing because of our–habit of regarding Christmas gifts as a matter of conventional obligation.

If we get the spirit of giving because of Him whose birthday it is, we shall love to give, and our hearts will go out with our gifts,–and every gift, whether great or small, will be a thoughtful message of love from one to another. There are now many people, of course, who have this true spirit of Christmas giving, and they are the people who most earnestly wish that they had more. Then there are many more who do not know the spirit of a truly thoughtful gift, but would be glad to know it, if it could once be brought to their attention.

We cannot give in a truly loving spirit if we give in order that we may receive.

We cannot give truly in the spirit of Christmas if we rush and hurry, and feel strained and anxious about our gifts.

We cannot give truly if we give more than we can afford.

People have been known to give nothing, because they could not give something expensive; they have been known to give nothing in order to avoid the trouble of careful and appropriate selection: but to refrain from giving for such reasons is as much against the true spirit of Christmas as is the hurried, excited gift-making of conventionality.

Even now there is joy in the Christmas time, in spite of the rush and hurry and selfishness, and the spirit of those who keep the joy alive by remembering whose birthday it is, serves as leaven all over the world.

First let us remember what Christmas stands for, and then let us try to realize the qualities of the great personality which gave the day its meaning and significance,–let us honor them truly in all our celebrations. If we do this, we shall at the same time be truly honoring the qualities, and respecting the needs of every friend to whom we give, and our gifts, whether great or small, will be full of the spirit of discriminating affection. Let us realize that in order to give truly, we must give soberly and quietly, and let us take an hour or more by ourselves to think over our gifts before we begin to buy or to make them. If we do that the helpful thoughts are sure to come, and new life will come with them.

A wise man has described the difference between heaven and hell by saying that in heaven, every one wants to give all that he has to every one else, and that in hell, every one wants to take away from others all they have. It is the spirit of heaven that belongs to Christmas.

XIV

To Mothers

MOST mothers know that it is better for the baby to put him into his crib and let him go quietly to sleep by himself, than to rock him to sleep or put him to sleep in his mother’s arms.

Most mothers know also the difficulty of getting the baby into the right habit of going to sleep; and the prolonged crying that has to be endured by both mother and baby before the habit is thoroughly established.

Many a mother gets worn out in listening to her crying child, and goes to bed tired and jaded, although she has done nothing but sit still and listen. Many more, after listening and fretting for a while, go and take up the baby, and thus they weaken him as well as their own characters.

A baby who finds out, when he is two months old, that his mother will take him up if he cries, is also apt to discover, if he cries or teases enough, that his mother will let him have his own way for the rest of his life.

The result is that the child rules the mother, rather than the mother the child; and this means sad trouble and disorder for both.

Strong, quiet beginnings are a most valuable help to all good things in life, and if a young mother could begin by learning how to sit quietly and restfully and let her baby cry until he quieted down and went to sleep, she would be laying the foundation for a very happy life with her children.

The first necessity, after having seen that nothing is hurting him and that he really needs nothing, is to be willing that he should cry. A mother can make herself willing by saying over and over to herself, “It is right that he should cry; I want him to cry until he has learned to go to sleep quietly by himself He will be a stronger and a more healthy man for getting into all good habits as a child.”

Often the mother’s spirit is willing, or wants to be willing, but her nerves rebel if, while she is teaching herself to listen quietly, she will take long, quiet breaths very steadily for some time, and will occupy herself with interesting work, she will find it a great help toward dropping nervous resistance.

Children are much more sensitive than most people know, and readily respond to the mother’s state of mind; and even though the mother is in the next room, if she is truly dropping her nervous resistance and tension, the baby will often stop his crying all the sooner, and besides, his mother will feel the good effects of her quiet yielding in her care of the baby all day long. She will be rested instead of tired when the baby has gone to sleep. She will have a more refreshing sleep herself, and she will be able to care for the baby more restfully when they are both awake.

It is a universal rule that the more excited or naughty the children are, the more quiet and clear the mother should be. A mother who realizes this for the first time, and works with herself until she is free from all excited and strained resistance, discovers that it is through her care for her children that she herself has learned how to live. Blessed are the children who have such a mother, and blessed is the mother of those children!

It is resistance–resistance to the naughtiness or disobedience in the child that not only hurts and tires the mother, but interferes with the best growth of the child.

“What!” a mother may say, “should I want my child to be naughty? What a dreadful thing!”

No, we should not want our children to be naughty, but we should be willing that they should be. We should drop resistance to their naughtiness, for that will give us clear, quiet minds to help them out of their troubles.

All vehemence is weak; quiet, clear decision is strong; and the child not only feels the strength of the quiet, decisive action, but he feels the help from his mother’s quiet atmosphere which comes with it. If all parents realized fully that the work they do for their children should be done in themselves first, there would soon be a new and wonderful influence perceptible all about us.

The greatest difficulty often comes from the fact that children have inherited the evil tendencies of their parents, which the parents themselves have not acknowledged and overcome. In these cases, most of all, the work to be done for the child must first be done in the parents.

A very poor woman, who was living in one room with her husband and three children, once expressed her delight at having discovered how to manage her children better: “I see!” she said, “the more I hollers, the more the children hollers; now I am not going to holler any more.”

There is “hollering” of the voice, and there is “hollering” of the spirit, and children echo and suffer from both.

The same thing is true from the time they are born until they are grown up, when it should be right for them to be their own fathers and mothers, so far as their characters are concerned, that they can receive the greatest possible help from their parents through quiet non-resistance to their naughtiness, combined with firm decision in demanding obedience to law,–a decision which will derive its weight and influence from the fact that the parents themselves obey the laws to which they require obedience.

Thus will the soul of the mother be mother to the soul of her child, and the development of mother and child be happily interdependent.

It is, of course, not resisting to be grieved at the child’s naughtiness,–for that grief must come as surely as penitence for our own wrongdoing.

The true dropping of resistance brings with it a sense that the child is only given to us in trust, and an open, loving willingness leaves us free to learn the highest way in which the trust may be fulfilled.

Dynamic Thought

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Dynamic Thought

DYNAMIC THOUGHT

or

THE LAW OF VIBRANT ENERGY

by William Walker Atkinson

A FOREWORD

This is a queer book. It is a marriage of the Ancient Occult Teachings to the latest and most advanced conceptions of Modern Science–an odd union, for the parties thereto are of entirely different temperaments. The marriage might be expected to result disastrously, were it not for the fact that a connecting link has been found that gives them a bond of common interest. No two people may truly love each other, unless they also love something in common–the more they love in common, the greater will be their love for each other. And, let us trust that this will prove true in this marriage of Occultism and Science, celebrated in this book.

The Occultists usually get at the “facts,” first, but they manage to evolve such outrageous theories to explain the facts, that the world will have none of their wares, and turns to Science for something “reasonable.” Science, proceeding along different lines, at first denies these “facts” of the Occultists, not finding them accounted for by any of her existing theories; but, later on, when the “facts” have been finally thrust under her eyes, after repeated attempts and failures, she says, “Oh, yes, of course!” and proceeds to evolve a new theory, welding it with other scientific hypotheses, and after attaching a new label thereto, she proudly exhibits the thing as “the latest discovery of Modern Science”–and smiles indulgently, or indignantly, when the theory of the old Occultists is mentioned, saying, “Quite a different thing, we assure you!” And yet, in all justice, be it said, Science usually proceeds to find much better “proofs” to fit the “facts” of Occultism, than did the Occultists themselves. The Occultist “sees things,” but is a poor hand at “proofs”–while the Scientist is great on “proofs,” but so often, and so long, fails to see many things patent to the Occultist who is able to “look within” himself, but who is then unable to positively and scientifically “prove” the facts. This is easily explained–the Occultist’s information comes from “within,” while the Scientist’s comes from without–and “proofs” belong to the “without” side of Mentation. And this is why the Occultists so often make such a bungle regarding “proofs” and the Scientist fails to see “facts” that are staring the Occultist in the face.

The whole history of Occultism and Science proves the above. Take the phenomenon called “Mesmerism” for instance–it was an old story with the Occultists, who had been for years aware of it, theoretically and practically. Mesmer brought it into general prominence, and Science laughed at it and at Mesmer’s “fluid” theory, and called him a charlatan and imposter. Years afterwards, Braid, an English surgeon, discovered that some of the facts of “Mesmerism” were true, and he announced his discovery in a scientific manner, and lo! his views were accepted, and the thing was called “Hypnotism,” poor old Mesmer being forgotten, because of his theory. Then, after a number of years, certain other aspects of the phenomenon were discovered, and scientifically relabelled “Suggestion,” and the re-naming was supposed to “explain” the entire subject, the learned ones now saying, “Pooh, ’tis nothing but ‘Suggestion,'” as if _that_ explained the matter. But so far, they have only accepted certain phases of this form of Dynamic Thought–for that is what it is, and there are many other phases of which they do not dream.

And the same is true of the Occult Teaching that there is “Life in Everything–the Universe is Alive.” For years, this idea was hooted at, and we had learned scientific discourses upon “dead Matter,” “inert substance,” etc. But, only within the past decade–yes, within the last five years, has Science discovered that there was Life in Everything, and that even in the Atom of mineral and chemical substance, there was to be found evidence of Mind. And Science is beginning to plume itself on its “recent discovery,” and to account for it by a new theory, which is “quite a different thing, we assure you,” from the old Occult Theory.

And the same will prove true in the case of the Occult Teaching of an Universal Mind, or Cosmic Mind. Science and Philosophy have long laughed at this, but even now their foremost investigators have come to the borders of a new country, and are gasping in amazement at what they see beyond its borders–they are now talking about “Life and Mind in the Ether”–and before long they will discard their paradoxical, absurd, hypothetical Ether, and say, “We are bathed in an Ocean of Mind”–only they will insist that this “Ocean of Mind” is, somehow, a “secretion of Matter”–something oozing out from the pores of Matter, perhaps.

But Science is doing valuable work in the direction of investigation and experiment, and in this way is _proving the principal occult teachings_ in a way impossible to the Occultists themselves.

So, you see that both Occultism and Science have their own work to do–and neither can do the work of the other. Just now Science is coquetting with the question of “Thought Transmission,” etc., at which she has for so long sneered and laughed. By and by she will accept the facts, and then proceed to prove them by a series of careful and conclusive experiments, and will then announce the result, solemnly, as “a triumph of Science.”

And so, in this book you will find a marriage of the old Occult Teachings and Modern Scientific Researches and Investigation. And the two are bound together with that bond forged by the writer of the book–heated in the oven of his mind, and hammered into shape with his “untrained” thought–a crude, clumsy thing, but it serves its purpose–a thing called “_The Theory of Dynamic Thought_.”

And so, this is what this Theory is–a “_tie that binds_.” How you will like it depends upon yourself. For himself, the writer does not hesitate to say that he is pleased with his handiwork, rude, and clumsy though it may be. He believes that he has made a thing that will stand wear and tear, and that though it be not beautifully finished, it “will serve,” and “be useful.” And that is the main thing, after all. And, then, perhaps, some may see beauty in the very crudeness of the thing–may see that it bears the loving mark of the hammer that beat it into shape–may recognize that over it has passed the caress of the hand that made it–and in that seeing there may come the recognition of a beauty that is beyond “prettiness.”

CHAPTER I

“IN THE BEGINNING”

This book will deal with Life. It holds that Life is Universal–that it is inherent in, and manifests (in different degrees) in every part, particle, phase, aspect, condition, place, or relationship, in the World of Things that we call the Universe.

It holds that Life manifests in two aspects or forms, which are generally found by us in connection and co-operation with each other, but which are both, probably, an expression of some One Thing higher than either. These two aspects or forms, which together go to make up or produce that which we know as “Life,” are known as (1) Substance or Matter; and (2) Mind. In this book the term “Substance” is used in preference to “Matter,” owing to the fact that the term “Matter” has become closely identified with certain ideas of the Materialistic school of thought, and has generally been regarded by the public in the light of “dead matter,” whereas this book holds that all Substance is Alive. The term “Mind” is used in the sense of “Mind, _as we know it_,” rather than as “Mind, _as it is_”–or, as “The Cosmic Mind.” In some places the term “Mind-principle” is used to convey the idea of “a portion of the Great Principle of Mind, of which that which we call ‘Mind’ is but a small and but partially expressed portion.” These terms are explained and illustrated as we proceed. The aspect of “Energy or Force” is not treated as a separate aspect or form of Life, in this book, for the reason that it is regarded as merely a manifestation of Mind, as will appear as we proceed. We have much to say regarding Motion, but the writer has tried to explain and prove that, at the last, all Motion results from Mental Action, and that all Force and Energy is Vital-Mental Force and Energy.

This book is not intended to run along metaphysical or theological lines–its field is different. And so, while it recognizes the importance of these branches of human thought, still, it finds that its own particular field is sufficient to engross its entire attention, for the moment, and, consequently the aforesaid subjects shall not be touched upon except incidentally, in connection with the subject matter of the book.

This being the case, there will be no discussion of the “origin of Life”–the question of “creation”–the problems of theology and metaphysics–the riddle of the “Why and Wherefore” of Life and the Universe. The writer has his own opinions upon these questions, but feels that this is not the place in which to air the same. For the purposes of the book, he prefers to leave every reader to his own favorite views and conceptions regarding these great subjects, feeling that the views regarding Life, Mind, Motion and Substance, that are advanced in this book, may be accepted by any intelligent reader, without prejudice to his, or her, accepted religious or philosophical views.

The writer sees that this something called “Life” exists–he finds it in evidence everywhere. And he sees it always in its aspects of Substance and Mind. And he feels justified in regarding “Life” as always existing in, and manifesting in these aspects–always in conjunction–at least, Life “as we know it.”

And he finds certain apparent Laws of Life in operation in the Universe to which all Life, in all of its aspects, is apparently amenable. And he feels justified in considering these Laws constant, and invariable, and unchangeable so long as the Universe, as it now is, exists.

And with the above views in mind, this book will proceed to a consideration of its subject, without attempting to peer behind the veil separating the Universe from its Causer–Life from its Source.

But in justice to reader, subject and writer, the latter has thought it well to state that he _does_ recognize, not only the veil, but That-which-is-behind-the-Veil. To proceed without this statement would be unfair and misleading. The writer wishes to be understood positively upon this point, even though the declaration may bring forth the derisive jeer of those who feel that they “have outgrown” this conception; or else the calm, superior, pitying smile of those who feel that the Universe is its own Cause and Effect. By “Universe,” the writer means “The whole body of Things” (Webster). His declaration means that he believes in “That-which-is-above-Things.”

The writer prefers not to attempt to “define” THAT which he calls “The Infinite.” The word “Infinite” means “without limit in time, space, power, capacity, knowledge or excellence” (Webster). And to “define” is to “limit”; “mark the limits of”; “mark the end of,” etc. The term “define,” as applied to “The Infinite,” is ridiculous–an absurd paradox. The writer echoes Spinoza’s statement: “To define God is to deny Him.” And so there shall be no attempt at definition or limitation.

But the human mind, in considering the subject, is bound by its own laws to think of “The Infinite” as Real, and actually being and existent, if it thinks of It at all. And if it thinks of It as “Infinite,” it _must_, by its own laws, think of It as Causeless; Eternal; Absolute; Everywhere-present; All-Powerful; All-Wise. The human mind is _compelled_ to so consider The Infinite, if it thinks of It at all. But even in so thinking of It as “being” these things, it is doing something like “defining” or “limiting” It, for The Infinite must not only “be” those things, but it must “be” so much more, that “those things” are but as a grain of dust on the desert as compared to the real “Being” of The Infinite. For the “things” mentioned are but “finite” or “defined” things–things possessed by the Finite Things–and, at the best can be but symbols of the attributes or qualities of The Infinite; even the words “attributes” or “qualities” being an absurdity as applied to The Infinite. This view, also, _must_ be reported by the human reason, if it thinks about the matter at all.

The final report of the human reason regarding this matter is that it is insoluble and unthinkable to that reason, in its final analysis. This because the human reason is compelled to use terms, concepts, etc., derived from its experience with finite things, and therefore has no tools, measurements, or other appliances with which to “think” of The Infinite. All that it can do is to report that it finds that it has limits itself, and that it finds beyond those limits That which it cannot define, but which it is justified in considering as Infinite, and superior to all finite conceptions, such as Time, Space, Causation and Thought. (The idea of Thought being finite, equally with Time, Space and Causation, is not common, by the writer is compelled to place it in that category, because it is clearly under the laws of Time, Space, and Cause and Effect, and must be considered as “finite.” The “knowledge” possessed by The Infinite must be something far transcending that which we know as the result of “mental operations,” or “thinking.”)

Certain fundamental truths seem to have been impressed upon the human intellect, and the reason is compelled to report in accordance therewith. But an analysis of these fundamental truths is futile, and the attempt only leads one into wild speculations. The only advantage that comes from the attempt is the strengthening of mental muscle of those who are able to stand the strain of the exercise; and the fact that by such attempt we are made aware that we do not know, and cannot know, by reasons of the nature of the Intellect, and are thus prevented from harboring absurd and childish theories about the Unknowable. To know that we do _not_ know, and _cannot_ know, is the next best thing to actually knowing.

The writer does not wish to be understood, that the limits of the human reason are unalterably fixed. On the contrary, he believes that additional fundamental portions of Truth are super-imposed upon the mind of the race from time to time. And he believes, yes, _knows_, that there are regions of the mind that give reports higher than those conveyed through the Intellect. And he believes that there are phases of knowledge in store for Man that will raise him as much higher than his present position, as that present position is superior to that of the earthworm. And he believes that there are Beings in existence to-day, on planes of Life as yet undreamed of by the average man, who far transcend Man in power, wisdom and nature. He believes that Man is merely just entering into his kingdom, and does not realize the grandeur of that which is his Divine Inheritance.

It will be as well to mention here that the classification of Mind with the aspects of Life, in conjunction with Substance, and Motion, does not mean that the Ego or Man is a material thing. The writer believes that the Ego is a transcendent Being, partaking in some wonderful way of the essence of The Infinite–that it is a Soul–Immortal. He believes that as Paul says, “We are all children of God, but what we shall be does not as yet appear.” These matters shall not be discussed in this book, but the writer wishes to make himself clear, in order to prevent misunderstanding. Again, in this respect, he must “fly in the face of Materialism.”

But, although the writer expresses his belief in the existence of The Infinite, and bases his philosophy upon that basis, he does not wish to insist upon the identification of his conception with that of any other particular conception of the Source of Life. Nor does he insist upon names, or terms, in connection with the conception. He has used the term, “The Infinite,” because it seems to be broader than any other of which he could think, but he uses it merely as a name for the Un-Nameable. So, if the reader prefers, he, or she, may use the terms: “God”; “Deity”; “First Cause”; “Principle”; “Unknowable”; “Infinite and Eternal Energy”; “The Thing-in-Itself”; “The Absolute”; or any of the other countless terms used by Man in his attempt to name the Un-Nameable–to describe the Un-Describable–to define the Un-Definable.

And all may retain their ideas, or lack of ideas, regarding the relation of The Infinite to their own particular religious views, or lack of views. The philosophy of this book need not disturb a man’s religious belief–nor does it insist upon the man holding any special religious belief. Those are matters entirely for the exercise of the man’s own reason and conscience. And they may retain their own pet philosophy regarding the origin, purposes or plan of the production and existence of the Universe–this book shall not meddle with their metaphysics or philosophy. What is herein offered may be assimilated with the fundamental ideas of nearly every form of religious or philosophical belief, it being in the nature of an Addition rather than a Subtraction, or Division. Its philosophy is Constructive rather than Destructive.

CHAPTER II

THINGS AS THEY ARE

In our last chapter we considered the Source-of-All-Things, which we called The Infinite. In this chapter we shall consider the All-Things itself, which men call The Universe. Note that the word Universe is derived from the Latin word “Unus,” meaning “One,” and “_Versor_,” meaning “to turn,” the combined word meaning, literally, “One that turns, or moves.” The Latin words indicate a close meaning, namely, One thing in motion, turning its several aspects, and assuming many changes of appearance.

The writer does not intend touching upon theories of the origin of the Universe, nor of its purpose, or of any design in its production or management, nor of its possible or probable end. These questions do not belong to our subject, and then again, as was said in the last chapter, speculation regarding it is devoid of results, and leads one to quicksands and bogs of mental reasoning, from which it is difficult to extract oneself. The answer to the Riddle of the Universe rests with The Infinite.

But it is different with the case of the manifested Universe that is evidenced by our senses. Science is a different thing from metaphysics, and its process and mode of work are along different lines. And, much knowledge of Things may be obtained from a consideration of it–remembering always, that its knowledge is confined to Things, and not to That-which-is-back-of-Things. And, so let us consider the Universe of Things.

Material Science has held that the Universe is composed of two principles, (1) Matter; (2) Energy or Force. Some hold that these two principles really are aspects of the same thing, and that there is really but one Principle, one aspect of which is shape, form, etc., and called Matter; the other a quality manifesting in Motion, which quality is called Force. Others, the most radical, hold that there is nothing but Matter, and that Force and Energy is but a “quality,” or “power,” inherent in Matter. Others hold that Force is the “real thing” and Matter but a form of Force. All branches hold to the idea that Matter and Energy are always found together, and can not be thought of separately. Matter and Force are held to be Eternal, and Infinite, it following that there can be no addition to, or subtraction from either; all apparent loss and gain, creation and destruction being but change of form or mode. God is declared unnecessary, and the Universe is held to operate according to certain Laws of Matter or Force (either or both) which are unchangeable and immutable–eternal and always valid. Mind and Thought are held to be products of properties of Matter or Force (one or both), secreted, evolved, or produced in the Brain. The Soul is relegated to the waste heap, and discarded as useless in the new philosophy. _Moleschott_ said, “Thought is a motion of Matter”; and _Holbach_, that “Matter enjoys the power of thinking.” “Natural Laws” are held to be sufficient for the explanation of all phenomena, although ignoring the fact that the reason has never before formed the conception of a “law,” without thinking it necessary to think of a “law-maker,” or a power to enforce and administer the law. However, the philosophers hold that it is no more difficult to think of such a law than to try to form an idea of Space or Eternity, both of which are unthinkable to the human reason, but both of which are admitted as self-evident facts.

But notwithstanding this somewhat crude and “raw” reasoning, Material Science has accomplished a wonderful work in the world, and has brought to light facts of inestimable value to Man in mastering the material world, and in forming correct ideas of the solution of material difficulties. The facts of Material Science enables the world to cheerfully overlook its theories. And even the theories are rapidly undergoing a change, and, as we have stated, some of the most advanced scientists are rapidly reaching the position of the Occultists and mystics, bringing with them a mass of facts to back them up, to exhibit to the Occultists who dealt with principles rather than with details, or material facts, so far as fundamental theories were concerned. Each is boring his way through the mountain tunnel of the Unknown, and both will meet in the centre, their lines meeting each other without a variation. But the Occultists will call the tunnel-centre Mind, and the scientists will call it Matter, but both will be speaking of the same thing. And the Causer of the mountain will probably know that they both are right.

But, we are speaking of the new school of advanced Material Science now–not of the old conservative “All is Matter” people, who have been left behind. The new school speaks of Substance now, instead of Matter, and ascribes to “Substance” the properties of Matter, Energy, and something that they call Sensation, by which they mean Mind in a crude form, and from which they say Mind and “Soul” evolved.

This new school of Scientists are very different from their predecessors–they are less “hide-bound,” and far from being so “cock-sure.” They are seeing Matter melting into Energy, and giving signs of Sensation, and they are beginning to feel that, after all, there must be a Thing-in-Itself, that is the real basis of, or “real thing” in Substance. There is heard very little among them about “dead matter”; “blind force”; or of the “mechanical theory” of Life and the Universe. Instead of it being a big machine, operated under mechanical laws, with Life as the steam, the Universe is beginning to be regarded as somehow filled with Life, and Science is finding new examples of Life in unexpected quarters, and the “dead matter” area is being narrowed.

Men who have followed the advances made by recent Science are holding their breaths in awe and earnest expectation–and those who are pushing the inquiries and investigations to the furthest extent are showing by their eager faces and trembling hands that they feel that they are very close to the border line separating the old Materialism from a New Science that will give Thought and Philosophy a new impetus and a new platform. Such men are feeling that they are seeing the old Matter melting away into something else–the old theories are falling apart under the light of new discoveries–and these men feel that they are penetrating a new and hitherto unexplored region of the Unknown. May success be theirs, for they are now on the right road to Truth.

In the following chapters we shall see frequent references to “Science”–and when we use the word we shall know it means this new school of Scientists, rather than the older school that is now being superceded. There is no conflict between True Occultism and True Science, notwithstanding their directly opposite theories and ideals–they are merely looking at the Truth from different viewpoints–at different sides of the same shield. A better day is coming, when they shall work together, instead of in opposition. There should be no partisanship in the search for Truth.

Things have worked this way: Occultism would enunciate a theory or principle–but would not attempt to prove it by material facts, for it had not gathered the facts, having found the principle _within_ the mind, rather than without. Then, after laughing at the occult theory or principle, Science would search diligently for material facts to prove an opposite theory, and in so doing would unearth new facts that would support the Occultists contention. Then Science would discard its old theory (that is, the younger men would–the old ones, never) and proceed to proclaim a new theory or principle, under a new name, and backed up with a mass of facts and experiments that would create a new school with many enthusiastic followers. The old claim of the Occultists would then be forgotten or else go unrecognized under its old name; or disguised by the fantastic and _bizarre_ coverings which some so-called Occultists had draped around the original Truth.

But, so long as Truth is being uncovered, what matters it who does the work, or by what name he calls his school. The movement is ever forward, and upward–what matter the banner under which the armies move?

In this book the writer will advance a very different theory of the Universe of All-Things from that of Modern Science, although he feels that his theory may easily be reconciled with the most advanced views of that school.

In the first place, as he has stated in the first chapter, he does not hold that the Universe, as we know it, is self-sufficient, but he recognizes a Something back of all phenomena and appearances, which Something he calls “The Infinite.”

And he differs very materially from the views of those who claim that Mind is but a property, or quality, or something proceeding from Matter or Force, or Matter-Force, or Force-Matter–according to the views of the respective schools. He takes an entirely different and opposite position.

He holds that all that we call Matter (or Substance) and Mind (_as we know it_) are but aspects of something infinitely higher, and which may be called the “Cosmic Mind.” He holds that _what we call_ “Mind” is but a partial manifestation of the Cosmic Mind. And that Substance or Matter is but a cruder or grosser form of that which we call Mind, and which has been manifested in order to give Mind a Body through which to operate. But this view he merely states in passing, for he makes no attempt to demonstrate or prove the same, his idea being that it forms a different part of the general subject than the phase of “Dynamic Thought,” to the consideration of which this book is devoted.

He also differs very materially from the Materialistic school in his conception of Force or Energy. Instead of regarding Force as a distinct principle, and as something of which Mind is but a form, he walks boldly out into the arena of Scientific Thought, and throwing down his gauntlet, proclaims his theory that “There is no such thing as Force apart from Life and Mind”–“All Force and Energy is the product of Life and Mind–all Force, Energy and Motion result from Vital-Mental Action–all Force, Energy and Motion is Vital-Mental Force, Energy and Motion.”–“The Mind abiding in and permeating all Substance, not only has the power to Think, but also the power to Act, and to manifest Force and Energy, which are its inherent and essential properties.”

He also takes the position that Mind is in and about and around Everything. And that “Everything is Alive and Thinking.” And that there is no such things as “Dead-Matter,” or “Blind-Force,” but that all Substance, even to the tiniest Particle, is permeated with Life and Mind, and that all Force and Motion is caused and manifested by Mind.

He holds that all forms of Force, Energy and Motion, from the Attraction of the Particles of Matter, and their movements in response thereto, up to the Attraction of Gravitation, and the response of the Worlds, and Suns, and Stars, and Planets, thereto–are forms of Mental Energy and Force, and Action. And that from the tiniest atom, or particle, to the greatest Sun–all obey this Great Action of Mind–this Great Force of Mind–this Great Energy of Mind–this Great Power of Mind.

And upon this rock–this rock of Truth, he believes it to be–he takes his stand, and announces his belief, and bids all-comers take notice of what he believes to be a germ-thought that will grow, develop, and increase so that it will eventually permeate all Scientific Thought as the years roll along. He calls this theory “The Theory of Dynamic Thought.”

CHAPTER III

THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE AND MIND

The writer has deemed it advisable to preface his consideration of “Mind” in itself, as well as of Substance and Motion, with two chapters, the purpose of which will be to demonstrate that Mind, in some form or degree, is to be found in connection with all Things–and that Everything has Life–and that Mind is an accompaniment of all Life. To many the term “Mind” means only the “thinking quality” of man, or perhaps of the lower animals; and “Life” the property only of such organic creatures. For that reason it has been deemed advisable to point out that Life and Mind are found even in the lowest forms of substance–even in the inorganic world.

In this chapter and from now on, the writer shall use the term “_the_ Mind,” etc., to indicate the particular mental principle of the creature or thing–the bit of Mind that is segregated from the rest, and which each person thinks of as “mine,” just as he thinks of “my” body, as distinguished from the universal supply of Substance. The term “Mind” will be used in its Universal sense.

And, the writer intends to use Elmer Gates’ term, “_Mentation_,” in the sense of “effort; action; or effect; in or of, the Mind”–in short, “mental process.” The word is useful and when one has learned to use it, he will prefer it to the more complicated terms. Remember, then, please–“Mentation” means “Mental Process.” Mentation includes that which we call “Thought,” as well as some more elementary forms of mental process that we are not in the habit of dignifying by the term, Thought, which latter we usually reserve for mental process of a higher order.

So, then, “Mind” is the something of which one’s particular Mind is composed; “The Mind” is that something possessed by one, by and through which he “thinks”; “Mentation” is mental process; and “Thought” is a advanced kind of Mentation. At least, the said words will be so employed in this book, from now on.

In this chapter, you are asked to consider the fact that Life is Universal–that Everything is Alive. And, that Mind and Mentation is an attribute of Life, and that, consequently, Everything has Mind, and is able to express a degree of Mentation.

Forms of Life, as we know them, are always seen as possessing two aspects, _viz._, (1) Body (Substance); and (2) Mentation (Mind). The two aspects are always found in combination. There may be living creatures who occupy bodies of so fine a form of Substance as to be invisible to the human senses–but their bodies would be “Substance” just as much as is the “body” of the granite rock. And, in order to “think,” these beings would need to have a material something corresponding to the brain, though it be finer in quality than the rarest gas, vapor, of electric wave. No body, without Mentation; no Mentation without a body. This last is the invariable law of the world of Things. And naught but The Infinite–That-which-is-above-Things–can be exempt from that law.

In order to grasp the idea of the Universality of Mind, let us go back to the elementary forms of Things, and, step by step, see how Mentation manifests itself in every point on the scale from mineral to man–using bodies ranging from the hardest rock to that finest form of known Substance–the Brain of Man. As Mind advances in the scale of evolution it creates its own working instrument–the body (including the brain) and shapes, and moulds it to admit of the fullest possible expression of Mentation possible at that stage. Mind is the moulder–body (and brain) that which is moulded. And Inclination, Desire, and Will, are the motive powers leading to gradual Unfoldment, the impelling cause being the craving for Satisfaction.

We shall make our journey backward–and ignoring Beings higher in the scale, we shall start with Man. Leaving out of the consideration, for the moment, the fact of the existence of the “Ego,” or “Spirit” of Man, which is higher than Body or Mind–and considering “the Mind of Man,” rather than the Man himself–we have our starting point on the downward journey of investigation. We need not devote much attention to the consideration of the Mind of Man, at this stage, although we shall have much to do with it, later on.

But we may undertake a brief consideration of the descending degrees of Mentation as manifested by Man, as we pass down the scale in the human family, considering in turn, the Newtons, Shakespeares, Emersons, Edisons, and their brothers in intellect, in the field of mathematics, literature, music, art, invention, science, statesmanship, business, skilled workmanship, etc., respectively. From these high levels we pass down, gradually, through the strata of men of but a slightly lower degree of intellect–down through the strata of the “average man”–down through the strata of the ignorant man–down through the strata of the lowest type of our own race and time–down through the strata of the barbarian, then on to the savage, then on to the Digger Indian, the Bushman. What a difference from highest to lowest–a being from another world would doubt that they were all of the same family.

Then we pass rapidly through the various strata of the lower animal kingdom–from the comparatively high degree of Mentation of the horse, the dog, the elephant, etc., down through the descending scale of the mammals, the degree of Mentation becoming less marked at each step of the journey. Then on through the bird kingdom. Then through the world of reptiles. Then through the family of fishes. Then through the millions of forms of insect life, including those wonderful creatures, the ant and the bee. Then on through the shell-fish family. Then on through the community of sponges, polyps, and other low forms of life. Then on to the vast empire of the microscopic creatures, whose name is legion. Then on to the plant life, the highest of which have “sensitive cells” that resemble brains and nerves–descending by stages to the lower plant life. Then still lower to the world of bacteria, microbes, and infusoria–the groups of cells with a common life–the monera–the single cell. The mind that has followed us in this descent of life, from the highest form to the cell-like “thing” merely “existing” in the slime at the bottom of the ocean, has acquired a sense of awe and sublimity not dreamed of by “the man on the street.”

The degrees of Mentation in the lower animal kingdom are well known to all of us, therefore, we need not devote much time to their consideration at this time. Although the degree of Mentation in some of the lowly forms of animal life, are scarcely above that of the plant life (in fact, are inferior to that of the highest plants), still we have accustomed ourselves to the use of the word “Mind” in connection with even the lowest animals, while we hesitate to apply the word to the plants.

It is true that some of us do not like to think of the lower animals “reasoning,” so we use the word “Instinct” to denote the degree of Mentation of the lower animal. The writer does not object to the word; in fact, he shall use it for the sake of distinguishing between the several mental states. But, remember, “Instinct” is but a term used to denote a lesser form of “Reason”–and the “Instinct” of the horse or dog is a fine thing when we consider the “Reason” of the Bushman or Digger Indian. However, we shall not quarrel about words. Both “Reason” and “Instinct” mean degrees or forms of “Mentation,” the word we are using. The lower forms of animal life exhibit Mentation along the lines of sex-action; feeling and taste. Then by degrees come smell, hearing and sight. And then something very like “reasoning” in the case of the dog, elephant, horse, etc. Mentation everywhere in the animal kingdom, in some degree. No doubt about Life and Mentation, there.

But what about Mentation and Life in the plant life? All of you admit that there is “Life” there–but about Mentation, well, let us see! Some of you draw the line at the word “Mind” in connection with plants, although you freely admit the existence of “Life” there. Well, remember our axiom–“no Life without Mentation.” Let us try to apply it.

A moment’s reflection will give you instances of Mentation among the plants. Science has called it “Appetency,” rather than admit “Mind,” the word “Appetency” being defined as “an instinctive tendency on the part of low forms of organic life to perform certain acts necessary for their well-being–such as to select and absorb such particles of matter as serve to support and nourish them.” Well, that looks like a degree of Mentation, doesn’t it? Many young animals evidence little or nothing more than “Appetency” in suckling. We shall adopt the word “Appetency” to designate the Mentation in plant-life. Remember this, please.

Anyone who has raised trees or plants has noticed the instinctive efforts of the plant to reach the water and sunlight. Potatoes in dark cellars have been known to send forth shoots twenty feet in length in order to reach an opening in the wall. Plants have been known to bend over during the night and dip their leaves in a pot of water several inches away. The tendrils of climbing plants seek for the stake or support, and find it, too, although it has been changed daily. The tendril will retwine itself, after it has been untwisted and bent in another direction. The tips of the roots of the tree are said to show a sensitiveness almost akin to that of the limb of an animal, and evidently possess something akin to nerve matter.

Duhamel placed some beans in a cylinder of moist earth. When they began to sprout, he turned the cylinder around quarter way of its circumference; then a little more the next day; and so on, a little each day, until the cylinder had described a complete revolution–had been turned completely around. Then the beans were taken from the earth, and lo! the roots and sprouts formed a complete spiral. With every turn of the cylinder the roots and sprouts had changed their position and direction–the roots striving to grow “downward,” and the sprouts striving to grow “upward”–until the spiral had formed. Akin to this is the boy’s trick of uprooting a sprouting seed, and replanting it upside down, in which case the sprouts begin to turn a semicircle until it is able to grow straight up to the surface of the earth, while the roots describe a semicircle until they can grow downward once more.

And so on, story after story of “Appetency” or Mentation in plants might be told, until we reach the insect-catching species, when even the most conservative observer is forced to admit that: “Well, it does _almost_ seem like thinking, doesn’t it?” Any lover of plants, flowers or trees, and who has been able to study them at first hand, does not need much argument to prove that plant-life exhibits traces of Mentation, some of it pretty far advanced, too. Some lovers of plants go so far as to claim that one must “love” plants before they will succeed in growing them, and that the plants feel and respond to the feeling. But the writer does not insist upon this, but merely mentions it in passing.

Before leaving the subject of Mentation in plants, the writer is tempted to steal a little more space and tell you that plants do more than receive sensations of light and moisture. They exhibit rudimentary taste as well. Haeckel relates an interesting story of an insect-catching plant. He states that while it will bend its leaves when any solid body (excepting a raindrop) touches its surface, still it will secrete its acrid digestive fluid only when that object happens to be nitrogenous (meat or cheese). The plant is able to distinguish its meat diet (its food being insectivorous), and while it will supply its gastric juice for meat and cheese, as well as for the insect, it will not do so for other solids to which it is indifferent. He also mentions the fact that roots of trees and plants are able to taste the different qualities of soil, and will avoid poor soil and plunge into the richer parts of the earth. The sexual organism and life of plants also affords a great field for study to the student hunting for evidences of “life” and “Mentation” in that kingdom.

The motion or circulation of the sap in trees and plants was formerly considered to be due to capillary attraction and purely “mechanical laws,” but recent scientific experiments have shown it to be a vital action–an evidence of life and Mentation–the experiments having proven that if the cell-substance of the plant was poisoned or paralyzed, the circulation of sap immediately ceased, although the “mechanical principles” had not been interfered with in the least.

And now on to the mineral kingdom. “What,” you may cry, “Mind and Mentation in the mineral and chemical world–surely not?” Yes, even in these low planes may be found traces of mental action. There is Life everywhere–even there. And where there is Life there is Mind. Away back among the chemical principles, and the minerals we may go in our search for Life and Mind–they cannot escape us–even there!

CHAPTER IV

LIFE AND MIND AMONG THE ATOMS

To the majority of persons the title of this chapter would seem an absurdity. Not to speak of Inorganic “Mind,” the idea of “Life” in the Inorganic World would seem a ridiculous paradox to the “man on the street” who thinks of Substance as “dead,” lifeless and inert. And, to tell the truth, even Science has held this view until a comparatively recent period, laughing to scorn the old Occult Teaching that the Universe is Alive, and capable of Thinking. But the recent discoveries of modern Science has changed all this, and we no longer hear Science speaking of “dead Matter” or “blind Force”–it recognizes that these terms are meaningless, and that the dreams of the old Occultists are coming true. Science confronts a live and thinking Universe. She is dazzled by the sight, and would shade her eyes, fearing to see that which she feels must present itself to her vision when her eyes become accustomed to the sight.

But a few daring minds among the scientific investigators are dreaming wonderful dreams to-day, and they tell us in broken tones of the wonderful visions that are passing before their sight. They dare not tell it all, for they fear the ridicule of their fellows. Their visions are of Life–Universal Life. In its investigations of the Material, Science has penetrated so far into the recesses of Things that its most advanced thinkers and investigators now find themselves standing in the presence of the Immaterial.

Science to-day is proclaiming the new doctrine–that is the same as the “old” doctrine of the Occultists–the doctrine of “Life Everywhere”–Life even in the hardest rock!

Before entering into our consideration of the evidence of Mentation in the Inorganic world, let us accustom ourselves to the idea of “something like Life” being found there. It will be better for us to approach the subject by easy stages. Where there is Life there must be Mind–so let us first look for evidences of Life.

The “man on the street” would require something more tangible than scientific explanations of “sensation,” “attraction,” etc. What can we offer him as an illustration? Let us see!

Suppose we call the attention of “the man” to the fact that metals get tired after considerable work without periods of rest. Science calls this the “fatigue of elasticity.” When the metals are given rest, they recuperate and regain their former elasticity and health. “The man” may remember that his razor acts this way occasionally–and if he talks the matter over with his barber, his suspicions will be verified.

Then, if he consults a musician friend, he will be informed that tuning-forks also become tired, and lose their vibrating quality, until they are given a rest. Then his machinist friend will tell him that machinery in factories must be given a rest, occasionally, else it will begin to disintegrate and “die.” Machinery will go on a strike for a rest, if it is overworked.

Then metals contract disease. Science informs us that zinc and tin have been infected, and the infection has spread from sheet to sheet crumbling the metal into powder–the spread of the infection resembling the spread of a plague among animals or plant-life. Science has experimented with copper and iron, and has found that these metals may be poisoned with chemicals, and will remain in a weakened condition until antidotes are administered. Window-glass workers declare that there is such a thing as “glass-disease,” that will ruin fine stained glass windows unless the infected panes are removed. The “glass-disease” starts with one pane, and spreads gradually to the entire window, and from there to other windows.

Metallurgists have found that when metallic ores are put under certain forms of pressure, they seem to lose strength, and become weak until the pressure is removed.

Do these things mean anything to the “Man of the Street?”

Another step in the consideration of Life in the Inorganic world, is the realization of the fact that, after all, there is but the very finest line separating the higher forms of Mineral “life,” from the lower forms of vegetable life, or the life of those “Things” which we may call either plants or animals. The “Life-line” is being pushed further back every day, by scientific investigation, and the “living” thing of today was the “inanimate” thing of yesterday. We hear much talk in the newspapers about some scientist, or another, “discovering life,” or “creating life,” in some “inanimate substance.” Bless your hearts, you who are alarmed by these reports–no one can “create” life in anything, for it already exists there. The “discovery” is simply the realization of this fact.

Science, by means of the microscope, has brought to light forms of “living things,” resembling in appearance the fine dust of inorganic minerals. These low forms of life exhibit but the simplest vital processes, the same very closely resembling chemical processes, although just a shade higher in the scale. Living creatures have been found which could be dried and laid aside like dust for several years, and then revived by being immersed in water, when they would resume their vital process as if they had been awakened from a sleep. Forms of life, called “Baccilli” have been discovered that can pass through degrees of heat and cold that can be expressed only by vague symbols or figures, the heat and cold being so intense that the unscientific mind cannot imagine it.

In appearance the “Diatoms” resemble the chemical crystals. These “Diatoms” are minute one-celled living “Things,” having a hard but thin siliceous covering or shell, of extreme delicacy. They are what are known as “microscopic” creatures–that is, visible only through the microscope. Some of them are so small that it would take a thousand or more to cover the head of a pin. But, remember this–the microscope reveals them as “living creatures” performing vital functions. They are found in the deep waters of the ocean. To the naked eye they appear like fine sand or “dirt,” but under the most powerful microscope, they are seen to comprise many species and varieties, exhibiting many peculiar shapes and forms–in fact, they have been called “living geometrical forms,” their shapes and appearances almost exactly resembling those of the chemical and mineral crystals.

Science informs us that these and similar microscopic creatures, number thousands of families or species,–and it is thought that the varieties of microscopic creatures outnumber the varieties of creatures visible to the unaided sight. And, remember, that there is probably a still greater world of “sub-microscopic” creatures, that is a world invisible even when the most powerful microscope is used. Who knows what wonders are to be found there–what forms of creatures live, and move and have their being there.

In passing by the subject of the resemblance between the outward forms of living things and the crystals, it is interesting to note how the crystals of frost and ice resemble the forms of leaves, branches, flowers, foliage, etc.–the pane of glass covered with these frosty forms, resembles a garden. The disk of saltpeter, under the effect of polarized light, very closely resembles the form of the orchid.

Recent scientific experiments have shown that certain metallic salts, when subjected to a galvanic current, group themselves around one of the poles of the battery, and assume a mushroom-like shape and appearance. At first, they seem to be transparent, but gradually they assume color, the top becoming a bright red, with the under-side showing a pale rose color, the stem being of a pale straw color. The discoverers of these peculiar forms, called them by the German equivalent for “inorganic mushrooms,” but even this term seems scarcely worthy of them, for they even show a trace of something like organs. Under the microscope they are seen to have fine canals or vein-like channels running through their stems, from top to base. And through these “veins” the “thing” absorbed fresh material and actually “grew” like low forms of fungus-life. Were these things merely minerals or chemical-substances, or were they low forms of organic life? The lines between the Inorganic and the Organic are being wiped out rapidly. The Supreme Power that _caused_ Life to Be, caused it to All, and did not divide Its manifestations into Dead-Things and Live-Things, but breathed into all the Breath of Life. And the more clearly we see the actual evidence of this, the greater does that Supreme Power seem to us.

A very low form of living creatures called the Monera, is held by Science to be the one of the strands of the connecting link between the organic and inorganic worlds. The Monera are the lowest and simplest form (at least so far known) of organic life. They may be said to be “organic” creatures _without organs_–being but little more than simple cells–tiny globules of plasm, surrounded by a thin membrane–their sole vital function being the absorption of nourishment through the pores of their covering (just as a piece of chalk would absorb water) and the consequent conversion of the nourishment into material for growth, the whole process resembling chemical action. The Monera reproduce their kind simply by cleavage or separation of the substance of the mother cell into two, and so on, being little more than the “growth” of crystals. The Monera are everywhere recognized, without question, as “living creatures,” but they exhibit merely a trace more of life than do certain forms of crystals.

The difficulty in considering crystals as “living things” is partially due to the outward form and substance, so different from the form and substance of the higher “living things.” But we have seen that the Diatoms took on shapes of crystals, and that the outer shell or covering was similar to silicia, a mineral, the inner substance being but a tiny speck of plasm, similar to that of the substance of a plant cell. And then we may look to the tiny bit of chalk dust which was once the skeleton-form of a living creature. The same is true of coral. In the very low forms of life, the skeleton, or form, is the thing most apparent, the plasm of “living substance” being still smaller, and less apparent. And yet, the skeleton, or shell, was formed by the vital processes of the creature, and was a part of its “body,” just as is the skeleton or bony structure of the higher animals. And, in the same sense it is “living substance.” And, remember, that there is but little difference between these “bodies” of the low forms of life, and the bodies of crystals. And the chemical constituents of its plasmic inner body is but slightly different from that of the crystals. And its nature and vital process are by a shade higher in the scale than those of the crystals.

You may ask why we have said so much of Crystals. The reason is just this–Science has begun to think of Crystals as semi-living things, and its most advanced investigators and thinkers go further and assert that “the Crystals are alive–Crystallization is an evidence of life process.”

Crystals arrange themselves in well-known and well-defined shapes, direction and order of formation being observed implicitly. Each crystal follows the laws and habits of its kind, just as do plants and animals. Its lines of crystallization are mathematically perfect, and according to the laws of its being. Not only this, but some substances have a range of six or seven different forms of crystal-forms possible to them. In some cases a chemical element assumes one form of crystallization when it manifests as one mineral, and a second form when it manifests in another form–in each case however, it manifests along well-known and recognized courses of action, movement, and shapes.

Crystals may be “killed” by a strong electrical discharge–that is, they are so affected that they disintegrate, their atoms separating to form new combinations, just as is the case with the “bodies” of higher forms of life. Some scientists have gone so far as to claim that they had discovered something akin to rudimentary sex-action in certain crystals, resembling the sex-process of the lowest plant-life. But this has not, as yet, been positively established, although it seems probable and reasonable. A recent writer in one of the magazines has said, “Crystallization, as we are to learn now, is not a mere mechanical grouping of dead atoms. It is a birth.” This may seem mere “scientific poetry” until the process of crystallization is carefully studied, when it will be seen to give evidence, not only of something like vital and mental action, but also something very much like reproductive functioning of the lower forms of “life.”

There is an “assimilation” of material to build up the crystal in the first place, just as an animal assimilates matter to build up its shell–or a tree to form its bark. The “form” of the crystal is truly its “body,” and behind and _in that body there is “something at work” that is not the body, but which is forming it_. And, later on, that crystal increases in size, and then begins to separate into two, throwing off a smaller crystal, identical in form with the parent crystal. This manner of reproduction is almost identical with the process of reproduction in the lower forms of “life,” which consist merely of a like separation of the parent form into two, and the throwing off of the offspring.

The principal difference between the growth of crystals and of the Monera, is that the Crystals grow by absorbing fresh matter and attaching it to their outer surface, while the Monera grow by absorbing fresh material and growing outwardly, from within. But this may be accounted for by the difference in the density of their bodies, the Crystal being very solid, while the Monera is like a thin jelly. If the Crystal had a soft interior, it could grow like the Monera or Diatom, _but then it would be a Diatom_.

The process of crystallization is accountable only by the theory that in the crystal there exists something like life and Mentation. There is something more than mere “mechanical motion,” or blind chance at work here. Does not the process of crystallization look like rudimentary purposive action? It may be said that it is movement and action in accordance with some established “Law of Nature”–granted, but is not that also true of the physical processes and growth of higher forms of life? Is the forming of the Crystal-form to be considered as a “mechanical effect,” and the forming of the “shell” of the Monera to be considered a “mental and vital action?” If so, wherefore?

The point is that Crystals act as if they are “alive,” and capable of assimilation, growth, and reproduction, in a manner and degree differing but very slightly from corresponding functioning of the lower forms of “life.” Verily the Crystals are “alive”–and if alive they must have at least a trace of “Mind.” Does it not appear that they exhibit something very like both? Quoting from a recent writer, let us notice that: “Recent investigations in the new department of science, which has been termed ‘plasmology,’ show in crystals phenomena which are absolutely analogous to vital phenomena–so much so that photographs of certain forms produced in the changes of crystals appear to be almost exact duplicates of those in the various lower forms of microbes. The question has been raised as to whether the microbe is no more alive than the crystal, or the latter equally endowed with life as is the former.”

And now another step, in our search for Life. Remember, that the hardest rocks are composed of crystals of certain kinds. And, if the higher crystals have Life, then it is only fair to suppose that the lower and cruder forms are likewise endowed, even if in a still lower degree. And if all crystals are endowed with Life, then the most solid rocks, being composed of aggregations of crystals must be masses of Inorganic Life–and consequently, of Inorganic Mind. A Crystal, according to Webster, is “the regular form, bounded by plane surfaces, which a substance tends to assume in solidifying, through the inherent powers of cohesive attraction.”

That definition of Webster tells the whole story, and we see that a “Crystal” is merely a “regular form” of a “Substance,” which the substance “tends to assume in solidifying”–that is in re-assuming a solid form after being in a liquid or melted state, and that is just what all the rocks of the earth did when they emerged from the melted state in which they existed in the early days of the world’s history. And this “tendency” that caused them to solidify, and assume certain crystal forms, and which must have existed potentially through the melted state–what of that, what is this “tendency” or force. The definition answers: “_the inherent powers of cohesive attraction_.”

So, here is “Cohesive Attraction,” that we shall consider fully in forthcoming chapters of this book. “Inherent,” too, the definition says. What is “Inherent?” Let us see, Webster defines “Inherent” as “permanently existing.” So this power of Cohesive Attraction “permanently existed” in the Substance or else in connection with it. Let us take another look at Cohesive Attraction.

Cohesive Attraction is that form of Universal Attraction that causes the Molecules of a body to draw together–that “invisible power of” the Molecule, by which it draws another Molecule toward itself, and itself toward the other, the manifestation of which power by several Molecules tends to draw each of them together. (We shall learn of these particles of Substance called Molecules before long.) It is a primal cause of Motion, this mutual Attraction, and drawing-power. Now is it reasonable to suppose that this wonderful “power” is a mere blind-force? Is it not more reasonable to think of it as a form of vital-action–life-action? “Dead” things could not manifest this force and action.

And if this Cohesive Attraction is an evidence of Life, then all substance must have Life manifesting through it. Not only the rocks, but the soil and earth and dirt, for they are but crumbled rock.

And, when we thus consider Substance, as being the “body” through which Life is Manifesting, we must not lose sight of the Molecules and Atoms, in our consideration of the Mass. A bit of rock; crystal; or dirt; is but an aggregation of countless Molecules, grouped together in certain crystallized shapes and forms, each having characteristics of its own. These Molecules cling together, in accordance with their mutual Attractive powers.

And each of these Molecules is composed of a number of Atoms, which cling together in accordance with Chemical Affinity, or Chemism–but which is but another name for Attraction, or Cohesion–and which form a little family, called a Molecule. And these Atoms are composed of Corpuscles. We will waive the consideration of the Corpuscle, for the moment, but even if we consider it, we only carry the subject back a step farther. What we wish to say, could be said even if there were ten further divisions of Substance–or a million, for that matter.

The point we wish you to consider now, is that we must separate the Mass into its constituents–its Molecules, Atoms, and even Corpuscles–in our search for the Life in the Mineral and Chemical World. If there is Life in the Mass, there must be life in the Molecule, Atom, or Corpuscle. Now, do we find it there? Certainly, for the tiniest Atom manifests its Attractive Power, and not only does it draw other atoms to itself by virtue thereof, but it even goes a step further, and shows a “preference”–a degree of “liking” in its mutual relations with other atoms.

We shall see, in future chapters, that there is “desire,” “love,” “marriage,” and “divorce” among the chemical Atoms. We shall consider the flirtations, and love-affairs of certain Atoms. We shall see how an Atom will leave another, and fly to a new charmer. We shall have many evidences of _the Atom’s power to receive sensations, and to respond to the same_. Nothing “dead” about this, is there? The Atom is “very much alive.” The Attraction; Affinity; and Motions, of the Atom, give a certain evidence of something “very much like Life,” as we see it in higher forms. In the Atom exists all the Life that causes crystallization. And in the Atom lies that which causes Force and Motion to manifest. Verily, the Atom lives and moves and has its being.

And, so our journey is ended–we have traced Life to its last stages of manifestations–and we have found it there, and at each step of the journey. But, stop, we have not completed our journey–we have but begun it. “Why,” some of us may cry, “how can we go back of the Atom, or Electron?” The answer is “INTO THE ETHER”!

Yes, back of the Atom and the Corpuscle, is said by Science to lie that wonderful, paradoxical Something they call The Universal Ether–that Something that Science has considered the Womb of Matter and Force–Something that is different from Anything ever known or dreamed of by Man,–that Something which Science has labored so diligently to build up, and which it has used as an “explanation” for so much phenomena, but regarding which, of very recent date, there has begun to grow a distrust and a suspicion, owing to the discovery of Radiant Matter, and things that followed in its train. But, notwithstanding these shadowy suspicions, Science still asserts in belief in the constancy and integrity of The Ether, and it behooves us to investigate that wonderful region in which it dwells, in order to see whether Life and Mind are also to be found there. We think that, in the words of the street, we shall find that they are “very much there.”

And, so in later chapters of this book, we shall consider the Etherial Region very fully. But before doing so, we had better give Substance and Motion, in all their forms, a careful consideration, for a correct understanding of them is vitally necessary for an intelligent conception of the ideas underlying the philosophy to be herein set forth.

* * * * *

Now, pray do not leave this chapter with the belief that the writer has said that the Particles of Inorganic Substance are endowed with Conscious reasoning powers. Nothing of the kind has been said–nothing of the kind is meant. The Life and Mind evidenced in the Particles are but the faintest glimmerings. There is no sign of “consciousness” or “reasoning”–the Mind exhibited is less than that of the plant, yes, less than even that of the cell of the plant. The Life is evidenced by power to move, and the Mind is evidenced by the ability to receive impressions and to respond to the same by evidencing Force and movement.

There is no evidence of “consciousness” or “understanding” in these mental processes. Consciousness is not an essential attribute of Life or Mind-action. In fact, but a small part of even the Mentation of Man is performed in the field of consciousness. Nearly all of his bodily functions are beneath the field of consciousness–one does not consciously regulate the beating of his heart; the circulation of his blood; the digestion and assimilation of his food; the tearing-down and building-up work of the cells; the work of the organs, etc., etc. Yes, these processes are all mental processes, and far from mere “mechanical movements,” or chemical processes, as some imagine. Let the spark of Life leave the body, and the processes stop, although all the chemicals are still there, and the “mechanical movements” might go on unhindered.

The Particles of Substance have enough Life and Mind to enable them to move, receive and respond to impressions, and to exert force in accordance with the Law of Attraction–but there it stops. The Crystals show signs of something like taking nourishment, but the real taking of food may be said to commence with the Monera. Not until very high degrees of Life and Mind are attained, do “creatures” begin to exhibit Consciousness, and that which is called “Understanding” is still higher in the scale, and not until Man is reached does the faculty of turning the mental searchlight _inward_ manifest itself. These matters are mentioned here merely to prevent misunderstanding and misapprehension.

But still, do not forget–the Particles of Substance receive impressions and respond thereto–they _act_ and exert Force and Energy–they manifest Life and Mentation.

CHAPTER V

THE STORY OF SUBSTANCE

As we stated in a former chapter, there are two Aspects of All-Things, _viz._, (1) Substance; (2) Mind. In this and the following two chapters we shall consider the first one, Substance, which Science calls “Matter.”

Perhaps it would be as well to begin by asking ourselves the question: “What is Substance?” The answer seems to be: “Anything that takes up room; the Body aspect of Things; matter occupying space, etc.” Some writers have spoken of Substance as “something tangible–that can be felt,” but this definition will not do, for there are forms of Substance too fine to be felt. And so, perhaps the definition “The Body of Things,” is as good a definition as any, taken in connection with the thought that it “takes up room.”

Science divides Substance (which it calls “Matter”) into four general classes, _viz._: (1) _Solid Matter_, which is Substance, the parts of which closely adhere and resist impression, such as stone, wood, flesh, etc., the degrees of solidity varying greatly, and sometimes shading into the next class, which is called:

(2) _Liquid Matter_, which may be described as Substance, the parts of which have a free motion among themselves, and easily yield to impression, such as water, molasses, etc., the degree of fluidity ranging from some liquids that flow very slowly, such as hot pitch, up to others that flow very freely, such as water, wine, etc., the property of fluidity being also shared by the next higher class, which is called:

(3) _Aeriform Matter_, which is Substance in the form of “elastic fluid,” such as air, gas, vapor, etc.; and

(4) _Radiant Matter_, which is of recent recognition, and which is an ultra-gaseous form of Substance, utterly unlike anything ever before known, consisting of the tiniest particles of “corpuscles” of Substance finer and more subtle than the rarest form of atomic substance known to Science.

The three classes are well represented by (1) Earth (solid); (2) Water (liquid); (3) Air (aeriform); (4) The Corpuscles or Electrons, or particles of electrified substance, first noticed in connection with the X Rays, Radium, etc.

But it must be remembered that these four classes of Substance are not fixed or permanent–on the contrary they are changeable either under pressure, when subjected to heat, or under the influence of electricity, etc. In fact the word “condition” is more applicable than the term “class.” The condition or class of a particle of Substance may be changed into another class or condition by the application of the agencies above named. The same substance may exist in two or three classes, under different circumstances. Solids may be changed into liquids, and liquids into gases, and _vice versa_. Metals may be melted, then changed into gas, according to the degree of heat applied. Liquids may be changed into vapor by the application of heat, or into solids by the withdrawal of heat.

For an example we may turn to Water, which is a solid in the condition of ice; a liquid in the condition of water; and steam in the condition of vapor. Quicksilver is a metal which is in a liquid condition in our ordinary temperature, but which becomes a solid when subjected to a very low degree of temperature, and may be transformed into a gas, under a high degree of heat. Air is a vapor in our ordinary temperature, but has been transformed into “liquid air” under tremendous pressure, which produced a very low degree of temperature, and, theoretically, it may be transformed into a solid under a sufficiently low degree of temperature, although so far, Science has not been able to produce a degree of cold sufficient to “freeze” the liquid air. It is all a matter of “freeze,” “melt,” and “evaporate,” in all forms of Substance–and any substance, at least theoretically, is capable of being subjected to any of the three conditions just named, and being manifested in the respective conditions, of Solid, Liquid, and Aeriform.

This may actually be accomplished with the majority of substances at this time, although in some instances we are not able to produce a sufficiently high temperature to “melt and evaporate” certain solid substances, on the one hand, or a sufficiently low degree of temperature to “liquify” or “freeze solid” certain vapors. But the intense heat of the centre of the earth is able to melt rocks, and show them as liquid lava flowing from volcanoes, and Science teaches that the solid Substance of the Earth, and other planets, suns, etc., existed in the shape of a vapor at one time, and would again take on that condition in case of a collision with another great body, which convert motion into intense heat that would first melt, and then vaporize every solid particle of which the earth is composed.

If the sun’s heat were completely to die out, the cold would be so intense that the air around the earth, and all the gases and vapors, would be frozen to solids. In physics the term “gas” is generally applied to a substance that is aeriform in our ordinary temperature, but which may be liquefied in a low temperature; the term “vapor” being generally applied to the aeriform condition of substances that are solid or liquid in our ordinary temperatures, but which may be “evaporated” by heat, and thus transformed into an aeriform condition, resuming their original form upon cooling. These terms, however, are technical, and practically there is no difference between a gas and a vapor.

In the above statements regarding the possibility of the transformation of each of the several forms of Substance, into other forms, the reference has been applied only to the three better known forms, _i.e._, Solid, Liquid and Aeriform. The fourth form or state of Substance, known as Radiant Matter, is of too recent discovery to admit of its properties being accurately observed. The best and latest opinion of Science, however, is that it constitutes what may be called “Primal Matter”–that is substance from which all other forms, states, kinds and varieties of Substance arise–the “stuff” from which they are manufactured. Science seems to be discarding the Ether theory of the Origin of Matter, in favor of this “Primal Matter.”

Physical Science divides Substance into Masses, Molecules, and Atoms–that is, the old Physical Science did, but the later investigators now see that even the Atom may be sub-divided. But the old terms may as well be used, at least for the time being. Let us consider these divisions.

_A “Mass”_ is a quantity of Substance considered as a whole–but which is composed of a collection or combination of parts (molecules.) A lump of coal; a piece of iron; a portion of meat, even a drop of water, is a Mass. The only requisite for a Mass, is that it contains two or more parts or molecules. Therefore a Mass is a collection or combination of two or more molecules, considered as a whole.

_A “Molecule”_ is the _physical_ unit of Substance, or, in other words, the smallest part of any kind of Substance that can exist by itself and still remain that particular “kind” of substance. (But not the smallest chemical part–the latter is called an Atom, and Atoms combine to form a Molecule.) The Molecule exists as a unit, and cannot be split or separated by physical means, although it may be separated into Atoms by chemical means. In order that we may form a clear idea of the Molecule, let us take a very small Mass of Matter–a drop of water, for instance. This drop of water is a Mass composed of a great number of molecules. It may be divided, and sub-divided, into smaller and still smaller parts. This division may be carried on until it reaches a point where our sight and instruments are unable to make a further sub-division.

But, theoretically, the work may be carried on still further, until at last a limit is reached where we are unable to divide the water into any smaller parts, without separating its chemical constituents from each other, in which latter case there would be no water at all, its chemical constituents (or Atoms) having separated and now appearing as two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of Oxygen, separated and apart and no longer forming a molecule of water.

Well, this smallest possible part of water (or any other form of Substance) is a Molecule. Remember the Molecule is the smallest part of that kind of Substance that can be produced by division and sub-division, without destroying the “kind” of the Substance. It is the smallest part of any kind of Substance that can exist by itself, and maintain its “kind.”

In order that you may grasp the minuteness of the Molecule, we may mention that Science claims that no molecule, even the largest, is of sufficient magnitude to be seen under even the strongest microscope. It has been calculated that if a drop of water as large as a pea were magnified to the size of the Earth, the molecules would then appear no larger than the original drop. The space between the molecules is believed to be considerably larger than the molecules themselves.

The figures that are necessary to use in connection with molecular Substance are likely to stagger the imagination. Besides speaking of the molecules of inorganic Substance, it may be interesting to note that a spider’s thread is so fine that a piece of it large enough to circle the earth would weigh only half a pound. And yet each thread is composed of six thousand filaments. And each of these minute filaments may be divided into tiny bits, and each bit will still be a Mass of Substance containing thousands of molecules and their constituent chemical atoms. There are living, microscopic creatures, so small that five millions of them might be crowded into a space the size of a pin head. And yet each of them have organs. And in these organs fluids circulate. Try to figure out the size of the molecules of the fluids circulating in these tiny organs, not to speak of the chemical atoms.

When you handle a coin, an infinitesimal portion of it is worn off–can you figure the size of the molecules composing that part? When a rose throws off its perfume, it emanates tiny particles of itself–can you measure or weigh the molecules composing that odor? The human mind is compelled to realize its finiteness when it considers these things–but we have only just begun to consider the smallness of Things.

_An “Atom”_ is the _chemical_ unit of Substance–that is, the smallest chemical part that can enter into combination. It has been considered indivisible–that is, incapable of further sub-division. That is, it has been so considered, until very recently, but the latest discoveries have exploded this idea, and have shown the Atom is composed of certain other Things, as we shall see a little later on. Still we may use the Atom as a very good unit of measurement, for it still represents the unit of _chemical_ Substance, just as the molecule is the unit of _physical_ Substance. In order that you may understand the difference between Molecules and Atoms–physical units, and chemical units, let us give you a few examples.

Take a molecule of water–the _physical_ unit, you remember. When it is chemically separated or analyzed, it is found to contain two atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen–both chemical units, remember–which when united and combined, form water, but which when separated are simple atoms of certain chemical gases. The proportion in water is always the same, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen–this is the only partnership that will form water. The molecule of table salt contains one atom of sodium and one of chlorine. The molecule of air contains five chemical gases, of which nitrogen and oxygen are the principal ones, the proportion being about three parts of nitrogen to one of oxygen. Some molecules are far more complex, for instance the molecule of sugar is composed of _forty-five_ chemical atoms, and sulphuric acid of seven. An atom is estimated at one-250,000,000th of an inch in diameter.

But this is not all. The old theory of the finality, and ultimateness of the Atom has been shattered by the recent discoveries of Science. The atom of Hydrogen was formerly considered to be the refinement of Substance–the Ultimate Atom–the smallest and finest Atom possible or known–the last thing that could be imagined about Substance. Some even went so far as to declare that the Atom of Hydrogen was the Ultimate Element, that is the Element out of which all other atoms were made–the mother of Atoms–the Origin of Substance. It was supposed that all other Atoms of Matter were composed of a varying number of hydrogen Atoms, which themselves were “vortex-rings in the Ether”–and that analysis could go no further. Science rested on its oars, and pronounced the work of a century completed.

But alas! no sooner was this position reached, than the discovery of Radiant Matter and the formulation of the “Corpuscle Theory” brought down the whole theoretical structure, and Science was compelled to take up the hunt again, and to probe further into the inner recesses of Things for the Ultimate Thing. But, nevertheless, Atoms still exist, although their finality is no longer urged. The facts remain, although the theory has fallen.

Let us see about this latest theory–the Corpuscle or Electron Theory. The discovery of Radiant Matter, and the investigation of the late discovery of Radium, has led to the further discovery that each Atom, instead of being a “thing-in-itself” is a little mass containing numerous other “Things” called “Corpuscles” (or “Electrons,” because electrified). The theory is this, briefly: That each Atom is a minute mass of Substance containing a number of “electrified particles,” which are known as Electrons, in constant motion and vibration, revolving around each other, as do the planets, suns, and moons of the Universe–in fact each chemical Atom is like unto a Universe in itself. The simplest Atom–that which was supposed to be the “Ultimate Atom”–the Atom of Hydrogen–is supposed to contain within its tiny self no less than 1,000 minute Corpuscles, which because electrified are called “Electron,” revolving in fixed and regular orbits within the containing globe of the Atom. The more complex forms of Atoms are supposed to contain a far greater number of Electrons, the authorities estimating those in an Atom of Oxygen at 10,000; those in an Atom of Gold, 100,000; and those in an Atom of Radium, 150,000. These figures are of course mere “scientific guesses” but when compared with the similar “guess” regarding the size of the Atom, they give a startling illustration of the size of the newly discovered Corpuscle or Electron.

Another authority, for an illustration, asks us to consider a great globe about 100 feet in diameter–that is, of course, 100 feet through its centre. Let the globe represent the Atom. Then imagine 1,000 minute “specks,” each the size of a pin-point, composed of Substance, and each containing, as in a capsule, an atom of electricity. Each “speck” is revolving around each other in a regular orbit, in that great “100 feet through” globe, and keeping well away from one another. That will give you an idea of the relative size of the Electrons and Atoms, and the room that the former have to move about in–good many feet between each, you will notice. Lots of room, and plenty to spare. Try to figure out the size of an Electron.

Many readers of the magazines have been confused as to the relation between the Corpuscles and the Electrons (or Ions, as some have called the latter.) The matter is very simple. They are both the same. The Corpuscle is the tiny particle of Matter, which because it is electrified and has thus become the “unit of electricity,” is called an “Electron.” From the viewpoint of Substance we call the tiny particle a “Corpuscle”–from the viewpoint of Electricity, we call it an “Electron.”

These Electrons are the tiny particles that pour forth from the pole in the Crookes’ Tube, and constitute what are known as “X Rays,” “Cathode Rays,” “Becquerel Rays,” etc. They also are the particles that are thrown off and emitted by Radium, and similar substances. They exist in the Atom, as explained, but also are found “free” and independent, and in the last condition or state are thrown off in the aforesaid “Rays,” and by Radium, etc. So far the Corpuscles are known only as charged with Electricity, and the Electron only as a tiny charge of Electricity with which the Corpuscle is charged. But Science dreams of Corpuscles of Substance other than Electrons, in which case the old Occult teachings of “light dust” and “heat dust,” etc., will be verified.

The Electron contains a powerful charge of Electricity, as much in fact as an Atom, 1,000 to 150,000 times its size will carry. But Science is wondering how these highly charged particles manage to hold together in the Atom, so rigidly coherent as to appear indestructible. We think that we may get a hint at the matter a little later on in this book.

Science, or at least _some_ scientists, are wondering whether the “whirl” or vibration of the Corpuscle might not produce that which we call “Electricity,” and whether, when this motion is intensified, waves of Electricity will not be emitted. The writer fully agrees with this idea, and finds that it fits closely his own theories regarding Substance and Motion. But the reader is cautioned against falling into the error of many recent popular writers on the subject, some of whom have used terms calculated to convey the idea that the Corpuscle (Electron) is Electricity _itself_, rather than tiny particles of Substance called Corpuscles, charged with the unitary charge of Electricity, and therefore called “Electrons.” But for that matter, Electricity is only known to us as associated with some form of Substance, and not as “a thing-in-itself.” We shall see the reason for this as we proceed with this book. These Corpuscles are destined to play a most important part in the theories of Science from now on. They already have overturned several very carefully and laboriously erected theoretical structures–and many more will follow, among the many important ones evidently doomed to the dust-heap being the “vortex-ring” atomic theory, and other theories built upon the Etheric origin of Matter, and other theories concerning the Ether, even to the extent of breaking down the theory of The Ether itself, which theory had almost come to be considered a Law.

We shall further consider the Corpuscles, and their qualities, characteristics, etc., in the next chapter, for they have an important bearing upon the theories advanced in the course of the study of this book.

CHAPTER VI

SUBSTANCE AND BEYOND

Science has ascribed to Substance certain characteristic qualities which it calls “Properties.” It divides these properties into two classes, _viz._: (1) Molecular Properties (sometimes called Physical Properties); and (2) Atomic Properties (sometimes called Chemical Properties).

_Molecular Properties_ are those which may be manifested by Substance without disturbing the Molecules, and consequently without affecting the “kind” of Substance.

_Atomic Properties_ are those which concern the Atoms when free from Molecular combination, and which consequently cannot be manifested without changing the “kind” of Substance.

Science, before long, is likely to add a third class of Properties, namely, “_Corpuscular Properties_,” relating to the Corpuscles or particles of Radiant Matter, but, so far, it has not had the opportunity to sufficiently observe these qualities, except in a general way.

There are certain General Properties that seem possessed by both Mass, Molecules, and Atoms–and probably by Corpuscles.

These _General Properties_ are as follows:

_Shape_: That property whereby Substance “takes up room.” This property manifests in three directions, called Dimensions of Space, namely, Length, Breadth, and Thickness.

_Weight_: That property whereby Substance responds to Gravity. Weight is simply the measure of the attraction.

_Impenetrability_: That property whereby two bodies of Substance are prevented from occupying the same space at the same time. A nail driven into a piece of wood, simply pushes aside the molecules, and occupies the Space between them. Substance is never actually “invaded” or its actual territory occupied by other Substance.

_Indestructibility_: That property whereby Substance is prevented from being destroyed or annihilated. Although the forms of Substance may be changed, or transformed into other forms, still, Substance _in itself_ is not destroyed, and cannot be under the existing Laws of the Universe.

_Mobility_: That property whereby Substance responds to imparted Motion. We shall notice this property in our consideration of Motion. In addition to the Motion of the Mass, and the movements of Molecules and Atoms in response to its Attraction, there is another form of Motion constantly going on, without reference to the Attraction or impressed Motion of the Mass. The Molecules of all bodies are always in a state of rapid Motion, called Vibration. In solids this vibration is short, being restrained by the close cohesive position of the Molecules. But in Liquids, the Molecules being further separated, the vibration is far more rapid, and they move around and slide over each other with comparatively little resistance. In gases and vapors the Molecules have a splendid field for Motion, and consequently vibrate in wide fields and orbits, and dash around with the greatest velocity. The Atoms also are believed to vibrate rapidly, in accordance with their own laws of vibration. And the Corpuscles are believed to far excel the last two mentioned particles in intensity, rapidity and complexity of their vibrations, as we shall see a little later on in the book. All Substance is in constant Motion and Vibration. There is no Rest in Substance.

_Inertia_: That property whereby Substance may not move unless in response to imparted Motion; nor terminate its Motion, when it is once imparted, except in response to some other manifestation of impressed Force. Science holds that this “impressed Force” or “imparted Motion” must come from without, but the writer holds that Force may also be “expressed” from “within,” as may be seen by reference to subsequent chapters of this book.

_Attraction_: That property whereby particles or bodies of Substance (1) draw other particles or bodies toward themselves; or (2) move toward other particles or bodies; or (3) are mutually drawn together. This property manifests in four forms, generally referred to as separate and distinct from each other, but which the writer believes to be but forms of the same Attractive Power, and which he believes to be a Mental Process, at the last analysis (a revolutionary claim, which will be supported by argument in later chapters of the book). These three forms of Attraction are known as (1) Gravitation; (2) Cohesion; (3) Adhesion; and (4) Chemical Affinity, or Chemism. We are invited to consider them briefly, at this point, further investigation being reserved for our chapters on Motion, and Dynamic Thought.

_Gravitation_: This term is usually applied to the attraction between Masses of Substance, such as the Sun, the Earth, and Masses of Substance on or about the Earth’s surface. However, Newton, who discovered the facts of Gravitation, states the Law, as: “_Every particle of matter in the Universe, attracts every other particle_,” _etc._

_Cohesion_: This term is used to indicate the attraction between Molecules, by which they are combined into Masses or Bodies. Cohesion causes the Molecules to unite and cling together, thus forming the Mass.

_Adhesion_: This term is used to indicate the attraction between Masses which causes them to “stick together” without a cohesion of their Molecules. Adhesion operates through the adjacent surfaces of the two Masses. It may be considered as a “lesser” form of cohesion.

_Chemical Affinity_ (sometimes called Chemism or Atomic Attraction): This term is used to indicate the attraction between the atoms, by which they combine, unite and cling together, forming the Molecule.

Science has before it the task of naming, and classifying, the attraction between the Corpuscles, by which they combine and form the Atom. But whatever the name, it will be seen that it represents but another manifestation of “Attraction.”

Arising from Molecular Attraction, or Cohesion, are several “Properties” peculiar to Masses having Molecules, and resulting from the tendency of the latter to resist separation. We had better consider them briefly, in order to understand the power of Molecular Attraction, and its incidents.

_Porosity_: That property indicating the distances observed by the Molecules in their relation to each other, which varies in different “kinds” of Substance. All Substance is more or less Porous, that is, has more or less space existing between the Molecules–the degree depends upon the “closeness.” Compressibility and Expansibility, sometimes mentioned as “properties,” are but results of Porosity.

_Elasticity_: That property whereby bodies resume their original size and form, after having been compressed, expanded or “bent.” The result is caused by the inclination of the molecules to resume their original positions. What is sometimes called “Plasticity” is merely the reverse of Elasticity, and denotes a limited degree of the latter.

_Hardness_: That condition resulting from Molecular Attraction resisting the forcible entrance and passage of other Substance between the molecules.

_Tenacity_: That condition resulting from Molecular Attraction resisting the forcible pulling asunder, or tearing apart of the Mass. This condition sometimes is called “Toughness.”

_Malleability_: That condition resulting from Molecular Attraction resisting the forcible separation of the Mass by pounding, hammering or pressure. The resistance is “passive,” and consists of the Molecules allowing themselves to assume a spread-out formation, rather than to be forced apart.

_Ductility_: That condition resulting from Molecular Attraction resisting the forcible separation of the Mass by a “drawing out” process. The resistance is “passive,” and consists of the Molecules allowing themselves to be drawn out into a formation of the shape of wire or thread, rather than to be pulled apart.

In any of the above cases, we may intelligently, and with propriety, substitute the words, “_Molecules, by means of cohesion, resisting, etc._,” for the terms above used, “Molecular Attraction, resisting, etc.”

All Masses of Substance (probably Molecules as well) are capable of _Expansion and Contraction_, both phenomena, in fact, and in degree, resulting from the relation of the Molecules. Contraction is a “crowding together” of the Molecules; Expansion a “getting apart” of them.

_Density_: The amount of Substance in relation to a given bulk. _Volume_–the “size” or “bulk” of a body of Substance. _Mass_–Besides being used to designate a “body” of Substance, composed of two or more Molecules, the term “Mass” is used to designate the “total quantity of Substance in a Body.” An application of the above terms may be seen in the following illustration:

A quart of water occupies a certain space–and has a certain “volume,” “mass” and “density.” Convert the same “mass” of Water into Steam, and it expands to a “volume” of 1700 times that of Water–but, as no molecules have been added, the “mass” remains the same–but as a quart of Steam weighs 1700 times less than the same “volume” of Water, the “density” of Steam is 1700 times less than that of Water. As the “volume” of a given “mass” increases, the “density” decreases in the same proportion–but the “mass” remains the same. “Mass” therefore has two factors, _i.e._, “Volume” and “Density.” The “Density” of a “Mass” is determined by the _weight_ of a certain “Volume” of it.

The above consideration of the “Properties” of Substance dealt only with the Molecular Properties, or Physical Properties, as they are sometimes called–that is, with properties depending upon the existence of the Molecules. When we consider the Molecules as being composed of Atoms, and when we consider the processes whereby these Molecules are built up of, or broken down through the separation of Atoms, we come to the subject of Atomic Properties, or Chemical Properties, as they are often called.

_The Atomic Properties of Substance_ consist principally in the power and manifestation of Motion, in the direction of combination, separation, and the complex motions resulting from the same. This Motion is manifested by reason of Atomic Attraction, sometimes called “Chemical Affinity,” which we shall consider a little later on in the chapter.

Atomic Principles, as above mentioned, are best illustrated by a reference to Chemical changes, and we shall now examine the same. And, the better way to consider Chemical Changes is by comparing them with Physical Changes, or Changes of the Molecules.

_Some Physical Changes in Substance_ are brought about by Heat, which tends to separate the molecules, or rather to allow them to spread out away from each other, so long as the high temperature is maintained, the degree of their nearness being influenced by temperature. Other Physical Changes are produced by outside Forces separating the molecules to such an extent–to such a distance–that their cohesive force is lost, and the Solid matter is said to be “broken,” or even reduced to dust. Other physical changes are brought about by Electricity, causing the Molecules to separate and disintegrate.

_Chemical Changes_, as distinguished from Physical Changes, do not involve or deal with Molecules, the action being solely upon the Atoms of which the Molecules are composed. Physical Changes _separate_ Molecules from each other, while Chemical Changes destroy and break up the Molecule, so that its identity is forever lost, its Atoms thereafter either existing free from combinations, or else recombining with other Atoms, and forming new combinations. Chemical changes are occasioned by either physical or chemical agencies. The physical agencies generally employed are heat, electricity, light, pressure, percussion, etc. The principle of Chemical Changes is that the Atoms are possessed of, and subject to, what is called “Atomic Attraction” or “Chemical Affinity,” which may be defined as an attraction or “love” existing in varying degrees between Atoms. This Affinity causes Atoms of one element to seek out and ally themselves to Atoms of another element, the element of “choice” or “preference” being strikingly in evidence.

Atoms of different elements form marriages, and cling together in harmony, until, perchance, by some physical or chemical agency, the Molecule is brought in sufficiently close connection with another Molecule composed of different elemental atoms, when, alas! one of the Atoms of our Molecule finds that it has a greater Affinity for some other elemental Atom in the second Molecule, and lo! it flies away, leaving its first partner, and seeking the new charmer. Divorce and re-marriage is a common thing in the world of Atoms–in fact, Chemistry is based upon these qualities.

Physical and Chemical Changes gradually transform solid rock to “earth” or “soil.” Disintegration, by the action of changes in temperature, rains and atmospheric influences, and other Physical Changes, have slowly worn down the rocks into “dirt,” gravel, clay, loam, etc. And Decomposition by Chemical Change that set the atoms free from their combinations has aided in the work.

There is no rest in the world of Substance. Everything is changing–constantly changing. Old forms give way to new, and these, grown old while being born, are, in turn replaced by still newer. And on, endlessly. Nothing persists but change. And yet nothing is destroyed, although countless forms and shapes have succeeded each other. Substance is always there, undisturbed and unaffected by the varieties of forms it is compelled to undergo. Masses may change–and do change. Molecules may change–and do change. Disintegration and decomposition affect both, and bring to them the death of form. But their substance endures in the Atom. Atoms may change, and decompose, or undergo whatever change that is their fate, and still the Corpuscles, or what lies beyond the Corpuscles will remain. The Atom was once regarded as Eternal, but now even it seems to be capable of dissolving into some finer division of Substance–and perhaps still finer subdivisions await it.

That familiar form of Substance that we call “earth,” “dirt,” “soil,” etc., is but the result of disintegrated rock, which has crumbled and lost its former form through the action of air, water and atmospheric influences. And the rocks themselves, from which the “soil” came, were at one time a sea of melted, flowing liquid Substance, somewhat resembling volcanic lava. And this “melted rock” is thought to have been condensed from the same principles in the shape of vapor, that existed in the early days of our planetary system. Vapor, gas, liquid, semi-liquid, solid rock, “soil”–the Substance unchanged, the forms totally unlike. Helmholtz estimates the density of the nebulous vapors of Substance as being so rare that it would take several millions of cubic miles of it to weigh a single grain. Oh, Nature, what a wizard thou art!

We have spoken of Air and Water, in a former chapter, and their constituent atoms have been named. And from these three great reservoirs of Substance–the Earth, the Air, and the Water–are obtained all the material that goes to form the bodies of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The plant draws its nourishment from the soil, the air, and water, and in its wonderful chemical laboratory is able to transform the elements so drawn from these sources into a substance called “Plasm,” which consists principally of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, being nearly identical in composition to the white of an egg, and which constitutes the basis of animal and plant bodily structures. All the material of the physical bodies, of men, animals and plants, are but forms of Plasm. The animals, and man, obtain their nourishment, directly or indirectly, from the plant body, and so at the last we are seen to draw from the soil, air and water all our bodily nourishment, which we convert into bodily structure, bone, muscle, flesh, blood, veins, tissue, cells, etc. And the chemical atoms of our bodies are identical with those in the rock, the air, the water. And so you see the universality of Substance and its countless forms and appearances.

Chemistry resolves Substance back into about seventy-five simple substances, of which Atoms are the Units, which simple substances are called “Elements.” From these Elements (by their Atoms) all other substances are formed by combinations, the number of such possible combinations being infinite. An Element (in order to be an element) must be a “simple” substance, that is, must be incapable of further analysis into some other elements. The seventy-five elements, now recognized by science, have never been resolved into other elements, by chemical analysis, and therefore are accepted as “simple.” But, it is true that other substances that were formerly considered as simple elements were afterward decomposed by electricity, and found to consist of two or more simpler substances or elements. Thus new elements were discovered, and old ones discarded as “not-elemental.” And this fate may be in store for a number of the elements now on the list–and many new ones may be discovered.

For a long time Science was endeavoring to trace all elements back to Hydrogen, the latter being considered the “Ultimate Element,” and its atoms composing all the other atoms, under varying conditions, etc. But this theory is now almost abandoned, and Science rests on its list of seventy-five elements, the atoms of which are composed of “Electrons.” Some have hazarded the theory that the Elements were all forms of Ether (see next chapter), their apparent differences resulting merely from the varying rate of vibration, etc. And, in fact, such theory was about finally adopted as a working hypothesis until the discovery of the Corpuscle. Everything in Substance now seems to be moving back to the Corpuscle, as we shall see a little further on.

The following is a list of the principal Elements, known to Science, to-day:

Aluminum. Antimony. Arsenic. Barium. Bismuth. Boron. Bromine. Cadmium. Calcium. Carbon. Chlorine. Chromium. Cobalt. Copper. Fluorine. Gold. Hydrogen. Iodine. Iron. Lead. Magnesium. Manganese. Mercury. Nickel. Nitrogen. Oxygen. Phosphorus. Platinum. Potassium. Radium. Silicon. Silver. Sodium. Strontium. Sulphur. Tin. Zinc.

Of the above, Hydrogen is by far the lightest in weight; in fact it is used as a unit of Atomic Weight, its weight being marked “1” on the scale; Gold, 197; Lead, 207; Silver, 108; Oxygen, 16; Nitrogen, 14; Iron, 56.

The discovery of the Corpuscle, or Electron, rudely shattered the vortex-ring theory of the origin of the Atom, and now, instead of the Atom being regarded as a “vortex-ring” in that hypothetical, paradoxical absurdity, the Ether, it is believed to be composed of a vast number of tiny particles called Corpuscles, as we saw stated in our last chapter. These Corpuscles seem to be the “last thing in Substance”–its last known state of refinement, and already it is being proclaimed as the long-sought for “Primal Matter,” or “Ultimate Substance.” Whether or not a still finer state of Substance will be discovered Science is unable to say, but thinks it unlikely. But we must not overlook the old Occult Teaching indicating a state of Substance so fine that it is imperceptible, and only recognizable as apparently “free force”; its covering, or vehicle of Substance not being evident. This would seem to indicate a still further refinement of Substance, although perhaps the “Corpuscle” or “Electron” will answer to “fill the bill” in the case.

As to the Corpuscle being “Primal Substance,” it must be admitted that its advocates have presented a very strong case. One of their most important points is that although Molecules differ very materially from each other, according to their kinds; and while Atoms likewise manifest very plainly their “kind,” the Corpuscle seems to possess _only one “kind,”_ no matter from what form or “kind” of Substance it is thrown off. Just think what this means. It means that the finest particles of Gold, Silver, Iron, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and all the rest of the Elements, _are composed of identically the same material, and exhibit no differences in_ “_kind_.” The Elements are no longer “Simple.” _All Substance is One, at the last analysis!_

The Corpuscles seem to possess the same Mass–to carry the same charge of Electricity–to act precisely the same–irrespective of their source. No difference in size, mass or character, as in the case of the Atom–all are identical, save in the rate of their vibration at the time of observation, which is simply a matter of more or less Motion. Space seems to be flooded with these tiny particles–these Units of Substance. They stream from the Sun; the Stars; and every body highly heated. Likewise they stream from the bodies of highly electrified Substance. Groups of these Corpuscles, absolutely identical in nature, size, mass, etc., constitute the Atoms of the Seventy-five Elements, the “kind” of Element seemingly being dependent upon the number and arrangement of the Corpuscles, and possibly by their rate of vibration. Every Atom is like a great bee-hive with a swarm of Corpuscles vibrating, moving around each other, and upon their own centres. And, if by the action of intense heat, transmitted, or caused by interrupted Motion–or if by a strong Electric charge–some of these Corpuscles are detached from the Atoms (or possibly an Atom broken up), they fly off through Space at a marvellous speed of many thousand miles an hour.

So we see that these wonderful Corpuscles look very much like Primal Matter or Ultimate Substance–the “Stuff” out of which Substance is made. And, taking you back to the chapter on “The Universality of Life and Mind,” the writer would remind you that in their Motions and evident Attraction, etc., these Corpuscles evidence the same “Life and Mind” that we observed in the Molecules and Atoms. It must be so, for what is in the manufactured article must be in the material of which the article is made. And so, even here, Life and Mind have not escaped us. Nor will it in The Ether!

And speaking of the Corpuscles, as “manufactured articles,” we are reminded of Herschel’s thought about the Atoms, when they were regarded as Primal Matter and likely to be uniform, and, at the end, of one primal substance. Although Herschel’s conception does not now apply to the Atoms, it may be transferred to the Corpuscles.

Herschel thought that the fact that the Particles of Substance were likely to be found to be uniform in size, and identical in nature and characteristics, indicated that they might be akin to “manufactured articles,” turned out from the same great machinery of Creation. This idea would indicate that the Creator applied the rules of careful manufacture to the manufacture of the Particles, the uniformity operating in the direction of (1) Economy of Material; (2) Utility through interchangeability, replacing broken or discarded parts, etc.; and also (3) Conformity to a Standard of Size, Quality, etc.

The thought is interesting, and is mentioned here for that reason. It is not affected by the supposition that there may be a still finer and rarer form of Substance, from which the Particles are “manufactured”–in fact, the idea of Herschel, if closely analyzed, would seem to indicate some such “raw material” from which the articles were manufactured.

CHAPTER VII

THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE

In the days of the ancients, when the philosophers found themselves unable to account for any particular class of phenomena, they bundled it together and referred it to a suppositious Something that they called “The Ether.” Finding this an easy way to get rid of vexatious questions, they fell into the custom–and the habit grew upon them. Soon there were a dozen or more different kind of Ethers in vogue, each explaining something else–the “something else,” by the way, being things that Science _now_ feels that it understands pretty well. These Ethers grew to be like the various “Vapors” of the ancients–a dignified term for “We don’t know”–a respectable road for retreat under the semblance of an advance.

These Ethers became a scientific scandal, and caused a lax mode of thinking among students of those times. And so they were finally abolished and relegated to the scrap pile of Science, where they lay for many centuries until a comparatively recent period, when at least one of them was hauled forth, dusted, freshened up a little, and placed upon its old pedestal. This revamped Ether, referred to, was the “Ether of Aristotle.” Aristotle, as we know, was a famous Greek philosopher who lived about 350 B.C.–about 2250 years ago. He was a good man and a celebrated philosopher, but was somewhat deficient in scientific knowledge. Although he knew many things, and uttered many wise thoughts, he was under the impression that the breath of Man entered the heart instead of the lungs–that the back part of the skull was empty, and so on. He was without the advantages of a modern training–which, was not his fault, however.

Well, Aristotle conceived the idea of an Universal Ether, which he thought pervaded all space, and with which he accounted for the passage of light from the sun and stars; the movements of the planets, and various other physical phenomena. It is not known whether Aristotle really _believed_ in this Ether, or whether he merely used it as a speculative hypothesis, following the Ether Habit of his contemporaries. At any rate, his theory served its purpose–lived, flourished, declined and died–at least seemed to be dead. But its corpse was resurrected in modern times, and used to account for divers things.

This does not mean that modern thinkers really “believe” in the Universal Ether–they merely assume it as a working hypothesis until something better is offered.

Its principal modern use is to account for the transmission of Light from the Sun and Stars to the Earth. It was held that a thing could not act “where it was not,” and so it became necessary to account for the transmission either by the theory that small particles of substance were thrown off from the Sun, and travelled to the Earth, or else that there was some medium of communication by means of vibrations, etc. Newton held to the first theory, but his hypothesis went down before the Ether advocates, who advanced the “wave-theory,” although it seems that, like Banquo’s ghost, Newton’s theory will not stay down, and is now taking on a new lease of life, owing to the discovery of the Corpuscle and Radiant Matter.

The Wave-theory philosophers asserted that the Light and Heat of the Sun were thrown off in the shape of Force or Energy, and transformed into “waves” in and of a hypothetical Ether (Aristotle’s own), which waves were carried to the Earth, where, meeting Substance, they were again transformed into Heat and Light.

It was known that Light and Heat travelled at the rate of 184,000 miles per second, and therefore the “waves” of the Ether were considered to have that speed. The Wave-theory seemed to fit the facts of the case better than the Newtonian Theory of Corpuscles, although the latter has always been considered as better explaining certain phenomena than the new theory. And so the Ether Wave became generally accepted, and remains so to-day, although recent discoveries are causing a disturbance in the scientific camp regarding the question.

Later it was discovered that the Electricity travelled at the same rate as Light and Heat, and the Wave-of-the-Ether theory was thus thought to have additional verification, and Electricity came under the Law and remained there until the Electron discovery, which is causing much disturbance, among those interested in the study of Electricity.

Briefly stated, the theory of the Universal Ether is this:

That pervading all Space in the Universe–not only between planets, stars and suns, but also “filling in the cracks” between molecules, and atoms as well–there is a subtle Substance in and through which the waves of Light, Heat, Electricity and Magnetism travel at the rate of 184,000 miles per second. This Substance is said to be “Matter that is not Matter”–in fact, Science does not venture to say just _what_ it is, although it freely states just what some of its properties must be, and, alas! these properties are most contradictory and opposite to each other, as we shall see as we proceed.

This Universal Ether is purely hypothetical. It has been called a “necessity of Science”–something assumed for the purpose of explaining or accounting for certain phenomena. It is undemonstrated and unproved–in fact, may truthfully be said to be undemonstrable and unprovable. Some have gone so far as to say that its claimed properties and qualities render it “unthinkable” as well. And yet, Science finds itself compelled to assume that the Ether, or “something like it” exists, or else cease speculating about it. It belongs to the realm of pure theory, and yet, many writers treat it as if it were a positively demonstrated and proven fact. Let us examine into the nature of Science’s problem, and her attempted solution, and the trouble arising therefrom.

Light travels at the rate of 184,000 miles a second. Remember, that Light and Heat are that which we call by those names only when considered in connection with Substance. According to the theory, Light in the Sun’s atmosphere is transformed into a Light-wave of the Ether on its travels to the earth, and only when the “wave” comes in contact with the Substance on the earth’s body or atmosphere does it become again transformed into Light as we know it. In its travels through space it meets with no Substance, and has nothing to “turn into light”–consequently Space (between worlds) is in a state of absolute darkness. The same is true of Heat, and inter-world Space is absolutely cold, although passing through it are countless heat-waves of great intensity, which, later on, will be transformed into Heat when they reach the Substance, the earth. The same is true of Electricity and Magnetism.

Although the Ether, as we have seen, is a purely theoretical substance, yet Science has found it reasonable to conclude that it must be possessed of certain attributes in order to account for certain known facts. Thus, it is said to be frictionless, else the worlds, suns and planets could not pass freely through it, nor could the light and heat waves travel at such a tremendous rate. It also is thought to have something like Inertia, because Motion once started in it persists until stopped; because it is at a state of rest until Motion is imparted to it; and because it takes a fraction of time to impart motion to it. It is thought to be different from Substance in any of its known forms, for many reasons, among such being the fact that no known form of Substance could carry vibrations through space at the rate of 184,000 miles a second. And Light and Heat waves travel at that rate, and have forms and shapes, and lengths of their own. Light for instance, vibrates on two planes, and a light-wave is something like a Greek cross, thus (-|-), having a horizontal and a vertical line, or plane of vibration. And the Ether cannot be a fluid of any degree, because a fluid cannot transmit cross vibrations at all. And it cannot be a Solid, because a Solid could not stand vibrations at such a terrific speed, and still remain a Solid. And yet, to transmit the two-plane light waves, the Ether must have a certain degree of Rigidity, else the waves could not travel. Lord Kelvin estimated this degree of Rigidity as about 19,000,000,000th of the rigidity of the hardest steel. So, you see, Science is compelled to assume that the Ether is “a continuous, Frictionless medium, possessing both Inertia and Rigidity.” Some scientists have thought it to be a kind of “elastic jelly.”

Of the Ether, Prof. Oliver Lodge has said, “We have to try and realize the idea of a perfectly continuous, subtle, incompressible substance, pervading all Space, and penetrating between the molecules of ordinary Matter, which are imbedded in it, and connected to one another by its means. And we must regard it as the one universal medium by which all actions between bodies are carried on. This, then, is its function–to act as the transmitter of motion and energy.”

To give you an idea of the wonderful thing that Science is compelled to think of the Ether as being, by reason of the qualities it is compelled to ascribe to it–although it confesses itself unable to “imagine” the nature of the “Thing” which it has created in bits by the adding and bestowing of qualities which were made necessary by the logical requirements of the case–let us take a hurried view of the Thing as the several departments of Science say it must be thought of.

To meet the requirements of the case, Science says that The Universal Ether must be Substance infinitely more rare and evanescent than the finest gas or vapor known to Science, even in its rarest condition. It must convey Heat in the manner of an infinitely Solid body–and yet it must not be a Solid. It must be transparent and invisible. It must be Frictionless, and yet Incompressible. It cannot be a Fluid. It cannot have Attraction for Substance, such as all Substance has. Nor can it have Weight–that is, it is not subject to Gravitation. It is beyond the reach of any known scientific instrument, even of the greatest power, and it refuses to register itself in any way, either to senses or instruments.

It cannot be known “of itself,” but may only be recognized as existent by the “things” for which it acts as a medium or transmitting agent. It must convey Energy and Motion, yet it must not take up any part of either from the Matter in its midst. It must not absorb any of the Heat, Light or Electricity. It must fill up the spaces between the worlds, as well as the most minute space between the Molecules, Atoms and Corpuscles, or any other minute particle of Substance, either known by name to Science now or which may be discovered or imagined later as a necessity of some conception regarding the nature of Substance. In short, The Universal Ether, in order to do the things attributed to it, must be more solid than Solids; more Vapor-like and Gas-like than Vapor or Gas; more fluid than Fluids; infinitely less rigid than steel, and yet infinitely stronger than the strongest steel. It must be a substance having the qualities of a vacuum. It must be continuous and not composed of Particles, Atoms or Molecules. It must be an “everything” in some respects, and yet a “nothing” in others. It must not be Substance, and yet it must carry Substance within its ocean of dimensions, and, besides, interpenetrate the most minute space between the particles of Substance. It must not be Energy or Force, and yet Science has been considering Energy and Force as but “interruptions of rest” or “agitations” within, and of, itself.

So you see that this mysterious, wonderful Universal Ether–in order to “be” at all–must be a “Something” possessing certain qualities or properties of Substance–many of the properties of qualities being exactly contradictory and opposed to each other–and yet it cannot be Substance as we know it. It is a Paradoxical thing. It could only belong to another and an entirely different order of existence from that of Substance as we know it. It must possess characteristics and properties of an order as yet unknown to us by name–for which the material world contains no analogy–for which Substance has no analogues. It must be a far more complex thing than is even the most complex thing we call Matter, or that which we call Force or Energy. And yet, it has been claimed that it would explain both–yes, contain within itself the possibility of both.

And yet, in face of what has just been said, the writer must confess, humbly and with a full realization of the enormity of the offence, that he supposes advancing a theory, a little further on in this book that will attempt to identify this Something–this Universal Ether–with a Something else that we know, although not through the senses or by means of instruments. Bear with him kindly, he begs of you, while he proceeds gradually along the path that leads to the theory.

Scientists have compared Substance moving through the Ether as a coarse seive moving through water, the latter making room for the passage of the seive, and then closing up behind it. If this be amended by the idea that the moving seive, while allowing the water to pass through it freely, still carries along with it a thin film of water which clings to the wires of the seive by adhesion–if there be admitted this “clinging film” as well as the body of the water through which the seive moves–then the illustration answers quite well as a crude illustration of Substance and “The Ether.” This fact is important in view of the theory that will be advanced, further on in this book. Prof. Lodge, in his interesting work, “Modern Views of Electricity,” mentions a number of experiments tending to prove the above mentioned fact, which is not so generally known as other facts relating to the Ether.

Until the discovery of Radiant Matter (bringing with it the new theories of the Corpuscle or Electron, etc.), brushed aside into the dust heap many generally accepted scientific theories regarding the nature of Substance, the favorite and most popular theory was what was known as the “Vortex-ring” theory of the Atom. This theory held that the atoms of Substance were but vortex-rings of the Ether, having had motion communicated to them in some way, and which afterwards acquired other motions, and which finally become apparent to our senses as Substance. In other words, the Atom was supposed to be a vortex-ring of Ether, acted upon by Force, in some unknown way, the character, nature and properties of the Atom being determined by the shape and size of the vortex-ring; the rate of motion; etc., etc.

The new discoveries of Science, however, have set aside (at least temporarily) this “vortex-ring” theory, and at present Science seems to find its “latest thing in Substance,” in the theory that Substance–at the last–seems to be the Corpuscle or Electron. In other words, after many years of fancied security in a settled theory regarding the nature of Substance, Science once more finds itself compelled to take up the search for the origin of things. But the theory of the Ether remains–and is likely to–although the names applied to it will change. By some it is still believed that in the Ether, a little further removed, rests the origin of Substance and that the Corpuscle may be the “vortex-ring” product, instead of the Atom.

It will be noticed that Science has made no serious attempt to connect the phenomenon of Gravitation or Attraction with the Ether. Gravitation stands alone–an “outsider” among the Forces, responding to none of their laws–needing no time in which to travel–needing no medium like the Ether in which to transmit “waves”–fearing no obstacle or interfering body, but passing right through the same–different, different, different. And we shall see _why_ this difference, when we reach the point where our theory brings us to the point where we must substitute “something else” for that Great Paradoxical General Solvent of Modern Science–the Ether of Aristotle. We shall reach the point after a brief consideration of Motion, Force and Energy.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FORCES OF NATURE

The Substance filling the Universe is in constant and unceasing Motion. Motion is evidenced in every physical and chemical process and change, and manifested in the constant interchange of position of the Particles of Substance.

There is absolutely no rest in Nature–everything is constantly changing–moving–and vibrating. Building-up processes are ever at work forming larger masses or bodies of the Particles–and tearing-down processes, disintegration and decomposition of Molecules and Atoms, and Corpuscles, are constantly at work also. Nature maintains a constant balance among her Forces. If the building-up energies and forces were allowed full sway, then all the Particles in the Universe ultimately would gravitate to a common centre, thus forming a compact and solid Mass, which would thus dwell for Eternity, unless the Creative Power should move upon it and again scatter its Particles in all directions. And, if the tearing-down, and dispersive forces and energies were allowed full sway, the Particles would fly apart and would remain asunder for Eternity, unless called together by some new Creative fiat.

But Nature pits one force against another, maintaining an equilibrium. The result is constant play and inter-play of forces, causing distribution, and redistribution of Particles, following the gathering-together and building-up processes.

There is no lost motion, or waste force. One form of force and motion is converted into another, and so on, and on. Nothing is lost–all force is conserved, as we shall see as we proceed.

In the public mind–or rather, in the mind of that part of the public which think of the matter at all–there seems to be an idea that “Force” is something of the nature of an entity, separate from Substance or Mind–something that pounces down upon Substance and drives it along by presence from without. The ancient philosophers regarded Substance as acted upon from _without_ by an entity called Force, Substance being regarded as absolutely inert and “dead.” This idea, which is still held by the average person, owing, doubtless, to the survival of old forms of expression, was generally held by philosophers until the time of Descartes and Newton. This old idea was due to the teachings of Aristotle–he of the Ether Theory–and Science and Philosophy were timid about shaking off the Aristotelian dogmas. Others held that Light, Heat and Electricity were “fluids” conveyed from body to body–in fact the general public still entertains this idea regarding Electricity, owing to the use of the term “the Electric _fluid_.”

The present teaching of Science is that Force is the result of the motion of the Particles of Substance, and, of course, originates from _within_, rather than from without. It is true that Motion may be communicated to a body by means of another body in Motion imparting the same to it, but that does not alter the case, for the Original Motion came from the movement and vibration of the Particles of Substance, although it may have passed through many stages of transformation, change and transmission in its progress. The only exception to the rule is Gravitation, which is a form of Force, the nature of which is unknown to Science, although its laws of operation, etc., are understood. We shall learn some new facts about Gravitation in the forthcoming chapters of this book.

It will be well for us to remember _this_ fact, in our consideration of Force and Motion–that Force and Motion _originate_ from the inherent property of Motion passed by the Particles of Substance, and come from _within_, not from without. This is the best teaching of Modern Science, and also, forms an important part of the Theory of Dynamic Thought which is advanced in this book. Buchner, the author of “_Force and Matter_,” vigorously insists upon this conception, saying, among many other similar expressions: “Force may be defined as a condition of activity or a motion of matter, or of the minutest particles of matter or a capacity thereof.”

The term “Force” is generally defined in works on Physics as “That which causes, changes or terminates Motion.” The word “Force” is generally used in the sense of “in action,” while “Energy” is usually used in the sense of “Potential Force–capacity for performing work,” the idea being that it is “stored-up” force, or “force awaiting use.” The term “Power” is used in two senses, the first meaning “a measure of Mechanical Energy,” such as a “forty horse-power engine,” etc.; the second sense being “Capacity or Ability to Act, or exercise Force,” this use being almost identical to the idea of “Energy,” as above described, although, possibly, a little stronger expression.

The Materialistic school holds that Force is a property of Matter, the latter being regarded as the “real thing” of the Universe. Others hold that Force is the “real thing,” and that what is called Matter, or Substance, is but a centre of Force, etc. Others hold that the two are but aspects of the same thing, calling the “thing” by the name “Matter-Force,” or “Force-Matter.” Haeckel calls this combined “thing” by the name of “Substance,” claiming that what are called Matter and Force are but “attributes” of it, the third “attribute” being “Sensation,” which he holds is akin to Mind–“Haeckel’s Substance” is held to be Eternal, and Self-existent–its own Cause, in fact. (In this book the term “Substance” is not used in this sense, but merely as synonymous with what Science usually calls “Matter.”)

The views advanced in this book differ materially from any of those above mentioned, it being held by the writer that “All Force is Vital-Mental Force,” and, consequently, “Force” as a separate thing is considered an unreasonable proposition–what is called “Force” being considered merely an action of Mind upon Substance, causing Motion. The writer does not intend to advance this idea at this point beyond the mere mentioning of the fact–the theory being brought out and developed as we proceed–and he will proceed to a consideration of the phenomena of Force, along the lines of Modern Science, believing that in this way the subject may be better understood.

The term “Motion,” as used in Physics, is defined as: “The act, process or state of changing place or position; movement”–(Webster). So you see, Motion is the movement of Substance changing place or position; Force is that which causes, changes or terminates Motion; and Energy is the “capacity” for manifesting Force; and Power the Ability to Act. In works on Physics you will notice the expression, “Potential Energy,” meaning Energy awaiting action; also “Kinetic Energy,” meaning Energy in Action; that is, in Motion. We shall not need these terms in this book, but it is well to understand them.

Another term frequently met with, is “Conservation of Energy,” which is used to indicate that Law of Physics the operation of which renders Energy indestructible. That is, Science holds that Energy can not be destroyed–that it is not lost, or created, but is merely transformed into other forms of Energy, Potential or Kinetic. Therefore, after Energy is used, it either passes into a state of Potential Energy or Rest, awaiting a future call to Activity, or else is immediately transformed into another form of Kinetic Energy, or Energy in Action. The theory holds that the quantity or amount of Energy in the Universe is fixed in its totality–none may be created or destroyed–there can be no addition to, or subtraction from the Totality of Energy–that all Energy used has been previously stored up, or else has been immediately transmitted or transformed. It is also held that when Energy manifests as the result of work performed, it is always found that it is at the expense of some previously manifested form of Energy–that the agency by which the work is performed always parts with its stock of Energy, and that the thing worked upon always acquires or gains the amount of Energy lost by the aforesaid agent, or worker–and yet there is no actual loss or gain, but merely transformation.

The above theory is mentioned as of interest in the general subject, although it does not play a prominent part in the subject of this book, for the writer holds that all Energy resides in Mind, and emerges therefrom, and, in the end, returns thereto. This being believed, it is seen that Energy is not to be thought of as a separate thing having a “totality,” but merely as a quality of Mind–the question of its totality or fixed quantity not being inquired into, although both, probably, run along the lines of the nature of Mind, and depend upon the limitations, or lack of limitations, of the latter. However, the question does not assume a vital importance in our consideration of the subject.

So far as the question of transmission, or transformation of Energy, is concerned, however, the principles of the Law of Conservation of Energy may be accepted as correct, although it more properly belongs to the principle of what has been called “The Corelation of Force,” the idea of which is that one form of Energy may be, and is always, transformed into another form, and so on, and on, unto infinity. This idea is followed in this book, except that the idea of “From Mind originally, to Mind finally,” is incorporated within it. This law of the “Corelation of Force” may be illustrated by the following quotation from Tyndall, the great scientist of the last century, who says:

“A river, in descending from an elevation of 7720 feet, generates an amount of heat competent to augment its own temperature 10 degrees F., and this amount of heat was abstracted from the sun, in order to lift the matter of the river to the elevation from which it falls. As long as the river continues on the heights, whether in the solid form as a glacier, or in the liquid form as a lake, the heat expended by the sun in lifting it has disappeared from the universe. It has been consumed in the act of lifting. But, at the moment that the river starts upon its downward course, and encounters the resistance of its bed, the heat expanded in its elevation begins to be restored. The mental eye, indeed, can follow the emission from its source through the ether, as vibratory motion, to the ocean, where it ceases to be vibration, and takes the potential form among the molecules of aqueous vapor; to the mountain-top, where the heat absorbed in vaporization is given out in condensation, while that expended by the sun in _lifting_ the water to its present elevation is still unrestored. This we find paid back to the last unit by the friction along the river’s bed; at the bottom of the cascade, where the plunge of the torrent is suddenly arrested; in the warmth of the machinery turned by the river; in the spark from the millstone; beneath the crusher of the miner; in the Alpine saw-mill; in the milk-churn of the chalet; in the supports of the cradle in which the mountaineer, by water-power, rocks his baby to sleep. All the forms of mechanical motion here indicated are simply the parcelling out of an amount of calorific motion derived originally from the sun; and, at each point at which the mechanical motion is destroyed or diminished, it is the sun’s heat which is restored.”

The following quotation, also, is interesting as illustrating another phase of this law:

“The work performed by men and other animals is due to the transformed energy of food. This food is of vegetable origin and owes its energy to the solar rays. The energy of men and animals is, therefore, the transformed energy of the sun. Excepting the energy of the tides, the sun’s rays are the source of all the forms of energy practically available. It has been estimated that the heat received by the earth from the sun each year would melt a layer of ice over the entire globe a hundred feet in thickness. This represents energy equal to one horse-power for each fifty square feet of surface.”–Anthony and Brackett.

From the above quotations, it will be seen that the principal and most familiar sources (or great storage batteries) of Energy, apparent to dwellers upon this planet, are (1) the Earth manifesting the Power of Gravitation; and (2) the Sun, manifesting solar heat. In Tyndall’s illustration we see the force of the sun’s Energy–heat–raising the water from the ocean, by evaporation (although aided by the earth’s gravitation “pulling down” the heavier air, allowing the vapor to rise). Then we see the Force of Gravitation causes the condensed vapor to fall as rain or snow on the mountain-top–then causing the rain to run into little streams, and so on until the river is reached–then causing the river to start on its downward journey of over seven thousand feet–then causing it to plunge over the cascade; to turn the wheels that operated the machinery, and turned the millstone, and the crusher of the miner, and the saw-mill, and the milk-churn, and the cradle. And, as Tyndall might have added, had he lived a little later–in the running of the dynamo, which running, produced electricity, that in turn caused lights to burn; other machinery to run and manufacture things; stoves to cook; flat-irons to iron; automobiles and engines to run; and many other things along the lines of transmitting Energy, Force and Motion.

And in this consideration, let us not forget the important part that Gravitation–that most wonderful of all Forces–plays in the grand scheme of Nature. Not only does this Force cause the planets to circle around the sun, and, perhaps that sun around another sun, and so on, and on until the matter becomes unthinkable–not only this, but it performs a million parts in the affair of earthly Matter, as we shall see in a later chapter. The Force of Gravitation is one of the greatest mysteries confronting Science to-day, although many believe it a simple question. Gravitation and the Universal Ether contain the great secrets of Nature that Man is striving to unveil. And yet, so “common” is Gravitation that the race, including almost all the scientists, take it as a “matter of course.” We shall devote much attention to the question of Gravitation in the forthcoming chapters of this book, for it plays a very important part in the general theory of Dynamic Thought, upon which this book is based. We shall have a special chapter devoted to it, a little later on, and the matter will also come up for explanation further on in the book.

But, in the meantime, let us consider the other forms of Energy, _viz._, Heat, Light, Magnetism and Electricity, which with Gravitation and Attraction of other kinds, form the Forces of Nature.

CHAPTER IX

RADIANT ENERGY

The “kinds” of Energy are very few, although the methods of using, applying and manifesting same are innumerable. Let us begin with one of the best known forms of Energy, namely, Heat.

_Heat_ was formerly regarded as a very fine fluid or substance, called “caloric,” which was supposed to enter into Substance and then manifest the phenomenon of “heat.” This idea has long since been relegated to the scrap pile of Science. The present theory, which is supported by a mass of evidence obtained through investigation and experimentation, is that Heat is a form of Energy, arising from the vibratory motions of the Particles of Substance–a “Mode of Motion.” The degrees of Heat are termed “Temperature.” Temperature depends upon the rate of the heat-vibrations of the Particles of Substance, either arising from the Original Motion of the Particles, or else from vibrations or Motion aroused in them by transmission from Particles of other bodies of Substance–these vibrations being “contagious.” Temperature then means “the measure of the vibrations of the Particles.”

All bodies of Substance have _some_ degree of Temperature–some degree of heat-vibration of its Particles. Science has a pleasant “scientific friction” of an Absolute Zero at the degree of 491 below Zero, Fahrenheit, but this is merely an imaginary something with which the grown up children of Science amuse themselves.

When two bodies are brought near each other–the “nearness” being comparative, and, in some cases, meaning a distance of millions of miles–Heat is transmitted from the warmer to the cooler body, until the temperatures are equalized–that is until the two bodies vibrate in unison.

In Physics we are taught that the “Transmission” of Heat may be accomplished in three ways, although the writer is of the opinion that the three ways are but three forms of one way. The first form is called “Conduction,” whereby the vibration, or Heat, is conveyed along a body of Substance, from its warmer to its cooler parts–for instance, an iron poker with one end in the fire. The second form is called “Convection,” whereby the visible motion of heated Substance, moving along the air–for instance, hot-air, hot-water, steam, etc., either by means of pipes, or by allowing them to pass freely through the air. The third form is called “Radiation,” whereby the vibrations are believed to be transformed into “waves of the Ether,” which will be spoken of later, in addition to what has been said on the subject in our chapter entitled “The Paradox of Science.”

The writer thinks that a little consideration will show us that the same rule operates in all of the above cases, and that “Conduction” and “Convection” are but forms of Radiation. For instance, in Conduction there must be a few Particles first set into vibration, the same gradually passing on to the others farther, and farther away. Passing _how_? “By contact,” replies Physics. But, the Particles are never in absolute contact–there always is “plenty of space” between them. And so there must be some kind of “waves” passing through the space between them, which space is not filled with “air,” or other form of Substance, but only with “the Ether,” or _something that takes its place_. So that, after all, Conduction is but a form of Radiation. And the same rule will apply in the case of Convection.

Heat arises from several causes, all of which, however, manifest through the vibration of the Particles of the body evidencing the Heat. These causes may be stated as (1) Original Motion of the Particles of a body of Substance, arising from some workings of the Law of Attraction, and including Motion arising from Chemical Action, Combustion, etc. (2) From transmission or “contagion” from some other body of Substance, the Particles of which are vibrating at the rate of Heat. (3) From interrupted Motion, including friction both of the moving body with the air or other Substance, and the friction of a current of Electricity passing through the body. In each of the above cases, the _actual_ and immediate cause of the Heat is the vibration of the Particles of the Substance manifesting the Heat, although the transmitted vibratory waves, or the interrupted motion, friction, current, etc., may have been the instigator or provoker of such vibration. The interrupted motion, friction, or “wave” does not produce the Heat, but merely arouses or provokes the increased vibration of the Particles, that really manifest the Heat. At the last, remember, the Heat is in the Particles of the body that “feels” or experiences it.

The vibrations of Heat seem to have the properties of causing the Molecules to draw further apart, and to manifest less Attraction, or more Repulsion, whichever way one cares to express it. This “moving away” of the Molecules tend to cause the body to increase in volume or size, and occasions what is known as “Expansion” in Substance. In this way Heat transforms Solids into Liquids; Liquids into Gases or Vapors, the change being wholly a matter of the relative distances of the Molecules.

_Magnetism_ is another form of Energy, and is generally believed to be a part of the phenomena of Electricity, if indeed, not a form of Electricity itself. Science knows very little about the nature of Magnetism, but in a general way holds to the theory that it results from the vibration or motion of the Particles of Substance, as do all other forms of Energy. The magnetic qualities of a body may be increased or decreased by motion affecting the relation of the Molecules, which fact has been regarded as having some bearing on the theory.

_Electricity_ is a form of Energy, that Science regards as also arising from the vibration or motion of the Particles of Substance. It is transmitted, like Heat, by Conduction and Radiation, the “waves” tending to provoke similar vibrations in the Particles of Substances receiving them. By many careful investigators, Electricity is believed to be very closely related to the phenomenon called light, both having much in common. Science seems to be discovering new points of resemblance between them, and it is probable that in the near future they will be seen to be but varying forms of the same thing. The purposes of this book do not call for an extended consideration of the properties of Electricity, the same being served by a consideration of its nature being akin to that of the other forms of Energy, namely, “vibration or motion in or among the Particles of Matter.”

_Light_ is a form of Energy, the study of which is of the greatest interest to Science, for the reason that the field seems to be widening out continuously, and reaching out into the territory formerly thought to be the special region of Electricity. And, in another direction, it seems to be reaching out into the territory of Heat, the latter being considered by many to be but a form of Light, in its lower vibrations. In fact, the writer of this book so considers the subject, and for the purposes of this book, in later chapters, he will combine Electricity, Heat, and Light, including, also, the phenomena known as the X-Rays, Becquerel Rays, Radium waves, etc., as forms of Light–the combined forms of Energy to be called “_Radiant Energy_.” In this combination, he believes that he is in line with the latest and best thought of Modern Science. However, he does not insist upon his readers following this idea, and so, if they prefer, they may think of each of these forms as separate and distinct, and yet not run contrary to the line of thought of the book.

Light is not the simple thing that it is considered to be by the general public. It is composed of many parts, qualities and manifestations. Its rays, when separated by the Spectrum, are seen to consist of “waves” or vibrations of differing degrees of rate and intensity. The lower range contains the heat rays, and it is interesting to know that there are rays of heat too far down in the scale to be evidenced by human senses that may be distinguished by delicate instruments. But there are rays still further down in the scale that are known to exist, theoretically, that cannot be registered even by the finest instruments. To gain an idea of the delicacy of these instruments, let us remember that Prof. Langley has an instrument called the “Bolometer,” that is so delicate that it registers a change of temperature of one millionth of a degree, and will register the heat of a candle one and one-half miles distant from it. Light vibrations arise from combustion, friction, electricity etc., causing the Particles to assume increased Motion.

Let us consider the report of the Spectrum. Beginning with waves or vibrations far below the sensibility of Man, the scale shows an advance until the first “warm” vibration of iron was reached. This first indication of warmth comes when the vibrations reach the rate of 35,000,000,000,000 _per second_. Then gradually they increase until a dull red glow is noticed–the lowest _visible_ light ray–when the vibrations are 450,000,000,000,000 per second. Then come the orange rays, then the golden yellow, then the pure yellow, then the greenish yellow, then the pure green, then the greenish blue, then the ocean blue, then the cyanic blue, then the indigo, then the violet–the latter evidencing when the vibrations reach the rate of 750,000,000,000,000 per second. Then come the Ultra-violet rays–invisible to human sight–but evidenced by chemical media. In this Ultra-violet region lies the X-Rays, etc., and also the “Actinic Rays,” that produce photographs, sunburn one’s face and blister the nose–that cause violent explosions in chemicals–that transform forms of Substance–that are employed to cure skin diseases, etc. These Actinic or Chemical Rays have an important role to play in plant-life, for they act upon the green leaves of the plant, causing a chemical change by which carbonic acid and water are transformed into sugar and starches.

Some of the rays of the Ultra-violet region of Light penetrate substances formerly considered solid and impenetrable. And some of them emitted from Radium, etc., would destroy organic life if applied in sufficient quantities. Some of them are practically waves of Electricity so that Light and Electricity are seen to be closely related.

To give one an idea of the differences produced by different rates of vibration, let us imagine a Mass of Iron, shaped like a great “Top,” capable of being impelled to “spin” at a constantly increasing rate of speed, by some Mighty Will. At first it is seen as a slowly spinning Top, manifesting nothing but slow motion, to our senses.

Now, imagine our Top spinning at a rate doubling each second. The first second the Top spins at the rate of two revolutions per second. We notice no change, except that we can see the movement. The next second the revolutions are doubled to four per second. Then, doubling each second, we have, respectively, revolutions of eight per second, then sixteen, and then in the fifth second thirty-two per second. Then we begin to notice a change.

When the revolutions reach thirty-two per second the friction of the moving Top on the air causes it to give forth a very low, deep, bass note of sound. This note is like a low, deep “hum,” and is the lowest possible of perception by the human hearing, although it is possible that some of the lower forms of life may be conscious of still lower vibrations.

The sixth second the revolutions reach sixty-four, and the low note has grown much higher in the scale. The seventh second records a rate of 128, and the note has correspondingly increased. Then, as the seconds pass, we have, successively, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096, 8,192, 16,384, 32,768, the latter in the fifteenth second, and representing the highest note recognizable by the human ear, although it is believed that some of the lower animals may recognize sounds too acute for our sense of hearing. During this increase in revolutions from the fifth second to the fifteenth, the sound-note has risen rapidly in the scale from the low sullen “hum,” on through the notes of the musical scale, and beyond the range of instruments, until the shrillness becomes so intense as to be almost unbearable, and finally terminating in a shrill, piercing shriek like the “squeak” of the bat, only long-drawn out.

Then from the termination of the sound (by reason of the rate of vibration having become too high) silence reigns for thirty seconds–absolute silence, in spite of the rapidly increasing rate of vibrations, in fact, because of it.

When the forty-fifth second is reached, and the revolutions have reached the rate of 35,184,372,088,832 per second, our Top begins to emit heat-rays, increasing each second. Then a little later a dull, dim glow may be noticed. Then, as the seconds fly, the dull glow manifests a deep dark red color, such as one notices in the iron of the blacksmith’s shop, soon after it begins to “glow.” Then, on and on, as the seconds fly, the deep red grows lighter and brighter, gradually changing into orange, then into yellow, then into green, then into blue, then into indigo, then into violet, and then into the color of “white-heat.” Then this “white-heat” changes into a still more dazzling white, and then a white impossible to describe appears, so bright, clear and brilliant that the eye cannot bear the sight. Then, suddenly, the intense brightness is succeeded by absolute darkness, and the moving Top cannot be seen by the eye–and yet it moves on. The highest recorded chemical rays of light are estimated to equal a rate of vibration of 1,875,000,000,000,000 per second. The vibration of the lowest shade of red light is estimated at 450,000,000,000,000, and the highest of violet at 750,000,000,000,000 per second, so we may imagine what the highest line on the spectrum is like.

Still vibrating, our Top, which has become now a Mass of Vaporized Iron, rapidly tending toward still more ethereal forms. It has passed out from the region of light-waves, into another “Unknown Region” of Vibrations, in which region, however, exist the vibrations known to us as the “X-Rays,” etc. It is throwing off great quantities of Electrons. If we were to use a fluorescent screen we would be able to observe the phenomena of the Roentgen Rays, and similar manifestations of Radiant Energy.

On and on vibrates the Top of what we once called Iron–cold iron, warm iron, hot iron, melted iron, gaseous iron, etherealized iron, if you like. What it is like now, the imagination of Man cannot conceive. Still the revolutions continue, doubling each second. _What is being produced?_ The imagination cannot conceive of what this state of Substance, now being reached, is like. By a scientific form of poetry we might think of it as melting into Energy–pure Energy, if there were such a thing. Long since it has been resolved into its original Particles–its Corpuscles, and perhaps into the “stuff” from which particles are made. But we must let the curtain drop–the wildest fancy cannot follow the Dance of Substance any further.

The theory of the transmission of vibrations of Radiant Energy by means of “waves” in the Ether, or “something that takes the place of the Ether,” has been mentioned in other parts of the book. Referring again to it, the writer would say that he thinks it probable that the “waves” coming in contact with the countless Corpuscles in the Earth’s atmosphere, communicate a high rate of motion to them, the result being that they take on the vibrations immediately, and pass along with the “wave” current–the result being that much that we consider as waves of Light, Heat and Electricity are but streams of these Corpuscles in which vibrations have been awakened by the “waves.” This idea will help to explain some of the phenomena of Light, which seemed more understandable under the old Light-Corpuscle theory of Newton than under the “wave” theory of recent years. The idea is advanced merely for the purpose of setting down the thought, for it plays no important part in the theory of the book.

Another matter that should not be overlooked in connection with Light and Heat and Electricity is that Particles absorb or “catch” the vibrations in different degrees, their receptivity depending upon their particular vibratory mode, or “custom of their kind.” If unable to “absorb” the vibrations, they “reflect” them. Substance, of any particular kind, absorb Heat in the degree of its atomic weight.

In the next chapter we shall learn something of The Law of Attraction, that wonderful Law that makes possible any Motion or Radiant Energy.

CHAPTER X

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

In the previous chapters we have seen that all forms of Radiant Energy, _viz._, Light, Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, arose from the Motion of the Particles of Substance. It now becomes important to learn just what cause this “Motions of the Particles.” Science is somewhat hazy and foggy on this subject, but in a general way decides that it is caused by “the mutual relations and positions of the particles, arising from their respective attractive qualities,” as a recent writer has expressed it. Well, this is better than the old way of seeking refuge and retreat in a mere volume of dense words. It is indeed the only logical conclusion, this one that the operations of the Law of Attraction are manifested in the Motion of the Particles.

This great Law of Attraction is the greatest Law in Nature. It operates on all planes of life. It is always in evidence. Let us consider it.

Let us begin by considering the most magnificent and constant exhibition of that Law–Gravitation. Gravitation is the Riddle of the Universe, and the one form of Energy that balks Science–so much a mystery that Science does not even hazard a “guess” at its nature–no theory of the origin and nature of Gravitation is to be found in “the books.” Let us see what Gravitation is.

It is more than the power that “pulls things to the earth,” as the average man would define it. It does more than cause water to run down hill, and turn mill-wheels to drive machinery. Water-power results from Gravitation, but even the Energy of Niagara Falls is insignificant when compared to the other manifestations of the Mother of Energy–Gravitation.

Webster defines Gravitation as: “That attraction or force by which all bodies or particles in the universe tend toward each other.”

Following that definition, let us add that: _Every particle of Substance has an attraction for every other particle_.

In view of our belief that this “attraction” is a form of mental effort, let us regard the term “Attraction” as being a form of what we call “Desire,” or even “Love,” in the mental world. If you will think of it in this way, you will be better able to fall in with our lines of thought.

And, in addition to every particle of Substance having an attraction (love or desire) for every other particle, _it has the means and power to draw that other particle toward itself, and to move toward that other particle at the same time_. Webster gives a very clear idea of this when he defines Attraction as: “_An invisible power in a body by which it draws anything to itself; the power in nature acting mutually between bodies, or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together, or to produce their cohesion or combination, and conversely resisting separation_.”

The majority of persons, when thinking of “Gravitation,” are satisfied with the idea that it is a power that “pulls things down to the ground,” and do not think of it as a force that “pulls things” other ways besides “down,” and which is possessed and exercised by the speck of dust as well as by the whole earth–by the molecule as well as by the mass. The reason of this is that this power is so slight in small bodies of Substance that it is unnoticed; and that only when the mass is sufficiently large to make the “pull” strong does one perceive and appreciate that the force exists. The lack of information on the part of the average person regarding this subject is amazing, particularly when the importance of the knowledge is understood.

The attraction that holds the molecules of Substance together is Gravitation. The attraction that “pulls” a piece of Substance to the earth is Gravitation. The attraction that keeps the suns and planets in their orbits is Gravitation. Let us see the operations of the Law.

In Astronomy you may learn that the movements of the planets around the sun and the moons around their planets–their regular and constant relative positions–are caused by the force of Gravitation. If it were not for this attraction by the Sun, the planets would fly out into space, like a stone from a sling. The Attraction of Gravitation acts on the planets just as does the string of the whirling sling that keeps the stone from flying away during the whirling until the string is released. Some astronomers think that our sun revolves around some greater sun, and this again around a greater, and so on to infinity. If this be so, then the Attraction of Gravitation is that which holds them all in their orbits and places in spite of their motion.

And in Physics, you may learn that this same Attraction of Gravitation prevents the people and objects on the surface of the earth from flying off into space. And that it holds the portions of the earth together, preventing them from flying apart.

And, remember this, for it is important–the Attraction of the Earth, great and powerful as it is, is nothing more than the _combined_ attractive power of its constituent molecules, or atoms, or parts. The centre of the Earth is the Centre of the Attraction, because it is the centre of the aggregation of its Particles.

It must not be supposed that the Earth simply attracts “downward,” that is, toward its centre. On the contrary, large masses of earth–large mountains, for instance–exert a certain degree of Attraction of Gravitation, and experiments have shown that a “plumb” is slightly deflected by reason of the proximity of a large mountain. And the reason that bodies “lose weight” as they descend from the surface of the earth is because they leave “above” them a certain large portion of the molecules composing the earth, which mass of molecules exert an attraction proportionate to their mass, which attraction balances the attraction of the mass of earth “beneath them.”

Science teaches that if the earth were hollow in the centre, the weight there would be Zero, or nothing at all, and that a body would float in the space at the centre of the earth just as does a balloon in the air, the reason thereof being that the attraction would be equalized–equal attraction from every direction, counterbalancing each other. Considering the earth’s radius to be 4000 miles, a body that weighed 100 pounds on the surface would weigh but 75 pounds at the depth of 1000 miles; but 50 pounds at a depth of 2000 miles; but 25 pounds at a depth of 3000 miles; and Nothing, or Zero, at a depth of 4000 miles, which would be the Centre of the Earth. This, of course, supposes that the Substance of which the earth is composed is of uniform density from surface to centre.

From an equal distance above the surface of the earth, bodies released, or dropped, will reach the surface at exactly the same degree of speed, and in exactly the same time–this irrespective of weight or size. In other words, a cork or piece of lead, no matter what their sizes may be, will travel with equal rapidity. In case where the “lighter” substance travels more slowly (compare a feather and bullet, for instance) the difference is caused by the light object meeting with more resistance from the air. This apparent exception has been explained away by the experiment of dropping the bullet and the feather in a vacuum tube, in which there was no resistance from air, the consequence being that both descended precisely at the same instant. Another similar experiment is to place the feather upon a piece of iron whereby the resistance of the air is prevented, and the feather will maintain its position during the drop, and will reach the ground resting on top of the iron, just as it started.

And, remember this please, that the small object attracted by the earth exerts an attraction on its own account. If the two were of the same size they would exert an equal attracting power, but as one is smaller its attracting power is very slight compared with that of the large mass. But it is true that the particle of dust attracts the earth precisely as the earth attracts the particle of dust–the difference being solely a matter of degree depending upon the “mass” of the body. The amount or degree of the _combined_ attracting power is determined by the combined total of the two masses. Distance lessens the degree of attraction–thus as bodies are lifted above the earth the weight decreases very gradually, and by very slight degrees, but constantly and invariably. The poles of the earth are flattened, and, consequently, the weight of an object slightly increases as it is carried from equator to pole.

Concluding our consideration of Gravitation, it will be well to call your attention to the fact that Gravitation differs from the forms of Radiant Energy known as Heat, Light, Electricity and Magnetism in several very important particulars, which seems to go far in the direction of proof that the latter are by incidents or consequences of the former.

In the first place, Gravitation, so far as is known, is not dependent upon, caused by, or maintained by, any other Force or form of Energy. Nor does it seem to be derived from some great reservoir, from which it obtains its supply of Energy. On the contrary, it seems to be a “thing-in-itself,” self-supporting, self-existing–an intrinsic thing, in fact. It does not seem to be lost to bodies by radiation. And consequently there seems to be no need of a body replenishing its supply, as there is no loss. Gravitation seems to be a constant _something_, remaining always with bodies and neither being lost or acquired. It exists between the Atoms, Molecules, Masses–all in the same way. In fact, one is tempted to think of the planets and worlds in space, as Molecules of some greater Mass held together by Gravitation just as are the Molecules held together. Remember, that the Molecules and Atoms are not in absolute contact, _but there is always a “space” between them_, although the space or distance may be “insensible” to us. “As above, so below,” says the old occult aphorism, and it seems to be so.

Then again, Gravitation is believed to act _instantaneously_, and does not require Time to pass between bodies, as does Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism–Radiant Energy. Light travels through the Ether (as light-waves) at the rate of 184,000 miles a second. The same is true of Heat and of Electricity. But Gravitation travels instantaneously. For instance, if a new star were to spring into existence at some inconceivable distance from the earth it would require thousands of years for its light to reach us. But its Attraction of Gravitation would be felt _instantly_. Do you realize what this means? It means that Gravitation is in some way connected with the Ether, or “conveying medium,” that an impulse communicated at some point of space trillions of miles away is felt _at once_ at our point in space, and vice versa. There is some awful mystery here, and the laws of Substance, and Force, as generally understood, do not account for it. And the theories regarding the Ether do not throw light upon it. _But wait a bit!_

But more than this. Science holds that Gravitation _does not require a medium_–that it seems to be its own medium–needing no “Ether” or other medium to transmit its influence. In this respect also, Gravitation differs from the form of Radiant Energy. And more, it is not “cut-off” or interfered with by any intervening body, for its force operates through such intervening bodies. For instance, in an eclipse of the Sun, the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, but the Gravitation is not affected in the slightest, for the bodies would evidence such change immediately were it to occur.

So Gravitation acts instantaneously; is its own medium, and may not be interfered with by an intervening body. It, indeed, is in a different “class” from Light, Heat and Electricity.

And now let us consider the other forms of Attraction.

In the previous chapters we saw that the form of Attraction called “Cohesion” caused the molecules to tend to each other, and to remain in more or less close contact, the differing degrees of Cohesion determining the Density, etc., of the body. Were the Attractive force of Cohesion suddenly removed, the most solid bodies, as well as the lightest ones, would instantly fly into very fine powder, thus being resolved into their constituent molecules. The separation of the Molecules, that is, the “setting further apart,” occasioned by Heat, is spoken of by Physicists as “Repulsion.” But the writer holds that repulsion is an entirely different thing, and that the heat merely causes the Molecules to lose a portion of their Attractive power for each other. Until the heat being withdrawn, the Molecules respond to the uninterrupted Attraction. The Molecules are like lovers who are attracted toward each other, and remain attached unless separated violently, or by some fading of Attraction. Consider Heat as a disturbing element–a “misunderstanding” between the molecular lovers, who under its influence draw somewhat apart, and are only reunited when the obstacle is removed, and harmony again manifested.

As we have shown you in a previous chapter, the so-called “properties” of Matter, _i.e._, Hardness, Tenacity, Malleability, Ductility, etc., are simply evidence of a persistent Cohesiveness of the Molecules–a strong “love” or “desire” for each other that caused them to adopt every possible means in their power to resist, and prevent, the separation of the Molecules forming the mass. It was like a desperate attempt to prevent the “breaking up of the family.”

Each so-called Special Physical Property of Matter is seen to be but the action of the Molecule resisting separation, in obedience to that law of its being called “Attraction,” or “Gravitation,” or “Cohesion,” or “Adhesion”–but which might as fitly be called “Desire,” or “Love.” And, remember, that this law does not seem to be merely one of self-preservation of the Molecule–for it remains intact even after the separation from its companions or family. It is more, for it is a law that causes it to bend all its energies in remaining within “molecular distance” or close companionship with its family, and resisting disintegration. It is like the “social instinct” in Man, if one may be pardoned from using the figure.

Now for the Attraction of the Atoms–“Chemical Affinity,” or “Chemism,” as it is called. An Atom, you know, is the chemical unit of Matter, and the smallest particle of Matter that can enter into combination (leaving the Corpuscle out of the consideration, for the moment). These Atoms exhibit and manifest an Attraction for each other that causes them to form combinations or “marriages,” and thus to combine, forming a molecule. But remember, always, that when Atoms “combine” they do not merge their identities–they simply “marry,” and nothing more. Each atom maintains its own identity, and is found intact if the “marriage” is destroyed by chemical process, which might be called the termination of the molecular marriage, by “divorce,” that is, by one Atom forsaking its mate and seeking a new “affinity” in the shape of some more attractive (or attracting) Atom. For, alas, the Atoms are more or less fickle, and often leave their life-partners for some other fascinating Particle. At times there is manifested a condition of “how happy could I be with either, were t’other fair charmer away”–there is a conflict of attractions.

There is more “flirting” and “affairs of the heart” in the world of Atoms than in the region of the Molecules, for while the latter are apt to seek only the companionship of their own “family,” or some nearly related family, the Atoms have quite a number of possible “affinities,” and will invariably desert a lesser attraction for a greater one (thus forming a new molecule) and leave the deserted one to get along alone as best it may, or else form a new alliance with some other affinity who is either impervious to the attraction of the more brilliant charmer, or else is out of the danger of temptation.

But, if we analyze and carefully consider this “Chemical Affinity,” “Chemism,” we will see that it comes well under the definition of “Attraction” as given by Webster, and quoted in the first part of this chapter. It certainly comes under the rule of “_the power in nature acting mutually between bodies, or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together_,” etc.

The writer thinks that he is justified in asking you to consider Gravitation, Cohesion, Adhesion and Chemical Affinity as related forms of the same thing. If you do not like to call this “same thing” by the name of “Gravitation,” suppose we call it “The Law of Attraction,” of which Gravitation, Cohesion, Adhesion, Chemical Affinity or Chemism are but different aspects. (This “relation” is described in Chapter XIII.)

And the writer believes that this “Law of Attraction” is the underlying cause of all that we call Energy, Force, Power, Motion, etc., in the Physical world. For if “Gravitation” accounts for all “Mass Motion,” or “Mechanical Motion”–if Molecular Cohesion, and the vibrations accompanying it, manifest in forms of “Molecular Motion”–and if Atomic “Chemical Affinity” or “Chemism,” manifest in “Atomic Motion”–and if even the Corpuscles in their movements obey this same “Law of Attraction” in some form–and if all Force and Energy is but a “Mode of Motion”–then, if all this be true, are we not justified in claiming that this “Law of Attraction” is the Basis of All Energy, Force and Motion? And are we not justified in thinking of this “Law of Attraction” as always manifesting in the direction of drawing together particles of Substance–be those particles suns, planets, masses, molecules, atoms or corpuscles–in pursuance of some basic law imposed upon All-things, by That-which-is-above-Things?

The following quotation is interesting, in our consideration of this subject:

“There are other forces besides gravity, and one of the most active of these is chemical affinity. Thus, for instance, an atom of oxygen has a very strong attraction for one of carbon, and we may compare these two atoms to the earth and a stone lodged upon the top of a house. Within certain limits, this attraction is intensely powerful, so that when an atom of carbon and one of oxygen have been separated from each other, we have a species of energy of position just as truly as when a stone has been separated from the earth. Thus by having a large quantity of oxygen and a large quantity of carbon in separate states, we are in possession of a large store of _energy_ of position. When we allowed the stone and the earth to rush together, the _energy_ of position was transformed into that of actual motion, and we should therefore expect something similar to happen when the separated carbon and oxygen are allowed to rush together. This takes place when we burn coal in our fires, and the primary result, as far as _energy_ is concerned, is the production of a large amount of heat. We are, therefore, led to conjecture that heat may denote a motion of particles on the small scale just as the rushing together of the stone and the earth denotes a motion on the large. It thus appears that we may have invisible molecular energy as well as visible mechanical _energy_.”–_Balfour Stewart._

To the writer it seems that the Particle of Substance finds within its Mind-principle (for you know we have seen that all Substance had something akin to Life and Mind) a constant craving, imbedded in its very nature, which causes it to seek Satisfaction. This craving for Satisfaction results in Unrest, and seeks a solution along two lines. These two lines are indicated by two entirely different Desires that it finds within itself–the first being a Desire or Inclination to seek the companionship of some other Particle–the second being a Desire or Inclination to be Free of Attachment or Entanglement.

The Desire for Attachment arises from the force of the Law of Attraction that exists between each Particle of Substance. The Desire for Non-attachment arises from some inward inclination for Freedom. These two Desires or Inclinations may be called the Desire for Impression and the Desire for Expression.

The Desire for Impression (or pressing in) manifests along lines of action tending toward Attachment, Moreness, Companionship, Combination. The Desire for Expression (or pressing out) manifests along the lines of action tending toward Individuality, Freedom, Independence, Unattachment, etc. And both are strong cravings–and both tend to produce Unrest, which results in Motion. The “pull” of the Desire of Impression exists always, and is always modified and counteracted by the “push” of the Desire for Expression. And, resulting from the play of these two Desires, or Forces, result Activity, Motion and Change. Like the two conflicting angels in the Persian mythology–Ahriman and Ormuzd–these two Desires wrestle with each other in the theatre of the Universe–constant Motion and Change being the results.

And, if the writer may be pardoned for dropping into Mysticism for the moment, may it not be that these conflicting Desires for Separateness and Unity, respectively, are but different forms of the Desire for Satisfaction through Oneness. Impression seeks Oneness by combination with other separated Particles, _but finds it not_. Expression seeks Oneness by drawing apart and endeavoring to realize it in that way, _but finds it not_. But both are but different aspects of the same Desire for Satisfaction, and only when the Mind recognizes Oneness in Diversity does Satisfaction come. And thus the lesson of the Particle becomes the Lesson of the Man.

These conflicting Desires of Inclinations of the Particles–the one urging it along the lines of Attraction–the other along the lines of Separation–produce the Dance of the Atoms–the Motion of the Particles.

When the Particle manifests along the lines of Expression it pushes itself away from the other Particle, and, consequently, also pushes the other Particle away. When it manifests along the lines of Impression, it pulls itself toward the other Particle, and at the same time pulls the other Particle toward itself. In both cases the “medium” of the pulling extends over the space separating them, as will be described in future chapters. This pulling and pushing is called by Chemistry “Attraction and Repulsion” of the Particles.

It is perhaps unnecessary to state that the Force of the Attraction of Cohesion or of Chemical Affinity is much stronger than that of Gravitation, in the case of the same Particles. Otherwise, if one picked up a piece of iron, the Attraction of Gravitation would cause its particles to separate and fall to the ground, whereas, the Attraction of Cohesion and that of Chemical Affinity enable the Particles to counteract the pull of Gravitation, and thus remain intact. Compared with Cohesion or Chemical Affinity, the pull of Gravitation is incomparably weak. The force which holds together two atoms of water represents a high degree of dynamic power, and the shock of forcible separation of chemical atoms produces something akin to an explosion. So we see that the Attraction of the Particles, while of the same nature as Gravitation, is much higher in intensity.

But notwithstanding the power of the Attraction, it seems to be a matter inherent in the nature of the Particle, and to represent a something like Will, in response to Desire.

The varying “push and pull” or the two Desires, would necessarily cause a revolution of each Particle on its own axis, and a revolution around each other–besides many instances of rushing together and away from each other. In these forms of Motion is to be found the cause of the vibrations producing Radiant Energy, known as Light, Heat, Electricity and Magnetism.

CHAPTER XI

THE THEORY OF DYNAMIC THOUGHT

From the preceding chapters we have learned that:

(1) The forms of Force or Radiant Energy, known as Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity, are “Modes of Motion,” arising from the Original Motion of the Particles of Substance (Molecules, Atoms, Corpuscles or Electrons). And that such Original Motion of the Particles arises from the Operation of The Law of Attraction;

(2) That the forms of Attractive Force or Energy, known as Gravitation, Cohesion, Adhesion, Atomic Attraction, Chemical Affinity or Chemism, and Corpuscular Attraction, also arise from the operation of the Law of Attraction;

(3) That, from the above, it follows that: All Manifestations of Force and Energy in Inorganic Substance (_viz._, both Radiant Energy in its forms of Light, Heat, Magnetism, Electricity, etc.; and also Attractive Energy in its forms of Gravitation, Cohesion, Adhesion, Chemical Affinity or Atomic Attraction and Corpuscular Attraction) arise from the operation of the Law of Attraction.

It will be well to remember that the fact that some of the above forms of Radiant Force or Energy, such as Heat, Light, Magnetism and Electricity, may arise from Motion transmitted from other Substance, does not alter the matter. For if they arise from “waves” from some other Substance, it merely follows that the Original Motion that gave rise to the “waves” arose from the operation of the Law of Attraction. Or, if they arise from “interrupted Motion,” it merely follows that the Motion that is interrupted may be traced back to Original Motion that arose from the operation of the Law of Attraction. So that all Mechanical Power, and all the forms of Energy or Force producing the same (omitting for the moment the forms of Energy or Force of “Living Organisms,” which will be described later on) arise from the operation of the Law of Attraction.

Now, for the next step. We have seen that the operation of the Law of Attraction results from Vital-Mental Action on the part of the Life and Mind Principle inherent in the nature of the Particles of Substance. Consequently, all forms of Energy and Force arising from the operation of The Law of Attraction–the latter being the result of Vital-Mental Action–then it follows that:

_All forms of Energy and Force having its origin in the Law of Attraction are manifestations of Vital-Mental Action._

But this is not all–for we have not considered the Energy and Force abiding in, and manifested by, what are called “Living Organisms,” such as human, animal and plant life, which are manifested by the physical organisms or “bodies” of man, animal and plant. In order to avoid a long digression into the realms of biology, we will omit all but a passing reference to the theories that seek to identify the action of the cells of organic life with those of the particles of inorganic life–for remember, that Organic Substance has its Molecules, Atoms and Corpuscles, as well as its higher combinations known as “Cells”–and we will seek the ultimate source of all forms of Force and Energy, exhibited by “Organic Life,” in that which lies back of “Physical Action.” We need no argument here–for all will readily recognize that behind the physical action of man, animal and plant, lies Life and Mind, and that therefore all Force and Energy arising from such action must be manifestations of Vital-Mental Action.

And so, summing up our conclusions regarding Force and Energy and Motion in Inorganic Substance–and then in Organic Substance–we arrive at an understanding of the Basic Proposition of the Theory of Dynamic Thought, which is as follows:

BASIC PROPOSITION.–_That All forms and exhibition of Force, Energy, Motion and Power are manifestations of Vital-Mental Action. And that, consequently, at the last there is no Force but Vital-Mental Force; no Energy but Vital-Mental Energy; no Motion but Vital-Mental Motion; no Power but Vital-Mental Power._

It is possible that the average reader will fail to recognize the tremendous importance of the above proposition. It is most revolutionary, and is not only directly opposed to the Materialistic theory which makes Matter the dominant factor–the only factor, in fact–in Life; but it is also far different from the opinion of the average person who has been taught to think of “blind force,” “dead matter,” “mechanical energy,” “power of machinery, engines,” etc. And yet, you are invited to go back over the path that leads up to the theory, and test and examine every bit of the road for weak spots–insecure bridges, etc.–the writer feels that the work will bear examination. He thinks that he has succeeded not only in proving that (1) The Universe is Alive and Thinking; and (2) That Mind is Dominant–but he believes, also, that he has made at least partially understandable the old occult and metaphysical aphorism that has been heard so much in these later days–the statement that “All is Mind–Mind is All.”

The only fact needed now is the proof of the old occult theory that Matter or Substance blends gradually into Mind, and that in the end it is found to have its origin there. So far, Science has not given us this proof, but it begins to look that way, although Science does not dream of what lies at the end of the road she is travelling. She tells us that she sees Matter melting into Force or Energy, and that perhaps the Universe may be found to be Energy or Force, at the last. But she ignores the fact that her investigations have already proven (to those who know how to combine them) that Mind is back of Force–that all Force is Mental Force, at the last. And, so, you see it is not so far a cry from Matter to Mind in these days of the Twentieth Century. The bridge is being erected by the Materialists, but the Mentalist will be the first to cross over it.

But there are many important questions ahead of us for consideration in relation to the Theory of Dynamic Thought. And we must hasten on to them.

One of the first questions that must be considered is that of the transmission of Force, Energy or Motion. Science has told us that Light travels and is “contagious,” that Heat travels and is “contagious,” that Electricity travels and is “contagious,” that Magnetism travels and is “contagious.” But is has failed to find evidences of Cohesive Force, or Adhesive Force, or the Force of Gravitation, or the Force of Chemical Affinity, or the Force of Corpuscular Affinity, being “contagious,” and although it recognizes that they must “travel” beyond the limits of the bodies manifesting them, yet it has hazarded no theory or hypothesis, worthy of the name, to account for the phenomenon. It informs us that Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity “travel” (via waves of the “Ether”) at the rate of 184,000 miles per second–and that when they reach their destination the “Ether waves” set up similar vibrations in the Substance with which they come in contact. The only explanation of the method or medium of “travel” is the “Aristotle’s Ether” Theory, which, while generally accepted as a working hypothesis, nevertheless, brings a broad smile to the face of any thoughtful scientist who considers it in detail. As for the medium of the transmission of Gravitation, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity and Molecular Affinity, Science is mute. All that she says is that Gravitation is believed to travel _instantaneously_ over distances that it takes Light, travelling at the rate of 184,000 miles per second, _over two thousand years_ to travel. Verily, Gravitation defies Scientific theories and estimates, and laughs at the “Ether.” Let us see if the Dynamic Thought Theory throws any light on the subject!

The first step in the solution of the problem of the transferring and communication of Energy is the remembrance of the fact that the Energy is _purely Mental_. Be it Gravitation, Affinity or Attraction, on the one hand–or Light, Heat, Magnetism or Electricity on the other–it is all Mental Force. Attraction in all of its forms has been recognized as Mental Action. And the vibrations that cause Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity have been seen to result from the Law of Attraction, and, therefore, are Mental. This being the case, would it not be wise for us to look for a solution of the transmission of Force and Energy in the region from which it originated–_the Mental Region_? Does not this seem reasonable? Should not the explanation for Mental Effects be sought in a Mental Cause? And should not the medium between Mind and Mind be looked for in the Mental Region?

Taking the liberty of peeping into some of the succeeding chapters of this book–getting a little ahead of the story, as it were–let us consider the operation of Mind in the higher forms of Life. Without argument, or proof at this point, let us remember the well-founded statements of fact–and the old occult teachings as well–that the Mind is not confined to the limits of the body, but extends as an “Aura” for some distance beyond the physical form. Let us also remember the phenomena grouped together under the general subject of “Thought-transference,” “Thought-transmission,” “Telepathy,” or (the best term of all) “Telesthesia” (meaning, literally “far-off sensation”). The writer imagines that he hears the yell of derision go up at this point from the materialistic personage, or “man on the street,” who has been induced to read this book by some well meaning friend. “Thought-transference, Fiddlesticks,” we may hear him cry, in imagination. But let this reader remember–Fiddlesticks, or no Fiddlesticks–that Thought-transmission is a proven fact–and that thousands of people _know_ it to be so, absolutely, from their own experience. It is too late in the day for sneers at the mention of the term.

Well, then, since Force is Mental, and we are looking for a Mental explanation for the phenomenon of Transmission of Force, does it not seem natural to consider Thought-transmission in that connection? Answering a possible objection of some critical reader, to the effect that before a “sensation” may be received, the receiver must have “sense-organs”–a very good objection, but one that is answered by Science itself–let us read on.

Haeckel, the distinguished scientist, in his endeavor to prove that Man’s senses are but a development of something in inorganic life, has called our attention to the fact that Molecules, and Atoms, are capable of “receiving” sensations and “responding” thereto. He makes quite a point of this in his latest works, and remarks, among many other things showing his positive views on the subject of “sensation in the inorganic world”: “_I cannot imagine the simplest chemical and physical process without attributing the movements of the material particles to unconscious sensation_”; and again: “_The idea of chemical affinity consists in the fact that the various chemical elements perceive the qualitative differences in other elements–experience ‘pleasure’ or ‘revulsion’ at contact with them, and execute specific movements on this ground_.” He also quotes, approvingly, the remarks of Nageli, who said: “_If the molecules possess something that is related, however distantly, to sensation, it must be comfortable to be able to follow their attractions and repulsions; uncomfortable when they are forced to do otherwise_.” Haeckel also says that in his opinion _the sensations in animal and plant life are “connected by a long series of evolutionary stages with the simpler forms of sensation that we find in the inorganic elements, and that reveal themselves in chemical affinity_.” Is not this strong enough? Perhaps we may now be permitted at least to “assume” that even the Atoms, Molecules and Corpuscles have “something like sensation.”

Some one may now object that Haeckel speaks of “contact” between the particles, and that sensation by contact (even in an atom) is far different from sensation without contact, at a short distance. Quite right, but if the objector will take the trouble to review the teachings of Science regarding the relation of the Particles, he will see that the Particles are _never “exactly” in contact_, except in moments of collision, which, by the way, they carefully avoid. The Corpuscles, as we have shown, have _”plenty of room” in which to move about_, and they move in orbits around each other. The Atoms combine, _but there is always room between them_, as may be seen by reference to the teachings regarding the “Ether,” which “fills up the cracks” according to the theory. And the Molecules _also have “plenty of room,”_ as may be seen by reference to that part of the subject, particularly to the comparison of the drop of water magnified to the size of the Earth, in which the Molecules would appear about the size of the original drop _with more room between each than their own size_.

In fact, as we have been shown in a previous chapter, the particles are attracted only to a certain distance, at which they resist the impulse or attraction and “stand off” a bit. They will not be forced too near without creating disturbances, and manifestations of force, and if they are separate beyond a certain distance the attractive power ceases to operate. But _there is always some room between them_, and they bridge over that room and exert and receive the attractive power _in some way_. This is true not only of the particles but of the great bodies, like the Earth and planets, that are attracted, and attract over great distances. Now for the question: “How do they exert sense and attractive power over the great comparative distance–great, comparatively, as well in atom, as in planet and sun?”

Some one may answer the question closing the last paragraph with the word “_Electricity_.” Very good–Electricity, like the “Ether,” comes in quite handy when one is forced to explain something not known. “Electricity,” like the “Glacial Period,” “Aristotle’s Ether,” “Natural Laws,” and “Suggestion,” is a most handy weapon of argument, and often acts as a preventative to further inquiry and investigation until some sufficiently irreverent of precedent arises to ask, “But Why and How?” and starts the ball rolling again.

But “Electricity” will not answer in this case, for the rate of the “travel” of Electricity is well known–184,000 miles per second, which, fast as it is, assumes the crawl of a “slow-freight” when compared with the “instantaneous” rate of travel of Gravitation. And then Electricity requires a “medium” and Gravitation does not, and in many other ways the two are seen to be totally different. And in the case of the Space between the Atom and Molecule and Corpuscle, it is no more reasonable to say “Electricity” than it would be to say “Heat” or “Light”; and “Magnetism” is not available for obvious reasons. Remember that Electricity, Light and Heat are _caused_ by Motion resulting from Attraction, and _the child cannot procreate the parent_. Heat, Light and Electricity may beget each other (and they do). And Gravitation may procreate Heat, Light and Electricity. But Heat, Light and Electricity _cannot procreate Gravitation_–Never! And Light, Heat and Electricity require replenishing from the common source of Energy, but Gravitation is self-sufficient and asks no replenishing or storage-battery or power-house. Electricity, Heat and Light come and go, appearing, manifesting and disappearing, swallowed up by each other, or by Substance. But Gravitation is always there–unchangeable–unwavering–immutable–invariable–Something above Matter and Force–something majestic, awe-inspiring, sublime! Does it take a wild flight of the imagination to see that this Something, that is not Matter, and nor Force, _must be a manifestation of Mind_?

Let us first apply this idea of Thought-transference to the operation of the Law of Attraction between the Corpuscles, Atoms and Molecules of Substance–the Particles of Substance. The particles are believed to move to or away from each other in accordance with the workings of Attraction and Affinity, in its various degrees. First they must _desire_ to move–not Desire in the developed sense that we feel it, but still elementary “feeling,” or “inclination,” or “tendency”–call it what you will, but it remains rudimentary Mental Emotion–an E-motion leading to Motion. (This is not a pun–look up the meaning of the word Emotion and you will see its application.)

Then, following the Desire, comes the action in the direction of gratifying it. The Particles act to gratify Desire in two ways–acting at a “distance,” remember–they exert the Attractive Force, which the writer believes to be Mental Force, _transmitted by Mind, projection_, a mental or psychic bond or connection being thus established. By means of this bond of Mind, the Particle endeavors to (1) draw itself to the object; and (2) to draw the object toward itself. In the case of the Molecule, this Desire and Movement seems to be mutual, and evidenced by and to all Molecules alike, _providing they be within Molecular Distance_, as Science calls it. But in the case of the Atoms, it seems to be different–for there is found a greater degree of “choice,” or “elective affinity.” This “election” or “choice” is not altogether free, but depends upon the relative likes and dislikes of certain “kinds” of elements, as we have seen in previous chapters, although, to be sure, these Elements are all made out of the same “stuff” in different combinations.

The details of Corpuscular Attraction are not known, so it cannot be told whether “preferences” exist, or whether (in the words of the street) all Corpuscles “look alike” to each other. It would appear, however, that there must be some reasons for preference, among the Corpuscles, else they would always form in the same combinations–always act alike to each other, as they are alike in other actions–and thus there would be but _one_ Element or kind of Atom, formed, instead of the _seventy-five_, already known. To be sure, in this case, it _might_ be that the _one_ kind of Atom formed would be the Atom of Hydrogen, and that all other Elements, or Atoms, were modifications of that one–just proving the dream of the Scientists of the Nineteenth Century. But, as Kipling would say, “that is another story.”

To return to the Particle which we left trying to draw the other Particle to itself, and itself toward the other. There is no _material_ connection between them (and Electricity and Magnetism will not answer), so what is to be done? Evidently the Particle knows, for it exerts _a “drawing” power or force by means of the Mental-connection_, and two come together. The Particle evidently is able to exert a repelling or “moving away” power by reversing the process, the Mental-bond acting as the medium. This may cause a smile, because we have never seen an instance of bodies pulling themselves together by intangible “bonds.” _Haven’t we?_ Then how about two pieces of magnetised steel, or two electrified substances? Oh, that’s different, you say. _Why, different?_ Isn’t _the bond intangible_? And, haven’t we seen that both Electricity and Magnetism were Mental Actions also? Oh,–er–but well,–oh yes, _that’s_ it–perhaps the Attracting Force is Magnetism or Electricity. No, that will not do, for we have seen that Electricity and Magnetism were _products_ of this Attraction, not _producers_ of it–the Attraction must come _before_ Electricity and Magnetism, not _after_ them–you are mixing Cause and Effect. And, even if you were right–and you cannot be–wouldn’t the Electrical or Magnetic Force be _called into operation, and directed by the Mental Action_, arising from the Desire? You cannot get away from Mental Action when you study the Law of Attraction.

“But, how about the fact that Heat causes the Particles to change their vibrations, and draw apart, and all that sort of thing–and Electricity, likewise?” you may ask. “Surely this takes the matter away from Mental Action, doesn’t it?” Well, the writer thinks that the phenomenon referred to only helps to prove his theory. And he will endeavor to so prove to you.

The consideration of the facts related in this chapter, leads us to a supplemental proposition to our Basic Proposition, which may be stated as follows:

SUPPLEMENTAL PROPOSITION I.–_Not only is the Law of Attraction the manifestation of a Mental Process, or Vital-Mental Action; but also the actual Force or Energy used in bringing the Particles of Substance in closer relation, in accordance with that Law, is in its nature a Vital Mental Force or Energy, operating between bodies or particles of Substance, without a material medium._

CHAPTER XII

THE LAW OF VIBRANT ENERGY

In previous chapters we have seen that the phenomena of Radiant Energy, known as Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity, had their origin in the Motion of the Particles, the different classes of phenomena depending upon the particular degree and nature of the aforesaid Motion of Particles.

We have seen also that Radiant Energy could be communicated or transmitted from one body of Substance to another. And that the communication of transmission might be accomplished not only by close contact of the bodies, but by “waves” of some sort which were caused in some “medium” (the Ether) by the vibrations of the Particles of the body, and which “waves,” when they reached the other body, were transformed into vibrations of the Particles corresponding to those manifested in the first body. The idea has been illustrated by the sending telephone, the sound waves in the diaphragm of which were transformed into waves of the Electric current, and thus passing along the wires were transformed again into sound-waves by the diaphragm of the receiving instrument.

We have seen, also in the preceding chapter, that the medium by which these vibrations were transferred, transmitted, or communicated, might be supposed to be Mind, the operation being akin to Thought-transference. Now let us examine into the workings of the matter.

In the first place, we assume a certain state of vibration, existing in a certain body of Substance–Heat, or Electricity for instance (either illustration will answer.) Another body of Substance is brought in close contact with the first body, and the vibrations of Energy pass on to the second, not by “waves” but by a seeming actual passing of vibrations without the need of intervening “waves.” This, Science calls transmission by Conduction, the theory being that the particles rapidly “pass on” the vibrations from one to another. Convection or conduction along other forms of Substance, such as hot-air, hot-water-steam, etc., is but a variation of the above, as Substance is the medium in both cases. The third form of transmission is by Radiation, whereby the vibrations are transmitted by “waves” in some medium other than Substance (according to the theory), as we have described in a preceding paragraph, as well as in previous chapters. As a matter of fact, a careful analysis of the matter will show that even in the “Conduction” of the most solid Substance, there must be a “_medium not Substance_” between the Particles of the Substance, _for the Particles always have Space between them_–this being true of the Particles of Air, as well as those of Iron. _So there is always Space to be traversed by a “medium not Substance.”_ But we need not stop to split-hairs regarding this question, for the general explanation will explain this also.

Now, to get back to our body of Substance vibrating with Radiant Energy, separated from a second body of Substance by a great distance–thousands of miles in fact–millions would be better–let us take two worlds, for instance–the Sun and the Earth. Ignoring for the moment the explanation of Gravitations (which will be given later) and realizing that there _is no medium of Substance_ existing between the two bodies, we must grant that there is a “_medium not Substance_” existing between them, either permanently or thrown out for the purpose of this special transmission. We shall assume a medium existing before the need of the transmission (for reasons to be seen later.) Our Theory of Dynamic Thought, and Thought-Transference between bodies of Substance, compels us to suppose that this medium _is a Mental Connection, or Mental Relation, existing between the two bodies of Substance_. So, we must consider the question of this medium of Mind transmitting the vibrations of Radiant Energy from the Sun to the Earth. How can Mind conduct Radiant Energy? _It does not conduct Radiant Energy_, but it does _transmit_–not Radiant Energy–but the _Mental State that causes Radiant Energy Vibrations_.

This statement of a “Mental State causing Radiant Energy Vibrations” seems rather startling at first sight–but let us examine it. We have seen that the Radiant Energy was caused by the Motion or Vibrations of the Particles, which Motion or Vibration was the result of the workings of the Law of Attraction, and which Law was but the manifestation of Vital-Mental Action. And, at the last, the Vibrations of Radiant Energy are the result of peculiar or particular “states” of the Life and Mind of the Particle. The word “State” is derived from the Latin word _Status_, meaning “position; standing,” and is used generally in the sense of “condition.”

This Mental State of the Particle may be described as a state of “_Emotional Excitement_.” Let us pause a moment to consider the meaning of these words–it often helps us to understand a subject, if we examine the real meaning of the words defining it. “Emotion” is derived from the Latin word _Emotum_, meaning “to shake; to stir up”–the Latin word being made up of two other words, _i.e._, _E_, meaning “out”; and Motum, “to move.” “Emotion” is defined as “a moving or excitement of the mind.” “Excitement” is derived from the Latin word _Excitare_, meaning “to move out”–the English word being defined as “a calling to Activity; state of Active feeling; aroused Activity.” So you see that the idea of _Active Motion_, and _Aroused Activity_, of Mind, permeates the term “Emotional Excitement,” that is used by the writer in connection with the Mental State causing vibration of the Particles of Substance. The single word, “Excitement,” will be used by the writer, hereafter, in the above connection, in order to avoid complex terms. To those who still object to the use of a mental term in reference to motion of Substance, he might remark that Science makes use of the term–“Excite,” and “Excitement”–in reference to Electrical phenomena, so that he is not altogether without support in the use of the word.

Now to return again to our body of Substance–the Sun–the Particles of which are manifesting a great degree of “Excitement,” evidencing in Vibrations producing the phenomenon of Radiant Energy. The excitement is shared equally by its Particles, the “contagion” having spread among them. Even the Particles of its atmosphere are vibrating with Excitement, and evidencing Radiant Energy. The Sun is in direct Mental Connection with the Earth (as we shall see presently) and the Excitement is transmitted by Thought-Transference (along this Mental Connection) in the shape of Dynamic Thought-waves of Excitement. These waves have a rate of speed of 184,000 miles per second–why this particular rate, or any rate at all, is not apparent; it being very evident, however, that this particular kind of Mental Action–Excitement, or Thought–is not transmitted _instantaneously_ as is the Mental Quality known as Desire, resulting in Attraction, or Gravitation, which seems to be rather a Basic quality, rather than a temporary disturbance or emotional excitement. But the writer must not get ahead of his story.

The Excitement of the Particles of Substance composing the Sun is “contagious,” and the Thought-waves travel along the Mental Connection, or medium, at a wonderful rate of speed. Soon they come in contact with the Mental Atmosphere of the Earth and the Excitement becomes manifest in Action, the Emotional Excitement being reproduced by the Particles of the Earth’s Substance nearest the surface which vibrate and manifest the Radiant Energy in spite of themselves, for the tendency among Particles is to “settle down,” and remain “calm,” rather than to participate in Emotional Excitement. They have acquired a normal and fixed rate of Vibration, or Mental State, after many years, gradually changing from a high state of Excitement, to a comparative calm state. And, their tendency and inclination is Conservative, and they are disposed to resent and repel Radical states of Excitement or Disturbance, coming from other less Conservative Bodies.

The above fact partially explains why the communicated Excitement manifests itself more strongly on the surface of the body “exposed” to the contagion of Excitement. The Conservative influence is always at work, and manages to absorb and equally distribute the Energy that is beating down upon it, without allowing it to penetrate very far. The Energy is used-up or absorbed, and neutralized by the lower vibrations of the Mass. The effort of the Energy coming from the sending Body is to “bring-up” the vibrations of the receiving body to the rate of the sender; while the effort of the receiving body is to resist this effort, and to reduce and “bring-down” the transmitted increased rate of vibration of the Particles immediately exposed to the contagion. In both cases the effort is toward “equalization” of the rate of vibrations. This working of the law may be observed plainly in the case of Heat vibrations–the Energy seeming to wish to “bring-up” the vibrations or temperature of the second body, while the latter resists this effort, and strives to “bring-down” the vibrations or temperature of those Particles of itself that have “caught the Motion.” The Energy is like a Radical Agitator who wishes to stir up an Excitement, leading to “a change,” while the Body is like the Conservative element that prefers to “let well enough alone,” and resists the stirring-up process, and exerts itself to restore quiet, and to maintain accustomed conditions.

The explanation of the phenomenon given in any work on Physics or Natural Philosophy will answer fairly well in the consideration of this Theory of Dynamic Thought, the only important change being required, being the substitution of “Thought-waves” for “Waves of the Ether” of Science. Science has described the “working operations,” as might be expected from her years of careful study and examination. She has erred only in the Theory or Hypothesis advanced to account for the facts. Her “Ether” handed down by Aristotle, is admitted by her to be paradoxical and “unthinkable”–but she has had none other to substitute for it. She will probably sneer at the Dynamic Thought, and Thought-Transference theory advanced in this book–if indeed she takes the trouble to examine it. But sometime, from her own ranks–among her most advanced members–will arise a man who will claim that “All Force is Mental Force,” and that “Transference of Energy is Thought Transference.” And the Scientific World will accept the doctrine after it finds itself unable to fight it down–and it will give new names and terms to its workings. And it will proclaim loudly the “new” Truth. And this little book, and its writer will be ignored–but its work will go on. The writer although probably doomed to have himself and his theory laughed at by the masses of people (whose children will accept the teachings of this book) does not feel discouraged by the prospect. He cares nothing for personal credit–the truth being the important thing. Like Galvini, (whose words appear on the title page of this book) he may cry: “_I am attacked by two very opposite sects–the scientists and the know-nothings. Both laugh at me, calling me the ‘Frog’s Dancing Master,’ but I know that I have discovered one of the greatest Forces in Nature._” The illustration given above of the transmission of the Excitement of the Particles of the Sun to the Particles of the Earth, will answer equally well in the case of Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity. And it will answer in the case of the transmission of these Forces between Atoms, Molecules, and Masses as well as between Worlds and Solar Systems. Any bodies subject to the Law of Attraction may and do, so transmit Vibrations. In our consideration of “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” which forms the subject of the next chapter, we shall obtain further particulars of the workings of the Law.

The consideration of the facts and principles stated in this chapter brings us to a second Supplemental Proposition, which may be stated as follows:

SUPPLEMENTAL PROPOSITION II.–_The rates of vibration of the Particles of Substance may be likened to “Mental States”; and a high degree of the same may be called an “Excitement.” This “Excitement” may be, and is, communicated from the Particles of the body manifesting it, to the Particles of other bodies–the medium of such communication being a Mental Connection or Mental Relation existing between the two bodies of Substance, without the employment of any material medium–and which Excitement, so communicated, reproduces in the second body the vibrations manifested in the first body, subject, always, to the counteracting efforts of the second body to maintain its accustomed, and former, rate of vibration, and Mental State._

CHAPTER XIII

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

It is with no light emotion, or jaunty air, that the writer approaches this part of his subject. On the contrary, he feels something like awe when he contemplates the nature of that great Something which he is called upon to attempt to “explain” in a few pages. He feels, in only a lighter degree, the emotion that one experiences when, in occasional moments, his mind leads to a contemplation of The Infinite. He feels that that which men mean when they say “Gravitation” and “The Ether,” are but symbols and feeble concepts of Something so far above human experience that the Mind of Man may grasp only its lowest shadings, the greater and higher part of it, like the higher rays of the Spectrum, being hidden from the experience of Man.

In his endeavor to pass on to you his ideas regarding the Something that explains both Gravitation and the Ether, he must ask you to endeavor to form a Mental Picture of a “Something.” This Something must fill all Space within the Limits of the Universe, or Cosmos–if limits it has. It must be an expression of the first of the attributes of The Infinite–the one called Omnipresence, or Presence-everywhere–and _yet it must not be The Infinite Presence_. It also must be an expression of the second of the attributes of the Infinite–the one called Omnipotence, or All-Power–and _yet it must not be The Infinite Power_. It also must be an expression of the third attribute of The Infinite–the one called Omniscience, or All-Knowing–and _yet it must not be The Infinite Wisdom_. It must be an expression of All the Attributes that _we think of_ as belonging to The Infinite–_and yet through them All we may see The Infinite, Itself, in the background, viewing its expressions_.

This Something that you are asked to think of is that Something regarding which the mystics have dreamed; the philosophers have speculated; the scientists have sneered and smiled–that Something that Men have thought of as The Universal Mind or the Cosmic Mind.

You are asked to think of this Something as a great Ocean of Pure Mind, permeating all Space–between Solar Systems–between Worlds–between Masses of Substance–between the Molecules, Atoms, and Corpuscles. In and about and around everything–yes, even in Everything–in the very essence of the Corpuscle it is–in truth _it is that Essence itself_.

Bound up in the bosom of that Mighty Ocean of Mind must reside all Knowledge of the Universe–of all “this side of God.” For that All-Knowledge is but a knowing of its own region. Latent within itself must be locked up all Energy, or capacity for Force or Motion, for all Force or Energy is Mental. In its very presence it exemplifies the capacity of filling All Space. Omnipresent; Omnipotent; Omniscient–all the attributes of The Infinite are manifested in it–_and yet it is but the outward expression of That-Behind-the-Veil, which is the Causeless Cause of All_.

In that Great Ocean of Universal or Cosmic Mind, bodies of Substance are but as floating specks of dust–_or even bubbles formed of the substance of that Ocean itself_–on the surface of that Ocean, there may arise waves, currents, ripples, eddies, whirlpools,–storms, hurricanes, tempests,–from its bosom may rise vapor, that after stages of clouds, rain-drops, flowing in streams, rivers, bays, at last again reach the source of its origin. These disturbances and changes we call Energy, Force, Motion–but they are but surface manifestations, and the Great Ocean is serene in its depths, and, in reality, is unchanged and undisturbed.

This, friends, is that which the writer asks you to accept in the place of Aristotle’s Ether. Is it a worthy exchange?

* * * * *

We have seen that the Attraction of Gravitation was different from any other so-called form of Force and Energy–both in its operations and laws, as well as in its constancy and self-support. And that it was different from the other forms of Attraction such as Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, etc. And, so we must consider it as more than a mere “Emotional Excitement” in the Mind of the Particle–that bubble on the surface of the Ocean. And it must be different from the special forms of Attraction manifested by the Atom and Molecule. It must be a simpler, more basic, and yet a more constant and permanent thing. It must exist before and after “Excitement; Vibration; Cohesion; and Chemical Affinity.” _It must be the Mother of the Forces._

Let us imagine the Cosmic Mind as a great body of Something filling Space, instead of as the surface of the Ocean, which figure we used just now–either figure is equally correct. This great Cosmic Mind is to be thought of as filling Space, and containing within its volume (Oh, for a better word!) countless worlds, and suns, as well as smaller bodies of Substance. These suns and world, and bodies are apparently free and unconnected, floating in this great volume of Mind. But they are not free and unconnected–they are linked together by a web of lines of Gravitation. Each body of Substance has a line reaching out in a continuous direction, and connecting it with another body. Each body has one of such lines connecting it with _each_ particular “other body.” Consequently, each body has countless lines reaching out from it; some slender, and some thick,–the thickness depending upon the ratio of distances maintained by, and relative sizes of, the particular bodies that it connects. This system of “lines” form a great net-work of connections in the volume of Mind, crossing each other at countless points (but not interfering with each other.) And although the number may be said to be “countless,” still these lines do not begin to cover the entire dimensions of Space, or of the Mind that fills it. There are great areas of Space entirely untouched by these lines. If one could see the system of lines, it probably would appear as a sheared off section of a great spider’s web, with lines in all directions, but with “plenty of room” between the lines. _Perhaps these lines converge to a common centre, and that centre may be—-!_ But this is transcendental dreaming–let us proceed with our consideration of the use of these lines.

It is to be understood, of course, that these “lines” _are not material_ lines–not made of Substance–but rather, “conditions” in the Cosmic Mind. Not Thought-waves arising from the Excitement of Particles, but Something more basic, simpler, and more permanent. Let us look closer and we will see that the great lines of Gravitation radiating from, and connecting world with world–sun with planet–are really cables composed of much smaller lines, the finest strands of which are seen to emanate from each Corpuscle or Particle of Substance–the “line” of Gravitation reaching from the Earth to the Sun being composed of a mass of tiny strands which connect each Particle of one body with each Particle of the other. The last analysis shows us that _each Particle is connected with every other Particle in the Universe by a line of Attraction_.

_These “Lines of Attraction” are what we call Gravitation_–purely Mental in nature–Lines of Mind-Principle in the great volume of mind.

These lines of Gravitation must have existed from the creation of the Particle, and the connection between Particle and Particles must have existed from the beginning, if beginning there was. The Particles may have changed their positions and relations in the Universe, but the lines have never been broken. Whether the Particle existed as a free Corpuscle–whether combined as Atom or Molecule–whether part of this world or sun or planet, or that one countless millions of miles removed–it mattered not. The Line of Gravitation always was there, between that Particle and every other Particle. Distance extended and thinned the line, or the reverse, as the case might be–but it was there, always. Obstacles proved no hindrance to passage, for the lines passed through the obstacle. Can it not be seen that here is the secret of the fact that no “time” is required for the passage of Gravitation–it apparently traveling instantaneously, whereas, in fact, it does not “travel” at all. And does not seem that this theory also explains why no medium is required for the “travel” of Gravitation? And does it not explain why Gravitation is not affected in its “passage” by intervening bodies? Gravitation does not “travel” or “pass”–it remains constant, and ever present between the articles, varying in degree as the distance between the Particles is increased, and _vice-versa_; and increasing and decreasing in effect, according to the number of Particles combining their lines of Attraction, as in the case of Atom, Molecule, Mass, World. Gravitation is a Mental Connection or Bond uniting the Mind in the several Particles, rather than their Substance or Material.

Along these lines of Gravitation pass the “Thought-waves,” resulting from the Excitement of the Particles–these fleeting, changing, inconstant waves of Emotion–how different they are from the changeless, constant exhibition of Gravitation. And along these same lines–when shortened by close contact, travel the impulses of Cohesion and Chemical Affinity. Gravitation not only performs its own work, but also acts as a “common-carrier” for the waves of Desire-Force, and the Thought-waves of Excitement of the Particles, manifesting as Attractive Energy, and Radiant Energy, respectively.

The writer asks you to remember, particularly, that while the Desire-waves of the Particles,–and their Thought-waves of Excitement–are changeable, disconnected, and inconstant; the Line of Gravitation is never broken, and could not be unless the Particle of Substance was swept out of existence, in which case the balance of the Universe would be overturned, and chaos would result. The Divine Plan is perfect to the finest detail–every Particle is needed–is known–is counted–and used in the Plan. And Gravitation is the plainest evidence of the REALITY of The Infinite that is afforded us. _In it we see the actual machinery of The Infinite._ No wonder that great thinkers have bowed their heads reverently before its Power and Awfulness, when their minds have finally grasped its import. Verily the sparrow’s fall is noted, and known, as the Biblical writer has recorded, for the fall is in obedience to that great Law that holds the Particles in their places–that makes possible the whirl of worlds, and the existence of Solar Systems–that, indeed, makes possible the Forms of Life as we know them–that Something that forever and ever has, and will, silently, ceaselessly, untiringly, and without emotion, fulfilled its work and destiny–GRAVITATION.

* * * * *

The Theory of Dynamic Thought also holds that in addition to the existence of the Cosmic Mind, or Ocean of Mind-principle–and the Lines of Attraction that run through it, each particle has its Mental Atmosphere, or Aura. The Aura is an Atmosphere of Mind that surrounds the Particle–and also the larger bodies–and also living forms higher in the scale. This Aura is merely an extension of the bit of Mind that is segregated or apparently separated from the Cosmic Mind, for use by the individual Particle, Mass, or Creature. Through, and by means of this Aura the Particle takes cognizance of the approach and nature of the other Particles in its vicinity. The same rule holds good in the case of the Creatures, including Man, as we shall see in a later chapter. The fact is mentioned here, merely in order to connect the several manifestation of Mental Phenomena mentioned in the several parts of this book.

* * * * *

Some may object to the Theory of the Lines of Gravitation being the only “carriers” of the Energy of the Sun, as being contrary to the conception of Science that the Sun radiates Energy _in all directions equally_, just as does a piece of hot iron, or a lamp. Answering this objection, the writer would say that there is a decided difference in the two cases. The iron or lamp radiates its heat and light to the particles of the surrounding air and other Substance in close distance, the “lines” being very close together,–so close in fact that they seem to be continuous and having no space between them, at least no Space sufficiently large to be detected by the eye of Man, or his instruments. But with the Sun the case is different, for the distances are greater and the lines spread apart as the distance is increased. Draw a diagram of many fine rays emanating from a central point, and you will have the idea at once. If Space were filled with Substance, just as is the Atmosphere of the Earth–the Air, is meant of course–then indeed would the lines practically be joined together, but as Space between the worlds is almost devoid of Substance, the lines between the Sun and the other worlds, and planets, spread out rapidly as the distance from the Sun increases.

To show how this objection is really an additional proof of the Theory the writer begs to call your attention to the fact that according to the calculations of the physicists in Science, the Sun’s energy would have been exhausted in 20,000,000 years, granting that it was dispersed equally in all directions during that time. But, _note this_, Science in its other branches, namely in Geology, etc., holds that the Sun already has been throwing out energy for 500,000,000 or more years, and seems able to stand the strain for many millions of years more. Thus Science is arrayed against Science. Does not this Theory harmonize the two, by showing that the Sun does _not_ emanate Energy in _all_ directions, equally, and at all times–but, on the contrary radiates Energy _only along the lines of Gravitation, and in proportion to the relative distances and sizes of the bodies to whom such Energy is radiated_?

The writer need scarcely state that in the short space at his disposal, in the pages of this book, he has been able merely to outline his Theory of Dynamic Force, as applied to the Inorganic World. The patience of the average reader has limits–and he must pass on to other features of the workings of the theory, namely the Mental Life of Man, in which the same laws are manifested. But, he feels that those interested in the phases of the subject touched upon, may explain for themselves the missing details by reference to the teachings of Modern Science on the subjects of Physics, remembering, _always_, to substitute the Theory of Dynamic Thought for the “Ether” theory that Modern Science borrows from Aristotle as a temporary “makeshift.” The writer believes that this Theory will account for many of the missing links in Physics–a broad statement, he knows, and one either extremely impudent or superbly confident, according to the view-point of the critic.

* * * * *

The writer may be able to throw a little additional light, probably, upon the question of the relation between Gravitation, and the Excitement-waves of Radiant Energy. Without attempting to go into details, he wishes to suggest that in view of the fact that the Particles are connected by the “Lines of Gravitation,” any great, extended, and rapid disturbance of a number of Particles would cause a series of undulating or wave-like movements in the “lines,” which might be spoken of as waves of “Agitation or Unrest” in the Lines of Gravitation. This Agitation, or Unrest, of course, would be thus communicated to all other Particles toward whom lines extended, the intensity or effect of such Agitation or Unrest depending upon the relative distances, and the number of Particles involved. We may easily imagine how the intense and high rate of vibration among the Particles of the Sun, manifesting as intense Heat, would cause a like high degree of Agitation or Unrest among the Lines of Gravitation–the “lines” dancing backward and forward; around and about; following the movements of the Particles, and thus producing “waves” of Gravitational Agitation and Unrest, which when communicated to the Particles of the Earth, would produce a similar Excitement among the Particles of the latter. In the same way the “Sun-spots,” and consequent terrestial electrical disturbance may be explained.

While not absolutely tying himself to this particular conception of the details of the workings of the law, the writer feels free to say that he considers it a very reasonable idea, and one that in all probability will be found to come nearer to explaining the phenomena, than any other hypothesis. It certainly coincides with the “undulatory wave” theory of Science. The idea is but crudely expressed here, for lack of space, it being impossible to attempt to go into details–the mere mention of general principles being all that is possible at this time and place.

* * * * *

And now, for a few additional words on the subject of our theory that in place of the hypothetical Ether of Science–a Substance that is not Substance–there exists a great Ocean of Cosmic Mind. The idea is not without coroborative proof in the direction of the thought of advanced thinkers even among the ranks of Science.

While Science has accustomed the public to the idea that in the Universal Ether might be found the origin of Matter–the essence of Energy–the secret of Motion–it has not spoken of “Mind,” in connection with this Universal Something. But the idea is not altogether new, and some daring Scientific thinkers have placed themselves on record regarding same. Let us quote from a few of them–it will make smoother our path.

_Edward Drinker Cope_, in several of his writings, hinted at the idea that _the basis of Life and Consciousness lay back of the Atoms, and might be found in the Universal Ether_.

_Dolbear_ says: “_Possibly the Ether may be the medium through which Mind and Matter react_.”

_Hemstreet_ says: “_Mind in the Ether is no more unnatural than Mind in flesh and blood_.”

_Stockwell_ says: “The Ether is coming to be apprehended as an _immaterial_, superphysical substance, filling all space, carrying in its infinite throbbing bosom the specks of aggregated dynamic force called worlds. _It embodies the ultimate spiritual principle_, and represents the unity of those forces and energies from which spring, as their source, all phenomena, physical, _mental and spiritual_, as they are known to man.”

_Dolbear_ speaks of the Ether as a substance, which, besides the function of energy and motion, has other inherent properties “_out of which could emerge, under proper circumstances, other phenomena, such as life, or mind or whatever may be in the substratum_.”

_Newton_ spoke of it as a “_subtle spirit, or immaterial substance_.” _Dolbear_ says: “The Ether–the properties of which _we vainly strive to interpret in the terms of Matter_, the undiscovered properties of which ought to warn every one against the danger of strongly asserting what is possible and what is impossible in the nature of things.”

_Stockwell_ says: “That the Ether _is not Matter in any of its forms_, practically all scientists are agreed. _Dolbear_, again, says: If the Ether that fills all space is not atomic in structure, presents no friction to bodies moving through it, and is not subject to the law of gravitation, it _does not seem proper to call it Matter_. One might speak of it as a substance if he wants another name for it. As for myself, I make _a sharp distinction between the Ether and Matter_, and feel somewhat confused to hear one speak of the Ether as Matter.”

And yet, in spite of the above expressions, no Scientist has dared to say in plain words that the Ether, or whatever took the place of the Ether, _must be Mind_, although several seem to be on the verge of the declaration, but apparently afraid to voice their thought.

* * * * *

In view of what we have seen in our consideration of the facts and principles advanced in this chapter, we are invited to consider the following two Supplemental Propositions:

SUPPLEMENTAL PROPOSITION III.–_Connecting each Particle of Substance with each and every other Particle of Substance, there exists “lines” of Mental Connection, the “thickness” of which depends upon the distance between the two particles, decreasing in proportion as the distance is increased. These “lines” may be considered as “conditions” of the great Ocean of Cosmic Mind which pervades and fills all Space, including the essence or inner being of the Particles of Substance, as well as the space between the said Particles. These “lines” are the “Lines of Gravitation,” by and over which the phenomenon of Gravitation is manifested. These Lines of Gravitation have always existed between each Particle and every other Particle, and have persisted continuously and constantly, throughout all the changes of condition, and position, and relation, that the Particles have undergone. There is no “passage” or “transmission” of Energy or Force of Gravitation over these lines, or any other channel, but, on the contrary the Energy or Force of Gravitation is a constant and continuous Mental Connection or Bond existing between the Mind of the Particles, rather than between their Substance or Material._

SUPPLEMENTAL PROPOSITION IV.–_The Lines of Gravitation, mentioned in the preceding proposition, are the medium over which travel, or are transmitted the “Thought-waves” resulting from the Excitement of the Particles, and by which waves the “Mental States” are communicated or transmitted. The same medium transmits or carries the Mental Force of Attraction–Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, etc., evidencing in the relation of the Particles to each other. Thus Gravitation not only performs its own work, but also acts as a “common carrier” for the “waves of Excitement,” manifesting as Radiant Energy; and the waves of Desire-Force, manifesting as Attractive Energy._

* * * * *

And here, the writer rests his case in the action in the Forum of Advanced Thought, entitled “_The Theory of Dynamic Thought vs. The Theory of Aristotle’s Ether_,” in which he appears for the Plaintiff. He begs that you, the members of the jury, will give to the evidence, and argument, due consideration, to the end that you may render a just verdict.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MYSTERY OF MIND

The writer, in this book, has treated the two manifestations of Life, _viz._, Mind and Substance, as if they were separate things, although he has hinted at his belief that Substance, at the last, might be found to emanate from Mind, and be but a cruder form of its expression. The better way to express the thought would be to say that he believes that both Substance, and Mind _as we know it_, are but expressions of a form of Mind as much higher than _that which we know as Mind_, as the latter is higher than Substance. But he does not intend to follow up this belief, in this book, as the field of the work lies along other lines. The idea is mentioned here, merely for the purpose of giving a clew to those who might be interested in the conclusions of the writer, regarding this more remote regions of the general subject.

The writer agrees with the Ancient Occult Teachings regarding the existence of The Cosmic Mind, as he has stated in the last chapter. This Cosmic Mind, he believes, is independent of Substance, in fact it is the Mother of Substance, and its twin-brother, _Mind as we know it_.

_Mind, as we know it_, and Substance are always found in connection with other. It is true that the form of Substance, used by Mind as its body, may be far finer than the rarest vapor that we know, but it is Substance nevertheless. The working of the Great Plan of the Universe seems to require that Mind shall always have a body with which to work, and this rule applies not only in the case of the densest form of Substance and the Mind-principle manifesting through it, but also in the case of the highest manifestation of Mind, as we know it, which requires a body through which to manifest.

This constant combination of Mind and Substance–the fact that no Substance has been found without at least a trace of Mind, and no Mind except in relation to and combination with Substance, has led many scientific thinkers to accept the Materialistic idea that Mind was but a property of Substance, or a quality thereof. Of course, these philosophers and thinkers have had to admit that they could form no idea of the real nature of Mind, and could not conceive how Substance really _could_ “think,” but they found the Materialistic idea a simpler one that its opposite, and so they fell into it. Notwithstanding the fact that there was always a Something Within that would cry “Pshaw!” at the conclusion of the argument or illustration, these men have thought it reasonable to believe that there was no such thing as Mind, except as a result of “irritation of tissue,” etc. But, nevertheless, there is always a Something in us that, in spite of argument, keeps crying like a child, “_’taint so_!” And, wonderful to relate, we heed the little voice.

This Materialistic theory is a curious reversal of the facts of the case. Even the very conclusions and reasoning of these thinkers is made possible only by the existence of that Mind which they would deny. The human reason is incapable of “explaining” the inner operation of the Mind, upon a strictly and purely physical basis. _Tyndall_, the great English scientist, truthfully said, “_the passage from the physics of the brain, to the corresponding facts of consciousness, is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action of the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other._”

The Materialist is prone to an attempt to rout the advocates of “Mind” with a demand for an answer to the question, “What is Mind?” The best answer to that question lies along the proverbial Irishman’s lines of answering a question by asking another one, resulting in the “answering question,” “What is _Matter_?” As a fact, the human reason is unable to give an intelligent answer to either question, and the best opinion seems to be to consider them as but two aspects of Something, the real origin of which lies in Something Higher, of which both are aspects or forms of expression.

The Occult Teaching, with which the writer agrees, is that the “Mind” inherent in any portion of substance, from the Corpuscle up to the Brain of Man, is but a segregated (or apparently separated) portion of the Universal Mind-principle, or Cosmic Mind. This fragment of Mind is always connected with Substance, and, in fact, it is believed that it is separated from the Universal Mind, and the other Separate Minds by a “film” of the rarest Substance, so fine as to be scarcely distinguishable from Mind. This separation is not a total separation, however, for the fragment of Mind is in connection with all other fragments of Mind, by “mental filaments,” and besides is never out of touch with the Cosmic Mind.

But, comparatively, the fragment of Mind is _apart_ from the rest, and we must consider it in this way, at least for the purpose of study, consideration, and illustration. It is like a drop in the Ocean of Mind, although connected, in a way, with every other drop, and the Ocean itself.

The individual Mind is not closely confined within the Substance in which it abides, but extends beyond the physical limits of the Substance, sometimes to a quite considerable distance. The Aura, or egg-shaped projection or emanation of Mind, surrounding each Particle and each Individual, is an instance of this. In addition to the Aura, there is possibly an extension of Mind to a considerable distance beyond the immediate vicinity of the physical limits, the connection, however, never being broken during the “life” term.

Mental influence at a distance, however, does not always require the above mentioned projection of the Mind. Thought-waves often answer the purpose, and, besides, there is such a thing as the imparting of Mental vibrations to the small particles of Substances with which the atmosphere is filled, which vibrations continue for quite a time, often for a long period after the presence of the individual producing them. These matters shall be discussed in later chapters of this book.

The Mind of Man is a far more complex thing that is generally imagined by the average man. Not only in its varied manifestation of consciousness, but its great region of “below-consciousness” or Infra Consciousness, as it is called. It shall be the purpose of the sequel to this book (now in preparation) which will be entitled “The Wonders of the Mind,” to describe these inner workings, and to point out methods of utilizing the same.

Our next chapter, entitled “The Finer Forces of the Mind,” will lead us into this field.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FINER FORCES OF THE MIND.

It was the writer’s original intention to close the book with the chapter in which he brought to a close his argument, and presentation of the case of “Dynamic Thought.” The book was written for the purpose of demonstrating that Theory, and it naturally should have closed there. The writer has in simultaneous course of preparation a companion book, entitled “_The Wonders of The Mind_,” in which, in addition to information and instruction regarding the latent powers and hidden regions of the mind–including an investigation of the Infra-conscious and Ultra-conscious Regions; Automatic Thinking; Occult Systems of Mentation; Mental Development, and Unfoldment, etc.–he purposes taking up the subject of “Dynamic Thought,” from the Mental Plane of Man. And he thought it better to keep the two branches of the subject separate and apart.

But, notwithstanding the above facts, he feels that he cannot close the present book–the consideration of the present phase of the subject, without at least a passing reference to the fact that “Dynamic Thought” is fully operative on the Plane of Human Mentation, as on the Plane of Atomic Mentation. In fact, Man has the same power, potentially, that is possessed by the Atom, only refined to a degree corresponding to the development of Man as compared to that of the Atom. The Power is raised to a higher Plane of Mentation, but is fully operative.

Just as the body of Man contains physical life corresponding with the different stages of lower physical life, mineral, vegetable, and animal–for instance, the mineral-like bones, and the mineral salts in the system; the plant-like life and work of the cells; and the animal-like flesh, and physical life; in addition to the wonderful brain-structure and fine brain development, peculiar to Man–so has Man the lower Mental Qualities of the lower life, in addition to his glorious Human Consciousness that is reserved for the Highest Form of Life on the globe.

In his Mental regions, man has the power of the Atom of attracting particles of Substance to him, that he may combine it with other Substances in building up his body–then he has the plant-like cell mentation, that does the building-up work, and repairs wounds, and damaged parts, etc.–then he has the animal mentation evidencing in the passions, desires, and emotions of the purely animal nature, and which mentation, by the way, keeps Man busy in controlling by means of his higher mental faculties, that are God’s gift to Man, and are not possessed by the animals. But all this will form part of the sequel, “_The Wonders of The Mind_,” and are merely mentioned here in passing.

And, just as Man is enabled to use elementary the physical qualities that he finds in his body, and to turn same to good account in living his human life, so does man, consciously, or unconsciously, make use of these elementary Mental powers in his everyday mental life. And if he but realizes what a _conscious_ use of these faculties, guided by the Human Will, will do, Man may become a different order of being. This is the basis of the Occult Teachings, and the Mysteries of the Ancients, as well as the teachings of the modern secret esoteric bodies and societies, such as the “Rosicrucians” and “Hermetic Brotherhood,” and several other societies whose names are not known–the _real_ societies are referred to, not the brazen imitations that unscrupulous men are holding out to the public as the original orders, membership being offered and urged for the consideration of a few dollars. It is needless to say that membership in the _real_ Occult orders is _never urged_, and _cannot be bought_.

But to return to the subject–the Individual Mind of Man is in direct touch, not only with the great Cosmic Mind, but also with the Individual Mind of every other Man. Just as the Particles are bound by lines of Attraction, so are the Minds of Men bound together by lines of Mind, or Mental filaments. And just as special forms of Attraction exist between the Particles, so do special forms of Attraction exist between Men. And just as Particles are influenced at a distance by other Particles, so are Men influenced at a distance by other Men. And just as the Particle draws toward itself that which it Desires, so do Men draw toward themselves that which they Desire. And just as Mental-States and “Excitement” are transmitted, or communicated from Particle to Particle, so are Mental States or “Excitement” transmitted or communicated from Men to Men. “_As Above so Below–as Below so Above_,” says the old Occult Maxim, and it may be found to operate on every plane.

The phenomena of Thought Transference; Telepathy; Telesthesia; Mental Projection; Suggestion; Hypnotism, Mesmerism, etc., etc., may be explained and understood, by reason of an acquaintance with the “Theory of Dynamic Thought,” as explained in this book. An understanding of one gives you the key to the other–for the Law operates precisely the same on each particular plane. If the reader will think over this statement, and then apply it to his investigations and experiments, he will find that he has the key to many mysteries–the loose end of a mighty ball of thread, which he may unwind at his leisure.

Let us begin by a consideration of the process of Thought-production in the Human Mind. In this way we may arrive at a clearer idea of the Mental Phenomena known as Thought-Force; Mental Power; Thought-waves; Thought-vibrations; Mind-transference; Mental Influence, etc. To understand these things we must begin by understanding the Process of Thought-production. Here is found the Secret of the phenomena named, and much more.

In the first place, while the Brain is the Organ of the Mind–the Instrument that the Mind uses in producing Thought, still the Brain does _not_ do the thinking, nor is the brain-matter visible to the eye, the material instrument of thinking. The Brain (and other portions of the nervous systems, including the “little brains” or ganglia, found in various parts of the body) is composed of a certain substance–a fine form of Plasm, which however is but the ground-work of foundation for finer forms of Substance used in the production of Thought. Science has not discovered this finer Substance, for it is not visible to the eye, or to the finest instruments, but trained Occulists know that it exists. This fine Substance escapes the scalpel and microscope of the biologists and anatomists, and, consequently, their search for “Mind” in the Brain is futile. There is something more than “tissue to be irritated” in the Brain. But, remember, that this “something more” is still Substance, and not Mind itself.

Thought is a form of “Excitement” in this fine brain-substance, which we may as well call Psycho-plasm, from the two Greek words meaning “the mind,” and “a mold, or matrix,” respectively–the combined word meaning the “mould or matrix of Mind,” in other words the material Substance used by the Mind in which to “cast” or “mold” Thoughts.

This Excitement in the Psychoplasm manifests in vibrations of its particles–for, like all Substance, it has “particles.” All scientists agree that in the process of thinking there is an expenditure of Energy, and a “using-up” of material Substance. Just how this is effected, they do not know, but their experiments have shown that there is Energy manifested and used, and also Substance consumed.

The secret of the production of Thought does not lie in the Brain or nervous system, which are but the material substratum upon which the Mind works, and which it uses as a mold or matrix for the production of Thought. Thought is the product of Mind directing Force upon Substance in the shape of Psychoplasm. And Energy is manifested in the production of Thought just as much as in the operation of the Law of Attraction, or Chemical Action. “_What_ Force and Energy?” may be asked. The answer is “_Mental_ Force!” But although the answer stares them right in the face, scientists deny that Mind contains Force or Energy within itself, and persist in thinking of Force as a “mechanical thing,” or as necessarily derived from the common forms of Energy, such as Heat, Light or Electricity. They ignore the fact that Mind has a Finer Force which it uses to perform its work.

How do the Atoms attract each other and move together? There is an evidence of Force and Energy here that is not Heat, Light or Electricity–what is it? When a man wishes to close his hand, he Wills that it be closed, and sends a current of this Finer Force of the Mind along the nerve to the muscle, and the latter contracts and the hand is closed. A similar process is used in every muscular action. _What is the Force used?_

Science admits the existence of this Force, and calls it “Nervous Energy,” or “Nerve Force.” It holds that it must be something like Electricity, and some even go so far as to say that it _is_ Electricity. They base their ideas upon the fact that when Electricity is applied to the muscle of living or dead animals, they contract just as they do when this “Nerve Force” is applied, and every movement of the muscles may be so produced by Electricity, which becomes a counterfeit Nerve Force. But, here is the point, this Force cannot be identical with Electricity, _for none of the appliances for registering electric currents will register it_. It is not Electricity, _but is some Finer Force of the Mind_, generated in the material substratum that the Mind uses as a base of operation.

This Fine Force of the Mind is generated in some way in the Brain and Nervous System, by action upon the Psychoplasm. The Brain, or brains (for Man has several centres worthy of that term) are like great dynamos and storehouses of this Force, and the nerves are the wires that carry it to all parts of the system. More than this, the nerves have been found to be generators of Force, also, as well as the Brain. Experiments have shown that the supply of Force in a nerve vanishes when the nerve is used, in which case it draws upon the storehouses for an additional supply.

This Fine Force of the Mind is really the source of All Energy, for as we have shown in previous chapters, all Motion arises from Mental Action, and this form of Force or Energy is the primal Force or Energy produced by the Mind. And this Force is in operation in all forms of Life, from the Atom to the Man. And not only may it be used by the Particle, but Man, also, has it at his disposal.

As a proof that Substance is “used-up,” and Energy manifested in the production of Thought, Science points to the fact that the temperature of a nerve rises when it is used, and the temperature of the Brain increases when it is used for extended Thought. Scientists have claimed, and advanced a mass of proof to back up the same, that Thought was as much a form of Energy as was the pulling of a train of cars, and was attended by the production of a definite amount of Heat, resulting from the activity of the fine substance of the physical extended resistant and composite substratum.

But, Science has taken all this to mean that Thought and Mind were purely material things, and properties of Matter. It has claimed that “Matter Thinks,” instead of that Mind uses the Matter or Substance, in its finer forms, as a _substratum for the production of Thought_. Buchner, the leader of the purely Materialistic school, claims positively that Thought is but the product of Matter. He says: “Is it not a patent fact, obvious to all but the wilfully blind that _matter does think_? De la Mettrie made merry over the narrowness of the mentalists, in saying: ‘When people ask whether matter can think, it is as though they asked whether matter can strike the hours!’ Matter, indeed, as such, thinks as little as it strikes the hours; but it does both, when brought into such conditions that thinking, or hour-striking results as a natural action or performance.”

The above quoted opinion of Buchner shows how narrow and one-sided a talented man may become by reason of shutting out all other points of view, and seeing only one phase of a subject. The example of the “hour-striking” is a poor figure for the Materialists, for although matter _does_ strike the hours, it does so only when wound up by Man under direction of his Mind. And in the manufacture, adjustment, and winding of the clock, Mind is the Cause of the Action. And, more than this, the very action of the coiled spring that is the immediate cause of the striking, results from the _mental_ effort of the Particles of the spring endeavoring to resume their accustomed position, under the law of Elasticity, as explained in our chapters on Substance.

Science renders valuable service in showing us the details of the “mechanism” of Thought, but it will never really _explain_ anything unless it assumes the existence of Mind, back of and in everything. It may dissect the brain-cells, and show us their composition, but it never will find Mind under the scalpel, or in the scale or test-tube. Not only is this true, but it cannot even discover the fine Psychoplasm which is used in the production of Mind. But we may make use of its investigations regarding the matter of Activity of Brain-substance in the process of Thought, and by combining them with our belief regarding the existence of Mind we may form a complete chain of reasoning, without any missing-links–these missing-links appearing both in the case of the “no-mind” philosophers, and the “no-matter” metaphysicians.

This theory of Mind and Substance considered as the two aspects of Something Higher, from which both have originated or emanated, will come to be regarded as the only “thinkable” proposition, in the end. And, with this idea in view, we may use the facts and experiments of the Materialists, while smiling at their theories. And, with but a slight change of words, we may turn against them their own verbal batteries. In this way, we may take Moleschott’s famous statement: “_Thought is but a motion of Matter_,” and render it intelligible by making it read as follows: “_Thought produces Motion in Matter_.”

This Finer Force of the Mind is in full evidence to those who look for it, and although it may not be registered by the scales or instruments designed to register the coarser grades of Force, still it _is_ registered in the minds of men and women, and in the actions resulting from their thoughts. These living registers of the Force respond readily to it,–and every one of us is such a register. Just as is the Force a much higher grade of Energy than the forms usually considered as comprising the entire range of Energy, so are the instruments required for its registration much higher than those used to determine the degrees of Heat, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism. It may be that the future will give us instruments adapted for the purpose–in fact it begins to look even now as if the same were forthcoming. But whether we have such mechanical instruments, or not, the living instruments give us a sufficient proof of the existence of the Force, and its operation.

Well–the writer still finds himself unable to bring the book to a close. He added this chapter, to show that the property of Dynamic Thought extended to the highest development of Mind, as well as abiding in the lowest. And, now that he has ventured upon the subject, he finds himself impelled to give you a few instances of the workings and operations of that Law, in the case of Human Mental Life. And this means one more chapter–but only one, remember. The book must come to an end sometime remember. And, so we will pass over into another chapter, which will be entitled, “Thought in Action.”

CHAPTER XVI

THOUGHT IN ACTION

Without attempting to go into details, or to enter into explanations, the writer purposes taking his readers on a flying trip through the region of “Thought in Action,” or “Dynamic Thought in Operation in Human Life.” The details of this fascinating region must be left for another and more extended visit, in our next book (before mentioned) which will be called “_The Wonders of The Mind_.” But he thinks that even this flying trip will prove of interest and instruction.

Let us start with a hasty look at Man himself. Not to speak of his “Seven Planes of Mind,” which belongs to the next visit, we find him a very interesting object. Not only has he a physical body, apparent to our senses, but he has also a finer or “astral body,” which he may use (unconsciously, or consciously, when he learns how) for little excursions away from the body, during his lifetime. This Astral Body is composed of Substance just as his denser physical body. The field and range of Substance extends far beyond the powers of ordinary vision, as even the Materialists must admit when they talk of “Radiant Matter,” “Etherial Substance,” etc. Then he has currents of Fine Force coursing through his nervous system, which may be seen by those possessing “Astral Vision,” if the teachings of the Occultists be true.

Then he, like the Particle, has an “Aura” or egg-shaped projection of Mind and fine particles of Psychoplasm, which has been thrown off in the process of Thought, and which clusters around him, producing a “Mental Atmosphere,” which constantly surrounds him, and makes itself “felt” by those coming in his presence. Those who read these words may remember, readily, the “feeling” they have experienced when coming in contact with certain people–how some radiated an atmosphere of cheerfulness, brightness, etc., while others radiated the very opposite. Some radiate a feeling of energy, activity, etc., while others manifest just the reverse. Many likes and dislikes between people meeting for the first time, arise in this way, each finding in the mental atmosphere of the other, some inharmonious element. These radiations are perceived by others coming into their range.

Occultists tell us that the character of a man’s thought vibrations may be determined by certain colors, which are visible to those having “Astral Sight.” There is nothing so wonderful about this, when it is remembered that the various “colors” of light, comprising the visible colors of the spectrum, ranging from red, on through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and terminating in violet, arise simply from different rates of vibration of the Particles of Substance. And as Thought is produced by Mind causing vibrations in the Psychoplasm, why is not the Astral Colors reasonable? We cannot stop to consider these colors in detail, but may run over the ones corresponding to each marked Emotion of Thought, as reported by the Occult teachings.

For instance the shade of the thought manifesting in physical or organic functions, is of a colorless white, or “color of clear water”; and the color of the thought manifesting in Fine Force or Vital Energy, is that of air,–heated air arising from a furnace or heated ground–when it emerges from the body although of a faint pink when in the body itself. Black represents Hate, Malice, etc.; Gray (bright shade) represents Selfishness, while Gray of a dark dull shade represents Fear. Green represents Jealousy, Deceit, Treachery, and similar emotions, ranging from the dull shades which characterize the lower and cruder forms, to the bright shades which characterize the finer, or more delicate forms of “Tact,” “Politeness,” “Diplomacy,” etc. Red (dull shade) represents Sensuality and Animal Passion, while red (bright and vivid) represents Anger. Crimson, in varying shades, represents the phases of “Love.” Brown represents Avarice or Greed. Orange represents Pride and Ambition; and Yellow, in varying shades, represents grades of Intellectual Power. Blue is the color of the Religious thoughts, ranging, however, through a great variety of stages, from the dull shade of superstitious religious belief, to the beautiful violet of the highest religious emotion or thought. What is generally known as “Spirituality” is characterized by a Light Blue of a peculiarly luminous shade. Just as there are ultra-red, and ultra-violet rays in the spectrum, which the eye cannot perceive, so Occultists inform us there are “colors” in the Aura or Mental Atmosphere of a person of unusual psychic or occult development, the ultra-violet rays indicating the thought of one who is pursuing the higher planes of occult thought and unfoldment, while the ultra-red is evidenced by those possessing occult development, but who are using the same for base and selfish purposes–“black-magic” in fact. There are other shades, known to Occultists, indicating several highly developed states of Mind, but it is needless to mention them here.

But the influence of these Particles of “Thought-stuff” thrown off from the Mind Psychoplasm under the vibrations produced by the Mind during the process of Thought, does not cease with the phenomena surrounding the Aura. They are radiated to a considerable distance, and produce a number of effects. We will remember how the Corpuscles or Electrons are thrown off by Substance in a high state of vibration. Well, the same law manifests in the vibrations attendant upon the production of Thought. The particles are thrown off in great quantities each vibrating at the rate imparted to it during the process. No these particles of “Thought-stuff” do not compose the “Thought-waves”–the latter belong to a different set of phenomena.

These particles of vibrating “Thought-stuff” fly off from the brain of the thinker, in all directions, and affect other persons who may come in contact with them. There is an important rule here, however, and that is that they seem to be attracted by those minds which are vibrating in similar thought-rates with themselves, and are but feebly attracted–and in some cases, actually repelled–by minds vibrating on opposite lines of Thought. “Like attracts Like,” in the Thought World, and “Birds of a feather flock together,” here as elsewhere.

Some of these particles of “Thought-stuff” are still in existence, and vibrating, which proceeded from the minds of persons long since dead, the same being emitted or thrown off during the lifetime of the persons, however. Just as a distant star, which was destroyed hundreds of years ago, may have emitted rays which are only now reaching our vision, years after the destruction of the star which emitted them–and just as an odor will remain in a room after the object causing it has departed the particles still remaining and vibrating–and just as a stove removed from a room may leave heat vibrations behind it–so do these particles persist, vibrate, and influence other minds, long after the person who caused them may have passed out of the body. In this way, rooms, houses, neighborhoods, and localities may vibrate with the thoughts of people who lived there long ago, but who have since passed away, or removed. These vibrations affect people living in these places, to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon circumstances, but they may always be counteracted or changed (if they are of undesirable nature) by setting upon positive vibrations on a different plane of mind, or character of thought.

The mind of a thinker is constantly emitting or throwing off these particles of “Thought-stuff”; the distance and rate of speed, to and by which they travel, being determined by the “force” used in their production, there being a great difference between the thought of a vigorous thinker, and that emanating from a weak, listless mind. These projections of Thought-stuff have a tendency to mingle with others of a corresponding rate of vibration (depending upon the character of the thought.) Some remain around the places where they were emitted, while others float off like clouds, and obey the Law of Attraction which draws them to persons thinking along similar lines.

The characteristics of cities arise in this way, the general average of Thought of their inhabitants causing a corresponding Thought-atmosphere to hang over and around it, which atmosphere is distinctly felt by visitors, and often determines the mental character of the persons residing there, in spite of their previous characteristics–_that is, unless they understand the Laws of Thought_. Some neighborhoods, also, have their own peculiar Mental Atmosphere, as all may have noticed if they have visited certain “tough” neighborhoods, on the one hand, and neighborhoods of an opposite kind, on the other. Certain kinds of Thoughts and Actions seem to be contagious in certain places–_and they are_ to those who do not understand the Law. Certain shops seem to have their own atmosphere–some reflecting confidence and honest dealing, and others radiating an atmosphere that causes patrons to hold tightly to their pocketbooks, and, in some extreme cases, to be certain that their buttons are tightly sewed on their garments. Yes, places like people, have their distinctive Mental Atmospheres, and both arise from the same cause.

And each person draws to himself these particles of vibrating “Thought-stuff” corresponding with the general mental attitude maintained by him. If one harbors feelings of Malice, he will find thoughts of malice, revenge, hate, etc., pouring in upon him. He has made himself a centre of Attraction, and has set the Law into operation. His only safe course is to resolutely change his thought vibrations.

A most remarkable form of these particles of Thought-stuff is evidenced in the case of what are known among occultists as “Thought-forms,” which are aggregations of Particles of Thought-stuff energized by intense and positive thought, and which are sent out with such intensity and positiveness, that they are almost “vitalized,” and manifest almost the same degree of mental influence that would be manifested by the sender if he were present where they are. This highly interesting phase of the subject would take many chapters to describe in detail, and we must content ourselves with a mere passing view. To those who are interested in the subject, the writer would say that he purposes considering them at considerable length, in the forthcoming book “_The Wonders of The Mind_,” which has been alluded to elsewhere.

Besides the operation of these particles of Thought-stuff emitted during the production of Thought, there are many other phases of Thought Influence, or Thought in Action. The principal phase of this phenomena arises from the working of the Law of Attraction between the respective minds of different people. Just as are the Particles of Substance united and connected by “lines” of connection, so are the minds of Men connected. And the strong “pull” of Desire manifests along these lines, just as it does in the case of the Atoms. There has been much written of recent years regarding this “Drawing Power of the Mind,” and although some of what has been written is the veriest rubbish and nonsense, yet under it all there remains a strong, form, substantial substratum of Fact and Truth. Men _do_ attract Success and Failure to them–people _do_ attract things to them–as strange as it may seem to the person who has not acquainted himself with the laws underlying the phenomenon.

There is no “miracle” about all of this–it is simply that the Law of Attraction is in full operation, and that people of similar thoughts are drawn together by reason thereof. The workings of this Law are somewhat intricate, but all of us are constantly using them, consciously or unconsciously. We draw to ourselves that which we Desire very much, or that which we Fear very much, for a Fear is a Belief, and acts in the direction of actualizing itself, _sometimes_. But, again, as Kipling would say: “But, that’s another story.” This phase of the subject is a mighty subject in itself, and “the half has not been told” even by the many who have written of it. The writer intends to try to remedy the deficiency in his next book, however.

Then, again, the “Excitement” of Thought, in the minds of people may be transmitted or communicated to the minds of others, and a similar vibration set up, under certain conditions, and subject to certain restraining influences–just as in the case of the Particles of Substances in a body or Mass of Substance. And, in many ways that will suggest themselves to the reader who has mastered the contents of the earlier chapters of this book, the phenomena of Dynamic Thought in the case of the Atoms, and Particles, may be, and are duplicated in the case of Individual Minds of Men.

The reader will see, readily, that this theory of Dynamic Thought, and the facts noted in the consideration thereof, give an intelligent explanation for the respective phenomena of Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Suggestion, Thought-transference, Telepathy, etc., as well as of Mental Healing, Magnetic Healing, etc., all of which are manifestations of “Dynamic Thought.” Not only do we see, as Prentice Mulford said, that “Thoughts are Things,” but we may see “_just why_” they are Things. And we may see and understand the laws of their production and operation. This theory of Dynamic Thought will throw light into many dark corners, and make plain many “hard sayings” that have perplexed you in the past. The writer believes that it gives us the key to many of the great Riddles of Life.

This theory has come to stay. It is no ephemeral thing, doomed to “die a-borning.” It will be taken up by others and polished, and added to, and shaped, and “decorated”–but the fundamental principles will stand the stress of Time and Men. Of this the writer feels assured. It may be laughed at at first, not only by the “man on the street,” but also by the scientists. But it will outlive this, and in time will come to its own–perhaps long after the writer and the book have been forgotten.

This must be so–for the idea of “Dynamic Thought” underlies the entire Universe, and is the cause of all phenomena. Not only is all that we see as Life and Mind, and Substance illustrations of the Law, but even that which lies back of these things must evidence the same Law. Is it too daring a conception to hazard the thought that perhaps the Universe itself is _the result of the Dynamic Thought of The Infinite_?

Oh, Dynamic Thought, we see in thee the instrument by which all Form and Shape are created, changed and destroyed–we see in thee the source of all Energy, Force and Motion–we see thee Always–present and Everywhere–present, and always in Action. Verily, thou art Life in Action. Thou art the embodiment of Action and Motion, of which Zittel hath said: “Wherever our eyes dwell on the Universe; whithersoever we are carried in the flight of thought, everywhere we find Motion.” Suns, planets, worlds, bodies, atoms, and particles, move, and act at thy bidding. Amidst all the change of Substance–among the play of Forces–and among and amidst all that results therefrom–there art thou, unchanged, and constant. As though fresh from the hand of The Infinite, thou hast maintained thy vigor and strength, and power, throughout the aeons of Time. And, likewise, Space has no terrors for thee, for thou hath mastered it. Thou art a symbol of the Power of The Infinite–thou art Its message to doubting Man!

Let us close this book with the thought of the Greatness of this Thing that we call Dynamic Thought–which, great as it is, is but as the shadow of the Absolute Power of The Infinite One, which is the Causeless Cause, and the Causer of Causes. And in thus parting company, reader, let us murmur the words of the German poet, who has sung:

“Dost thou ask for rest? See then how foolish is thy desire; the stern yoke of motion holds in harness the whole Universe.

“Nowhere in this age canst thou ever find rest, and no power can deliver thee from the doom of Activity.

“Rest is not to be found either in heaven or on earth, and from death and dying break forth new growth,–new birth.

“All the life of Nature is an ocean of Activity; following on her footsteps, without ceasing, thou must march forward with the whole.

“Even the dark portal of death gives thee no rest, and out of thy coffin will spring blossoms of a new life.”

FINIS.

Within You is the Power

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Within You is the Power

WITHIN YOU IS THE POWER

by Henry Thomas Hamblin

PREFACE.

There is a power lying hidden in man, by the use of which he can rise to higher and better things.

There is in man a greater Self, that transcends the finite self of the sense-man, even as the mountain towers above the plain.

The object of this little book is to help men and women to bring their inward powers of mind and spirit into expression, wisely and in harmony with universal law; to build up character, and to find within themselves that wondrous Self, which is their real self, and which, when found, reveals to them that they are literally and truly sons of God and daughters of the Most High.

There is no way whereby the discipline of life can be avoided. There is no means by which fate can be “tricked,” nor cunning device by which the great cosmic plan can be evaded. Each life must meet its own troubles and difficulties: each soul must pass through its deep waters, every heart must encounter sorrow and grief. But none need be overwhelmed in the great conflicts of life, for one who has learned the great secret of his identity with the Universal life and Power, dwells in an impregnable city, built upon and into the Rock of Truth, against which the storms of life beat in vain.

While this little work does not offer any vain promises of an easy life–for, if this were possible, it would be the greatest of all disasters–but rather endeavours to show how to become so strong that life looks almost easy by comparison (the life or fate does not change or become easier, but the individual alters and becomes stronger), yet, it does show the reader how to avoid making his life more difficult than it need be. Most people’s lives would be less filled with trouble and suffering if they took life in the right spirit and acted in harmony with Universal Law.

It is hoped that this little book may help many to come into harmony with life’s law and purpose and thus avoid much needless suffering: to find the Greater Self within, which discovery brings with it a realization of absolute security: to bring into expression and wisely use their inner spiritual and mental forces and thus enter a life of overcoming and almost boundless power.

CHAPTER I.

INFINITE LIFE AND POWER.

Man possesses, did he but know it, illimitable Power. [1] This Power is of the Spirit, therefore, it is unconquerable. It is not the power of the ordinary life, or finite will, or human mind. It transcends these, because, being spiritual, it is of a higher order than either physical or even mental. This Power lies dormant, and is hidden within man until he is sufficiently evolved and unfolded to be entrusted with its use.

[1] The powers of the sub-conscious mind are dealt with in other chapters. The Powers of the Spirit are far greater and finer than those of the sub-conscious mind.

Thought is a spiritual power of tremendous potency, but this is not the power of which we speak. By thought, man can either raise himself up and connect himself with the “Power House” of the Universe, or cut himself off entirely from the Divine Inflow. His thought is his greatest weapon, because, by it he can either draw on the Infinite or sever himself (in consciousness, but not in reality) from his Divine Source.

Through the Divine Spark within him, which is really his real Self, man is connected with the Infinite. Divine Life and Power are his, if he _realizes_ that they are his. So long as he is ignorant of his oneness with the Divine Source of all life, he is incapable of appropriating the power that is really his. If, however, he enters into this inner knowledge, he finds himself the possessor of infinite power and unlimited resources.

This Power, then, is God’s, yet it is also man’s, but it is not revealed to him until he is fit to be entrusted with it. It is only when man realizes his oneness with his Divine Source that he becomes filled with Its power. Many teachers and initiates lament the fact that certain secrets are being spread broadcast to-day; secrets that, in the past, were kept closely guarded. They fear that unillumined and un-evolved people may make destructive use of spiritual power. This, to the writer, appears to be improbable. It is true that strong personalities, who have a great belief in their own power to achieve and succeed, draw unconsciously on hidden powers, and thus are able to raise themselves high above their fellows. The use, however, that they can make of spiritual power for base purposes is limited, and is not to be feared. There are others, of course, who are misusing their powers. These are black magicians, and while they may do a certain amount of harm, they become reduced, ultimately, to beggary and impotence. There are also others who spend the whole of their spare time searching for knowledge of this very subject. They read every occult book they can lay hands on, but they never find that for which they seek. There are spiritual powers and influences that withhold the eyes of the seekers from seeing, until they are ready for the revelation. When man, in his search for Truth, has given up all selfish striving after unworthy things, and has ceased to use his self-will in conflict with the greater Will of the Whole, he is ready for the revelation of his oneness with the Infinite. Yielding implicitly to the Will of the Whole may seem, to the unillumined, an act of weakness, yet it is the entrance to a life of almost boundless power.

Man is not separate from his Divine Source and never has been. He is, in reality, one with the Infinite. The separation which he feels and experiences is mental, and is due to his blindness and unbelief. Man can never be separated from Spirit, for he himself is Spirit. He is an integral part of one complete whole. He lives and moves and has his being in God (Universal, Omnipresent Spirit), and God (Spirit) dwells in him. The majority of people are unaware of this intimate relationship with the Divine, and, because they are unaware, or because they refuse to believe it, they are, in one sense, separated from the inner life of God. Yet this separation is only in their thoughts and beliefs, and not in reality. Man is not separated and never can be, yet so long as he believes that he is separate and alone, he will be as weak and helpless as though he actually were. As soon as man realizes the truth of his relationship to the Infinite, he passes from weakness to power, from death unto life. One moment he is in the desert, afar off, weak, separate, and alone; the next, he realizes that he is nothing less than a son of God, with all a son’s privileges and powers. He realizes, in a flash, that he is one with his Divine Source, and that he can never be separated. He awakens also to the fact that all the Power of the Infinite is his to draw upon; that he can never really fail, that he is marching on to victory.

It will thus be seen how great is the power of man’s thought. While thought is not the power of the Spirit, it is the power by which man either connects himself up with the Infinite Power, opening himself to the Divine Inflow, or cuts himself off and separates himself from his Spiritual Source. Thus, in a sense, man is what he thinks he is. If he thinks he is separate from God and cut off from His Power, then it is as though this were really the case, and he is just as impotent and miserable as though he actually existed apart from God. On the other hand, if he thinks and believes that he is one with the Infinite, he finds that it is gloriously true, and that he is really a son of God. If he believes and thinks that he is a mere material being, then he lives the limited life of a material being, and is never able to rise above it. But if, on the contrary, he thinks and believes that he is a spiritual being, then he finds that he possesses all the powers of a spiritual being.

Again, if he thinks that his work is difficult and that he is not equal to his tasks, he finds that really his tasks are difficult and beyond his powers. Yet on the other hand, if he believes his work is easy, or, at any rate, within his powers, he finds that such is the case, and that he can do his work with ease.

The power within is infinite, for, by faith in it, man is directly “coupled up” with the Spiritual Power of the Universe. The Divine Spark within him connects him to the Sacred Flame, thus making him potentially a god in the making.

A change then, must take place within man before he can enter into his Divine inheritance. He must learn to think after the Spirit, _i.e._, as a spiritual being, instead of after the flesh, _i.e._, as a material creature. Like the prodigal son he must “come to himself,” and leave the husks and the swine in the far country, returning to his Father’s house, where there is bread (of life) enough and to spare.

CHAPTER II.

THE OVERCOMING OF LIFE’S DIFFICULTIES.

The true object of life is that man may attain wisdom through experience. This cannot be accomplished by giving in to the difficulties of life, but only by overcoming them. The promises of God are not made to those who fail in life’s battle, but to those who _overcome_. Neither are there any promises that man shall have an easy time and be happy ever afterwards. Yet, it is after this that the majority of people are for ever seeking–an easy life, a good time, freedom from suffering and care. But, in spite of all their seeking, they can never find that which they desire. There is always a fly in the ointment of their pleasure, something that robs them of true happiness; or, possibly, combinations of circumstances conspire to upset all their plans.

Life is a paradox; the true object of life is not the attainment of happiness, yet if we attain the true object of life we find happiness. Those who are ignorant of life’s true purpose and who seek happiness high and low, year after year, fail to find it. Like a will-o’-the-wisp, it for ever eludes them. On the other hand, those who recognize the true object of life, and follow it, attain happiness without seeking for it.

In times past, people have made God a convenience. They have thought they could drift through life, learning none of its discipline and then, when in trouble, or things were not to their liking, they could pray to God and have the unpleasant circumstances taken away. The same idea is prevalent to-day. People have left the old orthodoxy and look to various “cults” and “isms” to get them out of their difficulties. They do not believe now that they can curry special favour with God by prayer, but they firmly believe that they can get what they want from the Invisible by demanding it. They think that by this means they can have their own way after all. By this they mean having a good time, with no unpleasant experiences, trials, difficulties, adversities. They are, however, merely chasing rainbows. The easy life they seek constantly eludes them, simply because there is no such thing. The only life that is easy is the life of the strong soul who has overcome. His life is not easy in reality, but appears relatively so because of his strength.

It is impossible to have an easy life, and, if it were possible, then life would be not worth living, for the sole object of life is the building of character and the attainment of wisdom through experience. Life to all of us must always be full of difficulty, and it is to help those, who, hitherto, have found life rather too much for them that this book is being written. What the majority are seeking for is an easy life (which they will never find, but precisely the reverse) and for them I have no message. But to those wise and awakened souls who are seeking for Truth, no matter from whence it may come, and who desire to overcome life and its difficulties, instead of weakly giving in to them, this book, it is hoped, will bring a message.

At this stage we cannot go into the subject of why we should meet with disasters and adversity in this life, nor why some people should have, apparently, a smoother life than others. [2] We must therefore be satisfied to know that we have to meet trouble and overcome difficulty, and that it is only by so doing that we can attain wisdom and build up character. The question, then, is not _whether_ we shall meet the trouble and adversity or not, but rather, _how_ we shall meet them. Shall we be victorious or shall we be submerged? Shall we overcome life’s difficulties or shall we give in to them?

[2] This subject is dealt with in “The Path of Victory” by the same author, and published by The Science of Thought Press.

The majority of people are drifters on the sea of life. They are wafted here and blown there: they are also carried hither and thither by every current. It is only the few who realize that they have the Power of the Infinite within them by which they can rise superior to all their difficulties, overcome their own weaknesses, and, through victorious experience, attain wisdom.

At this point some practical reader may say that attaining wisdom is all very well, but what he wants is practical help. He is perhaps out of work, has sickness in his house and is in debt. Or, he may be well-to-do, and yet in the deepest distress and misery. To all such I would say that they possess the Power by which they can overcome all their difficulties, and, through overcoming, attain wisdom. A man’s success depends, more than anything, upon his faith–his faith in the good purpose of life: his faith in the Power of the Infinite within him and his ability to overcome every obstacle in his path.

The extent of the Power that man can bring into his life is the measure of his faith in that Power. If his faith in It is small, then his life will be feeble and lacking in achievement. If his faith in the Power within him is large, then great will be the power manifesting in his life. The Power of the Infinite is illimitable and inexhaustible: all that is required is an unquenchable belief and trust in it. The weakest and most timid can make use of this Power. There is the same Power in the timid and weak as in the brave and strong. The weakness of the former is due to a lack of faith and belief in the Infinite Power within them.

Difficulties and troubles there will be in every life, and sometimes disaster and heartbreak, when the very earth slides from under the feet, yet, by calling upon the Power within, it is possible to rise from the ruins of cherished hopes stronger and “greater” through experience. Happiness and true success depend upon how the troubles and difficulties of life are met. Adversity comes to all, but if it is met in the right manner even failure can be made the stepping-stone to success. Trouble comes to all, but, while it makes some people stronger and better in every way, it submerges others so that they never rise again. The trouble is the same, it is how it is met that makes the difference. Those who meet difficulty and adversity in the feeble strength of their finite minds and false personality are speedily overwhelmed and broken by the storms of life. But those who rely upon, and have faith in the Power within them, can never be overwhelmed, neither can they ever be defeated. The Power, being infinite, is always sufficient, no matter how great the need may be.

One who realizes his own real spiritual identity, knows that he can never die, that he can never be defeated, that he can never really fail. He may lose his body through the change that is called death; but he, the true man, can never die. Neither can he fail, though he be defeated a thousand times–he _must_ rise again.

Only have faith in the Spiritual Power within you and you can know all the joys of overcoming and achievement. All things will become yours. Seek first the Kingdom within you (your spiritual union with the Infinite, and harmony with the Divine Will and Purpose) and all these things shall be added unto you. You will have no need to fear the morrow, for you will know that all provision has already been made. There will be no need to hoard up wealth, for there will be the necessary daily supplies always available. There will be no need to live near a doctor, for God, the Infinite Life, shall be your health. There will be no need for regret or lamentation, for you shall know that all is well. There will be no fear of future happenings, for you shall realize that the Infinite One makes no mistakes.

CHAPTER III.

FATE OR FREE-WILL?

Great has been the controversy in the past, over the vexed subject of fate versus free-will. On the one hand, fatalists claim that man is so closely bound to the wheel of fate it is impossible for him to live his life in any different way than that which is mapped out for him. He can bring a quantity of first-class evidence in support of his claim and believes in his theory with all his heart. On the other hand, the advocate of free-will believes just as whole-heartedly that man is not bound at all, being as free as air. He, too, can bring plenty of evidence in support of his theory, which confirms him in his belief. Each one of them thinks that the other is wrong, yet they cannot both be wrong! Let us therefore examine the subject for ourselves, for it is an important one, being intimately connected with the subject which this book discusses.

First of all, let it be said, they are both wrong, in part, and right, in part. Man is bound to the wheel, yet, at the same time, he has free-will. Let us, therefore, explain this seeming paradox.

It is an ancient truth of the inner teaching that man, when he is unevolved and before he is “unfolded,” is bound to the wheel of fate very closely. The unevolved man follows his desires, thus creating for himself a future from which he cannot escape. When however, he becomes more evolved and emancipated, he begins to resist following his desires and strives, instead, to follow higher things. This creates for him a better future and thus he becomes free in comparison with his former slave state. Man is a slave to fate as long as he is a slave to the desires of the earth plane. He is, however, free to overcome lower things and thus rise to higher. When he does this he ceases to create a painful future for himself and thus becomes free.

There is, therefore, fate which is self created. It is necessary to acknowledge this before we can proceed further. One who has not had much experience of life or who has not been a close observer, may deny that there is such a thing, but one who has had great changes in his life, against which he has fought and struggled in vain, knows that there is a purpose working behind the events of life, against which even kings and mighty men are powerless. There come times in man’s life when he moves heaven and earth, figuratively speaking: prays until he can pray no more: sacrifices, it may be, his money, his health, his prospects, and does everything that is in the power of a human being in a vain attempt to stave off a threatened disaster. But, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his cries to a pitiless heaven, the relentless march of fate cannot be stayed. It moves forward like a huge juggernaut and crushes his hopes, his dearest idol, his very life itself or all that then makes his life worth living–and leaves him desolate.

“If then,” you may ask, “fate is so pitiless and so powerful, what can be done with it and where does free-will enter into the matter?” In reply it must be admitted at once that it is no use fighting fate. The more man fights it, the more completely he gets broken. There are certain main events in each life which must come to pass. These events and changes are inevitable and it is hopeless to fight against them. While these things, which constitute what we call fate, are inevitable and therefore cannot be avoided, it rests with ourselves how we meet these adversities and disasters. If we meet them in the wrong way they break us. If, however, we meet them in the right way we become stronger through discipline and experience, thus becoming better fitted to bear life’s responsibilities and to overcome its difficulties and temptations. One who meets the setbacks, griefs, bereavements and disasters of life in the right spirit becomes a strong and rich character. He becomes mellowed through experience, strong, stable, a helpful influence to all who meet him.

When things go smoothly and life is a merry round, no philosophy or religion seems necessary, and “as for an inward power, what of it, we can do very well without it.” So say the thoughtless and inexperienced, but there come times in every life, when, not only is a philosophy, and that a very sound one, necessary, but also a power, of which the finite self knows nothing, is needed in order to raise the soul out of the dust and ashes of its despair. It is one thing to try and meet trouble and adversity in the right spirit and quite another thing to have the power to do so. One who thinks that he has no power within him but that all the power is in circumstances, can never rise victorious over his troubles and become a conqueror over life’s difficulties; but one who realizes that he possesses a wonderful power that can raise him up, no matter how crushed he may be, can never be a failure in life. No matter what may happen to him he will play the man and act a noble part. He will rise from the ruins of his life and build it anew in greater beauty and splendour.

At this stage it is necessary to point out that there is a difference between “big fate” and the circumstances of life. “Big fate” as it sometimes is called antedates this present life and its cause does not come within the scope of this little book. [3] Sufficient if we say here that, through the ages, we reap as we sow, therefore our future depends upon how we meet life and its difficulties _now_. Big fate, then, cannot be successfully fought, simply because it is the working of Omnipotent Law, but our life generally and its circumstances depend upon how we meet “big fate,” and how we recover from it. No matter how seemingly unkind “fate” may be, it is possible for us to make our life a beautiful thing. Inspired and energized by the Power within, we can rise from the ashes of our dead hopes to build anew our life in greater beauty and more in harmony with the Divine Ideal.

[3] In addition to the “fate” or “future” which every thought and action builds, there is, behind all evolution, a gigantic plan. This wonderful plan that embraces all, from the stupendous conception of a limitless universe down to the smallest electron, is being worked out through the ages with absolute precision. Nothing can prevent this plan from being brought into manifestation. It gathers up our past and weaves it into our present life, just in the same way that it is busily gathering up our present life and weaving it into future fate. It works it all into the big plan, somehow, and with infinite skill. The plan is bound to be followed (this, too, is fate) but HOW we follow it, either with willingness and happiness, or opposition or woe, rests with us (this is free will).

Those who have studied the Occult sciences may say “what about planetary influences?” They will point out that, according to the ancient science of astrology, a man’s life is determined by the “star” under which he is born. This is true, if he gives in to the influences around his path. At different times in his life man meets with influences that are sometimes “favourable” and at other times, adverse. These influences are, however, only influences after all, and one who will stand firm during periods of adversity and refuse to give in, relying upon the great Power within to carry him through, will find that he can weather all storms of life and come out of his trials greatly strengthened. He cannot prevent these influences from coming around his path of life, but he can rise superior to them. He will meet with failures and set-backs but he will make of these, stepping-stones to success. He will experience griefs and bereavements, but out of these he will build a finer character and rise to higher things. One, however, who gives in to these things, refusing to rise again and reconstruct his life, condemns himself to further suffering, thus making utter shipwreck of his life.

Let the despairing take heart again. Believe in the Power within you and you will rise to heights before undreamed of. With this Power to help you, you can accomplish the apparently impossible.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

Our life here is not governed by a capricious Being who blows first hot and then cold or who favours one person and tortures another. The Supreme Being works through laws that are absolutely just and unchanging. Therefore all disaster and trouble in the life is the effect of certain causes. These causes are our own wrong doing in the past, which set in motion forces, against which the power and wit and wisdom of man are powerless. [4] However, because the fundamental law of the Universe is love, it follows that the working of the law of cause and effect is not vindictive. Its object is our highest good, viz., to bring us into union with the Divine or in tune with the Infinite. Therefore, by rising up to a higher plane and coming more into harmony and union with the Divine, we rob even big fate of something of its power. We cannot oppose it, for by so doing we fight against Omnipotence, but we can _forestall_ it by doing willingly, and of our own accord, that very thing which experience comes to teach us.

[4] Another cause is that the soul has failed to learn certain lessons, therefore, in this life, many painful experiences are brought to bear, in such a way, as to teach the necessary lessons. The lessons are, however, learnt only if painful or unpleasant experiences are met in the right way. So long as man believes that he is unjustly treated by fate and that he does not “deserve” what life metes out to him, he intensifies his troubles, both now and hereafter, through not learning the lessons that life desires to teach. When, however man realizes and admits that life is just and that the cause of all his troubles is within himself, he, like the prodigal son comes to himself and, soon afterwards, begins his homeward journey. Yet another cause is that the soul is deficient in character. Strength and stability of character can be built up through the soul meeting trouble and difficulty. Again it must be pointed out that they must be met in the right spirit.

It will be seen then, that our future depends entirely upon the way we think and act in this life. Our future lies in our own hands. If we violate the law of love in this life, we create disaster and suffering for the future, which will have to be met, in the form of “big fate” of a painful character, some day. Therefore, by right thinking and right doing now, we not only ameliorate conditions in this life, but we also create a future that will be more harmonious and freer than anything we have experienced hitherto.

It is also necessary to point out that, even in this life, some of its big disasters are the result of thoughts and actions committed during this present existence. A youth or young man may commit a folly that brings, in after life, a terrible retribution. Or he may do another man a grievous wrong and years afterwards someone else does the same wrong to him. It is always an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth on this plane of cause and effect, but the Great Way Shower, by His teaching of the power of love, enables us to rise above these lower things and live a life of harmony and peace.

CHAPTER IV.

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Man is the cause of the disasters in his life. He reaps through the ages exactly as he sows. Life is perfectly just and rewards every man according to his works. The fate of the present is the reaping of his sowing in, it may be, a distant past. Therefore, the disasters and sufferings of this life, must not be attributed to the interference of a capricious and unreasonable God, for the truth is, they are due to the exact working of a perfectly just law. Fate, once created, is irrevocable. It can neither be fought nor evaded. By fighting against fate, man merely smashes himself to pieces. To do so, is equivalent to running his head against a stone cliff: the harder he charges, the greater the damage to his head–but the cliff is unaffected. Fate, although largely self-created, is really the Divine purpose of life: therefore, to resist it is to fight against God. Fate, again is not punishment, in any vindictive sense, it is the drawing together of certain remedial experiences, through which the soul can learn the lessons it has failed to learn in past ages and thus attain wisdom. The object of fate is the highest good of the individual, although it may entail suffering and painful experiences.

Because the disasters in man’s life are due to past wrong doing, it naturally follows that his future depends upon the kind of life that he lives to-day. If, in the past, he has created for himself a sequence of events and experiences, from which it is impossible for him to escape, it is obvious that his future lives depend entirely upon how he lives the present one. It will be seen that if man can learn the lessons of the present life, and live in such a way as to cease creating trouble for the future, he is beginning to climb the Path of Liberation, which is the road all advanced souls have to follow, or, rather, have the privilege of following. By following this path, man ceases to be bound to the wheel of fate.

This little work does not teach reincarnation, but its teaching is based on a belief that man, in reality, is a spiritual being, a Divine Spark from the Sacred Fire. Spirit being immortal has no beginning or end therefore always lives. This present life is one of countless experiences, each one of which helps to build up character. There is no death, but only changes from one vehicle to another. There is no beginning, or end, or time in reality, these are mere limitations of the human mind. It is impossible for man to die: he can only leave his body. He cannot kill himself, try how he will: he can only force himself out of his body. Man must always go on, whether he likes it or not: he proceeds through the ages, _reaping exactly as he sows_.

We have already seen that man cannot avoid or fight successfully against fate, but that he can become free from the wheel of fate by living a life in harmony with Divine Law. [5] At this point it is necessary to point out that most of man’s troubles are not caused by fate at all, but are due to his fighting against or trying to resist the great plan. If the experiences of life are resisted, or an attempt is made to evade its discipline, troubles and difficulties will repeat, becoming more painful and insistent until their lesson is learnt and the life changed accordingly. Therefore man has it in his power greatly to improve his present life, as well as to create a far better future, simply by living his life to-day in harmony with Divine Law. Further, it is necessary to point out that all thought and action have an _immediate_ as well as a far reaching effect. It is true that the full effect of life here is not reaped until after our little course on this plane has been run, but great differences are effected in the present life nevertheless. The way a youth makes use of, or throws away his opportunities, either makes or mars, to a very large extent, his adult career. Opportunities, once allowed to pass, can never be recalled. Sins committed and wrongs done to our fellow men have an unpleasant habit of repeating themselves in a reversed way later in life. For instance, a man may get on in life, and, in his selfish climb, may trample on one weaker than himself, ruining him and driving him to despair. Years afterwards, he will probably be treated in exactly the same way by someone stronger and more favourably situated than himself. Therefore, there is an immediate sowing and reaping that finds fruition in this life. By “immediate” is meant, within the compass of this life. The reaping may be delayed ten or twenty years, but in the writer’s experience, it not infrequently comes. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Those, therefore, who think that life is not just, and who whine and complain about the way they are treated, are simply increasing their own troubles. Until man realizes that the cause of all his troubles is within himself he can never do anything to remedy matters, because, obviously, the only thing that is required is for him to change within. Man has to become changed within before his life can be altered. His thoughts, his ideals, his attitude towards life must all become transformed. When this change has been effected, he not only begins to repair his present life, but he creates a fairer and nobler life for the future.

[5] This is the inner secret of all esoteric teaching. The new birth, or regeneration, means the awakening of the soul to conscious immortality. The old self, that was bound to the wheel of fate and the plane of cause and effect from which it could never free itself, owing to the fact that it was continually binding itself to the wheel afresh, through following selfish desires, dies, and a new self is born. In other words, the consciousness is raised from the plane of sin and death, of sensuality and desire, of restriction and captivity, to the higher plane of Spirit, where man realizes that he is a son of God. He discovers that the Divine Spark within is his true self. He realizes also that he has always lived–in his real Spiritual Self. Beginning and end, like change and decay, belong purely to the material plane and have no place in Reality. They form part of this present three dimensional existence but have no reality. Endless being is the reality. Anything short of this is mere illusion. It is not necessary, therefore, to believe in the theory of reincarnation or that all our experiences must of necessity take place on this plane. Sufficient to know that we can never die, that we cannot escape from ourselves, and that to neglect seeking with all our heart for union once again with our Divine Source, is merely to prolong our sufferings.

Man, then, has to change. His desires and aspirations, instead of being directed towards hate and evil must be transformed to love and good. Instead of wallowing in lust and selfishness he must lift himself to higher and better things. How can this be done? It cannot be accomplished by the finite man at all, but it can be achieved by the Infinite Power within. It is only when man realizes his oneness with the Infinite and _believes_ that Omnipotent Power is at his disposal, that the Spiritual Power within becomes available. So long as man has doubts and fears or disbeliefs, this special power is not available. It is his, but his state of heart and mind prevents him from either realizing the presence of the Power or making use of it. Before the machinery of a workshop can run it must be connected up with the engine room. In the same way, man, before he can live the new life, must become one with the Infinite Life and Power.

Entering this new life of power, does not take away life’s experiences, its trials, troubles and adversities, but the change within does prevent the creation of unnecessary troubles and suffering. Also even a so-called unkind fate loses much of its power to wound, for the higher man rises into union with God and Infinite Love, the less power it has in his life. It still operates, but it fails to wound so deeply, for man, seeing with illumined eyes, knows that it is good that has come to bless; and not evil that has come to slay. Painful fate loses its power to hurt when man ceases to resist it and meets it with open arms, seeking to learn the lessons that it has to teach.

CHAPTER V.

SUCCESS.

What is meant here by success is the achievement of something worth while, that shall make the world better and richer, and add something to the common good. Our sphere in life may be very humble, but if we overcome our own weaknesses, help others along life’s pathway, and do our daily work better than we need, our life cannot be other than successful. If, at the end of our life, we can be thankful for it, realizing that we have made the best possible use of it, we have achieved real success.

Success, to the unillumined, may mean the accumulation of wealth and the winning of fame. Yet those who give up their lives to the acquirement of these things are the greatest failures in life. They gain wealth, it is true, but they find that their money can buy only those things that bring no satisfaction: that it cannot purchase for them any of the things which are really worth having. Success of this hollow kind, can be won, but at too great a price. The greatest Teacher of all once said: “For what shall it profit man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What _does_ it profit a man if he “gets on” at the cost of happiness, health, joy of living, domestic life, and the ability to appreciate Nature’s beauties and simple pleasures?

Yet man must be a striver. He must be for ever seeking better things and to express himself more perfectly. One who drifts through life, making no effort to rise to better things, is not worthy of the name of citizen. Man, if he is to be worthy of the name, must be for ever striving, overcoming, rising. Failure in life is always due to weakness of character. It is only strong characters who can resist the buffetings of life and overcome its difficulties. The man who would make his life worthy of respect and who would rise to high achievement and service, will be confronted by difficulty at every turn. This is as it should be, for it weeds out the weaklings and unworthy aspirants, and awards the spoils to those who exhibit faith, courage, steadfastness, patience, perseverance, persistence, cheerfulness, and strength of character, generally. Success, especially material success, is not, in itself, of much benefit to the one who wins it. It does not satisfy for long, but it is valuable in other ways. For instance, success, based on service, is a benefit to the community. If, it were not for successful people of this type the ordinary man in the rut would have a bad time. Also, the winning of success builds up character. One who would be successful in the battle of life, must be prepared to be tested and tried in every possible way. One who survives them all is built up in character in almost every direction. Even in his success, however, he will be tempted and tried. One who is engaged in the harsh struggle of business, or who takes part in public life, may, if he does not watch himself very carefully, become hard and callous. Of all failures this is probably the worst. One who succeeds in other directions and becomes a “hard man,” is, after all, a sorry failure.

Again, people of the successful, striving, climbing type, are tempted far more than those who are afraid to venture and who remain in the valley of mediocrity. This is true, not only of those who seek to climb the steep path of spiritual attainment, but also of those who are successful in mundane affairs. In each case, they have placed in their keeping great powers and influence such as the ordinary man little dreams of. This is a grave responsibility, for if these powers are used for self-aggrandisement the results are disastrous. Thus, those who climb, are beset on all sides by temptations of a very subtle kind, which, if yielded to, will ruin the life and do grave injury to the soul.

Life is a continual battle. To the ordinary person it is generally a fight with circumstances and the ordinary difficulties of life which are very important in his eyes. The more advanced soul is not troubled much by these things–he rises above them–but he is tempted and tried to a much greater degree, and in a far more subtle manner. Those who think that by following a certain “cult” or “ism,” they will be able to have an uneventful walk through life are merely deluding themselves. As he learns to overcome the difficulties of life which baffle the ordinary individual, he will be tempted and tried in other and more subtle ways. This is because life is not for mere passing pleasure, but is for the building up of character, through experience. Therefore, one who would succeed must be strong, and wise and patient. Those who aspire to make their lives really worth while: who desire to serve their fellows more perfectly: who want to build up character through experience and overcome all their weaknesses, inherited or otherwise, must look within for power and wisdom.

It must be pointed out, however, that man must not use his spiritual powers for selfish purposes and self-aggrandisement. There is an immutable law, which has been known to the inner teaching all through the ages, that forbids the use of spiritual powers for the creation of wealth or even of daily bread. Jesus was subject to the same spiritual law, and was tempted exactly in the same way as we. The tempter said: “Command this stone that it be made bread.” If Christ had turned the stone into bread, He would have failed in His great mission, but He knew the law. There are thousands of people to-day who are trying, not only to turn, by the mis-use of their spiritual powers, stones into bread, but also into motor cars, fat bank balances and lands and houses. Such are heading to disaster, for they are working _against_ the combined Spiritual Power of the Universe. The Enemy of Souls offers those who have learned to tap the inexhaustible Power of the Universe, and who have discovered that they are sons of God, wealth, power, pomp, the applause of men–the glittering things that perish–if only they will mis-use their God-given power. Like Jesus, they must refuse. They must put service before self, and give instead of grasping.

Thousands are being taught to-day to force their human will upon life and to use occult powers for the acquisition of wealth and power. They are taught to enter the Silence and demand “what they want.” “How to get what you want” is the slogan of these modern teachers. Not merit, not service, not giving, but demanding, compelling by human will-power and by the use of occult forces. This is another device of the Enemy of Souls, and it is taking tens of thousands of seekers for Truth out of the Path. This subject is dealt with more fully in a separate chapter.

If, however, man’s ambition is to serve and to give, instead of to grasp and to grab: if, also, he seeks success through merit and not through the mis-use of his spiritual powers, he can go forward and the Power will go with him and will help him. When once the Power has been aroused, man must cease all purely selfish striving, although, of course, there will still be much selfishness in his motive. He must seek his success through service and through following noble aims: through merit and a fair exchange, instead of trying to wring success from life, no matter who may suffer thereby.

Further, when this Power has been brought into expression it must only be used in love, for if it used otherwise it will destroy the user. Again, the Power must not be used by the finite human will, but an endeavour must be made to find what the Will of the Whole is, and to work in harmony with it.

Behind each life is the Divine Will and Purpose. Each life is perfect as it is imaged in the Universal Mind. The highest success, indeed, the only true success, is to live the life according to the great Cosmic Purpose, or, in other words, as it is imaged in the One Mind.

Do not imagine, however, that it is the Will of the Universal Mind that man should be a failure or lacking in achievement. Far from it, for we have only to contemplate the Universe to see that the Infinite Mind is for ever achieving and that it never fails. Man, too, must succeed, but let him mix wisdom with his ambition, and work for the benefit of the Whole, rather than for any purely selfish purpose.

It is natural for man to “get on” in life, to a moderate extent. [6] In order to “get on” he must become more efficient, and thus serve life and his fellows better. Therefore, there is no harm in success of this kind. It is natural and laudable also for one in poor and unlovely surroundings to have an ambition to raise himself to better circumstances. It is only right that he should desire to make life brighter and better for his wife and family. So long as he indulges in ambition wisely, and if he seeks success through _better service_ to his fellows, his is a laudable purpose. If, however, he does not curb and control his ambition but allows it to “run away” with him, he will lose all real joy in life, and, at the last, when it is too late, learn, to his sorrow, that his life, through too much “success,” has been a failure.

[6] It must not be deduced from this that the author deprecates large achievement. There must always be the few who have to bear huge responsibilities. The real success of the lives of these great ones depends entirely upon their MOTIVE. If they seek merely power, fame and self-aggrandisement, then their life, no matter how it may APPEAR otherwise, can be only a failure. If, however, their motive is SERVICE, then their life is truly successful, no matter how it may appear to be otherwise.

The writer’s experience has been that it is necessary that we should always be progressing, achieving, overcoming and endeavouring to succeed. One of the greatest laws of the Universe is progress, therefore it is fatal to stand still. We must go forward, we must achieve, we must accomplish things. If we do so, we may find that many things which cost us much effort, and hard work are not worth the having, yet all the time we are learning, through experience, and are being strengthened and prepared for greater things. Through repeated failure to find true satisfaction we arrive finally at true knowledge, wisdom and understanding. We are wise then, if, with the world at our feet, we can be satisfied with a very moderate material success, and turn our attention and aspirations to higher and better things.

In concluding this chapter let it be pointed out that success and achievement will not drop ready made from heaven into your lap. All who succeed are gluttons for work, toiling whilst others play and sleep. All teaching to the contrary is erroneous. To think that success is going to come to you when it is unmerited, simply because you make use of “affirmations” or employ mental “treatments,” is folly of the first water. On the other hand, to use the inner forces in an occult way, so as to compel material things or “success,” so-called, in any shape or form, to come to you, is black magic. One who stoops to such practices becomes a black magician, earning for himself a terrible retribution. There is only one way to succeed in the affairs of life, and that is by raising oneself to greater usefulness and service. By doing things better than they have been done before, by bearing greater responsibility, you serve humanity better, and therefore merit success. “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” said the Master, and this is true even in the practical and material affairs of life. First, you must give better and more valuable service: in other words, deserve and merit before you expect to see it materialize. You must sow before you can reap: you must become too big for your present position before you are capable of occupying a larger one. You must grow and expand in every possible way, and as you grow so will your success increase. Outward success is only a reflection, so to speak, of what you really are, and a result of greater and more valuable service to humanity. It requires great effort and determination to get out of the rut, but so long as your ambition is not ignoble or selfish, there will be found within you power sufficient for all your needs.

To win success, either in the hurly-burly of life, or the more difficult path of spiritual progress, demands imagination, vision, courage, faith, determination, persistence, perseverance, hope, cheerfulness and other qualities. These are all to be found within. All these qualities lie more or less dormant within, and can be called into expression if we believe that Infinite Power is ours.

Again, however, must the warning be repeated that this Power must not be used for selfish self-aggrandisement, still less may it be used, or, rather, mis-used, either to influence or dominate others. If this Power is mis-used the results are terrible and disastrous. Therefore, use the Power only for the achievement of good and noble aims and in service which shall enrich the life of your fellows, adding to the common good. Having arrived at this stage you must go forward. There can be no holding back. Ever onward, the Divine Urge is sending you, to greater achievement and accomplishment. Just as surely as the planets must revolve round the sun and fulfil their destiny, so also must you go forward. See to it, then, that your aims and ambitions are based upon eternal wisdom, for upon this does your whole future depend.

CHAPTER VI.

HEALTH.

It is impossible, in a little work of this description to explain why it is that one person inherits a weak and ailing body and another enjoys a strong and robust constitution. Sufficient for us here to notice that the days of rude, rugged health are passing, and that man is becoming more highly strung, nervous and psychic in his make-up. The old type of rude, unconscious health was due to the animal-like nature of man, which caused his body to be governed more completely by the instinctive mind. Less evolved humans are not affected, apparently, by the mental storms, psychic changes, and spiritual disharmonies that disturb the health of the more evolved types. We have an illustration of this in the case of some forms of insanity. The patient “goes out of his mind,” with the result that his bodily health becomes wonderfully good. The instinctive mind takes control of things, and rude, robust animal health is the result. When the patient was sane and his mind filled with worry, ambitions, plans, cares, lusts, hates and griefs, he was probably very far from well. This would be due to the disturbing effects of his thoughts and uncontrolled emotions. When, therefore, his conscious mind gave way and he became happy in an imbecile way, he ceased to think of these disturbing things, with the result that the instinctive, animal mind was able to work undisturbed.

It is of no use sighing for “the good old times,” when people were rugged and strong in the way that savages are rugged and strong, for evolution has decreed that man shall change into a higher and more nervous and sensitive type. In this sensitive type wrong thoughts and emotions quickly produce pain and suffering. The majority of people do not know what good health is. Not only do they suffer from minor ailments, such as headaches, indigestion, rheumatism, neuritis, but they also never feel hearty or completely well. They are strangers to the joy of living. Life does not thrill them: nothing quickens their blood: they have no moments of vivid ecstasy–in other words, they do not live, they merely exist at a poor dying rate.

Again, the majority of people are susceptible to infectious diseases and epidemics, yet, if they were really well, they would be immune. Instead, however, of seeking immunity through health, they are seeking it through the use of vaccines and serums, thus adding to the burdens which the body has to bear. All attempts in this direction are bound to end in failure, for, as fast as one disease is suppressed another one will appear.

Many people look upon disease and sickness as inevitable, yet the truth is that health is the normal state and ill-health an abnormality. In tracing back ill-health to its source, we find, first of all, that it is due to disobedience of natural law. Large numbers of people break nearly every known natural law of health, and are surprised that they become ill. Yet the wonder is that they are as well as they are. Yet, while obedience to nature’s laws and the use of nature-cure methods will carry us a certain part of the way, we find that there must be causes even deeper than those which are physical. We are confronted by the fact that there are many people who obey every known physical law of health, who bathe, exercise, breathe, eat and drink scientifically, who adopt nature-cure methods instead of drugs and serums, who yet cannot find health. Therefore we must search deeper and go to the mind in order to discover the cause of ill-health.

When we look to the mind we find a prolific cause of sickness. Man thinks himself into ill-health and disease. It is well known that thinking about disease and sickness produces them in the body. People who are for ever thinking about disease, illness, operations and other morbid subjects, become a prey to these things. Those who believe that sickness is inevitable, manifest it in their life. Morbid thinking produces a morbid state of the body, causing it either to fall an easy prey to infection or to break down into chronic ill-health, or even disease. Allowing the thoughts to dwell upon morbid things is a sure way to sickness and invalidism.

Man is not only made ill by his own negative thoughts and emotions, he is also under the hypnotic spell of the race mind. “The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” We are all under the spell, more or less, of a huge illusion. The evil, disease, sickness and other imperfections that we see and experience, have no reality, _in reality_, but have an _existence_ in _unreality_. [7] Although they are not real in a real sense, yet they are terribly real to this present limited consciousness. By realizing the truth, and by thinking and living in its light and power, the hypnotic spell becomes broken, not completely, else we should not grow old, but to such an extent that a state of greatly improved health can be enjoyed.

[7] For a fuller explanation of this metaphysical statement see Science of Thought Text Books, Nos. I. and II.

We are also hypnotically affected by suggestion, which reaches us from a thousand different sources. The conversations of friends and acquaintances, affect us adversely. Their belief in disease and sickness as realities, and in its inevitableness, colours all their conversation, and, unless we guard against it, this unconsciously affects us. Newspapers, magazines, books, all steeped in the same error, also influence us unless we have become too positive to be affected. From innumerable sources it is subtly suggested to us that disease, sickness, infection are realities that cannot be evaded, and to which we are prone. The effect of all this, putting it in simple and elementary language, is to divert the life power into wrong channels, thus producing disease and ill-health in place of perfection. The normal state of health has to give place to an abnormal state of disease or sickness. The normal health-state is, however, restored when Truth is realized, and the life lived in Its light and power. Absolute Truth and Perfection stand behind all the illusion and imperfection of the sense life. It is by realizing the Truth and the perfection of the Reality, and by establishing the thought-life in Truth, so that our thoughts cease to be negative and based on error and illusion, that health is to be found.

It is often said that ill-health is the result of sin. It is, for thinking about disease, sickness and ill-health, believing them to be inevitable, is one of the greatest of sins. The way of life is to walk (think and act) after the Spirit (which is perfect, whole, immortal and incorruptible) and not after the flesh (corruption, disease, sickness, death). By thinking “after the flesh” we dishonour God who is absolute Wholeness and Perfection, and cut ourselves off from the Divine Life and Power.

But there are other ways by which wrong thinking destroys the health. Thinking thoughts of lust is a prolific cause of unhappiness, sickness and nervous disease. The divine forces of life are directed into a wrong channel, resulting either in indulgence and inevitable weakening of body, brain and will, or in repression and its consequent nervous diseases. If the thoughts are allowed to dwell upon impurity, evil results must follow in some form, either in action or ill-health, or both. Thought must be controlled and reversed continually. Not repressed, but reversed, be it noted, for there is a tremendous difference between the two. Repression creates nervous trouble, but by reversing or transmuting the thoughts the life becomes transformed, and the bodily health greatly improved.

Further, indulging in thoughts of hate, resentment, ill-will, fear, worry, care, grief, and anxiety, produces ill-health, and, by lowering the tone of the body, lays it open to infection and disease. We therefore see that the state of the mind and the character of the thoughts are important factors which cannot be ignored. It is useless to treat either ill-health or disease if they are merely the external _effects_ of hidden causes of the mind. In order to effect a cure we have to get back to the cause of the trouble.

Thought control [8] is a great assistance. Substituting a right or positive thought for a wrong one, will, in course of time, work wonders in the life. In the sub-conscious we have an illimitable power of extraordinary intelligence. According to our thoughts this wonderful power either builds up health, harmony and beauty in our life and body, or just the reverse. The power is good, the intelligence is apparently infinite, but it goes where-ever our thoughts direct it. By our thinking, therefore, we either create or destroy, produce either good or evil. If, therefore, all our thoughts are good, positive and constructive, it follows that both our body and our life must become built up in harmony and perfection. The question is, can this be done? It can be done if we have the desire, and are willing to discipline ourselves and persevere in the face, often, of seeming failure. Some readers may say, at this point, that they have no desire to be so frightfully good, that they are not prepared to give up lust, impurity, hate, anger, malice and thoughts and emotions of this kind. Very well, if this is so, they must go on and learn, through suffering, the lesson which they refuse to learn willingly. Others may say: “Yes, I want to control my thoughts, but how can I cease to worry when I have so much about which to worry, and how can I cease to hate when I have been so deeply wronged?” This brings us to an even deeper cause of ill-health than that of mind, viz., the attitude of the heart. Our scriptures tell us that “as a man thinketh in his _heart_ so is he.” By “heart” is meant the soul or feeling, desiring part of man. It is here where the conflict between the self-will and the Divine Will, between the desires of the flesh and the longings of the Spirit take place. The real root cause of all unhappiness, disharmony and ill-health is spiritual, and not merely mental or physical. The latter are contributory causes, but the former is the fundamental cause. Spiritual disharmony is, in reality, the cause of all ill-health and disease. Until spiritual harmony is restored, man is a kingdom divided against itself, which, as our Lord said, cannot stand. Healing, then, must be of a spiritual character. Until this harmony exists there can be no overcoming of hate thoughts, fear thoughts or worry thoughts, and until these are overcome there can be no true healing. Our Lord’s healing was a gracious healing of the Spirit. It restored inward harmony by forgiving sin, by changing the heart’s desires, by bringing the will of the subject into harmony with the Divine Will of the Whole. Our Lord’s healing was not accomplished by means of suggestion, neither was it achieved by human will power; it was done by a bringing into harmony of the heart and desires and will with the Divine Will. At the same time there must have been a revelation of the truth that the Will of God is love, wholeness, joy and perfection, and not disease, sickness and misery.

[8] See also “The Power of Thought” by the same author, published by The Science of Thought Press, Chichester.

Mental healing does not become possible until we have made our peace with God. Until we have surrendered entirely to the love principle, we cannot overcome our hate thoughts and malice thoughts or resentment thoughts, by transmuting them into thoughts of love. Until we surrender to the Divine Will and leave all our problems to the Infinite Mind, we cannot cease to worry and fear. Mental discipline and thought-control are necessary after this inward change has taken place, for we all have to work out our own salvation, but the essential thing is the inward heart surrender in love and trust. So long as we hate our brother, or fear what the morrow may bring forth, or worry about the things of this life, we can never be well. When, however, we have become attuned to the Divine Harmony, and have learnt to control our thoughts and emotions and to transmute fleshly and material desires into loving service, a state of wholeness is the inevitable result. Old, deeply-seated disorders die away, and a steady improvement in the state of health takes its place.

In order to regain health it is necessary to raise oneself up continually to the Divine Ideal of health, harmony and perfection. But this is useless if there still remains a clashing of the personal will with the Divine Will, or if there is any hate, malice, envy, or fear in the heart. The will must be surrendered to the greater Will (this, in reality, is our highest good, for the fulfilment of the Divine Will is the happy destiny of man): the heart must forgive and be filled with love; fear must be cast out, and replaced by confidence and complete trust, before we can enter into that happy, care-free, restful state which is necessary for healing. Health is harmony–a delicate balance and adjustment between spirit, soul, mind and body. This harmony is dependent entirely upon the greater harmony between ourselves and God. So long as there is a conflict of will, so long as there is hate or resentment, so long as there is selfishness or while there is fear, this harmony cannot exist. Therefore, the bed-rock cause of health is spiritual harmony, all healing being a restoration of harmony between man and his Divine Source. When this harmony is restored, man is no longer a kingdom divided against itself, for he becomes established in _unity_: he works with the Universe and the Divine Laws of his being, instead of against them. The Divine Life and Power flow through him unimpeded, promoting perfect sub-conscious functioning. His thoughts become cleansed at their source (“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” “Cleanse Thou me from _secret_ faults”). He becomes free from the hypnotic spell of the race mind: his eyes, through the influence of the Divine Spirit, become opened to the Truth; therefore he is no longer blinded by the Prince of this world. In the Divine Union he becomes free. (In Christ all are made alive).

The subject of grief and its effect upon health has purposely been left to the last. No amount of right thinking will prevent bereavements in this life. These form part of the necessary discipline of life, and it depends entirely upon how we meet our trials whether they shall be hurtful or the greatest possible blessing. By rebelling against life’s discipline, griefs become hurtful, but the hurt is not in the bereavement itself, but in the attitude of the mind and heart. Until the soul is able to drink the cup of sorrow willingly, and say “Thy Will be done,” bereavement is hurtful, destroying both health and happiness. The cause of the hurt is, however, in the hardness of heart, and not in the bereavement itself. There must, therefore, be submission and an acknowledgment that the discipline is necessary. This does not imply, however, a weak giving-in to grief and mourning. One who has been bereaved can never, it is true, be the same again, for he or she becomes more chastened, more loving, more sympathetic, richer and more mellow in character. The loved one can never be forgotten, but that is no reason why the heart should be bowed down by grief and the life made desolate by sorrow. In such cases true religion, not religiousness, is the only thing that can satisfy the soul, harmonize the mind, and heal the body. To be established in Truth, knowing that all is well: that God makes no mistakes and that there is, in reality, no death but only change, is the only way by which bereavement can be made to be a blessing in disguise. When this stage is reached, grief is overcome, death being swallowed up in victory. The only panacea for all life’s troubles is conscious harmony with our Divine Source and the Divine Will and Purpose which desire only our highest good.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SECRET OF ABUNDANT SUPPLY.

It is a metaphysical truth that the outward life is a reflection of the thought life. Our life is affected by our habit of thinking and attitude of mind, in two ways: first, all our actions are unconsciously influenced by our thoughts, thus helping to bring into manifestation, or attracting to us, an environment that corresponds to our thoughts. [9] Secondly, we discharge or emit an influence, silent and invisible, that no doubt affects other people. They are probably not aware of it, but they are either repelled or attracted by this silent influence. Thus, if our thoughts and mental attitude are of the wrong type, not only are our actions affected thereby, but also we exert a silent influence that assists in driving the right type of friends, opportunity, success and every possible good away from us. The reverse also is equally true. By right thoughts and a correct mental attitude we naturally attract to us all the good of which our present life is capable.

[9] This may seem, at first sight, to be a sweeping statement, but two homely illustrations will prove its reasonableness. First we will take the case of a man committed to prison for law-breaking. His environment is obviously due to his wrong actions, the latter being the offspring of his thoughts, for all actions spring from thoughts. Next let us take the case of a man who is the trusted head of an efficient business. Obviously his position is the result of his actions, for he has climbed to it by hard work and faithful service, all due in the first place to constructive thinking and a right attitude of mind.

The Bible tells us that as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. It is equally true to say that as a man _is_, so does he _think_, and, that as he thinks, so do his outer life and circumstances become. Therefore, as a man _is_, so is his environment. This may sound rather metaphysical, but it is really quite simple, and proof meets us at every turn. Take a man from slumdom and put him in nice surroundings, and note what happens. Very soon he either drifts back to a slum or turns his new house into a slum dwelling. Take a man of a higher type, and put him in a slum, and soon he will either leave the slum or change his slum dwelling into a more decent habitation. Put a slut in a mansion, and she will turn it into a pig-sty, but put a woman of a higher type in a hovel and she will make it clean enough to entertain royalty. Therefore, before you can change a person’s environment it is necessary to change inwardly the person himself. When a man becomes inwardly changed and filled with new ambitions, ideals and hopes, he, in course of time, rises above his sordid surroundings and _attracts to himself an environment that corresponds to his new state of mind_. It would be useless to tidy up the house of a slut for her, for she would soon make it like a pig-sty again, but if you could get a new ideal of neatness, cleanliness, order and spotlessness into her mind, she would not rest satisfied until her immediate environment corresponded, in some measure at least, to her mental ideal or image.

Very often, the failures of a man’s life, and its disharmonies and poverty, either comparative or real, are outward symbols of his weakness of character. He may have ability in plenty, but he may lack application or steadfastness, and thus he fails in all his undertakings, and has to be kept by his wife and daughters. He will assure you that his circumstances are due to ill-fortune, but the actual cause of his failure is in his character, or, rather, lack of character.

If, therefore, a man’s poverty and lack, or financial difficulties are due to weakness of character which manifest in his work and dealings with others, in the form of inefficiency, poor service and bad judgment, it follows that he, himself, must change before his circumstances can be permanently altered for the better. The difficulty in dealing with unsuccessful people is in getting them to realize that they, themselves, are the cause of all their troubles. [10] Until, however, they do realize this, their case is hopeless, and it is impossible to help them, but when they acknowledge that the fault is theirs, they can be shown that there is a remedy for their ills and a way out of their difficulties, by means of self-improvement. Let them then search for hidden weaknesses, and build up those weak places in their character, such as lack of grit, determination, steadfastness, persistence, patience, probity, decision, which are the cause of their troubles, and they will find that their circumstances will gradually change for the better. Everything comes from within–first within, then out, this is the law–therefore the change must always take place within.

[10] See also “The Fundamentals of True Success,” by the same author and published by The Science of Thought Press, Chichester.

Going more deeply into the subject and becoming more metaphysical, it is necessary to point out that the cause of all manifestation is Mind. We have already seen that a man’s mind and character are reflected in his circumstances; now let us think, for a moment, about the Mind that is Infinite. The whole universe, which is, of course, infinite in extent, has its origin in the Divine Mind, and _is contained within this Infinite Mind_, just in the same way that you can hold a mental picture in your own mind. God’s Universe, _as it is imaged in the Divine Mind_, is perfect. We see it as imperfect, because we only receive a finite sense-perception of that which is perfect and infinite, from this forming, in our minds, an image that is necessarily imperfect and finite, which we project outwards, and, not knowing any better, think is real. But the universe, _as imaged in the Divine Mind_, and as it actually is in reality, is both infinite and perfect: it is also infinitely perfect. There is no poverty or lack in a universe that is infinitely perfect, whole and complete in the Divine Mind. Poverty and lack have their origin in the mind of man: they have no place in the Mind of God.

We cannot, in a little elementary work of this kind, go more deeply into this extremely fascinating subject. Sufficient if we say here that the only Reality is infinite perfection and wholeness, therefore there cannot be any lack at all (in reality). The obvious lack and poverty that we see around us are the product of the human mind. Those who live in a consciousness of poverty and lack, go through life closely fettered by limitation. They can never escape from poverty, it dogs their footsteps like their shadow. In fact, it is a shadow or reflection, in the outer life, of their state of mind and mental attitude.

On the other hand, those who live in a consciousness of sufficiency, are not troubled about supply. Their circumstances reflect their type of mind and mental attitude. It does not follow that they will be rich, for many of them prefer to live from hand to mouth, and quite large numbers of people have no desire whatever to possess wealth of any kind, but they have no worry about supply, for their needs are always met by sufficiency.

Many of our readers look upon the possession of wealth as an iniquity. Personally, I do not see how, at this stage, it can be altogether avoided. Capital is necessary for the conducting of business and for the carrying out of enterprises, but, as far as the hoarding of wealth is concerned, I certainly think that it is both unwise and unnecessary. There is nothing more deadening to the spiritual life than riches. There is always hope for the drunkard and the harlot, but it is most difficult although, of course, not impossible, for one who is burdened by wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven. Some are able to do so, but they are allowed to enter simply because they hold their wealth as of no importance, merely as something of which they are stewards for a season.

The hoarding of wealth is just as unnecessary as poverty. They are both based upon a fundamental error. This error is in thinking that all supply, being material, must necessarily have a material source: that it is limited in quantity, and therefore must be grabbed at and fought over. The truth is, of course, that the source of supply is Spiritual, and therefore without limit; consequently, one who realizes the truth has no thoughts of poverty or lack, and ceases to fear it. On the other hand, he has no incentive to hoard or to grab wealth, for of what use are riches to one whose supply is for ever assured?

All who enter into this truth regarding supply, either despise riches or hold them very lightly indeed. They cease to have any desire for wealth. Why should they have any such desire? People hanker after wealth because they fear poverty with a deadly fear, and long for wealth because they think that its possession would release them from their fears. When, however, they know the truth, they also KNOW that their wants will always be supplied, therefore they no longer desire wealth and its cares and responsibilities.

Wealth is just as abnormal as poverty. Our Lord showed this to be the case by choosing to be poor (but not in poverty) and by His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. What Jesus promised was adequate supply, but not wealth or riches, to those who had sufficient faith in their “Heavenly Father.” Many people live this planless life of utter dependence upon their Spiritual Source. They never become rich, but all their needs are supplied. Something always arrives in time to meet their requirements. Such a life requires a very live and active faith, but its results are as certain as the rising of the sun.

An understanding of the truth regarding supply is a necessary foundation for the faith without which the planless life is impossible. It is necessary to _know_ the utter falseness and unreality of poverty and lack before we can trust in Divine Providence or the working of Spiritual (at the same time, mental) law. It is necessary to know that the universe is Spiritual: that God is Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, and that because we are a part, very small, but yet a part, of the Whole, all our wants, all through the ages, must be supplied. Supply, sufficient for all our needs, is the reality. Poverty and lack, the product of lack of faith, of fear, of ignorance, of weakness of character, have their origin in the human mind, and are the unreality–the negative which has no permanence or reality.

When we have learnt the truth, it is necessary to live in the Consciousness of it, and to think and act and praise God as though sufficiency were already ours. Not to spend money that we cannot afford to spend, nor to incur debt, but to live mentally in an atmosphere of abundant supply. We have to remember that the change in consciousness must take place first and become well-established, before its effects can be seen to manifest in the outer life.

The entering of this higher consciousness where we know and realize the truth, viz., that the Source of all our supply is Spirit, and that the Divine Source is limitless, is not easy, although it is less difficult to some than to others. It demands constant mental activity and watchfulness: it requires persistence and perseverance in right thinking, yet it is possible to those who are in earnest. By living in the consciousness of God’s Supply and exercising a lively faith, the life becomes affected, principally due to both conscious and unconscious change of action.

Having dealt with the esoteric or inner side of the subject of supply, I will now treat it more from the outer or practical side, the latter being, of course, just as important as the former.

The teaching of this chapter does not discourage industry and thrift, far from it. After the Lord Christ had fed the five thousand, all the leavings were carefully collected so that nothing should be wasted. This is in accord with Universal law. There is a law of economy both in the natural and spiritual worlds. Nature appears, on the surface, to be very wasteful and prodigal, but, actually, she never wastes anything, if it can be avoided. Therefore, the action of the disciples was in accord with universal law. What a lesson for us! To be careful and saving is a mark of superiority both in mind and character. The wastefulness of the helpless poor is notorious. Those who are “well to do” are far more careful and conserving than the very poor. There are exceptions, it is true, but the rule is that a man who cannot save money has not it in him to command success in life. Inability to deny himself certain things shows a weakness of character and lack of purpose which make success impossible. Two men that I knew very well built fortunes upon P5, which they saved out of meagre earnings. It is always the start that is difficult: if you cannot overcome the preliminary difficulties you have not the steadfast purpose to hold your own in the battle of life. On the other hand, once the initial difficulties have been overcome, it is not difficult to get your barque into the currents of prosperity. When once you realize that there is unlimited abundance in which you can share: when once you learn to live in the consciousness of this abundance, at the same time living within your present income and doing your present work as well as it is possible for it to be done, you have set out on the path to affluence. One who realizes and really believes that there is abundance and plenty for _him_, puts into operation a powerful law which will surely bring opportunity to him, sooner or later. Many, however, ruin their hopes by not knowing that for a time they must live a kind of double life. They must be opulent in consciousness, but careful and thrifty in actual practice. The time will come when their means will largely increase, then, if they are wise, they will live on part of their income, instead of living up to it. This will give them a wide margin for charitable purposes, for the taking up of further opportunities and for extensions. Many business men have to let golden opportunities pass, simply because they have saved little or nothing, owing to lavish private expenditure, or they have to let other people in to share their schemes who, in addition to taking a large share of the profits may prove a serious handicap and hindrance in other ways.

While in its essence, the Source of Supply is spiritual, it comes to us through material channels, and, in order to have a share in it, it is necessary to earn it. We have to give something in exchange for what we draw from life in the way of supply. We must give in order to receive, and what we give must be something that the world wants or needs.

The secret of supply is, then, to realize that there is unlimited abundance and to live in the consciousness of it, as completely as though no material channels existed, and, at the same time, to work as zealously and be as careful as though there were no such thing as spiritual supply. At the same time we must give the world something that it wants, or otherwise serve in some useful capacity, exercising honesty, probity and justice in all our affairs. It is folly to expect abundance to drop ready-made in our lap; it must be earned by intelligent and faithful service. [11]

[11] This subject is treated fully in “The Fundamentals of True Success,” by the same author. Published by The Science of Thought Press, Chichester.

Being a retired business man who started life with nothing, not even good health, I have looked at this subject from a business man’s point of view. The principle applies, however, to every walk in life, and each reader can adapt the teaching of this lesson to his or her particular needs.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POWERS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND.

The sub-conscious mind is the mind of Nature. It possesses extraordinary powers and intelligence, but no inspiration. It is instinctive: it is animal: it is natural: but there is nothing god-like about it–it is of the earth and the physical plane. It can be described as the inner forces of Nature resident within our body. Having said this we have said nearly all there is to be said about the sub-conscious, yet this is the mind of which some people have made a veritable god.

The sub-conscious mind, if led aright, is a very good friend, reducing all repeated thoughts and actions into habit, which, in time, become settled and part of the very life itself. Thus, by conscious right thinking and conscious right action, a good habit is formed, which becomes, in course of time, practically automatic. This, of course, builds up the character, which, in turn, affects the life. It will be seen then, how important is the right use of this willing and faithful servant. It is no god, it has no inspiration, but it is a very useful servant, as we shall see.

Most of our actions or movements are done or made sub-consciously. The reason that “practice makes perfect” is that the sub-conscious mind learns to do the task, and, by so doing, takes it off our hands. How difficult it is to learn to drive a motor-car. How carefully, at first, we have to double de-clutch and obtain the right engine speed for a noiseless “change,” yet, after a time, the whole action is performed sub-consciously. It is the same with pianoforte playing. Many players, some better than others, can play the most difficult classical music without _consciously_ recalling it to mind. As soon as they _try to remember_ the whole “piece” leaves them, but as long as they leave the whole matter to the sub-conscious (which never forgets) they can keep on playing. I and my conscious mind are not doing much of the actual writing of this book. We think the thoughts and have something to do with the formation of the sentences, but the sub-conscious mind writes them down. If I had to think of each word and letter, my task would be hopeless, and I should become half dead with fatigue.

The sub-conscious mind, however, is even more helpful, for it does the bulk of our thinking, and can be taught to do a great deal more. If we had to think everything out laboriously, according to the laws of logic, life would be unbearable. Instead of this our sub-conscious mind does the bulk or our thinking, and, if we give it a chance, will do it in an extremely accurate manner, strictly according to the laws of logic and _without the slightest fatigue_. The more that we train the sub-conscious to do our ordinary thinking for us, the less we suffer from fatigue. Fatigue is unknown to the sub-conscious mind, therefore we can never tire it or overwork it.

The sub-conscious mind can be made to do more and more work for us if we will delegate definite work for it to deal with. One who has learnt thought control, who can take up a matter, consider it in all its bearings, and then dismiss the subject from his conscious thought, is able to increase his efficiency a hundred per cent., and reduce his mental fatigue almost to vanishing point. Instead of laboriously working out his problems and worrying and scheming over them, he simply dismisses them to his sub-conscious mind to be dealt with by a master mind which works unceasingly, with great rapidity, extreme accuracy and entirely without effort. It is necessary, however, to give the sub-conscious every available information, for it possesses no inspiration or super-human wisdom, but works out logically, according to the facts supplied to it.

This great, natural, untiring “mind downstairs,” as it has been called, is also capable of doing even more useful work still. A writer or speaker, or preacher can collect notes and ideas for his article, book, speech or sermon, and pass them down to his sub-conscious mind with orders that they be arranged in suitable order, division, sub-division and so on. When he comes either to write or prepare the notes of his speech or sermon, he will find all the work done for him, and all that he has to do is to write it down, entirely without effort or fatigue.

Again, a business man who has learnt to make use of his sub-conscious mind in this way, need not juggle or worry or fatigue himself by planning and scheming for the future. All that he need do is to submit the facts to the “greater mind downstairs,” and all the planning will be done for him, entirely without effort, and far more efficiently than he would have done it through laborious conscious thinking.

The following, which has just been brought to my notice, is a striking confirmation of the teaching of this chapter.

In a recent issue of _Collier’s Magazine_, an interview with Henry Ford appeared. He spoke of the way with which big business men deal with problems, and pointed out that they did not spend a lot of time pondering and puzzling over plans or ideas. He said: “An idea comes to us: we think of it for a little while, and then _we put it in the pot to boil_. We let it simmer for a time, and then take it out.” What Henry Ford means, of course, is precisely what we have been saying, viz., that the idea or problem is dismissed to the sub-conscious mind, which works it out, and presents it to the conscious mind for judgment.

Yet again, an inventor or one who is constructing something mechanical, can make use of the sub-conscious mind in precisely the same way. Let him sum up the whole problem, arrange all his facts and available information, and pass them all to his sub-conscious mind, when, if a successful result is within the range of possibility, an answer or idea will be forthcoming. All this being done, mark you, without any effort whatever.

All this may seem, especially to some readers, rather wonderful and far-fetched, yet there is nothing occult or mysterious about it. I am perfectly sure that there is no great writer, politician or business man who does not make use of his sub-conscious mind in this way. He probably does so unconsciously, but his procedure is the same. Some employ the whole of their mind naturally. These become men of achievement, who occupy responsible positions, and who bear immense burdens without strain, worry or care. Responsibility sits lightly upon them, and they are serene and untroubled when in positions, and when confronted by tasks and difficulties, such as would drive an ordinary individual out of his mind. Such men develop their powers of attention and concentration (anyone who is in earnest can do this) to a very high degree. They are at great pains to get to the root of a problem, and obtain all the available data possible, but, after that, it is their sub-conscious mind that does all the work, and which arrives at a decision.

While it comes natural to a few to use their sub-conscious mind in the correct way, the majority of people find themselves unable to do so. Such, however, can acquire the art by training. First, it is necessary to learn thought-control, so as to be able to take up a problem or dismiss it entirely from the mind _at will_. When a problem is passed on to the sub-conscious to be worked out, the subject must be dismissed entirely from the conscious mind. The problem must not be worried over, nor the thoughts allowed to dwell upon it; it must be left entirely to the sub-conscious. Second, every possible detail and information connected with the problem must be grasped by the conscious mind, and the whole matter, pro and con, visualized before being passed to the sub-conscious. It will be seen, then, that thought-control of a high order is necessary, also powers of attention and concentration. These can all be developed by anyone who is really in earnest.

A good way of starting the use of the sub-conscious mind is to hold the problem in the mind just as one is going to sleep. There must not, upon any account, be any attempt made to solve the problem or to worry over it. Instead, the main facts of the case, on both sides, must be marshalled, and the case presented to the sub-conscious mind in much the same way as you would place it before your lawyer. Having done this, dismiss the whole matter to your sub-conscious mind, and in most cases you will find in the morning that a solution has been arrived at without any effort or fatigue on your part.

This, of course, is only one of the many ways in which the sub-conscious mind can, and does, serve its master, or the one who should be master. This great invisible force of Nature is for ever working. Whatever ideal is held in the mind becomes woven into the life through the tireless working of the sub-conscious mind. Only set your attention upon high and lofty achievement, and you will focus all the invisible inward forces of Nature upon its accomplishment. In course of time you will reap as you sow. If you will direct your attention into the right channel, backing it up with energetic, conscious action, your sub-conscious will help you day and night, thus making success and achievement possible.

CHAPTER IX.

THE USE OF THE SPIRITUAL OR SUPER-CONSCIOUS MIND.

We have already seen that the sub-conscious mind, wonderful though it be, is instinctive merely, lacking inspiration and what we call originality.

All inspiration comes from the Universal Mind, via the super-conscious. All poets and inspired writers get their inspiration in this way. This higher mind is not recognized by Psychologists, but it has long been known to searchers for spiritual truth.

What we get from the sub-conscious is the outcome of facts and knowledge supplied to it. What we get from the super-conscious is direct inspiration from higher planes. This higher mind might also be called the Mind of Illumination, for those who can enter into it become illumined, being able to know the Truth and to see things as they really are, and not as they falsely appear to the senses.

This limited consciousness in which we live is bounded by our five senses. The universe that we see around us is partly real and partly an illusion. The real universe is Spiritual and infinite: what we sense is a limited, partial conception of a fragment of it. Our limited, finite conception of the universe is entirely misleading and erroneous, and so long as we rely on sense evidence and the human mind, we remain in darkness and uncertainty. When, however, we can rise into the super-conscious realm, our consciousness expands, transcending the senses and the limitations of the physical plane.

The Spiritual mind is, of course, only accessible to those who are more delicately attuned to its finer vibrations. Nothing that is worth having can be had without effort, and it is only after much self-discipline that it becomes possible for the student to raise his consciousness to this higher realm and understand life from the standpoint of the Universal Mind.

There is nothing, either mystical or psychical, about the use of this higher mind. One who makes use of it becomes spiritually-minded, that is all. He does not go into trances, nor need he become clairvoyant: he simply remains a sane, normal individual, with this difference only–he makes use of more of his mind than does the ordinary individual.

One who is able to use this higher mind develops that which has been termed “the divine quality of originality.” If ever a person is to rise above the dead level of mediocrity it must be through direct inspiration from higher planes, through his super-conscious mind. If ever a person is to bring forth a new idea which shall enrich humanity and add to the common good, it must come through the higher mind.

One who is properly attuned, becomes, through the super-conscious mind, a recipient of knowledge that is above human, and wisdom that is divine. He knows by direct knowing: he becomes wise through an influx of Divine Wisdom. He is able to distinguish between the real and the sham, between the gold and the dross: he is also able to see and recognize the right path in life–a thing utterly impossible to the mind of the senses–and to tread it, thus being led into the only true success and real good of which his life is capable.

Let it be said here that all Wisdom must come from within. While books and the written word may be helpful, it is the Spirit within the reader that illumines the word, and makes it real and true to the seeker after Wisdom. One who realizes that he is illumined within by the Divine Spirit, and that this alone can bring him into real knowledge is well advanced on the path that leads to realization.

The wisdom of the human mind always leads to disappointment. It is based on the evidence of the senses, which is erroneous, therefore its findings must always be lacking in _real_ wisdom. One who relies upon the inspiration of Divine Wisdom has often to decide to take a course of action which, apparently, is opposed to his best interests. Yet, if he follows the inward Wisdom, he finds that he is always guided aright, and, later, has cause to be devoutly thankful that he followed the gleam.

CHAPTER X.

CHARACTER BUILDING AND THE OVERCOMING OF HABIT.

Character building is the greatest object in life. It has been said that character is the only thing we can take with us when we depart this life. This is perfectly true, therefore the object of all religion (not religiousness), mental training and development should be the building of character. A religion that does not build up character is worthless. Those who think that they can “flop” through life, avoid, as far as possible, its discipline, make no effort to improve their character, and through believing in a certain creed can miraculously become perfect, simply by dying, are deceiving themselves. We do not become “perfect,” _i.e._, of a strong and perfect character, either by believing in a creed or through dying, but by attainment. God helps those who help themselves, and those people who will not strive after better things cut themselves off from all the glorious and wonderful possibilities of attainment.

Before, however, thinking about such lofty things as entering the Path of Attainment, and becoming changed into, and modelled after the Divine Image, the average person may wish to know how to overcome bad habits and weaknesses of character which are keeping him down in life, and, possibly, undermining his health. Most people are conscious of some wrong habits that ought to be overcome, and weaknesses of character which should be eradicated. Possibly they have fought against their habits or weaknesses for years, prayed until they are tired of praying, made innumerable attempts at turning over a new leaf, yet all in vain, for they are as firmly in the toils as ever. Many people give up the struggle and endeavour to lead a sort of Jekyll and Hyde existence, being outwardly a Christian or righteous person, but inwardly something quite different. Yet they find no satisfaction in this dual life, for they know that they are drifting towards an abyss.

Yet there is a way of escape that is open to all. The Infinite One has provided man with powers that are apparently unlimited: powers which can be used either to build up the life and character or to destroy them. These powers are those of the sub-conscious mind. This mind is a reservoir of unlimited, tireless forces, and becomes, if we use it aright, our best friend, or, if we mis-use it, our worst enemy.

Every time a bad action is indulged in, wonderful changes take place in the nervous system, and energy becomes stored up in certain cells, so as to make it easier to do the wrong act on a future occasion. It is equally true that every time a good action is done, similar changes, but in a reverse direction, take place, that make the doing of the same action easier in the future. This explains the tremendous power of habit. Our body, brain and nervous system become changed, either for the worse or the better, according to the type of action indulged in.

We do not yet fully realize what a wonderful adventure life is. We are entrusted with tremendous powers, and by their use or mis-use we can either destroy ourselves or build up our character in every possible direction. What a responsibility, yet what a glorious opportunity!

In order, however, to find a way of escape from evil habit and weaknesses of character, we must go deeper than actual deeds, for actions are effects of hidden causes. The cause of all action is thought. A thought, someone has said, is an action in the process of being born. It is true that we possess primitive desires and impulses, but these can be transmuted into noble actions and high achievement simply by directing the thoughts and attention to higher and better things. For instance, the powers of sex become transmuted into brain power if the thoughts and attention are completely transferred from sex to intellectual pursuits. If, however, the thoughts are allowed to dwell upon sex or passion, then the kingdom becomes divided against itself, and man begins to drift towards the abyss. The strain of modern life is filling our asylums, yet there are those who can work fifteen or even eighteen hours a day and thrive on it, although engaged in severely-trying brain work. These have learnt to transmute their lower powers into higher. This is not done by means of esoteric or occult practices, but by obeying the Divine Injunction to set our affections on things above. In other words, to keep our thoughts and attention fixed upon higher and better aims, ambitions and pursuits.

It is impossible to overcome bad habits by fighting them, for the more we fight them the stronger they become. The injunction to “resist not evil” is very applicable to habit. The way of escape is not by fighting evil or wrong habit, no matter what its character may be, but by concentrating upon building a good habit that shall cut the ground from under the feet of the bad one, or by turning the attention to higher and better things.

Whatever we fix our attention upon, or whatever it is that we idealize, our sub-conscious mind endeavours to actualize and make real in our life. By fighting a habit we direct sub-conscious attention to it, and this is fatal. If, however, we turn our whole attention to something entirely different and which is higher and better, all the powers of the sub-conscious are directed towards the production, in the life and body, of the new object of attention.

We see, therefore, that we do not have to overcome habit. If we did our task would be hopeless, for the human will is helpless before the power of the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious powers can be led by the imagination, but they cannot be coerced by the will. The will must be used not to fight the habit, but in raising and directing the attention to something higher and better. By this means a new habit is formed. The attention of the sub-conscious mind is taken away from the bad habit, and all its powers directed towards the creation of a new and better one. The sub-conscious does not care what the habit is. It is indifferent as to whether it is good or bad. It is just as willing to produce a good habit as a bad one. We, each of us, therefore, hold our fate in our own hands. We can, by controlling our thoughts and imagination and by directing our attention to better things, focus all the powers of the sub-conscious on the building up of good habits, or, on the other hand, we can, by allowing our thoughts and mental pictures to dwell upon undesirable things and our attention to be directed to low or weak ideals, fall into undesirable habits. The power that produces the habits is the same in each case; it is the way in which this power is directed that is the vital and essential thing.

It is very necessary to point out that right thinking and correct use of the imagination must be accompanied by corresponding right action. Many people make use of auto-suggestion and expect it to destroy their bad habits and build up better ones, but it never will, or can do so, unaided. Auto-suggestion is useless if it is not followed by constructive action. Young people should expend their energies in physical culture and games. Older people should interest themselves in hobbies and intellectual pursuits. It is only advanced students who can control their thoughts so that they can govern their life forces by mental means. Those less advanced, when attacked by evil or weak thoughts, must get up and _do_ something quite different, and thus get their minds off the forbidden subject and interested in the new object of attention. It is a case of directing the desires and life forces into different channels, by controlling the thoughts and attention. Here is seen the value of true religion, for it brings fresh ideals into the life and directs the attention to higher and better things. The writer realizes that a change must take place in the heart of the individual before he can desire these better things. When, however, this change has taken place, the battle has only just begun, for each one has to work out his own salvation.

At first, then, most people will find it necessary to do something in order to attract their attention and guide their thoughts to something quite different from the forbidden subject. Later on, however, when they become more advanced in the science of right thinking, they will be able to direct their thoughts into any desired direction. This necessitates constant vigilance. Each thought has to be carefully scrutinized before being allowed to pass the threshold of the mind. By reversing every negative or unworthy or ignoble thought into its opposite, a change is wrought in the brain and nervous system. The cells formerly used for wrong thinking and for the production of wrong action go out of use as new cells are brought into use for the production of right action.

This stage leads to one higher still, when it becomes a settled habit to reverse bad thoughts into good ones and perform right actions instead of bad or weak ones. The power of the sub-conscious mind, which at one time seemed so evil, produces right action more or less automatically. When once the habit of cleaning the teeth is established there is experienced an uncomfortable feeling until they have been attended to. When once a dirty person has learnt to wash himself thoroughly and keep himself decent, he will feel uncomfortable if he gets dirty. The same rule applies in the more important things and habits of life. If those who are in the bondage of habit will only direct their thoughts and attention to the building up of good habits, their old weaknesses will die a natural death.

It must not be thought that the victory over life-long habits is easy. It may seem so at first, but sooner or later temptation will come with added force, which may result in a sad fall. If this should happen it is most important that too much attention should not be paid to the incident. Instead, the beginner should pick himself up, and, making a mental note of the immediate cause of his downfall, thus benefiting by the experience, press on again towards freedom. It is most helpful to realize that not only is the sub-conscious mind willing to be guided aright, if we will only persevere long enough (until persevering itself becomes a habit), but that we also have behind us all the Spiritual powers of God. The Infinite One sees to it that the odds are not overwhelmingly against us. Our difficulties are not insuperable, although they may appear to be so. We can always win through if we faint not. Heaven looks on with sympathetic interest and rejoices with the struggler when he succeeds, and mourns with him when he fails. The struggle is a stiff one, for it is only by this that the seeker after God can become strong in character, but the victory can always be won. When the situation appears hopeless, let the struggling one remember that there is a way of escape somewhere, and that God, who is his freedom and deliverer, will reveal it to him if he faints not. If all who seek deliverance will realize that the Power of the Infinite is on their side, and that they are bound to become victors if they will only keep on, they must succeed. And what a joy is theirs! There is no happiness quite like that which comes to one who has fought the good fight and overcome habit and weaknesses of character.

May every reader experience this supreme joy of overcoming.

CHAPTER XI.

HAPPINESS AND JOY.

Deep down in every heart is an unquenchable desire for happiness. The advanced soul desires happiness just as much as the pleasure-seeking worldling, the difference between them is simply that the former, through knowledge and experience, does not search for happiness, knowing that it can never be found by direct seeking, but finds it through service and love to others and in victory over self; while the latter seeks happiness, like a will-o’-the-wisp, in every form of pleasure, and finds it not.

Man is never satisfied with his life: he is for ever seeking something that is better. Until he learns wisdom, he looks for it in pleasure, in sense gratification of various kinds, in wealth, luxury and possession. The less evolved a man is the more convinced he is that happiness can be gained in these ways, and the lower are his desires. For instance, those who form what is called the underworld of our cities, seek happiness in vice and debauchery. Those who are more evolved seek pleasure in more refined things, hoping to find happiness in intellectual pursuits, friendships, and in pure human loves. These more evolved types get much more pleasure through the senses than do those who are more elemental, but they are capable also of greater and more acute suffering. They can derive great pleasure from a picture gallery, whereas a savage would see nothing interesting at all: they can also suffer from things which a savage would not be capable of feeling. Yet, in spite of this developed refinement and ability to derive pleasure from art, science, literature, etc., happiness is still as far off as ever. All attempts at finding happiness lead finally to “emptiness.” There is no satisfaction, either in wealth and all that it can command, getting on in life, or in fame and power. They allure at first and promise happiness, but they fail us, and finally are seen to be but vanity and vexation of spirit.

This desire for happiness is good, for it leads us through innumerable experiences so that the soul can realize, by practical experience, the emptiness of all self-seeking, and thus learn wisdom. After running the whole gamut of experience the soul learns at last that happiness is not something that can be found by seeking it, but is an inward mental state.

Although work, well done, brings a quiet sense of satisfaction, and success in one’s career may also be a source of gratification for a short time, yet even these cannot satisfy the deep longing of the soul.

Happiness, however, is to be found in service. Not if we seek happiness in service, and serve in order to be happy, but if we serve others for the sake of serving we find the only happiness that will endure and satisfy.

One has only to observe the lives of those who are always selfishly seeking and grabbing, who are hard in their dealings, and always “looking after number one,” in order to see how impossible it is for self-seekers to be happy. It does not matter whether they acquire riches or remain poor–they are equally unhappy. In contrast to this, you have only to go out of your way to do a kind and perfectly disinterested action and experience the glow of sheer happiness that it brings, in order to realize that you are dealing with a law of life that is as sure and unalterable as the law of gravitation.

There must be a purpose in life, and this must have for its object the betterment of the lives of others, either few or many. The law of service must be obeyed, otherwise there can be no happiness. This may fill some readers with dismay, for they may be employed in an occupation that apparently does no good to anybody. They may feel that if they were engaged in some noble enterprise for the uplift of humanity, then they could truly serve, but in their present occupation this is impossible. To think thus is very natural, yet the truth is we can all obey the law of service, and can begin now, in our present occupation, no matter what it may be. We have only to do our daily work, not as a task which must be “got through,” in order to bring us a living, or because it is expected of us that we should work, but as an offering of love to life and the world, in order to come into harmony with the great law of service. Our ideas of values with regard to occupations are altogether erroneous, from the “inner wisdom” point of view. The scrubbing of a doorstep, if faithfully done in a true spirit of service, is of as much value and real importance as the writing of a deathless poem, or dying for one’s country. We can never truthfully say that one act of service is of greater value, or is more important than another. All that the higher law looks at is the _motive_. Therefore, if your motive is right, you can be engaged in the humblest and, apparently, most useless occupation, and yet be happy because you satisfy the law of service.

Another road to happiness is the conquest of the lower nature, the overcoming of weaknesses, the climbing to higher and better things. There is intense happiness in realizing daily that old habits are being overthrown, weak points in the character built up, and an ever-increasing state of liberty and freedom entered into. Thank God, we do not have to remain as we once were, but can progress upwards, indefinitely, for there is no limit to our upward climb.

But there is a state that is far higher than happiness, and this is JOY. Happiness comes through service and overcoming, but joy comes only to one who realizes his oneness with his Divine Source. The _reality_ is ineffable joy. Behind this world of shadows is the real, spiritual world of splendour and delight. When the soul, after its immense journey through matter, time and space, at last finds its way back to its Divine Source, it becomes aware of this intense joy, too great to be described in words. It not only realizes that the _reality_ is joy, and the universe filled, not with groans or sighing, but with the sweet, quiet laughter of freed souls! it also is filled itself with this ineffable joy.

What has all this got to do with practical, everyday life, it may be asked? Everything, for the one who possesses this quiet joy can never be defeated in life’s battles. He has something within him that can never be quenched and which will lead him from victory to victory.

CHAPTER XII.

THE USE AND MIS-USE OF MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS.

The average individual knows nothing of mental forces, and, although he may suffer from the effects of unconscious wrong thinking, yet he is in no danger of making deliberate mis-use of the inner powers. One, however, who has learnt how to use these interior forces must be very careful to use them aright or he will find that the invisible powers of mind and spirit are far more powerful and destructive than dynamite. It is not meant by this that he can blow himself up thereby, but it does mean that he can injure himself, not only in this life, but for ages to come, and, in addition, seriously retard his spiritual evolution.

All use of the mind to coerce other people or to influence them by means of suggestion, not for their benefit, but for your advantage, is highly destructive, not to them actually, _but to you_. On the face of it, it looks an easy road to success and prosperity, but, actually, it leads to failure and poverty. The mis-use of the mental powers in this way is really a form of black magic, and the fate of all black magicians is very terrible. Even the use of the mind to coerce other people _for their good_ is not desirable. It never does any real good, although it may seem beneficial for a time, and its use, therefore, is to be deprecated. Healing, so-called, by hetero-suggestion, is not permanent, for as soon as the healer ceases to “pump” suggestion into the patient the latter begins to relapse into his former state. Far better results accrue if the patient is taught to use auto or self-suggestion for himself. It is seen, then, that the use of the mind to influence others is distinctly harmful if it is used selfishly, and of no real use if used unselfishly. Hypnotism is harmful, no matter which way it is used, and is also detrimental to the patient. Because of this some of our more thoughtful neurologists have given up its use.

We have no right to endeavour to influence other people by the use of our inner forces, even if our object is their good. Each soul has the right to live its life in its own way, and choose for itself either good or evil. That is the object of life, so that each evolving soul should learn wisdom through the lessons learnt as a result of its own mistakes. Far worse is it if others are coerced, not in order to help them, but to defraud them or to make them buy goods they do not require, or sign agreements they would not otherwise put their name to.

One who mis-uses his mental and spiritual powers literally smashes his life up. He works against the laws of life and the universe, and encompasses his own ruin.

There is, however, a far more subtle way of mis-using the mental and spiritual forces than by coercion, mind domination and hetero-suggestion. This method is equally destructive, and if persisted in builds up a painful future. With this method other people are not influenced or dominated, but the finer forces of Nature are coerced by the human will. Mental demands are made on the invisible substance from which, we are told, all things are made, and wealth is compelled to appear. In addition to this, sickness, so it is claimed, is banished, and the invisible forces of life are compelled to operate in such a way as to make life’s pathway a bed of roses, without thorns, so that life becomes shorn of all its discipline and experience.

Its devotees “enter the Silence,” and there visualize exactly what they think they want, and compel it to appear, in material form, by the strength of their desire or through the exercise of their will.

Some followers of this cult may be able to make an apparent success of it, but I have never yet met any. If they do, however, they will live to regret it, for they are merely practitioners of black magic. Their efforts are of the same nature as sorcery. All such methods build up a heavy debt of future suffering, and seriously hinder the soul in its evolutionary journey.

Entering the Silence is a good thing: it is really entering the inner silence of the soul, the inner sanctuary where the Divine Spirit abides in fulness. To mis-use this inward power for selfish and material ends, and for forcing our human will upon life, so as to make it conform to what _we_ think it ought to be is a crime of the first magnitude, which can result only in ultimate failure and disaster.

CHAPTER XIII.

OVERCOMING LIMITATIONS AND AWAKENING INWARD POWERS.

Limitations can be overcome through a realization of Truth. When we say this it is taken for granted that every effort will be made on the physical plane. It is necessary to bathe, exercise and breathe fresh air in order to be well: it is equally necessary to work hard, and to give the best of which we are capable, in service, in exchange for that which we receive in the way of supply, if we are to be successful. If you keep a gardener, you must pay him. The money that you pay him is part of what you have earned by the sweat of your brain. Therefore you exchange the work of your brain for the labour of his hands, and you are mutually helped and helpful to one another, both giving and receiving, and each one serving life according to his ability. Taking all this for granted, we will pass on to the metaphysical side of our subject. This, by the way, is vastly the more important, but the outer, practical work is indispensable nevertheless.

In order to overcome limitations it is necessary to know the Truth and to live in the consciousness of It. For instance, if ill-health is our limitation, then, in order to become free it is necessary that we live in the consciousness of the Wholeness of God and His Divine Idea. If our limitation be restricted means, it is necessary that we live in the consciousness of the inexhaustible and unlimited nature of the Substance from which the Creator brings everything into manifestation. If our limitation is disharmony and unhappiness, then we must become attuned to the Divine harmony in such a way and to such an extent as to cause it to be reflected into the outward life. No matter what our limitation may be, we can find liberation and deliverance by looking to our Divine Source, realizing that in the Perfect Reality all our wants are supplied, and then living in the consciousness of this truth.

Ill-health is, apart from physical causes, an outward sign of an inward warfare or disharmony, caused by wrong thoughts, emotions, beliefs and attitude of mind and soul towards life and God. In other words, the life is lived in an “error” consciousness of disease and sickness. First, the inward life has to be adjusted in such a way as to harmonize with the laws of our own being and the Divine purpose of life. There must be an inward surrender to the love principle, after which the thoughts must be brought under control so that health-destroying emotions may no longer impair the health. Further, the whole consciousness must, as often as possible, be raised to a realization of the perfect Wholeness which is the reality. If this course is persevered with, a consciousness of health and wholeness becomes a permanent mental state, with the result that health becomes manifested in the life. The outward life is always a reflection or external manifestation of what we are within, or our state of consciousness. Therefore everything depends upon which kind of consciousness it is in which we live.

One who lives in the mental atmosphere of Divine Wholeness, health and harmony, unconsciously directs all the inner forces of nature into health channels. On the other hand, one who lives in a mental atmosphere of ill-health, as sick and unhealthy people very often do, unconsciously directs all his sub-conscious activities in such a way as to produce sickness and disease.

Again, with regard to lack of means, this state also can be overcome, spiritually, only by living in a higher consciousness of abundance and sufficiency. This affects, unconsciously, every action in such a way as to bring about a better state of affairs. On the other hand, one who lives in a mental atmosphere of limitation and lack, unconsciously directs all his actions towards the production, in his life, of penury and restricted means.

The same rule applies, no matter what the limitations of one’s life may be. Freedom can be gained only by realizing the truth about life and being. When we realize the truth, live in the consciousness of it, and become obedient to the laws of life and being, the life becomes increasingly free. This does not mean that if we are plain of feature, and of a stumpy figure, that we shall become beautiful and graceful; but it does mean that these so-called drawbacks will no longer fetter us, and that others will see in us something far better than mere regularity of feature and beauty of form. When the soul is _alive_ and the life filled with love, the homeliest face becomes attractive. Neither does it mean that we shall not suffer bereavements and sorrows, difficulties and adversities, but it does mean that we shall cease intensifying these things and creating further troubles by taking life’s discipline in the wrong spirit. It also means that we shall be able to overcome all life’s difficulties and trials, become a conqueror in the strife, and, in so doing, build up character. Thus the storms of life, instead of destroying us, can succeed only in _making us stronger_. Thus our fate depends not on the storms of life, but upon how we meet them. If we give in to them, or, thinking that they are evil and not a necessary discipline, rebel against them and resist them, then we become shipwrecked on a desolate shore. If, however, we are armed with the knowledge of truth we can set our sails in such a way as to compel the storms of life actually to help us towards the desired haven.

The first step in the direction of knowledge of the truth is right thinking. Every negative thought must be transmuted into its positive opposite, [12] for instance, hate and dislike into love and goodwill, fear into confident trust, poverty into abundance, evil into absolute good, and so on. This will be found to be not easy, but it is possible, and the power to control one’s thoughts increases if one perseveres continually, with the passing of the years. A beginner cannot, naturally, expect to be able to exercise the same control as one who has been perseveringly seeking self-mastery for years, but he can make substantial progress and learn from day to day.

[12] See also “The Power of Thought” and “The Way of Escape,” by the same author and publisher.

The result of thinking in this way is surprising. The reversal of thought may appear at first to be simplicity itself, and to lead nowhere in particular, but after a time the vastness of the subject becomes almost appalling. The cultivation and practice of right thinking gradually lead to a knowledge of the Truth. Not an intellectual knowledge of truth, but a realization, by the soul, of _the_ Truth. This is the knowing of the Truth which sets men free. We can then look through all the ages and know that all is well. The heavy burden which has oppressed us so long, rolls from our shoulders, and we become free.

AROUSING INWARD POWERS.

Man is heir to wonderful and illimitable powers, but until he becomes aware of them and consciously identifies himself with them, they lie dormant and unexpressed, and might just as well not exist at all as far as their use to man, in his unawakened state, is concerned. When, however, man becomes awakened to the great truth that he is a spiritual being: when he learns that the little petty self and finite personality are not his real self at all, but merely a mask to the real man: when he realizes that the Spiritual Ego, a true Divine Spark of, or branch or twig of the Eternal Logos, [13] is _his real Self_: when he understands that his body is not himself, that his mind is not himself, that even his soul is not himself, being but vehicles through which he seeks expression, but that he is spirit, deathless, diseaseless, eternal, forming an integral part of the One Spirit and being identical with It, he enters a new life of almost boundless power.

[13] “I am the Vine, ye are the branches.”–Jesus.

It is unwise to engage in any mystical practices in an attempt to “force” development and unfoldment. Mystic trances are highly dangerous and are also unnecessary. Psychic experiences and the awakening of psychic centres are also dangerous and lead away from our goal. Breathing exercises, whose object is to awaken inward powers, are _highly dangerous_ and are to be condemned in consequence. The cultivation of negative passivity such as inhibiting all thought and making oneself quite passive and open to any influence, is also highly dangerous and should be strictly avoided.

In place of all these unwise practices a short time should be set aside each night and also morning, if possible, for getting into touch with Reality. You should then endeavour to realize that the body, mind and soul are but vehicles of expression, mere servants of the true Self or Ego. This will bring about in time, a consciousness of identity with the One Eternal Spirit. What Jesus called “our Father in Heaven.”

One might proceed after this fashion:–

“My body is not myself, but is merely something that enables me to live this material life and gain experience.

“My mind is not myself, but merely an instrument which I use and which obeys my will.

“My soul is not myself, but merely a garment of my spirit.

“My will is not myself, but is something of which I, the true Self, make use.”

And so on. By this means you gradually approach the great truth which cannot be put into words and which can only become yours through realization or inward spiritual understanding.

In addition one can use a positive statement of Truth, reverently, but with full confidence, such as: “I am a branch in the True Vine.”

In course of time you will become possessed of a feeling of tremendous and unlimited power and security. This is a great responsibility for this power must be used only in service and not for selfish purposes. If it is used for the acquisition of wealth and the gaining of temporal power, great disaster will be the inevitable result. Yet, if used aright, it is bound to have a great, though unconscious, influence for good on the life, and for this you are not responsible. Constantly endeavour to serve and bless others, then, because you do not seek them, crowds of blessings will come into your life unbidden, great happiness being one of the chief. Having found the kingdom of heaven it will be your experience that all needed good will be added unto you.

This power may also be used to strengthen character, to overcome in the conflicts of the soul, and to build up the spiritual body which will be our vehicle of expression in higher realms.

THE END.

The Psychology and Pedagogy of Anger

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The Psychology and Pedagogy of Anger

THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY OF ANGER

by Roy Franklin Richardson

INTRODUCTION

Although the emotions are recognized as among the most important mental phenomena, exerting a marked influence on other mental processes, they have had comparatively little systematic investigation. We have our casual descriptions of emotions in terms of feelings, sensations and physiological effects. We have our theories, accounting for the expression of the emotions, and our theories of the constituents of the emotive consciousness. The functional side of emotions, emphasizing the behavior of consciousness, has been for the most part neglected. In looking over the literature on emotions, one is impressed by its theoretical and opinionated trend. Much of it is based on casual individual observations. Attention has for the most part been directed to the most intense emotional experiences, neglecting the smaller emotions, important as they are in the behavior of consciousness. Then psychology has concerned itself with the exciting period of the emotion, disregarding the consciousness preceding the emotion and that after the emotion has disappeared. From the functional aspect of emotions, some of the _questions_ which invite study are as follows: 1. the mental situation, including the fore-period from which the emotion develops; 2. the behavior of consciousness during the period the emotion exists; 3. the manner of disappearance and diminution of the emotion; 4. the effect in consciousness after the emotion has disappeared; 5. individual differences in emotional life.

The statement of Wundt (21) and Külpe (14) concerning voluntary action, that its mere period of duration is but a small part of its psychological significance, may well be said of emotions. Wundt suggests the close relation between the emotion and volitional action. A volitional process that passes into an external act, he defines as an emotion which closes with a “pantomimetic” movement. Ach (1), in his experiments with the will, distinguishes in each experiment a fore, mid and after period. In our emotional experiences, it is true to a marked degree that we are predisposed and predetermined to a specific emotional excitement by temporary or permanent dispositions and attitudes.

METHODS. The method in the present study has been to observe anger introspectively as it appears in every-day life. Ten graduate students of Clark University and two persons outside of the University volunteered to observe their emotions for a period of at least three months and report to the writer each day from the notes of their introspections. These persons were asked to observe all instances of anger and fear no matter how minute. Only anger will be used in the present study. They were asked to observe the conscious fore-period before the emotion begins, the development of the emotion, the disappearance, the diminution and the consciousness after the emotion has disappeared, which is recognized as having been influenced by the emotion.

Historically, three methods have been used in studying the emotions. Casual individual introspection is the earliest and is consequently the basis for most of the literature. Bain (2) and Ribot (16) were among the first to employ this method extensively. Observations of the behavior of normal and abnormal persons have given some results. The questionnaire method used by Dr. Hall (11) has shown the wide range of objective reactions and objects of anger.

Both anger and fear are deep rooted psychic strata. Introspections reveal motives of selfish, unsocial and unlawful character, springing from a level lower than the social man. All observers have been quite frank in giving the full introspections, even when their most private and personal matters were concerned. Where illustrative material is used it has been necessary to remove the personal element, as in many instances, others besides the observer were concerned. This revision has been the work of the writer. The essential psychological factor is unchanged and the words of the observers are used as nearly as possible. The twelve persons will be called by the first twelve letters of the alphabet, and other persons named in the introspections will be called X. Y. and Z. Ten of the observers were graduate men students of psychology. Seven of these had had considerable experience in introspection under controlled laboratory conditions. Most of the illustrative data will be taken from the observations of A. B. C. D. E. F. and G. who are the most experienced observers.

No apology is offered for this study because of the uncontrolled conditions of introspection. Emotions are involuntary processes and consequently do not lend themselves to voluntary control necessary for laboratory technique. The emotion springs from an antecedent complex combined with a present idea. The fact that anger does not develop from a single experience but is a predetermined consciousness usually cumulative in character, makes voluntary origin difficult. Even when the individual is aware of the antecedent which tends to give rise to anger, the voluntary combination with a present idea is unsuccessful. A further difficulty in introspection is the tendency of the emotion to disappear as a result of the act of introspection. It occurs frequently in the data that a further development of the emotion is entirely cut off by introspection. However, attention to the situation giving rise to anger frequently reinstates the emotion, if the feeling background is intense enough. It was necessary to instruct the observers to allow their emotions to run their usual course and note the facts of behavior at convenient times. The purpose of this study is to investigate the behavior of consciousness in the development, expression and disappearance of anger. The observers were asked to direct their observation especially to the behavior side of consciousness. It is believed, that regardless of the necessary uncontrolled conditions of introspection, that a systematic observation of both mild and intense experiences of anger by a number of observers over an extended period of time will add to a better comprehension of the functional character of this one of the fundamental emotions.

CHAPTER ONE

MENTAL SITUATION STIMULATING ANGER

Professor Titchener (19) states concerning emotions in general three essential factors for their formation. First, a series of ideas shall be interrupted by a vivid feeling; second, the feeling shall mirror a situation or incident in the outside world; and third, the feeling shall be enriched by organic sensations created by the course of bodily adjustment to the situation. It has been well agreed from casual introspection that the stimulus to an emotion is a total mental situation or predicament. It is evidently necessary in the psychology of the emotions that each emotion should be studied in connection with its predetermining mental situation giving rise to it. Anger because of its slowness to develop, lends itself more readily to a study of the situation from which it arises, than some other emotions.

It is well known that there is little constancy in the outside situation, associated with the emotion of anger. What one will take as an insult, another will regard as a joke. With the same individual, what will at one time excite anger, will at another be scarcely noticed. We commonly say, referring to some incident, “There was nothing for him to be angry about,” and the statement may be correct if the outside situation is viewed as the stimulus to the emotion. With the insane and hysterical, an observer is often baffled by the apparently harmless idea that will excite anger. The fact is, the situation stimulating anger is a psychic one. We fail in viewing our emotional life in the same manner as we do in observing our sensations. Whatever the outside conditions, it is the psychic situation as only a partial reflection of outside conditions, that is of primary importance. A few instances of the current views of the situation exciting anger may be given. What may be called a genetic view is illustrated in McDougall’s (15) statement, “The condition of its (anger) excitement is rather any opposition to the free exercise of any impulse, any obstruction to the activity to which the creature is impelled by any one of the other instincts.” Dewey (6) in his conception of instincts has pointed out that we are not angry when we are fighting successfully. Only when the pugnacious instinct is impeded does emotion arise. An introspective view may be taken from Bain (2), “When we have suffered harm at the hands of another, it leaves a sting in the violation of the sanctity of our feelings. This pre-supposes a sentiment of self regarding pride, the presence of which gives rise to the best developed form of anger.” David Irons (12), who did some keen work in the analysis of the emotions, does not qualify his statement that anger appears only when we feel that we have been injured.

From the pathological side, Féré (7) and Magnan (11) have described slow accumulation of anger in paranoiacs, which seems to re-enforce the casual introspective view stated above. These insane persons first believe they are persecuted. They suspect all about them. Even their very best friends are trying to injure their business or reputation. Gradually reactionary impulses begin and they themselves become the persecutors and concern themselves with the business of revenge. They find gratification in every sort of angry outburst,—insult, abuse, threat, murderous attack, irony, witticism, etc.

The same view has been advanced by Steinmetz (18) in the observation of the behavior of primitive people. He holds that revenge is essentially rooted in the feeling of power and superiority. It arises upon the experience of injury and its aim is to enhance self-feeling, which has been lowered by the injury suffered.

The next few pages will be devoted to an examination of the mental situations from which anger develops as found in the results of the introspections. About six hundred introspections from the various observers have been used for this study.

_Feelings of Irritation._ One of the characteristic mental situations from which anger arises is that connected with feelings of irritation. These feelings are described as unpleasant nervous tension with a tendency to motor activity. Awareness of the feeling may be present while attention is directed elsewhere. It may or may not be referred to any particular incident. C.—“It is a sort of diffused unpleasant consciousness that things in general are going wrong.”

Irritation in connection with pain or illness is a condition from which anger may develop. From this a trivial incident may give rise to anger. A note from E.’s records says, “I had a severe headache to-day and felt irritable. When X. would try to sympathize with me, the irritation would increase and I tended to be angry.” G, who has relatively few emotions of anger, introspected upon ten cases of anger, arising from a fore-period of irritation during a day’s illness. Subject I. states with reference to pain, “While the pain was on I felt as though I wanted to be angry at somebody or something, X. spoke to me and at once I was angry.” Feelings of irritation may increase, gradually, accompanying the increased intensity of pain. A. states, “Irritableness at the first beginning of the pain increased to intense anger at the moment the pain was most severe. There was a strong motor tension in the hands and face muscles with the impulse to look about, vaguely aware that I was trying to find something to refer the anger to…. A decrease of the pain was accompanied by a decrease of the anger to a feeling of irritation again.”Feelings of irritation follow as a result of the thwarting of some desire or mental attitude and are consequently predetermined by the attitude of the moment. From this, anger develops for the most part, as a result of a series of stimuli, which have a cumulative effect. Each thwarting of the impulse intensifies the irritation until anger is developed. One or two failures may stimulate unpleasant feelings, which at the time are ignored; but with an increase of the number of stimuli, there is an accumulative effect in which the awareness of the previous failures becomes more intense than at the moment when they occurred. The following from B.’s observations will illustrate, “I was writing a letter to an important personage and was making special effort to write it neatly. I made an error and felt unpleasantly irritated. Still feeling quite unpleasant, I turned to look for my eraser and could not find it. I looked in several places. Each failure was followed by a sudden increase in intensity of unpleasant feelings.” Finally B. found himself using defamatory language prolifically, giving expression to a rather well developed case of anger. One is usually aware in anger of this type, that the emotion is the cumulative effect of a number of previous stimuli. It appears from the reports, that if the mental predisposition is intense enough, one or two failures may suffice to excite anger. In general the stronger the predisposition, the less number of failures is required before anger is fully developed.

Another characteristic of the feeling of irritation is its indefinite objective reference. It may not refer definitely to any object at first. The tendency is usually present to refer it to some object or person, regardless of the real cause of the feeling. E. states, “I felt I wanted to get angry at somebody or something and I did not care much what.” While it is common with all the persons studied, to be irritated and burst out angrily at objects, the tendency to transfer the anger from objects which may be the real objective cause to unoffending persons, is a matter in which there is a wide individual difference. C. when irritated by objects, finds a partial relief if he can lay the blame on some person and take an imaginary vent against him. He states, “I have been cross and grouchy all day; ‘felt out’ with everybody. Several times the association of X. and Y. came up with a little rising anger and an attitude that they were somehow to be blamed. I was aware that they were not to be blamed, but at times I would find myself ignoring this and taking pleasure in criticising them adversely.” This tendency to personify the source of anger is illustrated in another incident from C. He lost his umbrella. He looked for it in several places with an increased feeling of irritation; following a line of other associations, he imagined Z., a person whom he dislikes, walking off with it. He says, “All this was mildly pleasant. I was scarcely aware how improbable it was that Z. had taken it, till the act of introspecting on the emotion. I really wanted to believe that he had taken it.” The personal objective reference to somewhat suppressed feelings of irritation frequently facilitates the sudden development of the emotion. The tendency to refer the anger to some innocent person, ignoring for the moment the real facts and forgetting one’s sense of justice for the time being, is a matter in which there are marked individual differences in the subjects studied.

It is a common characteristic of the initial stage of anger, that although there is an awareness that the emotion is due to a series of irritating stimuli, the entire situation exciting the anger is ignored and the anger is referred to some person, frequently one recently associated in time. Thus objectified, anger seems to find a more ready expression. Anger is more successfully developed from a fore-period of irritation if the present predicament is in any way associated with a person or situation against which there is already an emotional disposition of dislike. A feeling of pleasurable satisfaction is often reported to follow the successful expression of anger after feelings of irritation.

Anger with a fore-period of irritation is common with all the subjects studied, but the manner in which the anger arises from these feelings is a matter of wide individual difference. They all get angry at objects when they act as hindrances. With B. and C., who live alone, this tendency is more marked. With all the persons studied, anger with a fore-period of irritation occurs more frequently against objects and situations than against persons. When persons are involved in anger of this type, they are usually those with whom there is close intimacy or with servants and children.

The sentiment of justice may facilitate the development of anger arising from feelings of irritation. Irritable feelings may more readily develop into anger if a situation is associated in which fairness and justice are violated, although the point of justice may be far removed from the actual cause of the irritation. Under the influence of irritation, there is frequently a little more sensitiveness to injustice if the idea of unfairness can facilitate in the objective reference to the emotion. The following instance will illustrate. A. was walking along the street at night in an irritable state of mind in connection with a series of incidents just past. In this state of mind he came to a place where a new house was being built and the builders had left an accumulation of dirt on the sidewalk. When it rained, the water would collect making the walk bad. He had previously noted that they had made enough progress with the building that it was unnecessary to leave the dirt on the walk. “On this occasion,” he states, “I now become quite indignant, and suddenly found myself in imagination telephoning the street commissioner in an angry attitude and tone of voice, telling him about the dirt and where the house was located, and ending with the sentence, ‘It is an outrage to tax payers.’” But this did not fully satisfy his resentment. He imagined himself the next day walking up to the overseer of the construction gang and assuming a rather indignant air, telling him among other things that the way he had left the walk was an outrage to the public. On the other hand, the sense of justice may be ignored for the time if it does not aid expression. In some extreme cases the subject may assume a make-believe attitude and trump up reasons to suit his own ends regardless of the facts. The tendency is strong to give some justifiable expression to the present mental predicament. In such cases reason serves the purpose of feeling. All other mental processes may become subservient to the rising indignation till the point of anger is reached, but with the expression of anger, the illusion of fairness usually disappears. The behavior that seemed so commendable while angry may excite shame or regret after the emotion has been vented._Negative Self-feeling._ A second characteristic mental situation from which anger arises, is that connected with negative self-feeling; the self-feeling has been lowered and anger follows. In the observation of all the observers, it appears at times in the initial stage of anger. Whatever outside situation occasions lowered self-feeling may indirectly give rise to anger. And just as there are feelings of irritation, which do not pass into anger, so there are negative self-feelings which are not followed by anger. In the description of this feeling, it appears in marked contrast to the anger that follows. As to time, it may last but a moment before anger arises. In other instances the feeling of humiliation may be rather prolonged or repeated before anger arises. The feeling is described as unpleasant, as a lack of motor tension, a feeling like shrinking up, an impulse to get away, a confused inco-ordinated state of mind. A rather wide vocabulary referring to self and the feeling side of experience is used by the subjects to designate this feeling in colloquial language. Examples of such phrases from the observations are as follows:—“I felt sat on,” “Was humiliated,” “Felt inefficient,” “Felt imposed upon,” “Felt stepped on,” “A feeling of self depreciation,” “Felt offended,” “A feeling of subjection,” “Felt as if he thought I were no good,” “Felt worried,” “Felt as if he were hitting at me,” “Felt that what he said reflected on my ability,” “Disappointed in myself,” “Felt ashamed,” “My feelings were wounded,” “Felt that that was insult added to injury,” “Felt slighted,” “Feeling of abasement,” “I was embarrassed,” “Felt as if I had been caught with the goods on.”

Unlike the feeling of irritation, negative self-feeling has a more definite reference to the outside situation and for the most part refers to persons. It will be noted that the origin of anger from the mental situation of lowered self-feeling, and that from a condition of irritable feelings, comes about by quite different processes. The latter is reached by an increased complexity till the anger point is suddenly attained. In the former case the anger comes about as a rather sudden reaction from a state of consciousness that is in marked contrast to anger. Notes from the reports will illustrate this characteristic. B. had made some errors at a public meeting. X. in a speech jokingly called attention to the errors. At first B. was confused and felt a little worried and embarrassed. In a few moments he found himself mildly angry at X. and was planning to retaliate. B. states that his anger did not refer to the fact that he had made the error, but to X. who had humiliated him by calling public attention to it. F. went to get a check cashed and was refused. He states, “I felt belittled and became indignant as I walked away…. With the appearance of the imagery of another person getting his check cashed the day before, I became quite angry.” He adds that he was not angry because of the failure to get the check cashed, but because of the discrimination against himself. The anger referred to the cashier. The idea that he was acting according to rules and not personally responsible, appeared, but was ignored by a recall of the imagery of the other person getting his check cashed.

Negative self-feeling appears rather suddenly without any definite conscious fore-period of its own. It is a state of consciousness predetermined by pleasurable feelings of self regard. In taking the report of C.’s emotions one evening, there was found to be an unusual number. He had been usually observing from one to four emotions each day, with occasionally a day having no experiences of anger. On this particular day he had observed and taken notes on twelve rather strongly developed cases of anger. An inquiry into the cause showed nothing except that he had felt extra well all day and had turned off more than the usual amount of work. This was a disturbing situation in connection with evidence that had previously been collected from G. and D. These two persons have few emotions of anger and have gone over a week with no experience of anger. On December 4th, D. took observations on four cases of anger. On inquiry it was found that he had been ill and not slept the night before. G. on the two days that he was ill introspected on ten cases of anger. An examination of G.’s and D.’s reports indicate a fore-period of irritable feelings or a lack of immediate conscious fore-period. In none of these cases was there any indication of lowered self-feeling in the fore-period of the emotion, while with each of the introspections of C. on the day he felt extra well and reported on the unusual number of twelve cases, there was a fore-period of negative self-feeling. With A. on the days when he feels best, there is an increase in the number of cases of anger with an initial lowered self- feeling. Such evidences as we have, indicate that anger with a fore-period of negative self-feeling occurs most readily when the sentiment of self-regard is active,—on the days when the person is well pleased with himself. It is true that the play of this sentiment only appears in consciousness, when it has been interfered with or enhanced. It makes up an essential mental predisposition in connection with the situation stimulating anger. The following note from C.’s observations will illustrate. C. met X. and spoke to him; X. paid no attention. C. states, “For a moment I felt humiliated…. I said to myself, ‘He does not know my importance.’” C. then became quite angry thinking cutting remarks about X. and ending the emotion by finding an excuse for X.’s not seeing him.Any remark, suggestion, chance association, it may be, attitude of another or incident, which in any way lowers the sentiment of self-respect may stimulate anger. In this regard there is a wide individual difference with the persons studied and with the same person at different times. A trivial incident may lower the play of the self-regarding sentiment and consequently give rise to anger, while at other times a direct thrust at one’s honor may be ignored. The personality of the offender, his social and intellectual standing, his general demeanor and attitude, play an important part in the entire emotional situation, but at times personality is ignored and a “chip is carried on the shoulder” for the chance passer-by.

It appears in the results that the anger of the person who is not in authority against the one who is, or the anger of the man lower down against the one higher up, usually has a fore-period of negative self-feeling. A mental disposition toward the one in power in addition to the sentiment of self-regard, is a predetermining mental situation in exciting lowered self-feeling and consequently anger. The most intense instances of anger that C., D. and E. experienced were against persons in power. D.—“I was aware they were in authority and were taking advantage of it to run us out. I felt a little humiliated but not angry as I left the room. It occurred to me they were rather small in usurping the place.” A little later D. became quite angry and carried on in imagination a rather extensive verbal combat with the usurpers in which he came out victor. E. states in his observation, “If X. had been an ordinary man, I would not have given the occasion a second thought. But being very high up … I was inclined to take less off of him than those I consider as not knowing better.”

On the other hand a certain mental disposition toward the person lower down in connection with the self-regarding sentiment may be a precondition of anger. Too great familiarity from an inferior may momentarily lower the self-regarding sentiment to his level and in consequence excite anger; we do not resent a slap on the back by one whom we admire or recognize as our superior, but we do from our inferior. The same act from the one may heighten our self-respect while from the other it is lowered. D. reports a case of anger when he was in a crowd. A boy kept purposely stepping on his heels. He states, “I was not hurt but he acted too familiar for a boy under the circumstances. I took his attitude as a personal matter and felt a little humiliated.” A. reporting a case of anger stimulated by a person whom he holds in low esteem, says, “It was not what X. did so much, but it was his familiar confidential attitude before others that embarrassed me.”

It appears frequently in the observations that it is not what is done or said, so much as it is the attitude of the person, that is so offensive. A too positive and aggressive action, a too great display of wisdom, a too familiar or condescending demeanor, may be the essential element in the stimulus to anger. The following phrases are noted by the different subjects as being an important part of the situation stimulating anger of the type now being treated. C.—“I resented his too dignified air more than anything else.” G.—“What angered me most was his condescending attitude as if he knew it all.” I.—“He acted too wise and I was aware he was trying to lord it over us. That was the most offensive part.” H.—“He sat and stared at me as if he thought I didn’t know what I was talking about.” F.—“He took on a wise air implying that he had already passed through the stage in which I now was.” E.—“It was not his statement so much as it was his rather spiteful attitude that angered me.” A.—“It was not what he said. It was his haughty air and little condescending laugh in dismissing the matter that rang in my ears.”

While in the presence of a situation that lowers self-feeling, even though persons may not be connected with the situation, it is a common characteristic to refer the anger to some person. The bounds of justice may be, for the moment, overstepped. The dim awareness with some, that the person is not to be blamed, is ignored for the time, while the tendency is strongest in consciousness to give expression to the emotion. The individual differences here are quite marked. G. apparently has developed a habit of referring his anger to a principle, ignoring the personality. In many of his observations, persons were connected with a situation, but were neglected in his attention to the principle violated. A business man had told him an untruth causing him difficulty. G. states, “I was not angry at the man. That was his way of doing business.” In the course of his emotional experience, his anger became rather intense, referring to the business ethics practiced. The degree in which the sense of justice is ignored under the influence of anger of this type is also a matter of wide individual difference.

In the observations collected, anger at one’s self appears quite frequently. There have been no cases found, in which anger at one’s self develops purely from a fore-period of irritation. The subject takes the matter to himself and feels a little humiliated and degraded and may react against his own personality in the same manner that he would against another. Two observers, B. and G., quite frequently get angry at themselves. A. reports that this sort of anger rarely occurs with him. G. observes the following case. After he had been repeatedly humiliated by his own failure, he says, “I felt as if I were so inefficient. I said to myself, ‘If I had a man working for me and he should do work in that manner I would discharge him.’” G. then continued to talk to himself like another person in rather severe condemnatory language. B. was reading a book. He could not understand the author’s demonstration. He had made several trials at it. He states, “I felt as if I must be stupid, somehow; there was a slight feeling of worry and dejection. The idea of my stupidity was followed by anger at myself for being so stupid. I clinched my fists and threw my arms in angry demonstration, feeling as if I would like to pummel myself. I went over the demonstration again with an attitude of carefulness and finally concluded that it was the author who was hazy instead of myself. I slammed the book down on the table and broke forth angrily, ‘You, X., are the one who is stupid, you don’t make it clear.’ This anger at the author was rather pleasant in quality. I felt a sort of triumph over him.”Another situation quite common in the origin of anger with a fore-period of lowered self-feeling, is its appearance at times with greater intensity after the actual outside stimulus is passed. One becomes more angry in recalling afterward what was said, than he was at the time of the offense. This belated origin of anger appears in the observations of all the subjects studied. It may be noted that anger with a fore-period of irritation does not appear in this retarded manner. In the recall of an incident in imagination, anger may become quite intense; while it may be at the time of the incident, there was no awareness of any tendency to anger. Mild anger at the time of the initial stimulus may become intensified in its recall. In such cases there was evidently some element lacking in the mental situation stimulating anger. An offensive statement in the heat of an irascible discussion may be ignored. A rather severe thrust may seem proper, but when recalled in connection with another mental situation, the emotional content may be entirely changed. X. in the course of an argument with E. implied, “You never will know as much about the subject under discussion as Y.” “At the time I noted his statement and was aware that it was a thrust at myself, but I had no feeling about the matter then. I considered that I was producing the better argument, and his personal thrust I was aware was an admission on his part that he knew I was. To-day I recalled his statement and felt degraded and angry.” Then C. proceeded to plan a series of cutting remarks that he would like to tell X. In some instances the presence of a too active aggressive attitude at the time of the stimulus seems to predispose against a too easy lowering of self-esteem, and consequently anger with a fore-period of negative self-feeling does not appear. But let one momentarily lose faith in his point of view or fail in words to express it, and he becomes more sensitive to the thrusts of his opponent’s argument.

Another factor partly accounts for the greater emotional intensity of the recalled incident. The conventional control of emotions during social contact may be relaxed during the memory recall. The same ethical standard is not required for one’s private thinking as in actual contact with others. In this respect there is rather wide individual difference with the subjects studied. Though in general with persons of rather intense emotions, there is a marked difference in the ethical standard they practice, when the incident is present to consciousness, and the standard used when the anger occurs from the imaged situation; with all persons studied at times during their most intense anger emotions, the imaginative reaction is far more crude and unethical, and consequently the imaged anger may be more intense. A third factor may be involved here. A personal thrust may be partly ignored at the time without lowered dignity because it is given with a smile or a friendly attitude, but when recalled later, the friendliness may be neglected and consequently anger is more intense. A fourth condition that partly accounts for more intense anger in the imaged situation, is that the anger consciousness of this type is usually cumulative. With an entirely novel experience, a certain amount of resistance must be broken down before the emotion develops. The emotion seems to develop by a cumulative process through a series of stimuli. One personal thrust in a situation in which there is involved no previous emotional excitement, may be ignored or the humiliation may be borne at the time with no anger reactions; but when it is repeated one or more times under similar circumstances, there is present a characteristic mental situation for the development of anger. The repeated occurrence of the incident in the imagination intensifies the feelings till anger becomes fully developed. E.’s observations will illustrate. “During the argument with X., I was in splendid humor, enjoying myself to the fullest and naturally supposed everybody was.” Referring to a statement made by X. during the argument, E. states, “The glow of the conflict had not entirely departed when I began to see his statement in an entirely new light as reflecting on myself, then I felt somewhat distressed and overcome to a slight degree, by a feeling of abasement but no resentment against X. The next day at ten o’clock I was recalling the events of the argument. There was still a feeling of abasement but now it stirred me to anger. I found myself going over it and thinking what I might have said, and what I would say the next time.”

_Anger Without an Immediate Feeling Fore-period._ This study was begun tentatively with the view held by Wundt (21) that each emotion of anger has an immediate feeling fore-period. The study had not progressed far till this view had to be abandoned. It early appeared in the observations that anger may begin rather suddenly with no initial feeling fore-period, which the observer is able to find. The subject reports that he suddenly finds himself in the midst of an emotion of anger before he is scarcely aware of it, and is giving verbal and motor expressions usually accompanying such emotions. In many of the emotions of this type there is evidence in the observations that the emotion refers to a previous emotional experience. From the mental disposition left over from the previous emotion, the emotion suddenly emerges without passing through the cumulative process that is necessary with an entirely novel emotional experience. In other words the way has previously been broken so that it is not necessary to break down the same amount of resistance. A. observes, “Sitting in my room, I imaged X. At once I was angry, motor expression not marked at first. X. was imaged in a rather positive and demonstrative attitude which he sometimes takes. I found myself with quite a good deal of motor activity saying in voco-motor fashion as if talking to X.——I was partly aware of three former disagreements with X., the imagery of the circumstances of the last one was most clearly defined. I imagined X. a little humbled by my remark. The emotional experience from the first was pleasant. I felt a little victorious in the imaginary act of dealing a telling thrust.”

With all persons studied, there is evidence of a previously developed mental disposition against certain persons and against certain principles which allows the anger point to be reached in a short cut fashion. Anger is easily attained without the initial feeling either of irritation or lowered self-feeling. Anger that rises from this situation is usually pleasant in quality. The mental disposition which is connected with this sudden origin of anger may be present during the later recall of the emotion. It is also shown by the frequent re-occurrence that the same situation may repeatedly give rise to anger. B. has a rather strongly developed sentiment against ministers who preach what they do not believe; G. against persons who do their work carelessly, especially manufacturers who send out goods of inferior quality. I. has a marked sentiment against acts of cruelty in the treatment of animals. D. reacts rather vigorously against persons who are disloyal to friendship. These sentiments go back to early experiences in the life of the individuals.

B. in talking with X. directed the conversation to ministers who preach what they really do not believe. He took Dr. Y. as an example. He had previously seen Dr. Y. drinking beer with the boys and had resented his behavior. He began to vituperate to X. against Y., giving instances and telling his opinion rather vigorously about such men who have a double personality. “Before I was scarcely aware of it, I was in the midst of motor and verbal expressions of righteous indignation. I enjoyed it all very much. I always take delight in making myself angry with ministers of this sort.” B. has reported other instances of his anger against ministers of this type. A case from I. will illustrate further. “I had the same recurring anger for three weeks. A delivery boy who passes about the same time each day goes by whipping and abusing his horse. Anger arises each time the incident occurs. The sight made me pleasantly indignant. I have the image of an old German, living near my home as a child, who treated his horse so cruelly. The idea of telephoning to the police occurs to me, but the boy goes on and the idea is abandoned.”

CHAPTER TWO

BEHAVIOR OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Wundt (21) has pointed out that there are two types of reaction to an emotion, what he calls outer and inner volitional acts. The first refers to the external bodily expression of an emotion and the latter to the mental behavior. In the study of the emotions, attention has for the most part been directed to the former. Darwin’s study of the emotions in man and animals, early called attention to the finer physical expressions of each emotion, explaining them as instinctive habits which were formerly useful. Darwin’s study partly paved the way for the James-Lange theory, which maintains that what we experience as an emotion is but the sensation of the instinctive physical expression.

The aim of this chapter is to study the mental behavior during the conscious period the anger exists. It is recognized that the motor and physical expressions is primary and fundamental. For that reason it has served so adequately in the objective study of the emotion. What we shall attempt to study is the mental behavior of persons under the influence of anger. Ethics tells us how we ought to act when angry, but psychology has neglected to find out how in reality consciousness does behave when the emotional excitement is on. David Iron’s (12) statement is still apropos. He writes, “The neglect of the reactive side of human consciousness is nowhere more conspicuous than in the case of the emotions.”

The anger consciousness is characterized by heightened mental activity. A multiple number of images, attitudes, fluctuations of the emotional and feeling content appear in rapid succession till the emotion disappears. This statement is true for even the more tenuous instances of anger. In fact some of the milder experiences have the most marked changeableness of conscious content. Objectively there may be little activity, while simultaneously on the mental side, there is a wealth of processes which must be considered in the psychology of the emotions.

After making a rather minute collection of the different kinds of mental reaction to anger, as shown by the introspections, it is observed that they fall into three rather clear types of conscious behavior. The first type is in the general direction of the emotive tendency and is the one that most impulsively follows on the stimulus of the emotion. It expresses pugnacity in some form. This type of reaction expresses a tendency similar to the basal instinct of the emotion of anger, such as thinking cutting remarks, imagining the offender’s humiliation, hostile witticism, joking and sarcasm. This type of a reaction will be called _attributive reaction_. A second type is contrary to pugnacity; the instinctive impulse is reversed. A friendly attitude may be assumed toward the offender, an adequate excuse it found for his offense, an over polite attitude may be taken. This type of behavior will be called the _contrary reaction_. A third type is one that is entirely of a conscious attitudinal character. The subject becomes indifferent to the whole situation exciting the emotion. The offense may suddenly be apathetically ignored and the subject behaves unconcerned and assumes an “I don’t care,” or a “What-is-the-use” attitude. This will be called _indifferent reaction_. These three types of behavior are characteristic of the reactive consciousness to anger. The emotion may contain one, or it may contain all three of these types before it finally ends. Going over the results of the observations of all the subjects, about fourteen hundred sixty eight reactions are counted in the six hundred cases of anger studied. Seventy one percent of such reactions are classified as attributive reaction, eighteen percent are the contrary type, and eleven percent are the indifferent.

The initial reaction to anger is always of the attributive type. Whatever other reactions may follow in the course of the entire anger period, the attributive reaction in some form is characteristic of the early stage of the emotion. The contrary and indifferent types are secondary in point of time and occur after the initial hostile tendencies have been restrained. If an emotion of anger is made up entirely of the attributive type, which frequently occurs, and continues for any length of time, it is always noted that some of the reactions are more crude and unsocial and others are refined, disguised it may be, covered up, and when the emotion is most intense whether it be in the initial stage or elsewhere, the unsocial attributive tendencies are usually found at those places.ATTRIBUTIVE REACTION

The anger consciousness in its development, especially in its initial stage is characterized by restraint. The subject is aware of hostile unlawful impulses that must be controlled. Its initial stage is usually reported as unpleasant. The second characteristic of the anger consciousness is reaction of some sort. What takes place on the mental side, is along the line of least resistance for the moment. Mental life is rather versatile in providing subjective reaction to anger. Motor and visual imagery play an important role involving lessened resistance. A third characteristic of the anger consciousness is what the Germans call “Verschiebung.” The emotive tendency is inhibited. A substitution follows for the tendencies restrained. It may be purely subjective or only partly subjective. But the subject in the observation of his anger is fully aware that he would behave in some more drastic fashion if the restraint were off.

_Substitution of Visual and Motor Imagery._ With the subjects studied there occurred no real pugnacious attack in which blows were struck except with those persons who have the correction of children; there are also but few real quarrels reported. But the versatility of consciousness in substituting and providing merely mental reaction for other hostile tendencies that the subject really wished fulfilled is quite striking. Visual and motor imagery may take the place of tendencies which are inhibited and allow a successful expression. An observation from A. will illustrate. “I found myself saying cutting remarks as if speaking directly to X., and I planned a course of behavior toward him that I considered would humiliate him. I finally ended by imagining myself kicking him down the street, telling him I wanted no more to do with him. The imagery of this act was pleasant. I felt victorious. X. was imagined as penitent.” The imagery of the pugnacious attack in some form is a quite common characteristic of the mental reaction to anger. It occurs after a period of restraint when there seems nothing else to be done; imagination and fancy appear at such a crisis and assume the role of a surrogate for hostile tendencies, which the subject has controlled. The awareness of the direct end of the initial tendency of the anger may be present in consciousness or the aim may be indefinite. Subject I. observes, “I felt as if I wanted to say something or do something at once that would get even with X. The thing to do was vague, but the impulse to do something in a hostile manner was strong.” The aim of behavior may be rather definitely formed in the early stage of the anger consciousness as soon as the irascible feelings are definitely referred to some object. An illustration from A. follows:—“The impulse to take X. (a child) and shake him, was strong on the first stimulus of the emotion; suppressing this I spoke crossly to him, at the same time there appeared motor imagery of my holding him with both hands and shaking him.” Another instance from the same subject: “I had an impulse to punish X., restraint was immediately followed by a motor and visual imagery of the act of punishment.” Subject C. observes, “The first impulse was to kick X., the restraint was accompanied by motor images of kicking him, followed by the image of his being hurt in the face.” E. states, “I felt as if I would like to shake him and imagined myself doing it.” G. developed a case of anger from a series of irritating stimuli. Describing his anger, he says, “I felt like I wanted to bite or hit something.” B. reports a case when he had been humiliated by some boys along the street. The tendency to anger at the time was controlled, but as he passed on, the emotion arose with greater intensity. “I imagined myself beating one of the boys, I gave him several good punches; he had no show at all. I came out victor and was enjoying it all.” One of the many sorts of mental reactions that H. reports to a case of anger that extended over three quarters of an hour, is, “I imagined myself charging at him and his looking frightened at my behavior.”

_Substitution of Irascible Play._ The imagined fight and victory take the place of tendencies which would have a more objective expression. Another sort of substitution of the initially restrained emotional reaction, is first to lessen the restraint by inhibition and react in some less crude manner in a slightly disguised form, which gives a feeling of satisfaction in inner victory and at the same time lacks the objective hostility. A. felt humiliated because of X.’s remark in the presence of others. “Resenting his familiarity, I went out of my way to pass him; I grabbed his arm and gave it a tremendous grip, at the same time I smiled playfully. I really aimed to hurt him and was fully aware that I wished to hurt him worse than I did. What I did was merely a substitution, but now that the act was over, I felt fully satisfied and pleased with what I had done.” The playful attack is a rather common sort of reaction to resentment with observers A., C. and D. D. observes, “I was angry at X. and was trying to control myself; suddenly I grabbed him and punched him several times in the ribs, at the same time I smiled. I did not want him or the others to know I was angry. I enjoyed pummelling him, as I felt I had demonstrated to him that I could handle him.” In such observations the subject’s awareness that what he does in a playful fashion is but a substitution of what he would like to do in another manner, is significant. This sort of awareness seems to be ignored in the every-day experience of our emotional life. Attention is directed to the reaction; we involuntarily seek a place of lessened resistance, but the act of introspection allows the subject to be more clearly aware of the inhibited reaction and the substituted expression which follows.

_Substitution of Imaginary Invective and Cutting Remarks._ The vocal expression of anger is one of primary significance. Swearing, grumbling, invective, quarrelling, interjectional obloquy, etc., are very common signs of anger. The results would very strongly suggest that anger rarely, if ever, occurs without its vocal expression in some manner, if not by direct vocalization either by inner speech or voco-motor imagery. Introspection of slight emotions or anger lasting momentarily, show as their most marked sensation, one of tightening of the throat muscles. Defamatory language or mild swearing is common with all the subjects studied while in the privacy of their own rooms when the restraint is off. The expression of the vocal cords is one of the most successful vents. B. was instructed to abandon himself to vigorous invective and interjectional obloquy when the emotion first began and note the result. He followed these instructions on three occasions when the emotion from the beginning was unpleasant, developing from a fore-period of irritation. With this sort of voluntary vigorous vocal expression, the anger soon passed into rather pleasurable excitement.The reaction to anger in its initial stage may be a vocal tendency to express one’s anger, referring the emotion directly to some person or to an object. When the restraint is on, either from motives of decency or the absence of the offender, the thinking of cutting remarks may be substituted for the actual verbal attack. The subject is aware that what he says to himself he would like to say to the offender. Methods of procedure are elaborately planned for a future verbal attack, just what he expects to say and wants to say, how he will say it, the inflection of the voice, the emphasis of words and dramatic attitude. He may imagine the effect of the attack on his opponent, the latter may talk back. The imagined verbal combat is usually a one-sided affair and ends in victory for the subject. Drastic remarks and the most cutting sarcasms are planned at times by the subjects studied. However there are wide individual differences which cannot be referred entirely to the difference in intensity of the emotional life. Habit apparently plays an important role. D. felt that he had been imposed upon by X. and Y. After the humiliating incident had passed, D. suddenly found himself in the midst of an anger reaction. “I found myself having a verbal combat with them. I imagined I was telling X., ‘I should think it costs but little to act like a gentleman, but I presume this is an illustration of your piggishness.’ Then I imagined Y. beginning to talk. Just what he was saying was not clear, but I was aware that he was helping X. I interrupted by telling him, ‘I understand you are from —— and of course I can’t expect anything better of you.’ They began to talk back several times, but I got the better of them and felt pleased about it.”

The cutting remarks are at times crude and abusive. The subject may swear at the offender. Persons who do not swear in actual life frequently do in imagination. In such imaginative verbal attacks the offender’s bad qualities are displayed before him, at other times the same subject may resort to imagery, sarcasm, witticism or joking of a hostile nature. The motivation seems to be to imagine remarks that would humiliate the offender. The visual imagery of the astonished humble opponent is usual in these imaginary attacks. Crude and abusive remarks may at times seem entirely appropriate; at others, sarcasm and irascible joking seem more adequate. Sarcasm usually develops rather slowly with a period of restraint preceding it, unless it is ready made for the occasion. When the fitting sarcastic remark is found, it is usually accompanied by pleasantness in some degree. F. observes, “I could get no imaginative remark that would suit me at first, but after the emotion appeared several times in succession I suddenly discovered one and found myself saying it over and over again. It rather pleased me, I practiced it to get the right inflection and emphasis that I desired.”

The imaginative cutting remark may be in the second person as if addressed directly to the offender, especially when the emotion is intense. It may be in the third person about the offender, his unfavorable qualities are recalled with no plan or intention of repeating his remarks to him. The contemplation of his unworthiness is accompanied by an agreeable feeling. B. became righteously indignant at X. because of an incident of ungentlemanly conduct toward a friend. He observes, “A moment later (that is after the first instance of anger) I imagined myself in my alcove in the Library, and imagined some other person, I did not know, who came in and said to me, ‘What do you think of X?’ I replied with a good deal of pleasurable indignation, ‘I think he is a damned ass.’ Three-quarters of an hour later as I was walking along the street, the emotion arose again, and I imagined some one asking the same question, I replied the same as before with a like feeling of pleasure. I really wanted some one to ask me what I thought of X.” The subject may be aware that what he says to and about the opponent is a little unfair, but at the time that the emotion is progressing, he ignores it and wants to believe ill of the offender.

The results of this study abundantly show that a make-believe attitude plays an important role in the anger consciousness, in both the development of the anger and the reactive consciousness. It is believed momentarily, when the anger is most intense, that the offender is really a bad man. Pausing for introspection in the midst of such emotional reaction, it is frequently reported, “I knew very well I would say nothing of the sort and that X. was not so bad as I believed him.” While the emotion is most intense, ill reports about the offender which were previously ignored are now believed and assumed as true, and satisfaction is derived by degrading the best qualities of the offender, by believing stories of ill repute, by suspecting or imagining evil of him. The degree in which this tendency is present, depends partly on the intensity of the emotion, and evidently in part on the individual habits of reaction to anger. The chronic irascible gossiper is evidently a characteristic type of person who has specialized in this mode of reaction to anger._Substitutions by Witticism and Irony._ Witticism, sarcasm, irony, teasing and joking make up a large class of vocal and imaginal reactions which may take the place of the initially restrained emotional tendency. The crude remarks, transformed into wit or fitting sarcasm, overcome the consciousness restraint that was initially present in the emotion and lessen resistance. It is accompanied by a pleasant feeling and may be keenly delightful. A thrust in a half serious tone accompanied by a smile, the jest and hostile joke follow a state of mind characterized by restraint. In the observations of the subjects studied there is evidence supporting Freud’s (8) theory of wit. What he calls “tendency wit”; that is, wit with a definite aim has two divisions, the hostile joke and the obscene joke. The first is a reaction to irascible anger and the latter to the sexual emotions. The introspection of the reactive stage of anger consciousness shows the Freudian mechanism for “tendency wit.” The following case will illustrate a crude kind of wit. H. whose husband had stayed out late at night became angry following a period of worry. Fluctuating intensities of anger and periods of worry lasted over an hour. After a number of reactions such as planning verbal attacks; recalling his thoughtless behavior at other times; crying, assuming an attitude of self-pity; devising some means of making him sorry; at times trying to assume the attitude that it was no use to be angry; taking observations of the emotion at a number of places, motivated by a wish that her husband would see the results and feel sorry; imagining herself going to him and talking rather abusively. Finally she found a remark that gave the keenest pleasure of all. “I imagined myself saying, ‘Petty dear, you have been out pretty late tonight.’” This was a condensed veiled statement expressing about all she would like to say. “Petty” is a character portrayed in a current illustrated newspaper as being mean to his wife and flaring up angrily at every little incident. The character of “Petty” was fully understood by her husband. The crude hostile reaction was followed by a rather condensed acute remark; it was reported as pleasant, “because it seemed so fitting.”

C. in a discussion with X. became angry and gives the following observation, “I noted I was getting angry and wanted to say something hostile, but instead I turned away suddenly and laughed, saying in a joking, half-serious manner, ‘Oh you old bottle head, you don’t know anything.’ Although I laughed, I really meant it. That gave complete satisfaction. He laughed too.” Let us illustrate further. A., with four others, was walking along the street, coming from a clinic at the hospital, where a case of flight of ideas had just been observed. X., one of the party, was talking in a manner that seemed to A. a little superfluous. He resented his attitude, and turning he said to X. in a joking manner, “What did you say? The malady must be catching,” (referring to the case observed). X. retorted, “I never have any fixed ideas.” A. replied, “No, they do fly away pretty fast.” A. observed, “I felt pleased and victorious with my remark, my resentment was entirely gone and I entered into conversation with X. in a friendly manner.”

Witticism is one of the more refined modes of substitution for the more directly hostile attack. Sarcasm is cruder. Its mechanism depends for the most part upon the inflection and tone of voice in speaking. The words themselves in sarcasm are innocent enough, but the mode of expression and the meaning involved are the sources of hostility. The following statement represent sarcastic remarks. A.—“I think I will come around to your Club,” emphasis on the word “your.” A.—again, “You surely must be right,” emphasis on “surely.” J.—“You are not the boss, then?”—emphasis on “not,” with a little sneer and an accompanying laugh. Sarcasm is a rather cheap and easy reaction to anger. It is consequently more easily attained than wit. The period of conscious restraint preceding sarcasm is usually less, unless the witticism is already made for the occasion. Its feeling effect is also not so pleasant as of wit. At times sarcasm may be combined with rather crude wit, but wit of a more refined type will exclude sarcasm. The following is a combination of this kind. C., having become angry at X. for his “bragging attitude,” says, “I was conscious of the tendency to say something hostile, but could think of nothing appropriate. In the course of his remarks X. finally said, ‘I never read anything for an experiment as I fear it might bias my results.’ I suddenly found a remark that seemed entirely fitting at the time and at once the restraint was off. I said a little sarcastically, ‘No, you never want to read anything, it might hurt your intellect.’ As soon as the statement was made I saw I had gone too far and felt a little cheap. I at once noted that he did not take my remark seriously, and felt relieved. My former resentment had entirely disappeared.”

_Substitution by Disguise._ There are many devices less refined than wit which are commonly resorted to in slightly disguising the hostile attack. The offender may be attacked indirectly and impersonally. The following case will illustrate. F. became angry at a merchant because, when he went to pay for an article, the price was marked more than he had previously agreed to pay. Feeling resentful, he said, “I suppose the bill is all right, the clerk said it would be less, but people in this town don’t know what they are talking about anyway.” F. observes, “What I really meant was that you don’t know what you are talking about.” To avoid making the direct attack, the indefinite pronoun is substituted at times for the definite. The use of “some one” or “somebody” instead of “you,” in talking to the offender blunts the remark. The device is rather cheap affording little pleasure and has but a short fore-period of restraint. It is carried to an extreme when the subject pretends he does not know the perpetrator of the offense and in fact may assume it is some one else, so that he may speak his mind directly to the offender. I. observes, “I was angry, and talked to her about the affair as if I did not know that she did it. I wouldn’t have had her to know that I knew for anything. I told her what I thought of a person who had acted in that way and noted that she looked cheap. That pleased me.” Some gossip and vituperate against their enemies and derive a moiety of ill-gotten pleasure if a sympathetic hearer is found. One subject states, “I went to tell X., hoping he would be angry too, and felt just a little disappointed when he was not.” Hints and insinuations often become devices to avoid a too hostile direct attack._Imaginary Exaltation of Self._ Another rather important reaction of the attributive type is an idealistic one. Imagination and ideational processes are active. Lowered self-feeling has been accomplished in the subject usually by a number of repeated offenses by some one that the subject really respects. The offender is frequently not imagined as degraded, but he is left as he is, and the subject proceeds to imagine,—it may be to fancy or day-dreams that he is the offender’s superior. As the reaction to moments of humiliation, he may later plan to surpass him. An attitude of make-believe may be momentarily assumed that he is already the offender’s superior. Fantastic schemes of a successful career may appear in which he imagines some distant future, in which he has gained renown and the offender is glad to recall that he knew him in other days. Sometimes he is imagined as seeking his friendship or advice, or favor, and is refused with dignity. At the next moment he may be graciously bestowing favors upon the offender. Such imaginative processes are observed to afford pleasure to the subject at the time and may lead to a new level of self-confidence which has important influences on later behavior. Usually idealistic reactions of this character appear in consciousness after more directly hostile reactions have failed to satisfy the subject. A few cases will illustrate. A., recalling an incident of the day before which humiliated him, became angry. At first he began saying in voco-motor fashion as if talking directly to X., “You are a conceited fellow. You are hard to get along with. I will beat you. You are too nervous to get very far.” “I imagined myself treating him in a superior, dignified manner.” A. then laid plans how he would work, stick to one thing, make himself a recognized authority, and how he would have little to do with X. He imagined X. coming to him for favors when he had attained the success he had planned, and himself taking a rather indifferent attitude toward his requests. A. observes that his entire reverie was pleasant, although the anger was unpleasant in the beginning. C. reports a case of anger at X. who had taken a rather critical attitude toward a problem which he was studying. He observes, “At first there was a slight humiliated feeling. This was displaced by resentment. I imagined myself standing before X. and giving him two good retorts which I considered would have their ill effects on him. At this point the theme changed, ‘I will leave you alone and have nothing to do with you,’ I felt as if this behavior would somehow punish him, and that pleased me a little.” But as a third and final reaction C. observes the following. “I planned to do my work so well that X. would feel sorry for what he had said, I imagined X. complimenting me after it was finished.” The early stage of the emotion above was reported as unpleasant, the final ending in which C. imagines X. complimenting him on his success was a point of marked pleasure. Subject E. who had felt humiliated by X. whom he considered had underestimated him, observed as a final reaction, “I will show him in the next ten years, I am young and can work, and he will see.” Then followed a number of plans for the future. One subject reacts for a moment at times to resentment by day dreams in which he imagines himself a man of wealth and deals out favors to all except his enemy. He even uses his wealth and influence against him. The feeling is rather pleasant in tone till the moment he comes back to a sense of reality. The transition decreases the pleasantness rather suddenly.

_Attitudinal Reactions._ Attitudinal reactions of a hostile nature are an important part of the anger consciousness. What may be called “resolutional attitudes” frequently occur as one of the final mental reactions in the diminution of the emotion. The resolutional attitude to do something in the future at a more convenient time when the effects will be greater, becomes a convenient substitute for conscious tendencies that require present restraint. The subject definitely settles on a course of action which cannot be carried out at once. The feeling tone of such conscious attitudes is pleasant. It is not unusual to have a settled resolution and come to a definite conclusion in the initial reactive stage of the emotion. Unless the attitude is ready made for the occasion, it appears as one of the final resorts. A characteristic of “nowness” belongs to anger. An attitude that portends to future behavior is secondary, appearing after the possibilities of present reactions are exhausted. Much of the initial restraint in inhibitions is preparatory to the attainment of a settled conclusion; in some cases initial reaction behaves in a trial and error fashion. The results of a number of hostile impulses are imagined and are followed to their end until finally one is selected that seems most fitting. The conclusion reached may be temporary. Although it may be abandoned on the reappearance of the emotion, there is a temporary satisfaction in having attained a conclusive attitude even momentarily. The following case from C. will illustrate. C. became angry on being told of X.’s behavior. He first recalled a number of previous similar instances; second, he transferred the anger momentarily to another person who told him of the offense; third, he imagined himself cutting off all business relations with X. and as a fourth reaction he observes, “I took on a pugnacious attitude and concluded to fight it out according to the rules of the game, and planned what I would do and say to make him come my way.” The attitude of waiting for further developments, biding one’s time, being cautious, is a frequent substitute for rising tendencies demanding present action. Subject E. observes, “I finally came to the conclusion not to lie in wait for the opportunity to get back at the offender, but to be on guard against a future attack, but even after the conclusion was formed it was not at once carried out though it pleased me. I still found myself planning what I would say if the thing should be repeated.” A. angry at X. and Y., finally came to the following hostile conclusive attitude, “They had better be doing nothing like that, I will watch them, and when I get a chance they will hear from me. I will be cautious and sure first, with which final conclusion my anger disappeared.”THE CONTRARY REACTION

The second general type of reaction to anger is what we have called contrary reaction. The subject suddenly reacts contrary to the emotive tendency of the emotion. He behaves contrary to what he actually wishes at the time. Religion and morals have idealized this type of behavior in its extreme form. “Turn the other cheek,” “Love your enemy,” “Do good to those that hate you,” are exhortations of more than one religion. As compared with the type described above, relatively a small percent of the mental reactions under the influence of anger, as shown by the observations of all the subjects studied, are classed as the contrary reactive type, eighteen percent as compared with seventy one percent.

The contrary reaction is not so rich in versatile behavior as the one just described, in fact it is limited to a few set reactions. The subject suddenly reacts to a state of mind contrary to anger. It may take strong effort to make the change and the attitude is not heartily entered into at first and does not usually occur when the emotion is most intense, but after it is partly diminished, consequently it is usually delayed till a later stage of the emotion. If it appears in the initial stage it precludes a complete development of the emotion. Subject G. has apparently acquired the habit of championing, in the initial stage of the emotion, the offender’s point of view and forestalling the development of anger against persons. His anger is attained most fully against objects and situations. He considers this due to his training in early childhood. E. has developed a partial habit of assuming an attitude of forgiveness toward the offender. C. and A. when in a quandary and unable to find other adequate means of expression, suddenly revert to the contrary reaction. It becomes a habitual device toward close and intimate friends or toward persons with whom it is necessary to get along. After the anger has gone so far, the subject suddenly assumes a friendly attitude as if there were no emotion.

There are various conditions under which this sort of mental reaction to anger occurs. It is a frequent device in a social situation when there is rising anger and it becomes necessary to adopt a sudden and quick control. It is forced upon the subject to meet a sudden crisis. He may at once assume an over-friendly or over-polite behavior, when in reality he would like to behave in a hostile manner. A little over-solicitude for the offender may be conspicuously displayed. A few cases will illustrate. B. was met on the stairs by his landlady, who requested him not to write on his machine after ten o’clock, also to put on his slippers on coming home late before ascending the stairs. He observes, “Before she had finished I felt uncomfortable and was vaguely aware of the inconvenience that these limitations would cause me. I recalled that she had said that I could use the typewriter all I wished when I took the room; I found myself becoming angry, but at once I took the attitude of excusing her. I noted that she looked tired while she was talking, and thought perhaps I had kept her awake. I then said with an extra pleasant tone, ‘That is all right, I am very glad you speak of it, I wish you had told me before.’ The pleasantness was assumed, I did not feel pleasant as I spoke, I was still mildly angry. Five minutes later I recalled what she had said and began to get angry again, but at once imaged her tired appearance and excused her as before.” A.’s observation illustrates further. A. was humiliated and angry at X.’s statement. “I wanted to say something cutting, several hostile remarks appeared which were inhibited one after the other. I felt extremely confused and unpleasant but I suddenly began to agree with X. I told him in an over-polite manner he was quite right and that I was glad he had mentioned it. In reality I did not agree with him nor was I glad.” A. states that on leaving the presence of X. the emotion reappeared many times in the course of the next half day and in no case did he find any excuse for X.’s behavior but blamed him severely. When the contrary reaction is resorted to as a device to gain quick control, it is reported as unpleasant. The emotion reappears again and is usually followed by unpleasant feelings, but when it is not forced upon the subject and is entered into spontaneously with zest, as a means of finding some sort of satisfaction for the emotional restraint, it is accompanied by pleasant feelings. Subject A. sometimes takes keen delight in assuming a dignified attitude toward an offender and treating him rather friendly as if he were far above getting angry. He states, “I always feel I am victor, that I am master of the situation, and it is pleasing when I do this.” It may be said that whenever the attributive reaction is satisfactory, the contrary reaction is not resorted to. The latter type occurs for the most part when the subject is mentally obstructed and there seems nothing else to be done but to ally himself heartily with the opponent for the moment until the storm of his mental stress is passed. Subject J. in a situation, when it would be rude to display his anger, observes, “Each time I found myself becoming angry at X.’s remarks, I would take a negative attitude toward the rising impulse and laugh quite good naturedly at his statement. The laugh was not forced, I entered into it heartily.” Subject C. finds himself at times suddenly laughing at the most commonplace remarks when mildly angry at an offence. It is a common device of subject B. to burst out laughing at his behavior when mildly angry, as if he were merely a spectator of his emotion and not a partaker of it. “I recalled the offensive behavior of X. which had happened two hours before. I found myself in an emotion of slight anger, followed by an explosive, ‘Damn that X.’ There was present much motor tension in arms and face muscles, then noting my angry demonstrations I laughed outright at myself and felt pleased.” The anger disappeared entirely with the act. It is frequently reported that a sudden pause in the midst of unpleasant anger to introspect, is pleasant when attention is directed to the behavior, but when attention passes to the situation exciting the emotion, anger tends to be reinstated again. Observations like the following are reported: “Pausing to observe my emotion, my whole behavior seemed so ludicrous that I had to laugh.” The subject may suddenly assume his opponent’s point of view, find a number of probable excuses for his behavior and at times actually imagine himself as champion for his enemy against himself. He does this heartily at times when there is no outside compulsion and derives a feeling of pleasure in the act. The contrary reaction may be hostilely resorted to in some instances. The subject is aware that his aim is to humiliate his opponent by making him ashamed and sorry; but it is usually reported that, after he has assumed the over-friendly attitude with its hostile intent, there is a self-satisfaction in the sudden breaking up of the unpleasant conscious restraint. Subject D. observes, “I knew I was doing the favor to make him feel ashamed; watching him, I saw he was not ashamed in the least but I continued my friendliness and felt pleased in doing it. There was no regret when I saw that he did not take the matter as I had at first wished.” In the contrary reaction, a joke or witticism may be employed, but it has an entirely different aim from the joke discussed in attributive reaction. It lacks hostility. Its aim is friendliness, the theme is contrary to the situation giving rise to anger and serves to distract the attention from the emotion.

THE INDIFFERENT REACTION

The third class of mental reactions to anger is what has been called the indifferent type. It is attitudinal in character. The subject assumes for the time an indifferent attitude toward the situation and person exciting the emotion. Eleven percent of the reactions of all the subjects studied may be classified under this type. It occurs as one of the last resorts when there is nothing else to be done. If it appears in the initial stage of anger, the emotion does not fully develop. It is not reported as actually pleasant but rather passively relieving for the time. Subject B. had received a piece of adverse information in a letter. He observes, “At first, I was angry and at once threw the letter down on the table in an attitude of not caring anything about it. I felt that nothing could be done. I had really wanted the information badly. I threw up my hands and moved my body suddenly with a ‘don’t care’ feeling.” B. reports that he recalled the situation several times later, but the anger did not appear again. The same subject recalling the offensive behavior of X. and Y. became angry, and observes, “I found myself saying aloud, ‘Oh confound them, I don’t care anything about them,’ and at once started to attend to something else. My saying I did not care, made me feel as if I did not care; in fact now I really did not care.” The sudden assuming of an apathetic attitude toward the developing anger is a frequent device of subject B. A. after a rather prolonged emotional reaction in which he imagined cutting remarks and planned how he would retaliate, suddenly changed his attitude, saying, “What is the use anyway, it is just X., I don’t care anything about him, I will let him go his way.” C. when angry at times reenforces an assumed attitude of indifference by saying to himself, “Here, you must not be bothered about such things, be a good sport and play the game.” One at times assumes an attitude of accepting the situation as it is, and dropping the matter.

CHAPTER THREE

DISAPPEARANCE OF ANGER

The anger consciousness is one of variability and change. The emotion may disappear rather suddenly with the appearance of a new emotion or it may disappear gradually. There are usually fluctuating nodes of increasing and diminishing intensity accompanying the changing direction of attention, ideational behavior, and motor and mental activity in general. Attention again to the situation exciting anger tends to increase its intensity, if the situation from which it arises remains unchanged.

Any behavior, whether mental or motor, which changes the total mental situation from which anger originates, tends to modify the emotion itself. This total mental situation cannot remain unchanged long. The affective processes which have been aroused usually serve to redirect attention again and again to the situation exciting anger. The aim of angry behavior may be said to be three fold, referring to the total mental situation from which the three main types of anger arise; (1) to enhance self-feeling which has been lowered; (2) to get rid of the opposing obstacle to the continuity of associative processes; (3) to recover from one’s wounded sense of justice.

The total feeling situation becomes modified in the course of the disappearance or diminution of the emotion. Anger which springs from a fore-period of irritable feelings disappears by a different set of ideas than from anger arising from a fore-period of negative self-feeling.

Pleasantness is an important condition in the diminution of anger. There are but few instances that show no pleasantness in some degree somewhere in the reactive stage of the emotion. The pleasantness ranges from momentary mild relief to active delight. Periods of restraint during anger are periods of unpleasantness. Periods of lessened restraint are accompanied by relief or pleasantness. Two periods in the development of anger are most unpleasant. (1) The entire cumulative development of anger is unpleasant. It is a frequent observation in the immediate fore-period, “I wanted to get angry at somebody or something, I felt I would feel better if I did.” (2) Often during the active stage of anger, there are found one or more periods of unpleasant inhibition and restraint. This is often a stage of experiment in imagination, foreseeing unpleasant results of too drastic behavior, inhibiting, choosing and selecting in the effort to discover some reaction which may successfully meet the emotional crisis of the moment. There are cases of anger with all the persons studied, which do not get beyond this inhibitive unpleasant stage. Anger may be almost entirely unpleasant or mostly pleasant. Some persons have a greater mental versatility than others in finding a successful expression to anger, consequently they have relatively a greater proportion of pleasantness. Under the influence of fatigue, the ability for successful expression is lessened and there is a correspondingly increased tendency to emotive excitation and decreased emotional control.

When a fully successful reaction is not found, anger dies hard. It may become necessary to attend to something else voluntarily for self protection. Anger disappearing unsuccessfully tends to recur again and again, it may be. Its reappearance frequently allows the unpleasant initial stage to be shortened or dropped entirely leaving a mildly pleasant experience.

Anger disappears suddenly and pleasantly if the subject can gain the subjective end of the emotion. Subject J. observes in the case of an anger arising from a feeling of irritation, “At this moment (the moment of successful expression) I felt pleased, my anger now disappeared leaving a pleasant after-effect.” A case from A. will illustrate further. A. got on the wrong street car. The conductor refused to allow him to get off at his corner of the street. He observes he was angry, not because he was hindered from getting off, but because of the insulting attitude and remark of the conductor, who said in a hostile manner, “Why did you not pay attention to what I said, this car does not stop, you will have to go on.” A. then became angry and demanded in rather severe language to have the car stopped. At this point the conductor changed his attitude and stopped with no further words. A. observes, “As I stepped off I had a distinct feeling of pleasantness. I felt I had been victorious. I was no longer angry. Sensations were still present in chest, arm and leg muscles but these were now pleasant. Upon recalling the incident, I had not the least resentment against the conductor. On the whole, I now felt glad the incident had occurred.”

Pleasantness may appear on the observation of the offender’s failure or humiliation. C. becoming angry at X., who was manipulating some laboratory apparatus, observes, “I let him proceed rather hoping he would spoil his results. When I noted he was failing and observed his discomposure, I felt pleased. That satisfied my anger against him at once.”

The imaginal humiliation and trouble coming to the offender, also increases the feeling of pleasantness and diminishes for the moment the anger. The imaginative verbal or physical attacks usually allow a subject to come out victor. What D. observes is typical. “I imagined he was stunned by my attack, and the result pleased me; that satisfied my anger.”

If the offender acts friendly and accommodating, that affords a relief to the offended person and is a condition for the rapid disappearance of anger. F. observes, “He behaved so friendly that I thanked him and felt relieved. My anger was now almost gone.” C. became angry at X. for what he had interpreted as a hostile attitude. Five minutes later X. sat down by him. C. observes, “He acted sociable and I felt relieved, my anger was entirely gone, in fact I now felt quite friendly toward him.” It is also commonly reported that when the offender becomes submissive, it affords a relief to the subject and usually kills the emotion. C. observes, “After he had submitted, my anger had disappeared and I now felt a little repentant at what I had done.” The same subject sometimes observes that he imagines the absent offender at whom he is angry, smiling and acting friendly in the usual way, and the imagined friendly attitude is a relief to the emotion.Anger which develops from a fore-period of negative self-feeling, disappears when the subject is able to acquire a positive feeling attitude toward the offender. It may be accomplished subjectively. The subject tends to lower his opinion of his opponent, he enjoys an idle gossip, it may be, at his expense, recalls ill reports he had previously heard but ignored, and in fact may employ a number of devices of imagination and make-believe. He at times tends to magnify the offender’s unworthiness, and may come to the conclusion that he is scarcely worth troubling about. Mental behavior of this sort is commonly reported to enhance self-feeling. On the other hand the subject may accomplish the same end by magnifying his own personal feelings directly by dwelling on his own good qualities and worth in comparison with that of the offender. Such comparisons are almost always to the disadvantage of the opponent. Subject C., in a controversy with X., became angry and walked away when the emotion was still intense. “I now began to recall how insignificant he is and how important I am. He is narrow, pedantic and incapable of seeing a large point of view. I am not so narrow. All was slightly pleasant and was accompanied by a decreased intensity of my emotion. I now met X. and joked with him; my anger was entirely gone.” The feeling of superiority kills anger of the type which arises from a fore-period of humiliation. It has already been indicated that when a positive feeling is maintained in receiving an injury, anger does not arise. The would-be offender if he is regarded as unworthy or unaccountable for his act, does not usually excite anger. The same person, however, may stimulate anger by a process of increased irritable feelings. Subject A. beginning to get angry at X., (a person he holds in low esteem) observes the following association. “Oh, it is just X., no use in my getting angry at a fellow like that, he is not responsible anyway, and I would be foolish to be bothered by him. I had started to ridicule him but now my emotion was gone.”

A contemplated victory gives pleasure and diminishes anger even before the victory is attained. The emotion disappears on assuming a positive determined mental attitude, it may pass off in vehement resolution as to further behavior. In fact, one may begin and finish his fight through the medium of ideas and have no enthusiasm left for the actual encounter.

With a third condition for the disappearance of anger, pleasantness is present but usually in the form of mild relief. Positive self-feeling is not so clearly marked in consciousness. The subject looks at the offender’s point of view, finds excuses for his behavior, elevates his opinion it may be of him. A new idea is added to the mental situation exciting anger which entirely alters the feeling content, and consequently anger disappears. Subject I. observes, “When I finally concluded that X. meant well, my anger was almost gone.” G. resentful at X. because he did not speak to him states, “I recalled suddenly that he is cross-eyed and probably did not see me. I said to myself, ‘He is a good fellow and is friendly toward me all right.’ My emotion was now gone.” B. mildly angry at X. and Y. for intruding upon him, observes the following soliloquy. “No, they have more right here than I have. This room is for people to converse in rather than for one man to occupy alone. My anger was now decreased but not entirely gone.” Even a tentative excuse for the offender’s behavior allays anger temporarily. The emotion may last for several days, appearing at intervals, and with a sudden introduction of a new idea providing an adequate excuse for the offence, the condition exciting the emotion will be completely changed.

Anger diminishes and disappears more frequently in the change of attention than by any other one condition. A pause in the midst of anger to attend to one’s mental behavior affords a diminution of the affective process. It is often reported as amusing when a subject suddenly ceases attending to the situation exciting the emotion and observes his mental behavior; laughter at this point is often reported. Close attention to the act of managing the irritating or humiliating incident, allows a rather gradual diminution of anger. Anger does not arise when the subject is rigidly attending to the damage done, but only when he begins to feel the damage as humiliating, irritating or as contrary to justice. One subject hums or sings when angry. A joke or witticism will break the crust of conscious tension allowing the attention to be distracted elsewhere.

The subject may suddenly assume an apathetic attitude toward the whole incident and kill the emotion at least temporarily. The mental situation from which anger arises, is one contrary to indifference, in fact, the lack of indifference is one of the essential characteristics of the fore-condition of anger, and consequently when this attitude is present, anger is cut off.

A resolution or a settled judgment has a relieving effect. Whenever the subject comes to a definite conclusion whether it refers to the emotional situation or a contemplated mode of behavior toward the offender, there is reported a sudden drop in the intensity of the emotion, even though the attitude is but a tentative and temporary one. The reason for this is evidently that such a mental attitude is contrary to the immediate mental situation from which anger arises. Anger springs from the fact that there is lacking a definite mental attitude as to what should be done during the reactive stage of the emotion. One of the most efficient controls is to have a well planned reaction to meet the emotional crisis before it appears; when the injury occurs, if there is a preparedness as to what should be done, even though the response is but a subjective one purely attitudinal in its nature, anger fails to develop to its intense stage.SUCCESSFUL DISAPPEARANCE

The success with which the emotion of anger disappears is a matter of wide individual difference with the persons studied. With some the reporting of the emotion from the introspection notes tended to reinstate the emotion. One subject was frequently disturbed by the reappearance of the emotion during the report. In one instance he refused to report to the writer for three days afterward. He reports he could not recall the situation without the reappearance of the anger in its unpleasant form. Other persons could rarely reinstate an emotion in any unpleasant form over night. At times the anger was reinstated in its pleasant aspect. Sometimes a feeling of exaltation was displayed. The subject showed he enjoyed recalling the emotion. Imagined and carefully devised schemes of retaliation were often rehearsed with pleasure. Again the observation would be a feeling of indifference, as something past and finished. Often the statement was given, “The whole thing seems ludicrous and amusing to me now.”

It is rather pleasing to recall the situation exciting anger when the original emotion is short-circuited, as it were, allowing a pleasurable, gossipy vituperation against the offender without the initially unpleasant stage of anger. In fact the subject may re-experience a little of the unpleasant humiliation through imaginative stimulus, if the pleasantly reactive stage is successful enough to compensate. If the subject is aware he has a sympathetic hearer, it is far easier to pass over the initially unpleasant stage of the reinstated anger and enjoy a hostile, gossipy reaction. The writer in the course of the study became so intimately acquainted with the private emotional life of the subjects studied and had been a sympathetic listener of the emotional experiences so long, that after the period of observation had ended, he would find himself the recipient of emotional confidences which the subjects took pleasure in relating to him. Says one on reporting, “I really was not interested so much in the scientific side of this emotion as I was to tell you of my resentment, and as I look over it now, I am really aware that I assumed a scientific interest as a means of gaining full sympathy and giving me full freedom to speak everything in mind.” Another subject says, “I went to tell X. for I believed he would get angry too and I hoped that he would.” The same situation does not usually allow anger to continue to reappear in its unpleasant form, for repeated appearance tends to eliminate the active unpleasant stage.

An emotion of anger which has been unsuccessfully expressed may continue to reappear in consciousness again and again. Crowded out, it will suddenly return at times by chance associations. It may become so insistent that it is an unpleasant distraction from business affairs and the subject must find some sort of reaction to satisfy it. F. observes, “I could not do my work. Just as I would get started, the idea would reappear suddenly and I would find myself angry, tending to think cutting remarks and planning what I should do. Each time I tried to escape from it, it would come back again. Finally I determined deliberately to get rid of it. I recalled all the good qualities of X., what favors he had bestowed upon me and in fact felt quite friendly toward him. Before I had finished, the anger had disappeared and did not return. Later, as I recalled the situation incidentally, I felt indifferent toward it.” Such deliberate behavior is unusual. The reaction to an emotion is mostly involuntary. In many instances, when emotion is prolonged, it is much like a trial and error process, one reaction after another is tried out in imagination until a rather successful one is found. This reappearance of an emotion when it has been repressed gives opportunity for a new trial and mode of attack.

There are two general conditions under which anger disappears most successfully. First, if the mental situation from which anger arises is changed directly by the addition of a new idea that gives an entirely new meaning content to the incident so that it will no longer be humiliating or irritating, as when the subject can thoroughly come to believe that the motives of the opponent’s offense were not hostile but friendly, anger disappears rather successfully with no unpleasant after effects; the anger is cut off directly at its source. To illustrate, C.’s anger at X. which had been a source of unpleasant disturbance for two days, completely disappeared when he was finally informed that what X. did was not meant as personal. The subject at times finds himself trying to assume a little of the attitude of make-believe. He really wants to believe the offender meant well. A second successful condition for the removal of anger is when the subject reacts so that he feels he has fully mastered his opponent. He has given full restitution for the offense and feels a pleasureable satisfaction in the results. Feeling is an essential factor, whatever the method employed. If a feeling of complete victorious satisfaction is accomplished in connection with the disappearance of anger it is usually successful. The circumstances are rare in which the direct verbal or physical attack would be fully satisfactory. A substitution in the form of hostile wit, teasing, irony, or it may be a favor bestowed with a hostile intent, may accomplish the same result as far as feelings are concerned and completely satisfy the anger. The imagined victory, or a make-believe one, may serve the same purpose.

The most unsuccessful condition for the disappearance of anger is one commonly used in emergencies—that of changing the attention and avoiding the offensive idea. Intense anger usually returns when diminished in this manner. The attitude of indifference and over-politeness usually serves only as a temporary device of removal for the purpose of expeditious control. Mere repression is not always most successful.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONSCIOUS AFTER-EFFECTS

Anger has an important influence upon mental life and behavior long after the emotion itself has disappeared. The functional effect of anger may be disclosed in a period after the emotion proper has disappeared. Other emotions may immediately follow anger, such as pity, regret, sorrow, joy, shame, remorse, love and fear. Feelings and tendencies are left over which the subject is fully aware are directly related to the previous emotion. For purposes of study, the period after the emotion will be divided into two parts; first, that immediately after the emotion has disappeared, and second, the more or less remote period of indefinite time. The reaction while the emotion is present, and the way in which the emotion disappears, are conditions which determine to a large extent what will consciously appear after the emotion has passed away. With the aim of finding out what mental factors follow in the wake of anger, the subjects were instructed to keep account of any sort of consciousness of which they were aware as referring either directly or indirectly to the previous emotion observed.

Pity is frequently associated with anger. Mild anger may merge into pity at the point where attention changes from the situation exciting anger to the effects of angry behavior on the offender. Pity often follows the imaginal humiliation of the person committing the offense. It follows more readily when the emotion is against children, servants, dependents or persons with whom there is close intimacy. A kind of self-pity is sometimes associated with anger. With one subject, a mildly pleasant self-pity would frequently follow anger at an injury. At times there is found a curious mixture of anger and self-pity. H. observes, “At times I would be angry, then at other times I would find myself taking a peculiar pleasure in rehearsing my injuries and feeling rather pitiful for one who had been mistreated like myself.” An observation from C. will illustrate the suddenness of the transition from mild anger to pity. Angry at a clerk for a slight offense, he observes, “As I turned away I said to myself, ‘I wish that fellow would lose his place,’ but at once I felt a little pity for him and said, ‘No, that would be too bad, he has a hard time putting up with all these people.’” Subject A., angry at a child observes, “I found myself tending to punish him, I saw his face, it looked innocent and trusting, that restrained me, I now thought, ‘Poor little fellow, he does not know any better,’ and I felt a pity for him to think that such a person as myself had the correcting of him.”

Shame may follow in the wake of anger. It arises rather suddenly in the disappearing stage of the emotion when attention is directed to the results of the angry behavior just finished. Both shame and pity, following anger, are usually a condition of immunity against the reappearance of the same emotion. After shame appears, a reaction usually follows in the effort to compensate in some fashion. Subject C. observes, “Becoming aware of my act and how it appeared, I now felt ashamed and humiliated at what I had said. In a few minutes I brought it about to offer him a favor and felt pleased when it was accepted. I had really been trying to convince him that I was not angry, and now felt that I was doing it.” Subject C. observes, “I noted that they saw I was angry and at once I felt ashamed. I now began to laugh the matter off as if trying to show I was not.” At times during mild anger when the emotion is displayed too impulsively and the bounds of caution have been overstepped, exposing one’s self to a too easy attack from an opponent, an uncomfortable feeling of chagrin appears. The anger may be displayed in too crude a fashion, consequently an advantage is given to the opponent which was not intended. Anxiety that the opponent may take the hostile thrust too seriously or fear of the consequence, may suddenly displace anger. Instead of an offending person, the same person now suddenly becomes one exciting anxiety or fear.

A fourth affective condition of the immediate after-period of anger is an active pleasantness. Anger disappears and joy takes its place. The condition, originally exciting anger, is no longer able to reproduce the emotion as the subject has become the victor and the offense is recompensed. The goal of anger from its impulsive and feeling side is to be found in the pleasurable victorious affection in the after-period of the emotion. Any anger possesses possibilities of pleasantness in its after-stage. If an objective victory cannot be had, a subjective one plays the part of a surrogate. The processes of imagination, make-believe and disguise, as previously discussed, become devices directly referring to the aim of pleasurable feelings in the after-period of anger. The motivation is to avoid the unpleasant emotions and feelings in the wake of anger and acquire the feeling of victory. The tendency to humor and jocular behavior after anger is sometimes observed. The subject tends to recall his feelings of success and relive them, self-confidence and positive self-feelings are increased.

The feeling of friendliness toward the offender may follow anger which has been successfully expressed. Spinoza was right when he said, “An act of offense may indirectly give origin to love.” It is frequently observed in the after-period of anger, “I felt more friendly toward him after my emotion had disappeared.” In fact an unusual friendliness with a desire to bestow favors was often observed. We like a man better after we have been angry at him in a successful manner. The emotional attitude is entirely changed toward an opponent who has been overcome, if he allows the victory. It is the unreasoning person who never becomes aware of his defeat, against whom hate follows anger.Feelings of unpleasant irritation usually follow anger when social or other conditions prevent adequate expression. These feelings seem to be the medium by which the situation exciting anger is repeatedly recalled. The emotion which appears from the imagined situation usually does not leave such intense unpleasant feelings, as the subject tends to attain in his deliberate moments, to some degree, an inner victory over his opponent, or to find an adequate excuse for his behavior. Either of these reactions may be successful enough to exclude irritable feelings in the after-period. Irritation after controlled anger is the medium for the so-called transfer of the emotion from an offending to an unoffending object, which is so often observed. In the after-period of irritation, it is a rather common observation of the subjects, “I was looking for something or somebody at whom I could get angry.” “I felt I wanted to hurt somebody.” In fact irritation in the after-period becomes an essentially affective element in a situation from which may arise a new anger of a different type. The first anger may have arisen from a fore-period of humiliation, while the latter is from that of irritation.

There is evidence that the affective state in the after-period of anger has a compensating relation to the emotion that has just passed, not unlike the compensation role played between the anger proper and the feeling fore-stage from which it arises. The reactive stage of anger tends to over-compensate for the unpleasant feelings of irritation and humiliation in the fore-period of anger by either increasing the pleasantness or diminishing unpleasantness. If the reaction is incomplete and has not adequately met the emotional crisis of the moment, irritation may follow with a tendency to continue further the emotion, or if the reaction has gone too far, it is paid for by the appearance in the after-stage of other emotions of social origin, such as fear, shame, pity, etc. The feeling of relief occurs after the expression has nearly restored consciousness to about the same affective level as before the beginning of the emotion; but with active pleasure, a higher affective level has been attained and the subject feels he was glad to have been angry. There is a heightened effect in the affective state following anger; a sort of over-compensation, which is a little out of proportion to the behavior apart from the anger itself. If the after-period is one of pleasantness, the feeling is increased far more because of what the subject has done during the emotion, for it is evident if the same mental processes and behavior occur without anger, the pleasantness is less. Joy is a good example of the intensification of the emotion in the after-period of anger which is out of proportion to the idea stimulating it. The relation between the fore-period, the anger proper, and the after-period is so intimate in anger that the writer has had it repeatedly impressed upon him in making the present study, that to solve some of the important problems of our emotional life, this relation must be taken into account. The entire gamut of the emotional consciousness for each emotion must be studied from the initial feeling stage to the termination of the conscious content after the emotion has disappeared. The emotions do not appear as separate effective entities, but have an intimate relation which is important in the study of their psychology.

Mild anger may leave the subject in a state of curiosity. A feeling of doubt as to the motivation of the offender may appear, and curiosity follows with an awareness of a tendency for anger to reappear if the occasion should arise. After the emotion has passed, the subject is aware of tendencies or attitudes, referring directly to the mental behavior, which were present during the emotion. An attitude of indifference toward the offender and offending situation follows what has been called the indifferent type of reaction. The emotion of anger may leave the subject in a state of confidence toward himself, positive self-feelings have been reached as a result of the entire experience. On the other hand, slightly reduced self-feelings may follow if the reaction to anger has been unsuccessful. It may leave the subject in either a heightened or a lowered opinion of the offender. A previously friendly interest in the person committing the offense may be increased or otherwise. A feeling of amusement at one’s behavior when recalling it after the emotion has disappeared, is often reported. The subject stands off, as it were, and views his own response to anger as if he were a spectator rather than a partaker of his emotion. What the subject did when angry seems so incongruous with his mental state after the emotion has disappeared, that it strikes him as ludicrous. Laughter and amusement frequently appear in the recall of the emotional situation.

An attitude of caution often follows. After a period of stressed inhibition, in which the evil consequences of a too impulsive behavior have been pre-perceived, there is assumed an attitude of control and at the same time a readiness to respond to a suitable stimulus. Anger may leave in its place an attitude of greater determination to make one’s point, or if the emotion has been entirely satisfactory, the subject takes the attitude that the score has been settled. An attitude of belief or conviction as to a future course of action toward a like offense may follow in the period after anger, which is a direct result of the conclusion reached when the emotion was present. Mild anger may have changed the feeling tone but little, but leaves the subject primed and ready to respond more quickly to another offense. The result of anger may be purely a practical attitude as to what should be done in such cases with little marked feeling accompanying it. The subject is left not in a fighting attitude, but in one of preparedness to prevent the offense recurring. It is usually necessary in the after-period to reconstruct or modify the revengeful plans or conclusions which were formed when the emotion was intense. What seemed so justifiable during the emotion proper, after it has disappeared becomes strikingly inopportune. If the emotion has disappeared unsuccessfully and resentful feelings still linger, the subject wishes to execute the plans previously formed; but in the act of doing it, he usually finds difficulties of which he was not aware when the emotion was intense. An instance from A. will illustrate. He had been intensely angry at X. and had planned to tell him his opinion of his conduct. By the time he had opportunity to speak, the emotion had subsided. He observes, “I had at this point a severe struggle with myself. I wanted to tell him what I had planned; I felt I was inconsistent if I did not. On the other hand I was slightly apprehensive, not of X., but of making myself ludicrous. I recognized what I had not before, that I was not fully justified, and partially excused him for what he had done. But the tendency to do what I had planned still persisted, and I felt I would give anything if I could do it.” He reports further that although the emotion was now fear, at this point “the tendency to execute the plan, formed during the anger, persisted for about fifteen minutes of intense struggle with myself before it disappeared.” Tendencies in the after-period of the emotion, which refer to conclusions or resolutions reached during its active stage, at times, when they appear are passed over lightly and even with amusement.The effects of anger may extend far beyond the period immediately after the emotion has disappeared. The more remote after-period, after the immediate effects have passed off or been modified, have important results in our mental life. The momentum, acquired during anger by determined emotional outburst, may be a reenforcement to volitional action and may allow old habits to be more quickly broken down and new ones formed. If an error has been repeatedly made with increased irritation, till the subject has been thoroughly aroused to anger at himself, the tendency to repeat the error is usually successfully forestalled by an attitude of caution and determination following the emotion. The possible failure may be prevented by mild anger at the imagined humiliating result, which increases volitional action to a point insuring success, and a new momentum is acquired which may have far reaching influences. Slight habitual mistakes, like errors in typewriting or speaking, repeated forgetting of details, and social blunders, are reported as cured by anger.

Mild prolonged anger which has not had a fully satisfactory expression may leave in its wake a fighting attitude which if transferred into work enables the subject to acquire new levels of activity. A record from C. will illustrate. He observes, “I would not allow myself to be dejected, but have planned to fight and dig into it like everything. These emotions are the greatest stimuli I have. I get angry, then I want to get down to work for all I am worth.” On the other hand, anger which has been successfully expressed may be followed by a feeling of satisfaction in the result and an attitude of success, which gives momentum for increased volitional action in the future.

There is usually a residuum from intense anger which may appear long after the anger has consciously disappeared. The recall of the situation which had previously excited anger may have little or no feeling; merely indifference is present. Sometimes feelings of resentment and dislike are observed, while at other times, there is amusement. It frequently happens that while the situation which has previously excited the emotion may be accompanied by indifference upon its being recalled either voluntarily or involuntarily, there follows an emotion of dislike and hate. The incident itself may be almost forgotten, or not recalled at all, but the result of anger is to be observed in tendencies and emotional dispositions left in the wake of the emotion. An over-critical attitude, with something of a gossipy tendency and hostile suspicion in which the bounds of justice are partly ignored, may long continue to reappear after the emotion itself has passed away and the situation has been forgotten. It is rather probable that a single strong outburst of anger does not leave the hostile emotional disposition in its wake. It is usually the mild anger, preceded by much feeling of humiliation and anger which tends to recur again and again till it has settled to a hostile disposition toward the offender. It is reported in some instances to refer to the offender’s way of talking, laughing, manner of walking, his mode of dressing; in fact any chance idea of the offender’s behavior may be sufficient to allow a feeling of dislike and disgust to appear.

It may be said that anger which disappears in an unsatisfactory manner leaves an emotional disposition which possesses potentialities of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Some persons seem to derive much satisfaction in picking the sores of their unhealed resentments; little acts of revenge and retaliation are suddenly hit upon; even hate may have its pleasures. Small acts of revenge and retaliation are observed with an affective state which cannot be called anger, but the subject is aware that it refers to the anger which is passed. One subject became severely angry at his grocer and went to trade with another merchant near by. He states that on several occasions just after the anger, when buying at another place he felt pleased at the other man’s having lost his trade. Once he observes, “I believe I bought several things I did not need, I felt I was retaliating and enjoyed it.” The emotional disposition following anger may be a source of rather intense enjoyment. Laughter and mirth are observed with the appearance of an idea that has humiliated the offender. In such cases the laughter is purely spontaneous with no recall of anger. Subject J. broke out laughing when told that X. was on unfavorable terms with Y. His laughter, he observes, referred to a resentment a few days before against X. In fact laughter frequently springs rather suddenly from the mental disposition which has followed from anger. Such cases afford another instance of the close intimacy of our emotions with each other. The residuum of potential feelings from an emotion of anger appears in the form of less active pleasantness.There is a relation between the immediate after-period of anger and the more remote one that is important. If anger is immediately followed by such emotions as pity, shame, regret or fear, any positive tendency left over in the remote after-period from the emotion itself is apparently lacking. There is, however, a negative effect. The subject is immune to re-experience the same emotion from the same emotional situation again, but anger which has disappeared with unpleasant feelings may tend to recur in a rather prolonged after-period and may finally settle into an emotional disposition and mental attitude which play an important role in behavior and later feelings. It seems to be true, that when anger disappears consciously in such a manner that the subject is aware that his wishes have not been satisfied and the disappearance is followed by unpleasant feelings, the immediate after-period is rather barren as compared with the out-cropping which appears in a more remote period after the emotion. In anger, when sudden control is required, the subject is forced to attend to something else or react contrary to the emotional tendency to save himself a later humiliation. The immediate after-period is usually one of unpleasantness and tension. Under such circumstances, the tendency to recur again and again is characteristic and if, in some later recurrence or expression through the imaginative process, it does not end satisfactorily, it may settle down to an emotional disposition and mental attitude.

Anger that arises from a fore-period of irritation in which the subject suddenly bursts out with emotion may have an immediate after-period of irritation, but it leaves little in the remote after-period; the subject is aware that the emotion is finished. Anger which ends with active pleasantness of victory leaves an attitude of confidence and success toward the situation which has excited the emotion. There is little tendency for the emotion, disappearing in this fashion, to reappear except in its pleasant stage. With a consciousness of complete victory in the immediate after-period, there is established an attitude of positive self-feeling and confidence toward the situation exciting the emotion so that a practical immunity against the reappearance of anger in its unpleasant stage is reached as a negative result of the emotion. There are wide individual differences in the ability of the subjects studied to allow anger to disappear, leaving a pleasant after-period. C. reports but few instances in which his anger disappeared with a fully satisfactory result. He consequently has a wealth of emotional dispositions and mental attitudes following anger. On the other hand F. and E., whose anger emotions are less intense, are early able either to attain an inner victory or to react contrary to the emotion and leave an after-period of immunity against its reappearance from the same mental situation. Hence the tendencies and dispositions left over in the after-period of their anger are less. E.’s dislikes are short lived. It is probable that some subjects have acquired the habit of shortening their emotions of anger, short-cutting the unpleasant period of restraint and early acquiring the after-period of relief, humor or it may be indifference, before the emotion has developed far.

_Classifications._ Anger might be classified according to a number of schemes that would serve the purpose of emphasizing its characteristics. From the standpoint of feeling, anger might be classed as pleasant or unpleasant. Some emotions of anger are observed to be almost entirely pleasant from their early beginning including their final ending. Other cases have fluctuating pleasant and unpleasant stages. There are few instances of anger that have no flash of pleasantness anywhere, in some degree before the emotion is finally completed. The unsatisfactorily expressed emotion is almost entirely unpleasant. Even anger of this kind usually shows some flash of pleasantness or relief at the moment of the angry outburst.

Secondly, anger might be classified as exciting or calm. The exciting anger has greater tension during the period of the emotion proper. There is usually less co-ordination and greater intensity of feeling which may be either pleasant or unpleasant. The motor reactions are more prominent than the mental reactions. On the other hand, calm anger usually has a longer observable fore and after-period of the emotion. Mental processes are intensified, the motor expression is correspondingly less.

Anger may be classified according to its function. The emotion may be merely an end in itself. It relieves the tension of unpleasant feelings. It is purgative in its effect in removing an unpleasant mental situation. The underlying purpose of such anger is not to increase volitional action, in fact, it may disturb co-ordination to any purposive end. This type serves primarily to remove the tension of unpleasant accumulations of feelings in some act of expression. If successful in its purpose, it may have an indirect hygienic effect on mental action. Further, anger may be of a kind which intensifies volitional action, accomplishes work, and serves the end of survival. A residuum in mental attitude and emotional disposition follows, which has possibilities either of morbidity or a source of energy which is sublimated into work.Anger may be classified genetically on the basis of sentiments which are violated in its origin. Anger which springs from a thwarting of desires is primary in its origin. This is the usual type of anger of young children and animals. Anger which has its source in the self-feelings, such as the sentiments of honor and self respect and in social feelings, of injustice, of fairness, are genetically later in their development.

_Types._ Three rather definite types appear. First is anger which rises from a fore-period of irritable feelings. It develops by a cumulative process of irascible feelings, through a series of stimuli till the point of anger is suddenly reached. An idea is present at the point of anger which serves as a vehicle of expression. It may be an idea not directly associated with the situation exciting the emotion. In fact an apparently irrelevant idea may break the crust of unpleasant feeling tension and serve as an objective reference for the emotion. Anger of this type is scattered. It is not necessary that the emotion be referred to the actual thwarting idea, it frequently refers to inanimate objects and often arises from the irritation accompanying pain. The active period of this type of emotion is mostly voco-motor tension and reaction of larger muscles. The immediate after-period may be a feeling of relief, irascible irritation, or other emotions such as pity, shame, regret and fear. Its increased volitional action may establish a mental attitude of caution and determination against a future thwarting when it is finished. A new emotion may arise however from the same background of irritation. The after effects of an emotion of this type are shallow and easily forgotten. It does not leave hate or dislike in its wake, there is nothing left over for revengeful behavior.

A second type of anger is predetermined by another sort of mental disposition. Self-feelings are its source. An idea excites negative self-feeling and anger follows as a reaction with the purpose of restoring positive feelings of self. It usually has a greater proportion of pleasantness than the type described above. Its end is to attain pleasantness in some form of positive self-feeling, and when that is successfully reached the emotion disappears. Any idea from a subjective or objective source which intensifies positive feelings of self, tends to diminish emotion of this type. The thwarting of a desire, due to the damage and inconvenience done, is insignificant as compared with the thrust that one’s pride and self-respect have received. In the type above, there is thwarting of desire; while in this type, there is humiliation. In fact in the latter type, serious inconvenience may be suffered in the effort to heal a wounded self respect. Anger of this type is not so indefinite in its objective reference. It has direct reference to an offender before the point of anger has been reached, and another person or object cannot be substituted with any degree of satisfaction. Anger of this type leaves an important residuum after the emotion has disappeared in the form of other affective processes, in tendencies, mental attitudes and dispositions, some of which have possibilities of morbidity, others mere pleasantness or sublimation into work.

A third type of anger is that which springs from social sentiments involving justice and fairness. It has little unpleasant fore-period and arises suddenly without the initial cumulative feeling development which is usual with the other types described. The point of anger is more readily reached; the emotion is nearer the surface as if it were ready for a sudden rise. The origin of anger of this type is not unlike anger which springs rather suddenly from an emotional disposition left over from the second type described above. The expression of the emotion in this type is less restrained, it is usually reported as pleasant throughout. While anger of this type is sensitive to justice and fairness, the two types above may grossly disregard these sentiments. In its wake is often observed the tendency to reappear. The after-period has not the possibilities of so intense pleasure as the second type above, nor of morbidity, nor of a disposition capable of being sublimated into work.

The three types above may occur in a rather pure form but frequently they are mixed. When desire has been thwarted or pride has been wounded, a sense of miscarried justice or fairness with reference to self, intensifies the emotion. In addition to lowered self-feeling, the social sentiment of justice and fairness may re-enforce the irascible feelings or negative feelings of self. At times make-believe of offended fairness is assumed to justify the angry behavior, and consequently increases the intensity and allows pleasurable expression when the subject is vaguely aware that the real cause is his own selfish pride which has been wounded.

CHAPTER FIVE

EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION

From the present study, anger may be said to have a two fold functional meaning. First it intensifies volitional action in a useful direction. Second, viewed from the mental conditions under which it occurs, it may be a superfluous affectivity and is largely an end in itself. These two functions are not to be separated. In fact any single emotion of anger in its different stages of reaction may be merely hedonic, it may serve a directly useful purpose or it may be both. These two functional aspects of anger are the basis for pedagogical conclusions.

_Sublimation._ Anger in a modified form has been the theme of the poet and artist. With its running mate fear, it has played an important role in religion. Primitive magic with its self assertive coercion of the supernatural, is not unlike anger. The curse prayer of backward religion is motivated by resentment. A deity with an irascible temper like that of the ancient Hebrews suggests the role of righteous indignation in the discipline of the soul. Plato[1] held that anger is at the foundation of the organization of the State. Ribot (16) has suggested that it is at the basis of justice. More recently Bergson writes, “No society can reach civilization unless throughout its members, there exists the nervous organization which supports the sentiment of anger and hostility against criminals; and this physical organization is the foundation of what we call our moral code.” President Hall (10), James (13), and Dewey (5) have suggested that much of the best work of the world and the great deeds of valor have been done by anger. Dr. Hall states, “A large part of education is to teach men to be angry aright,—it should be one aim of pedagogy to show how the powers of the soul should be utilized.—Man has powers of resentment which should be hitched onto and allowed to do good and profitable work. We should keep alive our emotions and allow them to do our labor.” (From lecture notes.) It has been suggested by Wundt (22), James (13) and Stanley (17) that the function of anger is to increase volitional action. The latter author writes, “At some point in the course of evolution, anger comes in as a stimulant to aggressive willed action. Some favored individual first attained the power of getting mad, in violently attacking his fellows and so attaining sustenance likely in the struggle for food.” The same author further writes, “We take it then that it was a most momentous day in the progress of mind when anger was first achieved and some individuals really got mad.”

Education has to do with the function of anger in human needs, in growth and development and in mental hygiene. Ethics has at times advocated the elimination of anger as if it were a noxious product. From a pedagogical view, it should be cultivated and excited aright. The familiar moral exhortations, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath,” “Love your enemies and do good to those that hate you,” and others like them, are in accord with some satisfactory individual reactions to anger from the feeling side, which have been cited; but their universal application would not always serve the purpose of ethics. In pedagogical practice, they would fall short. A good healthy resentment is, at times, a good thing and should be kept alive. The emotion, if it works, must not die out too satisfactorily at the cost of real effort. There should be a working residuum for the time when it is needed. An injury may be forgiven too quickly and resentment given up too easily. A healthy fighting attitude, increased caution and willed action turned into productive work is often subverted for an immediate satisfactory ending of the emotion. There are none of the subjects studied but observe this wholesome effect of anger at times. Anger may disappear successfully and satisfactorily on the side of the feelings. The subject may attain the full sense of victory by a number of devices of make-believe, substitution, disguise, etc. An inner victory may be a good thing. In fact, all subjects would, at times, resort to imaginative processes motivated by the feeling and impulsive side of the emotion. A subjective satisfaction may in fact save the day, clear the mental atmosphere, so to speak, and allow mental life to continue along its habitual lines. On the other hand, a subjective victory may become too easy. On the verge of defeat, victory is at times imagined which takes the place of real volition. The fight may be carried too far through the medium of ideas leaving little enthusiasm for actual effort. A too easy habit of excusing the offender at times serves an unprofitable end. Anger should not be cut off too near its beginning by finding excuses too readily for the offender or offending situation. It should at least be allowed to get a little above the initial feeling stage to keep the emotional life alive or there is danger of lapsing into obliviousness to essential rights; mental life becomes too prosaic and commonplace, on a plateau with no capacity to acquire new levels.

A second point of which the writer is convinced, is that in order to study the emotions, especially the deep seated primary emotions like fear and anger, it is necessary to take into account the finer working of the emotion in its feeling and impulsive stage of development and disappearance. In fact, the milder tenuous emotions of anger are markedly important from the educational side as well as psychologically. The normal function of the emotion is better exemplified in the less intense experiences. Anger, as it is usually thought of, is the emotion in its excited uncontrolled stage. Anger, sublimated into keener intellectual and willed action, is no less anger though its affective side is less intense; its reactive side is working in better accord with the evolutionary function of the emotion,—to intensify action in a needed direction. In fact, affective processes of indignation, resentment and irascible feelings which are not called anger in the popular sense, from the scientific side should be considered a part of the anger consciousness. They have the feeling fore-stage of humiliation and an intellectual reaction; the residuum of the affective process has every mark of that victorious satisfaction, which is typical of anger.Such tenuous emotions are reported to have far reaching results in mental behavior and personal development. One subject, resentful at an implication against the value of his work, considers that it stimulated him to increased determined action and intensified endeavor for several months in order to show the offender he was wrong. A., resentful of X.’s adverse suggestion, put in three days of severe intellectual labor to prove his point. E. observes that a humiliation and mild resentment was a keen stimulus to his ambition. His ambitious behavior, he considers was accompanied by increased friendliness toward the offender. The question was privately put to a number of persons as to the effects of resentment on some of their ambitions in the past. Every person who was asked, after a careful recall, was able to find one and some times several instances of important results of anger of this kind. Some persons from early childhood have habitually reacted to little resentments to beat the offender in an ambitious way. One person with defective eyes early became sensitive about it. Any implication against his defect was always reacted to, he says, by saying to himself, “I will show you I can do more with poor eyes than you can with good ones, and you will be sorry some day.” M. 28—“Resentful because the parents of a lady to whom I was paying attention did not approve of me, I determined to make so much of myself that they would be sorry. It was one of the main incentives to my entering on a career. With this aim I went to the University; I worked hard with success. Many times during the year I would recall the incident and would resolve again and again to show them some day. For two years this idea was pretty constantly in my mind. In the course of four years I now take keen satisfaction in recalling that I have partly accomplished my purpose.” M. 25.—“Four years ago a friend whom I admire much, told me that I would never make a scientist. I have resented it ever since and have laid plans to show him, which I have partly carried out. Every once in a while I recall his statement in connection with my work. It spurs me on. I imagine myself sending him a copy of my scientific problem on which I am working.” M. 34.—“In my sophomore year in college, I failed to be elected president of our literary society. I became resentful against the one who beat me in the election. This person was ambitious in college contests. I now laid plans to beat him. I went into an oratorical contest first with the sole aim of surpassing him. I did not care about the others. I am certain that I would never have gone into this contest and others if it had not been for a deep set resentment developed against him. I recall yet how in practicing and writing in contests during the two years of my college work my aim principally was to surpass this person. We were good friends all the time.”

Such tenuous resentments which persist for years, it may be, against people with whom one is on friendly terms, and which are accompanied by a rather sudden rise in the curve of personal growth, are evidently an essential part of the anger consciousness. Smaller achievements of individual worth are often reported to be the direct result of a healthy sort of reaction from resentment. It is entirely probable that most persons, especially those of irascible disposition, could point to sudden spurts in their own personal development and achievement, which were motivated by anger which never reached the stage of intense excitability or from the residuum of exciting anger which disappeared unsuccessfully. Freud (9) has taken the view that much of biography should be rewritten to include the part that sexual motives, which have been sublimated, play in personal ambitions. Evidently anger cannot be neglected by one who seeks for motives of personal growth whether biographer or educator.

A too soft pedagogy which would heal over too soon the injury to self-feelings, has its disadvantages. Encouragement at times by superficial means may cut off a good healthy angry reaction which may be needed. In fact a little lowered self-feeling with an irascible response is a good thing and it may be a signal for “hands off,” or a little skillful and judicious suggestion. It is frequently observed by the subjects studied that anger at self intensifies a lagging willed action and breaks up interfering habits. A quotation from B. will illustrate. “I turned the anger inward and vituperated against myself for being such a lazy man. The emotion of the moment was relieved and I feel now like getting down to work at the stuff and getting it out of the way.” Some subjects work at their very best when mildly angry. Attention and association processes are intensified to the point that real difficulties disappear. Anger in the exciting stage and at a situation too remote from the problem at hand, interferes with mental work. Bryan and Harter (3) in their study of skill in telegraphy, found that the skillful operator may work best when angry, but the inexperienced worker is less efficient. Michael Angelo is said to have worked at his best in a state of irascible temper. The mass of mankind are sluggish and need a hearty resentment as a stimulant. If the circumstances are too soft and easy, the best which is in a man may be dormant; there is no tonic to a strong nature capable of bearing it like anger.

Many a good intellect has lacked the good powers of resentment necessary for the most efficient work. The boy who has not the capacity for anger should be deliberately taught it by some means. Göthe, who was a rather keen observer of human nature, said, “With most of us the requisite intensity of passion is not forth-coming without an element of resentment, and common sense and careful observation will I believe confirm the opinion that few people who amount to anything are without a good capacity for hostile feelings upon which they draw freely when they need it.”_Need of Expression._ The second condition for the expression of anger is that in which reaction is an end in itself. It may be said that while on the one hand from a genetic and utilitarian point of view the function of anger is to do work, to aid in behavior, where increased willed action is needed; on the other, the mere expressional side in connection with feeling and impulse assumes an important role in every emotion. In fact with intense and exciting anger, utility may be ignored and actually thwarted, volitional action is exerted contrary to objective needs.

There is much in the expression of anger in both the subjective and objective reaction to the emotion whose impulsive aim is merely to release unpleasant feeling tension, to clear the mental atmosphere, so to speak. A brief resumé of the reactive consciousness to anger will illustrate. First on the feeling side there occurs a mental situation accompanied by a tendency to expression in order to remove or modify the situation. Irritation may be relieved or turned into pleasantness by the reaction. Lowered self-feeling may be restored with extra compensation in pleasurable feelings of victory, if the reaction has been successful. Second, the expression of anger involves restraint, the cruder unsocial tendencies are controlled and others are substituted of a less objectionable and offensive nature. By both objective and subjective reactions, devices of disguise, transfer and modification of the unsocial pugnacious tendencies may allow the restraint to be released and the emotive tendency fully satisfied, in which a feeling of pleasantness follows. Third, the reaction which has been fully satisfactory from the feeling side, is followed by a partial or complete immunity against the recurrence of the anger from the same mental situation, as the successful reaction has removed the mental situation from which the emotion arose.

Anger from the point of view stated above, touches upon the second educational aim. So large a part of the reactive consciousness to anger is motivated to find a successful surrogate for cruder and unsocial tendencies which are objectional, that this side of anger expression is educationally important. It is a desirable personal equipment to have strong potentialities of anger. However there should be a mentality which is versatile and active enough by training and habit to react successfully to the emotion, in the first place to use such reservoirs of energy for work, and second, to react satisfactorily from the feeling-side, where the instinctive tendencies are restrained, and break up morbid and unpleasant mental tension which may be an inference.

A good angry outburst at times may be a good thing, but most frequently some sort of surrogate is more satisfactory. Habits of witticism, refined joking, a little good-natured play and teasing within the limits of propriety serves a worthy end for mental hygiene, and often leaves a basis for good will and a friendship which would otherwise be in danger. The habit of suddenly breaking up an angry tension by a good thrust of wit or joke would be a good one to inculcate with the irascibly inclined. Many persons suffer in feelings and lack of good friendship because they have never learned to be good mental sparrers and to relieve their emotions by socially appropriate reaction rather than by a method of repression which is cheaper at the moment but more expensive in the end. Their anger is too absorbing and serious. It lacks the necessary flexibility, their emotions are too near the instinctive level and when the instinctive tendencies are restrained they lack mental habits of purging their feelings in a satisfactory way, consequently suppression is resorted to as a self-defense.

_Anger and Instruction._ As Terman (20) has pointed out, the emotions employed in the act of instruction need a systematic investigation. The emotions brought into play in school control, as incentive to work, emotional reactions which retard, and those which accelerate learning and efficient work in classes, these are little known scientifically.

Anger, or, perhaps, better potentialities of anger in both teacher and pupils, is impulsively used in the role of teaching. Skill in using this emotion aright is part of the teacher’s stock in trade. Pugnacity in the form of rivalry is a common device.

_Individual Differences._ First, there is the problem of individual differences in the emotional life of students; and the teacher, too, for that matter. With some, the dominant emotion is fear and anxiety. The material of the present study shows a wide variation in the type and character of emotional reactions of the subjects studied in which anger is one of the most frequently occurring emotions. This difference is illustrated by the following summary from three subjects: With J., anger predominates over fear; he knows but little of the latter emotion. Anger usually occurs from a fore-period of lowered self-feeling, the feeling intensity of the fore-period is not strong. The reactive stage of the anger does not reach a high degree of excitement. With him, anger usually disappears into indifference and unpleasantness, leaving tendencies of passive dislike. He observed no cases of anger at injustice or unfairness except when the latter sentiments referred to himself. His anger for the most part is an unsuccessful experience and is unpleasant. He consequently tries to avoid getting angry and has relatively few emotions. The after-period of his anger tends to be a little morbid, lacking any strongly marked disposition which is the source of tendencies to do more work. Subject G. has anger as a dominant emotion over fear. He scarcely knows anger which arises from a fore-period of humiliation except anger at himself when he has been inefficient. He does not hold resentments against persons but against situations and principles. Anger is usually unpleasant except a mild after-period of relief. With him, anger is a means of throwing off superfluous feelings of irritation and serves but little the purpose of work, except to increase volitional action for the moment. His anger often refers to himself. Anger at unfairness tends to refer to the principle rather than to the person. The emotion occurs more frequently when he is unwell. It is rather slow to appear, by a gradual accumulation, till the point of anger is reached; the emotion does not attain a high degree of excitement. With subject C. the character and type of anger reaction is in marked contrast to the two subjects mentioned above. He knows but little of fear except in extreme situations. His anger nearly all springs from a fore-period of humiliation and is often intense in its most active stage. For a time during the most intense stage of the emotion, he almost loses the sense of justice; but as the emotion begins to die down, he has a habit of excusing the offender and looking at his side of the question. His anger is frequently followed by pity, remorse, shame and fear. The emotion is both pleasant and unpleasant. The disappearance is usually unpleasant and leaves a wealth of affective tendencies and mental attitudes which are later a source of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Anger is one of the greatest stimuli he has to do work. He will work for days preparing some subject in which he has had opposition that excited his resentment in order to even up with the offender, and takes extreme delight in making his point. His tendency to anger is greater when feeling well pleased with himself. The residuum of his emotion involves attitudes of determination and idealization which plays an important role in his ambition in general.The description above will suffice to show the problem in individual differences in emotional life. With some subjects fear is the ruling passion. Subjects A. and B. have almost an even proportion of fear and anger during the period of observation. However these instances represent adult persons. How far the habitual emotional reactions are determined by training and instruction, is an important question. It is highly probable that the character of training in childhood and early adolescence plays a leading part. Subject C. above was an only child and took considerable license, almost getting beyond the control of his parents at an early age. J. reports that at early adolescence, anger was much more frequent and intense than at present. He believes that an early philosophical notion that intelligence should dominate the emotions, had an influence in establishing his present emotional habits. G. was early taught that it was sinful to get angry, an idea which he accepted at the time. His anger rarely refers to persons but vents on objects, principles and situations involved. He has relatively few emotions of anger. He believes that his early religious training was of importance in moulding the habitual reactions which he now assumes when angry. Such material as we have makes it entirely probable that a large part of the habitual mental reactions assumed in anger is the result of training. It may be said further that when instruction involves affairs of emotional life, individual difference become a still more pressing problem than when intelligence is the criterion.

Other inferences of the role of anger in the act of instruction are suggested from the present study. If the teacher himself does not possess the ability of well defined resentment against an infringement of fairness, advantage of this defect may be taken by the alert pupil unless there is compensation for it in another direction as by the principle of co-operation, by love or pride appealed to. Cooley however puts the matter a little too strongly when he says, “No teacher can maintain discipline unless his scholars feel that in some manner he will resent a breach of it.” (Human Nature and the Social Order (4), Page 244.) The method of school control itself refers to some extent to the individual emotional life of the teacher, as well as pupil.

When anger enters into the role of discipline, of the three types already discussed, that which springs from the sentiment of justice is most efficient in instruction. Anger which arises from irritable feelings, from its nature becomes a dangerous emotion to be used in discipline. Emotion of this type develops by a cumulative process till the point of anger has been reached. It too readily ignores justice and is easily transferred from the real offender and may finally break out against an innocent party who may have unwittingly touched off the feelings which have been accumulated by previous stimuli, consequently anger of this type which is so frequently displayed in school rooms usually defeats the ends of discipline. Anger with a fore-period of lowered self-feeling because of the personal element entering into this type of anger and the tendency to ignore justice can evidently be resorted to but sparingly in school control unless it also involves the sense of justice.

Another point the teacher has to take into account is that from his position, if he is held in respect, the anger he excites in the student will usually be preceded by humiliation and, if he has been unfair, it will be intensified by the sense of offended fairness. Anger of this type is the one most frequently followed by an emotional disposition against the offender. It is the residuum of unsuccessfully expressed anger of this type which becomes a disturbing element in school control with the student who is irascibly inclined. The wise teacher who understands the individual emotional life of the pupil and the nature of the after-period of anger, will skillfully remove the morbid residuum and ally the resentful pupil on his side. Dislike following anger, is skillfully removed, will frequently increase the friendship of the offender more than before the offense. This principle of compensation in the after-period is thus to be utilized in discipline. It may be a good plan deliberately to bring a moody pupil to the point of anger and let him vent his wrath. Any punishment in discipline has the possibilities of being dangerous to school control, especially with the student of pugnacious disposition, if the justice of the punishment cannot be recognized by the offending pupil. Evidently a mistake in control is not to recognize the individual differences in emotional life and to attempt to use the discipline of fear with an irascible boy who knows no fear. Anger, disappearing unsuccessfully, may leave a morbid residuum which completely disqualifies the student for efficient learning, consequently when it exists, it is the business of the educator to remove the morbidity, transform it into work or to have the pupil transferred; for it may be as serious a hindrance to learning as adenoids or defective sense organs.

There is every reason to believe that a large part of the mental reactions to anger is individually acquired habits, consequently successful and satisfactory reactions are a matter of training. Potentialities of anger may actually be taught indirectly by building up the sentiments and mental disposition from which anger arises. Whatever will increase ideals and new desires, achievements in school which allow a better opinion of self and build up the sentiment of self-regard, of fairness and justice, are at work at the very root of anger consciousness. The study of the mental situation from which anger arises allows every reason to believe that when there is a lack of potentialities to anger, it may be built up in this indirect manner. The student who lacks good healthy resentment when the proper stimulus is at hand evidently is weak in the sentiment of self-regard, desire to achieve, or sense of fairness.

Whatever exercises will excite the pugnacious instinct, if done satisfactorily may involve a training in emotional habits. Habits of good fighting in work and play, the give and take in debate, class discussion, the witty retort, boxing, the team games if carried on aright, afford good exercise for the emotions. To acquire good habits of behavior when under fire, to fight clean and to the finishing point, to take defeat in a sportsman-like manner, are valuable acquisitions educationally whether they are acquired in athletics or the rivalry of intellectual work. On the other hand, athletics and mental contests may be carried on under conditions of emotional reaction, which defeat the aim of healthy emotional habits and consequently lack their better educational significance.

In Tune With the Infinite

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In Tune With the Infinite

IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE

or FULLNESS OF PEACE, POWER, AND PLENTY

by Ralph Waldo Trine

PREFACE.

There is a golden thread that runs through every religion in the world. There is a golden thread that runs through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world’s history, through the lives of all men and women of truly great and lasting power. All that they have ever done or attained to has been done in full accordance with law. What one has done, all may do.

This same golden thread must enter into the lives of all who today, in this busy work-a-day world of ours, would exchange impotence for power, weakness and suffering for abounding health and strength, pain and unrest for perfect peace, poverty of whatever nature for fullness and plenty.

Each is building his own world. We both build from within and we attract from without. Thought is the force with which we build, for thoughts are forces. Like builds like and like attracts like. In the degree that thought is spiritualized does it become more subtle and powerful in its workings. This spiritualizing is in accordance with law and is within the power of all.

Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of its cause.

To point out the great facts in connection with, and the great laws underlying the workings of the interior, spiritual, thought forces, to point them out so simply and so clearly that even a child can understand, is the author’s aim. To point them out so simply and so clearly that all can grasp them, that all can take them and infuse them into every-day life, so as to mould it in all its details in accordance with what they would have it, is his purpose. That life can be thus moulded by them is not a matter of mere speculation or theory with him, but a matter of positive knowledge.

There is a divine sequence running throughout the universe. Within and above and below the human will incessantly works the Divine will. To come into harmony with it and thereby with all the higher laws and forces, to come then into league and to work in conjunction with them, in order that they can work in league and in conjunction with us, is to come into the chain of this wonderful sequence. This is the secret of all success. This is to come into the possession of unknown riches, into the realization of undreamed-of powers.

R.W.T.

PRELUDE.

The optimist is right. The pessimist is right. The one differs from the other as the light from the dark. Yet both are right. Each is right from his own particular point of view, and this point of view is the determining factor in the life of each. It determines as to whether it is a life of power or of impotence, of peace or of pain, of success or of failure.

The optimist has the power of seeing things in their entirety and in their right relations. The pessimist looks from a limited and a one-sided point of view. The one has his understanding illumined by wisdom, the understanding of the other is darkened by ignorance. Each is building his world from within, and the result of the building is determined by the point of view of each. The optimist, by his superior wisdom and insight, is making his own heaven, and in the degree that he makes his own heaven is he helping to make one for all the world beside. The pessimist, by virtue of his limitations, is making his own hell, and in the degree that he makes his own hell is he helping to make one for all mankind.

You and I have the predominating characteristics of an optimist or the predominating characteristics of a pessimist. We then are making, hour by hour, our own heaven or our own hell; and in the degree that we are making the one or the other for ourselves are we helping make it for all the world beside.

The word heaven means harmony. The word hell is from the old English _hell_, meaning to build a wall around, to separate; to be _helled_ was to be shut off from. Now if there is such a thing as harmony there must be that something one can be in right relations with; for to be in right relations with anything is to be in harmony with it. Again, if there is such a thing as being _helled_, shut off, separated from, there must be that something from which one is held, shut off, or separated.THE SUPREME FACT OF THE UNIVERSE.

The great central fact of the universe is that Spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is behind all, that animates all, that manifests itself in and through all; that self-existent principle of life from which all has come, and not only from which all has come, but from which all is continually coming. If there is an individual life, there must of necessity be an infinite source of life from which it comes. If there is a quality or a force of love, there must of necessity be an infinite source of love whence it comes. If there is wisdom, there must be the all-wise source behind it from which it springs. The same is true in regard to peace, the same in regard to power, the same in regard to what we call material things.

There is, then, this Spirit of Infinite Life and Power behind all which is the source of all. This Infinite Power is creating, working, ruling through the agency of great immutable laws and forces that run through all the universe, that surround us on every side. Every act of our every-day lives is governed by these same great laws and forces. Every flower that blooms by the wayside, springs up, grows, blooms, fades, according to certain great immutable laws. Every snowflake that plays between earth and heaven, forms, falls, melts, according to certain great unchangeable laws.

In a sense there is nothing in all the great universe but law. If this is true there must of necessity be a force behind it all that is the maker of these laws and a force greater than the laws that are made. This Spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is behind all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light, Providence, the Over Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever term may be most convenient. I care not what the term may be as long as we are agreed in regard to the great central fact itself.

God, then, is this Infinite Spirit which fills all the universe with Himself alone, so that all is from Him and in Him, and there is nothing that is outside. Indeed and in truth, then, in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We have received, we are continually receiving our life from Him. We are partakers of the life of God; and though we differ from Him in that we are individualized spirits, while He is the Infinite Spirit including us as well as all else beside, _yet in essence the life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and so are one_. They differ not in essence, in quality; they differ in degree.

There have been and are highly illumined souls who believe that we receive our life from God after the manner of a divine inflow. And again, there have been and are those who believe that our life is one with the life of God, and so that God and man are one. Which is right? Both are right; both right when rightly understood.

In regard to the first: if God is the Infinite Spirit of Life behind all, whence all comes, then clearly our life as individualized spirits is continually coming from this Infinite Source by means of this divine inflow. In the second place, if our lives as individualized spirits are directly from, are parts of this Infinite Spirit of Life, then the degree of the Infinite Spirit that is manifested in the life of each must be identical in quality with that Source, the same as a drop of water taken from the ocean is, in nature, in characteristics, identical with that ocean, its source. And how could it be otherwise? The liability to misunderstanding in this latter case, however, is this: in that although the life of God and the life of man in essence are identically the same, the life of God so far transcends the life of individual man that it includes all else beside. In other words, so far as the quality of life is concerned, in essence they are the same; so far as the degree of life is concerned, they are vastly different.

In this light is it not then evident that both conceptions are true? and more, that they are one and the same? Both conceptions may be typified by one and the same illustration.

There is a reservoir in a valley which receives its supply from an inexhaustible reservoir on the mountain side. It is then true that the reservoir in the valley receives its supply by virtue of the inflow of the water from the larger reservoir on the mountain side. It is also true that the water in this smaller reservoir is in nature, in quality, in characteristics identically the same as that in the larger reservoir which is its source. The difference, however, is this: the reservoir on the mountain side, in the _amount_ of its water, so far transcends the reservoir in the valley that it can supply an innumerable number of like reservoirs and still be unexhausted.

And so in the life of man. If, as I think we have already agreed, however we may differ in regard to anything else, there is this Infinite Spirit of Life behind all, the life of all, and so, from which all comes, then the life of individual man, your life and mine, must come by a divine inflow from this Infinite Source. And if this is true, then the life that comes by this inflow to man is necessarily the same in essence as is this Infinite Spirit of Life. There is a difference. It is not a difference in essence. It is a difference in degree.

If this is true, does it not then follow that in the degree that man opens himself to this divine inflow does he approach to God? If so, it then necessarily follows that in the degree that he makes this approach does he take on the God-powers. And if the God-powers are without limit, does it not then follow that the only limitations man has are the limitations he sets to himself, by virtue of not knowing himself?THE SUPREME FACT OF HUMAN LIFE.

From the great central fact of the universe in regard to which we have agreed, namely, this Spirit of Infinite Life that is behind all and from which all comes, we are led to inquire as to what is the great central fact in human life. From what has gone before, the question almost answers itself.

_The great central fact in human life, in your life and in mine, is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow_. This is the great central fact in human life, for in this all else is included, all else follows in its train. In just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the Infinite Life.

And what does this mean? It means simply this: that we are recognizing our true identity, that we are bringing our lives into harmony with the same great laws and forces, and so opening ourselves to the same great inspirations, as have all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world’s history, all men of truly great and mighty power. For in the degree that we come into this realization and connect ourselves with this Infinite Source, do we make it possible for the higher powers to play, to work, to manifest through us.

We can keep closed to this divine inflow, to these higher forces and powers, through ignorance, as most of us do, and thus hinder or even prevent their manifesting through us. Or we can intentionally close ourselves to their operations and thus deprive ourselves of the powers to which, by the very nature of our being, we are rightful heirs. On the other hand, we can come into so vital a realization of the oneness of our real selves with this Infinite Life, and can open ourselves so fully to the incoming of this divine inflow, and so to the operation of these higher forces, inspirations, and powers, that we can indeed and in truth become what we may well term, God-men.

And what is a God-man? One in whom the powers of God are manifesting, though yet a man. No one can set limitations to a man or a woman of this type; for the only limitations he or she can have are those set by the self. Ignorance is the most potent factor in setting limitations to the majority of mankind; and so the great majority of people continue to live their little, dwarfed, and stunted lives simply by virtue of the fact that they do not realize the larger life to which they are heirs. They have never as yet come into a knowledge of the real identity of their true selves.

Mankind has not yet realized that the real self is one with the life of God. Through its ignorance it has never yet opened itself to the divine inflow, and so has never made itself a channel through which the infinite powers and forces can manifest. When we know ourselves merely as men, we live accordingly, and have merely the powers of men. When we come into the realization of the fact that we are God-men, then again we live accordingly, and have the powers of God-men. _In the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow are we changed from mere men into God-men_.

A friend has a beautiful lotus pond. A natural basin on his estate–his farm as he always calls it–is supplied with water from a reservoir in the foothills some distance away. A gate regulates the flow of the water from the main that conducts it from the reservoir to the pond. It is a spot of transcendent beauty. There, through the days of the perfect summer weather, the lotus flowers lie full blown upon the surface of the clear, transparent water. The June roses and other wild flowers are continually blooming upon its banks. The birds come here to drink and to bathe, and from early until late one can hear the melody of their song. The bees are continually at work in this garden of wild flowers. A beautiful grove, in which many kinds of wild berries and many varieties of brakes and ferns grow, stretches back of the pond as far as the eye can reach.

Our friend is a man, nay more, a God-man, a lover of his kind, and as a consequence no notice bearing such words as “Private grounds, no trespassing allowed,” or “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” stands on his estate. But at the end of a beautiful by-way that leads through the wildwood up to this enchanting spot, stands a notice bearing the words “All are welcome to the Lotus Pond.” All love our friend. Why? They can’t help it. He so loves them, and what is his is theirs.

Here one may often find merry groups of children at play. Here many times tired and weary looking men and women come, and somehow, when they go their faces wear a different expression,–the burden seems to be lifted; and now and then I have heard them when leaving, sometimes in a faint murmur, as if uttering a benediction, say, “God bless our brother-friend.” Many speak of this spot as the Garden of God. My friend calls it his Soul Garden, and he spends many hours in quiet here. Often have I seen him after the others have gone, walking to and fro, or sitting quietly in the clear moonlight on an old rustic bench, drinking in the perfume of the wild flowers. He is a man of a beautifully simple nature. He says that here the real things of life come to him, and that here his greatest and most successful plans, many times as by a flash of inspiration, suggest themselves to him.

Everything in the immediate vicinity seems to breathe a spirit of kindliness, comfort, good-will, and good cheer. The very cattle and sheep as they come to the old stone-fence at the edge of the grove and look across to this beautiful spot seem, indeed, to get the same enjoyment that the people are getting. They seem almost to smile in the realization of their contentment and enjoyment; or perhaps it seems so to the looker-on, because he can scarcely help smiling as he sees the manifested evidence of their contentment and pleasure.The gate of the pond is always open wide enough to admit a supply of water so abundant that it continually overflows a quantity sufficient to feed a stream that runs through the fields below, giving the pure mountain water in drink to the cattle and flocks that are grazing there. The stream then flows on through the neighbors’ fields.

Not long ago our friend was absent for a year. He rented his estate during his absence to a man who, as the world goes, was of a very “practical” turn of mind. He had no time for anything that did not bring him direct “practical” returns. The gate connecting the reservoir with the lotus pond was shut down, and no longer had the crystal mountain water the opportunity to feed and overflow it. The notice of our friend, “All are welcome to the Lotus Pond,” was removed, and no longer were the gay companies of children and of men and women seen at the pond. A great change came over everything. On account of the lack of the life-giving water the flowers in the pond wilted, and their long stems lay stretched upon the mud in the bottom. The fish that formerly swam in its clear water soon died and gave an offensive odor to all who came near. The flowers no longer bloomed on its banks. The birds no longer came to drink and to bathe. No longer was heard the hum of the bees; and more, the stream that ran through the fields below dried up, so that the cattle and the flocks no longer got their supply of clear mountain water.

The difference between the spot now and the lotus pond when our friend gave it his careful attention was caused, as we readily see, by the shutting of the gate to the pond, thus preventing the water from the reservoir in the hills which was the source of its life, from entering it. And when this, the source of its life, was shut off, not only was the appearance of the lotus pond entirely changed, but the surrounding fields were deprived of the stream to whose banks the flocks and cattle came for drink.

In this do we not see a complete parallel so far as human life is concerned? In the degree that we recognize our oneness, our connection with the Infinite Spirit which is the life of all, and in the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we come into harmony with the highest, the most powerful, and the most beautiful everywhere. And in the degree that we do this do we overflow, so that all who come in contact with us receive the effects of this realization on our part. This is the lotus pond of our friend, he who is in love with all that is truest and best in the universe. And in the degree that we fail to recognize our oneness with this Infinite Source, and so close, shut ourselves to this divine inflow, do we come into that state where there seems to be with us nothing of good, nothing of beauty, nothing of power; and when this is true, those who come in contact with us receive not good, but harm. This is the spot of the lotus pond while the farm was in the hands of a renter.

There is this difference between the lotus pond and your life and mine. It has no power in itself of opening the gate to the inflow of the water from the reservoir which is its source. In regard to this it is helpless and dependent upon an outside agency. You and I have the power, the power within us, to open or to close ourselves to this divine inflow exactly as we choose. This we have through the power of mind, through the operation of thought.

There is the soul life, direct from God. This it is that relates us to the Infinite. There is, then, the physical life. This it is that relates us to the material universe about us. The thought life connects the one with the other. It is this that plays between the two.

Before we proceed farther let us consider very briefly the nature of thought. Thought is not, as is many times supposed, a mere indefinite abstraction, or something of a like nature. It is, on the contrary, a vital, living force, the most vital, subtle, and irresistible force there is in the universe.

In our very laboratory experiments we are demonstrating the great fact that thoughts are forces. They have form, and quality, and substance, and power, and we are beginning to find that there is what we may term a _science of thought_. We are beginning also to find that through the instrumentality of our thought forces we have creative power, not merely in a figurative sense, but creative power in reality.

Everything in the material universe about us, everything the universe has ever known, had its origin first in thought. From this it took its form. Every castle, every statue, every painting, every piece of mechanism, everything had its birth, its origin, first in the mind of the one who formed it before it received its material expression or embodiment. The very universe in which we live is the result of the thought energies of God, the Infinite Spirit that is back of all. And if it is true, as we have found, that we in our true selves are in essence the same, and in this sense are one with the life of this Infinite Spirit, do we not then see that in the degree that we come into a vital realization of this stupendous fact, _we, through the operation of our interior, spiritual, thought forces, have in like sense creative power_?

Everything exists in the unseen before it is manifested or realized in the seen, and in this sense it is true that the unseen things are the real, while the things that are seen are the unreal. The unseen things are _cause_; the seen things are _effect_. The unseen things are the eternal; the seen things are the changing, the transient.The “_power of the word_” is a literal scientific fact. Through the operation of our thought forces we have creative power. The spoken word is nothing more nor less than the outward expression of the workings of these interior forces. The spoken word is then, in a sense, the means whereby the thought forces are focused and directed along any particular line; and this concentration, this giving them direction, is necessary before any outward or material manifestation of their power can become evident.

Much is said in regard to “building castles in the air,” and one who is given to this building is not always looked upon with favor. But castles in the air are always necessary before we can have castles on the ground, before we can have castles in which to live. The trouble with the one who gives himself to building castles in the air is not that he builds them in the air, but that he does not go farther and actualize in life, in character, in material form, the castles he thus builds. He does a part of the work, a very necessary part; but another equally necessary part remains still undone.

There is in connection with the thought forces what we may term, the drawing power of mind, and the great law operating here is one with that great law of the universe, that like attracts like. We are continually attracting to us from both the seen and the unseen side of life, forces and conditions most akin to those of our own thoughts.

This law is continually operating whether we are conscious of it or not. We are all living, so to speak, in a vast ocean of thought, and the very atmosphere around us is continually filled with the thought forces that are being continually sent or that are continually going out in the form of thought waves. We are all affected, more or less, by these thought forces, either consciously or unconsciously; and in the degree that we are more or less sensitively organized, or in the degree that we are negative and so are open to outside influences, rather than positive, thus determining what influences shall enter into our realm of thought, and hence into our lives.

There are those among us who are much more sensitively organized than others. As an organism their bodies are more finely, more sensitively constructed. These, generally speaking, are people who are always more or less affected by the mentalities of those with whom they come in contact, or in whose company they are. A friend, the editor of one of our great journals, is so sensitively organized that it is impossible for him to attend a gathering, such as a reception, talk and shake hands with a number of people during the course of the evening, without taking on to a greater or less extent their various mental and physical conditions. These affect him to such an extent that he is scarcely himself and in his best condition for work until some two or three days afterward.

Some think it unfortunate for one to be sensitively organized. By no means. It is a good thing, for one may thus be more open and receptive to the higher impulses of the soul within, and to all higher forces and influences from without. It may, however, be unfortunate and extremely inconvenient to be so organized unless one recognize and gain the power of closing himself, of making himself positive to all detrimental or undesirable influences. This power every one, however sensitively organized he may be, can acquire.

This he can acquire through the mind’s action. And, moreover, there is no habit of more value to anyone, be he sensitively or less sensitively organized, than that of occasionally taking and holding himself continually in the attitude of mind–I close myself, I make myself positive to all things below, and open and receptive to all higher influences, to all things above. By taking this attitude of mind consciously now and then, it soon becomes a habit, and if one is deeply in earnest in regard to it, it puts into operation silent but subtle and powerful influences in effecting the desired results. In this way all lower and undesirable influences from both the seen and the unseen side of life are closed out, while all higher influences are invited, and in the degree that they are invited will they enter.

And what do we mean by the unseen side of life? First, the thought forces, the mental and emotional conditions in the atmosphere about us that are generated by those manifesting on the physical plane through the agency of physical bodies. Second, the same forces generated by those who have dropped the physical body, or from whom it has been struck away, and who are now manifesting through the agency of bodies of a different nature.

“The individual existence of man _begins_ on the sense plane of the physical world, but rises through successive gradations of ethereal and celestial spheres, corresponding with his ever unfolding deific life and powers, to a destiny of unspeakable grandeur and glory. Within and above every physical planet is a corresponding ethereal planet, or soul world, as within and above every physical organism is a corresponding ethereal organism, or soul body, of which the physical is but the external counterpart and materialized expression. From this etherealized or soul planet, which is the immediate home of our arisen humanity, there rises or deepens in infinite gradations spheres within and above spheres, to celestial heights of spiritualized existence utterly inconceivable to the sense man. Embodiment, accordingly, is two-fold,–the physical being but the temporary husk, so to speak, in and by which the real and permanent ethereal organism is individualized and perfected, somewhat as ‘the full corn in the ear’ is reached by means of its husk, for which there is no further use. By means of this indestructible ethereal body and the corresponding ethereal spheres of environment with the social life and relations in the spheres, the individuality and personal life is preserved forever.”The fact of life in whatever form means the continuance of life, even though the form be changed. Life is the one eternal principle of the universe and so always continues, even though the form of the agency through which it manifests be changed. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” And surely, because the individual has dropped, has gone out of the physical body, there is no evidence at all that the life does not go right on the same as before, not commencing,–for there is no cessation,–but commencing in the other form, exactly where it has left off here; for all life is a continuous evolution, step by step; there one neither skips nor jumps.

There are in the other form, then, mentalities and hence lives of all grades and influences, the same as there are in the physical form. If, then, the great law that like attracts like is ever operating, we are continually attracting to us from this side of life influences and conditions most akin to those of our own thoughts and lives. A grewsome thought that we should be so influenced, says one. By no means, all life is one; we are all bound together in the one common and universal life, and especially not when we take into consideration the fact that we have it entirely in our own hands to determine the order of thought we entertain, and consequently the order of influences we attract, and are not mere willowy creatures of circumstance, unless indeed we choose to be.

In our mental lives we can either keep hold of the rudder and so determine exactly what course we take, what points we touch, or we can fail to do this, and failing, we drift, and are blown hither and thither by every passing breeze. And so, on the contrary, welcome should be the thought, for thus we may draw to us the influence and the aid of the greatest, the noblest, and the best who have lived on the earth, whatever the time, wherever the place.

We cannot rationally believe other than that those who have labored in love and with uplifting power here are still laboring in the same way, and in all probability with more earnest zeal, and with still greater power.

“And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain _was full of horses and chariots of fire_ round about Elisha.”

While riding with a friend a few days ago, we were speaking of the great interest people are everywhere taking in the more vital things of life, the eagerness with which they are reaching out for a knowledge of the interior forces, their ever increasing desire to know themselves and to know their true relations with the Infinite. And in speaking of the great spiritual awakening that is so rapidly coming all over the world, the beginnings of which we are so clearly seeing during the closing years of this, and whose ever increasing proportions we are to witness during the early years of the coming century, I said, “How beautiful if Emerson, the illumined one so far in advance of his time, who labored so faithfully and so fearlessly to bring about these very conditions, how beautiful if he were with us today to witness it all! how he would rejoice!” “How do we know,” was the reply, “that he is not witnessing it all? and more, that he is not having a hand in it all,–a hand even greater, perhaps, than when we _saw_ him here?” Thank you, my friend, for this reminder. And, truly, “are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation?”

As science is so abundantly demonstrating today,–the things that we see are but a very small fraction of the things that are. The real, vital forces at work in our own lives and in the world about us are not seen by the ordinary physical eye. Yet they are the causes of which all things we see are merely the effects. Thoughts are forces; like builds like, and like attracts like. For one to govern his thinking, then, is to determine his life.

Says one of deep insight into the nature of things: “The law of correspondences between spiritual and material things is wonderfully exact in its workings. People ruled by the mood of gloom attract to them gloomy things. People always discouraged and despondent do not succeed in anything, and live only by burdening some one else. The hopeful, confident, and cheerful attract the elements of success. A man’s front or back yard will advertise that man’s ruling mood in the way it is kept. A woman at home shows her state of mind in her dress. A slattern advertises the ruling mood of hopelessness, carelessness, and lack of system. Rags, tatters, and dirt are always in the mind before being on the body. The thought that is most put out brings its corresponding visible element to crystallize about you as surely and literally as the visible bit of copper in solution attracts to it the invisible copper in that solution. A mind always hopeful, confident, courageous, and determined on its set purpose, and keeping itself to that purpose, attracts to itself out of the elements things and powers favorable to that purpose.“Every thought of yours has a literal value to you in every possible way. The strength of your body, the strength of your mind, your success in business, and the pleasure your company brings others, depends on the nature of your thoughts. . . . In whatever mood you set your mind does your spirit receive of unseen substance in correspondence with that mood. It is as much a chemical law as a spiritual law. Chemistry is not confined to the elements we see. The elements we do not see with the physical eye outnumber ten thousand times those we do see. The Christ injunction, ‘Do good to those who hate you,’ is based on a scientific fact and a natural law. So, to do good is to bring to yourself all the elements in nature of power and good. To do evil is to bring the contrary destructive elements. When our eyes are opened, self-preservation will make us stop all evil thought. Those who live by hate will die by hate: that is, ‘those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’ Every evil thought is as a sword drawn on the person to whom it is directed. If a sword is drawn in return, so much the worse for both.”

And says another who knows full well whereof he speaks: “The law of attraction works universally on every plane of _action_, and we attract whatever we desire or expect. If we desire one thing and expect another, we become like houses divided against themselves, which are quickly brought to desolation. Determine resolutely to expect only what you desire, then you will attract only what you wish for. . . . Carry any kind of thought you please about with you, and so long as you retain it, no matter how you roam over land or sea, you will unceasingly attract to yourself, knowingly or inadvertently, exactly and only what corresponds to your own dominant quality of thought. Thoughts are our private property, and we can regulate them to suit our taste entirely by steadily recognizing our ability so to do.”

We have just spoken of the drawing power of mind. Faith is nothing more nor less than the operation of the _thought forces_ in the form of an earnest desire, coupled with expectation as to its fulfillment. And in the degree that faith, the earnest desire thus sent out, is continually held to and watered by firm expectation, in just that degree does it either draw to itself, or does it change from the unseen into the visible, from the spiritual into the material, that for which it is sent.

Let the element of doubt or fear enter in, and what would otherwise be a tremendous force will be so neutralized that it will fail of its realization. Continually held to and continually watered by firm expectation, it becomes a force, a drawing power, that is irresistible and absolute, and the results will be absolute in direct proportion as it is absolute.

We shall find, as we are so rapidly beginning to find today, that the great things said in regard to faith, the great promises made in connection with it, are not mere vague sentimentalities, but are all great scientific facts, and rest upon great immutable laws. Even in our very laboratory experiments we are beginning to discover the laws underlying and governing these forces. We, are now beginning, some at least, to use them understandingly and not blindly, as has so often and so long been the case.

Much is said today in regard to the will. It is many times spoken of as if it were a force in itself. But will is a force, a power, only in so far as it is a particular form of the manifestation of the thought forces; for it is by what we call the “will” that thought is focused and given a particular direction, and in the degree that thought is thus focused and given direction, is it effective in the work it is sent out to accomplish.

In a sense there are two kinds of will,–the human and the divine. The human will is the will of what, for convenience’ sake, we may term the lower self. It is the will that finds its life merely in the realm of the mental and the physical,–the sense will. It is the will of the one who is not yet awake to the fact that there is a life that far transcends the life of merely the intellect and the physical senses, and which when realized and lived, does not do away with or minify these, but which, on the contrary, brings them to their highest perfection and to their powers of keenest enjoyment. The divine will is the will of the higher self, the will of the one who recognizes his oneness with the Divine, and who consequently brings his will to work in harmony, in conjunction with the divine will. “The Lord thy God _in the midst of thee_ is mighty.”

The human will has its limitations. So far and no farther, says the law. The divine will has no limitations. It is supreme. All things are open and subject to you, says the law, and so, in the degree that the human will is transmuted into the divine, in the degree that it comes into harmony with and so, acts in conjunction with the divine, does it become supreme. Then it is that “Thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee.” The great secret of life and of power, then, is to make and to keep one’s conscious connection with this Infinite Source.The power of every life, the very life itself, is determined by what it relates itself to. God is immanent as well as transcendent. He is creating, working, ruling in the universe today, in your life and in mine, just as much as He ever has been. We are too apt to regard Him after the manner of an absentee landlord, one who has set into operation the forces of this great universe, and then taken Himself away.

In the degree, however, that we recognize Him as immanent as well as transcendent, are we able to partake of His life and power. For in the degree that we recognize Him as the Infinite Spirit of Life and Power that is today, at this very moment, working and manifesting in and through all, and then, in the degree that we come into the realization of our oneness with this life, do we become partakers of, and so do we actualize in ourselves the qualities of His life. _In the degree that we open ourselves to the inflowing tide of this immanent and transcendent life, do we make ourselves channels through which the Infinite Intelligence and Power can work_.

It is through the instrumentality of the mind that we are enabled to connect the real soul life with the physical life, and so enable the soul life to manifest and work through the physical. The thought life needs _continually_ to be illumined from within. This illumination can come in just the degree that through the agency of the mind we recognize our oneness with the Divine, of which each soul is an individual form of expression.

This gives us the inner guiding which we call intuition. “Intuition is to the spiritual nature and understanding practically what sense perception is to the sensuous nature and understanding. It is an inner spiritual sense through which man is opened to the direct revelation and knowledge of God, the secrets of nature and life, and through which he is brought into conscious unity and fellowship with God, and made to realize his own deific nature and supremacy of being as the son of God. Spiritual supremacy and illumination thus realized through the development and perfection of intuition under divine inspiration, gives the perfect inner vision and direct insight into the character, properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are directed. . . . It is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly; and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information, we call it intuition. All inspired teaching and spiritual revelations are based upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the soul, and its power to receive and appropriate them. . . . Conscious unity of man in spirit and purpose with the Father, born out of his supreme desire and trust, opens his soul through this inner sense to immediate inspiration and enlightenment from the Divine Omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the Divine Omnipotence, under which he becomes a seer and a master.

“On this higher plane of realized spiritual life in the flesh the mind holds the impersonal attitude and acts with unfettered freedom and unbiased vision, grasping truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information. Approaching all beings and things from the divine side, they are seen in the light of the Divine Omniscience. God’s purpose in them, and so the truth concerning them, as it rests in the mind of God, are thus revealed by direct illumination from the Divine Mind, to which the soul is opened inwardly through this spiritual sense we call intuition.” Some call it the voice of the soul; some call it the voice of God; some call it the sixth sense. It is our inner spiritual sense.

In the degree that we come into the recognition of our own _true_ selves, into the realization of the oneness of our life with the Infinite Life, and in the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow, does this voice of intuition, this voice of the soul, this voice of God, speak clearly; and in the degree that we recognize, listen to, and obey it, does it speak ever more clearly, until by-and-by there comes the time when it is unerring, _absolutely unerring_, in its guidance.FULLNESS OF LIFE–BODILY HEALTH AND VIGOR.

God is the Spirit of Infinite Life. If we are partakers of this life, and have the power of opening ourselves fully to its divine inflow, it means more, so far as even the physical life is concerned, than we may at first think. For very clearly, the life of this Infinite Spirit, from its very nature, can admit of no disease; and if this is true, no disease can exist in the body where it freely enters, through which it freely flows.

Let us recognize at the outset that, so far as the physical life is concerned, _all life is from within out_. There is an immutable law which says: “As within, so without; cause, effect.” In other words, the thought forces, the various mental states and the emotions, all have in time their effects upon the physical body.

Some one says: “I hear a great deal said today in regard to the effects of the mind upon the body, but I don’t know as I place very much confidence in this.” Don’t you? Some one brings you sudden news. You grow pale, you tremble, or perhaps you fall into a faint. It is, however, through the channel of your mind that the news is imparted to you. A friend says something to you, perhaps at the table, something that seems very unkind. You are hurt by it, as we say. You have been enjoying your dinner, but from this moment your appetite is gone. But what was said entered into and affected you through the channel of your mind.

Look! yonder goes a young man, dragging his feet, stumbling over the slightest obstruction in the path. Why is it? Simply that he is weak-minded, an idiot. In other words, _a falling state of mind is productive of a falling condition of the body_. To be sure minded is to be sure footed. To be uncertain in mind is to be uncertain in step.

Again, a sudden emergency arises. You stand trembling and weak with fear. Why are you powerless to move? Why do you tremble? And yet you believe that the mind has but little influence upon the body. You are for a moment dominated by a fit of anger. For a few hours afterwards you complain of a violent headache. And still you do not seem to realize that the thoughts and emotions have an effect upon the body.

A day or two ago, while conversing with a friend, we were speaking of worry. “My father is greatly given to worry,” he said. “Your father is not a healthy man,” I said. “He is not strong, vigorous, robust, and active.” I then went on to describe to him more fully his father’s condition and the troubles which afflicted him. He looked at me in surprise and said, “Why, you do not know my father?” “No,” I replied. “How then can you describe so accurately the disease with which he is afflicted?” “You have just told me that your father is greatly given to worry. When you told me this you indicated to me cause. In describing your father’s condition I simply connected with the cause its own peculiar effects.”

Fear and worry have the effect of closing up the channels of the body, so that the life forces flow in a slow and sluggish manner. Hope and tranquillity open the channels of the body, so that the life forces go bounding through it in such a way that disease can rarely get a foothold.

Not long ago a lady was telling a friend of a serious physical trouble. My friend happened to know that between this lady and her sister the most kindly relations did not exist. He listened attentively to her delineation of her troubles, and then, looking her squarely in the face, in a firm but kindly tone said: “Forgive your sister.” The woman looked at him in surprise and said: “I can’t forgive my sister.” “Very well, then,” he replied, “keep the stiffness of your joints and your kindred rheumatic troubles.”

A few weeks later he saw her again. With a light step she came toward him and said: “I took your advice. I saw my sister and forgave her. We have become good friends again, and I don’t know how it is, but somehow or other from the very day, as I remember, that we became reconciled, my troubles seemed to grow less, and today there is not a trace of the old difficulties left; and really, my sister and I have become such good friends that now we can scarcely get along without one another.” Again we have effect following cause.

We have several well-authenticated cases of the following nature: A mother has been dominated for a few moments by an intense passion of anger, and the child at her breast has died within an hour’s time, so poisoned became the mother’s milk by virtue of the poisonous secretions of the system while under the domination of this fit of anger. In other cases it has caused severe illness and convulsions.

The following experiment has been tried a number of times by a well-known scientist: Several men have been put into a heated room. Each man has been dominated for a moment by a particular passion of some kind; one by an intense passion of anger, and others by different other passions. The experimenter has taken a drop of perspiration from the body of each of these men, and by means of a careful chemical analysis he has been able to determine the particular passion by which each has been dominated. Practically the same results revealed themselves in the chemical analysis of the saliva of each of the men.Says a noted American author, an able graduate of one of our greatest medical schools, and one who has studied deeply into the forces that build the body and the forces that tear it down: “The mind is the natural protector of the body. . . . Every thought tends to reproduce itself, and ghastly mental pictures of disease, sensuality, and vice of all sorts, produce scrofula and leprosy in the soul, which reproduces them in the body. Anger changes the chemical properties of the saliva to a poison dangerous to life. It is well known that sudden and violent emotions have not only weakened the heart in a few hours, but have caused death and insanity. It has been discovered by scientists that there is a chemical difference between that sudden cold exudation of a person under a deep sense of guilt and the ordinary perspiration; and the state of the mind can sometimes be determined by chemical analysis of the perspiration of a criminal, which, when brought into contact with selenic acid, produces a distinctive pink color. It is well known that fear has killed thousands of victims; while, on the other hand, _courage is a great invigorator_.

“Anger in the mother may poison a nursing child. Rarey, the celebrated horse-tamer, said that an angry word would sometimes raise the pulse of a horse ten beats in a minute. If this is true of a beast, what can we say of its power upon human beings, especially upon a child? Strong mental emotion often causes vomiting. Extreme anger or fright may produce jaundice. A violent paroxysm of rage has caused apoplexy and death. Indeed, in more than one instance, a single night of mental agony has wrecked a life. Grief, long-standing jealousy, constant care and corroding anxiety sometimes tend to develop insanity. Sick thoughts and discordant moods are the natural atmosphere of disease, and crime is engendered and thrives in the miasma of the mind.”

From all this we get the great fact we are scientifically demonstrating today,–that the various mental states, emotions, and passions have their various peculiar effects upon the body, and each induces in turn, if indulged in to any great extent, its own peculiar forms of disease, and these in time become chronic.

Just a word or two in regard to their mode of operation. If a person is dominated for a moment by, say a passion of anger, there is set up in the physical organism what we might justly term a bodily thunder-storm, which has the effect of souring, or rather of corroding, the normal, healthy, and life-giving secretions of the body, so that instead of performing their natural functions they become poisonous and destructive. And if this goes on to any great extent, by virtue of their cumulative influences, they give rise to a particular form of disease, which in turn becomes chronic. So the emotion opposite to this, that of kindliness, love, benevolence, good-will, tends to stimulate a healthy, purifying, and life-giving flow of all the bodily secretions. All the channels of the body seem free and open; the life forces go bounding through them. And these very forces, set into a bounding activity, will in time counteract the poisonous and disease-giving effects of their opposites.

A physician goes to see a patient. He gives no medicine this morning. Yet the very fact of his going makes the patient better. He has carried with him the spirit of health; he has carried brightness of tone and disposition; he has carried hope into the sick chamber; he has left it there. In fact, the very hope and good cheer he has carried with him has taken hold of and has had a subtle but powerful influence upon the mind of the patient; and this mental condition imparted by the physician has in turn its effects upon the patient’s body, and so through the instrumentality of this mental suggestion the healing goes on.

“Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene Supports the mind, supports the body, too. Hence the most vital movement mortals feel Is _hope_; the balm and life-blood of the soul.”

We sometimes hear a person in weak health say to another, “I always feel better when you come.” There is a deep scientific reason underlying the statement. “The tongue of the wise is health.” The power of suggestion so far as the human mind is concerned is a most wonderful and interesting field of study. Most wonderful and powerful forces can be set into operation through this agency. One of the world’s most noted scientists, recognized everywhere as one of the most eminent anatomists living, tells us that he has proven from laboratory experiments that the entire human structure can be completely changed, made over, within a period of less than one year, and that some portions can be entirely remade within a period of a very few weeks.

“Do you mean to say,” I hear it asked, “that the body can be changed from a diseased to a healthy condition through the operation of the interior forces?” Most certainly; and more, this is the natural method of cure. The method that has as its work the application of drugs, medicines and external agencies is the artificial method. The only thing that any drug or any medicine can do is to remove obstructions, that the life forces may have simply a better chance to do their work. _The real healing process must be performed by the operation of the life forces within_. A surgeon and physician of world-wide fame recently made to his medical associates the following declaration: “For generations past the most important influence that plays upon nutrition, the _life principle_ itself, has remained an unconsidered element in the medical profession, and the almost exclusive drift of its studies and remedial paraphernalia has been confined to the action of matter over mind. This has seriously interfered with the evolutionary tendencies of the doctors themselves, and consequently the psychic factor in professional life is still in a rudimentary or comparatively undeveloped state. But the light of the nineteenth century has dawned, and so the march of mankind in general is taken in the direction of the hidden forces of nature. Doctors are now compelled to join the ranks of students in psychology and follow their patrons into the broader field of mental therapeutics. There is no time for lingering, no time for skepticism or doubt or hesitation. _He who lingers is lost, for the entire race is enlisted in the movement_.”I am aware of the fact that in connection with the matter we are now considering there has been a great deal of foolishness during the past few years. Many absurd and foolish things have been claimed and done; but this says nothing against, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the great underlying laws themselves. The same has been true of the early days of practically every system of ethics or philosophy or religion the world has ever known. But as time has passed, these foolish, absurd things have fallen away, and the great eternal principles have stood out ever more and more clearly defined.

I know _personally_ of many cases where an entire and permanent cure has been effected, in some within a remarkably short period of time, through the operation of these forces. Some of them are cases that had been entirely given up by the regular practice, _materia medica_. We have numerous accounts of such cases in all times and in connection with all religions. And why should not the power of effecting such cures exist among us today? The _power does exist_, and it will be actualized in just the degree that we recognize the same great laws that were recognized in times past.

One person may do a very great deal in connection with the healing of another, but this almost invariably implies co-operation on the part of the one who is thus treated. In the cures that Christ performed he most always needed the co-operation of the one who appealed to him. His question almost invariably was, “Dost thou believe?” He thus stimulated into activity the life-giving forces within the one cured. If one is in a very weak condition, or if his nervous system is exhausted, or if his mind through the influence of the disease is not so strong in its workings, it may be well for him for a time to seek the aid and co-operation of another. But it would be far better for such a one could he bring himself to a vital realization of the omnipotence of his own interior powers.

One may cure another, but to be _permanently healed_ one must do it himself. In this way another may be most valuable as a teacher by bringing one to a clear realization of the power of the forces within, but in every case, in order to have a permanent cure, the work of the self is necessary. Christ’s words were almost invariably,–Go and sin no more, or, thy sins are forgiven thee, thus pointing out the one eternal and never-changing fact,–that all disease and its consequent suffering is the direct or the indirect result of the violation of law, either consciously or unconsciously, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Suffering is designed to continue only so long as sin continues, sin not necessarily in the theological, but always in the philosophical sense, though many times in the sense of both. The moment the violation ceases, the moment one comes into perfect harmony with the law, the cause of the suffering ceases; and though there may be residing within the cumulative effects of past violation, the cause is removed, and consequently there can be no more effects in the form of additions, and even the diseased condition that has been induced from past violation will begin to disappear as soon as the right forces are set into activity.

There is nothing that will more quickly and more completely bring one into harmony with the laws under which he lives than this vital realization of his oneness with the Infinite Spirit, which is the life of all life. In this there can be no disease, and nothing will more readily remove from the organism the obstructions that have accumulated there, or in other words, the disease that resides there, than this full realization and the complete opening of one’s self to this divine inflow. “I shall put My spirit in you, and ye shall live.”

The moment a person realizes his oneness with the Infinite Spirit he recognizes himself as a spiritual being, and no longer as a mere physical, material being. He then no longer makes the mistake of regarding himself as body, subject to ills and diseases, but he realizes the fact that he is spirit, spirit now as much as he ever will or can be, and that he is the builder and so the master of the body, the house in which he lives; and the moment he thus recognizes his power as master he ceases in any way to allow it the mastery over him. He no longer fears the elements or any of the forces that he now in his ignorance allows to take hold of and affect the body. The moment he realizes his own supremacy, instead of fearing them as he did when he was out of harmony with them, he learns to love them. He thus comes into harmony with them; or rather, he so orders them that they come into harmony with him. He who formerly was the slave has now become the master. The moment we come to love a thing it no longer carries harm for us.

There are almost countless numbers today, weak and suffering in body, who would become strong and healthy if they would only give God an opportunity to do His work. To such I would say, _Don’t shut out the divine inflow_. Do anything else rather than this. Open yourselves to it. Invite it. In the degree that you open yourselves to it, its inflowing tide will course through your bodies a force so vital that the old obstructions that are dominating them today will be driven out before it. “My words are life to them that find them, and health to all their flesh.”

There is a trough through which a stream of muddy water has been flowing for many days. The dirt has gradually collected on its sides and bottom, and it continues to collect as long as the muddy water flows through it. Change this. Open the trough to a swift-flowing stream of clear, crystal water, and in a very little while even the very dirt that has collected on its sides and bottom will be carried away. The trough will be entirely cleansed. It will present an aspect of beauty and no longer an aspect of ugliness. And more, the water that now courses through it will be of value; it will be an agent of refreshment, of health and of strength to those who use it.Yes, in just the degree that you realize your oneness with this Infinite Spirit of Life, and thus actualize your latent possibilities and powers, you will exchange dis-ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength. And in the degree that you realize this wholeness, this abounding health and strength in yourself, will you carry it to all with whom you come in contact; for _we must remember that health is contagious as well as disease_.

I hear it asked, What can be said in a concrete way in regard to the practical application of these truths, so that one can hold himself in the enjoyment of perfect bodily health; and more, that one may heal himself of any existing disease? In reply, let it be said that the chief thing that can be done is to point out the great underlying principle, and that each individual must make his own application; one person cannot well make this for another.

First let it be said, that the very fact of one’s holding the thought of perfect health sets into operation vital forces which will in time be more or less productive of the effect,–perfect health. Then speaking more directly in regard to the great principle itself, from its very nature, it is clear that more can be accomplished through the process of realization than through the process of affirmation, though for some affirmation may be a help, an aid to realization.

In the degree, however, that you come into a vital realization of your oneness with the Infinite Spirit of Life, whence all life in individual form has come and is continually coming, and in the degree that through this realization you open yourself to its divine inflow, do you set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring even the physical body into a state of abounding health and strength. For to realize that this Infinite Spirit of Life can from its very nature admit of no disease, and to realize that this, then, is the life in you, by realizing your oneness with it, you can so open yourself to its more abundant entrance that the diseased bodily conditions–effects–will respond to the influences of its all-perfect power, this either quickly or more tardily, depending entirely upon yourself.

There have been those who have been able to open themselves so fully to this realization that the healing has been instantaneous and permanent. The degree of intensity always eliminates in like degree the element of time. _It must, however, be a calm, quiet, and expectant intensity, rather than an intensity that is fearing, disturbed, and non-expectant_. Then there are others who have come to this realization by degrees.

Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: With a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought,–I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in which disease has gotten a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing, but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence remain ill.

If one will give himself to this meditation, realization, treatment, or whatever term it may seem best to use, at stated times, as often as he may choose, and then _continually hold himself in the same attitude of mind_, thus allowing the force to work continually, he will be surprised how rapidly the body will be exchanging conditions of disease and inharmony for health and harmony. There is no particular reason, however, for this surprise, for in this way he is simply allowing the Omnipotent Power to do the work, which will have to do it ultimately in any case.

If there is a local difficulty, and one wants to open this particular portion, in addition to the entire body, to this inflowing life, he can hold this particular portion in thought, for to fix the thought in this way upon any particular portion of the body stimulates or increases the flow of the life forces in that portion. It must always be borne in mind, however, that whatever healing may be thus accomplished, effects will not permanently cease until causes have been removed. In other words, _as long as there is the violation of law, so long disease and suffering will result_.

This realization that we are considering will have an influence not only where there is a diseased condition of the body, but even where there is not this condition it will give an increased bodily life, vigor, and power.

We have had many cases, in all times and in all countries, of healing through the operation of the interior forces, entirely independent of external agencies. Various have been the methods, or rather, various have been the names applied to them, but the great law underlying all is one and the same, and the same today. When the Master sent his followers forth, his injunction to them was to heal the sick and the afflicted, as well as to teach the people. The early church fathers had the power of healing, in short, it was a part of their work.And why should we not have the power today, the same as they had it then? Are the laws at all different? Identically the same. Why, then? Simply because, with a few rare exceptions here and there, we are unable to get beyond the mere letter of the law into its real vital spirit and power. It is the letter that killeth, it is the spirit that giveth life and power. Every soul who becomes so individualized that he breaks through the mere letter and enters into the real vital spirit, _will have the power_, as have all who have gone before, and when he does, he will also be the means of imparting it to others, for he will be one who will move and who will speak with authority.

We are rapidly finding today, and we shall find even more and more, as time passes, that practically all disease, with its consequent suffering, has its origin in perverted mental and emotional states and conditions. _The mental attitude we take toward anything determines to a greater or less extent its effects upon us_. If we fear it, or if we antagonize it, the chances are that it will have detrimental or even disastrous effects upon us. If we come into harmony with it by quietly recognizing and inwardly asserting our superiority over it, in the degree that we are able successfully to do this, in that degree will it carry with it no injury for us.

No disease can enter into or take hold of our bodies unless it find therein something corresponding to itself which makes it possible. And in the same way, no evil or undesirable condition of any kind can come into our lives unless there is already in them that which invites it and so makes it possible for it to come. The sooner we begin to look within ourselves for the cause of whatever comes to us, the better it will be, for so much the sooner will we begin to make conditions within ourselves such that only _good_ may enter.

We, who from our very natures should be masters of all conditions, by virtue of our ignorance are mastered by almost numberless conditions of every description.

Do I fear a draft? There is nothing in the draft–a little purifying current of God’s pure air–to cause me trouble, to bring on a cold, perhaps an illness. The draft can affect me only in the degree that _I myself_ make it possible, only in the degree that I allow it to affect me. We must distinguish between causes and mere occasions. The draft is not cause, nor does it carry cause with it.

Two persons are sitting in the same draft. The one is injuriously affected by it, the other experiences not even an inconvenience, but he rather enjoys it. The one is a creature of circumstances; he fears the draft, cringes before it, continually thinks of the harm it is doing him. In other words, he opens every avenue for it to enter and take hold of him, and so it–harmless and beneficent in itself–brings to him exactly what he has empowered it to bring. The other recognizes himself as the master over and not the creature of circumstances. He is not concerned about the draft. He puts himself into harmony with it, makes himself positive to it, and instead of experiencing any discomfort, he enjoys it, and in addition to its doing him a service by bringing the pure fresh air from without to him, it does him the additional service of hardening him even more to any future conditions of a like nature. But if the draft was cause, it would bring the same results to both. The fact that it does not, shows that it is not a cause, but a condition, and it brings to each, effects which correspond to the conditions it finds within each.

Poor draft! How many thousands, nay millions of times it is made the scapegoat by those who are too ignorant or too unfair to look their own weaknesses square in the face, and who instead of becoming imperial masters, remain cringing slaves. Think of it, what it means! A man created in the image of the eternal God, sharer of His life and power, born to have dominion, fearing, shaking, cringing before a little draft of pure life-giving air. But scapegoats are convenient things, even if the only thing they do for us is to aid us in our constant efforts at self-delusion.

The best way to disarm a draft of the bad effects it has been accustomed to bring one, is first to bring about a pure and healthy set of conditions within, then, to change one’s mental attitude toward it. Recognize the fact that of itself it has no power, it has only the power you invest it with. Thus you will put yourself into harmony with it, and will no longer sit in fear of it. Then sit in a draft a few times and get hardened to it, as every one, by going at it judiciously, can readily do. “But suppose one is in delicate health, or especially subject to drafts?” Then be simply a little judicious at first; don’t seek the strongest that can be found, especially if you do not as yet in your own mind feel equal to it, for if you do not, it signifies that you still fear it. That supreme regulator of all life, _good common sense_, must be used here, the same as elsewhere.

If we are born to have dominion, and that we are is demonstrated by the fact that some have attained to it,–and what one _has_ done, soon or late all _can_ do,–then it is not necessary that we live under the domination of any physical agent. In the degree that we recognize our own interior powers, then are we rulers and able to dictate; in the degree that we fail to recognize them, we are slaves, and are dictated to. We build whatever we find within us; we attract whatever comes to us, and all in accordance with spiritual law, for all natural law is spiritual law.The whole of human life is cause and effect; there is no such thing in it as chance, nor is there even in all the wide universe. Are we not satisfied with whatever comes into our lives? The thing to do, then, is not to spend time in railing against the imaginary something we create and call fate, but to look to the within, and change the causes at work there, in order that things of a different nature may come, for there will come exactly what we cause to come. This is true not only of the physical body, but of all phases and conditions of life. We invite whatever comes, and did we not invite it, either consciously or unconsciously, it could not and it would not come. This may undoubtedly be hard for some to believe, or even to see, at first. But in the degree that one candidly and open-mindedly looks at it, and then studies into the silent, but subtle and, so to speak, omnipotent workings of the thought forces, and as he traces their effects within him and about him, it becomes clearly evident, and easy to understand.

And then whatever does come to one depends for its effects entirely upon his mental attitude toward it. Does this or that occurrence or condition cause you annoyance? Very well; it causes you annoyance, and so disturbs your peace merely because you allow it to. You are born to have absolute control over your own dominion, but if you voluntarily hand over this power, even if for a little while, to some one or to some thing else, then you of course, become the creature, the one controlled.

To live undisturbed by passing occurrences you must first find your own centre. You must then be firm in your own centre, and so rule the world from within. He who does not himself condition circumstances allows the process to be reversed, and becomes a conditioned circumstance. Find your centre and live in it. Surrender it to no person, to no thing. In the degree that you do this will you find yourself growing stronger and stronger in it. And how can one find his centre? By realizing his oneness with the Infinite Power, and by living continually in this realization.

But if you do not rule from your own centre, if you invest this or that with the power of bringing you annoyance, or evil, or harm, then take what it brings, but cease your railings against the eternal goodness and beneficence of all things.

“I swear the earth shall surely be complete To him or her who shall be complete; The earth remains jagged and broken Only to him who remains jagged and broken.”

If the windows of your soul are dirty and streaked, covered with matter foreign to them, then the world as you look out of them will be to you dirty and streaked and out of order. Cease your complainings, however; keep your pessimism, your “poor, unfortunate me” to yourself, lest you betray the fact that your windows are badly in need of something. But know that your friend, who keeps his windows clean, that the Eternal Sun may illumine all within and make visible all without,–know that he lives in a different world from yours.

Then, go wash your windows, and instead of longing for some other world, you will discover the wonderful beauties of this world; and if you don’t find transcendent beauties on every hand here, the chances are that you will never find them anywhere.

“The poem hangs on the berry-bush When comes the poet’s eye, And the whole street is a masquerade When Shakspeare passes by.”

This same Shakspeare, whose mere passing causes all this commotion, is the one who put into the mouth of one of his creations the words: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And the great work of his own life is right good evidence that he realized full well the truth of the facts we are considering. And again he gave us a great truth in keeping with what we are considering when he said:

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By _fearing_ to attempt.”

There is probably no agent that brings us more undesirable conditions than fear. We should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully to know ourselves. An old French proverb runs

“Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived; But what _torments of pain_ you endured From evils that never arrived.”

Fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. The one is born of the other. Tell me how much one is given to fear, and I will tell you how much he lacks in faith. Fear is a most expensive guest to entertain, the same as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to entertain them. _We invite what we fear, the same as, by a different attitude of mind, we invite and attract the influences and conditions we desire_. The mind dominated by fear opens the door for the entrance of the very things, for the actualization of the very conditions it fears.

“Where are you going?” asked an Eastern pilgrim on meeting the plague one day. “I am going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,” was the reply. A few days later the same pilgrim met the plague returning. “You told me you were going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,” said he, “but instead, you killed fifty thousand.” “No,” said the plague. “_I killed only five thousand_, as I told you I would; _the others died of fright_.”

Fear can paralyze every muscle in the body. Fear affects the flow of the blood, likewise the normal and healthy action of all the life forces. Fear can make the body rigid, motionless, and powerless to move.Not only do we attract to ourselves the things we fear, but we also aid in attracting to others the conditions we in our own minds hold them in fear of. This we do in proportion to the strength of our own thought, and in the degree that they are sensitively organized and so influenced by our thought, and this, although it be unconscious both on their part and on ours.

Children, and especially when very young, are, generally speaking, more sensitive to their surrounding influences than grown people are. Some are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the influences about them, and embodying them as they grow. How careful in their prevailing mental states then should be those who have them in charge, and especially how careful should a mother be during the time she is carrying the child, and when every thought, every mental as well as emotional state has its direct influence upon the life of the unborn child. Let parents be careful how they hold a child, either younger or older, in the thought of fear. This is many times done, unwittingly on their part, through anxiety, and at times through what might well be termed over-care, which is fully as bad as under-care.

I know of a number of cases where a child has been so continually held in the thought of fear lest this or that condition come upon him, that the very things that were feared have been drawn to him, which probably otherwise never would have come at all. Many times there has been no adequate basis for the fear. In case there is a basis, then far wiser is it to take exactly the opposite attitude, so as to neutralize the force at work, and then to hold the child in the thought of wisdom and strength that it may be able to meet the condition and master it, instead of being mastered by it.

But a day or two ago a friend was telling me of an experience of his own life in this connection. At a period when he was having a terrific struggle with a certain habit, he was so continually held in the thought of fear by his mother and the young lady to whom he was engaged,–the engagement to be consummated at the end of a certain period, the time depending on his proving his mastery,–that he, very sensitively organized, _continually_ felt the depressing and weakening effects of their negative thoughts. He could always tell exactly how they felt toward him; he was continually influenced and weakened by their fear, by their questionings, by their suspicions, all of which had the effect of lessening the sense of his own power, all of which had an endeavor-paralyzing influence upon him. And so instead of their begetting courage and strength in him, they brought him to a still greater realization of his own weakness and the almost worthless use of struggle.

Here were two who loved him dearly, and who would have done anything and everything to help him gain the mastery, but who, ignorant of the silent, subtle, ever-working and all-telling power of the thought forces, instead of imparting to him courage, instead of adding to his strength, disarmed him of this, and then added an additional weakness from without. In this way the battle for him was made harder in a three-fold degree.

Fear and worry and all kindred mental states are too expensive for any person, man, woman, or child, to entertain or indulge in. Fear paralyzes healthy action, worry corrodes and pulls down the organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. Nothing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost. Long-continued grief at any loss will do the same. Each brings its own peculiar type of ailment. An inordinate love of gain, a close-fisted, hoarding disposition will have kindred effects. Anger, jealousy, malice, continual fault-finding, lust, has each its own peculiar corroding, weakening, tearing-down effects.

We shall find that not only are happiness and prosperity concomitants of righteousness,–living in harmony with the higher laws, but bodily health as well. The great Hebrew seer enunciated a wonderful chemistry of life when he said,–“As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death.” On the other hand, “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” The time will come when it will be seen that this means far more than most people dare _even to think as yet_. “It rests with man to say whether his soul shall be housed in a stately mansion of ever-growing splendor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building,–a hovel at last ruined and abandoned to decay.”

The bodies of almost untold numbers, living their one-sided, unbalanced lives, are every year, through these influences, weakening and falling by the wayside long before their time. Poor, poor houses! Intended to be beautiful temples, brought to desolation by their ignorant, reckless, deluded tenants. Poor houses!

A close observer, a careful student of the power of the thought forces, will soon be able to read in the voice, in the movements, in the features, the effects registered by the prevailing mental states and conditions. Or, if he is told the prevailing mental states and conditions, he can describe the voice, the movements, the features, as well as describe, in a general way, the peculiar physical ailments their possessor is heir to.

We are told by good authority that a study of the human body, its structure, and the length of time it takes it to come to maturity, in comparison with the time it takes the bodies of various animals and their corresponding longevity, reveals the fact that its natural age should be nearer a hundred and twenty years than what we commonly find it today. But think of the multitudes all about us whose bodies are aging, weakening, breaking, so that they have to abandon them long before they reach what ought to be a long period of strong, vigorous middle life.Then, the natural length of life being thus shortened, it comes to be what we might term a race belief that this shortened period is the natural period. And as a consequence many, when they approach a certain age, seeing that as a rule people at this period of life begin to show signs of age, to break and go down hill as we say, they, thinking it a matter of course and that it must be the same with them, by taking this attitude of mind, many times bring upon themselves these very conditions long before it is necessary. Subtle and powerful are the influences of the mind in the building and rebuilding of the body. As we understand them better it may become the custom for people to look forward with pleasure to the teens of their second century.

There comes to mind at this moment a friend, a lady well on to eighty years of age. An old lady, some, most people in fact, would call her, especially those who measure age by the number of the seasons that have come and gone since one’s birth. But to call our friend old, would be to call black white. She is no older than a girl of twenty-five, and indeed younger, I am glad to say, or I am sorry to say, depending upon the point of view, than _many_ a girl of this age. Seeking for the good in all people and in all things, she has found the good everywhere. The brightness of disposition and of voice that is hers today, that attracts all people to her and that makes her so beautifully attractive to all people, has characterized her all through life. It has in turn carried brightness and hope and courage and strength to hundreds and thousands of people through all these years, and will continue to do so, apparently, for many years yet to come.

No fears, no worryings, no hatreds, no jealousies, no sorrowings, no grievings, no sordid graspings after inordinant [Transcriber’s note: inordinate?] gain, have found entrance into her realm of thought. As a consequence her mind, free from these abnormal states and conditions, has not externalized in her body the various physical ailments that the great majority of people are lugging about with them, thinking in their ignorance, that they are natural, and that it is all in accordance with the “eternal order of things” that they should have them. Her life has been one of varied experiences, so that all these things would have found ready entrance into the realm of her mind and so into her life were she ignorant enough to allow them entrance. On the contrary she has been wise enough to recognize the fact that in one kingdom at least she is ruler,–the kingdom of her mind, and that it is hers to dictate as to what shall and what shall not enter there. She knows, moreover, that in determining this she is determining all the conditions of her life. It is indeed a pleasure as well as an inspiration to see her as she goes here and there, to see her sunny disposition, her youthful step, to hear her joyous laughter. Indeed and in truth, Shakspeare knew whereof he spoke when he said,–“It is the mind that makes the body rich.”

With great pleasure I watched her but recently as she was walking along the street, stopping to have a word and so a part in the lives of a group of children at play by the wayside, hastening her step a little to have a word with a washerwoman toting her bundle of clothes, stopping for a word with a laboring man returning with dinner pail in hand from his work, returning the recognition from the lady in her carriage, and so imparting some of her own rich life to all with whom she came in contact.

And as good fortune would have it, while still watching her, an old lady passed her,–really old, this one, though at least ten or fifteen years younger, so far as the count by the seasons is concerned. Nevertheless she was bent in form and apparently stiff in joint and muscle. Silent in mood, she wore a countenance of long-faced sadness, which was intensified surely several fold by a black, sombre headgear with an immense heavy veil still more sombre looking if possible. Her entire dress was of this description. By this relic-of-barbarism garb, combined with her own mood and expression, she continually proclaimed to the world two things,–her own personal sorrows and woes, which by this very method she kept continually fresh in her mind, and also her lack of faith in the eternal goodness of things, her lack of faith in the love and eternal goodness of the Infinite Father.

Wrapped only in the thoughts of her own ailments, and sorrows, and woes, she received and she gave nothing of joy, nothing of hope, nothing of courage, nothing of value to those whom she passed or with whom she came in contact. But on the contrary she suggested to all and helped to intensify in many, those mental states all too prevalent in our common human life. And as she passed our friend one could notice a slight turn of the head which, coupled with the expression in her face, seemed to indicate this as her thought,–Your dress and your conduct are not wholly in keeping with a lady of your years. Thank God, then, thank God they are not. And may He in His great goodness and love send us an innumerable company of the same rare type; and may they live a thousand years to bless mankind, to impart the life-giving influences of their own royal lives to the numerous ones all about us who stand so much in need of them.

Would you remain always young, and would you carry all the joyousness and buoyancy of youth into your maturer years? Then have care concerning but one thing,–how you live in your thought world. This will determine all. It was the inspired one, Gautama, the Buddha, who said,–“The mind is everything; what you think you become.” And the same thing had Ruskin in mind when he said,–“Make yourself nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us as yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought,–_proof against all adversity_.”And would you have in your body all the elasticity, all the strength, all the beauty of your younger years? Then live these in your mind, making no room for unclean thought, and you will externalize them in your body. In the degree that you keep young in thought will you remain young in body. And you will find that your body will in turn aid your mind, for body helps mind the same as mind builds body.

You are continually building, and so externalizing in your body conditions most akin to the thoughts and emotions you entertain. And not only are you so building from within, but you are also continually drawing from without, forces of a kindred nature. Your particular kind of thought connects you with a similar order of thought from without. If it is bright, hopeful, cheerful, you connect yourself with a current of thought of this nature. If it is sad, fearing, despondent, then this is the order of thought you connect yourself with.

If the latter is the order of your thought, then perhaps unconsciously and by degrees you have been connecting yourself with it. You need to go back and pick up again a part of your child nature, with its careless and cheerful type of thought. “The minds of the group of children at play are unconsciously concentrated in drawing to their bodies a current of playful thought. Place a child by itself, deprive it of its companions, and soon it will mope and become slow of movement. It is cut off from that peculiar thought current and is literally ‘out of its element.’

“You need to bring again this current of playful thought to you which has gradually been turned off. You are too serious or sad, or absorbed in the serious affairs of life. You can be playful and cheerful without being puerile or silly. You can carry on business all the better for being in the playful mood when your mind is off your business. There is nothing but ill resulting from the permanent mood of sadness and seriousness,–the mood which by many so long maintained makes it actually difficult for them to smile at all.

“At eighteen or twenty you commenced growing out of the more playful tendency of early youth. You took hold of the more serious side of life. You went into some business. You became more or less involved in its cares, perplexities and responsibilities. Or, as man or woman, you entered on some phase of life involving care or trouble. Or you became absorbed in some game of business which, as you followed it, left no time for play. Then as you associated with older people you absorbed their old ideas, their mechanical methods of thinking, their acceptance of errors without question or thought of question. In all this you opened your mind to a heavy, care-laden current of thought. Into this you glided unconsciously. That thought is materialized in your blood and flesh. The seen of your body is a deposit or crystallization of the unseen element ever flowing to your body from your mind. Years pass on and you find that your movements are stiff and cumbrous,–that you can with difficulty climb a tree, as at fourteen. Your mind has all this time been sending to your body these heavy, inelastic elements, making your body what now it is. . . .

“Your change for the better must be gradual, and can only be accomplished by bringing the thought current of an all-round symmetrical strength to bear on it,–by demanding of the Supreme Power to be led in the best way, by diverting your mind from the many unhealthy thoughts which habitually have been flowing into it without your knowing it, to healthier ones. . . .

“Like the beast, the bodies of those of our race have in the past weakened and decayed. This will not always be. Increase of spiritual knowledge will show the cause of such decay, and will show, also, how to take advantage of a Law or Force to build us up, renew ever the body and give it greater and greater strength, instead of blindly using that Law or Force, as has been done in the past, to weaken our bodies and finally destroy them.”

Full, rich, and abounding health is the normal and the natural condition of life. Anything else is an abnormal condition, and abnormal conditions as a rule come through perversions. God never created sickness, suffering, and disease; they are man’s own creations. They come through his violating the laws under which he lives. So used are we to seeing them that we come gradually, if not to think of them as natural, then to look upon them as a matter of course.

The time will come when the work of the physician will not be to treat and attempt to heal the body, but to heal the mind, which in turn will heal the body. In other words, the true physician will be a teacher; his work will be to keep people well, instead of attempting to make them well after sickness and disease comes on; and still beyond this there will come a time when each will be his own physician. In the degree that we live in harmony with the higher laws of our being, and so, in the degree that we become better acquainted with the powers of the mind and spirit, will we give less attention to the body,–no less _care_, but less _attention_.

The bodies of thousands today would be much better cared for if their owners gave them less thought and attention. As a rule, those who think least of their bodies enjoy the best health. Many are kept in continual ill health by the abnormal thought and attention they give them.Give the body the nourishment, the exercise, the fresh air, the sunlight it requires, keep it clean, and then think of it as little as possible. In your thoughts and in your conversation never dwell upon the negative side. Don’t talk of sickness and disease. By talking of these you do yourself harm and you do harm to those who listen to you. Talk of those things that will make people the better for listening to you. Thus you will infect them with health and strength and not with weakness and disease.

To dwell upon the negative side is always destructive. This is true of the body the same as it is true of all other things. The following from one whose thorough training as a physician has been supplemented by extensive study and observations along the lines of the powers of the interior forces, are of special significance and value in this connection: “We can never gain health by contemplating disease, any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord. We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind. . . .

“Never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true. Do not dwell upon your ailments, nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of any inferior power. . . . I would teach children early to build a strong barrier between themselves and disease, by healthy habits of thought, high thinking, and purity of life. I would teach them to expel all thoughts of death, all images of disease, all discordant emotions, like hatred, malice, revenge, envy, and sensuality, as they would banish a temptation to do evil. I would teach them that bad food, bad drink, or bad air makes bad blood; that bad blood makes bad tissue, and bad flesh bad morals. I would teach them that healthy thoughts are as essential to healthy bodies as pure thoughts to a clean life. I would teach them to cultivate a strong will power, and to brace themselves against life’s enemies in every possible way. I would teach the sick to have hope, confidence, cheer. Our thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits to our possibilities. No man’s success or health will ever reach beyond his own confidence; as a rule, we erect our own barriers.

“Like produces like the universe through. Hatred, envy, malice, jealousy, and revenge all have children. Every bad thought breeds others, and each of these goes on and on, ever reproducing itself, until our world is peopled with their offspring. The true physician and parent of the future will not medicate the body with drugs so much as the mind with principles. The coming mother will teach her child to assuage the fever of anger, hatred, malice, with the great panacea of the world,–Love. The coming physician will teach the people to cultivate cheerfulness, good-will, and noble deeds for a health tonic as well as a heart tonic; and that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

The health of your body, the same as the health and strength of your mind, depends upon what you relate yourself with. This Infinite Spirit of Life, this Source of all Life, can from its very nature, we have found, admit of no weakness, no disease. Come then into the full, conscious, vital realization of your oneness with this Infinite Life, open yourself to its more abundant entrance, and full and ever-renewing bodily health and strength will be yours.

“And good may ever conquer ill, Health walk where pain has trod; ‘As a man thinketh, so is he,’ Rise, then, and think with God.”

The whole matter may then be summed up in the one sentence, “God is well and so are you.” You must awaken to the knowledge of your _real being_. When this awakening comes, you will have, and you will see that you have, the power to determine what conditions are externalized in your body. You must recognize, you must realize yourself as one with Infinite Spirit. God’s will is then your will; your will is God’s will, and “with God all things are possible.” When we are able to do away with all sense of separateness by living continually in the realization of this oneness, not only will our bodily ills and weaknesses vanish, but all limitations along all lines.

Then “delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Then will you feel like crying all the day long, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” Drop out of mind your belief in good things and good events coming to you in the future. Come _now_ into the real life, and coming, appropriate and actualize them _now_. Remember that only the best is good enough for one with a heritage so royal as yours.

“We buy ashes for bread; We buy diluted wine; Give me the true,– Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled Among the silver hills of heaven, Draw everlasting dew.”THE SECRET, POWER, AND EFFECTS OF LOVE.

This is the Spirit of Infinite Love. The moment we recognize ourselves as one with it we become so filled with love that we see only the good in all. And when we realize that we are all one with this Infinite Spirit, then we realize that in a sense we are all one with each other. When we come into a recognition of this fact, we can then do no harm to any one, to any thing. We find that we are all members of the one great body, and that no portion of the body can be harmed without all the other portions suffering thereby.

When we fully realize the great fact of the oneness of all life,–that all are partakers from this one Infinite Source, and so that the same life is the life in each individual, then prejudices go and hatreds cease. Love grows and reigns supreme. Then, wherever we go, whenever we come in contact with the fellow-man, we are able to recognize the God within. We thus look only for the good, and we find it. It always pays.

There is a deep scientific fact underlying the great truth, “He that takes the sword shall perish by the sword.” The moment we come into a realization of the subtle powers of the thought forces, we can quickly see that the moment we entertain any thoughts of hatred toward another, he gets the effects of these diabolical forces that go out from us, and has the same thoughts of hatred aroused in him, which in turn return to the sender. Then when we understand the effects of the passion, hatred or anger, even upon the physical body, we can see how detrimental, how expensive this is. The same is true in regard to all kindred thoughts or passions, envy, criticism, jealousy, scorn. In the ultimate we shall find that in entertaining feelings of this nature toward another, we always suffer far more than the one toward whom we entertain them.

And then when we fully realize the fact that selfishness is at the root of all error, sin, and crime, and that ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, with what charity we come to look upon the acts of all. It is the ignorant man who seeks his own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant man, therefore, who is the selfish man. The truly wise man is never selfish. He is a seer, and recognizes the fact that he, a single member of the one great body, is benefited in just the degree that the entire body is benefited, and so he seeks nothing for himself that he would not equally seek for all mankind.

If selfishness is at the bottom of all error, sin, and crime, and ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, then when we see a manifestation of either of these qualities, if we are true to the highest within us, we will look for and will seek to call forth the good in each individual with whom we come in contact. When God speaks to God, then God responds, and shows forth as God. But when devil speaks to devil, then devil responds, and the devil is always to pay.

I sometimes hear a person say, “I don’t see any good in him.” No? Then you are no seer. Look deeper and you will find the very God in every human soul. But remember it takes a God to recognize a God. Christ always spoke to the highest, the truest, and the best in men. He knew and he recognized the God in each because he had first realized it in himself. He ate with publicans and sinners. Abominable, the Scribes and Pharisees said. They were so wrapped up in their own conceits, their own self-centredness, hence their own ignorance, that they had never found the God in themselves, and so they never dreamed that it was the real life of even publicans and sinners.

In the degree that we hold a person in the thought of evil or of error, do we suggest evil and error to him. In the degree that he is sensitively organized, or not well individualized, and so, subject to the suggestions of the thought forces from others, will he be influenced; and so in this way we may be sharers in the very evil-doing in which we hold another in thought. In the same way when we hold a person in the thought of the right, the good, and the true, righteousness, goodness, and truth are suggested to him, and thus we have a most beneficent influence on his life and conduct. If our hearts go out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love, and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept–If you would have all the world love you, you must first love all the world.

In the degree that we love will we be loved. Thoughts are forces. Each creates of its kind. Each comes back laden with the effect that corresponds to itself and of which it is the cause.

“Then let your secret thoughts be fair– They have a vital part, and share In shaping words and moulding fate; God’s system is so intricate.”

I know of no better practice than that of a friend who continually holds himself in an attitude of mind that he continually sends out his love in the form of the thought,–“Dear everybody, I love you.” And when we realize the fact that a thought invariably produces its effect before it returns, or before it ceases, we can see how he is continually breathing out a blessing not only upon all with whom he comes in contact, but upon all the world. These same thoughts of love, moreover, tokened in various ways, are continually coming to him from all quarters.

Even animals feel the effects of these forces. Some animals are much more sensitively organized than many people are, and consequently they get the effects of our thoughts, our mental states, and emotions much more readily than many people do. Therefore whenever we meet an animal we can do it good by sending out to it these thoughts of love. It will feel the effects whether we simply entertain or whether we voice them. And it is often interesting to note how quickly it responds, and how readily it gives evidence of its appreciation of this love and consideration on our part.What a privilege and how enjoyable it would be to live and walk in a world where we meet only Gods. In such a world you can live. In such a world I can live. For in the degree that we come into this higher realization do we see only the God in each human soul; and when we are thus able to see Him in every one we meet, we then live in such a world.

And when we thus recognize the God in every one, we by this recognition help to call it forth ever more and more. What a privilege,–this privilege of yours, this privilege of mine! That hypocritical judging of another is something then with which we can have nothing to do; for we have the power of looking beyond the evolving, changing, error-making self, and seeing the real, the changeless, the eternal self which by and by will show forth in the full beauty of holiness. We are then large enough also to realize the fact that when we condemn another, by that very act we condemn ourselves.

This realization so fills us with love that we continually overflow it, and all with whom we come in contact feel its warming and life-giving power. These in turn send back the same feelings of love to us, and so we continually attract love from all quarters. Tell me how much one loves and I will tell you how much he has seen of God. Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how much he lives with God. Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how far into the Kingdom of Heaven,–the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, for “love is the fulfilling of the law.”

And in a sense love is everything. It is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world. Live only in the thought of love for all and you will draw love to you from all. Live in the thought of malice or hatred, and malice and hatred will come back to you.

“For evil poisons; malice shafts Like boomerangs return, Inflicting wounds that will not heal While rage and anger burn.”

Every thought you entertain is a force that goes out, and every thought comes back laden with its kind. This is an immutable law. Every thought you entertain has moreover a direct effect upon your body. Love and its kindred emotions are the normal and the natural, those in accordance with the eternal order of the universe, for “God is love.” These have a life-giving, health-engendering influence upon your body, besides beautifying your countenance, enriching your voice, and making you ever more attractive in every way. And as it is true that in the degree that you hold thoughts of love for all, you call the same from them in return, and as these have a direct effect upon your mind, and through your mind upon your body, it is as so much life force added to your own from without. You are then continually building this into both your mental and your physical life, and so your life is enriched by its influence.

Hatred and all its kindred emotions are the unnatural, the abnormal, the perversions, and so, out of harmony with the eternal order of the universe. For if love is the fulfilling of the law, then these, its opposites, are direct violations of law, and there can never be a violation of law without its attendant pain and suffering in one form or another. There is no escape from this. And what is the result of this particular form of violation? When you allow thoughts of anger, hatred, malice, jealousy, envy, criticism, or scorn to exercise sway, they have a corroding and poisoning effect upon the organism; they pull it down, and if allowed to continue will eventually tear it to pieces by externalizing themselves in the particular forms of disease they give rise to. And then in addition to the destructive influences from your own mind you are continually calling the same influences from other minds, and these come as destructive forces augmenting your own, thus aiding in the tearing down process.

And so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred. Love and good will stimulate and build up the body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it down. Love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor of death unto death.

“There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, There are souls that are pure and true; Then give to the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you.

“Give love, and love to _your_ heart will flow, A strength in your utmost need; Have faith, and a score of hearts will show Their faith in _your_ word and deed.”

I hear it said,–How in regard to one who bears me hatred, towards whom I have entertained no such thoughts and feelings, and so have not been the cause of his becoming my enemy? This may be true, but the chances are that you will have but few enemies if there is nothing of an antagonistic nature in your own mind and heart. Be sure there is nothing of this nature. But if hatred should come from another without apparent cause on your part, then meet it from first to last with thoughts of love and good-will. In this way you can, so to speak, so neutralize its effects that it cannot reach you and so cannot harm you. Love is positive, and stronger than hatred. Hatred can always be conquered by love.On the other hand, if you meet hatred with hatred, you simply intensify it. You add fuel to the flame already kindled, upon which it will feed and grow, and so you increase and intensify the evil conditions. Nothing is to be gained by it, everything is to be lost. By sending love for hatred you will be able so to neutralize it that it will not only have no effect upon you, but will not be able even to reach you. But more than this, you will by this course sooner or later be able literally to transmute the enemy into the friend. Meet hatred with hatred and you degrade yourself. Meet hatred with love and you elevate not only yourself but also the one who bears you hatred.

The Persian sage has said, “Always meet petulance with gentleness, and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even an elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness. Opposition to peace is sin.” The Buddhist says, “If a man foolishly does me wrong I will return him the protection of my ungrudging love. The more evil comes from him the more good shall go from me.” “The wise man avenges injuries by benefits,” says the Chinese. “Return good for evil, overcome anger by love; hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love,” says the Hindu.

The truly wise man or woman will recognize no one as an enemy. Occasionally we hear the expression, “Never mind; I’ll get even with him.” Will you? And how will you do it? You can do it in one of two ways. You can, as you have in mind, deal with him as he deals, or apparently deals, with you,–pay him, as we say, in his own coin. If you do this you will get even with him by sinking yourself to his level, and both of you will suffer by it. Or, you can show yourself the larger, you can send him love for hatred, kindness for ill-treatment, and so get even with him by raising him to the higher level. But remember that you can never help another without by that very act helping yourself; and if forgetful of self, then in most all cases the value to you is greater than the service you render another. If you are ready to treat him as he treats you, then you show clearly that there is in you that which draws the hatred and ill-treatment to you; you deserve what you are getting and should not complain, nor would you complain if you were wise. By following the other course you most effectually accomplish your purpose,–you gain a victory for yourself, and at the same time you do a great service for him, for which it is evident he stands greatly in need.

Thus you may become his saviour. He in turn may become the saviour of other error-making, and consequently care-encumbered men and women. Many times the struggles are greater than we can ever know. We need more gentleness and sympathy and compassion in our common human life. Then we will neither blame nor condemn. Instead of blaming or condemning we will sympathize, and all the more we will

“Comfort one another, For the way is often dreary, And the feet are often weary, And the heart is very sad. There is a heavy burden bearing, When it seems that none are caring, And we half forget that ever we were glad

“Comfort one another With the hand-clasp close and tender, With the sweetness love can render, And the looks of friendly eyes. Do not wait with grace unspoken, While life’s daily bread is broken– Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies.”

When we come fully to realize the great fact that all evil and error and sin with all their consequent sufferings come through ignorance, then wherever we see a manifestation of these in whatever form, if our hearts are right, we will have compassion, sympathy and compassion for the one in whom we see them. Compassion will then change itself into love, and love will manifest itself in kindly service. Such is the divine method. And so instead of aiding in trampling and keeping a weaker one down, we will hold him up until he can stand alone and become the master. But all life-growth is from within out, and one becomes a true master in the degree that the knowledge of the divinity of his own nature dawns upon his inner consciousness and so brings him to a knowledge of the higher laws; and in no way can we so effectually hasten this dawning in the inner consciousness of another, as by showing forth the divinity within ourselves simply by the way we live.

By example and not by precept. By living, not by preaching. By doing, not by professing. By living the life, not by dogmatizing as to how it should be lived. There is no contagion equal to the contagion of life. Whatever we sow, that shall we also reap, and each thing sown produces of its kind. We can kill not only by doing another bodily injury directly, but we can and we do kill by every antagonistic thought. Not only do we thus kill, but while we kill we suicide. Many a man has been made sick by having the ill thoughts of a number of people centred upon him; some have been actually killed. Put hatred into the world and we make it a literal hell. Put love into the world and heaven with all its beauties and glories becomes a reality.Not to love is not to live, or it is to live a living death. The life that goes out in love to all is the life that is full, and rich, and continually expanding in beauty and in power. Such is the life that becomes ever more inclusive, and hence larger in its scope and influence. The larger the man and the woman, the more inclusive they are in their love and their friendships. The smaller the man and the woman, the more dwarfed and dwindling their natures, the more they pride themselves upon their “exclusiveness.” Any one–a fool or an idiot–can be exclusive. It comes easy. It takes and it signifies a large nature to be universal, to be inclusive. Only the man or the woman of a small, personal, self-centred, self-seeking nature is exclusive. The man or the woman of a large, royal, unself-centred nature never is. The small nature is the one that continually strives for effect. The larger nature never does. The one goes here and there in order to gain recognition, in order to attach himself to the world. The other stays at home and draws the world _to him_. The one loves merely himself. The other loves all the world; but in his larger love for all the world he finds himself included.

Verily, then, the more one loves the nearer he approaches to God, for God is the spirit of infinite love. And when we come into the realization of our oneness with this Infinite Spirit, then divine love so fills us that, enriching and enrapturing our own lives, from them it flows out to enrich the life of all the world.

In coming into the realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, we are brought at once into right relations with our fellowmen. We are brought into harmony with the great law, that we find our own lives in losing them in the service of others. We are brought to a knowledge of the fact that all life is one, and so that we are all parts of the one great whole. We then realize that we can’t do for another without at the same time doing for ourselves. We also realize that we cannot do harm to another without by that very act doing harm to ourselves. We realize that the man who lives to himself alone lives a little, dwarfed, and stunted life, because he has no part in this larger life of humanity. But the one who in service loses his own life in this larger life, has his own life increased and enriched a thousand or a million fold, and every joy, every happiness, everything of value coming to each member of this greater whole comes as such to him, for he has a part in the life of each and all.

And here let a word be said in regard to true service. Peter and John were one day going up to the temple, and as they were entering the gate they were met by a poor cripple who asked them for alms. Instead of giving him something to supply the day’s needs and then leaving him in the same dependent condition for the morrow and the morrow, Peter did him a real service, and a real service for all mankind by saying, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto thee. _And then he made him whole_. He thus brought him into the condition where he could help himself. In other words, the greatest service we can do for another is to help him to help himself. To help him directly might be weakening, though not necessarily. It depends entirely upon circumstances. But to help one to help himself is never weakening, but always encouraging and strengthening, because it leads him to a larger and stronger life.

There is no better way to help one to help himself than to bring him to a knowledge of himself. There is no better way to bring one to a knowledge of himself than to lead him to a knowledge of the powers that are lying dormant within his own soul. There is nothing that will enable him to come more readily or more completely into an awakened knowledge of the powers that are lying dormant within his own soul, than to bring him into the conscious, vital realization of his oneness with the Infinite Life and Power, so that he may open himself to it in order that it may work and manifest through him.

We will find that these same great truths lie at the very bottom of the solution of our social situation; and we will also find that we will never have a full and permanent solution of it until they are fully recognized and built upon.WISDOM AND INTERIOR ILLUMINATION.

This is the Spirit of Infinite Wisdom, and in the degree that we open ourselves to it does the highest wisdom manifest itself to and through us. We can in this way go to the very heart of the universe itself and find the mysteries hidden to the majority of mankind,–hidden to them, though not hidden of themselves.

In order for the highest wisdom and insight we must have absolute confidence in the Divine guiding us, but not through the channel of some one else. And why should we go to another for knowledge and wisdom? With God is no respect of persons. Why should we seek these things second hand? Why should we thus stultify our own innate powers? Why should we not go direct to the Infinite Source itself? “If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God.” “Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”

When we thus go directly to the Infinite Source itself we are no longer slaves to personalities, institutions, or books. We should always keep ourselves open to suggestions of truth from these agencies. We should always regard them as agencies, however, and never as sources. We should never recognize them as masters, but simply as teachers. With Browning, we must recognize the great fact that–

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate’er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fullness.”

There is no more important injunction in all the world, nor one with a deeper interior meaning, than “To thine own self be true.” In other words, be true to your own soul, for it is through your own soul that the voice of God speaks to you. This is the interior guide. This is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. This is conscience. This is intuition. This is the voice of the higher self, the voice of the soul, the voice of God. “Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, saying: This is the way, walk ye in it.”

When Moses was on the mountain it was after the various physical commotions and manifestations that he heard the “still, small voice,” the voice of his own soul, through which the Infinite God was speaking. If we will but follow this voice of intuition, it will speak ever more clearly and more plainly, until by and by it will be absolute and unerring in its guidance. The great trouble with us is that we do not listen to and do not follow this voice within our own souls, and so we become as a house divided against itself. We are pulled this way and that, and we are never _certain_ of anything. I have a friend who listens so carefully to this inner voice, who, in other words, always acts so quickly and so fully in accordance with his intuitions, and whose life as a consequence is so absolutely guided by them, that he always does the right thing at the right time and in the right way. He always knows when to act and how to act, and he is never in the condition of a house divided against itself.

But some one says, “May it not be dangerous for us to act always upon our intuitions? Suppose we should have an intuition to do harm to some one?” We need not be afraid of this, however, for the voice of the soul, this voice of God speaking through the soul, will never direct one to do harm to another, nor to do anything that is not in accordance with the highest standards of right, and truth, and justice. And if you at any time have a prompting of this kind, know that it is not the voice of intuition; it is some characteristic of your lower self that is prompting you.

Reason is not to be set aside, but it is to be continually illumined by this higher spiritual perception, and in the degree that it is thus illumined will it become an agent of light and power. When one becomes thoroughly individualized he enters into the realm of all knowledge and wisdom; and to be individualized is to recognize no power outside of the Infinite Power that is back of all. When one recognizes this great fact and opens himself to this Spirit of Infinite Wisdom, he then enters upon the road to the true education, and mysteries that before were closed now reveal themselves to him. This must indeed be the foundation of all true education, this evolving from within, this evolving of what has been involved by the Infinite Power.

All things that it is valuable for us to know will come to us if we will but open ourselves to the voice of this Infinite Spirit. It is thus that we become seers and have the power of seeing into the very heart of things. There are no new stars, there are no new laws or forces, but we can so open ourselves to this Spirit of Infinite Wisdom that we can discover and recognize those that have not been known before; and in this way they become new to us. When in this way we come into a knowledge of truth we no longer need facts that are continually changing. We can then enter into the quiet of our own interior selves. We can open the window and look out, and thus gather the facts as we choose. This is true wisdom. “Wisdom is the knowledge of God.” Wisdom comes by intuition. It far transcends knowledge. Great knowledge, knowledge of many things, may be had by virtue simply of a very retentive memory. It comes by tuition. But wisdom far transcends knowledge, in that knowledge is a mere incident of this deeper wisdom.

He who would enter into the realm of wisdom must first divest himself of all intellectual pride. He must become as a little child. Prejudices, preconceived opinions and beliefs always stand in the way of true wisdom. Conceited opinions are always suicidal in their influences. They bar the door to the entrance of truth.All about us we see men in the religious world, in the world of science, in the political, in the social world, who through intellectual pride are so wrapped in their own conceits and prejudices that larger and later revelations of truth can find no entrance to them; and instead of growing and expanding, they are becoming dwarfed and stunted, and still more incapable of receiving truth. Instead of actively aiding in the progress of the world, they are as so many dead sticks in the way that would retard the wheels of progress. This, however, they can never do. Such always in time get bruised, broken, and left behind, while God’s triumphal car of truth moves steadily onward.

When the steam engine was still being experimented with, and before it was perfected sufficiently to come into practical use, a well-known Englishman–well known then in scientific circles–wrote an extended pamphlet proving that it would be impossible for it ever to be used in ocean navigation, that is, in a trip involving the crossing of the ocean, because it would be utterly impossible for any vessel to carry with it sufficient coal for the use of its furnace. And the interesting feature of the whole matter was that the very first steam vessel that made the trip from England to America, had among its cargo a part of the first edition of this carefully prepared pamphlet. There was only the one edition. Many editions might be sold now.

This seems indeed an amusing fact; but far more amusing is the man who voluntarily closes himself to truth because, forsooth, it does not come through conventional, or orthodox, or heretofore accepted channels; or because it may not be in full accord with, or possibly may be opposed to, established usages or beliefs. On the contrary–

“Let there be many windows in your soul, That all the glory of the universe May beautify it. Not the narrow pane Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays That shine from countless sources. Tear away The blinds of superstition: let the light Pour through fair windows, broad as truth itself And high as heaven. . . . Tune your ear To all the worldless music of the stars And to the voice of nature, and your heart Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights, And all the forces of the firmament Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.”

There is a great law in connection with the coming of truth. It is this: Whenever a man or a woman shuts himself or herself to the entrance of truth on account of intellectual pride, preconceived opinions, prejudices, or for whatever reason, there is a great law which says that truth _in its fullness_ will come to that one from no source. And on the other hand, when a man or a woman opens himself or herself fully to the entrance of truth from _whatever_ source it may come, there is an equally great law which says that truth will flow in to him or to her from all sources, from all quarters. Such becomes the free man, the free woman, for it is the truth that makes us free. The other remains in bondage, for truth has had no invitation and will not enter where it is not fully and freely welcomed.

And where truth is denied entrance the rich blessings it carries with it cannot take up their abode. On the contrary, when this is the case, it sends an envoy carrying with it atrophy, disease, death, physically and spiritually as well as intellectually. And the man who would rob another of his free and unfettered search for truth, who would stand as the interpreter of truth for another, with the intent of remaining in this position, rather than endeavoring to lead him to the place where he can be his own interpreter, is more to be shunned than a thief and a robber. The injury he works is far greater, for he is doing direct and positive injury to the very life of the one he thus holds.

Who has ever appointed any man, whoever he may be, as the keeper, the custodian, the dispenser of God’s illimitable truth? Many indeed are moved and so are called to be teachers of truth; but the true teacher will never stand as the interpreter of truth for another. The _true teacher_ is the one whose endeavor is to bring the one he teaches to a true knowledge of himself and hence of his own interior powers, that he may become his own interpreter. All others are, generally speaking, those animated by purely personal motives, self-aggrandizement, or personal gain. Moreover, he who would claim to have all truth and the only truth, is a bigot, a fool, or a knave.

In the Eastern literature is a fable of a frog. The frog lived in a well, and out of his little well he had never been. One day a frog whose home was in the sea came to his well. Interested in all things, he went in. “Who are you? Where do you live?” said the frog in the well. “I am so and so, and my home is in the sea.” “The sea? What is that? Where is that?” “It is a very large body of water, and not far away.” “How big is your sea?” “Oh, very big.” “As big as this?” pointing to a little stone lying near. “Oh, much bigger.” “As big as this?” pointing to the board upon which they were sitting. “Oh, much bigger.” “How much bigger, then?” “Why, the sea in which I live is bigger than your entire well; it would make millions of wells such as yours.” “Nonsense, nonsense; you are a deceiver and a falsifier. Get out of my well. Get out of my well. I want nothing to do with any such frogs as you.”“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” is the promise. Ye shall close yourselves to truth, ye shall live in your own conceits, and your own conceits shall make fools and idiots of you, would be a statement applicable to not a few, and to not a few who pride themselves upon their superior intellectual attainments. Idiocy is arrested mental growth. Closing one’s self for whatever reason to truth and hence to growth, brings a certain type of idiocy, though it may not be called by this name. And on the other hand, another type is that arrested growth caused by taking all things for granted, without proving them for one’s self, merely because they come from a particular person, a particular book, a particular institution. This is caused by one’s always looking without instead of being true to the light within, and carefully tending it that it may give an ever-clearer light.

With brave and intrepid Walt Whitman, we should all be able to say–

“From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.”

Great should be the joy that God’s boundless truth is open to all, open _equally_ to all, and that it will make each one its dwelling place in proportion as he earnestly desires it and opens himself to it.

And in regard to the wisdom that guides us in our daily life, there is nothing that it is right and well for us to know that may not be known when we recognize the law of its coming, and are able wisely to use it. Let us know that all things are ours as soon as we know how to appropriate them.

“I hold it as a changeless law, From which no soul can sway or swerve, We have that in us which will draw Whate’er we need or most deserve.”

If the times come when we know not what course to pursue, when we know not which way to turn, the fault lies in ourselves. If the fault lies in ourselves then the correction of this unnatural condition lies also in ourselves. It is never necessary to come into such a state if we are awake and remain awake to the light and the powers within us. The light is ever shining, and the only thing that it is necessary for us diligently to see to is that we permit neither this thing nor that to come between us and the light. “With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light.”

Let us hear the words of one of the most highly illumined men I have ever known, and one who as a consequence is never in the dark, when the time comes, as to what to do and how to do it. “Whenever you are in doubt as to the course you should pursue, after you have turned to every outward means of guidance, _let the inward eye see, let the inward ear hear_, and allow this simple, natural, beautiful process to go on unimpeded by questionings or doubts. . . . In all dark hours and times of unwonted perplexity we need to follow one simple direction, found, as all needed directions can be found, in the dear old gospel, which so many read, but alas, _so few interpret_. ‘Enter into thine inner chamber and shut the door.’ Does this mean that we must literally betake ourselves to a private closet with a key in the door? If it did, then the command could never be obeyed in the open air, on land or sea, and the Christ loved the lakes and the forests far better than the cramping rooms of city dwelling houses; still his counsels are so wide-reaching that there is no spot on earth and no conceivable situation in which any of us may be placed where we cannot follow them.

“One of the most intuitive men we ever met had a desk in a city office where several other gentlemen were doing business constantly and often talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many various sounds about him, this self-centred, faithful man would, in any moment of perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about him that he would be as fully enclosed in his own psychic aura, and thereby as effectually removed from all distractions as though he were alone in some primeval wood. Taking his difficulty with him into the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which he expected a certain answer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came, and never once through many years’ experience did he find himself disappointed or misled. Intuitive perceptions of truth are the daily bread to satisfy our daily hunger; they come like the manna in the desert day by day; each day brings adequate supply for that day’s need only. They must be followed instantly, for dalliance with them means their obscuration, and the more we dally the more we invite erroneous impressions to cover intuition with a pall of conflicting moral phantasy born of illusions of the terrence will.

“One condition is imposed by _universal law_, and this we must obey. Put all wishes aside save the one desire to know _truth_; couple with this one demand the fully consecrated determination to follow what is distinctly perceived as truth immediately it is revealed. No other affection must be permitted to share the field with this all-absorbing love of _truth_ for its own sake. Obey this one direction and never forget that expectation and desire are bride and bridegroom and forever inseparable, and you will soon find your hitherto darkened way grow luminous with celestial radiance, for with the heaven within, all heavens without incessantly co-operate.” This may be termed going into the “silence.” This it is to perceive and to be guided by the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. This it is to listen to and be guided by the voice of your own soul, the voice of your higher self.The soul is divine and in allowing it to become translucent to the Infinite Spirit it reveals all things to us. As man turns away from the Divine Light do all things become hidden. There is nothing hidden of itself. When the spiritual sense is opened, then it transcends all the limitations of the physical senses and the intellect. And in the degree that we are able to get away from the limitations set by them, and realize that so far as the real life is concerned it is one with the Infinite Life, then we begin to reach the place where this voice will always speak, where it will never fail us, if we follow it, and as a consequence where we will always have the divine illumination and guidance. To know this and to live in this realization is not to live in heaven hereafter, but to live in heaven here and now, _today and every day_.

No human soul need be without it. When we turn our face in the right direction it comes as simply and as naturally as the flower blooms and the winds blow. It is not to be bought with money or with price. It is a condition waiting simply to be realized, by rich and by poor, by king and by peasant, by master and by servant the world over. All are equal heirs to it. And so the peasant, if he find it first, lives a life far transcending in beauty and in real power the life of his king. The servant, if he find it first, lives a life surpassing the life of his master.

If you would find the highest, the fullest, and the richest life that not only this world but that any world can know, then do away with the sense of the separateness of your life from the life of God. Hold to the thought of your oneness. In the degree that you do this you will find yourself realizing it more and more, and as this life of realization is lived, you will find that no good thing will be withheld, for all things are included in this. Then it will be yours, without fears or forebodings, simply to do today what your hands find to do, and so be ready for tomorrow, _when it comes_, knowing that tomorrow will bring tomorrow’s supplies for the mental, the spiritual, and the physical life. Remember, however, that tomorrow’s supplies are not needed until tomorrow comes.

If one is willing to trust himself _fully_ to the Law, the Law will never fail him. It is the half-hearted trusting to it that brings uncertain, and so, unsatisfactory results. Nothing is firmer and surer than Deity. It will never fail the one who throws himself wholly upon it. The secret of life then, is to live continually in this realization, whatever one may be doing, wherever one may be, by day and by night, both waking and sleeping. It can be lived in while we are sleeping no less than when we are awake. And here shall we consider a few facts in connection with sleep, in connection with receiving instruction and illumination while asleep?

During the process of sleep it is merely the physical body that is at rest and in quiet; the soul life with all its activities goes right on. Sleep is nature’s provision for the recuperation of the body, for the rebuilding and hence the replacing of the waste that is continually going on during the waking hours. It is nature’s great restorer. If sufficient sleep is not allowed the body, so that the rebuilding may equalize the wasting process, the body is gradually depleted and weakened, and any ailment or malady, when it is in this condition, is able to find a more ready entrance. It is for this reason that those who are subject to it will take a cold, as we term it, more readily when the body is tired or exhausted through loss of sleep than at most any other time. The body is in that condition where outside influences can have a more ready effect upon it, than when it is in its normal condition. And when they do have an effect they always go to the weaker portions first.

Our bodies are given us to serve far higher purposes than we ordinarily use them for. Especially is this true in the numerous cases where the body is master of its owner. In the degree that we come into the realization of the higher powers of the mind and spirit, in that degree does the body, through their influence upon it, become less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form. And then, because the mind finds a kingdom of enjoyment in itself, and in all the higher things it becomes related to, _excesses_ in eating and drinking, as well as all others, naturally and of their own accord fall away. There also falls away the desire for the heavier, grosser, less valuable kinds of food and drink, such as the flesh of animals, alcoholic drinks, and all things of the class that stimulate the body and the passions rather than build the body and the brain into a strong, clean, well-nourished, enduring, and fibrous condition. In the degree that the body thus becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, is there less waste, and what there is is more easily replaced, so that it keeps in a more regular and even condition. When this is true, less sleep is actually required. And even the amount that is taken does more for a body of this finer type than it can do for one of the other nature.

As the body in this way grows finer, in other words, as the process of its evolution is thus accelerated, it in turn helps the mind and the soul in the realization of ever higher perceptions, and thus body helps mind the same as mind builds body. It was undoubtedly this fact that Browning had in mind when he said:

“Let us cry ‘All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh, more now, Than flesh helps soul.'”Sleep, then, is for the resting and the rebuilding of the body. The soul needs no rest, and while the body is at rest in sleep the soul life is active the same as when the body is in activity.

There are some, having a deep insight into the soul’s activities, who say that we travel when we sleep. Some are able to recall and bring over into the conscious, waking life the scenes visited, the information gained, and the events that have transpired. Most people are not able to do this and so much that might otherwise be gained is lost. They say, however, that it is in our power, in proportion as we understand the laws, to go where we will, and to bring over into the conscious, waking life all the experiences thus gained. Be this, however, as it may, it certainly is true that while sleeping we have the power, in a perfectly normal and natural way, to get much of value by way of light, instruction, and growth that the majority of people now miss.

If the soul life, that which relates us to Infinite Spirit, is always active, even while the body is at rest, why may not the mind so direct conditions as one falls asleep, that while the body is at rest, it may continually receive illumination from the soul and bring what it thus receives over into the conscious, waking life? This, indeed, can be done, and is done by some to great advantage; and many times the highest inspirations from the soul come in this way, as would seem most natural, since at this time all communications from the outer, material world no longer enter. I know those who do much work during sleep, the same as they get much light along desired lines. By charging the mind on going to sleep as to a particular time for waking, it is possible, as many of us know, to wake on the very minute. Not infrequently we have examples of difficult problems, problems that defied solution during waking hours, being solved during sleep.

A friend, a well-known journalist, had an extended newspaper article clearly and completely worked out for her in this way. She frequently calls this agency to her aid. She was notified by the managing editor one evening to have the article ready in the morning,–an article requiring more than ordinary care, and one in which quite a knowledge of facts was required. It was a matter in connection with which she knew scarcely anything, and all her efforts at finding information regarding it seemed to be of no avail.

She set to work, but it seemed as if even her own powers defied her. Failure seemed imminent. Almost in desperation she decided to retire, and putting the matter into her mind in such a way that she would be able to receive the greatest amount of aid while asleep, she fell asleep and slept soundly until morning. When she awoke her work of the previous evening was the first thing that came into her mind. She lay quietly for a few minutes, and as she lay there, the article, completely written, seemed to stand before her mind. She ran through it, arose, and without dressing took her pen and transcribed it on to paper, literally acting simply as her own amanuensis.

The mind acting intently along a particular line will continue so to act until some other object of thought carries it along another line. And since in sleep only the body is in quiet while the mind and soul are active, then the mind on being given a certain direction when one drops off to sleep, will take up the line along which it is directed, and can be made, in time, to bring over into consciousness the results of its activities. Some will be able very soon to get results of this kind; for some it will take longer. Quiet and continued effort will increase the faculty.

Then by virtue of the law of the drawing power of mind, since the mind is always active, we are drawing to us even while sleeping, influences from the realms kindred to those in which we in our thoughts are living before we fall asleep. In this way we can put ourselves into relation with what ever kinds of influence we choose and accordingly gain much during the process of sleep. In many ways the interior faculties are more open and receptive while we are in sleep than while we are awake. Hence the necessity of exercising even greater care as to the nature of the thoughts that occupy the mind as we enter into sleep, for there can come to us only what we by our own order of thought attract. We have it entirely in our own hands.

And for the same reason,–this greater degree of receptivity during this period,–we are able by understanding and using the law, to gain much of value more readily in this way than when the physical senses are fully open to the material world about us. Many will find a practice somewhat after the following nature of value: When light or information is desired along any particular line, light or information you feel it is right and wise for you to have, as, for example, light in regard to an uncertain course of action, then as you retire, first bring your mind into the attitude of peace and good-will for all. You in this way bring yourself into an harmonious condition, and in turn attract to yourself these same peaceful conditions from without.Then resting in this sense of peace, quietly and calmly send out your earnest desire for the needed light or information; cast out of your mind all fears or forebodings lest it come not, for “in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.” Take the expectant attitude of mind, firmly believing and expecting that when you awake the desired results will be with you. Then on awaking, before any thoughts or activities from the outside world come in to absorb the attention, remain for a little while receptive to the intuitions or the impressions that come. When they come, when they manifest themselves clearly, then act upon them without delay. In the degree that you do this, in that degree will the power of doing it ever more effectively grow.

Or, if for unselfish purposes you desire to grow and develop any of your faculties, or to increase the health and strength of your body, take a corresponding attitude of mind, the form of which will readily suggest itself in accordance with your particular needs or desires. In this way you will open yourself to, you will connect yourself with, and you will set into operation within yourself, the particular order of forces that will make for these results. Don’t be afraid to voice your desires. In this way you set into operation vibratory forces which go out and which make their impress felt somewhere, and which, arousing into activity or uniting with other forces, set about to actualize your desires. No good thing shall be withheld from him who lives in harmony with the higher laws and forces. There are no desires that shall not be satisfied to the one who knows and who wisely uses the powers with which he or she is endowed.

Your sleep will be more quiet, and peaceful, and refreshing, and so your power increased mentally, physically, and spiritually, simply by sending out as you fall asleep, thoughts of love and good-will, thoughts of peace and harmony for all. In this way you are connecting yourself with all the forces in the universe that make for peace and harmony.

A friend who is known the world over through his work along humane lines, has told me that many times in the middle of the night he is awakened suddenly and there comes to his mind, as a flash of inspiration, a certain plan in connection with his work. And as he lays there quietly and opens himself to it, the methods for its successful carrying out all reveal themselves to him clearly. In this way many plans are entered upon and brought to a successful culmination that otherwise would never be thought of, plans that seem, indeed, marvelous to the world at large. He is a man with a sensitive organism, his life in thorough harmony with the higher laws, and given wholly and unreservedly to the work to which he has dedicated it. Just how and from what source these inspirations come he does not fully know. Possibly no one does, though each may have his theory. But this we do know, and it is all we need to know now, at least,–that to the one who lives in harmony with the higher laws of his being, and who opens himself to them, they come.

Visions and inspirations of the highest order will come in the degree that we make for them the right conditions. One who has studied deeply into the subject in hand has said: “To receive education spiritually while the body is resting in sleep is a perfectly normal and orderly experience, and would occur definitely and satisfactorily in the lives of all of us, if we paid more attention to internal and consequently less to external states with their supposed but unreal necessities. . . . Our thoughts make us what we are here and hereafter, and our thoughts are often busier by night than by day, for when we are asleep to the exterior we can be wide awake to the interior world; and the unseen world is a substantial place, the conditions of which are entirely regulated by mental and moral attainments. When we are not deriving information through outward avenues of sensation, we are receiving instruction through interior channels of perception, and when this fact is understood for what it is worth, it will become a universal custom for persons to take to sleep with them the special subject on which they most earnestly desire particular instruction. The Pharaoh type of person dreams, and so does his butler and baker; but the Joseph type, which is that of the truly gifted seer, both dreams and interprets.”

But why had not Pharaoh the power of interpreting his dreams? Why was Joseph the type of the “truly gifted seer?” Why did he not only dream, but had also the power to interpret both his own dreams and the dreams of others? Simply read the lives of the two. He who runs may read. In all true power it is, after all, living the life that tells. And in proportion as one lives the life does he not only attain to the highest power and joy for himself, but he also becomes of ever greater service to all the world. One need remain in no hell longer than he himself chooses to; and the moment he chooses not to remain longer, not all the powers in the universe can prevent his leaving it. One can rise to any heaven he himself chooses; and when he chooses so to rise, all the higher powers of the universe combine to help him heavenward.

When one awakes from sleep and so returns to conscious life, he is in a peculiarly receptive and impressionable state. All relations with the material world have for a time been shut off, the mind is in a freer and more natural state, resembling somewhat a sensitive plate, where impressions can readily leave their traces. This is why many times the highest and truest impressions come to one in the early morning hours, before the activities of the day and their attendant distractions have exerted an influence. This is one reason why many people can do their best work in the early hours of the day.But this fact is also a most valuable one in connection with the moulding of every-day life. The mind is at this time as a clean sheet of paper. We can most valuably use this quiet, receptive, impressionable period by wisely directing the activities of the mind along the highest and most desirable paths, and thus, so to speak, set the pace for the day.

Each morning is a fresh beginning. We are, as it were, just beginning life. We have it _entirely_ in our own hands. And when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today. And, again, when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow.

“Every day is a fresh beginning, Every morn is the world made new; You who are weary of sorrow and sinning, Here is a beautiful hope for you, A hope for me and a hope for you.

“All the past things are past and over, The tasks are done, and the tears are shed. Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover; Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled, Are healed with the healing which might has shed.

* * * * * *

“Let them go, since we cannot relieve them, Cannot undo and cannot atone. God in His mercy receive, forgive them! Only the new days are our own. Today is ours, and today alone.

“Here are the skies all burnished brightly; Here is the spent earth all reborn; Here are the tired limbs springing lightly To face the sun and to share with the morn In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

“Every day is a fresh beginning, Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning, And puzzles forecasted, and possible pain, Take heart with the day and begin again.”

Simply the first hour of this new day, with all its richness and glory, with all its sublime and eternity-determining possibilities, and each succeeding hour as it comes, but _not before_ it comes. This is the secret of character building. This simple method will bring any one to the realization of the highest life that can be even conceived of, and there is nothing in this connection that can be conceived of that cannot be realized somehow, somewhen, somewhere.

This brings such a life within the possibilities of _all_, for there is _no one_, if really in earnest and if he really desires it, who cannot live to his highest for a single hour. But even though there should be, if he is _only earnest in his endeavor_, then, through the law that like builds like, he will be able to come a little nearer to it the next hour, and still nearer the next, and the next, until sooner or later comes the time when it becomes the natural, and any other would require the effort.

In this way one becomes in love and in league with the highest and best in the universe, and as a consequence, the highest and best in the universe becomes in love and in league with him. They aid him at every turn; they seem literally to move all things his way, because forsooth, he has first moved their way.THE REALIZATION OF PERFECT PEACE.

This is the Spirit of Infinite Peace, and the moment we come into harmony with it there comes to us an inflowing tide of peace, for peace is harmony. A deep interior meaning underlies the great truth, “To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” To recognize the fact that we are spirit, and to live in this thought, is to be spiritually minded, and so to be in harmony and peace. Oh, the thousands of men and women all about us weary with care, troubled and ill at ease, running hither and thither to find peace, weary in body, soul, and mind; going to other countries, traveling the world over, coming back, and still not finding it. Of course they have not found it and they never will find it in this way, because they are looking for it where it is not. They are looking for it without when they should look within. Peace is to be found only within, and unless one find it there he will never find it at all.

Peace lies not in the external world. It lies within one’s own soul. We may travel over many different avenues in pursuit of it, we may seek it through the channels of the bodily appetites and passions, we may seek it through all the channels of the external, we may chase for it hither and thither, but it will always be just beyond our grasp, because we are searching for it where it is not. In the degree, however, that we order the bodily appetites and passions in accordance with the promptings of the soul within will the higher forms of happiness and peace enter our lives; but in the degree that we fail in doing this will disease, suffering, and discontent enter in.

To be at one with God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father’s life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy. I have particularly in mind at this moment a comparatively young man who was an invalid for several years, his health completely broken with nervous exhaustion, who thought there was nothing in life worth living for, to whom everything and everybody presented a gloomy aspect, and he in turn presented a gloomy aspect to all with whom he came in contact. Not long ago he came into such a vital realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power, he opened himself so completely to its divine inflow, that today he is in perfect health, and frequently as I meet him now he cannot resist the impulse to cry out, “Oh, it is a joy to be alive.”

I know an officer on our police force who has told me that many times when off duty and on his way home in the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and vital realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power, and this Spirit of Infinite Peace so takes hold of and so fills him, that it seems as if his feet could scarcely keep to the pavement, so buoyant and so exhilarated does he become by reason of this inflowing tide.

He who comes into this higher realization never has any fear, for he has always with him a sense of protection, and the very realization of this makes his protection complete. Of him it is true,–“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;” “There shall no ill come nigh thy dwelling;” “Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.”

These are the men and the women who seem to live charmed lives. The moment we fear anything we open the door for the entrance of the actualization of the very thing we fear. An animal will never harm a person who is absolutely fearless in regard to it. The instant he fears he opens himself to danger; and some animals, the dog for example, can instantly detect the element of fear, and this gives them the courage to do harm. In the degree that we come into a full realization of our oneness with this Infinite Power do we become calm and quiet, undisturbed by the little occurrences that before so vex and annoy us. We are no longer disappointed in people, for we always read them aright. We have the power of penetrating into their very souls and seeing the underlying motives that are at work there.

A gentleman approached a friend the other day, and with great show of cordiality grasped him by the hand and said, “Why, Mr. ——, I am so glad to see you.” Quick as a flash my friend read him, and looking him steadily in the eye, replied, “No, you are mistaken, you are not glad to see me; but you are very much disconcerted, so much so that you are now blushing in evidence of it.” The gentleman replied, “Well, you know in this day and age of conventionality and form we have to put on the show and sometimes make believe what we do not really feel.” My friend once more looked him in the face and said, “Again you are mistaken. Let me give you one little word of advice: You will always fare better and will think far more of yourself, always to recognize and to tell the truth rather than to give yourself to any semblance of it.”As soon as we are able to read people aright we will then cease to be disappointed in them, we will cease to place them on pedestals, for this can never be done without some attendant disappointment. The fall will necessarily come, sooner or later, and moreover, we are thus many times unfair to our friends. When we come into harmony with this Spirit of Peace, evil reports and apparent bad treatment, either at the hands of friends or of enemies, will no longer disturb us. When we are conscious of the fact that in our life and our work we are true to that eternal principle of right, of truth, of justice that runs through all the universe, that unites and governs all, that always eventually prevails, then nothing of this kind can come nigh us, and come what may we will always be tranquil and undisturbed.

The things that cause sorrow, and pain, and bereavement will not be able to take the hold of us they now take, for true wisdom will enable us to see the proper place and know the right relations of all things. The loss of friends by the transition we call death will not cause sorrow to the soul that has come into this higher realization, for he knows that there is no such thing as death, for each one is not only a partaker, but an eternal partaker, of this Infinite Life. He knows that the mere falling away of the physical body by no means affects the real soul life. With a tranquil spirit born of a higher faith he can realize for himself, and to those less strong he can say–

“Loving friends! be wise and dry Straightway every weeping eye; What you left upon the bier Is not worth a single tear; ‘Tis a simple sea-shell, one Out of which the pearl has gone. The shell was nothing, leave it there; The pearl–the soul–was all, is here.”

And so far as the element of separation is concerned, he realizes that to spirit there are no bounds, and that spiritual communion, whether between two persons in the body, or two persons, one in the body and one out of the body, is within the reach of all. In the degree that the higher spiritual life is realized can there be this higher spiritual communion.

The things that we open ourselves to always come to us. People in the olden times expected to see angels and they saw them; but there is no more reason why they should have seen them than that we should see them now; no more reason why they should come and dwell with them than that they should come and dwell with us, for the great laws governing all things are the same today as they were then. If angels come not to minister unto us it is because we do not invite them, it is because we keep the door closed through which they otherwise might enter.

In the degree that we are filled with this Spirit of Peace by thus opening ourselves to its inflow does it pour through us, so that we carry it with us wherever we go. In the degree that we thus open ourselves do we become magnets to attract peace from all sources; and in the degree that we attract and embody it in ourselves are we able to give it forth to others. We can in this way become such perfect embodiments of peace that wherever we go we are continually shedding benedictions. But a day or two ago I saw a woman grasp the hand of a man (his face showed the indwelling God), saying, “Oh, it does me so much good to see you. I have been in anxiety and almost in despair during the past few hours, but the very sight of you has rolled the burden entirely away.” There are people all around us who are continually giving out blessings and comfort, persons whose mere presence seems to change sorrow into joy, fear into courage, despair into hope, weakness into power.

It is the one who has come into the realization of his own true self who carries this power with him and who radiates it wherever he goes,–the one who, as we say, has found his centre. And in all the great universe there is but one centre,–the Infinite Power that is working in and through all. The one who then has found his centre is the one who has come into the realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power, the one who recognizes himself as a spiritual being, for God is spirit.

Such is the man of power. Centred in the Infinite, he has thereby, so to speak, connected himself with, he has attached his belts to, the great power-house of the universe. He is constantly drawing power to himself from all sources. For, thus centred, knowing himself, conscious of his own power, the thoughts that go from his mind are thoughts of strength; and by virtue of the law that like attracts like, he by his thoughts is continually attracting to himself from all quarters the aid of all whose thoughts are thoughts of strength, and in this way he is linking himself with this order of thought in the universe.

And so to him that hath, to him shall be given. This is simply the working of a natural law. His strong, positive, and hence constructive thought is continually working success for him along all lines, and continually bringing to him help from all directions. The things that he sees, that he creates in the ideal, are through the agency of this strong constructive thought continually clothing themselves, taking form, manifesting themselves in the material. Silent, unseen forces are at work which will sooner or later be made manifest in the visible.Fear and all thoughts of failure never suggest themselves to such a man; or if they do, they are immediately sent out of his mind, and so he is not influenced by this order of thought from without. He does not attract it to him. He is in another current of thought. Consequently the weakening, failure-bringing thoughts of the fearing, the vacillating, the pessimistic about him, have no influence upon him. The one who is of the negative, fearing kind not only has his energies and his physical agents weakened, or even paralyzed through the influence of this kind of thought that is born within him, but he also in this way connects himself with this order of thought in the world about him. And in the degree that he does this does he become a victim to the weak, fearing, negative minds all around him. Instead of growing in power, he increases in weakness. He is in the same order of thought with those of whom it is true,–and even that which they have shall be taken away from them. This again is simply the working of a natural law, the same as is its opposite. Fearing lest I lose even what I have I hide it away in a napkin. Very well. I must then pay the price of my “fearing lest I lose.”

Thoughts of strength both build strength from within and attract it from without. Thoughts of weakness actualize weakness from within and attract it from without. Courage begets strength, fear begets weakness. And so courage begets success, fear begets failure. It is the man or the woman of faith, and hence of courage, who is the master of circumstances, and who makes his or her power felt in the world. It is the man or the woman who lacks faith and who as a consequence is weakened and crippled by fears and forebodings, who is the creature of all passing occurrences.

Within each one lies the cause of whatever comes to him. Each has it in his own hands to determine what comes. Everything in the visible, material world has its origin in the unseen, the spiritual, the thought world. This is the world of cause, the former is the world of effect. The nature of the effect is always in accordance with the nature of the cause. What one lives in his invisible, thought world, he is continually actualizing in his visible, material world. If he would have any conditions different in the latter he must make the necessary change in the former. A clear realization of this great fact would bring success to thousands of men and women who all about us are now in the depths of despair. It would bring health, abounding health and strength to thousands now diseased and suffering. It would bring peace and joy to thousands now unhappy and ill at ease.

And oh, the thousands all about us who are continually living in the slavery of fear. The spirits within that should be strong and powerful, are rendered weak and impotent. Their energies are crippled, their efforts are paralyzed. “Fear is everywhere,–fear of want, fear of starvation, fear of public opinion, fear of private opinion, fear that what we own today may not be ours tomorrow, fear of sickness, fear of death. Fear has become with millions a fixed habit. The thought is everywhere. The thought is thrown upon us from every direction. . . . To live in continual dread, continual cringing, continual fear of anything, be it loss of love, loss of money, loss of position or situation, is to take the readiest means to lose what we fear we shall.”

By fear nothing is to be gained, but on the contrary, everything is to be lost. “I know this is true,” says one, “but I am given to fear; it’s natural to me and I can’t help it.” Can’t help it! In saying this you indicate one great reason of your fear by showing that you do not even know yourself as yet. You must know yourself in order to know your powers, and not until you know them can you use them wisely and fully. Don’t say you can’t help it. If you think you can’t, the chances are that you can’t. If you think you can, and act in accordance with this thought, then not only are the chances that you can, but if you act fully in accordance with it, that you can and that you will is an absolute certainty. It was Virgil who in describing the crew which in his mind would win the race, said of them,–They can because they think they can. In other words, this very attitude of mind on their part will infuse a spiritual power into their bodies that will give them the strength and endurance which will enable them to win.

Then take the thought that you _can_; take it merely as a seed-thought, if need be, plant it in your consciousness, tend it, cultivate it, and it will gradually reach out and gather strength from all quarters. It will focus and make positive and active the spiritual force within you that is now scattered and of little avail. It will draw to itself force from without. It will draw to your aid the influence of other minds of its own nature, minds that are fearless, strong, courageous. You will thus draw to yourself and connect yourself with this order of thought. If earnest and faithful, the time will soon come when all fear will loose its hold; and instead of being an embodiment of weakness and a creature of circumstances, you will find yourself a tower of strength and a master of circumstances.We need more faith in every-day life,–faith in the power that works for good, faith in the Infinite God, and hence faith in ourselves created in His image. And however things at times may seem to go, however dark at times appearances may be, the knowledge of the fact that “the Supreme Power has us in its charge as it has the suns and endless systems of worlds in space,” will give us the supreme faith that all is well with us, the same as all is well with the world. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”

There is nothing firmer, and safer, and surer than Deity. Then, as we recognize the fact that we have it in our own hands to open ourselves ever more fully to this Infinite Power, and call upon it to manifest itself in and through us, we will find in ourselves an ever increasing sense of power. For in this way we are working in conjunction with it, and it in turn is working in conjunction with us. We are then led into the full realization of the fact that all things work together for good to those that love the good. Then the fears and forebodings that have dominated us in the past will be transmuted into faith, and faith when rightly understood and rightly used is a force before which nothing can stand.

Materialism leads naturally to pessimism. And how could it do otherwise? A knowledge of the Spiritual Power working in and through us as well as in and through all things, a power that works for righteousness, leads to optimism. Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power. The one who is centred in Deity is the one who not only outrides every storm, but who through the faith, and so, the conscious power that is in him, faces storm with the same calmness and serenity that he faces fair weather; for he knows well beforehand what the outcome will be. He knows that underneath are the everlasting arms. He it is who realizes the truth of the injunction, “Rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him and He shall give thee thy heart’s desire.” All shall be given, simply given, to him who is ready to accept it. Can anything be clearer than this?

In the degree, then, that we work in conjunction with the Supreme Power do we need the less to concern ourselves about results. To live in the full realization of this fact and all that attends it brings peace, a full, rich, abiding peace,–a peace that makes the present complete, and that, going on before, brings back the assurance that as our days, so shall our strength be. The one who is thus centred, even in the face of all the unrest and the turmoil about us, can realize and say–

* * * *

“I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails this eager pace? I stand amid eternal ways, And what is mine shall know my face.

“Asleep, awake, by night or day, The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor change the tide of destiny.

* * * *

“The waters know their own, and draw The brooks that spring in yonder height; So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delight

“The stars come nightly to the sky; The tidal wave unto the sea; Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, Can keep my own away from me.”COMING INTO FULLNESS OF POWER.

This is the Spirit of Infinite Power, and in the degree that we open ourselves to it does power become manifest in us. With God all things are possible,–that is, in conjunction with God all things are possible. The true secret of power lies in keeping one’s connection with the God who worketh all things; and in the degree that we keep this connection are we able literally to rise above every conceivable limitation.

Why, then, waste time in running hither and thither to acquire power? Why waste time with this practice or that practice? Why not go directly to the mountain top itself, instead of wandering through the by-ways, in the valleys, and on the mountain sides? That man has absolute dominion, as taught in all the scriptures of the world, is true not of physical man, but of _spiritual man_. There are many animals, for example, larger and stronger, over which from a physical standpoint he would not have dominion, but he can gain supremacy over even these by calling into activity the higher mental, psychic, and spiritual forces with which he is endowed.

Whatever can’t be done in the physical can be done in the spiritual. And in direct proportion as a man recognizes himself as spirit, and lives accordingly, is he able to transcend in power the man who recognizes himself merely as material. All the sacred literature of the world is teeming with examples of what we call miracles. They are not confined to any particular times or places. There is no age of miracles in distinction from any other period that may be an age of miracles. Whatever has been done in the world’s history can be done again through the operation of the same laws and forces. These miracles were performed not by those who were more than men, but by those who through the recognition of their oneness with God became God-men, so that the higher forces and powers worked through them.

For what, let us ask, is a miracle? Is it something supernatural? Supernatural only in the sense of being above the natural, or rather, above that which is natural to man in his ordinary state. A miracle is nothing more nor less than this. One who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading Wisdom and Power, thus makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him. These laws he makes use of; the people see the results, and by virtue of their own limitations, call them miracles and speak of the person who performs these apparently supernatural works as a supernatural being. But they as supernatural beings could themselves perform these supernatural works if they would open themselves to the recognition of the same laws, and consequently to the realization of the same possibilities and powers. And let us also remember that the supernatural of yesterday becomes, as in the process of evolution we advance from the lower to the higher, from the more material to the more spiritual, the common and the natural of today, and what seems to be the supernatural of today becomes in the same way the natural of tomorrow, and so on through the ages. Yes, it is the God-man who does the things that appear supernatural, the man who by virtue of his realization of the higher powers transcends the majority and so stands out among them. But any power that is possible to one human soul is possible to another. The same laws operate in every life. We can be men and women of power or we can be men and women of impotence. The moment one vitally grasps the fact that he can rise he will rise, and he can have absolutely no limitations other than the limitations he sets to himself. Cream always rises to the top. It rises simply because _it is the nature of cream to rise_.

We hear much said of “environment.” We need to realize that environment should never be allowed to make the man, but that man should always, _and always can_, condition the environment. When we realize this we will find that many times it is not necessary to take ourselves out of any particular environment, because we may yet have a work to do there; but by the very force we carry with us we can so affect and change matters that we will have an entirely new set of conditions in an old environment.

The same is true in regard to “hereditary” traits and influences. We sometimes hear the question asked, “Can they be overcome?” Only the one who doesn’t yet know himself can ask a question such as this. If we entertain and live in the belief that they cannot be overcome, then the chances are that they will always remain. The moment, however, that we come into a realization of our true selves, and so of the tremendous powers and forces within,–the powers and forces of the mind and spirit,–hereditary traits and influences that are harmful in nature will begin to lessen, and will disappear with a rapidity directly in proportion to the completeness of this realization.

“There is no thing we cannot overcome; Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn, And calls down punishment that is not merited.

“Back of thy parents and grandparents lies The Great Eternal Will! That too is thine Inheritance,–strong, beautiful, divine, Sure lever of success for one who tries.

* * * * * *“There is no noble height thou canst not climb; All triumphs may be thine in Time’s futurity, If, whatso’er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt; But lean upon the staff of God’s security.

“Earth has no claim the soul cannot contest; Know thyself part of the Eternal Source; Naught can stand before thy spirit’s force; The soul’s Divine Inheritance is best.”

Again there are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Don’t class yourself, don’t allow yourself to be classed among the second-hand, among the _they-say_ people. Be true to the highest within your own soul, and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded upon _principle_. Those things that are founded upon principle will be observed by the right-minded, the right-hearted man or woman, in any case.

Don’t surrender your individuality, which is your greatest agent of power, to the customs and conventionalities that have gotten their life from the great mass of those who haven’t enough force to preserve their individualities,–those who in other words have given them over as ingredients to the “mush of concession” which one of our greatest writers has said characterizes our modern society. If you do surrender your individuality in this way, you simply aid in increasing the undesirable conditions; in payment for this you become a slave, and the chances are that in time you will be unable to hold even the respect of those whom you in this way try to please.

If you preserve your individuality then you become a master, and if wise and discreet, your influence and power will be an aid in bringing about a higher, a better, and a more healthy set of conditions in the world. All people, moreover, will think more of you, will honor you more highly for doing this than if you show your weakness by contributing yourself to the same “mush of concession” that so many of them are contributing themselves to. With all classes of people you will then have an influence. “A great style of hero draws equally all classes, all extremes of society to him, till we say the very dogs believe in him.”

To be one’s self is the only worthy, and by all means the only satisfactory, thing to be. “May it not be good policy,” says one, “to be governed sometimes by one’s surroundings?” What is good policy? To be yourself, first, last, and always.

“This above all,–to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“When we appeal to the Supreme and our life is governed by a principle, we are not governed either by fear of public opinion or loss of others’ approbation, and we may be sure that the Supreme will sustain us. If in any way we try to live to suit others we never shall suit them, and the more we try the more unreasonable and exacting do they become. The government of your life is a matter that lies entirely between God and yourself, and when your life is swayed and influenced from any other source you are on the wrong path.” When we find the kingdom within and become centred in the Infinite, then we become a law unto ourselves. When we become a law unto ourselves, then we are able to bring others to a knowledge of laws higher than they are governed or many times even enslaved by.

When we have found this centre, then that beautiful simplicity, at once the charm and the power of a truly great personality, enters into our lives. Then all striving for effect,–that sure indicator of weakness and a lack of genuine power,–is absent. This striving for effect that is so common is always an indicator of a lack of something. It brings to mind the man who rides behind a dock-tailed horse. Conscious of the fact that there is not enough in _himself_ to attract attention, in common with a number of other weaklings, he adopts the brutal method of having his horse’s tail sawed off, that its unnatural, odd appearance may attract from people the attention that he of himself is unable to secure.

But the one who strives for effect is always fooled more than he succeeds in fooling others. The man and the woman of true wisdom and insight can always see the causes that prompt, the motives that underlie the acts of all with whom he or she comes in contact. “He is great who is what he is from nature and who never reminds us of others.”

The men and the women who are truly awake to the real powers within are the men and women who seem to be doing so little, yet who in reality are doing so much. They seem to be doing so little because they are working with higher agencies, and yet are doing so much because of this very fact. They do their work on the higher plane. They keep so completely their connection with the Infinite Power that _It_ does the work for them and they are relieved of the responsibility. They are the care-less people. They are care-less because it is the Infinite Power that is working through them, and with this Infinite Power they are simply co-operating._The secret of the highest power is simply the uniting of the outer agencies of expression with the Power that works from within_. Are you a painter? Then in the degree that you open yourself to the power of the forces within will you become great instead of mediocre. You can never put into permanent form inspirations higher than those that come through your own soul. In order for the higher inspirations to come through it, you must open your soul, you must open it fully to the Supreme Source of all inspiration. Are you an orator? In the degree that you come into harmony and work in conjunction with the higher powers that will speak through you will you have the real power of moulding and of moving men. If you use merely your physical agents, you will be simply a demagogue. If you open yourself so that the voice of God can speak through and use your physical agents, you will become a great and true orator, great and true in just the degree that you so open yourself.

Are you a singer? Then open yourself and let the God within pour forth in the spirit of song. You will find it a thousand times easier than all your long and studied practice without this, and other things being equal, there will come to you a power of song so enchanting and so enrapturing that its influence upon all who hear will be irresistible.

When my cabin or tent has been pitched during the summer on the edge or in the midst of a forest, I have sometimes lain awake on my cot in the early morning, just as the day was beginning to break. Silence at first. Then an intermittent chirp here and there. And as the unfolding tints of the dawn became faintly perceptible, these grew more and more frequent, until by and by the whole forest seemed to burst forth in one grand chorus of song. Wonderful! wonderful! It seemed as if the very trees, as if every grass-blade, as if the bushes, the very sky above, and the earth beneath, had part in this wonderful symphony. Then, as I have listened as it went on and on, I have thought. What a study in the matter of song! If we could but learn from the birds. If we could but open ourselves to the same powers and allow them to pour forth in us, what singers, what movers of men we might have! Nay, what singers and what movers of men _we would have_!

Do you know the circumstances under which Mr. Sankey sang for the first time “The Ninety and Nine?” Says one of our able journals: “At a great meeting recently in Denver, Mr. Ira W. Sankey, before singing ‘The Ninety and Nine,’ which, perhaps, of all his compositions is the one that has brought him the most fame, gave an account of its birth. Leaving Glasgow for Edinburg with Mr. Moody, he stopped at a news-stand and bought a penny religious paper. Glancing over it as they rode on the cars, his eye fell on a few little verses in the corner of the page. Turning to Mr. Moody he said, ‘I’ve found my hymn.’ But Mr. Moody was busily engaged and did not hear a word. Mr. Sankey did not find time to make a tune for the verses, so he pasted them in his music scrapbook.

“One day they had an unusually impressive meeting in Edinburg, in which Dr. Bonar had spoken with great effect on ‘The Good Shepherd.’ At the close of the address Mr. Moody beckoned to his partner to sing. He thought of nothing but the Twenty-third Psalm, but that he had sung so often. His second thought was to sing the verses he had found in the newspaper, but the third thought was, how could it be done when he had no tune. Then a fourth thought came, and that was to sing them anyway. He put the verses before him, touched the keys of the organ, opened his mouth and sang, not knowing where he was going to come out. He finished the first verse amid profound silence. He took a long breath and wondered if he could sing the second the same way. He tried and succeeded; after that it was easy to sing it. When he finished the hymn the meeting was all broken down and the throngs were crying. Mr. Sankey says it was the most intense moment of his life. Mr. Moody said he never heard a song like it. It was sung at every meeting, and was soon going over the world.”

When we open ourselves to the highest inspirations they never fail us. When we fail to do this we fail in attaining the highest results, whatever the undertaking.

Are you a writer? Then remember that the one great precept underlying all successful literary work is, _Look into thine own heart and write. Be true. Be fearless. Be loyal to the promptings of your own soul_. Remember that an author can never write more than he himself is. If he would write more, then he must be more. He is simply his own amanuensis. He in a sense writes himself into his book. He can put no more into it than he himself is.

If he is one of a great personality, strong in purpose, deep in feeling, open always to the highest inspirations, a certain indefinable something gets into his pages that makes them breathe forth a vital, living power, a power so great that each reader gets the same inspirations as those that spoke through the author. That that’s written between the lines is many times more than that that’s written in the lines. It is the spirit of the author that engenders this power. It is this that gives that extra twenty-five or thirty per cent that takes a book out of the class called medium and lifts it into the class called superior,–that extra per cent that makes it the one of the hundred that is truly successful, while the ninety-nine never see more than their first edition.It is this same spiritual power that the author of a great personality puts into his work, that causes it to go so rapidly from reader to reader; for the only way that any book circulates in the ultimate is from mouth to mouth, any book that reaches a large circulation. It is this that many times causes a single reader, in view of its value to himself, to purchase numbers of copies for others. “A good poem,” says Emerson, “goes about the world offering itself to reasonable men, who read it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. Thus it draws to it the _wise and generous souls_, confirming their secret thoughts, and through their sympathy _really publishing itself_.”

This is the type of author who writes not with the thought of having what he writes become literature, but he writes with the sole thought of reaching the hearts of the people, giving them something of vital value, something that will broaden, sweeten, enrich, and beautify their lives; that will lead them to the finding of the higher life and with it the higher powers and the higher joys. It most always happens, however, that if he succeeds in thus reaching the people, the becoming literature part somehow takes care of itself, and far better than if he aimed for it directly.

The one, on the other hand, who fears to depart from beaten paths, who allows himself to be bound by arbitrary rules, limits his own creative powers in just the degree that he allows himself so to be bound. “My book,” says one of the greatest of modern authors, “shall smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window shall interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.” Far better, gentle sage, to have it smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects than to have it sound of the rules that a smaller type of man gets by studying the works of a few great, fearless writers like yourself, and formulating from what he thus gains a handbook of rhetoric. “Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can never understand that _today is a new day_.”

When Shakspeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: “Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.” This is the type of man who doesn’t move the world’s way, but who moves the world his way.

I had rather be an amanuensis of the Infinite God, as it is my privilege literally to be, than a slave to the formulated rules of any rhetorician, or to the opinions of any critic. Oh, the people, the people over and over! Let me give something to them that will lighten the every-day struggles of our common life, something that will add a little sweetness here, a little hope there, something that will make more thoughtful, kind, and gentle this thoughtless, animal-natured man, something that will awaken into activity the dormant powers of this timid, shrinking little woman, powers that when awakened will be irresistible in their influence and that will surprise even herself. Let me give something that will lead each one to the knowledge of the divinity of every human soul, something that will lead each one to the conscious realization of _his own divinity_, with all its attendant riches, and glories, and powers,–let me succeed in doing this, and I can then well afford to be careless as to whether the critics praise or whether they blame. If it is blame, then under these circumstances it is as the cracking of a few dead sticks on the ground below, compared to the matchless music that the soft spring gale is breathing through the great pine forest.

Are you a minister, or a religious teacher of any kind? Then in the degree that you free yourself from the man-made theological dogmas that have held and that are holding and limiting so many, and in the degree that you open yourself to the Divine Breath, will you be one who will speak with authority. In the degree that you do this will you study the prophets less and be in the way of becoming a prophet yourself. The way is open for you exactly the same as it has ever been open for anyone.

If when born into the world you came into a family of the English-speaking race, then in all probability you are a Christian. To be a Christian is to be a follower of the _teachings_ of Jesus, the Christ; to live in harmony with the same laws he lived in harmony with: in brief, _to live his life_. The great central fact of his teaching was this conscious union of man with the Father. It was the complete realization of this oneness with the Father on his part that made Jesus the Christ. It was through this that he attained to the power he attained to, that he spake as never man spake.

He never claimed for himself anything that he did not claim equally for all mankind. “The mighty works performed by Jesus were not exceptional, they were the natural and necessary concomitants of his state; he declared them to be in accordance with unvarying order; he spoke of them as no unique performances, but as the outcome of a state to which all might attain if they chose. As a teacher and demonstrator of truth, according to his own confession, he did nothing for the purpose of proving his solitary divinity. . . . The life and triumph of Jesus formed an epoch in the history of the race. His coming and victory marked a new era in human affairs; he introduced a new because a more complete ideal to the earth, and when his three most intimate companions saw in some measure what the new life really signified, they fell to the earth, speechless with awe and admiration.”By coming into this complete realization of his oneness with the Father, by mastering, absolutely mastering every circumstance that crossed his path through life, even to the death of the body, and by pointing out to us the great laws which are the same for us as they were for him, he has given us an ideal of life, an ideal for us to attain to _here and now_, that we could not have without him. _One has conquered first; all may conquer afterward_. By completely realizing it first for himself, and then by pointing out to others this great law of the at-one-ment with the Father, he has become probably the world’s greatest saviour.

Don’t mistake his mere person for his life and his teachings, an error that has been made in connection with most all great teachers by their disciples over and over again. And if you have been among the number who have been preaching a dead Christ, then for humanity’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for God’s sake, and I speak most reverently, don’t steal the people’s time any longer, don’t waste your own time more, in giving them stones in place of bread, dead form for the spirit of living truth. In his own words, “let the dead bury their dead.” Come out from among them. Teach as did Jesus, _the living Christ_. Teach as did Jesus, _the Christ within_. Find this in all its transcendent beauty and power,–find it as Jesus found it, then you also will be one who will speak with authority. Then you will be able to lead large numbers of others to its finding. This is the pearl of great price.

It is the type of preacher whose soul has never as yet even perceived the _vital spirit_ of the teachings of Jesus, and who as a consequence instead of giving this to the people, is giving them old forms and dogmas and speculations, who is emptying our churches. This is the type whose chief efforts seem to be in getting men ready to die. The Germans have a saying, Never go to the second thing first. We need men who will teach us first how to live. Living quite invariably precedes dying. This also is true, that when we once know how to live, and live in accordance with what we know, then the dying, as we term it, will in a wonderfully beautiful manner take care of itself. It is in fact the only way in which it can be taken care of.

It is on account of this emptying of our churches, for the reason that the people are tiring of mere husks, that many short-sighted people are frequently heard to say that religion is dying out. Religion dying out? How can anything die before it is really born? And so far as the people are concerned, religion is just being born, or rather they are just awaking to a vital, every-day religion. We are just beginning to get beyond the mere letter into its real, vital spirit. Religion dying out? Impossible even to conceive of. Religion is as much a part of the human soul as the human soul is a part of God. And as long as God and the human soul exist, religion will never die.

Much of the dogma, the form, the ceremony, the mere letter that has stood as religion,–and honestly, many times, let us be fair enough to say,–this, thank God, is rapidly dying out, and never so rapidly as it is today. By two methods it is dying. There is, first, a large class of people tired of or even nauseated with it all, who conscientiously prefer to have nothing rather than this. They are simply abandoning it, the same as a tree abandons its leaves when the early winter comes. There is, second, a large class in whom the Divine Breath is stirring, who are finding the Christ within in all its matchless beauty and redeeming power. And this new life is pushing off the old, the same as in the spring the newly awakened life in the tree pushes off the old, lifeless leaves that have clung on during the winter, to make place for the new ones. And the way this old dead leaf religion is being pushed off on every hand is indeed most interesting and inspiring to witness.Let the places of those who have been emptying our churches by reason of their attempts to give stones for bread, husks and chaff for the life-giving grain, let their places be taken even for but a few times by those who are open and alive to these higher inspirations, and then let us again question those who feel that religion is dying out. “It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead.” Let their places be taken by those who have caught the inspiration of the Divine Breath, who as a consequence have a message of mighty value and import for the people, who by virtue of this same fact are able to present it with a beauty and a power so enrapturing that it takes captive the soul. Then we will find that the churches that today are dotted here and there with a few dozen people will be filled to overflowing, and there will not be even room enough for all who would enter. “Let the shell perish that the pearl may appear.” We need no new revelations as yet. We need simply to find the vital spirit of those we already have. Then in due time, when we are ready for them, new ones will come, but not before.

“What the human soul, all the world over, needs,” says John Pulsford, “is not to be harangued, however eloquently, about the old, accepted religion, but to be permeated, charmed, and taken captive by _a warmer and more potent Breath of God than they ever felt before_. And I should not be true to my personal experience if I did not bear testimony that this Divine Breath is as exquisitely adapted to the requirements of the soul’s nature as a June morning to the planet. Nor does the morning breath leave the trees freer to delight themselves and develop themselves under its influence than the Breath of God allows each human mind to unfold according to its genius. Nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the Breath of God. The whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions; his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all new-born. The change is greater than he knows; he marvels at the powers in himself which the Breath is opening and calling forth. He finds his nature to be an unutterable thing; he is sure therefore that the future must have inconceivable surprises in store. And herein lies the evidence, which I commend to my readers, of the existence of God, and of the Eternal human Hope. Let God’s Breath kindle new spring-time in the soul, start into life its deeply buried germs, lead in heaven’s summer; you will then have as clear evidence of God from within as you have of the universe from without. Indeed, your internal experience of life, and illimitable Hope in God will be nearer to you, and more prevailing, than all your external and superficial experience of nature and the world.”

There is but one source of power in the universe. Whatever then you are, painter, orator, musician, writer, religious teacher, or whatever it may be, know that to catch and take captive the secret of power is so to work in conjunction with the Infinite Power, in order that it may continually work and manifest through you. If you fail in doing this, you fail in everything. If you fail in doing this, your work, whatever it may be, will be third or fourth rate, possibly at times second rate, but it positively never can be first rate. Absolutely impossible will it be for you ever to become a master.

Whatever estimate you put upon yourself will determine the effectiveness of your work along any line. As long as you live merely in the physical and the intellectual, you set limitations to yourself that will hold you as long as you so live. When, however, you come into the realization of your oneness with the Infinite Life and Power, and open yourself that it may work through you, you will find that you have entered upon an entirely new phase of life, and that an ever increasing power will be yours. Then it will be true that your strength will be as the strength of ten because your heart is pure.

“O God! I am one forever With Thee by the glory of birth; The celestial powers proclaim it To the utmost bounds of the earth.

“I think of this birthright immortal, And my being expands like a rose, As an odorous cloud of incense Around and above me flows.

“A glorious song of rejoicing In an innermost spirit I hear, And it sounds like heavenly voices, In a chorus divine and clear.

“And I feel a power uprising, Like the power of an embryo god; With a glorious wall it surrounds me, And lifts me up from the sod.”PLENTY OF ALL THINGS–THE LAW OF PROSPERITY.

This is the Spirit of Infinite Plenty, the Power that has brought, that is continually bringing, all things into expression in material form. He who lives in the realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power becomes a magnet to attract to himself a continual supply of whatsoever things he desires.

If one hold himself in the thought of poverty, he will be poor, and the chances are that he will remain in poverty. If he hold himself, whatever present conditions may be, continually in the thought of prosperity, he sets into operation forces that will sooner or later bring him into prosperous conditions. The law of attraction works unceasingly throughout the universe, and the one great and never changing fact in connection with it is, as we have found, that like attracts like. If we are one with this Infinite Power, this source of all things, then in the degree that we live in the realization of this oneness, in that degree do we actualize in ourselves a power that will bring to us an abundance of all things that it is desirable for us to have. In this way we come into possession of a power whereby we can actualize at all times those conditions that we desire.

As all truth exists _now_, and awaits simply our perception of it, so all things necessary for present needs exist _now_, and await simply the power in us to appropriate them. God holds all things in His hands. His constant word is, My child, acknowledge me in all your ways, and in the degree that you do this, in the degree that you live this, then what is mine is yours. Jehovah-jireh,–the Lord will provide. “He giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.” He giveth liberally to all men who put themselves in the right attitude to receive from Him. He forces no good things upon any one.

The old and somewhat prevalent idea of godliness and poverty has absolutely no basis for its existence, and the sooner we get away from it the better. It had its birth in the same way that the idea of asceticism came into existence, when the idea prevailed that there was necessarily a warfare between the flesh and the spirit. It had its origin therefore in the minds of those who had a distorted, a one-sided view of life. True godliness is in a sense the same as true wisdom. The one who is truly wise, and who uses the forces and powers with which he is endowed, to him the great universe always opens her treasure house. The supply is always equal to the demand,–equal to the demand when the demand is rightly, wisely made. When one comes into the realization of these higher laws, then the fear of want ceases to tyrannize over him.

Are you out of a situation? Let the fear that you will not get another take hold of and _dominate_ you, and the chances are that it may be a long time before you will get another, or the one that you do get may be a very poor one indeed. Whatever the circumstances, you must realize that you have within you forces and powers that you can set into operation that will triumph over any and all apparent or temporary losses. Set these forces into operation and you will then be placing a magnet that will draw to you a situation that may be far better than the one you have lost, and the time may soon come when you will be even thankful that you lost the old one.

Recognize, working in and through you, the same Infinite Power that creates and governs all things in the universe, the same Infinite Power that governs the endless systems of worlds in space. Send out your thought,–thought is a force, and it has occult power of unknown proportions when rightly used and wisely directed,–send out your thought that the right situation or the right work will come to you at the right time, in the right way, and that you will recognize it when it comes. Hold to this thought, never allow it to weaken, hold to it, and continually water it with firm expectation. You in this way put your advertisement into a psychical, a spiritual newspaper, a paper that has not a limited circulation, but one that will make its way not only to the utmost bounds of the earth, but of the very universe itself. It is an advertisement, moreover, which if rightly placed on your part, will be far more effective than any advertisement you could possibly put into any printed sheet, no matter what claims are made in regard to its being “the great advertising medium.” In the degree that you come into this realization and live in harmony with the higher laws and forces, in that degree will you be able to do this effectively.

If you wish to look through the “want” columns of the newspapers, then do it not in the ordinary way. Put the higher forces into operation and thus place it on a higher basis. As you take up the paper, take this attitude of mind: If there is here an advertisement that it will be well for me to reply to, the moment I come to it I will recognize it. Affirm this, believe it, expect it. If you do this in full faith you will somehow feel the intuition the moment you come to the right one, and this intuition will be nothing more nor less than your own soul speaking to you. When it speaks then act at once.

If you get the situation and it does not prove to be exactly what you want, if you feel that you are capable of filling a better one, then the moment you enter upon it take the attitude of mind that this situation is the stepping-stone that will lead you to one that will be still better. Hold this thought steadily, affirm it, believe it, expect it, and all the time be faithful, _absolutely faithful_ to the situation in which you are at present placed. If you are _not_ faithful to it then the chances are that it will not be the stepping-stone to something better, but to something poorer. If you are faithful to it, the time may soon come when you will be glad and thankful, when you will rejoice, that you lost your old position.This is the law of prosperity: When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions.

Never give a moment to complaint, but utilize the time that would otherwise be spent in this way in looking forward and actualizing the conditions you desire. Suggest prosperity to yourself. See yourself in a prosperous condition. Affirm that you will before long be in a prosperous condition. Affirm it calmly and quietly, but strongly and confidently. Believe it, believe it absolutely. Expect it,–keep it continually watered with expectation. You thus make yourself a magnet to attract the things that you desire. Don’t be afraid to suggest, to affirm these things, for by so doing you put forth an ideal which will begin to clothe itself in material form. In this way you are utilizing agents among the most subtle and powerful in the universe. If you are particularly desirous for anything that you feel it is good and right for you to have, something that will broaden your life or that will increase your usefulness to others, simply hold the thought that at the right time, in the right way, and through the right instrumentality, there will come to you or there will open up for you the way whereby you can attain what you desire.

I know of a young lady who a short time ago wanted some money very badly. She wanted it for a good purpose; she saw no reason why she shouldn’t have it. She is one who has come into an understanding of the power of the interior forces. She took and held herself in the attitude of mind we have just pointed out. In the morning she entered into the silence for a few moments. In this way she brought herself into a more complete harmony with the higher powers. Before the day closed a gentleman called, a member of a family with which she was acquainted. He asked her if she would do for the family some work that they wanted done. She was a little surprised that they should ask her to do this particular kind of work, but she said to herself, “Here is a call. I will respond and see what it will lead to.” She undertook the work. _She did it well_. When she had completed it there was put into her hands an amount of money far beyond what she had expected. She felt that it was an amount too large for the work she had done. She protested. They replied, “No; you have done us a service that transcends in value the amount we offer to pay you.” The sum thus received was more than sufficient for the work she wished to accomplish.

This is but one of many instances in connection with the wise and effective use of the higher powers. It also carries a lesson,–Don’t fold your hands and expect to see things drop into your lap, but set into operation the higher forces and then take hold of the first thing that offers itself. Do what your hands find to do, _and do it well_. If this work is not thoroughly satisfactory to you, then affirm, believe, and expect that it is the agency that will lead you to something better. “The basis for attracting the best of all the world can give to you is to first surround, own, and live in these things in mind, or what is falsely called imagination. All so-called imaginings are realities and forces of unseen element. Live in mind in a palace and gradually palatial surroundings will gravitate to you. But so living is _not_ pining, or longing, or complainingly wishing. It is when you are ‘down in the world,’ calmly and persistently seeing yourself as up. It is when you are now compelled to eat from a tin plate, regarding that tin plate as only the certain step to one of silver. It is not envying and growling at other people who have silver plate. That growling is just so much capital stock taken from the bank account of mental force.”

A friend who knows the power of the interior forces, and whose life is guided in every detail by them, has given a suggestion in this form: When you are in the arms of the bear, even though he is hugging you, look him in the face and laugh, but all the time keep your eye on the bull. If you allow all of your attention to be given to the work of the bear, the bull may get entirely out of your sight. In other words, if you yield to adversity the chances are that it will master you, but if you recognize in yourself the power of mastery over conditions then adversity will yield to you, and will be changed into prosperity. If when it comes you calmly and quietly recognize it, and use the time that might otherwise be spent in regrets, and fears, and forebodings, in setting into operation the powerful forces within you, it will soon take its leave.

Faith, absolute dogmatic faith, is the only law of true success. When we recognize the fact that a man carries his success or his failure with him, and that it does not depend upon outside conditions, we will come into the possession of powers that will quickly change outside conditions into agencies that make for success. When we come into this higher realization and bring our lives into complete harmony with the higher laws, we will then be able so to focus and direct the awakened interior forces, that they will go out and return laden with that for which they are sent. We will then be great enough to attract success, and it will not always be apparently just a little ways ahead. We can then establish in ourselves a centre so strong that instead of running hither and thither for this or that, we can stay at home and draw to us the conditions we desire. If we firmly establish and hold to this centre, things will seem continually to come our way.The majority of people of the modern world are looking for things that are practical and that can be utilized in every-day life. The more carefully we examine into the laws underlying the great truths we are considering, the more we will find that they are not only eminently practical, but in a sense, and in the deepest and truest sense, they are the only practical things there are.

There are people who continually pride themselves upon being exceedingly “practical,” but many times those who of themselves think nothing about this are the most practical people the world knows. And, on the other hand, those who take great pride in speaking of their own practicality are many times the least practical. Or again, in some ways they may be practical, but so far as life in its totality is concerned, they are absurdly impractical.

What profit, for example, can there be for the man who, materially speaking, though he has gained the whole world, has never yet become acquainted with his own soul? There are multitudes of men all about us who are entirely missing the real life, men who have not learned even the a, b, c of true living. Slaves they are, abject slaves to their temporary material accumulations. Men who thinking they possess their wealth are on the contrary completely possessed by it. Men whose lives are comparatively barren in service to those about them and to the world at large. Men who when they can no longer hold the body,–the agency by means of which they are related to the material world,–will go out poor indeed, pitiably poor. Unable to take even the smallest particle of their accumulations with them, they will enter upon the other form of life naked and destitute.

The kindly deeds, the developed traits of character, the realized powers of the soul, the real riches of the inner life and unfoldment, all those things that become our real and eternal possessions, have been given no place in their lives, and so of the real things of life they are destitute. Nay, many times worse than destitute. We must not suppose that habits once formed are any more easily broken off in the other form of life than they are in this. If one voluntarily grows a certain mania here, we must not suppose that the mere dropping of the body makes all conditions perfect. All is law, all is cause and effect. As we sow, so shall we also reap, not only in this life but in all lives.

He who is enslaved with the sole desire for material possessions here will continue to be enslaved even after he can no longer retain his body. Then, moreover, he will have not even the means of gratifying his desires. Dominated by this habit, he will be unable to set his affections, for a time at least, upon other things, and the desire, without the means of gratifying it will be doubly torturing to him. Perchance this torture may be increased by his seeing the accumulations he thought were his now being scattered and wasted by spendthrifts. He wills his property, as we say, to others, but he can have no word as to its use.

How foolish, then, for us to think that any material possessions _are ours_. How absurd, for example, for one to fence off a number of acres of God’s earth and say they are _his_. Nothing is ours that we cannot retain. The things that come into our hands come not for the purpose of being possessed, as we say, much less for the purpose of being hoarded. They come into our hands to be used, to be wisely used. We are stewards merely, and as stewards we shall be held accountable for the way we use whatever is entrusted to us. That great law of compensation that runs through all life is wonderfully exact in its workings, although we may not always fully comprehend it, or even recognize it when it operates in connection with ourselves.

The one who has come into the realization of the higher life no longer has a desire for the accumulation of enormous wealth, any more than he has a desire for any other _excess_. In the degree that he comes into the recognition of the fact that he is wealthy within, external wealth becomes less important in his estimation. When he comes into the realization of the fact that there is a source within from which he can put forth a power to call to him and actualize in his hands at any time a sufficient supply for all his needs, he no longer burdens himself with vast material accumulations that require his constant care and attention, and thus take his time and his thought from the real things of life. In other words, he first finds the _kingdom_, and he realizes that when he has found this, all other things follow in full measure.It is as hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, said the Master,–he who having nothing had everything,–as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. In other words, if a man give all his time to the accumulation, the hoarding of outward material possessions far beyond what he can possibly ever use, what time has he for the finding of that wonderful kingdom, which when found, brings all else with it. Which is better, to have millions of dollars, and to have the burden of taking care of it all,–for the one always involves the other,–or to come into the knowledge of such laws and forces that every need will be supplied in good time, to know that no good thing shall be withheld, to know that we have it in our power to make the supply always equal to the demand?

The one who enters into the realm of this higher knowledge, never cares to bring upon himself the species of insanity that has such a firm hold upon so many in the world today. He avoids it as he would avoid any loathsome disease of the body. When we come into the realization of the higher powers, we will then be able to give more attention to the real life, instead of giving so much to the piling up of vast possessions that hamper rather than help it. It is the medium ground that brings the true solution here, the same as it is in all phases of life.

Wealth beyond a certain amount cannot be used, and when it cannot be used it then becomes a hindrance rather than an aid, a curse rather than a blessing. All about us are persons with lives now stunted and dwarfed who could make them rich and beautiful, filled with a perennial joy, if they would begin wisely to use that which they have spent the greater portion of their lives in accumulating.

The man who accumulates during his entire life, and who leaves even all when he goes out for “benevolent purposes,” comes far short of the ideal life. It is but a poor excuse of a life. It is not especially commendable in me to give a pair of old, worn-out shoes that I shall never use again to another who is in need of shoes. But it is commendable, if indeed doing anything we ought to do can be spoken of as being commendable, it is commendable for me to give a good pair of strong shoes to the man who in the midst of a severe winter is practically shoeless, the man who is exerting every effort to earn an honest living and thereby take care of his family’s needs. And if in giving the shoes I also give myself, he then has a double gift, and I a double blessing.

There is no wiser use that those who have great accumulations can make of them than wisely to put them into life, into character, _day by day while they live_. In this way their lives will be continually enriched and increased. The time will come when it will be regarded as a disgrace for a man to die and leave vast accumulations behind him.

Many a person is living in a palace today who in the real life is poorer than many a one who has not even a roof to cover him. A man may own and live in a palace, but the palace for him may be a pool-house still.

Moth and rust are nature’s wise provisions–God’s methods–for disintegrating and scattering, in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. There is also a great law continually operating whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher faculties of the one who hoards.

Multitudes of people are continually keeping away from them higher and better things because they are forever clinging on to the old. If they would use and pass on the old, room would be made for new things to come. Hoarding always brings loss in one form or another. Using, wisely using, brings an ever renewing gain.

If the tree should as ignorantly and as greedily hold on to this year’s leaves when they have served their purpose, where would be the full and beautiful new life that will be put forth in the spring? Gradual decay and finally death would be the result. If the tree is already dead, then it may perhaps be well enough for it to cling on to the old, for no new leaves will come. But as long as the life in the tree is active, it is _necessary_ that it rid itself of the old ones, that room may be made for the new.

Opulence is the law of the universe, an abundant supply for every need if nothing is put in the way of its coming. The natural and the normal life for us is this,–To have such a fullness of life and power by living so continually in the realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life and Power that we find ourselves in the constant possession of an abundant supply of all things needed.

Then not by hoarding but by wisely using and ridding ourselves of things as they come, an ever renewing supply will be ours, a supply far better adapted to present needs than the old could possibly be. In this way we not only come into possession of the richest treasures of the Infinite Good ourselves, but we also become open channels through which they can flow to others.HOW MEN HAVE BECOME PROPHETS, SEERS, SAGES, AND SAVIOURS.

I have tried thus far to deal fairly with you in presenting these vital truths, and have spoken of everything on the basis of our own reason and insight. It has been my aim to base nothing on the teachings of others, though they may be the teachings of those inspired. Let us now look for a moment at these same great truths in the light of the thoughts and the teachings as put forth by some of the world’s great thinkers and inspired teachers.

The sum and substance of the thought presented in these pages is, you will remember, that the great central fact in human life is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. I and the Father are one, said the Master. In this we see how he recognized his oneness with the Father’s life. Again he said, The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works. In this we see how clearly he recognized the fact that he of himself could do nothing, only as he worked in conjunction with the Father. Again, My Father works and I work. In other words, my Father sends the power, I open myself to it, and work in conjunction with it.

Again he said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. And he left us not in the dark as to exactly what he meant by this, for again he said. Say not Lo here nor lo there, know ye not that the kingdom of heaven is within you? According to his teaching, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven were one and the same. If, then, his teaching is that the kingdom of heaven is within us, do we not clearly see that, putting it in other words, his injunction is nothing more nor less than, Come ye into a conscious realization of your oneness with the Father’s life. As you realize this oneness you find the kingdom, and when you find this, all things else shall follow.

The story of the prodigal son is another beautiful illustration of this same great teaching of the Master. After the prodigal had spent everything, after he had wandered in all the realms of the physical senses in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure, and found that this did not satisfy but only brought him to the level of the animal creation, he then came to his senses and said, I will arise and go to my Father. In other words, after all these wanderings, his own soul at length spoke to him and said, You are not a mere animal. You are your Father’s child. Arise and go to your Father, who holds all things in His hands. Again, the Master said, Call no man your Father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Here he recognized the fact that the real life is direct from the life of God. Our fathers and our mothers are the agents that give us the bodies, the houses in which we live, but the real life comes from the Infinite Source of Life, God, who is our Father.

One day word was brought to the Master that his mother and his brethren were without, wishing to speak with him. Who is my mother and who are my brethren? said he. Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Many people are greatly enslaved by what we term ties of relationship. It is well, however, for us to remember that our true relatives are not necessarily those who are connected with us by ties of blood. Our truest relatives are those who are nearest akin to us in mind, in soul, in spirit. Our nearest relatives may be those living on the opposite side of the globe,–people whom we may never have seen as yet, but to whom we will yet be drawn, either in this form of life or in another, through that ever working and never failing law of attraction.

When the Master gave the injunction, Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven, he here gave us the basis for that grand conception of the fatherhood of God. And if God is equally the Father of all, then we have here the basis for the brotherhood of man. But there is, in a sense, a conception still higher than this, namely, the oneness of man and God, and hence the oneness of the whole human race. When we realize this fact, then we clearly see how in the degree that we come into the realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and so, every step that we make Godward, we aid in lifting all mankind up to this realization, and enable them, in turn, to make a step God-ward.

The Master again pointed out our true relations with the Infinite Life when he said, Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. When he said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, he gave utterance to a truth of far greater import than we have as yet commenced fully to grasp. Here he taught that even the physical life can not be maintained by material food alone, but that one’s connection with this Infinite Source determines to a very great extent the condition of even the bodily structure and activities. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. In other words, blessed are they who in all the universe recognize only God, for by such God shall be seen.Said the great Hindu sage, Manu, He who in his own soul perceives the Supreme Soul in all beings, and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains the highest bliss. It was Athanasius who said, Even we may become Gods walking about in the flesh. The same great truth we are considering is the one that runs through the life and the teachings of Gautama, he who became the Buddha. People are in bondage, said he, because they have not yet removed the idea of _I_. To do away with all sense of separateness, and to recognize the oneness of the self with the Infinite, is the spirit that breathes through all his teachings. Running through the lives of all the mediaeval mystics was this same great truth,–union with God.

Then, coming nearer to our own time, we find the highly illumined seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, pointing out the great laws in connection with what he termed, the divine influx, and how we may open ourselves more fully to its operations. The great central fact in the religion and worship of the Friends is, the inner light,–God in the soul of man speaking directly in just the degree that the soul is opened to Him. The inspired one, the seer who when with us lived at Concord, recognized the same great truth when he said, We are all inlets to the great sea of life. And it was by opening himself so fully to its inflow that he became one inspired.

All through the world’s history we find that the men and the women who have entered into the realm of true wisdom and power, and hence into the realm of true peace and joy, have lived in harmony with this Higher Power. David was strong and powerful and his soul burst forth in praise and adoration in just the degree that he listened to the voice of God and lived in accordance with his higher promptings. Whenever he failed to do this we hear his soul crying out in anguish and lamentation. The same is true of every nation or people. When the Israelites acknowledged God and followed according to His leadings they were prosperous, contented, and powerful, and nothing could prevail against them. When they depended upon their own strength alone and failed to recognize God as the source of their strength, we find them overcome, in bondage, or despair.

A great immutable law underlies the truth, Blessed are they that hear the word of God and do it. Then follows all. We are wise in the degree that we live according to the higher light.

All the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world’s history became what they became, and consequently had the powers they had, through an entirely natural process. They all recognized and came into the conscious realization of their oneness with the Infinite Life. God is no respecter of persons. He doesn’t create prophets, seers, sages, and saviours as such. He creates men. But here and there one recognizes his true identity, recognizes the oneness of his life with the Source whence it came. He lives in the realization of this oneness, and in turn becomes a prophet, seer, sage, or saviour. Neither is God a respecter of races or of nations. He has no chosen people; but here and there a race or nation becomes a respecter of God and hence lives the life of a chosen people.

There has been no age or place of miracles in distinction from any other age or place. What we term miracles have abounded in all places and at all times where conditions have been made for them. They are being performed today just as much as they ever have been when the laws governing them are respected. Mighty men, we are told they were, mighty men who walked with God; and in the words “who walked with God” lies the secret of the words “mighty men.” Cause, effect.

The Lord never prospers any man, but the man prospers because he acknowledges the Lord, and lives in accordance with the higher laws. Solomon was given the opportunity of choosing whatever he desired; his better judgment prevailed and he chose wisdom. But when he chose wisdom he found that it included all else beside. We are told that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. I don’t believe it. God never hardens any one’s heart. Pharaoh hardened his own heart and God was blamed for it. But when Pharaoh hardened his heart and disobeyed the voice of God, the plagues came. Again, cause, effect. Had he, on the contrary, listened,–in other words, had he opened himself to and obeyed the voice of God, the plagues would not have come.

We can be our own best friends or we can be our own worst enemies. In the degree that we become friends to the highest and best within us, we become friends to all; and in the degree that we become enemies to the highest and best within us, do we become enemies to all. In the degree that we open ourselves to the higher powers and let them manifest through us, then by the very inspirations we carry with us do we become in a sense the saviours of our fellow-men, and in this way we all are, or may become, the saviours one of another. In this way you may become, indeed, one of the world’s redeemers.THE BASIC PRINCIPLE OF ALL RELIGIONS–THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

The great truth we are considering is the fundamental principle running through all religions. We find it in every one. In regard to it all agree. It is, moreover, a great truth in regard to which all people can agree, whether they belong to the same or to different religions. People always quarrel about the trifles, about their personal views of minor insignificant points. They always come together in the presence of great fundamental truths, the threads of which run through all. The quarrels are in connection with the lower self, the agreements are in connection with the higher self.

A place may have its factions that quarrel and fight among themselves, but let a great calamity come upon the land, flood, famine, pestilence, and these little personal differences are entirely forgotten and all work shoulder to shoulder in the one great cause. The changing, the evolving self gives rise to quarrels; the permanent, the soul self unites all in the highest efforts of love and service.

Patriotism is a beautiful thing; it is well for me to love my country, but why should I love my own country more than I love all others? If I love my own and hate others, I then show my limitations, and my patriotism will stand the test not even for my own. If I love my own country and in the same way love all other countries, then I show the largeness of my nature, and a patriotism of this kind is noble and always to be relied upon.

The view of God in regard to which we are agreed, that He is the Infinite Spirit of Life and Power that is back of all, that is working in and through all, that is the life of all, is a matter in regard to which all men, all religions can agree. With this view there can be no infidels or atheists. There are atheists and infidels in connection with many views that are held concerning God, and thank God there are. Even devout and earnest people among us attribute things to God that no respectable men or women would permit to be attributed to themselves. This view is satisfying to those who cannot see how God can be angry with his children, jealous, vindictive. A display of these qualities always lessens our respect for men and women, and still we attribute them to God.

The earnest, sincere heretic is one of the greatest friends true religion can have. Heretics are among God’s greatest servants. They are among the true servants of mankind. Christ was one of the greatest heretics the world has ever known. He allowed himself to be bound by no established or orthodox teachings or beliefs. Christ is preëminently a type of the universal. John the Baptist is a type of the personal. John dressed in a particular way, ate a particular kind of food, belonged to a particular order, lived and taught in a particular locality, and he himself recognized the fact that he must decrease while Christ must increase. Christ, on the other hand, gave himself absolutely no limitations. He allowed himself to be bound by nothing. He was absolutely universal and as a consequence taught not for his own particular day, but for all time.

This mighty truth which we have agreed upon as the great central fact of human life is the golden thread that runs through all religions. When we make it the paramount fact in our lives we will find that minor differences, narrow prejudices, and all these laughable absurdities will so fall away by virtue of their very insignificance, that a Jew can worship equally as well in a Catholic cathedral, a Catholic in a Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist in a Christian church, a Christian in a Buddhist temple. Or all can worship equally well about their own hearth-stones, or out on the hillside, or while pursuing the avocations of every-day life. For true worship, only God and the human soul are necessary. It does not depend upon times, or seasons, or occasions. Anywhere and at any time God and man in the bush may meet.

This is the great fundamental principle of the universal religion upon which all can agree. This is the great fact that is permanent. There are many things in regard to which all cannot agree. These are the things that are personal, non-essential, and so as time passes they gradually fall away. One who doesn’t grasp this great truth, a Christian, for example, asks “But was not Christ inspired?” Yes, but he was not the only one inspired. Another who is a Buddhist asks, “Was not Buddha inspired?” Yes, but he was not the only one inspired. A Christian asks, “But is not our Christian Bible inspired?” Yes, but there are other inspired scriptures. A Brahmin or a Buddhist asks, “Are not the Vedas inspired?” Yes, but there are other inspired sacred books. Your error is not in believing that your particular scriptures are inspired, but your error is–and you show your absurdly laughable limitations by it–your inability to see that other scriptures are also inspired.

The sacred books, the inspired writings, all come from the same source,–God, God speaking through the souls of those who open themselves that He may thus speak. Some may be more inspired than others. It depends entirely on the relative degree that this one or that one opens himself to the Divine voice. Says one of the inspired writers in the Hebrew scriptures, Wisdom is the breath of the power of God, and _in all ages_ entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and prophets.Let us not be among the number so dwarfed, so limited, so bigoted as to think that the Infinite God has revealed Himself to one little handful of His children, in one little quarter of the globe, and at one particular period of time. This isn’t the pattern by which God works. Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that revereth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him, says the Christian Bible.

When we fully realize this truth we will then see that it makes but little difference what particular form of religion one holds to, but it does make a tremendous difference how true he is to the _vital_ principles of this one. In the degree that we love self less and love truth more, in that degree will we care less about converting people to our particular way of thinking, but all the more will we care to aid them in coming into the full realization of truth through the channels best adapted to them. The doctrine of our master, says the Chinese, consisted solely in integrity of heart. We will find as we search that this is the doctrine of every one who is at all worthy the name of master.

The great fundamental principles of all religions are the same. They differ only in their minor details according to the various degrees of unfoldment of different people. I am sometimes asked, “To what religion do you belong?” What religion? Why, bless you, there is only one religion,–the religion of the living God. There are, of course, the various creeds of the same religion arising from the various interpretations of different people, but they are all of minor importance. The more unfolded the soul the less important do these minor differences become. There are also, of course, the various so-called religions. There is in reality, however, but one religion.

The moment we lose sight of this great fact we depart from the real, vital spirit of true religion and allow ourselves to be limited and bound by form. In the degree that we do this we build fences around ourselves which keep others away from us, and which also prevent our coming into the realization of universal truth; there is nothing worthy the name of truth that is not universal.

There is only one religion. “Whatever road I take joins the highway that leads to Thee,” says the inspired writer in the Persian scriptures. “Broad is the carpet God has spread, and beautiful the colors he has given it.” “The pure man respects every form of faith,” says the Buddhist. “My doctrine makes no difference between high and low, rich and poor; like the sky, it has room for all, and like the water, it washes all alike.” “The broad minded see the truth in different religions; the narrow minded see only the differences,” says the Chinese. The Hindu has said, “The narrow minded ask, ‘Is this man a stranger, or is he of our tribe?’ But to those in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family.” “Altar flowers are of many species, but all worship is one.” “Heaven is a palace with many doors, and each may enter in his own way.” “Are we not all children of one Father?” says the Christian. “God has made of one blood all nations, to dwell on the face of the earth.” It was a latter-day seer who said, “That which was profitable to the soul of man the Father revealed to the ancients; that which is profitable to the soul of man today revealeth He this day.”

It was Tennyson who said, “I dreamed that stone by stone I reared a sacred fane, a temple, neither pagoda, mosque, nor church, but loftier, simpler, always open-doored to every breath from heaven, and Truth and Peace and Love and Justice came and dwelt therein.”

Religion in its true sense is the most joyous thing the human soul can know, and when the real religion is realized, we will find that it will be an agent of peace, of joy, and of happiness, and never an agent of gloomy, long-faced sadness. It will then be attractive to all and repulsive to none. Let our churches grasp these great truths, let them give their time and attention to bringing people into a knowledge of their true selves, into a knowledge of their relations, of their oneness, with the Infinite God, and such joy will be the result, and such crowds will flock to them, that their very walls will seem almost to burst, and such songs of joy will continually pour forth as will make all people in love with the religion that makes for every-day life, and hence the religion that is true and vital. Adequacy for life, adequacy for everyday life here and now, must be the test of all true religion. If it does not bear this test, then it simply is not religion. We need an everyday, a this-world religion. All time spent in connection with any other is worse than wasted. The eternal life that we are now living will be well lived if we take good care of each little period of time as it presents itself day after day. If we fail in doing this, we fail in everything.ENTERING NOW INTO THE REALIZATION OF THE HIGHEST RICHES.

I hear the question, What can be said in a concrete way in regard to the method of coming into this realization? The facts underlying it are, indeed, most beautiful and true, but how can we actualize in ourselves the realization that carries with it such wonderful results?

The method is not difficult if we do not of ourselves make it difficult. The principal word to be used is the word,–Open. Simply to open your mind and heart to this divine inflow which is waiting only for the opening of the gate, that it may enter. It is like opening the gate of the trough which conducts the water from the reservoir above into the field below. The water, by virtue of its very nature, will rush in and irrigate the field if the gate is but opened. As to the realization of our oneness with this Infinite Life and Power, after seeing, as I think we have clearly seen by this time, the relations it bears to us and we to it, the chief thing to be said is simply,–Realize your oneness with it. The open mind and heart whereby one is brought into the receptive attitude is the first thing necessary. Then the earnest, sincere desire.

It may be an aid at first to take yourself for a few moments each day into the quiet, into the silence, where you will not be agitated by the disturbances that enter in through the avenues of the physical senses. There in the quiet alone with God, put yourself into the receptive attitude. Calmly, quietly, and expectantly desire that this realization break in upon and take possession of your soul. As it breaks in upon and takes possession of the soul, it will manifest itself to your mind, and from this you will feel its manifestations in every part of your body. Then in the degree that you open yourself to it you will feel a quiet, peaceful, illuminating power that will harmonize body, soul, and mind, and that will then harmonize these with all the world. You are now on the mountain top, and the voice of God is speaking to you. _Then, as you descend, carry this realization with you_. Live in it, waking, working, thinking, walking, sleeping. In this way, although you may not be continually on the mountain top, you will nevertheless be continually living in the realization of all the beauty, and inspiration, and power you have felt there.

Moreover, the time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of your own thoughts about you and realizing that there and everywhere the Spirit of Infinite Life, Love, Wisdom, Peace, Power, and Plenty is guiding, keeping, protecting, leading you. This is the spirit of continual prayer. This it is to pray without ceasing. This it is to know and to walk with God. _This it is to find the Christ within_. This is the new birth, the second birth. First that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. It is thus that the old man Adam is put off and the new man Christ is put on. This it is to be saved unto life eternal, whatever one’s form of belief or faith may be; for it is life eternal to know God. “The Sweet By and By” will be a song of the past. We will create a new song–“The Beautiful Eternal Now.”

This is the realization that you and I can come into this very day, this very hour, this very minute, if we desire and if we will it. And if now we merely set our faces in the right direction, it is then but a matter of time until we come into the full splendors of this complete realization. To set one’s face in the direction of the mountain and then simply to journey on, whether rapidly or more slowly, will bring him to it. But unless one set his face in the right direction and make the start, he will not reach it. It was Goethe who said:

“Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute: What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage and then the mind grows heated; Begin and then the work will be completed.”

Said the young man, Gautama Siddhârtha, I have awakened to the truth and I am resolved to accomplish my purpose,–Verily I shall become a Buddha. It was this that brought him into the life of the Enlightened One, and so into the realization of Nirvana right here in this life. That this same realization and life is within the possibilities of all here and now was his teaching. It was this that has made him the Light Bearer to millions of people.

Said the young man, Jesus, Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? Making this the one great purpose of his life he came into the full and complete realization,–I and the Father are one. He thus came into the full realization of the Kingdom of Heaven right here in this life. That all could come into this same realization and life here and now was his teaching. It was this that has made him the Light Bearer to millions of people.

And so far as practical things are concerned, we may hunt the wide universe through and we shall find that there is no injunction more practical than, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you. And in the light of what has gone before, I think there is no one who is open to truth and honest with himself who will fail to grasp the underlying reason and see the great laws upon which it is based.Personally I know lives that have so fully entered into the kingdom through the realization of their oneness with the Infinite Life and through the opening of themselves so fully to its divine guidance, that they are most wonderful concrete examples of the reality of this great and all-important truth. They are people whose lives are in this way guided not only in a general way, but literally in every detail. They simply live in the realization of their oneness with this Infinite Power, continually in harmony with it, and so continually in the realization of the kingdom of heaven. An abundance of all things is theirs. They are never at a loss for anything. The supply seems always equal to the demand. They never seem at a loss in regard to what to do or how to do it. Their lives are care-less lives. They are lives free from care because they are continually conscious of the fact that the higher powers are doing the guiding, and they are relieved of the responsibility. To enter into detail in connection with some of these lives, and particularly with two or three that come to my mind at this moment, would reveal facts that no doubt to some would seem almost incredible if not miraculous. But let us remember that what is possible for one life to realize is possible for all. This is indeed the natural and the normal life, that which will be the every-day life of every one who comes into and who lives in this higher realization and so in harmony with the higher laws. This is simply getting into the current of that divine sequence running throughout the universe; and when once in it, life then ceases to be a plodding and moves along day after day much as the tides flow, much as the planets move in their courses, much as the seasons come and go.

All the frictions, all the uncertainties, all the ills, the sufferings, the fears, the forebodings, the perplexities of life come to us because we are out of harmony with the divine order of things. They will continue to come as long as we so live. Rowing against the tide is hard and uncertain. To go with the tide and thus to take advantage of the working of a great natural force is safe and easy. To come into the conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life and Power is to come into the current of this divine sequence. Coming thus into harmony with the Infinite, brings us in turn into harmony with all about us, into harmony with the life of the heavens, into harmony with all the universe. And above all, it brings us into harmony with ourselves, so that body, soul, and mind become perfectly harmonized, and when this is so, life becomes full and complete.

The sense life then no longer masters and enslaves us. The physical is subordinated to and ruled by the mental; this in turn is subordinated to and continually illumined by the spiritual. Life is then no longer the poor, one-sided thing it is in so many cases; but the three-fold, the all-round life with all its beauties and ever increasing joys and powers is entered upon. Thus it is that we are brought to realize that the middle path is the great solution of life; neither asceticism on the one hand nor license and perverted use on the other. Everything is for use, but all must be wisely used in order to be fully enjoyed.

As we live in these higher realizations the senses are not ignored but are ever more fully perfected. As the body becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, all the senses become finer, so that powers we do not now realize as belonging to us gradually develop. Thus we come, in a perfectly natural and normal way, into the super-conscious realms whereby we make it possible for the higher laws and truths to be revealed to us. As we enter into these realms we are then not among those who give their time in speculating as to whether this one or that one had the insight and the powers attributed to him, but we are able _to know_ for ourselves. Neither are we among those who attempt to lead the people upon the hearsay of some one else, but we know whereof we speak, and only thus can we speak with authority. There are many things that we cannot know until by living the life we bring ourselves into that state where it is possible for them to be revealed to us. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” It was Plotinus who said, The mind that wishes to behold God must itself become God. As we thus make it possible for these higher laws and truths to be revealed to us, we will in turn become enlightened ones, channels through which they may be revealed to others.When one is fully alive to the possibilities that come with this higher awakening, as he goes here and there, as he mingles with his fellow-men, he imparts to all an inspiration that kindles in them a feeling of power kindred to his own. We are all continually giving out influences similar to those that are playing in our own lives. We do this in the same way that each flower emits its own peculiar odor. The rose breathes out its fragrance upon the air and all who come near it are refreshed and inspired by this emanation from the soul of the rose. A poisonous weed sends out its obnoxious odor; it is neither refreshing nor inspiring in its effects, and if one remain near it long he may be so unpleasantly affected as to be made even ill by it.

The higher the life the more inspiring and helpful are the emanations that it is continually sending out. The lower the life the more harmful is the influence it continually sends out to all who come in contact with it. Each one is continually radiating an atmosphere of one kind or the other.

We are told by the mariners who sail on the Indian Seas, that many times they are able to tell their approach to certain islands long before they can see them by the sweet fragrance of the sandalwood that is wafted far out upon the deep. Do you not see how it would serve to have such a soul playing through such a body that as you go here and there a subtle, silent force goes out from you that all feel and are influenced by; so that you carry with you an inspiration and continually shed a benediction wherever you go; so that your friends and all people will say,–His coming brings peace and joy into our homes, welcome his coming; so that as you pass along the street, tired, and weary, and even sin-sick men and women will feel a certain divine touch that will awaken new desires and a new life in them; that will make the very horse as you pass him turn his head with a strange, half-human, longing look? Such are the subtle powers of the human soul when it makes itself translucent to the Divine. To know that such a life is within our living here and now is enough to make one burst forth with songs of joy. And when the life itself is entered upon, the sentiment of at least one song will be:

“Oh! I stand in the Great Forever, All things to me are divine; I eat of the heavenly manna, I drink of the heavenly wine.

“In the gleam of the shining rainbow The Father’s Love I behold, As I gaze on its radiant blending Of crimson and blue and gold.

“In all the bright birds that are singing, In all the fair flowers that bloom, Whose welcome aromas are bringing Their blessings of sweet perfume;

“In the glorious tint of the morning, In the gorgeous sheen of the night, Oh! my soul is lost in rapture, My senses are lost in sight.”

As one comes into and lives continually in the full, conscious realization of his oneness with the Infinite Life and Power, then all else follows. This it is that brings the realization of such splendors, and beauties, and joys as a life that is thus related with the Infinite Power alone can know. This it is to come into the realization of heaven’s richest treasures while walking the earth. This it is to bring heaven down to earth, or rather to bring earth up to heaven. This it is to exchange weakness and impotence for strength; sorrows and sighings for joy; fears and forebodings for faith; longings for realizations. This it is to come into fullness of peace, power, and plenty. This it is to be in tune with the Infinite.

Successful Methods of Public Speaking

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Successful Methods of Public Speaking

SUCCESSFUL METHODS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

by Grenville Kleiser

You can acquire valuable knowledge for use in your own public speaking by studying the successful methods of other men. This does not mean, however, that you are to imitate others, but simply to profit by their experience and suggestions in so far as they fit in naturally with your personality.

All successful speakers do not speak alike. Each man has found certain things to be effective in his particular case, but which would not necessarily be suited to a different type of speaker.

When, therefore, you read the following methods of various men, ask yourself in each case whether you can apply the ideas to advantage in your own speaking. Put the method to a practical test, and decide for yourself whether it is advisable for you to adopt it or not.

Requirements of Effective Speaking

There are certain requirements in public speaking which you and every other speaker must observe. You must be grammatical, intelligent, lucid, and sincere. These are essential. You must know your subject thoroughly, and have the ability to put it into pleasing and persuasive form.

But beyond these considerations there are many things which must be left to your temperament, taste, and individuality. To compel you to speak according to inflexible rules would make you not an orator but an automaton.

The temperamental differences in successful speakers have been very great. One eminent speaker used practically no gesture; another was in almost constant action. One was quiet, modest, and conversational in his speaking style; another was impulsive and resistless as a mountain torrent.

It is safe to say that almost any man, however unpretentious his language, will command a hearing in Congress, Parliament, or elsewhere, if he gives accurate information upon a subject of importance and in a manner of unquestioned sincerity.

You will observe in the historical accounts of great orators, that without a single exception they studied, read, practised, conversed, and meditated, not occasionally, but with daily regularity. Many of them were endowed with natural gifts, but they supplemented these with indefatigable work.

Well-known Speakers and Their Methods

_Chalmers_

There is a rugged type of speaker who transcends and seemingly defies all rules of oratory. Such a man was the great Scottish preacher Chalmers, who was without polished elocution, grace, or manner, but who through his intellectual power and moral earnestness thrilled all who heard him.

He read his sermons entirely from manuscripts, but it is evident from the effects of his preaching that he was not a slave to the written word as many such speakers have been. While he read, he retained much of his freedom of gesture and physical expression, doubtless due to familiarity with his subject and thorough preparation of his message.

_John Bright_

You can profitably study the speeches of John Bright. They are noteworthy for their simplicity of diction and uniform quality of directness. His method was to make a plain statement of facts, enunciate certain fundamental principles, then follow with his argument and application.

His choice of words and style of delivery were most carefully studied, and his sonorous voice was under such complete control that he could speak at great length without the slightest fatigue. Many of his illustrations were drawn from the Bible, which he is said to have known better than any other book.

_Lord Brougham_

Lord Brougham wrote nine times the concluding parts of his speech for the defense of Queen Caroline. He once told a young man that if he wanted to speak well he must first learn to talk well. He recognized that good talking was the basis of effective public speaking.

Bear in mind, however, that this does not mean you are always to confine yourself to a conversational level. There are themes which demand large treatment, wherein vocal power and impassioned feeling are appropriate and essential. But what Lord Brougham meant, and it is equally true to-day, was that good public speaking is fundamentally good talking.

_Edmund Burke_

Edmund Burke recommended debate as one of the best means for developing facility and power in public speaking. Himself a master of debate, he said, “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amiable conflict with difficulty obliges us to have an intimate acquaintance with our subject, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.”

Burke, like all great orators, believed in premeditation, and always wrote and corrected his speeches with fastidious care. While such men knew that inspiration might come at the moment of speaking, they preferred to base their chances of success upon painstaking preparation.

_Massillon_

Massillon, the great French divine, spoke in a commanding voice and in a style so direct that at times he almost overwhelmed his hearers. His pointed and personal questions could not be evaded. He sent truth like fiery darts to the hearts of his hearers.I ask you to note very carefully the following eloquent passage from a sermon in which he explained how men justified themselves because they were no worse than the multitude:

“On this account it is, my brethren, that I confine myself to you who at present are assembled here; I include not the rest of men, but consider you as alone existing on the earth. The idea which occupies and frightens me is this: I figure to myself the present as your last hour and the end of the world; that the heavens are going to open above your heads; our Savior, in all His glory, to appear in the midst of the temple; and that you are only assembled here to wait His coming; like trembling criminals on whom the sentence is to be pronounced, either of life eternal or of everlasting death; for it is vain to flatter yourselves that you shall die more innocent than you are at this hour. All those desires of change with which you are amused will continue to amuse you till death arrives, the experience of all ages proves it; the only difference you have to expect will most likely be a larger balance against you than what you would have to answer for at present; and from what would be your destiny were you to be judged this moment, you may almost decide upon what will take place at your departure from life. Now, I ask you (and connecting my own lot with yours I ask with dread), were Jesus Christ to appear in this temple, in the midst of this assembly, to judge us, to make the dreadful separation betwixt the goats and sheep, do you believe that the greatest number of us would be placed at His right hand? Do you believe that the number would at least be equal? Do you believe there would even be found ten upright and faithful servants of the Lord, when formerly five cities could not furnish so many? I ask you. You know not, and I know it not. Thou alone, O my God, knowest who belong to Thee. But if we know not who belong to Him, at least we know that sinners do not. Now, who are the just and faithful assembled here at present? Titles and dignities avail nothing, you are stript of all these in the presence of your Savior. Who are they? Many sinners who wish not to be converted; many more who wish, but always put it off; many others who are only converted in appearance, and again fall back to their former courses. In a word, a great number who flatter themselves they have no occasion for conversion. This is the party of the reprobate. Ah! my brethren, cut off from this assembly these four classes of sinners, for they will be cut off at the great day. And now appear, ye just! Where are ye? O God, where are Thy chosen? And what a portion remains to Thy share.”

_Gladstone_

Gladstone had by nature a musical and melodious voice, but through practise he developed an unusual range of compass and variety. He could sink it to a whisper and still be audible, while in open-air meetings he could easily make himself heard by thousands.

He was courteous, and even ceremonious, in his every-day meeting with men, so that it was entirely natural for him to be deferential and ingratiating in his public speaking. He is an excellent illustration of the value of cultivating in daily conversation and manner the qualities you desire to have in your public address.

_John Quincy Adams_

John Quincy Adams read two chapters from the Bible every morning, which accounted in large measure for his resourceful English style. He was fond of using the pen in daily composition, and constantly committed to paper the first thoughts which occurred to him upon any important subject.

_Fox_

The ambition of Fox was to become a great political orator and debater, in which at last he succeeded. His mental agility was manifest in his reply to an elector whom he had canvassed for a vote, and who offered him a halter instead. “Oh thank you,” said Fox, “I would not deprive you of what is evidently a family relic.”

His method was to take each argument of an opponent, and dispose of it in regular order. His passion was for argument, upon great or petty subjects. He availed himself of every opportunity to speak. “During five whole sessions,” he said, “I spoke every night but one; and I regret that I did not speak on that night, too.”

_Theodore Parker_

Theodore Parker always read his sermons aloud while writing them, in order to test their “speaking quality.” His opinion was that an impressive delivery depended particularly upon vigorous feeling, energetic thinking, and clearness of statement.

_Henry Ward Beecher_

Henry Ward Beecher’s method was to practise vocal exercises in the open air, exploding all the vowel sounds in various keys. This practise duly produced a most flexible instrument, which served him throughout his brilliant career. He said:

“I had from childhood impediments of speech arising from a large palate, so that when a boy I used to be laughed at for talking as if I had a pudding in my mouth. When I went to Amherst, I was fortunate in passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution, and a better teacher for my purpose I can not conceive of. His system consisted in drill, or the thorough practise of inflections by the voice, of gesture, posture and articulation. Sometimes I was a whole hour practising my voice on a word–like justice. I would have to take a posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor. Then we would go through all the gestures, exercising each movement of the arm and throwing open the hand. All gestures except those of precision go in curves, the arm rising from the side, coming to the front, turning to the left or right. I was drilled as to how far the arm should come forward, where it should start from, how far go back, and under what circumstances these movements should be made. It was drill, drill, drill, until the motions almost became a second nature. Now, I never know what movements I shall make. My gestures are natural, because this drill made them natural to me. The only method of acquiring effective elocution is by practise, of not less than an hour a day, until the student has his voice and himself thoroughly subdued and trained to get right expression.”_Lord Bolingbroke_

Lord Bolingbroke made it a rule always to speak well in daily conversation, however unimportant the occasion. His taste and accuracy at last gave him a style in ordinary speech worthy to have been put into print as it fell from his lips.

_Lord Chatham_

Lord Chatham, despite his great natural endowments for speaking, devoted a regular time each day to developing a varied and copious vocabulary. He twice examined each word in the dictionary, from beginning to end, in his ardent desire to master the English language.

_John Philpot Curran_

The well-known case of John Philpot Curran should give encouragement to every aspiring student of public speaking. He was generally known as “Orator Mum,” because of his failure in his first attempt at public speaking. But he resolved to develop his oratorical powers, and devoted every morning to intense reading. In addition, he regularly carried in his pocket a small copy of a classic for convenient reading at odd moments.

It is said that he daily practised declamation before a looking-glass, closely scrutinizing his gesture, posture, and manner. He was an earnest student of public speaking, and eventually became one of the most eloquent of world orators.

_Balfour_

Among present-day speakers in England Mr. Balfour occupies a leading place. He possesses the gift of never saying a word too much, a habit which might be copied to advantage by many public speakers. His habit during a debate is to scribble a few words on an envelop, and then to speak with rare facility of English style.

_Bonar Law_

Bonar Law does not use any notes in the preparation of a speech, but carefully thinks out the various parts, and then by means of a series of “mental rehearsals” fixes them indelibly in his mind. The result of this conscientious practise has made him a formidable debater and extempore speaker.

_Asquith_

Herbert H. Asquith, who possesses the rare gift of summoning the one inevitable word, and of compressing his speeches into a small space of time, speaks with equal success whether from a prepared manuscript or wholly extempore. His unsurpassed English style is the result of many years reading and study of prose masterpieces. “He produces, wherever and whenever he wants them, an endless succession of perfectly coined sentences, conceived with unmatched felicity and delivered without hesitation in a parliamentary style which is at once the envy and the despair of imitators.”

_Bryan_

William Jennings Bryan is by common consent one of the greatest public speakers in America. He has a voice of unusual power and compass, and his delivery is natural and deliberate. His style is generally forensic, altho he frequently rises to the dramatic. He has been a diligent student of oratory, and once said:

“The age of oratory has not passed; nor will it pass. The press, instead of displacing the orator, has given him a larger audience and enabled him to do a more extended work. As long as there are human rights to be defended; as long as there are great interests to be guarded; as long as the welfare of nations is a matter for discussion, so long will public speaking have its place.”

_Roosevelt_

Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most effective of American public speakers, due in large measure to intense moral earnestness and great stores of physical vitality. His diction was direct and his style energetic. He spoke out of the fulness of a well-furnished mind.

Success Factors in Platform Speaking

Constant practise of composition has been the habit of all great orators. This, combined with the habit of reading and re-reading the best prose writers and poets, accounts in large measure for the felicitous style of such men as Burke, Erskine, Macaulay, Bolingbroke, Phillips, Everett and Webster.

I can not too often urge you to use your pen in daily composition as a means to felicity and facility of speech. The act of writing out your thoughts is a direct aid to concentration, and tends to enforce the habit of choosing the best language. It gives clearness, force, precision, beauty, and copiousness of style, so valuable in extemporaneous and impromptu speaking.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF MEMORIZING SPEECHES

Some of the most highly successful speakers carefully wrote out, revised, and committed to memory important passages in their speeches. These they dexterously wove into the body of their addresses in such a natural manner as not to expose their method.

This plan, however, is not to be generally recommended, since few men have the faculty of rendering memorized parts so as to make them appear extempore. If you recite rather than speak to an audience, you may be a good entertainer, but just to that degree will you impair your power and effectiveness as a public speaker.

There are speakers who have successfully used the plan of committing to memory significant sentences, statements, or sayings, and skilfully embodying them in their speeches. You might test this method for yourself, tho it is attended with danger.

If possible, join a local debating society, where you will have excellent opportunity for practise in thinking and speaking on your feet. Many distinguished public speakers have owed their fluency of speech and self-confidence to early practise in debate.

THE VALUE OF REPETITION

Persuasion is a task of skill. You must bring to your aid in speaking every available resource. An effective weapon at times is a “remorseless iteration.” Have the courage to repeat yourself as often as may be necessary to impress your leading ideas upon the minds of your hearers. Note the forensic maxim, “tell a judge twice whatever you want him to hear; tell a special jury thrice, and a common jury half a dozen times, the view of a case you wish them to entertain.”THE NEED OF SELF-CONFIDENCE

Whatever methods of premeditation you adopt in the preparation of a speech, having planned everything to the best of your ability, dismiss from your mind all anxiety and all thought about yourself.

Right preparation and earnest practise should give you a full degree of confidence in your ability to perform the task before you. When you stand at last before the audience, it should be with the assurance that you are thoroughly equipped to say something of real interest and importance.

THE POWER OF PERSONALITY

Personality plays a vital part in a speaker’s success. Gladstone described Cardinal Newman’s manner in the pulpit as unsatisfactory if considered in its separate parts. “There was not much change in the inflection of his voice; action there was none; his sermons were read, and his eyes were always on his book; and all that, you will say, is against efficiency in preaching. Yes; but you take the man as a whole, and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there was solemn music and sweetness in his tone, there was a completeness in the figure, taken together with the tone and with the manner, which made even his delivery such as I have described it, and tho exclusively with written sermons, singularly attractive.”

THE DANGER OF IMITATION

It is a fatal mistake, as I have said, to set out deliberately to imitate some favorite speaker, and to mold your style after his. You will observe certain things and methods in other speakers which will fit in naturally with your style and temperament. To this extent you may advantageously adopt them, but always be on your guard against anything which might in the slightest degree impair your own individuality.

Speech for Study, with Lesson Talk

FEATURES OF AN ELOQUENT ADDRESS

You will find useful material for study and practise in the speech which follows, delivered by Lord Rosebery at the Unveiling of the Statue of Gladstone at Glasgow, Scotland, October 11th, 1902.

The English style is noteworthy for its uniform charm and naturalness. There is an unmistakable personal note which contributes greatly to the effect of the speaker’s words.

This eloquent address is a model for such an occasion, and a good illustration of the work of a speaker thoroughly familiar with his theme. It has sufficient variety to sustain interest, dignity in keeping with the subject, and a note of inspiration which would profoundly impress an audience of thinking men. It is a scholarly address.

Note the concise introductory sentences. Repeat them aloud and observe how easily they flow from the lips. Notice the balance and variety of successive sentences, the stately diction, and the underlying tone of deep sincerity.

Examine every phrase and sentence of this eloquent speech. Study the conclusion and particularly the closing paragraph. When you have thoroughly analyzed the speech, stand up and render it aloud in clear-cut tones and appropriately dignified style.

SPEECH FOR STUDY

AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF GLADSTONE

(_Address of Lord Rosebery_)

I am here to-day to unveil the image of one of the great figures of our country. It is right and fitting that it should stand here. A statue of Mr. Gladstone is congenial in any part of Scotland. But in this Scottish city, teeming with eager workers, endowed with a great University, a center of industry, commerce, and thought, a statue of William Ewart Gladstone is at home.

But you in Glasgow have more personal claims to a share in the inheritance of Mr. Gladstone’s fame. I, at any rate, can recall one memory–the record of that marvelous day in December, 1879, nearly twenty-three years ago, when the indomitable old man delivered his rectorial address to the students at noon, a long political speech in St. Andrew’s Hall in the evening, and a substantial discourse on receiving an address from the Corporation at ten o’clock at night. Some of you may have been present at all these gatherings, some only at the political meeting. If they were, they may remember the little incidents of the meeting–the glasses which were hopelessly lost and then, of course, found on the orator’s person–the desperate candle brought in, stuck in a water-bottle, to attempt sufficient light to read an extract. And what a meeting it was–teeming, delirious, absorbed! Do you have such meetings now? They seem to me pretty good; but the meetings of that time stand out before all others in my mind.

This statue is erected, not out of the national subscription, but by the contributions from men of all creeds in Glasgow and in the West. I must then, in what I have to say, leave out altogether the political aspect of Mr. Gladstone. In some cases such a rule would omit all that was interesting in a man. There are characters, from which if you subtracted politics, there would be nothing left. It was not so with Mr. Gladstone.

To the great mass of his fellow-countrymen he was of course a statesman, wildly worshipped by some, wildly detested by others. But, to those who were privileged to know him, his politics seemed but the least part of him. The predominant part, to which all else was subordinated, was his religion; the life which seemed to attract him most was the life of the library; the subject which engrossed him most was the subject of the moment, whatever it might be, and that, when he was out of office, was very rarely politics. Indeed, I sometimes doubt whether his natural bent was toward politics at all. Had his course taken him that way, as it very nearly did, he would have been a great churchman, greater perhaps than any that this island has known; he would have been a great professor, if you could have found a university big enough to hold him; he would have been a great historian, a great bookman, he would have grappled with whole libraries and wrestled with academies, had the fates placed him in a cloister; indeed it is difficult to conceive the career, except perhaps the military, in which his energy and intellect and application would not have placed him on a summit. Politics, however, took him and claimed his life service, but, jealous mistress as she is, could never thoroughly absorb him.Such powers as I have indicated seem to belong to a giant and a prodigy, and I can understand many turning away from the contemplation of such a character, feeling that it is too far removed from them to interest them, and that it is too unapproachable to help them–that it is like reading of Hercules or Hector, mythical heroes whose achievements the actual living mortal can not hope to rival. Well, that is true enough; we have not received intellectual faculties equal to Mr. Gladstone’s, and can not hope to vie with him in their exercise. But apart from them, his great force was character, and amid the vast multitude that I am addressing, there is none who may not be helped by him.

The three signal qualities which made him what he was, were courage, industry, and faith; dauntless courage, unflagging industry, a faith which was part of his fiber; these were the levers with which he moved the world.

I do not speak of his religious faith, that demands a worthier speaker and another occasion. But no one who knew Mr. Gladstone could fail to see that it was the essence, the savor, the motive power of his life. Strange as it may seem, I can not doubt that while this attracted many to him, it alienated others, others not themselves irreligious, but who suspected the sincerity of so manifest a devotion, and who, reared in the moderate atmosphere of the time, disliked the intrusion of religious considerations into politics. These, however, though numerous enough, were the exceptions, and it can not, I think, be questioned that Mr. Gladstone not merely raised the tone of public discussion, but quickened and renewed the religious feeling of the society in which he moved.

But this is not the faith of which I am thinking to-day. What is present to me is the faith with which he espoused and pursued great causes. There also he had faith sufficient to move mountains, and did sometimes move mountains. He did not lightly resolve, he came to no hasty conclusion, but when he had convinced himself that a cause was right, it engrossed him, it inspired him, with a certainty as deep-seated and as imperious as ever moved mortal man. To him, then, obstacles, objections, the counsels of doubters and critics were as nought, he pressed on with the passion of a whirlwind, but also with the steady persistence of some puissant machine.

He had, of course, like every statesman, often to traffic with expediency, he had always, I suppose, to accept something less than his ideal, but his unquenchable faith, not in himself–tho that with experience must have waxed strong–not in himself but in his cause, sustained him among the necessary shifts and transactions of the moment, and kept his head high in the heavens.

Such faith, such moral conviction, is not given to all men, for the treasures of his nature were in ingots, and not in dust. But there is, perhaps, no man without some faith in some cause or some person; if so, let him take heart, in however small a minority he may be, by remembering how mighty a strength was Gladstone’s power of faith.

His next great force lay in his industry. I do not know if the aspersions of “ca’ canny” be founded, but at any rate there was no “ca’ canny” about him. From his earliest school-days, if tradition be true, to the bed of death, he gave his full time and energy to work. No doubt his capacity for labor was unusual. He would sit up all night writing a pamphlet, and work next day as usual. An eight-hours’ day would have been a holiday to him, for he preached and practised the gospel of work to its fullest extent. He did not, indeed, disdain pleasure; no one enjoyed physical exercise, or a good play, or a pleasant dinner, more than he; he drank in deep draughts of the highest and the best that life had to offer; but even in pastime he was never idle. He did not know what it was to saunter, he debited himself with every minute of his time; he combined with the highest intellectual powers the faculty of utilizing them to the fullest extent by intense application. Moreover, his industry was prodigious in result, for he was an extraordinarily rapid worker. Dumont says of Mirabeau, that till he met that marvelous man he had no idea of how much could be achieved in a day. “Had I not lived with him,” he says, “I should not know what can be accomplished in a day, all that can be comprest into an interval of twelve hours. A day was worth more to him than a week or a month to others.” Many men can be busy for hours with a mighty small product, but with Mr. Gladstone every minute was fruitful. That, no doubt, was largely due to his marvelous powers of concentration. When he was staying at Dalmeny in 1879 he kindly consented to sit for his bust. The only difficulty was that there was no time for sittings. So the sculptor with his clay model was placed opposite Mr. Gladstone as he worked, and they spent the mornings together, Mr. Gladstone writing away, and the clay figure of himself less than a yard off gradually assuming shape and form. Anything more distracting I can not conceive, but it had no effect on the busy patient. And now let me make a short digression. I saw recently in your newspapers that there was some complaint of the manners of the rising generation in Glasgow. If that be so, they are heedless of Mr. Gladstone’s example. It might be thought that so impetuous a temper as his might be occasionally rough or abrupt. That was not so. His exquisite urbanity was one of his most conspicuous graces. I do not now only allude to that grave, old-world courtesy, which gave so much distinction to his private life; for his sweetness of manner went far beyond demeanor. His spoken words, his letters, even when one differed from him most acutely, were all marked by this special note. He did not like people to disagree with him, few people do; but, so far as manner went, it was more pleasant to disagree with Mr. Gladstone than to be in agreement with some others.Lastly, I come to his courage–that perhaps was his greatest quality, for when he gave his heart and reason to a cause, he never counted the cost. Most men are physically brave, and this nation is reputed to be especially brave, but Mr. Gladstone was brave among the brave. He had to the end the vitality of physical courage. When well on in his ninth decade, well on to ninety, he was knocked over by a cab, and before the bystanders could rally to his assistance, he had pursued the cab with a view to taking its number. He had, too, notoriously, political courage in a not less degree than Sir Robert Walpole. We read that George II, who was little given to enthusiasm, would often cry out, with color flushing into his cheeks, and tears sometimes in his eyes, and with a vehement oath:–“He (Walpole) is a brave fellow; he has more spirit than any man I ever knew.”

Mr. Gladstone did not yield to Walpole in political and parliamentary courage–it was a quality which he closely observed in others, and on which he was fond of descanting. But he had the rarest and choicest courage of all–I mean moral courage. That was his supreme characteristic, and it was with him, like others, from the first. A contemporary of his at Eton once told me of a scene, at which my informant was present, when some loose or indelicate toast was proposed, and all present drank it but young Gladstone. In spite of the storm of objurgation and ridicule that raged around him, he jammed his face, as it were, down in his hands on the table and would not budge. Every schoolboy knows, for we may here accurately use Macaulay’s well-known expression, every schoolboy knows the courage that this implies. And even by the heedless generation of boyhood it was appreciated, for we find an Etonian writing to his parents to ask that he might go to Oxford rather than Cambridge, on the sole ground that at Oxford he would have the priceless advantage of Gladstone’s influence and example. Nor did his courage ever flag. He might be right, or he might be wrong–that is not the question here–but when he was convinced that he was right, not all the combined powers of Parliament or society or the multitude could for an instant hinder his course, whether it ended in success or in failure. Success left him calm, he had had so much of it; nor did failures greatly depress him. The next morning found him once more facing the world with serene and undaunted brow. There was a man. The nation has lost him, but preserves his character, his manhood, as a model, on which she may form if she be fortunate, coming generations of men. With his politics, with his theology, with his manifold graces and gifts of intellect, we are not concerned to-day, not even with his warm and passionate human sympathies. They are not dead with him, but let them rest with him, for we can not in one discourse view him in all his parts. To-day it is enough to have dealt for a moment on three of his great moral characteristics, enough to have snatched from the fleeting hour a few moments of communion with the mighty dead.

History has not yet allotted him his definite place, but no one would now deny that he bequeathed a pure standard of life, a record of lofty ambition for the public good as he understood it, a monument of life-long labor. Such lives speak for themselves, they need no statues, they face the future with the confidence of high purpose and endeavor. The statues are not for them but for us, to bid us be conscious of our trust, mindful of our duty, scornful of opposition to principle and faith. They summon us to account for time and opportunity, they embody an inspiring tradition, they are milestones in the life of a nation. The effigy of Pompey was bathed in the blood of his great rival: let this statue have the nobler destiny of constantly calling to life worthy rivals of Gladstone’s fame and character.

Unveil, then, that statue. Let it stand to Glasgow in all time coming for faith, fortitude, courage, industry, qualities apart from intellect or power or wealth, which may inspire all her citizens however humble, however weak; let it remind the most unthinking passer-by of the dauntless character which it represents, of his long life and honest purpose; let it leaven by an immortal tradition the population which lives and works and dies around this monument.

STUDY OF MODEL SPEECHES

MODEL SPEECHES, WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR STUDY

There is no better way for you to improve your own public speaking than to analyze and study the speeches of successful orators.

First read such speeches aloud, since by that means you fit words to your lips and acquire a familiarity with oratorical style.

Then examine the speaker’s method of arranging his thoughts, and the precise way in which they lead up and contribute to his ultimate object.

Carefully note any special means employed–story, illustration, appeal, or climax,–to increase the effectiveness of the speech.

_John Stuart Mill_

Read the following speech delivered by John Stuart Mill, in his tribute to Garrison. Note the clear-cut English of the speaker. Observe how promptly he goes to his subject, and how steadily he keeps to it. Particularly note the high level of thought maintained throughout. This is an excellent model of dignified, well-reasoned, convincing speech.

“Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen,–The speakers who have preceded me have, with an eloquence far beyond anything which I can command, laid before our honored guest the homage of admiration and gratitude which we all feel due to his heroic life. Instead of idly expatiating upon things which have been far better said than I could say them, I would rather endeavor to recall one or two lessons applicable to ourselves, which may be drawn from his career. A noble work nobly done always contains in itself not one but many lessons; and in the case of him whose character and deeds we are here to commemorate, two may be singled out specially deserving to be laid to heart by all who would wish to leave the world better than they found it.“The first lesson is,–Aim at something great; aim at things which are difficult; and there is no great thing which is not difficult. Do not pare down your undertaking to what you can hope to see successful in the next few years, or in the years of your own life. Fear not the reproach of Quixotism or of fanaticism; but after you have well weighed what you undertake, if you see your way clearly, and are convinced that you are right, go forward, even tho you, like Mr. Garrison, do it at the risk of being torn to pieces by the very men through whose changed hearts your purpose will one day be accomplished. Fight on with all your strength against whatever odds and with however small a band of supporters. If you are right, the time will come when that small band will swell into a multitude; you will at least lay the foundations of something memorable, and you may, like Mr. Garrison–tho you ought not to need or expect so great a reward–be spared to see that work completed which, when you began it, you only hoped it might be given to you to help forward a few stages on its way.

“The other lesson which it appears to me important to enforce, amongst the many that may be drawn from our friend’s life, is this: If you aim at something noble and succeed in it, you will generally find that you have succeeded not in that alone. A hundred other good and noble things which you never dreamed of will have been accomplished by the way, and the more certainly, the sharper and more agonizing has been the struggle which preceded the victory. The heart and mind of a nation are never stirred from their foundations without manifold good fruits. In the case of the great American contest these fruits have been already great, and are daily becoming greater. The prejudices which beset every form of society–and of which there was a plentiful crop in America–are rapidly melting away. The chains of prescription have been broken; it is not only the slave who has been freed–the mind of America has been emancipated. The whole intellect of the country has been set thinking about the fundamental questions of society and government; and the new problems which have to be solved and the new difficulties which have to be encountered are calling forth new activity of thought, and that great nation is saved probably for a long time to come, from the most formidable danger of a completely settled state of society and opinion–intellectual and moral stagnation. This, then, is an additional item of the debt which America and mankind owe to Mr. Garrison and his noble associates; and it is well calculated to deepen our sense of the truth which his whole career most strikingly illustrates–that tho our best directed efforts may often seem wasted and lost, nothing coming of them that can be pointed to and distinctly identified as a definite gain to humanity, tho this may happen ninety-nine times in every hundred, the hundredth time the result may be so great and dazzling that we had never dared to hope for it, and should have regarded him who had predicted it to us as sanguine beyond the bounds of mental sanity. So has it been with Mr. Garrison.”

It will be beneficial for your all-round development in speaking to choose for earnest study several speeches of widely different character. As you compare one speech with another, you will more readily see why each subject requires a different form of treatment, and also learn to judge how the speaker has availed himself of the possibilities afforded him.

_Judge Story_

The speech which follows is a fine example of elevated and impassioned oratory. Judge Story here lauds the American Republic, and employs to advantage the rhetorical figures of exclamation and interrogation.

As you examine this speech you will notice that the speaker himself was moved by deep conviction. His own belief stamped itself upon his words, and throughout there is the unmistakable mark of sincerity.

You are impressed by the comprehensive treatment of the subject. The orator here speaks out of a full mind, and you feel that you would confidently trust yourself to his leadership.

“When we reflect on what has been and what is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future ages? What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence! The Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and the end of all marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty.

“Greece! lovely Greece! ‘the land of scholars and the nurse of arms,’ where sister republics, in fair processions chanted the praise of liberty and the good, where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressors have bound her to the earth. Her arts are no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery; the fragments of her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruins.

“She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons united at Thermopylæ and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions–she fell by the hands of her own people. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Rome! whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun, where and what is she! The Eternal City yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death.

“The malaria has but traveled in the parts won by the destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire. A mortal disease was upon her before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money.“And where are the republics of modern times, which cluster around immortal Italy? Venice and Genoa exist but in name. The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss in their native fastnesses; but the guaranty of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained.

“When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.

“We stand the latest, and if we fall, probably the last experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppression of tyranny. Our Constitutions never have been enfeebled by the vice or the luxuries of the world. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning: simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect.

“The Atlantic rolls between us and a formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude, we have the choice of many products, and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach every home. What fairer prospects of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created?

“Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the North, and, moving onward to the South, has opened to Greece the lesson of her better days.

“Can it be that America under such circumstances should betray herself? That she is to be added to the catalog of republics, the inscription upon whose ruin is, ‘They were but they are not!’ Forbid it, my countrymen! forbid it, Heaven! I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.

“I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman, the love of your offspring, to teach them as they climb your knees or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never forsake her. I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are–whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary, in defense of the liberties of our country.”

You can advantageously read aloud many times a speech like the foregoing. Stand up and read it aloud once a day for a month, and you will be conscious of a distinct improvement in your own command of persuasive speech.

_W. J. Fox_

The following is a specimen of masterly oratorical style, from a sermon preached in London, England, by W. J. Fox:

“From the dawn of intellect and freedom Greece has been a watchword on the earth. There rose the social spirit to soften and refine her chosen race, and shelter as in a nest her gentleness from the rushing storm of barbarism; there liberty first built her mountain throne, first called the waves her own, and shouted across them a proud defiance to despotism’s banded myriads, there the arts and graces danced around humanity, and stored man’s home with comforts, and strewed his path with roses, and bound his brows with myrtle, and fashioned for him the breathing statue, and summoned him to temples of snowy marble, and charmed his senses with all forms of eloquence, and threw over his final sleep their veil of loveliness; there sprung poetry, like their own fabled goddess, mature at once from the teeming intellect, gilt with arts and armour that defy the assaults of time and subdue the heart of man; there matchless orators gave the world a model of perfect eloquence, the soul the instrument on which they played, and every passion of our nature but a tone which the master’s touch called forth at will; there lived and taught the philosophers of bower and porch, of pride and pleasure, of deep speculation, and of useful action, who developed all the acuteness and refinement, and excursiveness, and energy of mind, and were the glory of their country when their country was the glory of the earth.”

_William McKinley_

An eloquent speech, worthy of close study, is that of William McKinley on “The Characteristics of Washington.” As you read it aloud, note the short, clear-cut sentences used in the introduction. Observe how the long sentence at the third paragraph gives the needed variation. Carefully study the compact English style, and the use of forceful expressions of the speaker, as “He blazed the path to liberty.”

“Fellow Citizens:–There is a peculiar and tender sentiment connected with this memorial. It expresses not only the gratitude and reverence of the living, but is a testimonial of affection and homage from the dead.

“The comrades of Washington projected this monument. Their love inspired it. Their contributions helped to build it. Past and present share in its completion, and future generations will profit by its lessons. To participate in the dedication of such a monument is a rare and precious privilege. Every monument to Washington is a tribute to patriotism. Every shaft and statue to his memory helps to inculcate love of country, encourage loyalty, and establish a better citizenship. God bless every undertaking which revives patriotism and rebukes the indifferent and lawless! A critical study of Washington’s career only enhances our estimation of his vast and varied abilities.“As Commander-in-chief of the Colonial armies from the beginning of the war to the proclamation of peace, as president of the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, and as the first President of the United States under that Constitution, Washington has a distinction differing from that of all other illustrious Americans. No other name bears or can bear such a relation to the Government. Not only by his military genius–his patience, his sagacity, his courage, and his skill–was our national independence won, but he helped in largest measure to draft the chart by which the Nation was guided; and he was the first chosen of the people to put in motion the new Government. His was not the boldness of martial display or the charm of captivating oratory, but his calm and steady judgment won men’s support and commanded their confidence by appealing to their best and noblest aspirations. And withal Washington was ever so modest that at no time in his career did his personality seem in the least intrusive. He was above the temptation of power. He spurned the suggested crown. He would have no honor which the people did not bestow.

“An interesting fact–and one which I love to recall–is that the only time Washington formally addrest the Constitutional Convention during all its sessions over which he presided in this city, he appealed for a larger representation of the people in the National House of Representatives, and his appeal was instantly heeded. Thus was he ever keenly watchful of the rights of the people in whose hands was the destiny of our Government then as now.

“Masterful as were his military campaigns, his civil administration commands equal admiration. His foresight was marvelous; his conception of the philosophy of government, his insistence upon the necessity of education, morality, and enlightened citizenship to the progress and permanence of the Republic can not be contemplated even at this period without filling us with astonishment at the breadth of his comprehension and the sweep of his vision. His was no narrow view of government. The immediate present was not the sole concern, but our future good his constant theme of study. He blazed the path of liberty. He laid the foundation upon which we have grown from weak and scattered Colonial governments to a united Republic whose domains and power as well as whose liberty and freedom have become the admiration of the world. Distance and time have not detracted from the fame and force of his achievements or diminished the grandeur of his life and work. Great deeds do not stop in their growth, and those of Washington will expand in influence in all the centuries to follow.

“The bequest Washington has made to civilization is rich beyond computation. The obligations under which he has placed mankind are sacred and commanding. The responsibility he has left, for the American people to preserve and perfect what he accomplished, is exacting and solemn. Let us rejoice in every new evidence that the people realize what they enjoy, and cherish with affection the illustrious heroes of Revolutionary story whose valor and sacrifices made us a nation. They live in us, and their memory will help us keep the covenant entered into for the maintenance of the freest Government of earth.

“The nation and the name Washington are inseparable. One is linked indissolubly with the other. Both are glorious, both triumphant. Washington lives and will live because of what he did for the exaltation of man, the enthronement of conscience, and the establishment of a Government which recognizes all the governed. And so, too, will the Nation live victorious over all obstacles, adhering to the immortal principles which Washington taught and Lincoln sustained.”

_Edward Everett_

The following extract from “The Foundation of National Character,” by Edward Everett, is a fine example of patriotic appeal. Read it aloud, and note how the orator speaks with deep feeling and stirs the same feeling in you. This impression is largely due to the simple, sincere, right-onward style of the speaker,–qualities of his own well-known character.

It will amply repay you to read this extract aloud at least once a day for a week or more, so that its superior elements of thought and style may be deeply imprest on your mind.

“How is the spirit of a free people to be formed, and animated, and cheered, but out of the storehouse of its historic recollections? Are we to be eternally ringing the changes upon Marathon and Thermopylæ; and going back to read in obscure texts of Greek and Latin, of the exemplars of patriotic virtue?

“I thank God that we can find them nearer home, in our own soil; that strains of the noblest sentiment that ever swelled in the breast of man, are breathing to us out of every page of our country’s history, in the native eloquence of our mother-tongue,–that the colonial and provincial councils of America exhibit to us models of the spirits and character which gave Greece and Rome their name and their praise among nations.

“Here we ought to go for our instruction;–the lesson is plain, it is clear, it is applicable. When we go to ancient history, we are bewildered with the difference of manners and institutions. We are willing to pay our tribute of applause to the memory of Leonidas, who fell nobly for his country in the face of his foe.

“But when we trace him to his home, we are confounded at the reflection, that the same Spartan heroism, to which he sacrificed himself at Thermopylæ, would have led him to tear his own child, if it had happened to be a sickly babe,–the very object for which all that is kind and good in man rises up to plead,–from the bosom of his mother, and carry it out to be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus.“We feel a glow of admiration at the heroism displayed at Marathon by the ten thousand champions of invaded Greece; but we can not forget that the tenth part of the number were slaves, unchained from the workshops and doorposts of their masters, to go and fight the battles of freedom.

“I do not mean that these examples are to destroy the interest with which we read the history of ancient times; they possibly increase that interest by the very contrast they exhibit. But they warn us, if we need the warning, to seek our great practical lessons of patriotism at home; out of the exploits and sacrifices of which our own country is the theater; out of the characters of our own fathers.

“Them we know,–the high-souled, natural, unaffected, the citizen heroes. We know what happy firesides they left for the cheerless camp. We know with what pacific habits they dared the perils of the field. There is no mystery, no romance, no madness, under the name of chivalry about them. It is all resolute, manly resistance for conscience and liberty’s sake not merely of an overwhelming power, but of all the force of long-rooted habits and native love of order and peace.

“Above all, their blood calls to us from the soil which we tread; it beats in our veins; it cries to us not merely in the thrilling words of one of the first victims in this cause–‘My sons, scorn to be slaves!’–but it cries with a still more moving eloquence–‘My sons, forget not your fathers!'”

_John Quincy Adams_

John Quincy Adams, in his speech on “The Life and Character of Lafayette,” gives us a fine example of elevated and serious-minded utterance. The following extract from this speech can be studied with profit. Particularly note the use of sustained sentences, and the happy collocation of words. The concluding paragraph should be closely examined as a study in impressive climax.

“Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon, from the creation of the world to this day, the mighty dead of every age and every clime,–and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?

“There have doubtless been in all ages men whose discoveries or inventions in the world of matter, or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.

“Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe; in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment of attaining manhood the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from above.

“He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of Liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us.

“In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country.

“It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land; but he saw it from the summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consummation of his wishes in the establishment of a Republic and the extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived…. The prejudices and passions of the people of France rejected the principle of inherited power in every station of public trust, excepting the first and highest of them all; but there they clung to it, as did the Israelites of old to the savory deities of Egypt.

“When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all the institutions of France; when government shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came; as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be abused;–then will be the time for contemplating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors, and perils, and sacrifices of his long and eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward till the hour when the trumpet of the Archangel shall sound to announce that time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race high on the list of pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind.”

I have selected these extracts for your convenient use, as embodying both thought and style worthy of your careful study. Read them aloud at every opportunity, and you will be gratified at the steady improvement such practise will make in your own speaking power.HISTORY OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

MEN WHO HAVE MADE HISTORY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING–AND THEIR METHODS

The great orators of the world did not regard eloquence as simply an endowment of nature, but applied themselves diligently to cultivating their powers of expression. In many cases there was unusual natural ability, but such men knew that regular study and practise were essential to success in this coveted art.

The oration can be traced back to Hebrew literature. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy we find Moses’ speech in the end of the fortieth year, briefly rehearsing the story of God’s promise, and of God’s anger for their incredulity and disobedience.

The four orations in Deuteronomy, by Moses, are highly commended for their tenderness, sublimity and passionate appeal. You can advantageously read them aloud.

The oration of Pericles over the graves of those who fell in the Peloponnesian War, is said to have been the first Athenian oration designed for the public.

The agitated political times and the people’s intense desire for learning combined to favor the development of oratory in ancient Greece. Questions of great moment had to be discust and serious problems solved. As the orator gradually became the most powerful influence in the State, the art of oratory was more and more recognized as the supreme accomplishment of the educated man.

_Demosthenes_

Demosthenes stands preeminent among Greek orators. His well-known oration “On the Crown,” the preparation of which occupied a large part of seven years, is regarded as the oratorical masterpiece of all history.

It is encouraging to the student of public speaking to recall that this distinguished orator at first had serious natural defects to overcome. His voice was weak, he stammered in his speech, and was painfully diffident. These faults were remedied, as is well-known, by earnest daily practise in declaiming on the sea-shore, with pebbles in the mouth, walking up and down hill while reciting, and deliberately seeking occasions for conversing with groups of people.

The chief lesson for you to draw from Demosthenes is that he was indefatigable in his study of the art of oratory. He left nothing to chance. His speeches were characterized by deliberate forethought. He excelled other men not because of great natural ability but because of intelligent and continuous industry. He stands for all time as the most inspiring example of oratorical achievement, despite almost insuperable difficulties.

_Cicero_

The fame of Roman oratory rests upon Cicero, whose eloquence was second only to that of Demosthenes. He was a close student of the art of speaking. He was so intense and vehement by nature that he was obliged in his early career to spend two years in Greece, exercising in the gymnasium in order to restore his shattered constitution.

His nervous temperament clung to him, however, since he made this significant confession after long years of practise in public speaking. “I declare that when I think of the moment when I shall have to rise and speak in defense of a client, I am not only disturbed in mind, but tremble in every limb of my body.”

It is well to note here that a nervous temperament may be a help rather than a hindrance to a speaker. Indeed, it is the highly sensitive nature that often produces the most persuasive orator, but only when he has learned to conserve and properly use this valuable power.

Cicero was a living embodiment of the comprehensive requirements laid down by the ancients as essential to the orator. He had a knowledge of logic, ethics, astronomy, philosophy, geometry, music, and rhetoric. Little wonder, therefore, that his amazing eloquence was described as a resistless torrent.

_Luther_

Martin Luther was the dominating orator of the Reformation. He combined a strong physique with great intellectual power. “If I wish to compose, or write, or pray, or preach well,” said he, “I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, my understanding is sharpened, and all dismal thoughts and temptations are dissipated.” What the great Reformer called “anger,” we would call indignation or earnestness.

_John Knox_

John Knox, the Scotch reformer, was a preeminent preacher. His pulpit style was characterized by a fiery eloquence which stirred his hearers to great enthusiasm and sometimes to violence.

_Bossuet_

Bossuet, regarded as the greatest orator France has produced, was a fearless and inspired speaker. His style was dignified and deliberate, but as he warmed with his theme his thought took fire and he carried his hearers along upon a swiftly moving tide of impassioned eloquence. When he spoke from the text, “Be wise, therefore, O ye Kings! be instructed, ye judges of the earth!” the King himself was thrilled as with a religious terror.

To ripe scholarship Bossuet added a voice that was deep and sonorous, an imposing personality, and an animated style of gesture. Lamartine described his voice as “like that of the thunder in the clouds, or the organ in the cathedral.”

_Bourdaloue_

Louis Bourdaloue, styled “the preacher of Kings, and the King of preachers,” was a speaker of versatile powers. He could adapt his style to any audience, and “mechanics left their shops, merchants their business, and lawyers their court house” in order to hear him. His high personal character, simplicity of life, and clear and logical utterance combined to make him an accomplished orator.

_Massillon_

Massillon preached directly to the hearts of his hearers. He was of a deeply affectionate nature, hence his style was that of tender persuasiveness rather than of declamation. He had remarkable spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart, and was himself deeply moved by the truths which he proclaimed to other men.

_Lord Chatham_

Lord Chatham’s oratorical style was formed on the classic model. His intellect, at once comprehensive and vigorous, combined with deep and intense feeling, fitted him to become one of the highest types of orators. He was dignified and graceful, sometimes vehement, always commanding. He ruled the British parliament by sheer force of eloquence.

His voice was a wonderful instrument, so completely under control that his lowest whisper was distinctly heard, and his full tones completely filled the House. He had supreme self-confidence, and a sense of superiority over those around him which acted as an inspiration to his own mind._Burke_

Burke was a great master of English prose as well as a great orator. He took large means to deal with large subjects. He was a man of immense power, and his stride was the stride of a giant. He has been credited with passion, intensity, imagination, nobility, and amplitude. His style was sonorous and majestic.

_Sheridan_

Sheridan became a foremost parliamentary speaker and debater, despite early discouragements. His well-known answer to a friend, who adversely criticized his speaking, “It is in me, and it shall come out of me!” has for years given new encouragement to many a student of public speaking. He applied himself with untiring industry to the development of all his powers, and so became one of the most distinguished speakers of his day.

_Charles James Fox_

Charles James Fox was a plain, practical, forceful orator of the thoroughly English type. His qualities of sincerity, vehemence, simplicity, ruggedness, directness and dexterity, combined with a manly fearlessness, made him a formidable antagonist in any debate. Facts, analogies, illustrations, intermingled with wit, feeling, and ridicule, gave charm and versatility to his speaking unsurpassed in his time.

_Lord Brougham_

Lord Brougham excelled in cogent, effective argument. His impassioned reasoning often made ordinary things interesting. He ingratiated himself by his wise and generous sentiments, and his uncompromising solicitude for his country.

He always succeeded in getting through his protracted and parenthetical sentences without confusion to his hearers or to himself. He could see from the beginning of a sentence precisely what the end would be.

_John Quincy Adams_

John Quincy Adams won a high place as a debater and orator in his speech in Congress upon the right of petition, delivered in 1837. A formidable antagonist, pugnacious by temperament, uniformly dignified, a profound scholar,–his is “a name recorded on the brightest page of American history, as statesman, diplomatist, philosopher, orator, author, and, above all a Christian.”

_Patrick Henry_

Patrick Henry was a man of extraordinary eloquence. In his day he was regarded as the greatest orator in America. In his early efforts as a speaker he hesitated much and throughout his career often gave an impression of natural timidity. He has been favorably compared with Lord Chatham for fire, force, and personal energy. His power was largely due to a rare gift of lucid and concise statement.

_Henry Clay_

The eloquence of Henry Clay was magisterial, persuasive, and irresistible. So great was his personal magnetism that multitudes came great distances to hear him. He was a man of brilliant intellect, fertile fancy, chivalrous nature, and patriotic fervor. He had a clear, rotund, melodious voice, under complete command. He held, it is said, the keys to the hearts of his countrymen.

_Calhoun_

The eloquence of John Caldwell Calhoun has been described by Daniel Webster as “plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustrations, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner.”

He exerted unusual influence over the opinions of great masses of men. He had remarkable power of analysis and logical skill. Originality, self-reliance, impatience, aggressiveness, persistence, sincerity, honesty, ardor,–these were some of the personal qualities which gave him dominating influence over his generation.

_Daniel Webster_

Daniel Webster was a massive orator. He combined logical and argumentative skill with a personality of extraordinary power and attractiveness. He had a supreme scorn for tricks of oratory, and a horror of epithets and personalities. His best known speeches are those delivered on the anniversary at Plymouth, the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument, and the deaths of Jefferson and Adams.

_Edward Everett_

Edward Everett was a man of scholastic tastes and habits. His speaking style was remarkable for its literary finish and polished precision. His sense of fitness saved him from serious faults of speech or manner. He blended many graces in one, and his speeches are worthy of study as models of oratorical style.

_Rufus Choate_

Rufus Choate was a brilliant and persuasive extempore speaker. He possest in high degree faculties essential to great oratory–a capacious mind, retentive memory, logical acumen, vivid imagination, deep concentration, and wealth of language. He had an extraordinary personal fascination, largely due to his broad sympathy and geniality.

_Charles Sumner_

Charles Sumner was a gifted orator. His delivery was highly impressive, due fundamentally to his innate integrity and elevated personal character. He was a wide reader and profound student. His style was energetic, logical, and versatile. His intense patriotism and argumentative power, won large favor with his hearers.

_William E. Channing_

William Ellery Channing was a preacher of unusual eloquence and intellectual power. He was small in stature, but of surpassing grace. His voice was soft and musical, and wonderfully responsive to every change of emotion that arose in his mind. His eloquence was not forceful nor forensic, but gentle and persuasive.

His monument bears this high tribute: “In memory of William Ellery Channing, honored throughout Christendom for his eloquence and courage in maintaining and advancing the great cause of truth, religion, and human freedom.”

_Wendell Phillips_

Wendell Phillips was one of the most graceful and polished orators. To his conversational style he added an exceptional vocabulary, a clear and flexible voice, and a most fascinating personality.

He produced his greatest effects by the simplest means. He combined humor, pathos, sarcasm and invective with rare skill, yet his style was so simple that a child could have understood him._George William Curtis_

George William Curtis has been described in his private capacity as natural, gentle, manly, refined, simple, and unpretending. He was the last of the great school of Everett, Sumner, and Phillips.

His art of speaking had an enduring charm, and he completely satisfied the taste for pure and dignified speech. His voice was of silvery clearness, which carried to the furthermost part of the largest hall.

_Gladstone_

Gladstone was an orator of preeminent power. In fertility of thought, spontaneity of expression, modulation of voice, and grace of gesture, he has had few equals. He always spoke from a deep sense of duty. When he began a sentence you could not always foresee how he would end it, but he always succeeded. He had an extraordinary wealth of words and command of the English language.

Gladstone has been described as having eagerness, self-control, mastery of words, gentle persuasiveness, prodigious activity, capacity for work, extreme seriousness, range of experience, constructive power, mastery of detail, and deep concentration. “So vast and so well ordered was the arsenal of his mind, that he could both instruct and persuade, stimulate his friends and demolish his opponents, and do all these things at an hour’s notice.”

He was essentially a devout man, and unquestionably his spiritual character was the fundamental secret of his transcendent power. A keen observer thus describes him:

“While this great and famous figure was in the House of Commons, the House had eyes for no other person. His movements on the bench, restless and eager, his demeanor when on his legs, whether engaged in answering a simple question, expounding an intricate Bill, or thundering in vehement declamation, his dramatic gestures, his deep and rolling voice with its wide compass and marked northern accent, his flashing eye, his almost incredible command of ideas and words, made a combination of irresistible fascination and power.”

_John Bright_

John Bright won a foremost place among British orators largely because of his power of clear statement and vivid description. His manner was at once ingratiating and commanding.

His way of putting things was so lucid and convincing that it was difficult to express the same ideas in any other words with equal force. One of the secrets of his success, it is said, was his command of colloquial simile, apposite stories, and ready wit.

Mr. Bright always had himself well in hand, yet his style at times was volcanic in its force and impetuosity. He would shut himself up for days preparatory to delivering a great speech, and tho he committed many passages to memory, his manner in speaking was entirely free from artifice.

_Lincoln_

Lincoln’s power as a speaker was due to a combination of rugged gifts. Self-reliance, sympathy, honesty, penetration, broad-mindedness, modesty, and independence,–these were keynotes to his great character.

The Gettysburg speech of less than 300 words is regarded as the greatest short speech in history.

Lincoln’s aim was always to say the most sensible thing in the clearest terms, and in the fewest possible words. His supreme respect for his hearers won their like respect for him.

There is a valuable suggestion for the student of public speaking in this description of Lincoln’s boyhood: “Abe read diligently. He read every book he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them.”

_Daniel O’Connell_

Daniel O’Connell was one of the most popular orators of his day. He had a deep, sonorous, flexible voice, which he used to great advantage. He had a wonderful gift of touching the human heart, now melting his hearers by his pathos, then convulsing them with his quaint humor. He was attractive in manner, generous in feeling, spontaneous in expression, and free from rhetorical trickery.

As you read this brief sketch of some of the world’s great orators, it should be inspiring to you as a student of public speaking to know something of their trials, difficulties, methods and triumphs. They have left great examples to be emulated, and to read about them and to study their methods is to follow somewhat in their footsteps.

Great speeches, like great pictures, are inspired by great subjects and great occasions. When a speaker is moved to vindicate the national honor, to speak in defense of human rights, or in some other great cause, his thought and expression assume new and wonderful power. All the resources of his mind–will, imagination, memory, and emotion,–are stimulated into unusual activity. His theme takes complete possession of him and he carries conviction to his hearers by the force, sincerity, and earnestness of his delivery. It is to this exalted type of oratory I would have you aspire.EXTRACTS FOR STUDY, WITH LESSON TALK

EXAMPLES OF ORATORY AND HOW TO STUDY THEM

It will be beneficial to you in this connection to study examples of speeches by the world’s great orators. I furnish you here with a few short specimens which will serve this purpose. Carefully note the suggestions and the numbered extract to which they refer.

1. Practise this example for climax. As you read it aloud, gradually increase the intensity of your voice but do not unduly elevate the key.

2. Study this particularly for its suggestive value to you as a public speaker.

3. Practise this for fervent appeal. Articulate distinctly. Pause after each question. Do not rant or declaim, but speak it.

4. Study this for its sustained sentences and dignity of style.

5. Analyze this for its strength of thought and diction. Note the effective repetition of “I care not.” Commit the passage to memory.

6. Read this for elevated and patriotic feeling. Render it aloud in deliberate and thoughtful style.

7. Particularly observe the judicial clearness of this example. Note the felicitous use of language.

8. Read this aloud for oratorical style. Fit the words to your lips. Engrave the passage on your mind by frequent repetition.

9. Study this passage for its profound and prophetic thought. Render it aloud in slow and dignified style.

10. Practise this for its sustained power. The words “let him” should be intensified at each repetition, and the phrase “and show me the man” brought out prominently.

11. Study this for its beauty and variety of language. Meditate upon it as a model of what a speaker should be.

12. Note the strength in the repeated phrase “I will never say.” Observe the power, nobility and courage manifest throughout. The closing sentence should be read in a deeply earnest tone and at a gradually slower rate.

13. Read this for its purity and strength of style. Note the effective use of question and answer.

14. Study this passage for its common sense and exalted thought. Note how each sentence is rounded out into fulness, until it is imprest upon your memory.

Extracts for Study

SPECIMENS OF ELOQUENCE

_A Study in Climax_

1. My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon them, rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and opprest in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.–_Impeachment of Warren Hastings:_ EDMUND BURKE.

_Suggestions to the Public Speaker_

2. I am now requiring not merely great preparation while the speaker is learning his art but after he has accomplished his education. The most splendid effort of the most mature orator will be always finer for being previously elaborated with much care. There is, no doubt, a charm in extemporaneous elocution, derived from the appearance of artless, unpremeditated effusion, called forth by the occasion, and so adapting itself to its exigencies, which may compensate the manifold defects incident to this kind of composition: that which is inspired by the unforeseen circumstances of the moment, will be of necessity suited to those circumstances in the choice of the topics, and pitched in the tone of the execution, to the feelings upon which it is to operate. These are great virtues: it is another to avoid the besetting vice of modern oratory–the overdoing everything–the exhaustive method–which an off-hand speaker has no time to fall into, and he accordingly will take only the grand and effective view; nevertheless, in oratorical merit, such effusions must needs be very inferior; much of the pleasure they produce depends upon the hearer’s surprize that in such circumstances anything can be delivered at all, rather than upon his deliberate judgment, that he has heard anything very excellent in itself. We may rest assured that the highest reaches of the art, and without any necessary sacrifice of natural effect, can only be attained by him who well considers, and maturely prepares, and oftentimes sedulously corrects and refines his oration. Such preparation is quite consistent with the introduction of passages prompted by the occasion, nor will the transition from one to the other be perceptible in the execution of the practised master.–_Inaugural Discourse:_ LORD BROUGHAM.

_A Study in Fervent Appeal_

3. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace–but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!–_The War Inevitable:_ PATRICK HENRY._A Study in Dignity and Style_

4. In retiring as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer me to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my leave of you under more favorable auspices; but without meaning at this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the Senate and to the world to bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.–_Farewell Address:_ HENRY CLAY.

_A Study in Strength and Diction_

5. For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other, in these branches of the common race, the great principle of the freedom of human thought, and the respectability of individual character. I find everywhere an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere a rebuke of the idea that the many are made for the few, or that government is anything but an agency for mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion, white, or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate or cultivation–if I can find a race of men on an inhabited spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is made for man–man, as a religious, moral, and social being–and not man for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity and happiness.–_The Landing at Plymouth:_ DANIEL WEBSTER.

_A Study in Patriotic Feeling_

6. Friends, fellow citizens, free, prosperous, happy Americans! The men who did so much to make you are no more. The men who gave nothing to pleasure in youth, nothing to repose in age, but all to that country whose beloved name filled their hearts, as it does ours, with joy, can now do no more for us; nor we for them. But their memory remains, we will cherish it; their bright example remains, we will strive to imitate it; the fruit of their wise counsels and noble acts remains, we will gratefully enjoy it.

They have gone to the companions of their cares, of their dangers, and their toils. It is well with them. The treasures of America are now in heaven. How long the list of our good, and wise, and brave, assembled there! How few remain with us! There is our Washington; and those who followed him in their country’s confidence are now met together with him and all that illustrious company.–_Adams and Jefferson:_ EDWARD EVERETT.

_A Study in Clearness of Expression_

7. I can not leave this life and character without selecting and dwelling a moment on one or two of his traits, or virtues, or felicities, a little longer. There is a collective impression made by the whole of an eminent person’s life, beyond, and other than, and apart from, that which the mere general biographer would afford the means of explaining. There is an influence of a great man derived from things indescribable, almost, or incapable of enumeration, or singly insufficient to account for it, but through which his spirit transpires, and his individuality goes forth on the contemporary generation. And thus, I should say, one grand tendency of his life and character was to elevate the whole tone of the public mind. He did this, indeed, not merely by example. He did it by dealing, as he thought, truly and in manly fashion with that public mind. He evinced his love of the people not so much by honeyed phrases as by good counsels and useful service, _vera pro gratis_. He showed how he appreciated them by submitting sound arguments to their understandings, and right motives to their free will. He came before them, less with flattery than with instruction; less with a vocabulary larded with the words humanity and philanthropy, and progress and brotherhood, than with a scheme of politics, an educational, social and governmental system, which would have made them prosperous, happy and great.–_On the Death of Daniel Webster:_ RUFUS CHOATE.

_A Study of Oratorical Style_

8. And yet this small people–so obscure and outcast in condition–so slender in numbers and in means–so entirely unknown to the proud and great–so absolutely without name in contemporary records–whose departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their bodies–are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the Mayflower is immortal beyond the Grecian Argo or the stately ship of any victorious admiral. Tho this was little foreseen in their day, it is plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time and storm is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, the poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth, such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads coextensive with the cause they served.–_The Qualities that Win:_ CHARLES SUMNER._A Study in Profound Thinking_

9. There is something greater in the age than its greatest men; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive? Perhaps much of which we now fail to note. The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken in our day which we have not designed to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the church and the world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit. Of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the vast movements in our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its sentence.–_The Present Age:_ W. E. CHANNING.

_A Study of Sustained Power_

10. Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,–rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons,–anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival states makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.–_Toussaint L’Ouverture:_ WENDELL PHILLIPS.

_Study in Beauty of Language_

11. He faced his audience with a tranquil mien and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. It was simple colloquy–a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely the ear and heart were charmed. How was it done?–Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raffael?

The secret of the rose’s sweetness, of the bird’s ecstacy, of the sunset’s glory–that is the secret of genius and of eloquence. What was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possest him, and his

“Pure and eloquent blood Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say his body thought.”

Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Was it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips?–No, no! It was an American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American inhumanity.–_Eulogy of Wendell Phillips:_ GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

_A Study in Powerful Delivery_

12. I thank you very cordially, both friends and opponents, if opponents you be, for the extreme kindness with which you have heard me. I have spoken, and I must speak in very strong terms of the acts done by my opponents. I will never say that they did it from passion; I will never say that they did it from a sordid love of office; I have no right to use such words; I have no right to entertain such sentiments; I repudiate and abjure them; I give them credit for patriotic motives–I give them credit for those patriotic motives which are incessantly and gratuitously denied to us. I believe we are all united in a fond attachment to the great country to which we belong; to the great empire which has committed to it a trust and function from Providence, as special and remarkable as was ever entrusted to any portion of the family of man. When I speak of that trust and that function I feel that words fail. I can not tell you what I think of the nobleness of the inheritance which has descended upon us, of the sacredness of the duty of maintaining it. I will not condescend to make it a part of controversial politics. It is a part of my being, of my flesh and blood, of my heart and soul. For those ends I have labored through my youth and manhood, and, more than that, till my hairs are gray. In that faith and practise I have lived, and in that faith and practise I shall die.–_Midlothian Speech:_ WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

_A Study in Purity of Style_

13. Is this a reality? or is your Christianity a romance? is your profession a dream? No, I am sure that your Christianity is not a romance, and I am equally sure that your profession is not a dream. It is because I believe this that I appeal to you with confidence, and that I have hope and faith in the future. I believe that we shall see, and at no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more widely among the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and, which will be better than all–the churches of the United Kingdom–the churches of Britain awaking, as it were, from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the prophecy, but labor earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come a time–a blessed time–a time which shall last forever–when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”–_Peace:_ JOHN BRIGHT.

_A Study in Common Sense and Exalted Thought_

14. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in this dispute there is still no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, are the momentous issues of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend” it.–_The First Inaugural Address:_ ABRAHAM LINCOLN.HOW TO SPEAK IN PUBLIC

BY GRENVILLE KLEISER

The art of public speaking is so simple that it is difficult. There is an erroneous impression that in order to make a successful speech a man must have unusual natural talent in addition to long and arduous study.

Consequently, many a person, when asked to make a speech, is immediately subjected to a feeling of fear or depression. Once committed to the undertaking, he spends anxious days and sleepless nights in mental agony, much as a criminal is said to do just prior to his execution. When at last he attempts his “maiden effort,” he is almost wholly unfit for his task because of the needless waste of thought and energy expended in fear.

Elbert Hubbard once confided to me that when he made deliberate preparation for an elaborate speech,–which was seldom,–it was invariably a disappointment. To push a great speech before him for an hour or more used up most of his vitality. It was like making a speech while attempting to carry a heavy burden on the back.

HOW THE SPEAKER MUST PREPARE HIMSELF

There is, of course, certain preparation necessary for effective public speaking. The so-called impromptu speech is largely the product of previous knowledge and study. What the speaker has read, what he has seen, what he has heard,–in short, what he actually knows, furnishes the available material for his use.

As the public speaker gains in experience, however, he learns to put aside, at the time of speaking, all conscious thought of rules or methods. He learns through discipline how to abandon himself to the subject in hand and to give spontaneous expression to all his powers.

_Primarily, then, the public speaker should have a well-stored mind._ He should have mental culture in a broad way; sound judgment, a sense of proportion, mental alertness, a retentive memory, tact, and common sense,–these are vital to good speaking.

_The physical requirements of the public speaker_ comprise good health and bodily vigor. He must have power of endurance, since there will be at times arduous demands upon him. It is worthy of note that most of the world’s great orators have been men with great animal vitality.

The student of public speaking should give careful attention to his personal appearance, which includes care of the teeth. His clothes, linen, and the evidence of general care and cleanliness, will play an important part in the impression he makes upon an audience.

_Elocutionary training is essential._ Daily drill in deep breathing, articulation, pronunciation, voice culture, gesture, and expression, are prerequisites to polished speech. Experienced public speakers of the best type know the necessity for daily practise.

_The mental training of the public speaker_, so often neglected, should be regular and thorough. A reliable memory and a vivid imagination are his indispensable allies.

_The moral side of the public speaker_ will include the development of character, sympathy, self-confidence and kindred qualities. To be a leader of other men, a speaker must have clear, settled, vigorous views upon the subject under consideration.

So much, briefly, as to the previous preparation of the speaker.

HOW THE SPEAKER MUST PREPARE HIS SPEECH

_As to the speech itself, the speaker first chooses a subject._ This will depend upon the nature of the occasion and the purpose in view. He proceeds intelligently to gather material on his selected theme, supplementing the resources of his own mind with information from books, periodicals, and other sources.

_The next step is to make a brief_, or outline of his subject. A brief is composed of three parts, called the introduction, the discussion or statement of facts, and the conclusion. Principal ideas are placed under headings and subheadings.

_The speaker next writes out his speech in full_, using the brief as the basis of procedure. The discipline of writing out a speech, even tho the intention is to speak without notes, is of inestimable value. It is one of the best indications of the speaker’s thoroughness and sincerity.

When the speech has at last been carefully written out, revised, and approved, should it be committed word for word to memory, or only in part, or should the speaker read from the manuscript?

THE PART MEMORY PLAYS IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

Here circumstances must govern. _The most approved method is to fix the thoughts clearly in mind, and to trust to the time of speaking for exact phraseology._ This method requires, however, that the speaker rehearse his speech over and over again, changing the form of the words frequently, so as to acquire facility in the use of language.

_The great objection to memoriter speaking is that it limits and handicaps the speaker._ He is like a schoolboy “saying his piece.” He is in constant danger of running off the prescribed track and of having to begin again at some definite point.

The most effective speaker to-day is the one who can think clearly and promptly on his feet, and can speak from his personality rather than from his memory. Untrammelled by manuscript or effort of memory, he gives full and spontaneous expression to his powers. On the other hand, a speech from memory is like a recitation, almost inevitably stilted and artificial in character.THE STUDY OF WORDS AND IDEAS

Those who would become highly proficient in public speaking should form the dictionary habit. It is a profitable and pleasant exercise to study lists of words and to incorporate them in one’s daily conversation. Ten minutes devoted regularly every day to this study will build the vocabulary in a rapid manner.

The study of words is really a study of ideas,–since words are symbols of ideas,–and while the student is increasing his working vocabulary, in the way indicated, he is at the same time furnishing his mind with new and useful ideas.

_One of the best exercises for the student of public speaking is to read aloud daily, taking care to read as he would speak._ He should choose one of the standard writers, such as Stevenson, Ruskin, Newman, or Carlyle, and while reading severely criticize his delivery. Such reading should be done standing up and as if addressing an audience. This simple exercise will, in the course of a few weeks, yield the most gratifying results.

It is true that “All art must be preceded by a certain mechanical expertness,” but as the highest art is to conceal art, a student must learn eventually to abandon thought of “exercises” and “rules.”

ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OF THE PUBLIC SPEAKER

The three greatest qualities in a successful public speaker are simplicity, directness, and deliberateness.

Lincoln had these qualities in preeminent degree. His speech at Gettysburg–the model short speech of all history–occupied about three minutes in delivery. Edward Everett well said afterward that he would have been content to make the same impression in three hours which Lincoln made in that many minutes.

The great public speakers in all times have been earnest and diligent students. We are familiar with the indefatigable efforts of Demosthenes, who rose from very ordinary circumstances, and goaded by the realization of great natural defects, through assiduous self-training eventually made the greatest of the world’s orations, “The Speech on the Crown.”

Cicero was a painstaking disciple of the speaker’s art and gave himself much to the discipline of the pen. His masterly work on oratory in which he commends others to write much, remains unsurpassed to this day.

John Bright, the eminent British orator, always required time for preparation. He read every morning from the Bible, from which he drew rich material for argument and illustration. A remarkable thing about him was that he spoke seldom.

Phillips Brooks was an ideal speaker, combining simplicity and sympathy in large degree. He was a splendid type of pulpit orator produced by broad spiritual culture.

Henry Ward Beecher had unique powers as a dramatic and eloquent speaker. In his youth he hesitated in his speech, which led him to study elocution. He himself tells of how he went to the woods daily to practise vocal exercises.

He was an exponent of thorough preparation, never speaking upon a subject until he had made it his own by diligent study. Like Phillips Brooks, he was a man of large sympathy and imagination–two faculties indispensable to persuasive eloquence.

It was his oratory that first brought fame to Gladstone. He had a superb voice, and he possest that fighting force essential to a great public debater. When he quitted the House of Commons in his eighty-fifth year his powers of eloquence were practically unimpaired.

Wendell Phillips was distinguished for his personality, conversational style, and thrilling voice. He had a wonderful vocabulary, and a personal magnetism which won men instantly to him. It is said that he relied principally upon the power of truth to make his speaking eloquent. He, too, was an untiring student of the speaker’s art.

As we examine the lives and records of eminent speakers of other days, we are imprest with the fact that they were sincere and earnest students of the art in which they ultimately excelled.

LEARNING TO THINK ON YOUR FEET

One of the best exercises for learning to think and speak on the feet is to practise daily giving one minute impromptu talks upon chosen subjects. A good plan is to write subjects of a general character, on say fifty or more cards, and then to speak on each subject as it is chosen.

This simple exercise will rapidly develop facility of thought and expression and give greatly increased self-confidence.

It is a good plan to prepare more material than one intends to use–at least twice as much. It gives a comfortable feeling of security when one stands before an audience, to know that if some of the prepared matter evades his memory, he still has ample material at his ready service.

There is no more interesting and valuable study than that of speaking in public. It confers distinct advantages by way of improved health, through special exercise in deep breathing and voice culture; by way of stimulated thought and expression; and by an increase of self-confidence and personal power.

Men and women in constantly increasing numbers are realizing the importance of public speaking, and as questions multiply for debate and solution the need for this training will be still more widely appreciated, so that a practical knowledge of public speaking will in time be considered indispensable to a well-rounded education.

Speech for Study, with Lesson Talk

THE STYLE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The speeches of Mr. Roosevelt commend themselves to the student of public speaking for their fearlessness, frankness, and robustness of thought. His aim was deliberate and effective.

His style was generally exuberant, and the note of personal assertion prominent. He was direct in diction, often vehement in feeling, and one of his characteristics was a visible satisfaction when he drove home a special thought to his hearers.

It is hoped that the extract reprinted here, from Mr. Roosevelt’s famous address, “The Strenuous Life,” will lead the student to study the speech in its entirety. The speech will be found in “Essays and Addresses,” published by The Century Company.THE STRENUOUS LIFE

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach the boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes–to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practise such a doctrine. You work, yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt you will teach your sons that tho they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research–work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright and the man still does actual work tho of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of more enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the earth’s surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

In the last analysis a healthy State can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man’s work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Daudet’s powerful and melancholy books he speaks of “the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the young wife of the present day.” When such words can be truthfully written of a nation, that nation is rotten to the heart’s core. When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded.

As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even tho checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we would have spared the country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days, let us the children of the men who carried the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion, praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected; that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair were unflinchingly faced, and the years of strife endured; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations….

The Army and Navy are the sword and shield which this nation must carry if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth–if she is not to stand merely as the China of the western hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic good sense in our home administration of city, State and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual, for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man’s first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty, it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In the same way, while a nation’s first duty is within its own borders it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind.

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us, therefore, boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

The Training of a Public Speaker

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The Training of a Public Speaker

THE TRAINING OF A PUBLIC SPEAKER

by Grenville Kleiser

RHETORIC AND ELOQUENCE

WHAT RHETORIC IS

Rhetoric has been commonly defined as “The power of persuading.” This opinion originated with Isocrates, if the work ascribed to him be really his; not that he intended to dishonor his profession, tho he gives us a generous idea of rhetoric by calling it the workmanship of persuasion. We find almost the same thing in the Gorgias of Plato, but this is the opinion of that rhetorician, and not of Plato. Cicero has written in many places that the duty of an orator is to speak in “a manner proper to persuade”; and in his books of rhetoric, of which undoubtedly he does not approve himself, he makes the end of eloquence to consist in persuasion.

But does not money likewise persuade? Is not credit, the authority of the speaker, the dignity of a respectable person, attended with the same effect? Even without speaking a word, the remembrance of past services, the appearance of distress, a beautiful aspect, make deep impressions on minds and are decisive in their favor.

Did Antonius, pleading the cause of M. Aquilius, trust to the force of his reasons when he abruptly tore open his garment and exposed to view the honorable wounds he received fighting for his country? This act of his forced streams of tears from the eyes of the Roman people, who, not able to resist so moving a spectacle, acquitted the criminal. Sergius Galba escaped the severity of the laws by appearing in court with his own little children, and the son of Gallus Sulpitius, in his arms. The sight of so many wretched objects melted the judges into compassion. This we find equally attested by some of our historians and by a speech of Cato. What shall I say of the example of Phryne, whose beauty was of more service in her cause than all the eloquence of Hyperides; for tho his pleading was admirable in her defense, yet perceiving it to be without effect, by suddenly laying open her tunic he disclosed the naked beauty of her bosom, and made the judges sensible that she had as many charms for them as for others. Now, if all these instances persuade, persuasion, then, can not be the end of rhetoric.

Some, therefore, have seemed to themselves rather more exact who, in the main of the same way of thinking, define rhetoric as the “Power of persuading by speaking.” It is to this that Gorgias, in the book above cited, is at last reduced by Socrates. Theodectes does not much differ from them, if the work ascribed to him be his, or Aristotle’s. In this book the end of rhetoric is supposed to be “The leading of men wherever one pleases by the faculty of speaking.” But this definition is not sufficiently comprehensive. Many others besides the orator persuade by their words and lead minds in whatever direction they please.

Some, therefore, as Aristotle, setting aside the consideration of the end, have defined rhetoric to be “The power of inventing whatever is persuasive in a discourse.” This definition is equally as faulty as that just mentioned, and is likewise defective in another respect, as including only invention, which, separate from elocution, can not constitute a speech.

It appears from Plato’s Gorgias that he was far from regarding rhetoric as an art of ill tendency, but that, rather it is, or ought to be, if we were to conceive an adequate idea of it inseparable from virtue. This he explains more clearly in his Phædrus, where he says that “The art can never be perfect without an exact knowledge and strict observance of justice.” I join him in this opinion, and if these were not his real sentiments, would he have written an apology for Socrates and the eulogium of those brave citizens who lost their lives in the defense of their country? This is certainly acting the part of an orator, and if in any respect he attacks the profession, it is on account of those who make ill use of eloquence. Socrates, animated with the same spirit, thought it unworthy of him to pronounce the speech Lysias had composed for his defense, it being the custom of the orators of those times to write speeches for arraigned criminals, which the latter pronounced in their own defense; thus eluding the law that prohibited pleading for another. Plato, likewise, in his Phædrus, condemns the masters that separated rhetoric from justice, and preferred probabilities to truth.

Such are the definitions of rhetoric which have been principally set forth. To go through all of them is not my purpose, nor do I think it possible, as most writers on arts have shown a perverse dislike for defining things as others do or in the same terms as those who wrote before them. I am far from being influenced by a like spirit of ambition, and far from flattering myself with the glory of invention, and I shall rest content with that which seems most rational, that rhetoric is properly defined as “The science of speaking well.” Having found what is best, it is useless to seek further.

Accepting this definition, therefore, it will be no difficult matter to ascertain its end, for if it be “The science of speaking well,” then “to speak well” will be the end it proposes to itself.THE USE OF RHETORIC

The next question is on the utility of rhetoric, and from this point of view some direct the bitterest invectives against it, and what is very unbecoming, exert the force of eloquence against eloquence, saying that by it the wicked are freed from punishment, and the innocent opprest by its artifices; that it perverts good counsel, and enforces bad; that it foments troubles and seditions in States; that it arms nations against each other, and makes them irreconcilable enemies; and that its power is never more manifest than when error and lies triumph over truth.

Comic poets reproach Socrates with teaching how to make a bad cause good, and Plato represents Lysias and Gorgias boasting the same thing. To these may be added several examples of Greeks and Romans, and a long list of orators whose eloquence was not only the ruin of private persons, but even destructive to whole cities and republics; and for this reason it was that eloquence was banished from Sparta and so restricted at Athens that the orator was not allowed to make appeal to the passions.

Granting all this as sound argument, we must draw this necessary inference, that neither generals of armies, nor magistrates, nor medicine, nor philosophy, will be of any use. Flaminius, an imprudent general, lost one of our armies. The Gracchi Saturninus, and Glaucia, to raise themselves to dignity, put Rome into an uproar. Physicians often administer poisons, and among philosophers some have been found guilty of the most enormous crimes. Let us not eat of the meats with which our tables are spread, for meats frequently have caused disease. Let us never go into houses; they may fall and crush us to death. Let not our soldiers be armed with swords; a robber may use the same weapon against us. In short, who does not know that the most necessary things in life, as air, fire, water, nay, even the celestial bodies, are sometimes very injurious to our well-being?

But how many examples can be quoted in our favor? Did not Appius the Blind, by the force of his eloquence dissuade the Senate from making a shameful peace with Pyrrhus? Did not Cicero’s divine eloquence appear more popular than the Agrarian law he attacked? Did it not disconcert the audacious measures of Cataline? And did not he, even in his civil capacity, obtain by it honors that are conferred on only the most illustrious conquerors? Is it not the orator who strengthens the soldier’s drooping courage, who animates him amidst the greatest dangers, and inspires him to choose a glorious death rather than a life of infamy?

The example of the Romans, among whom eloquence always has been held in the greatest veneration, shall have a higher place in my regard than that of the Spartans and Athenians. It is not to be supposed that the founders of cities could have made a united people of a vagabond multitude without the charms of persuasive words, nor that law-givers, without extraordinary talent for speaking, could have forced men to bend their necks to the yoke of the laws. Even the precepts of moral life, tho engraved on our hearts by the finger of nature, are more efficacious to inspire our hearts with love for them when their beauty is displayed by the ornaments of eloquent speech. Tho the arms of eloquence may harm and benefit equally, we must not, therefore, look on that as bad which may be put to a good use. Doubts of this kind may well be entertained by such as make “the force persuasion the end of eloquence,” but we who constitute it “The science of speaking well,” resolved to acknowledge none but the good man an orator, must naturally judge that its advantage is very considerable.

Certainly, the gracious Author of all beings and Maker of the world, has distinguished us from the animals in no respect more than by the gift of speech. They surpass us in bulk, in strength, in the supporting of toil, in speed, and stand less in need of outside help. Guided by nature only, they learn sooner to walk, to seek for their food, and to swim over rivers. They have on their bodies sufficient covering to guard them against cold; all of them have their natural weapons of defense; their food lies, in a manner, on all sides of them; and we, indigent beings! to what anxieties are we put in securing these things? But God, a beneficent parent, gave us reason for our portion, a gift which makes us partakers of a life of immortality. But this reason would be of little use to us, and we would be greatly perplexed to make it known, unless we could express by words our thoughts. This is what animals lack, more than thought and understanding, of which it can not be said they are entirely destitute. For to make themselves secure and commodious lodges, to interweave their nests with such art, to rear their young with such care, to teach them to shift for themselves when grown up, to hoard provisions for the winter, to produce such inimitable works as wax and honey, are instances perhaps of a glimmering of reason; but because destitute of speech, all the extraordinary things they do can not distinguish them from the brute part of creation. Let us consider dumb persons: how does the heavenly soul, which takes form in their bodies, operate in them? We perceive, indeed, that its help is but weak, and its action but languid.THE VALUE OF THE GIFT OF SPEECH

If, then, the beneficent Creator of the world has not imparted to us a greater blessing than the gift of speech, what can we esteem more deserving of our labor and improvement, and what object is more worthy of our ambition than that of raising ourselves above other men by the same means by which they raise themselves above beasts, so much the more as no labor is attended with a more abundant harvest of glory? To be convinced of this we need only consider by what degrees eloquence has been brought to the perfection in which we now see it, and how far it might still be perfected. For, not to mention the advantage and pleasure a good man reaps from defending his friends, governing the Senate by his counsels, seeing himself the oracle of the people, and master of armies, what can be more noble than by the faculty of speaking and thinking, which is common to all men, to erect for himself such a standard of praise and glory as to seem to the minds of men not so much to discourse and speak, but, like Pericles, to make his words thunder and lightning.

THE ART OF SPEAKING

There would be no end were I to expatiate to the limit of my inclination on the subject of the gift of speech and its utility. I shall pass, therefore, to the following question, “Whether rhetoric be an art?” Those who wrote rules for eloquence doubted so little its being so, that they prefixt no other title to their books than “The art of speaking.” Cicero says that what we call rhetoric is only an artificial eloquence. If this were an opinion peculiar to orators, it might be thought that they intended it as a mark of dignity attached to their studies, but most philosophers, stoics as well as peripatetics, concur in this opinion. I must confess I had some doubt about discussing this matter, lest I might seem diffident of its truth; for who can be so devoid of sense and knowledge as to find art in architecture, in weaving, in pottery, and imagine that rhetoric, the excellence of which we have already shown, could arrive at its present state of grandeur and perfection without the direction of art? I am persuaded that those of the contrary opinion were so more for the sake of exercising their wit on the singularity of the subject than from any real conviction.

IS ELOQUENCE A GIFT OF NATURE?

Some maintain that rhetoric is a gift of nature, yet admit that it may be helped by exercise. Antonius, in Cicero’s books of the Orator, calls it a sort of observation and not an art. But this opinion is not there asserted as truth, but only to keep up the character of Antonius, who was a connoisseur at concealing art. Lysias seems to be of the same opinion, which he defends by saying that the most simple and ignorant people possess a kind of rhetoric when they speak for themselves. They find something like an exordium, they make a narration, they prove, refute, and their prayers and entreaties have the force of a peroration. Lysias and his adherents proceed afterward to vain subtleties. “That which is the effect of art,” say they, “could not have existed before art. In all times men have known how to speak for themselves and against others, but masters of rhetoric have been only of a late date, first known about the time of Tisias and Corax; therefore oratorical speech was prior to art, consequently it could not be the result of art, and therefore, rhetoric is not an art.” We shall not endeavor to enquire into the time when rhetoric began to be taught, but this we may say, that it is certain Homer makes mention not only of Phoenix, who was a master, skilled in both speaking and fighting, but also of many other orators. We may observe likewise from Homer, that all the parts of a discourse are found in the speech of the three captains deputed to Achilles, that several young men dispute for the prize of eloquence, and that among other ornaments of sculpture on the buckler of Achilles, Vulcan did not forget law-causes and the pleaders of them.

It will be sufficient, however, to answer that “Everything perfected by art has its source in nature.” If it were not so, we should exclude medicine from the catalog of arts, the discovery of which was owing to observations made on things conducive or harmful to public health, and in the opinion of some it is wholly grounded on experiments. Before it was reduced to an art, tents and bandages were applied to wounds, rest and abstinence cured fever; not that the reason of all this was then known, but the nature of the ailment indicated such curative methods and forced men to this regimen. In like manner architecture can not be an art, the first men having built their cottages without its direction. Music must undergo the same charge, as every nation has its own peculiarities in dancing and singing. Now, if by rhetoric be meant any kind of speech, I must own it prior to art; but if not everyone who speaks is an orator, and if in the primitive ages of the world men did not speak orator-like, the orator, consequently, must have been made so by art, and therefore could not exist before it.RHETORIC AND MISREPRESENTATION

The next objection is not one so much in reality as it is a mere cavil; that “Art never assents to false opinions, because it can not be constituted as such without precepts, which are always true; but rhetoric assents to what is false, therefore it is not an art.” I admit that sometimes rhetoric says false things instead of true, but it does not follow that it assents to what is false. There is a wide difference between assenting to a falsehood, and making others assent to it. So it is that a general of an army often has recourse to stratagems. When Hannibal perceived himself to be blocked up by Fabius, he ordered faggots of brush-wood to be fastened about the horns of some oxen, and fire being set to the faggots, had the cattle driven up the mountains in the night, in order to make the enemy believe he was about to decamp. But this was only a false alarm, for he himself very well knew what his scheme was. When Theopompus the Spartan, by changing clothes with his wife, made his escape out of prison, the deception was not imposed upon himself, but upon his guards. Thus, when an orator speaks falsehood instead of truth, he knows what he is about; he does not yield to it himself, his intention being to deceive others. When Cicero boasted that he threw darkness on the minds of the judges, in the cause of Cluentius, could it be said that he himself was unacquainted with all the intricacies of his method of confusing their understanding of the facts? Or shall a painter who so disposes his objects that some seem to project from the canvas, others to sink in, be supposed not to know that they are all drawn on a plain surface?

THE OBJECT OF A SPEECH

It is again objected that “Every art proposes to itself an end; but rhetoric has no end, or does not put into execution the end it proposes to itself.” This is false, as is shown from what already has been said concerning the end of rhetoric and in what it consists. The orator will never fail to obtain this end, for he always will speak well. This objection, therefore, can affect only those who make persuasion the end of rhetoric; but our orator, and our definition of art, are not restricted to events. An orator, indeed, strives to gain his cause; but suppose he loses it, as long as he has pleaded well he fulfils the injunctions of his art. A pilot desires to come safe into port, but if a storm sweeps away his ship, is he, on that account, a less experienced pilot? His keeping constantly to the helm is sufficient proof that he was not neglecting his duty. A physician tries to cure a sick person, but if his remedies are hindered in their operation by either the violence of the disease, the intemperance of the patient, or some unforeseen accident, he is not to be blamed, because he has satisfied all the directions of his art. So it is with the orator, whose end is to speak well; for it is in the act, and not in the effect, that art consists, as I shall soon make clear. Therefore, it is false to say that “Art knows when it has obtained its end, but rhetoric knows nothing of the matter,” as if an orator could be ignorant of his speaking well and to the purpose.

But it is said, further, that rhetoric, contrary to the custom of all other arts, adopts vice, because it countenances falsehood and moves the passions. Neither of these are bad practises, and consequently not vicious, when grounded on substantial reasons. To disguise truth is sometimes allowable even in the sage, and if a judge can not be brought to do justice except by means of the passions, the orator must necessarily have recourse to them. Very often the judges appointed to decide are ignorant, and there is necessity for changing their wrongly conceived opinions, to keep them from error. Should there be a bench, a tribunal, an assembly of wise and learned judges whose hearts are inaccessible to hatred, envy, hope, fear, prejudice, and the impositions of false witnesses, there would be little occasion for the exertions of eloquence and all that might seem requisite would be only to amuse the ear with the harmony of cadence. But if the orator has to deal with light, inconstant, prejudiced, and corrupt judges, and if many embarrassments must be removed in order to throw light upon truth, then artful stratagem must fight the battle, and set all its engines to work, for he who is beaten out of the straight road can not get into it again except by another turnabout.

ELOQUENCE ACQUIRED BY STUDY AND PRACTISE

These are the principal objections which have been made against rhetoric. There are others of less moment but derived from the same source. That rhetoric is an art is thus briefly demonstrated. If art, as Cleanthes thinks, is a power which prepares a way and establishes an order, can it be doubted that we must keep to a certain way and a certain order for speaking well? And if, according to the most generally accepted opinion, we ought to call art, everything which by a combination of agreeing and co-exercised principles conducts to a useful end, have we not already shown that nothing of all this is lacking in rhetoric? Has it not, likewise, the two constituent parts of other arts, theory and practise? Again, if dialect be an art, as it is granted, for the same reason; so is rhetoric an art, the chief difference lying not so much in the genus as in the species. But we must not forget this observation, that art must be where a thing is done according to rule, and not at random; and art must be where he who has learned succeeds better than he who has not learned. But in matter of eloquence not only will the ignorant person be surpassed by the learned, but also the learned by the more learned; otherwise we should not have so many rules nor so many excellent masters. This ought to be acknowledged by all, but more especially by us who do not separate eloquence from the man of integrity.THE EXORDIUM OR INTRODUCTION

The exordium, or introduction, is that part of the discourse which is pronounced before the subject is entered upon. As musicians make a prelude for obtaining silence and attention before they play their selections, so orators, before they begin their cause, have specified by the same application that which they say by way of preface for securing for themselves a kindly feeling in the listeners.

THE PURPOSE OF THE INTRODUCTION

The reason for an exordium is to dispose the auditors to be favorable to us in the other parts of the discourse. This, as most authors agree, is accomplished by making them friendly, attentive, and receptive, tho due regard should be paid to these three particulars throughout the whole of a speech.

Sometimes the exordium is applicable to the pleader of the cause, who, tho he ought to speak very little of himself, and always modestly, will find it of vast consequence to create a good opinion of himself and to make himself thought to be an honest man. So it is he will be regarded not so much as a zealous advocate, as a faithful and irreproachable witness. His motives for pleading must, therefore, appear to proceed not from tie of kindred, or friendship, but principally from a desire to promote the public good, if such motive can be urged, or any other important consideration. This conduct will befit plaintiffs in a much greater degree, that they may seem to have brought their action for just and weighty reasons, or were even compelled to do it from necessity.

As nothing else gives so great a sanction to the authority of the speaker as to be free from all suspicion of avarice, hatred, and ambition, so, also, there is a sort of tacit recommendation of ourselves if we profess our weak state and inability for contending with the superior genius and talents of the advocate of the other side. We are naturally disposed to favor the weak and opprest, and a conscientious judge hears an orator willingly whom he presumes not to be capable of making him swerve from his fixt purpose of doing justice. Hence the care of the ancients for concealing their talents.

IDEAS TO AVOID AND TO INCLUDE

All contemptuous, spiteful, haughty, calumniating expressions must be avoided and not so much as even insinuated to the defamation of any particular person or rank, much less against those to whom an affront would alienate the minds of the judges. To be so imprudent as to attack judges themselves, not openly, but in any indirect manner, would be most unwise.

The advocate for the other side may likewise furnish sufficient matter for an exordium. Sometimes honorable mention may be made of him, as when we pretend to be in dread of his interest and eloquence in order to make them suspected by the judges, and sometimes by casting odium on him, altho this must be done very seldom. I rather think, from the authority of the best authors, that whatever affects the orator, affects also the cause he patronizes, as it is natural for a judge to give more credit to those whom he more willingly hears.

We shall procure the favor of the judge not so much by praising him, which ought to be done with moderation, and is common to both sides, but rather by making his praise fitting, and connecting it with the interest of our cause. Thus, in speaking for a person of consequence, we may lay some stress on the judge’s own dignity; for one of mean condition, on his justice; for the unhappy, on his mercy; for the injured, on his severity.

STUDYING YOUR HEARERS

It also would not be amiss to become acquainted, if possible, with his character. For, according as his temper is, harsh or mild, pleasant or grave, severe or easy, the cause should be made to incline toward the side which corresponds with his disposition, or to admit some mitigation or softening where it runs counter to it.

It may happen sometimes, too, that the judge is our enemy, or the opponent’s friend. This is a circumstance requiring the circumspection of both parties, yet I think the favored advocate should behave with great caution, for a judge of a biased disposition will sometimes choose to pass sentence against his friends, or in favor of those to whom he bears enmity, that he may not appear to act with injustice.AROUSING EMOTIONS

Judges have also their private opinions and prejudices, which we must either strengthen or weaken, according as we see necessary. Fear, too, sometimes must be removed, as Cicero, in his defense of Milo, endeavors to assure the judges that Pompey’s army, drawn up about the Forum, is for their protection; and sometimes there will be an occasion to intimidate them, as the same orator does in one of his pleadings against Verres.

There are two ways of proceeding in this last case, the first plausible, and frequently used, as when it is hinted to them that the Roman people might entertain an ill opinion of them, or that there might be an appeal from their judgment; the other desperate, and not so much used, as when threatened with prosecution themselves if they suffer themselves to be corrupted. This is a hazardous point, and is conducted with more safety to the orator when in a large assembly where corrupt judges are restrained by fear, and the upright have the majority. But I would never counsel this before a single judge, unless every other resource was wanting. If necessity requires it, I can not say that it is the business of the art of oratory to give directions in the matter, any more than to lodge an appeal, tho that, too, is often of service, or to cite the judge in justice before he passes sentence, for to threaten, denounce, or indict may be done by any one else as well as the orator.

If the cause itself should furnish sufficient reason for gaining the good will of the judge, out of this whatever is most specious and favorable may be inserted in the exordium. It will be unnecessary to enumerate all the favorable circumstances in causes, they being easily known from the state of facts; besides, no exact enumeration can take place on account of the great diversity of law-suits. It is the cause itself, therefore, that must teach us to find and improve these circumstances; and, in like manner, with a circumstance that may make against us the cause will inform us how it may either be made entirely void, or at least invalidated.

From the cause compassion also sometimes arises, whether we have already suffered or are likely to suffer anything grievous. For I am not of the opinion of those who to distinguish the exordium from the peroration, will have the one to speak of what is past and the other of what is to come. They are sufficiently distinguished without this discrimination. In the exordium the orator ought to be more reserved, and ought only to throw out some hints of the sentiments of compassion he designs to excite in the minds of the judges; whereas in the peroration he may pour out all the passions, introduce persons speaking, and make the dead to come forth, as it were, out of their graves, and recommend to the judges the care of their dearest pledges. All these particulars are seldom executed in the exordium. But the manner just pointed out, it will be very proper to observe in it, and to wear down all impressions to the contrary made by the opposite side, that as our situation will be deplorable if we should be defeated in our expectations, so, on the other hand, the behavior of our opponent would be insolent and haughty.

MATERIAL FOR THE INTRODUCTION

Besides persons and causes, the exordium likewise is sometimes taken from their adjuncts, that is, from things relating to the cause and persons. To persons are applicable not only the pledges above mentioned, but affinities, friendships, sometimes cities and whole countries are also likely to suffer by the person’s misfortunes.

Theophrastus adds another kind of exordium, taken from the pleading of the orator who speaks first. Such seems to be that of Demosthenes for Ctesiphon, in which he requests the judges to please permit him to reply as he thinks suitable rather than to follow the rules prescribed by the accuser.

As the confidence observable in some orators may easily pass for arrogance, there are certain ways of behavior which, tho common, will please, and therefore ought not to be neglected, to prevent their being used by the opposing side: these are wishing, warding off suspicion, supplicating, and making a show of trouble and anxiety.

The judge’s attention is secured by inducing him to believe that the matter under debate is new, important, extraordinary, or of a heinous nature, or that it equally interests him and the public. Then his mind is to be roused and agitated by hope, fear, remonstrance, entreaty, and even by flattery, if it is thought that will be of any use. Another way of procuring attention may be to promise that we shall take up but little of their time, as we shall confine ourselves to the subject.

From what has been said, it appears that different causes require to be governed by different rules; and five kinds of causes are generally specified, which are said to be, either honest, base, doubtful, extraordinary, or obscure. Some add shameful, as a sixth kind, which others include in base or extraordinary. By extraordinary is understood that which is contrary to the opinion of men. In a doubtful cause the judge should be made favorable; in an obscure, docile; in a base, attentive. An honest cause is sufficient of itself to procure favor. Extraordinary and base causes lack remedies.TWO TYPES OF INTRODUCTIONS

Some, therefore, specify two kinds of exordiums, one a beginning, the other an insinuation. In the first the judges are requested openly to give their good will and attention; but as this can not take place in the base kind of cause, the insinuation must steal in upon their minds, especially when the cause does not seem to appear with a sufficiently honest aspect, either because the thing itself is wicked, or is a measure not approved by the public. There are many instances of causes of unseemly appearance, as when general odium is incurred by opposing a patriot; and a like hostility ensues from acting against a father, a wretched old man, the blind, or the orphan.

This may be a general rule for the purpose, “To touch but slightly on the things that work against us, and to insist chiefly on those which are for our advantage.” If the cause can not be so well maintained, let us have recourse to the goodness of the person, and if the person is not condemnable, let us ground our support on the cause. If nothing occurs to help us out, let us see what may hurt the opponent. For, since to obtain more favor is a thing to be wished, so the next step to it is to incur less hatred.

In things that can not be denied, we must endeavor to show that they are greatly short of what they are reported to be, or that they have been done with a different intention, or that they do not in any wise belong to the present question, or that repentance will make sufficient amends for them, or that they have already received a proportionate punishment. Herein, therefore, it will be better and more suitable for an advocate to act than for the person himself; because when pleading for another he can praise without the imputation of arrogance, and sometimes can even reprove with advantage.

Insinuation seems to be not less necessary when the opponent’s action has pre-possest the minds of the judges, or when they have been fatigued by the tediousness of the pleading. The first may be got the better of by promising substantial proofs on our side, and by refuting those of the opponent. The second, by giving hopes of being brief, and by having recourse to the means prescribed for making the judge attentive. In the latter case, too, some seasonable pleasantry, or anything witty to freshen the mind will have a good effect. It will not be amiss, likewise, to remove any seeming obstruction. As Cicero says of himself, he is not unaware that some will find it strange that he, who for so many years had defended such a number of people, and had given no offense to anyone, should undertake to accuse Verres. Afterward he shows that if, on the one hand, he accuses Verres, still, on the other, he defends the allies of the Roman people.

HOW TO SELECT THE RIGHT BEGINNING

The orator should consider what the subject is upon which he is to speak, before whom, for whom, against whom, at what time, in what place, under what conditions, what the public think of it, what the judges may think of it before they hear him, and what he himself has to desire, and what to apprehend. Whoever makes these reflections will know where he should naturally begin. But now orators call exordium anything with which they begin, and consider it of advantage to make the beginning with some brilliant thought. Undoubtedly many things are taken into the exordium which are drawn from other parts of the cause or at least are common to them, but nothing in either respect is better said than that which can not be said so well elsewhere.

THE VALUE OF NATURALNESS

There are many very engaging things in an exordium which is framed from the opponent’s pleading, and this is because it does not seem to favor of the closet, but is produced on the spot and comes from the very thing. By its easy, natural turn, it enhances the reputation of genius. Its air of simplicity, the judge not being on his guard against it, begets belief, and tho the discourse in all other parts be elaborate and written with great accuracy, it will for the most part seem an extempore oration, the exordium evidently appearing to have nothing premeditated.

But nothing else will so well suit an exordium as modesty in the countenance, voice, thoughts, and composition, so that even in an uncontrovertible kind of cause, too great confidence ought not to display itself. Security is always odious in a pleader, and a judge who is sensible of his authority tacitly demands respect.

An orator must likewise be exceedingly careful to keep himself from being suspected, particularly in that regard; therefore, not the least show of study should be made, because all his art will seem exerted against the judge, and not to show this is the greatest perfection of art. This rule has been recommended by all authors, and undoubtedly with good reason, but sometimes is altered by circumstances, because in certain causes the judges themselves require studied discourses, and fancy themselves thought mean of unless accuracy appears in thought and expression. It is of no significance to instruct them; they must be pleased. It is indeed difficult to find a medium in this respect, but the orator may so temper his manner as to speak with justness, and not with too great a show of art.THE NEED OF SIMPLICITY OF EXPRESSION

Another rule inculcated by the ancients is not to admit into the exordium any strange word, too bold a metaphor, an obsolete expression, or a poetical turn. As yet we are not favorably received by the auditors, their attention is not entirely held, but when once they conceive an esteem and are warmly inclined toward us, then is the time to hazard this liberty, especially when we enter upon parts the natural fertility of which does not allow the liberty of expression to be noticed amidst the luster spread about it.

The style of the exordium ought not to be like that of the argument proper and the narration, neither ought it to be finely spun out, or harmonized into periodical cadences, but, rather, it should be simple and natural, promising neither too much by words nor countenance. A modest action, also, devoid of the least suspicion of ostentation, will better insinuate itself into the mind of the auditor. But these ought to be regulated according to the sentiments we would have the judges imbibe from us.

It must be remembered, however, that nowhere is less allowance made than here for failing in memory or appearing destitute of the power of articulating many words together. An ill-pronounced exordium may well be compared to a visage full of scars, and certainly he must be a bad pilot who puts his ship in danger of sinking, as he is going out of port.

In regard to the length of the exordium, it ought to be proportionate to the nature of the cause. Simple causes admit of a shorter exordium; the complex, doubtful, and odious, require a longer exordium. Some writers have prescribed four points as laws for all exordiums,–which is ridiculous. An immoderate length should be equally avoided, lest it appear, as some monsters, bigger in the head than in the rest of the body, and create disgust where it ought only to prepare.

“TYING UP” THE INTRODUCTION

As often as we use an exordium, whether we pass next to the narration, or immediately to the proofs, we ought always to preserve a connection between what follows and what goes before. To proceed from one part to another, by some ingenious thought which disguises the transition, and to seek applause from such a studied exertion of wit, is quite of a piece with the cold and childish affectation of our declaimers. If a long and intricate narration must follow, the judge ought naturally to be prepared for it. This Cicero often does, as in this passage: “I must proceed pretty high to clear up this matter to you, which I hope, gentlemen, you will not be displeased at, because its origin being known will make you thoroughly acquainted with the particulars proceeding from it.”

THE NARRATION

There are causes so short as to require rather to be proposed than told. It is sometimes the case with two contending sides, either that they have no exposition to make, or that agreeing on the fact, they contest only the right. Sometimes one of the contending parties, most commonly the plaintiff, need only propose the matter, as most to his advantage, and then it will be enough for him to say: “I ask for a certain sum of money due to me according to agreement; I ask for what was bequeathed to me by will.” It is the defendant’s business to show that he has no right to such a debt or legacy. On other occasions it is enough, and more advisable, for the plaintiff to point out merely the fact: “I say that Horatius killed his sister.” This simple proposition makes known the whole crime, but the details and the cause of the fact will suit better the defendant. Let it be supposed, on the other hand, that the fact can not be denied or excused; then the defendant, instead of narrating, will best abide by the question of right. Some one is accused of sacrilege for stealing the money of a private person out of a temple. The pleader of the cause had better confess the fact than give an account of it. “We do not deny that this money was taken out of the temple. It was the money of a private person, and not set apart for any religious use. But the plaintiff calumniates us by an action for sacrilege. It is, therefore, your business, gentlemen, to decide whether it can properly be specified as sacrilege.”

THE TWO KINDS OF NARRATION

There are two kinds of narration in judicial matters, the one for the cause, the other for things belonging to it. “I have not killed that man.” This needs no narration. I admit it does not; but there may be a narration, and even somewhat long, concerning the probable causes of innocence in the accused, as his former integrity of life, the opponent’s motives for endangering the life of a guiltless person, and other circumstances arguing the incredibility of the accusation. The accuser does not merely say, “You have committed that murder,” but shows reasons to evince its credibility; as, in tragedies, when Teucer imputes the death of Ajax to Ulysses, he says that “He was found in a lonely place, near the dead body of his enemy, with his sword all bloody.” Ulysses, in answer, not only denies the crime, but protests there was no enmity between him and Ajax, and that they never contended but for glory. Then he relates how he came into that solitary place, how he found Ajax dead, and that it was Ajax’s own sword he drew out of his wound. To these are subjoined proofs, but the proofs, too, are not without narration, the plaintiff alleging, “You were in the place where your enemy was found killed.” “I was not,” says the defendant, and he tells where he was.HOW TO MAKE THE CONCLUSION

The end of the narration is rather more for persuading than informing. When, therefore, the judges might not require information, yet, if we consider it advisable to draw them over to our way of thinking, we may relate the matter with certain precautions, as, that tho they have knowledge of the affair in general, still would it not be amiss if they chose to examine into every particular fact as it happened. Sometimes we may diversify the exposition with a variety of figures and turns; as, “You remember”; “Perhaps it would be unnecessary to insist any longer on this point”; “But why should I speak further when you are so well acquainted with the matter.”

A subject of frequent discussion is to know whether the narration ought immediately to follow the exordium. They who think it should, seem to have some reason on their side, for as the design of the exordium is to dispose the judges to hear us with all the good will, docility, and attention, we wish, and as arguments can have no effect without previous knowledge of the cause, it follows naturally that they should have this knowledge as soon as it can conveniently be given to them.

PURPOSES OF THE NARRATION

If the narration be entirely for us, we may content ourselves with those three parts, whereby the judge is made the more easily to understand, remember, and believe. But let none think of finding fault if I require the narration which is entirely for us, to be probable tho true, for many things are true but scarcely credible, as, on the contrary, many things are false tho frequently probable. We ought, therefore, to be careful that the judge should believe as much what we pretend as the truth we say, by preserving in both a probability to be credited.

Those three qualities of the narration belong in like manner to all other parts of the discourse, for obscurity must be avoided throughout, and we must everywhere keep within certain bounds, and all that is said must be probable; but a strict observance of these particulars ought to be kept more especially in that part wherein the judge receives his first information, for if there it should happen that he either does not understand, remember, or believe, our labor in all other parts will be to no purpose.

THE QUALITIES NEEDED FOR SUCCESS

The narration will be clear and intelligible if, first, it be exprest in proper and significant words, which have nothing mean and low, nothing far-fetched, and nothing uncommon. Second, if it distinguishes exactly things, persons, times, places, causes; all of which should be accompanied with a suitable delivery, that the judge may retain the more easily what is said.

This is a quality neglected by most of our orators, who, charmed by the applause of a rabble brought together by chance, or even bribed to applaud with admiration every word and period, can neither endure the attentive silence of a judicious audience, nor seem to themselves to be eloquent unless they make everything ring about them with tumultuous clamor. To explain simply the fact, appears to them too low, and common, and too much within the reach of the illiterate, but I fancy that what they despise as easy is not so much because of inclination as because of inability to effect it. For the more experience we have, the more we find that nothing else is so difficult as to speak in such a manner that all who have heard us may think they could acquit themselves equally as well. The reason for the contrary notion is that what is so said is considered as merely true and not as fine and beautiful. But will not the orator express himself in the most perfect manner, when he seems to speak truth? Now, indeed, the narration is laid out as a champion-ground for eloquence to display itself in; the voice, the gesture, the thoughts, the expression, are all worked up to a pitch of extravagance, and what is monstrous, the action is applauded, and yet the cause is far from being understood. But we shall forego further reflections on this misguided notion, lest we offend more by reproving faults, than gratify by giving advice.

The narration will have its due brevity if we begin by explaining the affair from the point where it is of concern to the judge; next, if we say nothing foreign to the cause; and last, if we avoid all superfluities, yet without curtailing anything that may give insight into the cause or be to its advantage. There is a certain brevity of parts, however, which makes a long whole: “I came to the harbor, I saw a ship ready for sailing, I asked the price for passengers, I agreed as to what I should give, I went aboard, we weighed anchor, we cleared the coast, and sailed on briskly.” None of these circumstances could be exprest in fewer words, but it is sufficient to say, “I sailed from the port.” And as often as the end of a thing sufficiently denotes what went before, we may rest satisfied with it as facilitating the understanding of all other circumstances.

But often when striving to be short, we become obscure, a fault equally to be avoided, therefore it is better that the narration should have a little too much, than that it should lack enough. What is redundant, disgusts; what is necessary is cut down with danger. I would not have this rule restricted to what is barely sufficient for pronouncing judgment on, because the narration may be concise, yet not, on that account, be without ornament. In such cases it would appear as coming from an illiterate person. Pleasure, indeed, has a secret charm; and the things which please seem less tedious. A pleasant and smooth road, tho it be longer, fatigues less than a rugged and disagreeable short cut. I am not so fond of conciseness as not to make room for brightening a narration with proper embellishments. If quite homely and curtailed on all sides, it will be not so much a narration as a poor huddling up of things together.GETTING YOUR STATEMENTS ACCEPTED

The best way to make the narration probable is to first consult with ourselves on whatever is agreeable to nature, that nothing may be said contrary to it; next, to find causes and reasons for facts, not for all, but for those belonging to the question; and last, to have characters answerable to the alleged facts which we would have believed; as, if one were guilty of theft, we should represent him as a miser; of adultery, as addicted to impure lusts; of manslaughter, as hot and rash. The contrary takes place in defense, and the facts must agree with time, place, and the like.

Sometimes a cause may be prepared by a proposition, and afterward narrated. All circumstances are unfavorable to three sons who have conspired against their father’s life. They cast lots who shall strike the blow. He on whom the lot falls, enters his father’s bed-chamber at night, with a poniard, but has not courage to put the design into execution. The second and the third do the same. The father wakes. All confess their wicked purpose, and by virtue of a law made and provided for such case, they are to be disinherited. But should the father, who has already made a partition of his estate in their favor, plead their cause, he may proceed thus: “Children are accused of parricide, whose father is still alive, and they are sued in consequence of a law that is not properly applicable to their case. I need not here give an account of a transaction that is foreign to the point of law in question. But if you require a confession of my guilt, I have been a hard father to them, and rather too much occupied in hoarding up the income of my estate, which would have been better spent in necessaries for them.” Afterward he may say that they did not form this plan by themselves, that they were instigated to it by others who had more indulgent parents, that the result clearly showed they were not capable of so unnatural an action, that there was no necessity for binding themselves by oath if in reality they could have had such an inclination, nor of casting lots if each did not want to avoid the perpetration of such a crime. All these circumstances, such as they are, will be favorably received, softened in some measure by the short defense of the previous propositions.

THE ORDER OF THE NARRATION

I am not of the opinion of those who think that the facts ought always to be related in the same order in which they happened. That manner of narration is best which is of most advantage to the cause, and it may, not improperly, call in the aid of a diversity of figures. Sometimes we may pretend that a thing has been overlooked, so that it may be better exprest elsewhere than it would be in its own order and place; assuring the judges at the same time that we shall resume the proper order, but that the cause in this way will be better understood. Sometimes, after explaining the whole affair, we may subjoin the antecedent causes. And thus it is that the art of defense, not circumscribed by any one invariable rule, must be adapted to the nature and circumstances of the cause.

It will not be amiss to intimate that nothing enhances so much the credibility of a narration as the authority of him who makes it, and this authority it is our duty to acquire, above all, by an irreproachable life, and next, by the manner of enforcing it. The more grave and serious it is, the more weight it will have. Here all suspicion of cunning and artifice should, therefore, be particularly avoided, for the judges, ever distrustful, are here principally on their guard, and, likewise, nothing should seem a pure fiction, or the work of study, which all might rather be believed to proceed from the cause than the orator. But this we can not endure, and we think our art lost unless it is seen; whereas it ceases to be art if it is seen.DIVISION AND ARGUMENT

Some are of the opinion that division should always be used, as by it the cause will be more clear and the judge more attentive and more easily taught when he knows of what we speak to him and of what we intend afterward to speak. Others think this is attended with danger to the orator, either by his sometimes forgetting what he has promised, or by something else occurring to the judge or auditor, which he did not think of in the division. I can not well imagine how this may happen, unless with one who is either destitute of sense or rash enough to plead without preparation. In any other respect, nothing else can set a subject in so clear a light as just division. It is a means to which we are directed by the guidance of nature, because keeping in sight the heads on which we propose to speak, is the greatest help the memory can have.

THE MISTAKE OF TOO MANY DIVISIONS

But if division should seem requisite, I am not inclined to assent to the notion of those who would have it extend to more than three parts. Indeed, when the parts are too many, they escape the judge’s memory and distract his attention; but a cause is not scrupulously to be tied down to this number, as it may require more.

DISADVANTAGES OF DIVISIONS

There are reasons for not always using division, the principal reason being that most things are better received when seemingly of extempore invention and not suggestive of study, but arising in the pleading from the nature of the thing itself. Whence such figures are not unpleasing as, “I had almost forgotten to say”; “It escaped my memory to acquaint you”; and “You have given me a good hint.” For if the proofs should be proposed without something of a reputation of this kind, they would lose, in the sequel, all the graces of novelty.

The distinguishing of questions, and the discussing of them, should be equally avoided. But the listeners’ passions ought to be excited, and their attention diverted from its former bias, for it is the orator’s business not so much to instruct as to enforce his eloquence by emotion, to which nothing can be more contrary than minute and scrupulously exact division of a discourse into parts.

WHEN THE DIVISION IS DESIRABLE

If many things are to be avoided or refuted, the division will be both useful and pleasing, causing everything to appear in the order in which it is to be said. But if we defend a single crime by various ways, division will be superfluous, as, “I shall make it clear that the person I defend is not such as to make it seem probable that he could be guilty of murder; it shall also be shown that he had no motives to induce him to do it; and lastly, that he was across the sea when this murder took place.” Whatever is cited and argued before the third point must seem quite unnecessary, for the judge is in haste to have you come to that which is of most consequence, and the patient, will tacitly call upon you to acquit yourself of your promise, or, if he has much business to dispatch, or his dignity puts him above your trifling, or he is of a peevish humor, he will oblige you to speak to the purpose, and perhaps do so in disrespectful terms.

PITFALLS IN ARGUMENT

Many doubt the desirability of this kind of defense: “If I had killed him, I should have done well; but I did not kill him.” Where is the occasion, say they, for the first proposition if the second be true? They run counter to each other, and whoever advances both, will be credited in neither. This is partly true, for if the last proposition be unquestionable, it is the only one that should be used. But if we are apprehensive of anything in the stronger, we may use both. On these occasions persons seem to be differently affected; one will believe the fact, and exculpate the right; another will condemn the right, and perhaps not credit the fact. So, one dart may be enough for an unerring hand to hit the mark, but chance and many darts must effect the same result for an uncertain aim. Cicero clears up this matter in his defense of Milo. He first shows Clodius to be the aggressor, and then, by a superabundance of right, adds that tho he might not be the aggressor, it was brave and glorious in Milo to have delivered Rome of so bad a citizen.

Tho division may not always be necessary, yet when properly used it gives great light and beauty to a discourse. This it effects not only by adding more perspicuity to what is said, but also by refreshing the minds of the hearers by a view of each part circumscribed within its bounds; just so milestones ease in some measure the fatigue of travelers, it being a pleasure to know the extent of the labor they have undergone, and to know what remains encourages them to persevere, as a thing does not necessarily seem long when there is a certainty of coming to the end.ESSENTIALS OF GOOD ARGUMENT

Every division, therefore, when it may be employed to advantage, ought to be first clear and intelligible, for what is worse than being obscure in a thing, the use of which is to guard against obscurity in other things? Second, it ought to be short, and not encumbered with any superfluous word, because we do not enter upon the subject matter, but only point it out.

If proofs be strong and cogent, they should be proposed and insisted on separately; if weak, it will be best to collect them into a body. In the first case, being persuasive by themselves, it would be improper to obscure them by the confusion of others: they should appear in their due light. In the second case, being naturally weak, they should be made to support each other. If, therefore, they are not greatly effective in point of quality, they may be in that of number, all of them having a tendency to prove the same thing; as, if one were accused of killing another for the sake of inheriting his fortune: “You did expect an inheritance, and it was something very considerable; you were poor, and your creditors troubled you more than ever; you also offended him who had appointed you his heir, and you know that he intended to alter his will.” These proofs taken separately are of little moment, and common; but collectively their shock is felt, not as a peal of thunder, but as a shower of hail.

The judge’s memory, however, is not always to be loaded with the arguments we may invent. They will create disgust, and beget distrust in him, as he can not think such arguments to be powerful enough which we ourselves do not think sufficient. But to go on arguing and proving, in the case of self-evident things, would be a piece of folly not unlike that of bringing a candle to light us when the sun is in its greatest splendor.

To these some add proofs which they call moral, drawn from the milder passions; and the most powerful, in the opinion of Aristotle, are such as arise from the person of him who speaks, if he be a man of real integrity. This is a primary consideration; and a secondary one, remote, indeed, yet following, will be the probable notion entertained of his irreproachable life.

THE BEST ORDER OF THE ARGUMENT

It has been a matter of debate, also, whether the strongest proofs should have place in the beginning, to make an immediate impression on the hearers, or at the end, to make the impression lasting with them, or to distribute them, partly in the beginning and partly at the end, placing the weaker in the middle, or to begin with the weakest and proceed to the strongest. For my part I think this should depend on the nature and exigencies of the cause, yet with this reservation, that the discourse might not dwindle from the powerful into what is nugatory and frivolous.

Let the young orator, for whose instruction I make these remarks, accustom himself as much as possible to copy nature and truth. As in schools he often engages in sham battles, in imitation of the contests of the bar, let him even then have an eye to victory, and learn to strike home, dealing moral blows and putting himself on his defense as if really in earnest. It is the master’s business to require this duty, and to commend it according as it is well executed. For if they love praise to the degree of seeking it in their faults, which does them much harm, they will desire it more passionately when they know it to be the reward of real merit. The misfortune now is that they commonly pass over necessary things in silence, considering what is for the good of the cause as of little or no account if it be not conducive to the embellishment of the discourse.THE PERORATION

The peroration, called by some the completion, by others the conclusion, of a discourse, is of two kinds, and regards either the matters discust in it or the moving of the passions.

The repetition of the matter and the collecting it together, which is called by the Greeks recapitulation, and by some of the Latins enumeration, serves for refreshing the judge’s memory, for placing the whole cause in one direct point of view, and for enforcing in a body many proofs which, separately, made less impression. It would seem that this repetition ought to be very short, and the Greek term sufficiently denotes that we ought to run over only the principal heads, for if we are long in doing it, it will not be an enumeration that we make, but, as it were, a second discourse. The points which may seem to require this enumeration, however, ought to be pronounced with some emphasis, and enlivened with opposite thoughts, and diversified by figures, otherwise nothing will be more disagreeable than a mere cursory repetition, which would seem to show distrust of the judge’s memory.

RULES FOR THE PERORATION

This seems to be the only kind of peroration allowed by most of the Athenians and by almost all the philosophers who left anything written on the art of oratory. The Athenians, I suppose, were of that opinion because it was customary at Athens to silence, by the public crier, any orator who should attempt to move the passions. I am less surprized at this opinion among philosophers, every perturbation of the mind being considered by them as vicious; nor did it seem to them compatible with sound morality to divert the judge from truth, nor agreeable to the idea of an honest man to have recourse to any sinister stratagem. Yet moving the passions will be acknowledged necessary when truth and justice can not be otherwise obtained and when public good is concerned in the decision. All agree that recapitulation may also be employed to advantage in other parts of the pleading, if the cause is complicated and requires many arguments to defend it, and, on the other hand, it will admit of no doubt that many causes are so short and simple as to have no occasion in any part of them for recapitulation. The above rules for the peroration apply equally to the accuser and to the defendant’s advocate.

They, likewise, use nearly the same passions, but the accuser more seldom and more sparingly, and the defendant oftener and with greater emotions; for it is the business of the former to stir up aversion, indignation, and other similar passions in the minds of the judges, and of the latter to bend their hearts to compassion. Yet the accuser is sometimes not without tears, in deploring the distress of those in whose behalf he sues for satisfaction, and the defendant sometimes complains with great vehemence of the persecution raised against him by the calumnies and conspiracy of his enemies. It would be best, therefore, to distinguish and discuss separately the different passions excited on the parts of the plaintiff and defendant, which are most commonly, as I have said, very like what takes place in the exordium, but are treated in a freer and fuller manner in the peroration.

PURPOSES OF THE PERORATION

The favor of the judges toward us is more sparingly sued for in the beginning, it being then sufficient to gain their attention, as the whole discourse remains in which to make further impressions. But in the peroration we must strive to bring the judge into that disposition of the mind which it is necessary for us that he should retain when he comes to pass judgment. The peroration being finished, we can say no more, nor can anything be reserved for another place. Both of the contending sides, therefore, try to conciliate the judge, to make him unfavorable to the opponent, to rouse and occasionally allay his passions; and both may find their method of procedure in this short rule, which is, to keep in view the whole stress of the cause, and finding what it contains that is favorable, odious, or deplorable, in reality or in probability, to say those things which would make the greatest impression on themselves if they sat as judges.

I have already mentioned in the rules for the exordium how the accuser might conciliate the judges. Yet some things, which it was enough to point out there, should be wrought to a fulness in the peroration, especially if the pleading be against some one universally hated, and a common disturber, and if the condemnation of the culprit should redound as much to the honor of the judges as his acquittal to their shame. Thus Calvus spoke admirably against Vatinius:

“You know, good sirs, that Vatinius is guilty, and no one is unaware that you know it.” Cicero, in the same way, informs the judges that if anything is capable of reestablishing the reputation of their judgment, it must be the condemnation of Verres. If it be proper to intimidate the judges, as Cicero likewise does, against Verres, this is done with better effect in the peroration than in the exordium. I have already explained my sentiments on this point.HOW TO AROUSE EMOTIONS

In short, when it is requisite to excite envy, hatred, or indignation there is greater scope for doing this to advantage in the peroration than elsewhere. The interest in the accused may naturally excite the judge’s envy, the infamy of his crimes may draw upon him his hatred, the little respect he shows him may rouse his indignation. If he is stubborn, haughty, presumptuous, let him be painted in all the glaring colors that aggravate such vicious temper, and these manifested not only from his words and deeds, but from face, manner, and dress. I remember, on my first coming to the bar, a shrewd remark of the accuser of Cossutianus Capito. He pleaded in Greek before the Emperor, but the meaning of his words was: “Might it not be said that this man disdains even to respect Cæsar.”

The accuser has recourse frequently to the arousing of compassion, either by setting forth the distrest state of him for whom he hopes to find redress, or by describing the desolation and ruin into which his children and relations are likely thereby to be involved. He may, too, move the judges by holding out to them a prospect of what may happen hereafter if injuries and violence remain unpunished, the consequence of which will be that either his client must abandon his dwelling and the care of his effects, or must resolve to endure patiently all the injustice his enemy may try to do him.

The accuser more frequently will endeavor to caution the judge against the pity with which the defendant intends to inspire him, and he will stimulate him, in as great a degree as he can, to judge according to his conscience. Here, too, will be the place to anticipate whatever it is thought the opponent may do or say, for it makes the judges more circumspect regarding the sacredness of their oath, and by it the answer to the pleading may lose the indulgence which it is expected to receive, together with the charm of novelty in all the particulars which the accuser has already cleared up. The judges, besides, may be informed of the answer they should make to those who might threaten to have their sentence reversed; and this is another kind of recapitulation.

The persons concerned are very proper objects for affecting the mind of the judge, for the judge does not seem to himself to hear so much the orator weeping over others’ misfortunes, as he imagines his ears are smitten with the feelings and voice of the distrest. Even their dumb appearance might be a sufficiently moving language to draw tears, and as their wretchedness would appear in lively colors if they were to speak it themselves, so proportionately it must be thought to have a powerful effect when exprest, as it were, from their own mouths. Just so, in theatrical representations, the same voice, and the same emphatic pronunciation, become very interesting under the masks used for personating different characters. With a like view Cicero, tho he gives not the voice of a suppliant to Milo, but, on the contrary, commends his unshaken constancy, yet does he adapt to him words and complaints not unworthy of a man of spirit: “O my labors, to no purpose undertaken! Deceiving hopes! Useless projects!”

This exciting of pity, however, should never be long, it being said, not without reason, that “nothing dries up so soon as tears.” If time can mitigate the pangs of real grief, of course the counterfeit grief assumed in speaking must sooner vanish; so that if we dally, the auditor finding himself overcharged with mournful thoughts, tries to resume his tranquility, and thus ridding himself of the emotion that overpowered him, soon returns to the exercise of cool reason. We must, therefore, never allow this kind of emotion to become languid, but when we have wound up the passions to their greatest height, we must instantly drop the subject, and not expect that any one will long bewail another’s mishap. Therefore, as in other parts, the discourse should be well supported, and rather rise, so here particularly it should grow to its full vigor, because that which makes no addition to what has already been said seems to diminish it, and a passion soon evaporates that once begins to subside.

Tears are excited not only by words but by doing certain things, whence it is not unusual to present the very persons who are in danger of condemnation, in a garb suitable to their distress, together with their children and relations. Accusers, too, make it a custom to show a bloody sword, fractured bones picked out of wounds, and garments drenched in blood. Sometime, likewise, they unbind wounds to show their condition, and strip bodies naked to show the stripes they have received. These acts are commonly of mighty efficacy, as fully revealing the reality of the occurrence. Thus it was that Cæsar’s robe, bloody all over, exposed in the Forum, drove the people of Rome into an excess of madness. It was well known that he was assassinated; his body also lay in state, until his funeral should take place; yet that garment, still dripping with blood, formed so graphic a picture of the horrible murder that it seemed to them to have been perpetrated that very instant.

It will not be amiss to hint that the success of the peroration depends much on the manner of the parties in conforming themselves to the emotions and action of their advocates. Stupidity, rusticity, and a want of sensibility and attention, as it is said, throw cold water on a cause against which the orator can not be too well provided. I have, indeed, often seen them act quite contrary to their advocate’s instructions. Not the least show of concern could be observed in their countenance. They laughed foolishly and without reason, and made others laugh by some ridiculous gesticulation or grimace, especially when the heat of a debate exhibited anything akin to theatrical action.

An orator of slender ability will acquit himself better if he allows the judges by themselves to feel the compassion with which his subject may naturally inspire them, especially since the appearance, and voice, and studied air of the advocate’s countenance are often ridiculed by such as are not affected by them. Let the orator make an exact estimate of his powers, therefore, and be conscious of the burden he undertakes. Here there is no middle state; he must either make his hearers weep, or expect to be laughed at.

It should not be imagined, as some have thought, that all exciting of the passions, all sentimental emotions, ought to be confined to the exordium and peroration. In them they are most frequent, yet other parts admit them likewise, but in a shorter compass, as their greatest stress should be reserved for the end. For here, if anywhere, the orator may be allowed to open all the streams of eloquence. If we have executed all other parts to advantage, here we take possession of the minds of the judges, and having escaped all rocks, may expand all our sails for a favorable gale; and as amplification makes a great part of the peroration, we then may raise and embellish our style with the choicest expressions and brightest thoughts. And, indeed, the conclusion of a speech should bear some resemblance to that of tragedy and comedy, wherein the actor courts the spectator’s applause. In other parts the passions may be touched upon, as they naturally rise out of the subject, and no horrible or sorrowful thing should be set forth without accompanying it with a suitable sentiment. When the debate may be on the quality of a thing, it is properly subjoined to the proofs of each thing brought out. When we plead a cause complicated with a variety of circumstances, then it will be necessary to use many perorations, as it were; as Cicero does against Verres, lending his tears occasionally to Philodamus, to the masters of ships, to the crucified Roman citizens, and to many others.PASSION AND PERSUASION

It may well be imagined that nothing else is so important in the whole art of oratory as the proper use of the passions. A slender genius, aided by learning or experience, may be sufficient to manage certain parts to some advantage, yet I think they are fit only for instructing the judges, and as masters and models for those who take no concern beyond passing for good speakers. But to possess the secret of forcibly carrying away the judges, of moving them, as we please, to a certain disposition of mind, of inflaming them with anger, of softening them to pity, so as to draw tears from them, all this is rare, tho by it the orator is made most distinguished and by it eloquence gains empire over hearts. The cause itself is naturally productive of arguments, and the better share generally falls to the lot of the more rightful side of the question, so that whichever side wins by dint of argument, may think that so far they did not lack an advocate. But when violence is to be used to influence the minds of the judges, when they are to be turned from coolly reflecting on the truth that works against us, then comes the true exercise of the orator’s powers; and this is what the contending parties can not inform us of, nor is it contained in the state of their cases. Proofs, it is true, make the judges presume that our cause is the better, but passion makes them wish it to be such, and as they wish it, they are not far from believing it to be so. For as soon as they begin to absorb from us our passions of anger, favor, hatred, or pity, they make the affair their own. As lovers can not be competent judges of beauty, because love blinds them, so here a judge attentive to the tumultuous working of a passion, loses sight of the way by which he should proceed to inquire after the truth. The impetuous torrent sweeps him away, and he is borne down in the current. The effect of arguments and witnesses is not known until judgment has been passed, but the judge who has been affected by the orator, still sitting and hearing, declares his real sentiments. Has not he who is seen to melt into tears, already pronounced sentence? Such, then, is the power of moving the passions, to which the orator ought to direct all his efforts, this being his principal work and labor, since without it all other resources are naked, hungry, weak, and unpleasing. The passions are the very life and soul of persuasion.

QUALITIES NEEDED IN THE ORATOR

What we require in the orator is, in general, a character of goodness, not only mild and pleasing, but humane, insinuating, amiable, and charming to the hearer; and its greatest perfection will be if all, as influenced by it, shall seem to flow from the nature of things and persons, that so the morals of the orator may shine forth from his discourse and be known in their genuine colors. This character of goodness should invariably be maintained by those whom a mutual tie ought to bind in strict union, whenever it may happen that they suffer anything from each other, or pardon, or make satisfaction, or admonish, or reprimand, but far from betraying any real anger or hatred.

A sentiment very powerful for exciting hatred may arise when an act of submission to our opponents is understood as a silent reproach of their insolence. Our willingness to yield must indeed show them to be insupportable and troublesome, and it commonly happens that they who have desire for railing, and are too free and hot in their invectives, do not imagine that the jealousy they create is of far greater prejudice to them than the malice of their speech.

All this presupposes that the orator himself ought to be a good and humane man. The virtues which he commends, if he possibly can, in his client, he should possess, or be supposed to possess, himself. In this way will he be of singular advantage to the cause he undertakes, the good opinion he has created of himself being a prejudice in its favor. For if while he speaks he appears to be a bad man, he must in consequence plead ill, because what he says will be thought repugnant to justice. The style and manner suitable on these occasions ought, therefore, to be sweet and insinuating, never hot and imperious, never hazarded in too elevated a strain. It will be sufficient to speak in a proper, pleasing, and probable way.

The orator’s business in regard to the passions should be not only to paint atrocious and lamentable things as they are, but even to make those seem grievous which are considered tolerable, as when we say that an injurious word is less pardonable than a blow, and that death is preferable to dishonor. For the powers of eloquence do not consist so much in forcing the judge into sentiments which the nature of the matter itself may be sufficient to inspire him with, as they do in producing and creating, as it were, the same sentiments when the subject may seem not to admit them. This is the vehemence of oratorical ability which knows how to equal and even to surpass the enormity and indignity of the facts it exposes, a quality of singular consequence to the orator, and one in which Demosthenes excelled all others.

THE SECRET OF MOVING THE PASSIONS

The great secret for moving the passions is to be moved ourselves, for the imitation of grief, anger, indignation, will often be ridiculous if conforming to only our words and countenance, while our heart at the same time is estranged from them. What other reason makes the afflicted exclaim in so eloquent a manner during the first transports of their grief? And how, otherwise, do the most ignorant speak eloquently in anger, unless it be from this force and these mental feelings?

In such passions, therefore, which we would represent as true copies of real ones, let us be ourselves like those who unfeignedly suffer, and let our speech proceed from such a disposition of mind as that in which we would have the judge be. Will he grieve who hears me speak with an expressionless face and air of indifference? Will he be angry when I, who am to excite him to anger, remain cool and sedate? Will he shed tears when I plead unconcerned? All this is attempting impossibilities. Nothing warms nor moistens but that which is endued with the quality of heat or moisture, nor does anything give to another a color it has not itself. The principal consideration, then, must be that we, ourselves, retain the impression of which we would have the judges susceptible, and be ourselves affected before we endeavor to affect others.THE POWER OF MENTAL IMAGERY

But how shall we be affected, the emotions or passions being not at our command? This may be done by what we may call visions, whereby the images of things absent are so represented to the mind that we seem to see them with our eyes and have them present before us. Whoever can work up his imagination to an intuitive view of this kind, will be very successful in moving the passions.

If I deplore the fate of a man who has been assassinated, may I not paint in my mind a lively picture of all that probably happened on the occasion? Shall not the assassin appear to rush forth suddenly from his lurking place? Shall not the other appear seized with horror? Shall he not cry out, beg for his life, or fly to save it? Shall I not see the assassin dealing the deadly blow, and the defenseless wretch falling dead at his feet? Shall I not picture vividly in my mind the blood gushing from his wounds, his ghastly face, his groans, and the last gasp he fetches?

When there is occasion for moving to compassion, we should believe and, indeed, be persuaded that the distress and misfortunes of which we speak have happened to ourselves. Let us place ourselves in the very position of those for whom we feel sorrow on account of their having suffered such grievous and unmerited treatment. Let us plead their cause, not as if it were another’s, but taking to ourselves, for a short time, their whole grief. In this way we shall speak as if the case were our own. I have seen comedians who, when they have just appeared in a mournful character, often make their exit with tears in their eyes. If, then, the expression given to imaginary passions can affect so powerfully, what should not orators do, whose inner feelings ought to sympathize with their manner of speaking, which can not happen unless they are truly affected by the danger to which their clients are exposed.

RULES FOR PRACTISE

In the declamatory exercises of schools it would be expedient, likewise, to move the passions and imagine the scene as a real one in life, and it is the more important as there the part is performed rather of a pleader against some person, than an advocate for some person. We represent a person who has lost his children, or has been shipwrecked, or is in danger of losing his life, but of what significance is it to personate such characters, unless we also assume their real sentiments. This nature, and these properties of the passions, I thought it incumbent on me not to conceal from the reader, for I, myself, such as I am, or have been (for I flatter myself that I have acquired some reputation at the bar), have often been so affected that not only tears, but even paleness, and grief, not unlike that which is real, have betrayed my emotions.

THE STUDY OF WORDS

What now follows requires special labor and care, the purpose being to treat of elocution, which in the opinion of all orators is the most difficult part of our work, for M. Antonius says that he has seen many good speakers, but none eloquent. He thinks it good enough for a speaker to say whatever is necessary on a subject, but only the most eloquent may discuss it with grace and elegance. If down to the time he lived in, this perfection was not discoverable in any orator, and neither in himself nor in L. Crassus, it is certain that it was lacking in them and their predecessors only on account of its extreme difficulty. Cicero says that invention and disposition show the man of sense, but eloquence the orator. He therefore took particular pains about the rules for this part, and that he had reason for so doing the very name of eloquence sufficiently declares. For to be eloquent is nothing else than to be able to set forth all the lively images you have conceived in your mind, and to convey them to the hearers in the same rich coloring, without which all the principles we have laid down are useless, and are like a sword concealed and kept sheathed in its scabbard.

This, then, is what we are principally to learn; this is what we can not attain without the help of art; this ought to be the object of our study, our exercise, our imitation; this may be full employment for our whole life; by this, one orator excels another; and from this proceeds diversity of style.

THE PROPER VALUE OF WORDS

It should not be inferred from what is said here that all our care must be about words. On the contrary, to such as would abuse this concession of mine, I declare positively my disapprobation of those persons who, neglecting things, the nerves of causes, consume themselves in a frivolous study about words. This they do for the sake of elegance, which indeed is a fine quality when natural but not when affected. Sound bodies, with a healthy condition of blood, and strong by exercise, receive their beauty from the very things from which they receive their strength. They are fresh-colored, active, and supple, neither too much nor too little in flesh. Paint and polish them with feminine cosmetics, and admiration ceases; the very pains taken to make them appear more beautiful add to the dislike we conceive for them. Yet a magnificent, and suitable, dress adds authority to man; but an effeminate dress, the garb of luxury and softness, lays open the corruption of the heart without adding to the ornament of the body. In like manner, translucent and flashy elocution weakens the things it clothes. I would, therefore, recommend care about words, but solicitude about things.

The choicest expressions are for the most part inherent in things, and are seen in their own light, but we search after them as if always hiding and stealing themselves away from us. Thus we never think that what ought to be said is at hand; we fetch it from afar, and force our invention. Eloquence requires a more manly temper, and if its whole body be sound and vigorous, it is quite regardless of the nicety of paring the nails and adjusting the hair.THE DANGER OF VERBIAGE

It often happens, too, that an oration becomes worse by attending to these niceties, because simplicity, the language of truth, is its greatest ornament, and affectation the reverse. The expressions that show care, and would also appear as newly formed, fine, and eloquent, lose the graces at which they aim, and are far from being striking and well received, because they obscure the sense by spreading a sort of shadow about it, or by being too crowded they choke it up, like thick-sown grain that must run up too spindling. That which may be spoken in a plain, direct manner we express by paraphrase; and we use repetitions where to say a thing once is enough; and what is well signified by one word, we load with many, and most things we choose to signify rather by circumlocution than by proper and pertinent terms.

A proper word, indeed, now has no charms, nothing appearing to us fine which might have been said by another word. We borrow metaphors from the whims and conceits of the most extravagant poets, and we fancy ourselves exceedingly witty, when others must have a good deal of wit to understand us. Cicero is explicit in his views in this respect. “The greatest fault a speech can have,” says he, “is when it departs from the common way of discourse and the custom of common sense.” But Cicero would pass for a harsh and barbarous author, compared to us, who make little of whatever nature dictates, who seek not ornaments, but delicacies and refinements, as if there were any beauty in words without an agreement with things, for if we were to labor throughout our whole life in consulting their propriety, clearness, ornament, and due placing, we should lose the whole fruit of our studies.

ACQUIRING A PRACTICAL VOCABULARY

Yet many are seen to hesitate at single words, even while they invent, and reflect on and measure what they invent. If this were done designedly to use always the best, this unhappy temper would still be detestable, as it must check the course of speaking and extinguish the heat of thought by delay and diffidence. For the orator is wretched, and, I may say, poor, who can not patiently lose a word. But he will lose none who first has studied a good manner of speaking, and by reading well the best authors has furnished himself with a copious supply of words and made himself expert in the art of placing them. Much practise will so improve him afterward that he always will have them at hand and ready for use, the thought fitting in naturally with the proper manner of expression.

But all this requires previous study, an acquired faculty, and a rich fund of words. For solicitude in regard to inventing, judging, and comparing, should take place when we learn, and not when we speak. Otherwise they who have not sufficiently cultivated their talents for speaking will experience the fate of those who have made no provision for the future. But if a proper stock of words is already prepared, they will attend as in duty bound, not so much in the way of answering exigencies as always to seem inherent in the thought and to follow as a shadow does a body.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT WORDS

Yet this care should not exceed its due bounds, for when words are authorized by use, are significant, elegant, and aptly placed, what more need we trouble ourselves about? But some eternally will find fault, and almost scan every syllable, who, even when they have found what is best, seek after something that is more ancient, remote, and unexpected, not understanding that the thought must suffer in a discourse, and can have nothing of value, where only the words are commendable. Let us, therefore, pay particular regard to elocution, yet, at the same time be convinced that nothing is to be done for the sake of words, they having been invented solely for the sake of things. The most proper words always will be those which are best expressive of the ideas in our mind, and which produce in the ideas of the judges the effect we desire. Such undoubtedly will make a speech both admirable and pleasing, but not so admirable as are prodigies, nor pleasing by a vicious and unseemly pleasure, but a pleasure reflecting dignity with praise.ELEGANCE AND GRACE

The orator will recommend himself particularly by the embellishments he adopts, securing in other ways the approbation of the learned, and in this also the favor of popular applause.

Not so much with strong as with shining armor did Cicero engage in the cause of Cornelius. His success was not due merely to instructing the judges, and speaking in a pure and clear style. These qualities would not have brought him the honor of the admiration and applause of the Roman people. It was the sublimity, magnificence, splendor, and dignity of his eloquence that forced from them signal demonstrations of their amazement. Nor would such unusual eulogies have been given him if his speech had contained nothing extraordinary, nothing but what was common. And, indeed, I believe that those present were not completely aware of what they were doing, and that what they did was neither spontaneous, nor from an act of judgment, but that filled with a sort of enthusiasm, and not considering the place they were in, they burst forth with unrestrained excitement.

THE VALUE OF BEAUTY OF EXPRESSION

These ornaments of speech, therefore, may be thought to contribute not a little to the success of a cause, for they who hear willingly are more attentive and more disposed to believe. Most commonly it is pleasure that wins them over, and sometimes they are seized and carried away with admiration. A glittering sword strikes the eyes with some terror, and thunder would not so shock us if its crash only, and not its lightning, was dreaded. Therefore Cicero, with good reason, says in one of his epistles to Brutus: “The eloquence which does not excite admiration, I regard as nothing.” Aristotle, too, would have us endeavor to attain this perfection.

But this embellishment, I must again and again repeat, ought to be manly, noble, and modest; neither inclining to effeminate delicacy, nor assuming a color indebted to paint, but glistening with health and spirits.

Let none of those who build up their reputation on a corrupt manner of eloquence, say that I am an enemy to such as speak with elegance. I do not deny that it is a perfection, but I do not ascribe it to them. Shall I think a piece of ground better laid out and improved, in which one shall show me lilies and violets and pleasing cascades, than one where there is a full harvest or vines laden with grapes? Shall I esteem a barren planetree and shorn myrtles beyond the fruitful olive and the elm courting the embraces of the vine? The rich may pride themselves on these pleasures of the eye, but how little would be their value if they had nothing else?

But shall no beauty, no symmetry, be observed in the care of fruit trees? Undoubtedly there should, and I would place them in a certain order, and keep a due distance in planting them. What is more beautiful than the quincunx, which, whatever way you look, retains the same direct position? Planting them out so will also be of service to the growth of the trees, by equally attracting the juices of the earth. I should lop off the aspiring tops of my olive; it will spread more beautifully into a round form, and will produce fruit on more branches. A horse with slender flanks is considered handsomer than one not framed in that manner, and the same quality also shows that he excels in swiftness. An athlete whose arms from exercise show a full spring and play of the muscles, is a beautiful sight, and he, likewise, is best fitted as a combatant. Thus the true species is never without its utility, as even a meager judgment easily may discern.

DEVELOPING VARIETY OF STYLE

But it will be of more importance to observe that this decent attire ought to be varied according to the nature of the subject. To begin with our first division, the same style will not suit equally demonstrative, deliberative, and judicial causes. The first, calculated for ostentation, aims at nothing but the pleasure of the auditory. It, therefore, displays all the riches of art, and exposes to full view all the pomp of eloquence; not acting by stratagem, nor striving for victory, but making praise and glory its sole and ultimate end. Whatever may be pleasing in the thought, beautiful in the expression, agreeable in the turn, magnificent in the metaphor, elaborate in the composition, the orator will lay open for inspection and, if it were possible, for handling, as a merchant exposes his wares; for here the success wholly regards him and not the cause.

But when the serious part of a trial is on hand, and the contest is truly in earnest, care of reputation ought to be the orator’s last concern. For this reason, when everything in a way is at stake, no one ought to be solicitous about words. I do not say that no ornaments ought to have place in them, but that they should be more modest and severe, less apparent, and above all suited to the subject. For in deliberations the senate require something more elevated; the assemblies of the people, something more spirited; and at the bar, public and capital causes, something more accurate. But a private deliberation, and causes of trivial consequence, as the stating of accounts and the like, need little beyond the plain and easy manner of common discourse. Would it not be quite shameful to demand in elaborate periods the payment of money lent, or appeal to the emotions in speaking of the repairs of a gutter or sink?THE CHOICE OF WORDS

As the ornament, as well as perspicuity, of speech consists either in single words or in many together, we shall consider what they require separately and what in conjunction. Tho there is good reason for saying that perspicuity is best suited by proper words, and ornament by metaphorical, yet we should always know that an impropriety is never ornamental. But as many words very often signify the same thing, and therefore are called synonymous, some of these must be more sublime, more bright, more agreeable, and sweeter and fuller in pronunciation than others. As the more clear-sounding letters communicate the same quality to the syllables they compose, so the words composed of these syllables become more sonorous, and the greater the force or sound of the syllables is, the more they fill or charm the ear. What the junction of syllables makes, the copulation of words makes also, a word sounding well with one, which sound badly with another.

There is a great diversity in the use of words. Harsh words best express things of an atrocious nature. In general, the best of simple words are believed to be such as sound loudest in exclamation, or sweetest in a pleasing strain. Modest words will ever be preferred to those that must offend a chaste ear, and no polite discourse ever makes allowance for a filthy or sordid expression. Magnificent, noble, and sublime words are to be estimated by their congruity with the subject; for what is magnificent in one place, swells into bombast in another; and what is low in a grand matter, may be proper in a humble situation. As in a splendid style a low word must be very much out of place and, as it were, a blemish to it, so a sublime and pompous expression is unsuited to a subject that is plain and familiar, and therefore must be reputed corrupt, because it raises that which ought to find favor through its native simplicity.

THE MANNER OF DELIVERY

I shall pass now to the construction of words, observing that their ornamental use may be considered from two points of view; first, as it regards the elocution we conceive in our minds; second, the manner of expressing it. It is of particular consequence that we should be clear as to what ought to be amplified or diminished; whether we are to speak with heat or moderation; in a florid or austere style; in a copious or concise manner; in words of bitter invective, or in those showing placid and gentle disposition; with magnificence or plainness; gravity or politeness. Besides which it is equally important to know what metaphors, what figures, what thoughts, what manner, what disposition, are best suited for effecting our purpose.

FAULTS OF EXPRESSION TO AVOID

In speaking of the ornaments of a discourse, it may not be amiss to touch first upon qualities contrary to them, because the principal perfection consists in being free from faults. We, therefore, must not expect ornament that is not probable, in a discourse. Cicero calls that kind of ornament probable which is not more nor less than it ought to be. Not that it should not appear neat and polished, for this is a part of ornament, but because too much in anything is always a fault. He would have authority and weight in words, and thoughts that are sensible, or conformable to the opinions and manners of men. These inviolably retained and adhered to, he makes ample allowance for whatever else may contribute to illustrate a discourse. And thus it is that metaphors, superlatives, epithets, compound, and synonymous words, if they seem to express the action and fully represent things, seldom fail to please.

We should avoid the fault which makes a sentence appear not full enough, on account of something defective, tho this is rather a vice of obscurity than want of ornament in speech. But when it is done for some particular reason, then it becomes a figure of speech. We should likewise be aware of tautology, which is a repetition of the same word or thought, or the use of many similar words or thoughts. Tho this does not seem to have been much guarded against by some authors of great note, it is, notwithstanding, a fault, and Cicero himself often falls into it.

Similarity of expression is a still greater vice, because the mind is wearied by lack of the graces of variety, and the discourse being all of one color, shows a great deficiency in the art of oratory. It, besides, creates loathing, and at length becomes insupportable, both to the mind and ear, through the tedious repetition of the same cold thoughts, figures, and periods.

There is another fault, that of being over-nice, which is caused by extreme anxiety to be exact, but which is as far distant from exactness as superstition is from true religion. In short, every word that contributes neither to perspicuity nor ornament, may be called vicious.

A perverse affectation is faulty in all respects. All bombast, and flimsiness, and studied sweetness, and redundancies, and far-fetched thoughts, and witticisms, fall under the same denomination. Thus whatever stretches beyond the bounds of perfection, may be called affectation, and this happens as often as the genius is lacking in judgment, and suffers itself to be deceived by an appearance of good. It is the worst of vices in matters of eloquence, for even when others are avoided, this is sought after, and its whole trespass is against elocution. There are vices incident to things, which come from being devoid of sense, or from being common, or contrary, or unnecessary, and a corrupt style consists principally in impropriety of words, in their redundancy, in their obscure import, in a weak composition, and in a puerile hunting after synonymous or equivocal words. But every perverse affectation is false in consequence of its idea, tho not everything that is false is an affectation, the latter saying a thing otherwise than as nature will have it, and than it ought to be, and than is sufficient.USE OF VIVID DESCRIPTION

There can not be a greater perfection than to express the things we speak of in such lively colors as to make them seem really to take place in our presence. Our words are lacking in full effect, they assume not that absolute empire they ought to have, when they strike only the ear, and when the judge who is to take cognizance of the matter is not sensible of its being emphatically exprest.

One manner of representation consists in making out of an assemblage of circumstances the image we endeavor to exhibit. An example of this we have in Cicero’s description of a riotous banquet; he being the only one who can furnish us with examples of all kinds of ornaments: “I seemed to myself to see some coming in, others going out; some tottering with drunkenness, others yawning from yesterday’s carousing. In the midst of these was Gallius, bedaubed with essences, and crowned with flowers. The floor of their apartment was all in a muck of dirt, streaming with wine, and strewed all about with chaplets of faded flowers, and fish-bones.” Who could have seen more had he been present?

In this manner pity grows upon us from hearing of the sacking of a town. Undoubtedly he who acquaints us of such an event, comprehends all the incidents of so great a calamity, yet this cursory piece of intelligence makes but a languid impression upon the mind. But if you enter into descriptive pictures of all that was included in one word, as it were, flames will appear spreading through houses and temples; the crash of falling houses will be heard; and one confused noise formed out of all together. Some will be seen striving to escape the danger, but know not where to direct their flight; others embracing for the last time their parents and relations; here the dismal shrieks of women and piercing cries of children fill one with pity; there the sighs and groans of old men, lamenting their unhappy fate for having lived so long as to be witnesses of their country’s desolation. A further addition to these scenes of woe is the plunder of all things, sacred as well as profane; the avidity of the soldier prowling after and carrying away his prey; the wretched citizens dragged away in chains before their haughty conquerors; mothers struggling to keep with them their children; and slaughter still exercising its cruelties wherever there is the least expectation of booty. Tho all these details are comprehended in the idea of the sacking of a town, yet it is saying less to state merely that the town was sacked than to describe its destruction in this circumstantial manner.

Such circumstances may be made to appear vivid if they retain a likeness to truth. They may not have happened in reality, yet, as they are possible, the descriptive evidence is not objectionable. The same evidence will arise also from accidents, as in the following examples:

… me horror chills, Shudd’ring, and fear congeals my curdling blood. TRAPP.

… to their bosoms press’d, The frighted mothers clasp’d their crying babes. TRAPP.

This perfection, the greatest, in my opinion, a discourse can have, is very easily acquired by only considering and following nature. For eloquence is a picture of the happenings of human life, every one applying to himself what he hears, by making the case in some measure his own, and the mind receives very willingly that with which it has become familiar.

To throw light, also, upon things, similes have been invented, some of which by way of proof are inserted among arguments, and others are calculated for expressing the images of things, the point we are here explaining.

… Thence like wolves Prowling in gloomy shade, which hunger blind Urges along, while their forsaken whelps Expect them with dry jaws. TRAPP.

… Thence with all his body’s force Flings himself headlong from the steepy height Down to the ocean: like the bird that flies Low, skimming o’er the surface, near the sea, Around the shores, around the fishy rocks. TRAPP.HOW TO EMPLOY SIMILES AND METAPHORS

We must be exceedingly cautious in regard to similitudes, that we do not use such as are either obscure or unknown. For that which is assumed for the sake of illustrating another thing, ought indeed to be clearer than that which it so illustrates.

In speaking of arguments I mentioned a kind of similitude which, as an ornament to a discourse, contributes to make it sublime, florid, pleasing, and admirable. For the more far-fetched a similitude is, the more new and unexpected it will appear. Some may be thought commonplace, yet will avail much for enforcing belief; as, “As a piece of ground becomes better and more fertile by cultivation, so does the mind by good institutions.” “As physicians prescribe the amputation of a limb that manifestly tends to mortification, so would it be necessary to cut off all bad citizens, tho even allied to us in blood.” Here is something more sublime: “Rocks and solitudes echo back the melody, and the fiercest beasts are often made more gentle, being astonished by the harmony of music.” But this kind of similitude is often abused by the too great liberties our declaimers give themselves; for they use such as are false, and they do not make a just application of them to the subjects to which they would compare them.

In every comparison the similitude either goes before, and the thing follows; or the thing goes before, and the similitude follows. But the similitude sometimes is free and separate: sometimes, which is best, it is connected with the thing of which it is the image, this connection being made to aid and correspond mutually on both sides. Cicero says in his oration for Murena: “They who have not a genius for playing on the lyre, may become expert at playing on the flute (a proverbial saying among the Greeks to specify the man who can not make himself master of the superior sciences): so among us they who can not become orators, turn to the study of the law.” In another passage of the same oration, the connected comparison is conceived in a sort of poetical spirit. “As storms are often raised by the influence of some constellation, and often suddenly and from some hidden cause which can not be accounted for, so the stormy agitations we sometimes behold in the assemblies of the people are often occasioned by a malign influence easily discoverable by all; and often their cause is so obscure as to seem merely the effect of chance.” There are other similes, which are very short, as this, “Strolling and wandering through forests like beasts.” And that of Cicero against Clodius, “From which judgment we have seen him escape naked, like a man from his house on fire.” Such similes constantly occur in common discourse.

Of a similar kind is an ornament which not only represents things, but does so in a lively and concise manner. Undoubtedly a conciseness in which nothing is lacking, is deservedly praised; that which says precisely only what is necessary, is less estimable; but that which expresses much in a few words is of all the most beautiful.

Eloquence does not think it enough to show of what it speaks, in a clear and evident manner; it uses, besides, a variety of other expedients for embellishing a discourse. Thus it is that a simple and unaffected style is not without beauty, but it is a beauty entirely pure and natural, such as is admired in women. Beauty is also annexed to propriety and justness of expression, and this beauty is the more elegant as it shows but little care. There is an abundance that is rich, an abundance that smiles amidst the gaiety of flowers, and there is more than one sort of power, for whatever is complete in its kind can not be destitute of its proper strength and efficacy.COMPOSITION AND STYLE

I well know that there are some who will not sanction any care in composition, contending that our words as they flow by chance, however uncouth they may sound, are not only more natural, but likewise more manly. If what first sprang from nature, indebted in nowise to care and industry, be only what they deem natural, I admit that the art of oratory in this respect has no pretensions to that quality. For it is certain that the first men did not speak according to the exactness of the rules of composition; neither were they acquainted with the art of preparing by an exordium, informing by a narration, proving by arguments, and moving by passions. They were deficient in all these particulars, and not in composition only; and if they were not allowed to make any alterations for the better, of course they would not have exchanged their cottages for houses, nor their coverings of skins for more decent apparel, nor the mountains and forests in which they ranged for the abode of cities in which they enjoy the comforts of social intercourse. And, indeed, what art do we find coeval with the world, and what is there of which the value is not enhanced by improvement? Why do we restrain the luxuriance of our vines? Why do we dig about them? Why do we grub up the bramble-bushes in our fields? Yet the earth produces them. Why do we tame animals? Yet are they born with intractable dispositions. Rather let us say that that is very natural which nature permits us to meliorate in her handiwork.

THE POWER OF SKILFUL COMPOSITION

How can a jumble of uncouth words be more manly than a manner of expression which is well joined and properly placed? If some authors weaken the subjects of which they treat, by straining them into certain soft and lascivious measures, we must not on that account judge that this is the fault of composition. As the current of rivers is swifter and more impetuous in a free and open channel than amidst an obstruction of rocks breaking and struggling against the flow of their waters, an oration that is properly connected flows with its whole might, and is far preferable to one that is craggy and desultory by reason of frequent interruptions. Why, then, should it be thought that strength and beauty are incompatible, when, on the contrary, nothing has its just value without art, and embellishment always attends on it? Do not we observe the javelin which has been cleverly whirled about, dart through the air with the best effect; and in managing a bow and arrow, is not the beauty of the attitude as much more graceful as the aim is more unerring? In feats of arms, and in all the exercises of the palæstra, is not his attitude best calculated for defense or offense, who uses a certain art in all his motions, and keeps to a certain position of the feet? Composition, therefore, in my opinion, is to thoughts and words what the dexterous management of a bow or string may be for directing the aim of missive weapons; and I may say that the most learned are convinced that it is greatly conducive not only to pleasure, but also to making a good impression on others. First, because it is scarcely possible that anything should affect the heart, which begins by grating on the ear. Secondly, because we are naturally affected by harmony, otherwise the sounds of musical instruments, tho they express no words, would not excite in us so great a variety of pleasing emotions. In sacred canticles, some airs are for elating the heart into raptures, others to restore the mind to its former tranquillity. The sound of a trumpet is not the same when it is the signal for a general engagement, and when on defeat it implores the conqueror’s mercy; neither is it the same when an army marches up to give battle, and when it is intent on retreating. It was a common practise with the Pythagoric philosophers, on arising in the morning, to awake their minds by an air on the lyre, in order to make them more alert for action; and they had recourse to the same musical entertainment for disposing them to sleep, believing it to be a means for allaying all tumultuous thoughts which might in any way have ruffled them in the course of the day.

If, then, so great a power lies in musical strains and modulations, what must it be with eloquence, the music of which is a speaking harmony? As much, indeed, as it is essential for a thought to be exprest in suitable words, it is equally necessary for the same words to be disposed in proper order by composition, that they may flow and end harmoniously. Some things of little consequence in their import, and requiring but a moderate degree of elocution, are commendable only by this perfection; and there are others which appear exprest with so much force, beauty, and sweetness, that if the order in which they stand should be changed or disturbed, all force, beauty, and sweetness would vanish from them.THE ESSENTIALS OF GOOD COMPOSITION

There are three things necessary in every kind of composition, and these are order, correction, and number.

_1. Order_

We shall speak first of order, which applies to words considered separately or joined together. In regard to the former, care must be taken that there be no decrease by adding a weaker word to a stronger, as accusing one of sacrilege, and giving him afterward the name of thief; or adding the character of wanton fellow to that of a highwayman. The sense ought to increase and rise, which Cicero observes admirably where he says: “And thou, with that voice, those lungs, and that gladiator-like vigor of thy whole body.” Here each succeeding thing is stronger than the one before; but if he had begun with the whole body, he could not with propriety have descended to the voice and lungs. There is another natural order in saying men and women, day and night, east and west.

Words in prose not being measured, as are the feet which compose verse, they are, therefore, transferred from place to place, that they may be joined where they best fit, as in a building where the irregularity, however great, of rough stones is both suitable and proper. The happiest composition language can have, however, is to keep to a natural order, just connection, and a regularly flowing cadence.

Sometimes there is something very striking about a word. Placed in the middle of a sentence, it might pass unnoticed, or be obscured by the other words that lie about it, but when placed at the end the auditor can not help noting it and retaining it in his mind.

_2. Connection_

Juncture follows, which is equally requisite in words, articles, members, and periods, all these having their beauty and faults, in consequence of their manner of connection. It may be a general observation that in the placing of syllables, their sound will be harsher as they are pronounced with a like or different gaping of the mouth. This, however, is not to be dreaded as a signal fault, and I know not which is worse here, inattention or too great care. Too scrupulous fear must damp the heat and retard the impetuosity of speaking, while at the same time it prevents the mind from attending to thoughts which are of greater moment. As, therefore, it is carelessness to yield to these faults, so it is meanness to be too much afraid of them.

_3. Number_

Numbers are nowhere so much lacking, nor so remarkable, as at the end of periods; first, because every sense has its bounds, and takes up a natural space, by which it is divided from the beginning of what follows: next, because the hearers following the flow of words, and drawn, as it were, down the current of the oration, are then more competent judges, when that impetuosity ceases and gives time for reflection. There should not, therefore, be anything harsh nor abrupt in that ending, which seems calculated for the respite and recreation of the mind and ear. This, too, is the resting-place of the oration, this the auditor expects, and here burst forth all his effusions of praise.

THE COMPOSITION OF PERIODS

The beginning of periods demands as much care as the closing of them, for here, also, the auditor is attentive. But it is easier to observe numbers in the beginning of periods, as they are not depending on, nor connected with, what went before. But the ending of periods, however graceful it may be in composition and numbers, will lose all its charm if we proceed to it by a harsh and precipitate beginning.

As to the composition of the middle parts of a period, care must be taken not only of their connection with each other, but also that they may not seem slow, nor long, nor, what is now a great vice, jump and start from being made up of many short syllables, and producing the same effect on the ear as the sounds from a child’s rattle. For as the ordering of the beginning and ending is of much importance, as often as the sense begins or ends; so in the middle, too, there is a sort of stress which slightly insists; as the feet of people running, which, tho they make no stop, yet leave a track. It is not only necessary to begin and end well the several members and articles, but the intermediate space, tho continued without respiration, ought also to retain a sort of composition, by reason of the insensible pauses that serve as so many degrees for pronunciation.

Cicero gives many names to the period, calling it a winding about, a circuit, a comprehension, continuation, and circumscription. It is of two kinds; the one simple when a single thought is drawn out into a considerable number of words; the other compound, consisting of members and articles which include several thoughts.

Wherever the orator has occasion to conduct himself severely, to press home, to act boldly and resolutely, he should speak by members and articles. This manner has vast power and efficacy in an oration. The composition is to adapt itself to the nature of things, therefore, even rough things being conceived in rough sounds and numbers, that the hearer may be made to enter into all the passions of the speaker. It would be advisable, for the most part, to make the narration in members; or if periods are used, they ought to be more loose and less elaborate than elsewhere. But I except such narrations as are calculated more for ornament than for giving information.THE USE OF PERIODS

The period is proper for the exordiums of greater causes, where the matter requires solicitude, commendation, pity. Also in common places and in every sort of amplification; but if you accuse, it ought to be close and compact; if you praise, it should be full, round, and flowing. It is likewise of good service in perorations, and may be used without restriction wherever the composition requires to be set off in a somewhat grand and noble manner, and when the judge not only has a thorough knowledge of the matter before him, but is also captivated with the beauty of the discourse and, trusting to the orator, allows himself to be led away by the sense of pleasure.

History does not so much stand in need of a periodical flow of words, as it likes to move around in a sort of perpetual circle, for all its members are connected with each other, by its slipping and gliding along from one subject to the next, just as men, strengthening their pace, hold and are held, by grasping each other by the hand. Whatever belongs to the demonstrative kind has freer and more flowing numbers. The judicial and deliberative, being varied in their matter, occasionally require a different form of composition.

FITTING EXPRESSION TO THOUGHT

Who doubts that some things are to be exprest in a gentle way, others with more heat, others sublimely, others contentiously, and others gravely? Feet composed of long syllables best suit grave, sublime, and ornamental subjects. The grave will take up a longer space in the pronunciation, and the sublime and ornamental will demand a clear and sonorous expression. Feet of short syllables are more agreeable in arguments, division, raillery, and whatever partakes of the nature of ordinary conversation.

The composition of the exordium will differ, therefore, as the subject may require. For the mind of the judge is not always the same, so that, according to the time and circumstances, we must declare our mournful plight, appear modest, tart, grave, insinuating; move to mercy and exhort to diligence. As the nature of these is different, so their composition must be conducted in a different way.

Let it be in some measure a general observation that the composition ought to be modeled on the manner of pronunciation. In exordiums are we not most commonly modest, except when in a cause of accusation we strive to irritate the minds of the judges? Are we not copious and explicit in narration; in arguments animated and lively, even showing animation in our actions; in common places and descriptions, exuberant and lavish of ornaments; and in perorations, for the most part weighed down by distress? Of the variety which ought to be in a discourse, we may find another parallel instance in the motions of the body. With all of them, do not the circumstances regulate their respective degrees of slowness and celerity? And for dancing as well as singing, does not music use numbers of which the beating of the time makes us sensible? As our voice and action are indeed expressive of our inner feelings in regard to the nature of the things of which we speak, need we, then, be surprized if a like conformity ought to be found in the feet that enter into the composition of a piece of eloquence? Ought not sublime matters be made to walk in majestic solemnity, the mild to keep in a gentle pace, the brisk and lively to bound with rapidity, and the nice and delicate to flow smoothly?

FAULTS IN COMPOSITION

If faults in composition be unavoidable, I should rather give preference to that which is harsh and rough than to that which is nerveless and weak, the results of an affected style that many now study, and which constantly corrupts, more and more, by a wantonness in numbers more becoming a dance than the majesty of eloquence. But I can not say that any composition is good, however perfect otherwise, which constantly presents the same form, and continually falls into the same feet. A constant observing of similar measures and cadences, is a kind of versification, and all prose in which this fault is discoverable, can have no allowance made for it, by reason of its manifest affectation (the very suspicion of which ought to be avoided), and its uniformity, which, of course, must fatigue and disgust the mind. This vice may have some engaging charms at first sight, but the greater its sweets are, the shorter will be their continuance; and the orator once detected of any anxious concern in this respect, will instantly lose all belief that has been placed in him, and vainly will he strive to make on others’ minds the impressions he expected to make; for how is it to be expected that a judge will believe a man, or permit himself to feel grief or anger on account of one whom he observes to have attended to nothing more than the display of such trifles? Some of the connections of smooth composition ought, therefore, to be designedly broken, and it is no small labor to make them appear not labored.

Let us not be such slaves to the placing of words as to study transpositions longer than necessary, lest what we do in order to please, may displease by being affected. Neither let a fondness for making the composition flow with smoothness, prevail on us to set aside a word otherwise proper and becoming; as no word, in reality, can prove disagreeable enough to be wholly excluded, unless it be that in the avoiding of such words we consult mere beauty of expression rather than the good of composition.

To conclude, composition ought to be graceful, agreeable, varied. Its parts are three: order, connection, number. Its art consists in adding, retrenching, changing. Its qualities are according to the nature of the things discust. The care in composition ought to be great, but not to take the place of care in thinking and speaking. What deserves to be particularly attended to is the concealing of the care of composition, that the numbers may seem to flow of their own accord, and not with the least constraint or affectation.COPIOUSNESS OF WORDS

Eloquence will never be solid and robust, unless it collects strength and consistence from much writing and composing; and without examples from reading, that labor will go astray for lack of a guide; and tho it be known how everything ought to be said, yet the orator who is not possest of a talent for speaking, always ready to exert himself on occasion, will be like a man watching over a hidden treasure.

Our orator, who we suppose is familiar with the way of inventing and disposing things, of making a choice of words, and placing them in proper order, requires nothing further than the knowledge of the means whereby in the easiest and best manner he may execute what he has learned. It can not, then, be doubted that he must acquire a certain stock of wealth in order to have it ready for use when needed, and this stock of wealth consists of a plentiful supply of things and words.

THE RIGHT WORD IN THE RIGHT PLACE

Things are peculiar to each cause, or common to few; but a provision of words must be made indiscriminately for all subjects. If each word were precisely significant of each thing, our perplexity would be less, as then words would immediately present themselves with things, but some being more proper than others, or more ornamental, or more emphatic, or more harmonious, all ought not only to be known but to be kept ready and in sight, as it were, that when they present themselves for the orator’s selection, he easily may make a choice of the best.

I know that some make a practise of classing together all synonymous words and committing them to memory, so that out of so many at least one may more easily come to mind; and when they have used a word, and shortly after need it again, to avoid repetition they take another of the same significance. This is of little or no use, for it is only a crowd that is mustered together, out of which the first at hand is taken indifferently, whereas the copiousness of language of which I speak is to be the result of acquisition of judgment in the use of words, with the view of attaining the true expressive force of eloquence, and not empty volubility of speech. This can be affected only by hearing and reading the best things; and it is only by giving it our attention that we shall know not only the appellations of things, but what is fittest for every place.

THE VALUE OF HEARING SPEAKERS

With some eloquent compositions we may derive more profit by reading them, but with some others, more by hearing them pronounced. The speaker keeps awake all our senses, and inspires us by the fire that animates him. We are struck, not by the image and exterior of things, but by the things themselves. All is life and motion, and with solicitude for his success, we favorably receive all he says, its appeal to us lying in the charm of novelty. Together with the orator, we find ourselves deeply interested in the issue of the trial and the safety of the parties whose defense he has undertaken. Besides these we find that other things affect us: a fine voice, a graceful action corresponding with what is said, and a manner of pronunciation, which perhaps is the most powerful ornament of eloquence; in short, everything conducted and managed in the way that is most fitting.

THE ADVANTAGES OF READING

In reading, our judgment goes upon surer ground, because often our good wishes for the speaker, or the applause bestowed on him, surprizes us into approbation. We are ashamed to differ in opinion from others, and by a sort of secret bashfulness are kept from believing ourselves more intelligent than they are; tho indeed we are aware, at the same time, that the taste of the greater number is vicious, and that sycophants, even persons hired to applaud, praise things which can not please us; as, on the other hand, it also happens that a bad taste can have no relish for the best things. Reading is attended, besides, with the advantage of being free, and not escaping us by the rapidity which accompanies action; and we may go over the same things often, should we doubt their accuracy, or wish to fix them in our memories. Repeating and reviewing will, therefore, be highly necessary; for as meats are chewed before they descend into the stomach, in order to facilitate their digestion, so reading is fittest for being laid up in the memory, that it may be an object of imitation when it is no longer in a crude state but has been softened and elaborated by long meditation.

HOW TO READ MOST PROFITABLY

None, however, but the best authors, and such as we are least liable to be deceived in, demand this care, which should be diligent and extended even almost to the point of taking the pains to transcribe them. Nor ought judgment to be passed on the whole from examining a part, but after the book has been fully perused, it should have a second reading; especially should this be done with an oration, the perfections of which are often designedly kept concealed. The orator, indeed, often prepares, dissembles, lies in wait, and says things in the first part of the pleading which he avails himself of in the last part. They may, therefore, be less pleasing in their place, while we still remain ignorant of the purpose for their being said. For this reason, after a due consideration of particulars, it would not be amiss to re-read the whole.WHAT TO READ

Theophrastus says that the reading of poetry is of vast service to the orator. Many, and with good reason, are of the same opinion, as from the poets may be derived sprightliness in thought, sublimity in expression, force and variety in sentiment, propriety and decorum in character, together with that diversion for cheering and freshening minds which have been for any time harassed by the drudgery of the bar.

Let it be remembered, however, that poets are not in all things to be imitated by the orator, neither in the liberty of words, nor license of figures. The whole of that study is calculated for ostentation. Its sole aim is pleasure, and it invariably pursues it, by fictions of not only what is false, but of some things that are incredible. It is sure, also, of meeting with partizans to espouse its cause, because, since it is bound down to a certain necessity of feet it can not always use proper words, and being driven out of the straight road, must turn into byways of speaking, and be compelled to change some words, and to lengthen, shorten, transpose and divide them. As for orators, they must stand their ground completely armed in the order of battle, and having to fight for matters of the highest consequence, must think of nothing but gaining the victory.

Still would I not have their armor appear squalid and covered with rust, but retain rather a brightness that dismays, such as of polished steel, striking both the mind and eyes with awe, and not the splendor of gold and silver, a weak safeguard, indeed, and rather dangerous to the bearer.

History, likewise, by its mild and grateful sap may afford kind nutriment to an oratorical composition. Yet the orator should so read history as to be convinced that most of its perfections ought to be avoided by him. It nearly borders upon poetry, and may be held as a poem, unrestrained by the laws of verse. Its object is to narrate, and not to prove, and its whole business neither intends action nor contention, but to transmit facts to posterity, and enhance the reputation of its author.

In the reading of history there is another benefit, and indeed the greatest, but one not relative to the present subject. This proceeds from the knowledge of things and examples, which the orator ought to be well versed in, so that not all his testimonies may be from the parties, but many of them may be taken from antiquity, with which, through history, he will be well acquainted; these testimonies being the more powerful, as they are exempt from suspicion of prejudice and partiality.

I shall venture to say that there are few which have stood the test of time, that may not be read with some profit by the judicious. Cicero himself confesses that he received great help from old authors, who were, indeed, very ingenious but were deficient in art. Before I speak of the respective merit of authors, I must make, in a few words, some general reflections on the diversity of taste in regard to matters of eloquence. Some think that the ancients deserve to be read, believing that they alone have distinguished themselves by natural eloquence and that strength of language so becoming men. Others are captivated with the flowery profusion of the orators of the present age, with their delicate turns, and with all the blandishments they skilfully invent to charm the ears of an ignorant multitude. Some choose to follow the plain and direct way of speaking. Others take to be sound and truly Attic whatever is close, neat, and departs but little from ordinary conversation. Some are delighted with a more elevated, more impetuous, and more fiery force of genius. Others, and not a few, like a smooth, elegant, and polite manner. I shall speak of this difference in taste more fully when I come to examine the style which may seem most proper for the orator.

QUALITIES OF CLASSIC WRITERS

_Homer_

We may begin properly with Homer.

He it is who gave birth to, and set the example for all parts of eloquence, in the same way, as he himself says, as the course of rivers and springs of fountains owe their origin to the ocean. No one, in great subjects, has excelled him in elevation; nor in small subjects, in propriety. He is florid and close, grave and agreeable, admirable for his concise as well as for his copious manner, and is not only eminent for poetical, but likewise oratorical, abilities.

_Æschylus_

Æschylus is the one who gave birth to tragedy. He is sublime, and grave, and often pompous to a fault. But his plots are mostly ill-contrived and as ill-conducted. For which reason the Athenians permitted the poets who came after him to correct his pieces and fit them for the stage, and in this way many of these poets received the honor of being crowned._Sophocles and Euripides_

Sophocles and Euripides brought tragedy to greater perfection; but the difference in their manner has occasioned dispute among the learned as to their relative poetic merits. For my part, I shall leave the matter undecided, as having nothing to do with my present purpose. It must be confest, nevertheless, that the study of Euripedes will be of much greater value to those who are preparing themselves for the bar; for besides the fact that his style comes nearer the oratorical style, he likewise abounds in fine thoughts, and in philosophic maxims is almost on an equality with philosophers, and in his dialog may be compared with the best speakers at the bar. He is wonderful, again, for his masterly strokes in moving the passions, and more especially in exciting sympathy.

_Thucydides and Herodotus_

There have been many famous writers of history, but all agree in giving the preference to two, whose perfections, tho different, have received an almost equal degree of praise. Thucydides is close, concise, and ever pressing on. Herodotus is sweet, natural, and copious. One is remarkable for his animated expression of the more impetuous passions, the other for gentle persuasion in the milder: the former succeeds in harangues and has more force; the other surpasses in speeches of familiar intercourse, and gives more pleasure.

_Demosthenes_

A numerous band of orators follows, for Athens produced ten of them, contemporary with one another. Demosthenes was by far the chief of them, and in a manner held to be the only model for eloquence; so great is his force; so closely together are all things interwoven in his discourse, and attended with a certain self-command; so great is his accuracy, he never adopting any idle expression; and so just his precision that nothing lacking, nothing redundant, can be found in him. Æschines is more full, more diffusive, and appears the more grand, as he has more breadth. He has more flesh, but not so many sinews.

_Lysias and Isocrates_

Lysias, older than these, is subtle and elegant, and if it is enough for the orator to instruct, none could be found more perfect than he is. There is nothing idle, nothing far-fetched in him; yet is he more like a clear brook than a great river. Isocrates, in a different kind of eloquence, is fine and polished, and better adapted for engaging in a mock than a real battle. He was attentive to all the beauties of discourse, and had his reasons for it, having intended his eloquence for schools and not for contentions at the bar. His invention was easy, he was very fond of graces and embellishments, and so nice was he in his composition that his extreme care is not without reprehension.

_Plato_

Among philosophers, by whom Cicero confesses he has been furnished with many resourceful aids to eloquence, who doubts that Plato is the chief, whether we consider the acuteness of his dissertations, or his divine Homerical faculty of elocution? He soars high above prose, and even common poetry, which is poetry only because comprised in a certain number of feet; and he seems to me not so much endowed with the wit of a man, as inspired by a sort of Delphic oracle.

_Xenophon_

What shall I say of Xenophon’s unaffected agreeableness, so unattainable by any imitation that the Graces themselves seem to have composed his language? The testimony of the ancient comedy concerning Pericles, is very justly applicable to him, “That the Goddess of Persuasion had seated herself on his lips.”

_Aristotle and Theophrastus_

And what shall I say of the elegance of the other disciples of Socrates? What of Aristotle? I am at a loss to know what most to admire in him, his vast and profound erudition, or the great number of his writings, or his pleasing style and manner, or the inventions and penetration of his wit, or the variety of his works. And as to Theophrastus, his elocution has something so noble and so divine that it may be said that from these qualities came his name.

_Vergil_

In regard to our Roman authors, we can not more happily begin than with Vergil, who of all their poets and ours in the epic style, is without any doubt the one who comes nearest to Homer. Tho obliged to give way to Homer’s heavenly and immortal genius, yet in Vergil are to be found a greater exactness and care, it being incumbent on him to take more pains; so that what we lose on the side of eminence of qualities, we perhaps gain on that of justness and equability.

_Cicero_

I proceed to our orators, who likewise may put Roman eloquence upon a par with the Grecian. Cicero I would strenuously oppose against any of them, tho conscious of the quarrel I should bring upon myself by comparing him with Demosthenes in a time so critical as this; especially as my subject does not oblige me to it, neither is it of any consequence, when it is my real opinion that Demosthenes ought to be particularly read, or, rather, committed to memory.

I must say, notwithstanding, that I judge them to be alike in most of the great qualities they possest; alike in design, disposition, manner of dividing, of preparing minds, of proving, in short in everything belonging to invention. In elocution there is some difference. The one is more compact, the other more copious; the one closes in with his opponent, the other allows him more ground to fight in; the one is always subtle and keen in argument, the other is perhaps less so, but often has more weight; from the one nothing can be retrenched, neither can anything be added to the other; the one has more study, the other more nature.Still ought we to yield, if for no other reason than because Demosthenes lived before Cicero, and because the Roman orator, however great, is indebted for a large part of his merit to the Athenian. For it seems to me that Cicero, having bent all his thoughts on the Greeks, toward forming himself on their model, had at length made constituents of his character the force of Demosthenes, the abundance of Plato, and the sweetness of Isocrates. Nor did he only, by his application, extract what was best in these great originals, but by the happy fruitfulness of his immortal genius he himself produced the greater part, or rather all, of these same perfections. And to make use of an expression of Pindar, he does not collect the water from rains to remedy a natural dryness, but flows continually, himself, from a source of living waters, and seems to have existed by a peculiar gift of Providence, that in him eloquence might make trial of her whole strength and her most powerful exertions.

For who can instruct with more exactness, and move with more vehemence? What orator ever possest so pleasing a manner that the very things he forcibly wrests from you, you fancy you grant him; and when by his violence he carries away the judge, yet does the judge seem to himself to obey his own volition, and not to be swept away by that of another? Besides, in all he says there is so much authority and weight that you are ashamed to differ from him in opinion; and it is not the zeal of an advocate you find in him, but rather the faith and sincerity of a witness or judge. And what, at the same time, is more admirable, all these qualities, any one of which could not be attained by another without infinite pains, seem to be his naturally; so that his discourses, the most charming, the most harmonious, which possibly can be heard, retain, notwithstanding, so great an air of happy ease that they seem to have cost him nothing.

With good reason, therefore, is he said by his contemporaries to reign at the bar, and he has so far gained the good graces of posterity that Cicero is now less the name of a man than the name of eloquence itself. Let us then keep him in view, let him be our model, and let that orator think he has made considerable progress who has once conceived a love and taste for Cicero.

_Cæsar_

If Cæsar had made the bar his principal occupation, no other of our orators could better have disputed the prize of eloquence with Cicero. So great is his force, so sharp his wit, so active his fire, that it plainly appears he spoke with as much spirit as he fought. A wonderful elegance and purity of language, which he made his particular study, were a further embellishment of all these talents for eloquence.

_Philosophers_

It remains only to speak of those who have written on subjects of philosophy. Hitherto we have had but few of this kind. Cicero, as in all other respects, so also in this, was a worthy rival of Plato. Brutus has written some excellent treatises, the merit of which is far superior to that of his orations. He supports admirably well the weight of his matter, and seems to feel what he says. Cornelius Celsus, in the manner of the Skeptics, has written a good many tracts, which are not without elegance and perspicuity. Plancus, among the Stoics, may be read with profit, for the sake of becoming acquainted with the things he discusses. Catius, an Epicurean, has some levity in his way, but in the main is not an unpleasing author.

_Seneca_

I have designedly omitted speaking hitherto of Seneca,–who was proficient in all kinds of eloquence,–on account of the false opinion people entertained that I not only condemned his writings, but also personally hated him. I drew this aspersion upon myself by my endeavor to bring over eloquence to a more austere taste, which had been corrupted and enervated by very many softnesses and delicacies. Then Seneca was almost the only author young people read with pleasure. I did not strive to exclude him absolutely, but could not bear that he should be preferred to others much better, whom he took all possible pains to cry down, because he was conscious that he had taken to a different manner from their way of writing, and he could not otherwise expect to please people who had a taste for these others. It was Seneca’s lot, however, to be more loved than imitated, and his partizans run as wide from him as he himself had fallen from the ancients. Yet it were to be wished that they had proved themselves like, or had come near, him. But they were fond of nothing in him but his faults, and every one strove to copy them if he could. Then priding themselves on speaking like Seneca, of course they could not avoid bringing him into disgrace.

His perfections, however, were many and great. His wit was easy and fruitful, his erudition considerable, his knowledge extensive–in which last point he sometimes was led into mistakes, probably by those whom he had charged to make researches for him. There is hardly a branch of study on which he has not written something; for we have his orations, his poems, epistles, and dialogs. In philosophic matters he was not so accurate, but was admirable for his invectives against vice.

He has many bright thoughts, and many things are well worth reading in him for improvement of the moral character; but his elocution is, for the most part, corrupt, and the more dangerous because its vices are of a sweet and alluring nature. One could wish he had written with his own genius and another’s judgment. For if he had rejected some things, if he had less studiously affected some engaging beauties, if he had not been overfond of all his productions, if he had not weakened the importance of his matter by frivolous thoughts, he would have been honored by the approbation of the learned rather than by the love of striplings.

However, such as he is, he may be read when the taste is formed and strengthened by a more austere kind of eloquence, if for no other reason than because he can exercise judgment on both sides. For, as I have said, many things in him are worthy of praise, worthy even of admiration if a proper choice had been made, which I wish he had made himself, as indeed that nature is deserving of an inclination to embrace what is better, which has ability to effect anything to which it inclines.KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

Knowledge of the civil law will, likewise, be necessary for the orator whom we have described, and together with it knowledge of the customs and religion of the commonwealth of which he may take charge, for how shall he be able to give counsel in public and private deliberations if ignorant of the many things which happen together particularly to the establishment of the State? And must he not falsely aver himself to be the patron of the causes he undertakes, if obliged to borrow from another what is of greatest consequence in these causes, in some measure like those who repeat the writings of poets? And how will he accomplish what he has so undertaken if the things which he requires the judge to believe, he shall speak on the faith of another, and if he, the reputed helper of his clients, shall himself stand in need of the help of another?

THOROUGH INFORMATION INDISPENSABLE

But we will suppose him not reduced to this inconvenience, having studied his cause sufficiently at home, and having thoroughly informed himself of all that he has thought proper to lay before the judges: yet what shall become of him when unforeseen questions arise, which often are suddenly started on the back of pleadings? Will he not with great unseemliness look about him? Will he not ask the lower class of advocates how he shall behave? Can he be accurate in comprehending the things then whispered to him, when he is to speak on them instantly? Can he strongly affirm, or speak ingenuously for his clients? Grant that he may in his pleadings, but what shall be his fate in altercation, when he must have his answer ready and he has no time for receiving information? And what if a person learned in the law is not assisting? What if one who knows little of the matter tells him something that is wrong? And this is the greatest mischief in ignorance, to believe such a monitor intelligent.

Now, as we suppose the orator to be a particularly learned and honest man, when he has made sufficient study of that which naturally is best, it will give him little trouble if a lawyer dissents from him in opinion, since even they are admitted to be of different opinions among themselves. But if he desires to know their sentiments on any point of law, he need only read a little, which is the least laborious part of study. If many men who despaired of acquiring the necessary talents for speaking in public, have engaged in the study of law, with how much more ease will the orator effect this, which may be learned by those who from their own confession could not be orators?

M. Cato was as much distinguished by his great eloquence as by his great learning in the law. Scævola and Servius Sulpitius, both eminent lawyers, were also very eloquent. Cicero not only in pleading never appeared at a loss in knowledge of the law, but also began to write some tracts on it. From all these examples it appears that an orator may not less attend to the teaching than the learning of it.

THE MANNER OF THE SPEAKER

I would not have him who is to speak rise unconcerned, show no change of color, and betray no sense of danger,–if they do not happen naturally, they ought at least to be pretended. But this sense should proceed from solicitude for performing well our duty, not from a motive of fear; and we may decently betray emotion, but not faint away. The best remedy, therefore, for bashfulness, is a modest assurance, and however weak the forehead may be, it ought to be lifted up, and well it may by conscious merit.

THE NEED OF GOOD DELIVERY

There are natural aids, as specified before, which are improved by care, and these are the voice, lungs, a good presence, and graceful action, which are advantages sometimes so considerable as to beget a reputation for wit. Our age produced orators more copious than Trachallus, but when he spoke he seemed to surpass them all, so great was the advantage of his stature, the sprightliness of his glance, the majesty of his aspect, the beauty of his action, and a voice, not as Cicero desires it should be, but almost like that of tragedians, and surpassing all the tragedians I ever heard. I well remember that when he once pleaded in the Julian Hall before the first bench of judges, and there also, as usual, the four classes of judges were then sitting, and the whole place rang with noise, he was not only heard distinctly from the four benches, but also was applauded, which was a disparagement to those who spoke after him. But this is the accumulation of what can be wished for, and a happiness hard to be met with, and as it can not fall to every one’s lot, let the orator strive at least to make himself heard by those before whom he speaks.

THE TEST OF AN ORATION

Above all, as happens to a great many, let not desire for temporary praise keep our orator from having an eye to the interest of the cause he has undertaken. For as generals in waging wars do not always march their armies over pleasant plains, but often must climb rugged hills, must lay siege to forts and castles raised on steep rocks and mountains, and fortified both by nature and by art: so an orator will be pleased with an opportunity to make great excursions, and when he engages on champion ground, he will display all his forces so as to make an exceedingly fine appearance; but if under the necessity of unraveling the intricacies of some points of law, or placing truth in a clear light from amidst the obscurity thrown around it, he will not then ostentatiously ride about, nor will he use a shower of pointed sentences, as missive weapons; but he will carry on his operations by frustrating his enemy; by mines, by ambuscade, and by stratagem: all of which are not much to be commended while they are being used, but after they have been practised. Whence those men benefit themselves most, who seem least desirous of praise; for when the frivolous parade of eloquence has ceased its bursts of thunder among its own applauders, the more potent applause of true talents will appear in genuine splendor; the judges will not conceal the impressions which have been made on them; the sense of the learned will outweigh the opinion of ignorance: so true it is that it is the winding up of the discourse, and the success attending it, that must prove its true merit.AVOIDING OSTENTATION

It was customary with the ancients to hide their eloquence; and M. Antonius advises orators so to do, in order that they may be the more believed, and that their stratagems may be less suspected. But the eloquence of those times could well be concealed, not yet having made an accession of so many luminaries as to break out through every intervening obstacle to the transmission of their light. But indeed all art and design should be kept concealed, as most things when once, discovered lose their value. In what I have hitherto spoken of, eloquence loves nothing else so much as privacy. A choice of words, weight of thought, elegance of figures, either do not exist, or they appear. But because they appear, they are not therefore to be displayed with ostentation. Or if one of the two is to be chosen, let the cause rather than the advocate be praised; still the issue will justify him, by his having pleaded excellently a very good cause. It is certain that no one else pleads so ill as he who endeavors to please, while his cause displeases; because the things by which he pleases must necessarily be foreign to his subject.

The orator ought not to be so particular and vain as not to undertake the pleading of the smaller kind of causes, as beneath him, or as if a matter of less consequence should in any respect lessen the reputation he has acquired. Duty indeed is a just motive for his undertaking them, and he should wish that his friends were never engaged in any other kind of suits, which in the main are set off with sufficient eloquence when he has spoken to the purpose.

DO NOT ABUSE YOUR OPPONENT

Some are very liberal in abuse of the advocate of the opposing party, but unless he has brought it upon himself, I think it is acting very ungenerously by him, in consideration of the common duties of the profession. Add to this that these sallies of passion are of no advantage whatever to him who pleads, the opponent having, in his turn, an equal right to abuse; and they may even be harmful to the cause, because the opponent, spurred on to become a real enemy, musters together all the forces of wit to conquer if possible. Above all, that modesty is irrecoverably lost which procures for the orator so much authority and belief, if once departing from the character of a good man, he degenerates into a brawler and barker, conforming himself not to the disposition of the judge, but to the caprice and resentment of the client.

Taking liberties of this kind frequently leads the orator to hazard some rash expressions not less dangerous to the cause than to himself. Pericles was accustomed to wish, with good reason, that no word might ever enter his mind which could give umbrage to the people. But the respect he had for the people ought in my opinion to be had for all, who may have it in their power to do as much hurt; for the words that seemed strong and bold when exprest, are called foolish when they have given offense.

THOROUGH PREPARATION ESSENTIAL

As every orator is remarkable for his manner, the care of one having been imputed to slowness, and the facility of another to rashness, it may not be amiss to point out here a medium. Let him come for pleading prepared with all possible care, as it must argue not only neglect, but also a wicked and treacherous disposition in him, to plead worse than he can in the cause he undertakes, therefore he should not undertake more causes than he is well able to handle.

He should say things, studied and written, in as great a degree as the subject can bear, and, as Demosthenes says, deeply engraven, if it were possible, on his memory, and as perfect as may be. This may be done at the first pleading of a cause, and when in public judgments a cause is adjourned for some time before it comes to a rehearsing. But when a direct reply is to be made, due preparations are impracticable; and even they who are not so ready find what they have written to be rather a prejudice to them if anything unexpectedly is brought forward; for it is with reluctance that they part with what they have prepared, and keeping it in mind during the whole pleading, they are forced to continually wonder if anything can be taken from it to be included in what they are obliged to speak extempore. And tho this may be done, there will still be a lack of connection, and the incoherence will be discoverable from the different coloring and inequality of style. Thus there is neither an uninterrupted fluency in what they say extempore, nor a connection between it and what they recite from memory, for which reason one must be a hindrance to the other, for the written matter will always bring to it the attention of the mind, and scarcely ever follow it. Therefore in these actions, as country-laboring men say, we must stand firmly on our legs. For, as every cause consists of proving and refuting, whatever regards the first may be written, and whatever it is certain the opponent will answer, as sometimes it is certain what he will, may be refuted with equal care and study.

Knowing the cause well is one essential point for being prepared in other respects, and listening attentively to all the opponent states, is another. Still we may previously think of many particular incidents and prepare the mind for all emergencies, this being of special advantage in speaking, the thought being thereby the more easily transmitted and transferred.

But when in answering or otherwise there may be necessity for extempore speaking, the orator will never find himself at a loss and disconcerted, who has been prepared by discipline, and study, and exercise, with the powers of facility, and who, as always under arms and ready for engaging, will no more lack a sufficient flow of speech in the pleading of causes than he does in conversation on daily and domestic occurrences; neither will he ever, for lack of coming duly prepared, decline burdening himself with a cause, if he has time to learn the state of it, for with anything else he always will be well acquainted.CONCLUSION

The orator having distinguished himself by these perfections of eloquence at the bar, in counsels, in the assemblies of the people, in the senate, and in all the duties of a good citizen, ought to think, likewise, of making an end worthy of an honest man and the sanctity of his ministry: not that during the course of his life he ought to cease being of service to society, or that, endowed with such integrity of mind and such talent of eloquence, he can continue too long in the exercise of so noble an employment; but because it is fitting that he should guard against degrading his character, by doing anything which may fall short of what he has already done. The orator is indebted for what he is, not only to knowledge, which increases with his years, but to his voice, lungs, and strength of body; and when the latter are impaired by years, or debilitated by infirmities, it is to be feared that something might be lacking in this great man, either from his stopping short through fatigue, and out of breath at every effort, or by not making himself sufficiently heard, or, lastly, by expecting, and not finding, him to be what he formerly was.

When the orator does sound a retreat, no less ample fruits of study will attend on him. He either will write the history of his time for the instruction of posterity, or he will explain the law to those who came to ask his advice, or he will write a treatise on eloquence, or that worthy mouth of his will employ itself in inculcating the finest moral precepts. As was customary with the ancients, well-disposed youth will frequent his house, consulting him as an oracle on the true manner of speaking. As the parent of eloquence will he form them, and as an old experienced pilot will he give them an account of shores, and harbors, and what are the presages of storms, and what may be required for working the ship in contrary or favorable winds. To all this will he be induced not only by a duty of humanity common to mankind, but also by a certain pleasure in it; for no one would be glad to see an art going into decay, in which he himself excelled, and what is more laudable than to teach others that in which one is perfectly skilled?

For all I know, the happiest time in an orator’s life is when he has retired from the world to devote himself to rest; and, remote from envy, and remote from strife, he looks back on his reputation, as from a harbor of safety; and while still living has a sense of that veneration which commonly awaits only the dead; thus anticipating the pleasure of the noble impression posterity will conceive of him. I am conscious that to the extent of my poor ability, whatever I knew before, and whatever I could collect for the service of this work, I have candidly and ingenuously made a communication of, for the instruction of those who might be willing to reap any advantage from it: and it is enough for an honest man to have taught what he knows.

To be good men, which is the first and most important thing, consists chiefly in the will, and whoever has a sincere desire to be a man of integrity, will easily learn the arts that teach virtue; and these arts are not involved in so many perplexities, neither are they of such great number, as not to be learned by a few years’ application. The ordering of an upright and happy life is attainable by an easy and compendious method, when inclination is not lacking. Nature begot us with the best dispositions, and it is so easy to the well-inclined to learn that which is good, that we can not help being surprized, on making a due estimate of things, how there can be so many bad persons in the world. For, as water is naturally a proper element for fish, dry land for quadrupeds, and air for birds, so indeed it ought to be more easy to live according to the prescript of nature than to infringe her laws.

As to the rest, tho we might measure our age, not by the space of more advanced years, but by the time of youth, we should find that we had quite years enough for learning, all things being made shorter by order, method, and the manner of application. To bring the matter home to our oratorical studies, of what significance is the custom which I see kept up by many, of declaiming so many years in schools, and of expending so much labor on imaginary subjects, when in a moderate time the rules of eloquence may be learned, and pursuant to their directions, a real image framed of the contests at the bar? By this I do not mean to hint in the least that exercises for speaking should ever be discontinued, but rather that none should grow old in any one particular exercise for that purpose, for we may require the knowledge of many sciences, and learn the precepts of morality, and exercise ourselves in such causes as are agitated at the bar, even while we continue in the state of scholars. And indeed the art of oratory is such as need not require many years for learning it. Each of the arts I have mentioned may be abridged into few books, there being no occasion to consider them so minutely and so much in detail. Practise remains, which soon makes us well skilled in them. Knowledge of things is increasing daily, and yet books are not so many; it is necessary to read in order to acquire this knowledge, of which either examples as to the things themselves may be met with in history, or the eloquent expression of them may be found in orators. It is also necessary that we should read the opinions of philosophers and lawyers, with some other things deserving of notice.TAKING TIME FOR STUDY

All this indeed may be compassed, but we ourselves are the cause of our not having time enough. How small a portion of it do we allot to our studies! A good part of it is spent in frivolous compliments and paying and returning visits, a good part of it is taken up in the telling of idle stories, a good part at the public spectacles, and a good part in the pleasures of the table. Add to these our great variety of amusements, and that extravagant indulgence we bestow upon our bodies. One time we must go on a course of travels, another time we wish recreation amidst the pleasures of rural life, and another time we are full of painful solicitude regarding the state of our fortune, calculating and balancing our loss and gain; and together with these, how often do we give ourselves up to the intoxication of wine, and in what a multiplicity of voluptuousness does our profligate mind suffer itself to be immersed? Should there be an interval for study amidst these avocations, can it be said to be proper? But were we to devote all this idle or ill-spent time to study, should we not find life long enough and time more than enough for becoming learned? This is evident by only computing the time of the day, besides the advantages of the night, of which a good part is more than sufficient for sleep. But we now preposterously compute not the years we have studied, but the years we have lived. Tho geometricians and grammarians, and the professors of other arts, spent all their lives, however long, in treating and discussing their respective arts, does it thence follow that we must have as many lives as there are things to be learned? But they did not extend the learning of them to old age, being content with learning them only, and they spent so many years not so much in their study as in their practise.

Now, tho one should despair of reaching to the height of perfection, a groundless hope even in a person of genius, health, talent, and with masters to assist him; yet it is noble, as Cicero says, to have a place in the second, or third, rank. He who can not rival the glory of Achilles in military exploits, shall not therefore have a mean opinion of the praise due to Ajax, or Diomedes, and he who can not approach Homer, need not despise the fame of Tyrteus. If men were to yield to the thought of imagining none capable of exceeding such eminent persons as went before them, then they even who are deemed excellent would not have been so. Vergil would not have excelled Lucretius and Macer; nor Cicero, Crassus and Hortensius; and no one for the future would pretend to any advantage over his predecessor.

Tho the hope of surpassing these great men be but faint, yet it is an honor to follow them. Have Pollio and Messala, who began to appear at the bar when Cicero was already possest of the empire of eloquence, acquired little dignity in their life-time, and left but a small degree of glory for the remembrance of posterity? True it is that arts brought to perfection would deserve very ill of human affairs if afterward they could not at least be kept to the same standard.

THE REWARDS OF ELOQUENCE

Add to this that a moderate share of eloquence is attended with no small advantage, and if measured by the fruits gathered from it, will almost be on a par with that which is perfect. It would be no difficult matter to show from many ancient or modern examples that no other profession acquires for men, greater honors, wealth, friendship, present and future glory, were it not degrading to the honor of letters to divert the mind from the contemplation of the most noble object, the study and possession of which is such a source of contentment, and fix it on the less momentous rewards it may have, not unlike those who say they do not so much seek virtue as the pleasure resulting from it.

Let us therefore with all the zealous impulses of our heart endeavor to attain the very majesty of eloquence, than which the immortal gods have not imparted anything better to mankind, and without which all would be mute in nature, and destitute of the splendor of a perfect glory and future remembrance. Let us likewise always make continued progress toward perfection, and by so doing we shall either reach the height, or at least shall see many beneath us.

This is all, as far as in me lies, I could contribute to the promoting and perfecting of the art of eloquence; the knowledge of which, if it does not prove of any great advantage to studious youth, will, at least, what I more heartily wish for, give them a more ardent desire for doing well.

The Power of Concentration

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The Power of Concentration

THE POWER OF CONCENTRATION

by Theron Q. Dumont(thought to be a pseudonym of William Walker Atkinson)

INTRODUCTORY

We all know that in order to accomplish a certain thing we must concentrate. It is of the utmost value to learn how to concentrate. To make a success of anything you must be able to concentrate your entire thought upon the idea you are working out.

Do not become discouraged, if you are unable to hold your thought on the subject very long at first. There are very few that can. It seems a peculiar fact that it is easier to concentrate on something that is not good for us, than on something that is beneficial. This tendency is overcome when we learn to concentrate consciously.

If you will just practice a few concentration exercises each day you will find you will soon develop this wonderful power.

Success is assured when you are able to concentrate for you are then able to utilize for your good all constructive thoughts and shut out all the destructive ones. It is of the greatest value to be able to think only that which will be beneficial.

Did you ever stop to think what an important part your thoughts, concentrated thoughts, play in your life? This book shows their far-reaching and all-abiding effects.

These lessons you will find very practical. The exercises I have thoroughly tested. They are arranged so that you will notice an improvement from the very start, and this will give you encouragement. They point out ways in which you can help yourself.

Man is a wonderful creature, but he must be trained and developed to be useful. A great work can be accomplished by every man if he can be awakened to do his very best. But the greatest man would not accomplish much if he lacked concentration and effort. Dwarfs can often do the work of giants when they are transformed by the almost magic power of great mental concentration. But giants will only do the work of dwarfs when they lack this power.

We accomplish more by concentration than by fitness; the man that is apparently best suited for a place does not always fill it best. It is the man that concentrates on its every possibility that makes an art of both his work and his life.

All your real advancement must come from your individual effort.

This course of lessons will stimulate and inspire you to achieve success; it will bring you into perfect harmony with the laws of success. It will give you a firmer hold on your duties and responsibilities.

The methods of thought concentration given in this work if put into practice will open up interior avenues that will connect you with the everlasting laws of Being and their exhaustless foundation of unchangeable truth.

As most people are very different it is impossible to give instructions that will be of the same value to all. The author has endeavored in these lessons to awaken that within the soul which perhaps the book does not express. So study these lessons as a means of awakening and training that which is within yourself. Let all your acts and thoughts have the intensity and power of concentration.

To really get the full benefit of these lessons you should read a page, then close the book and thoughtfully recall its ideas. If you will do this you will soon cultivate a concentrated mental habit, which will enable you to read with ordinary rapidity and remember all that you read.

LESSON I. CONCENTRATION FINDS THE WAY

Everyone has two natures. One wants us to advance and the other wants to pull us back. The one that we cultivate and concentrate on decides what we are at the end. Both natures are trying to gain control. The will alone decides the issue. A man by one supreme effort of the will may change his whole career and almost accomplish miracles. You may be that man. You can be if you Will to be, for Will can find a way or make one.

I could easily fill a book, of cases where men plodding along in a matter-of-fact way, were all at once aroused and as if awakening from a slumber they developed the possibilities within them and from that time on were different persons. You alone can decide when the turning point will come. It is a matter of choice whether we allow our diviner self to control us or whether we will be controlled by the brute within us. No man has to do anything he does not want to do. He is therefore the director of his life if he wills to be. What we are to do, is the result of our training. We are like putty, and can be completely controlled by our will power.

Habit is a matter of acquirement. You hear people say: “He comes by this or that naturally, a chip off the old block,” meaning that he is only doing what his parents did. This is quite often the case, but there is no reason for it, for a person can break a habit just the moment he masters the “I will.” A man may have been a “good-for-nothing” all his life up to this very minute, but from this time on he begins to amount to something. Even old men have suddenly changed and accomplished wonders. “I lost my opportunity,” says one. That may be true, but by sheer force of will, we can find a way to bring us another opportunity. There is no truth in the saying that opportunity knocks at our door but once in a lifetime. The fact is, opportunity never seeks us; we must seek it. What usually turns out to be one man’s opportunity, was another man’s loss. In this day one man’s brain is matched against another’s. It is often the quickness of brain action that determines the result. One man thinks “I will do it,” but while he procrastinates the other goes ahead and does the work. They both have the same opportunity. The one will complain of his lost chance. But it should teach him a lesson, and it will, if he is seeking the path that leads to success.

Many persons read good books, but say they do not get much good out of them. They do not realize that all any book or any lesson course can do is to awaken them to their possibilities; to stimulate them to use their will power. You may teach a person from now until doom’s day, but that person will only know what he learns himself. “You can lead him to the fountain, but you can’t make him drink.”

One of the most beneficial practices I know of is that of looking for the good in everyone and everything, for there is good in all things. We encourage a person by seeing his good qualities and we also help ourselves by looking for them. We gain their good wishes, a most valuable asset sometimes. We get back what we give out. The time comes when most all of us need encouragement; need buoying up. So form the habit of encouraging others, and you will find it a wonderful tonic for both those encouraged and yourself, for you will get back encouraging and uplifting thoughts.

Life furnishes us the opportunity to improve. But whether we do it or not depends upon how near we live up to what is expected of us. The first of each month, a person should sit down and examine the progress he has made. If he has not come up to “expectations” he should discover the reason, and by extra exertion measure up to what is demanded next time. Every time that we fall behind what we planned to do, we lose just so much for that time is gone forever. We may find a reason for doing it, but most excuses are poor substitutes for action. Most things are possible. Ours may be a hard task, but the harder the task, the greater the reward. It is the difficult things that really develop us, anything that requires only a small effort, utilizes very few of our faculties, and yields a scanty harvest of achievement. So do not shrink from a hard task, for to accomplish one of these will often bring us more good than a dozen lesser triumphs.

I know that every man that is willing to pay the price can be a success. The price is not in money, but in effort. The first essential quality for success is the desire to do–to be something. The next thing is to learn how to do it; the next to carry it into execution. The man that is the best able to accomplish anything is the one with a broad mind; the man that has acquired knowledge, that may, it is true, be foreign to this particular case, but is, nevertheless, of some value in all cases. So the man that wants to be successful must be liberal; he must acquire all the knowledge that he can; he must be well posted not only in one branch of his business but in every part of it. Such a man achieves success.The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position. Learn all you can. Don’t see how little you can do, but how much you can do. Such a man will always be in demand, for he establishes the reputation of being a hustler. There is always room for him because progressive firms never let a hustler leave their employment if they can help it.

The man that reaches the top is the gritty, plucky, hard worker and never the timid, uncertain, slow worker. An untried man is seldom put in a position of responsibility and power. The man selected is one that has done something, achieved results in some line, or taken the lead in his department. He is placed there because of his reputation of putting vigor and virility into his efforts, and because he has previously shown that he has pluck and determination.

The man that is chosen at the crucial time is not usually a genius; he does not possess any more talent than others, but he has learned that results can only be produced by untiring concentrated effort. That “miracles,” in business do not just “happen.” He knows that the only way they will happen is by sticking to a proposition and seeing it through. That is the only secret of why some succeed and others fail. The successful man gets used to seeing things accomplished and always feels sure of success. The man that is a failure gets used to seeing failure, expects it and attracts it to him.

It is my opinion that with the right kind of training every man could be a success. It is really a shame that so many men and women, rich in ability and talent, are allowed to go to waste, so to speak. Some day I hope to see a millionaire philanthropist start a school for the training of failures. I am sure he could not put his money to a better use. In a year’s time the science of practical psychology could do wonders for him. He could have agencies on the lookout for men that had lost their grip on themselves; that had through indisposition weakened their will; that through some sorrow or misfortune had become discouraged. At first all they need is a little help to get them back on their feet, but usually they get a knock downwards instead. The result is that their latent powers never develop and both they and the world are the losers. I trust that in the near future, someone will heed the opportunity of using some of his millions in arousing men that have begun to falter. All they need to be shown is that there is within them an omnipotent source that is ready to aid them, providing they will make use of it. Their minds only have to be turned from despair to hope to make them regain their hold.

When a man loses his grip today, he must win his redemption by his own will. He will get little encouragement or advice of an inspiring nature. He must usually regain the right road alone. He must stop dissipating his energies and turn his attention to building a useful career. Today we must conquer our weakening tendencies alone. Don’t expect anyone to help you. Just take one big brace, make firm resolutions, and resolve to conquer your weaknesses and vices. Really none can do this for you. They can encourage you; that is all.

I can think of nothing, but lack of health, that should interfere with one becoming successful. There is no other handicap that you should not be able to overcome. To overcome a handicap, all that it is necessary to do is to use more determination and grit and will.

The man with grit and will, may be poor today and wealthy in a few years; will power is a better asset than money; Will will carry you over chasms of failure, if you but give it the chance.

The men that have risen to the highest positions have usually had to gain their victories against big odds. Think of the hardships many of our inventors have gone through before they became a success. Usually they have been very much misunderstood by relatives and friends. Very often they did not have the bare necessities of life, yet, by sheer determination and resolute courage, they managed to exist somehow until they perfected their inventions, which afterwards greatly helped in bettering the condition of others.

Everyone really wants to do something, but there are few that will put forward the needed effort to make the necessary sacrifice to secure it. There is only one way to accomplish anything and that is to go ahead and do it. A man may accomplish almost anything today, if he just sets his heart on doing it and lets nothing interfere with his progress. Obstacles are quickly overcome by the man that sets out to accomplish his heart’s desire. The “bigger” the man, the smaller the obstacle appears. The “smaller” the man the greater the obstacle appears. Always look at the advantage you gain by overcoming obstacles, and it will give you the needed courage for their conquest.

Do not expect that you will always have easy sailing. Parts of your journey are likely to be rough. Don’t let the rough places put you out of commission. Keep on with the journey. Just the way you weather the storm shows what material you are made of. Never sit down and complain of the rough places, but think how nice the pleasant stretches were. View with delight the smooth plains that are in front of you.

Do not let a setback stop you. Think of it as a mere incident that has to be overcome before you can reach your goal.

LESSON II. THE SELF-MASTERY: SELF-DIRECTION POWER OF CONCENTRATION

Man from a psychological standpoint of development is not what he should be. He does not possess the self-mastery, the self-directing power of concentration that is his by right.

He has not trained himself in a way to promote his self-mastery. Every balanced mind possesses the faculties whose chief duties are to engineer, direct and concentrate the operations of the mind, both in a mental and physical sense. Man must learn to control not only his mind but his bodily movements.

When the controlling faculties (autonomic) are in an untrained condition, the impulses, passions, emotions, thoughts, actions and habits of the person suffer from lack of regulation, and the procedure of mental concentration is not good, not because the mind is necessarily weak in the autonomic department of the faculties, but because the mind is not properly trained.

When the self-regulating faculties are not developed the impulses, appetites, emotions and passions have full swing to do as they please and the mind becomes impulsive, restless, emotional and irregular in its action. This is what makes mental concentration poor.

When the self-guiding faculties are weak in development, the person always lacks the power of mental concentration. Therefore you cannot learn to concentrate until you develop those very powers that qualify you to be able to concentrate. So if you cannot concentrate one of the following is the cause:

1. “Deficiency of the motor centers.” 2. “An impulsive and emotional mind.” 3. “An untrained mind.”

The last fault can soon be removed by systematic practice. It is easiest to correct.

The impulsive and emotional state of mind can best be corrected by restraining anger, passion and excitement, hatred, strong impulses, intense emotions, fretfulness, etc. It is impossible to concentrate when you are in any of these excited states.

These can be naturally decreased by avoiding such food and drinks as have nerve weakening or stimulating influences, or a tendency to stir up the passions, the impulses and the emotions; it is a very good practice to watch and associate with those persons that are steady, calm, controlled and conservative.

Correcting the deficiency of the motor centers is harder because as the person’s brain is undeveloped he lacks will power.

To cure this takes some time. Persons so afflicted may benefit by reading and studying my course, “The Master Mind.”[*]

[*] To be published by Advanced Thought Publishing Co., Chicago, Ill.

Many have the idea that when they get into a negative state they are concentrating, but this is not so. They may be meditating, though not concentrating. Those that are in a negative state a good deal of the time cannot, as a rule, concentrate very well; they develop instead abstraction of the mind, or absence of mind. Their power of concentration becomes weaker and they find it difficult to concentrate on anything. They very often injure the brain, if they keep up this state. To be able to concentrate you must possess strength of mind. The person that is feeble-minded cannot concentrate his mind, because of lack of will. The mind that cannot center itself on a special subject, or thought, is weak; also the mind that cannot draw itself from a subject or thought is weak. But the person that can center his mind on any problem, no matter what it is, and remove any unharmonious impressions has strength of mind. Concentration, first, last and all the time, means strength of mind.

Through concentration a person is able to collect and hold his mental and physical energies at work. A concentrated mind pays attention to thoughts, words, acts and plans. The person who allows his mind to roam at will will never accomplish a great deal in the world. He wastes his energies. If you work, think, talk and act aimlessly, and allow your brain to wander from your subject to foreign fields, you will not be able to concentrate. You concentrate at the moment when you say, “I want to, I can, I will.”

Some Mistakes Some People Make. If you waste your time reading sensational stories or worthless newspaper items, you excite the impulsive and the emotional faculties, and this means you are weakening your power of concentration. You will not be a free engineer, able to pilot yourself to success.

Concentration of the mind can only be developed by watching yourself closely. All kinds of development commence with close attention. You should regulate your every thought and feeling. When you commence to watch yourself and your own acts and also the acts of other people, you use the faculties of autonomy, and, as you continue to do so, you improve your faculties, until in time you can engineer your every thought, wish and plan. To be able to focalize the mind on the object at hand in a conscious manner leads to concentration. Only the trained mind can focalize. To hold a thought before it until all the faculties shall have had time to consider that thought is concentration.

The person that cannot direct his thoughts, wishes, plans, resolutions and studies cannot possibly succeed to the fullest extent. The person that is impulsive one moment and calm the next has not the proper control over himself. He is not a master of his mind, nor of his thoughts, feelings and wishes. Such a person cannot be a success. When he becomes irritated, he irritates others and spoils all chances of any concerned doing their best. But the person that can direct his energies and hold them at work in a concentrated manner controls his every work and act, and thereby gains power to control others. He can make his every move serve a useful end and every thought a noble purpose.

In this day the man that gets excited and irritable should be looked upon as an undesirable person. The person of good breeding now speaks with slowness and deliberation. He is cultivating more and more of a reposeful attitude. He is consciously attentive and holds his mind to one thing at a time. He shuts out everything else. When you are talking to anyone give him your sole and undivided attention. Do not let your attention wander or be diverted. Give no heed to anything else, but make your will and intellect act in unison.Start out in the morning and see how self-poised you can remain all day. At times take an inventory of your actions during the day and see if you have kept your determination. If not, see that you do tomorrow. The more self-poised you are the better will your concentration be. Never be in too much of a hurry; and, remember, the more you improve your concentration, the greater are your possibilities. Concentration means success, because you are better able to govern yourself and centralize your mind; you become more in earnest in what you do and this almost invariably improves your chances for success.

When you are talking to a person have your own plans in mind. Concentrate your strength upon the purpose you are talking about. Watch his every move, but keep your own plans before you. Unless you do, you will waste your energy and not accomplish as much as you should.

I want you to watch the next person you see that has the reputation of being a strong character, a man of force. Watch and see what a perfect control he has over his body. Then I want you to watch just an ordinary person. Notice how he moves his eyes, arms, fingers; notice the useless expenditure of energy. These movements all break down the vital cells and lessen the person’s power in vital and nerve directions. It is just as important for you to conserve your nervous forces as it is the vital forces. As an example we see an engine going along the track very smoothly. Some one opens all the valves and the train stops. It is the same with you. If you want to use your full amount of steam, you must close your valves and direct your power of generating mental steam toward one end. Center your mind on one purpose, one plan, one transaction.

There is nothing that uses up nerve force so quickly as excitement. This is why an irritable person is never magnetic; he is never admired or loved; he does not develop those finer qualities that a real gentleman possesses. Anger, sarcasm and excitement weaken a person in this direction. The person that allows himself to get excited will become nervous in time, because he uses up his nerve forces and his vital energies. The person that cannot control himself and keep from becoming excited cannot concentrate.

When the mind can properly concentrate, all the energy of every microscopic cell is directed into one channel and then there is a powerful personal influence generated. Everyone possesses many millions of little trembling cells, and each one of these has a center where life and energy are stored up and generated. If this energy is not wasted but conserved and controlled, this person is influential, but when it is the opposite, he is not influential or successful.

Just as it is impossible for a steam engine to run with all its valves open, so is it impossible for you to waste your energy and run at your top speed. Each neuron in the gray layers of the brain is a psychic center of thought and action, each one is pulsating an intelligent force of some kind, and when this force, your thoughts and motions, are kept in cheek by a conservative, systematic and concentrated mind, the result will be magnetism, vitality and health. The muscles, bones, ligaments, feet, hands and nerves, etc., are agents for carrying out the mandates of the mind. The sole purpose of the volitional faculties is to move the physical mechanism as the energy travels along the wires of nerves and muscles. Just for that reason, if you throw a voluntary control over these messages, impulses, thoughts, emotions, physical movements and over these physical instruments you develop your faculties of self-mastery and to the extent you succeed here in proportion will you develop the power of concentration.

Any exercise or work that excites the mind, stimulates the senses, calls the emotions and appetites into action, confuses, terrifies or emotionalizes, weakens the power of concentration. This is why all kind of excitement is bad. This is the reason why persons who drink strong drinks, who allow themselves to get into fits of temper, who fight, who eat stimulating food, who sing and dance and thus develop their emotions, who are sudden, vehement and emotional, lack the power to concentrate. But those whose actions are slower and directed by their intelligence develop concentration. Sometimes dogmatic, wilful, excitable persons can concentrate, but it is spasmodic, erratic concentration instead of controlled and uniform concentration. Their energy works by spells; sometimes they have plenty, other times very little; it is easily excited; easily wasted. The best way to understand it is to compare it with the discharge of a gun. If the gun goes off when you want it to, it accomplishes the purpose, but if it goes off before you are ready for it, you will not only waste ammunition, but it is also likely to do some damage. That is just what most persons do. They allow their energy to explode, thus not only wasting it but endangering others. They waste their power, their magnetism and so injure their chance of success. Such persons are never well liked and never will be until they gain control over themselves.It will be necessary for them to practice many different kinds of concentration exercises, and to keep them up for some time. They must completely overcome their sudden, erratic thoughts, and regulate their emotions and movements. They must from morning to night train the mind to be steady, and direct and keep the energies at work.

The lower area of the brain is the store house of the energy. Most all persons have all the dynamic energy they need if they would concentrate it. They have the machine, but they must also have the engineer, or they will not go very far. The engineer is the self-regulating, directing power. The person that does not develop his engineering qualities will not accomplish much in life. The good engineer controls his every act. All work assists in development. By what you do you either advance or degenerate. This is a good idea to keep always in mind. When you are uncertain whether you should do something or not, just think whether by doing it you will grow or deteriorate, and act accordingly.

I am a firm believer in “work when you work, and play when you play.” When you give yourself up to pleasure you can develop concentration by thinking of nothing else but pleasure; when your mind dwells on love, think of nothing but this and you will find you can develop a more intense love than you ever had before. When you concentrate your mind on the “you” or real self, and its wonderful possibilities, you develop concentration and a higher opinion of yourself. By doing this systematically, you develop much power, because you cannot be systematic without concentrating on what you are doing. When you walk out into the country and inhale the fresh air, studying vegetation, trees, etc., you are concentrating. When you see that you are at your place of business at a certain time each morning you are developing steadiness of habit and becoming systematic. If you form the habit of being on time one morning, a little late the next, and still later the following one, you are not developing concentration, but whenever you fix your mind on a certain thought and hold your mind on it at successive intervals, you develop concentration.

If you hold your mind on some chosen object, you centralize your attention, just like the lens of the camera centralizes on a certain landscape. Therefore always hold your mind on what you are doing, no matter what it is. Keep a careful watch over yourself, for unless you do your improvement will be very slow.

Practice inhaling long, deep breaths, not simply for the improvement of health, although that is no small matter, but also for the purpose of developing more power, more love, more life. All work assists in development.

You may think it foolish to try to develop concentration by taking muscular exercises, but you must not forget that the mind is associated with muscle and nerve. When you steady your nerves and muscles, you steady your mind, but let your nerves get out of order and your mind will become erratic and you will not possess the power of direction, which, in other words, is concentration. Therefore you understand how important exercises that steady the nerves and muscles are in developing concentration.

Everyone is continually receiving impulses that must be directed and controlled if one is to lead a successful life. That is the reason why a person must control the movements of his eyes, feet, fingers, etc.; this is another reason why it is important to control his breathing. The slow, deep, prolonged exhalations are of wonderful value. They steady the circulation, the heart action, muscles and nerves of the mind. If the heart flutters, the circulation is not regular, and when the lung action is uneven, the mind becomes unsteady and not fit for concentration. This is why controlled breathing is very important as a foundation for physical health.

You must not only concentrate your mind, but also the action of the eyes, ears and fingers. Each of these contain miniature minds that are controlled by the master engineer. You will develop much quicker if you thoroughly realize this.

If you have ever associated with big men, or read their biographies, you will find that they usually let the others do the talking. It is much easier to talk than it is to listen. There is no better exercise for concentration than to pay close attention when some one is talking. Besides learning from what they have to say, you may develop both mental and physical concentration.When you shake hands with some one just think of your hand as containing hundreds of individual minds, each having an intelligence of its own. When you put this feeling into your hand shake it shows personality. When you shake hands in a listless way, it denotes timidity, lack of force and power of personality. When the hand grip is very weak and stiff, the person has little love in his nature, no passion and no magnetism. When the hand shake is just the opposite, you will find that the nature is also. The loveless person is non-magnetic and he shows that he is by his non-magnetic hand shake. When two developed souls shake hands, their clasps are never light. There is a thrill that goes through both when the two currents meet. Love arouses the opposite currents of the positive and negative natures. When there is no love, life loses its charm. The hand quickly shows when love is being aroused. This is why you should study the art of hand shaking and develop your social affections. A person that loves his kind reflects love, but a person that hates reflects hate. The person with a bad nature, a hateful disposition, evil thoughts and feeling is erratic, freakish and fitful. When you allow yourself to become irritable, watch how you breathe and you will learn a valuable lesson. Watch how you breathe when you are happy. Watch your breathing when you harbor hate. Watch how you breathe when you feel in love with the whole world and noble emotions thrill you. When filled with good thoughts, you breathe a plentiful supply of oxygen into your lungs and love fills your soul. Love develops a person, physically, mentally and socially. Breathe deeply when you are happy and you will gain life and strength; you will steady your mind and you will develop your power of concentration and become magnetic and powerful.

If you want to get more out of life you must think more of love. Unless you have real affection for something, you have no sentiment, no sweetness, no magnetism. So arouse your love affections by your will and enter into a fuller life.

The hand of love always magnetizes, but it must be steady and controlled. Love can be concentrated in your hand shake, and this is one of the best ways to influence another.

The next time you feel yourself becoming irritable, use your will and be patient. This is a very good exercise in self-control. It will help you to keep patient if you will breathe slowly and deeply. If you find you are commencing to speak fast, just control yourself and speak slowly and clearly. Keep from either raising or lowering your voice and concentrate on the fact that you are determined to keep your poise, and you will improve your power of concentration.

When you meet people of some consequence, assume a reposeful attitude before them. Do this at all times. Watch both them and yourself. Static exercises develop the motor faculties and increase the power of concentration. If you feel yourself getting irritable, nervous or weak, stand squarely on your feet with your chest up and inhale deeply and you will see that your irritability will disappear and a silent calm will pass over you.

If you are in the habit of associating with nervous, irritable people, quit it until you grow strong in the power of concentration, because irritable, angry, fretful, dogmatic and disagreeable people will weaken what powers of resistance you have.

Any exercises that give you better control of the ears, fingers, eyes, feet, help you to steady your mind; when your eye is steady, your mind is steady. One of the best ways to study a person is to watch his physical movements, for, when we study his actions, we are studying his mind. Because actions are the expressions of the mind. As the mind is, so is the action. If it is uneasy, restless, erratic, unsteady, its actions are the same. When it is composed, the mind is composed. Concentration means control of the mind and body. You cannot secure control over one without the other.

Many people who seem to lack ambition have sluggish minds. They are steady, patient and seemingly have good control, but this does not say they are able to concentrate. These people are indolent, inactive, slow and listless, because they lack energy; they do not lose control because they have little force to control. They have no temper and it therefore cannot disturb them. Their actions are steady because they possess little energy. The natural person is internally strong, energetic and forceful, but his energy, force and strength, thoughts and physical movements are well under his control.

If a person does not have energy, both mental and physical, he must develop it. If he has energy which he cannot direct and hold to a point he must learn to do so. A man may be very capable, but, unless he Wills to control his abilities, they will not do him any good.

We hear so much talk about the benefit of physical culture, but the real benefit of this is really lost sight of. There is nothing that holds the faculties at work in a sustained and continuous manner as static exercises do. For, as stated before, when you learn to control the body, you are gaining control over the mind.

LESSON III. HOW TO GAIN WHAT YOU WANT THROUGH CONCENTRATION

The ignorant person may say, “How can you get anything by merely wanting it? I say that through concentration you can get anything you want. Every desire can be gratified. But whether it is, will depend upon you concentrating to have that desire fulfilled. Merely wishing for something will not bring it. Wishing you had something shows a weakness and not a belief that you will really get it. So never merely wish, as we are not living in a “fairy age.” You use up just as much brain force in “vain imaginings” as you do when you think of something worth while.

Be careful of your desires, make a mental picture of what you want and set your will to this until it materializes. Never allow yourself to drift without helm or rudder. Know what you want to do, and strive with all your might to do it, and you will succeed.

Feel that you can accomplish anything you undertake. Many undertake to do things, but feel when they start they are going to fail and usually they do. I will give an illustration. A man goes to a store for an article. The clerk says, “I am sorry, we have not it.” But the man that is determined to get that thing inquires if he doesn’t know where he can get it. Again receiving an unsatisfactory answer the determined buyer consults the manager and finally he finds where the article can be bought.

That is the whole secret of concentrating on getting what you want. And, remember, your soul is a center of all-power, and you can accomplish what you will to. “I’ll find a way or make one!” is the spirit that wins. I know a man that is now head of a large bank. He started there as a messenger boy. His father had a button made for him with a “P” on it and put it on his coat. He said, “Son, that ‘P’ is a reminder that some day you are to be the president of your bank. I want you to keep this thought in your mind. Every day do something that will put you nearer your goal.” Each night after supper he would say, “Son, what did you do today?” In this way the thought was always kept in mind. He concentrated on becoming president of that bank, and he did. His father told him never to tell anyone what that “P” stood for. A good deal of fun was made of it by his associates. And they tried to find out what it stood for, but they never did until he was made president and then he told the secret.

Don’t waste your mental powers in wishes. Don’t dissipate your energies by trying to satisfy every whim. Concentrate on doing something really worth while. The man that sticks to something is not the man that fails.

“Power to him who power exerts.”–Emerson.

Success to-day depends largely on concentrating on the Interior law of force, for when you do this you awaken those thought powers or forces, which, when used in business, insures permanent results.

Until you are able to do this you have not reached your limit in the use of your forces. This great universe is interwoven with myriads of forces. You make your own place, and whether it is important depends upon you. Through the Indestructible and Unconquerable Law you can in time accomplish all right things and therefore do not be afraid to undertake whatever you really desire to accomplish and are willing to pay for in effort. Anything that is right is possible. That which is necessary will inevitably take place. If something is right it is your duty to do it, though the whole world thinks it to be wrong. “God and one are always a majority,” or in plain words, that omnipotent interior law which is God, and the organism that represents you is able to conquer the whole world if your cause is absolutely just. Don’t say I wish I was a great man. You can do anything that is proper and you want to do. Just say: You can. You will. You must. Just realize this and the rest is easy. You have the latent faculties and forces to subdue anything that tries to interfere with your plans.

“Let-the-troubles-and-responsibilities-of-life-come-thick-and-fas t. I-am-ready-for-them. My-soul-is-unconquerable. I-represent-the-Infinite-law-of-force,-or-of-all-power. This-God-within-is-my-all-sufficient-strength-and-ever-present-he lp-in-time-of-trouble. The-more-difficulties-the-greater-its-triumphs-through-me. The-harder-my-trials,-the-faster-I-go-in-the-development-of-my-in herent-strength. Let-all-else-fail-me. This-interior-reliance-is-all-sufficient. The-right-must-prevail. I-demand-wisdom-and-power-to-know-and-follow-the-right. My-higher-self-is-all-wise. I-now-draw-nearer-to-it.”

LESSON IV. CONCENTRATION, THE SILENT FORCE THAT PRODUCES RESULTS IN ALL BUSINESS

I want you first to realize how powerful thought is. A thought of fear has turned a person’s hair gray in a night. A prisoner condemned to die was told that if he would consent to an experiment and lived through it he would be freed. He consented. They wanted to see how much blood a person could lose and still live. They arranged that blood would apparently drop from a cut made in his leg. The cut made was very slight, from which practically no blood escaped. The room was darkened, and the prisoner thought the dropping he heard was really coming from his leg. The next morning he was dead through mental fear.

The two above illustrations will give you a little idea of the power of thought. To thoroughly realize the power of thought is worth a great deal to you.

Through concentrated thought power you can make yourself whatever you please. By thought you can greatly increase your efficiency and strength. You are surrounded by all kinds of thoughts, some good, others bad, and you are sure to absorb some of the latter if you do not build up a positive mental attitude.

If you will study the needless moods of anxiety, worry, despondency, discouragement and others that are the result of uncontrolled thoughts, you will realize how important the control of your thoughts are. Your thoughts make you what you are.

When I walk along the street and study the different people’s faces I can tell how they spent their lives. It all shows in their faces, just like a mirror reflects their physical countenances. In looking in those faces I cannot help thinking how most of the people you see have wasted their lives.

The understanding of the power of thought will awaken possibilities within you that you never dreamed of. Never forget that your thoughts are making your environment, your friends, and as your thoughts change these will also. Is this not a practical lesson to learn? Good thoughts are constructive. Evil thoughts are destructive. The desire to do right carries with it a great power. I want you to thoroughly realize the importance of your thoughts, and how to make them valuable, to understand that your thoughts come to you over invisible wires and influence you.

If your thoughts are of a high nature, you become connected with people of the same mental caliber and you are able to help yourself. If your thoughts are tricky, you will bring tricky people to deal with you, who will try to cheat you.

If your thoughts are right kind, you will inspire confidence in those with whom you are dealing.

As you gain the good will of others your confidence and strength will increase. You will soon learn the wonderful value of your thoughts and how serene you can become even when circumstances are the most trying.

Such thoughts of Right and Good Will bring you into harmony with people that amount to something in the world and that are able to give you help if you should need it, as nearly everyone does at times.

You can now see why it is so important to concentrate your thoughts in the proper channels. It is very necessary that people should have confidence in you. When two people meet they have not the time to look each other up. They accept each other according to instinct which can usually be relied on.

You meet a person and his attitude creates a suspicion in you. The chances are you cannot tell why, but something tells you, “Have no dealings with him, for if you do, you will be sorry.” Thoughts produce actions. Therefore be careful of your thoughts. Your life will be molded by the thoughts you have. A spiritual power is always available to your thought, and when you are worthy you can attract all the good things without a great effort on your part.

The sun’s rays shine down on our gardens, but we can plant trees that will interfere with the sun light. There are invisible forces ready to help you if you do not think and act to intercept these. These forces work silently. “You reap what you sow.”

You have concentrated within powers that if developed will bring you happiness greater than you can even imagine. Most people go rushing through life, literally driving away the very things they seek. By concentration you can revolutionize your life, accomplish infinitely more and without a great effort.

Look within yourself and you will find the greatest machine ever made.

How to Speak Wisely. In order to speak wisely you must secure at least a partial concentration of the faculties and forces upon the subject at hand. Speech interferes with the focusing powers of the mind, as it withdraws the attention to the external and therefore is hardly to be compared with that deep silence of the subconscious mind, where deep thoughts, and the silent forces of high potency are evolved. It is necessary to be silent before you can speak wisely. The person that is really alert and well poised and able to speak wisely under trying circumstances, is the person that has practiced in the silence. Most people do not know what the silence is and think it is easy to go into the silence, but this is not so. In the real silence we become attached to that interior law and the forces become silent, because they are in a state of high potency, or beyond the vibratory sounds to which our external ears are attuned. He who desires to become above the ordinary should open up for himself the interior channels which lead to the absolute law of the omnipotent. You can only do this by persistently and intelligently practicing thought concentration. Hold the thought:

In-silence-I-will-allow-my-higher-self-to-have-complete-control. I-will-be-true-to-my-higher-self. I-will-live-true-to-my-conception-of-what-is-right. I-realize-that-it-is-to-my-self-interest-to-live-up-to-my-best. I-demand-wisdom-so that-I-may-act-wisely-for-myself-and-others.

In the next chapter I will tell you of the mysterious law, which links all humanity together, by the powers of co-operative thought, and chooses for us companionship and friends.

LESSON V. HOW CONCENTRATED THOUGHT LINKS ALL HUMANITY TOGETHER

It is within your power to gratify your every wish. Success is the result of the way you think. I will show you how to think to be successful.

The power to rule and attract success is within yourself. The barriers that shut these off from you are subject to your control. You have unlimited power to think and this is the link that connects you with your omniscient source.

Success is the result of certain moods of mind or ways of thinking. These moods can be controlled by you and produced at will.

You have been evolved to what you are from a lowly atom because you possessed the power to think. This power will never leave you, but will keep urging you on until you reach perfection. As you evolve, you create new desires and these can be gratified. The power to rule lies within you. The barriers that keep you from ruling are also within you. These are the barriers of ignorance.

Concentrated thought will accomplish seemingly impossible results and make you realize your fondest ambitions. At the same time that you break down barriers of limitation new ambitions will be awakened. You begin to experience conscious thought constructions.

If you will just realize that through deep concentration you become linked with thoughts of omnipotence, you will kill out entirely your belief in your limitations and at the same time will drive away all fear and other negative and destructive thought forces which constantly work against you. In the place of these you will build up a strong assurance that your every venture will be successful. When you learn thus how to concentrate and reinforce your thought, you control your mental creations; they in turn help to mould your physical environment, and you become the master of circumstances and the ruler of your kingdom.

It is just as easy to surround your life with what you want as it is with what you don’t want. It is a question to be decided by your will. There are no walls to prevent you from getting what you want, providing you want what is right. If you choose something that is not right, you are in opposition to the omnipotent plans of the universe and deserve to fail. But, if you will base your desires on justice and good will, you avail yourself of the helpful powers of universal currents, and instead of having a handicap to work against, can depend upon ultimate success, though the outward appearances may not at first be bright.

Never stop to think of temporary appearances, but maintain an unfaltering belief in your ultimate success. Make your plans carefully, and see that they are not contrary to the tides of universal justice. The main thing for you to remember is to keep at bay the destructive and opposing forces of fear and anger and their satellites.

There is no power so great as the belief which comes from the knowledge that your thought is in harmony with the divine laws of thought and the sincere conviction that your cause is right. You may be able seemingly to accomplish results for a time even if your cause is unjust, but the results will be temporary, and, in time, you will have to tear down your thought edifice and build on the true foundation of Right.

Plans that are not built on truth produce discordant vibrations and are therefore self-destructive. Never try to build until you can build right. It is a waste of time to do anything else. You may temporarily put aside your desire to do right, but its true vibrations will interfere with your unjust plans until you are forced back into righteous paths of power.

All just causes succeed in time, though temporarily they may fail. So if you should face the time when everything seems against you, quiet your fears, drive away all destructive thoughts and uphold the dignity of your moral and spiritual life.

“Where There Is A Will There Is A Way.” The reason this is so is that the Will can make a way if given the chance to secure the assistance of aiding forces. The more it is developed the higher the way to which it will lead.

When everything looks gloomy and discouraging, then is the time to show what you are made of by rejoicing that you can control your moods by making them as calm, serene and bright as if prosperity were yours.

“Be faithful in sowing the thought seeds of success, in perfect trust that the sun will not cease to shine and bring a generous harvest in one season.”It is not always necessary to think of the success of a venture when you are actually engaged in it. For when the body is inactive the mind is most free to catch new ideas that will further the opportunity you are seeking. When you are actually engaged in doing something, you are thinking in the channels you have previously constructed and the work does not have to be done over again.

When you are in a negative mood the intuitions are more active, for you are not then controlling your thoughts by the will. Everything we do. should have the approval of the intuition.

When you are in a negative mood you attract thoughts of similar nature through the law of affinity. That is why it is so important to form thoughts of a success nature to attract similar ones. If you have never made a study of this subject, you may think this is all foolishness, but it is a fact that there are thought currents that unerringly bring thoughts of a similar nature. Many persons who think of failure actually attract failure by their worries, their anxieties, their overactivity. These thoughts are bound to bring failure. When you once learn the laws of thought and think of nothing but Good, Truth, Success, you will make more progress with less effort than you ever made before.

There are forces that can aid the mind that are hardly dreamed of by the average person. When you learn to believe more in the value of thought and its laws you will be led aright and your business gains will multiply.

The following method may assist you in gaining better thought control. If you are unable to control your fears, just say to your faulty determination, “Do not falter or be afraid, for I am not really alone. I am surrounded by invisible forces that will assist me to remove the unfavorable appearances.” Soon you will have more courage. The only difference between the fearless man and the fearful one is in his will, his hope. So if you lack success, believe in it, hope for it, claim it. You can use the same method to brace up your thoughts of desire, aspiration, imagination, expectation, ambition, understanding, trust and assurance.

If you get anxious, angry, discouraged, undecided or worried, it is because you are not receiving the co-operation of the higher powers of your mind. By your Will you can so organize the powers of the mind that your moods change only as you want them to instead of as circumstances affect you.

I was recently asked if I advised concentrating on what you eat, or what you see while walking. My reply was that no matter what you may be doing, when in practice think of nothing else but that act at the time. The idea is to be able to control your unimportant acts, otherwise you set up a habit that it will be hard to overcome, because your faculties have not been in the habit of concentrating. Your faculties cannot be disorganized one minute and organized the next. If you allow the mind to wander while you are doing small things, it will be likely to get into mischief and make it hard to concentrate on the important act when it comes.

The man that is able to concentrate is the happy, busy man. Time does not drag with him. He always has plenty to do. He does not have time to think over past mistakes, which would make him unhappy.

If despite our discouragement and failures, we claim our great heritage, “life and truth and force, like an electric current,” will permeate our lives until we enter into our “birthright in eternity.”

The will does not act with clearness, decision and promptness unless it is trained to do so. There are comparatively few that really know what they are doing every minute of the day. This is because they do not observe with sufficient orderliness and accuracy to know what they are doing. It is not difficult to know what you are doing all the time, if you will just practice concentration and with a reposeful deliberation, and train yourself to think clearly, promptly, and decisively. If you allow yourself to worry or hurry in what you are doing, this will not be clearly photographed upon the sensitized plate of the subjective mind, and you therefore will not be really conscious of your actions. So practice accuracy and concentration of thought, and also absolute truthfulness and you will soon be able to concentrate.

LESSON VI. THE TRAINING OF THE WILL TO DO

The Will To Do is the greatest power in the world that is concerned with human accomplishment and no one can in advance determine its limits.

The things that we do now would have been a few ages ago impossibilities. Today the safe maxim is: “All things are possible.”

The Will To Do is a force that is strictly practical, yet it is difficult to explain just what it is. It can be compared to electricity because we know it only through its cause and effects. It is a power we can direct and to just the extent we direct it do we determine our future. Every time you accomplish any definite act, consciously or unconsciously, you use the principle of the Will. You can Will to do anything whether it is right or wrong, and therefore the way you use your will makes a big difference in your life.

Every person possesses some “Will To Do.” It is the inner energy which controls all conscious acts. What you will to do directs your life forces. All habits, good or bad, are the result of what you will to do. You improve or lower your condition in life by what you will to do. Your will has a connection with all avenues of knowledge, all activities, all accomplishment.

You probably know of cases where people have shown wonderful strength under some excitement, similar to the following: The house of a farmer’s wife caught on fire. No one was around to help her move anything. She was a frail woman, and ordinarily was considered weak. On this occasion she removed things from the house that it later took three men to handle. It was the “Will To Do” that she used to accomplish her task.

Genius Is But A Will To Do Little Things With Infinite Pains. Little Things Well Done Open The Door Of Opportunity For Bigger Things.

The Will accomplishes its greater results through activities that grow out of great concentration in acquiring the power of voluntary attention to such an extent that we can direct it where we will and hold it steadily to its task until our aim is accomplished. When you learn so to use it, your Will Power becomes a mighty force. Almost everything can be accomplished through its proper use. It is greater than physical force because it can be used to control not only physical but mental and moral forces.

There are very few that possess perfectly developed and balanced Will Power, but those who do easily crush out their weak qualities. Study yourself carefully. Find out your greatest weakness and then use your will power to overcome it. In this way eradicate your faults, one by one, until you have built up a strong character and personality.

Rules for Improvement. A desire arises. Now think whether this would be good for you. If it is not, use your Will Power to kill out the desire, but, on the other hand, if it is a righteous desire, summon all your Will Power to your aid, crush all obstacles that confront you and secure possession of the coveted Good.

Slowness in Making Decisions. This is a weakness of Will Power. You know you should do something, but you delay doing it through lack of decision. It is easier not to do a certain thing than to do it, but conscience says to do it. The vast majority of persons are failures because of the lack of deciding to do a thing when it should be done. Those that are successful have been quick to grasp opportunities by making a quick decision. This power of will can be used to bring culture, wealth and health.

Some Special Pointers. For the next week try to make quicker decisions in your little daily affairs. Set the hour you wish to get up and arise exactly at the fixed time. Anything that you should accomplish, do on or ahead of time. You want, of course, to give due deliberation to weighty matters, but by making quick decisions on little things you will acquire the ability to make quick decisions in bigger things. Never procrastinate. Decide quickly one way or the other even at the risk of deciding wrong. Practice this for a week or two and notice your improvement.

The Lack of Initiative. This, too, keeps many men from succeeding. They have fallen into the way of imitating others in all that they do. Very often we hear the expression, “He seems clever enough, but he lacks initiative.” Life for them is one continuous grind. Day after day they go through the same monotonous round of duties, while those that are “getting along” are using their initiative to get greater fullness of life. There is nothing so responsible for poverty as this lack of initiative, this power to think and do for ourselves.You Are as Good as Anyone. You have will power, and if you use it, you will get your share of the luxuries of life. So use it to claim your own. Don’t depend on anyone else to help you. We have to fight our own battles. All the world loves a fighter, while the coward is despised by all.

Every person’s problems are different, so I can only say “analyze your opportunities and conditions and study your natural abilities.” Form plans for improvement and then put them into operation. Now, as I said before, don’t just say, “I am going to do so and so,” but carry your plan into execution. Don’t make an indefinite plan, but a definite one, and then don’t give up until your object has been accomplished. Put these suggestions into practice with true earnestness, and you will soon note astonishing results, and your whole life will be completely changed. An excellent motto for one of pure motives is: Through my will power I dare do what I want to. You will find this affirmation has a very strengthening effect.

The Spirit of Perseverance. The spirit of “sticktoitiveness” is the one that wins. Many go just so far and then give up, whereas, if they had persevered a little longer, they would have won out. Many have much initiative, but instead of concentrating it into one channel, they diffuse it through several, thereby dissipating it to such an extent that its effect is lost.

Develop more determination, which is only the Will To Do, and when you start out to do something stick to it until you get results. Of course, before starting anything you must look ahead and see what the “finish leads to.” You must select a road that will lead to “somewhere,” rather than “nowhere.” The journey must be productive of some kind of substantial results. The trouble with so many young men is that they launch enterprises without any end in sight. It is not so much the start as the finish of a journey that counts. Each little move should bring you nearer the goal which you planned to reach before the enterprise began.

Lack of Perseverance is nothing but the lack of the Will To Do. It takes the same energy to say, “I will continue,” as to say, “I give up.” Just the moment you say the latter you shut off your dynamo, and your determination is gone. Every time you allow your determination to be broken you weaken it. Don’t forget this. Just the instant you notice your determination beginning to weaken, concentrate on it and by sheer Will Power make it continue on the “job.”

Never try to make a decision when you are not in a calm state of mind. If in a “quick temper,” you are likely to say things you afterwards regret. In anger, you follow impulse rather than reason. No one can expect to achieve success if he makes decisions when not in full control of his mental forces.

Therefore make it a fixed rule to make decisions only when at your best. If you have a “quick temper,” you can quickly gain control over it by simple rule of counting backwards. To count backwards requires concentration, and you thus quickly regain a calm state. In this way you can break the “temper habit.”

It will do you a lot of good to think over what you said and thought the last time you were angry. Persevere until you see yourself as others see you. It would do no harm to write the scene out in story form and then sit in judgment of the character that played your part.

Special Instructions to Develop the Will To Do. This is a form of mental energy, but requires the proper mental attitude to make it manifest. We hear of people having wonderful will power, which really is wrong. It should be said that they use their will power while with many it is a latent force. I want you to realize that no one has a monopoly on will power. There is plenty for all. What we speak of as will power is but the gathering together of mental energy, the concentration power at one point. So never think of that person as having a stronger will than yours. Each person will be supplied with just that amount of will power that he demands. You don’t have to develop will power if you constantly make use of all you have, and remember the way in which you use it determines your fate, for your life is moulded to great extent by the use you make of your will. Unless you make proper use of it you have neither independence nor firmness. You are unable to control yourself and become a mere machine for others to use. It is more important to learn to use your will than to develop your intellect. The man that has not learned how to use his will rarely decides things for himself, but allows his resolutions to be changed by others. He fluctuates from one opinion to another, and of course does not accomplish anything out of the ordinary, while his brother with the trained will takes his place among the world’s leaders.

LESSON VII. THE CONCENTRATED MENTAL DEMAND

The Mental Demand is the potent force in achievement. The attitude of the mind affects the expression of the face, determines action, changes our physical condition and regulates our lives.

I will not here attempt to explain the silent force that achieves results. You want to develop your mental powers so you can effect the thing sought, and that is what I want to teach you. There is wonderful power and possibility in the concentrated Mental Demand. This, like all other forces, is controlled by laws. It can, like all other forces, be wonderfully increased by consecutive, systematized effort.

The mental demand must be directed by every power of the mind and every possible element should be used to make the demand materialize. You can so intently desire a thing that you can exclude all distracting thoughts. When you practice this singleness of concentration until you attain the end sought, you have developed a Will capable of accomplishing whatever you wish.

As long as you can only do the ordinary things you will be counted in the mass of mediocrity. But just as quick as you surpass others by even comparatively small measure, you are classed as one of life’s successes. So, if you wish to emerge into prominence, you must accomplish something more than the ordinary man or woman. It is easy to do this if you will but concentrate on what you desire, and put forth your best effort. It is not the runner with the longest legs or the strongest muscles that wins the race, but the one that can put forth the greatest desire force. You can best understand this by thinking of an engine. The engine starts up slowly, the engineer gradually extending the throttle to the top notch. It is then keyed up to its maximum speed. The same is true of two runners. They start off together and gradually they increase their desire to go faster. The one that has the greatest intensity of desire will win. He may outdistance the other by only a fraction of an inch, yet he gets the laurels.

The men that are looked upon as the world’s successes have not always been men of great physical power, nor at the start did they seem very well adapted to the conditions which encompassed them. In the beginning they were not considered men of superior genius, but they won their success by their resolution to achieve results in their undertakings by permitting no set-back to dishearten them; no difficulties to daunt them. Nothing could turn them or influence them against their determination. They never lost sight of their goal. In all of us there is this silent force of wonderful power. If developed, it can overcome conditions that would seem insurmountable. It is constantly urging us on to greater achievement. The more we become acquainted with it the better strategists we become, the more courage we develop and the greater the desire within us for self-expression in activity along many lines.

No one will ever be a failure if he becomes conscious of this silent force within that controls his destiny. But without the consciousness of this inner force, you will not have a clear vision, and external conditions will not yield to the power of your mind. It is the mental resolve that makes achievement possible. Once this has been formed it should never be allowed to cease to press its claim until its object is attained. To make plans work out it will, at times, be necessary to use every power of your mind. Patience, perseverance and all the indomitable forces within one will have to be mustered and used with the greatest effectiveness.

Perseverance is the first element of success. In order to persevere you must be ceaseless in your application. It requires you to concentrate your thoughts upon your undertaking and bring every energy to bear upon keeping them focused upon it until you have accomplished your aim. To quit short of this is to weaken all future efforts.The Mental Demand seems an unreal power because it is intangible; but it is the mightiest power in the world. It is a power that is free for you to use. No one can use it for you. The Mental Demand is not a visionary one. It is a potent force, which you can use freely without cost. When you are in doubt it will counsel you. It will guide you when you are uncertain. When you are in fear it will give you courage. It is the motive power which supplies the energies necessary to the achievement of the purpose. You have a large store house of possibilities. The Mental Demand makes possibilities realities. It supplies everything necessary for the accomplishment, it selects the tools and instructs how to use them. It makes you understand the situation. Every time you make a Mental Demand you strengthen the brain centers by drawing to you external forces.

Few realize the power of a Mental Demand. It is possible to make your demand so strong that you can impart what you have to say to another without speaking to him. Have you ever, after planning to discuss a certain matter with a friend, had the experience of having him broach the subject before you had a chance to speak of it? Have you ever, in a letter, made a suggestion to a friend that he carried out before your letter reached him? Have you ever wanted to speak to a person who, just then walked in or telephoned. I have had many such responses to thought and you and your friends have doubtless experienced them, too.

These two things are neither coincidences nor accidents, but are the results of mental demand launched by strong concentration.

The person that never wants anything gets little. To demand resolutely is the first step toward getting what you want.

The power of the Mental Demand seems absolute, the supply illimitable. The mental demand projects itself and causes to materialize the conditions and opportunities needed to accomplish the purpose. Do not think I over estimate the value of the Mental Demand. It brings the fuller life if used for only righteous purposes. Once the Mental Demand is made, however, never let it falter. If you do the current that connects you with your desire is broken. Take all the necessary time to build a firm foundation, so that there need not be even an element of doubt to creep in. Just the moment you entertain “doubt” you lose some of the demand force, and force once lost is hard to regain. So whenever you make a mental demand hold steadfastly to it until your need is supplied.

I want to repeat again that Power of Mental Demand is not a visionary one. It is concentrated power only, and can be used by you. It is not supernatural power, but requires a development of the brain centers. The outcome is sure when it is given with a strong resolute determination.

No person will advance to any great extent, until he recognizes this force within him. If you have not become aware of it, you have not made very much of a success of your life. It is this “something” that distinguishes that “man” from other men. It is this subtle power that develops strong personality.

If you want a great deal you must demand a great deal. Once you make your demand, anticipate its fulfillment. It depends upon us. We are rewarded according to our efforts. The Power of Mental Demand can bring us what we want. We become what we determine to be. We control our own destiny.

Get the right mental attitude, then in accordance with your ability you can gain success.

And every man of AVERAGE ability, the ordinary man that you see about you, can be really successful, independent, free of worry, HIS OWN MASTER, if he can manage to do just two things.

First, remain forever dissatisfied with what he IS doing and with what he HAS accomplished.

Second, develop in his mind a belief that the word impossible was not intended or him. Build up in his mind the confidence that enables the mind to use its power.

Many, especially the older men, will ask:

“How can I build up that self-confidence in my brain? How can I, after months and years of discouragement, of dull plodding, suddenly conceive and carry out a plan for doing something that will make life worth while and change the monotonous routine?

“How can a man get out of a rut after he has been in it for years and has settled down to the slow jog-trot that leads to the grave?”

The answer is the thing can be done, and millions have done it.

One of the names most honored among the great men of France is that of Littre, who wrote and compiled the great French dictionary–a monument of learning. He is the man whose place among the forty immortals of France was taken by the great Pasteur, when the latter was elected to the Academy.

Littre BEGAN the work that makes him famous when he was more than sixty years old.

LESSON VIII. CONCENTRATION GIVES MENTAL POISE

You will find that the man that concentrates is well poised, whereas the man that allows his mind to wander is easily upset. When in this state wisdom does not pass from the subconscious storehouse into the consciousness. There must be mental quiet before the two consciousnesses can work in harmony. When you are able to concentrate you have peace of mind.

If you are in the habit of losing your poise, form the habit of reading literature that has a quieting power. Just the second you feel your poise slipping, say, “Peace,” and then hold this thought in mind and you will never lose your self-control.

There cannot be perfect concentration until there is peace of mind. So keep thinking peace, acting peace, until you are at peace with all the world. For when once you have reached this state there will be no trouble to concentrate on anything you wish.

When you have peace of mind you are not timid or anxious, or fearful, or rigid and you will not allow any disturbing thought to influence you. You cast aside all fears, and think of yourself as a spark of the Divine Being, as a manifestation of the “One Universal Principle” that fills all space and time. Think of yourself thus as a child of the infinite, possessing infinite possibilities.

Write on a piece of paper, “I have the power to do and to be whatever I wish to do and be.” Keep this mentally before you, and you will find the thought will be of great help to you.

The Mistake of Concentrating on Your Business While Away. In order to be successful today, you must concentrate, but don’t become a slave to concentration, and carry your business cares home. Just as sure as you do you will be burning the life forces at both ends and the fire will go out much sooner than was intended.

Many men become so absorbed in their business that when they go to church they do not hear the preacher because their minds are on their business. If they go to the theater they do not enjoy it because their business is on their minds. When they go to bed they think about business instead of sleep and wonder why they don’t sleep. This is the wrong kind of concentration and is dangerous. It is involuntary. When you are unable to get anything out of your mind it becomes unwholesome as any thought held continuously causes weariness of the flesh. It is a big mistake to let a thought rule you, instead of ruling it. He who does not rule himself is not a success. If you cannot control your concentration, your health will suffer.

So never become so absorbed with anything that you cannot lay it aside and take up another. This is self-control.

Concentration Is Paying Attention to a Chosen Thought. Everything that passes before the eye makes an impression on the subconscious mind, but unless you pay attention to some certain thing you will not remember what you saw. For instance if you walked down a busy street without seeing anything that attracted your particular attention, you could not recall anything you saw. So you see only what attracts your attention. If you work you only see and remember what you think about. When you concentrate on something it absorbs your whole thought.

Self-Study Valuable. Everyone has some habits that can be overcome by concentration. We will say for instance, you are in the habit of complaining, or finding fault with yourself or others; or, imagining that you do not possess the ability of others; or feeling that you are not as good as someone else; or that you cannot rely on yourself; or harboring any similar thoughts or thoughts of weakness. These should be cast aside and instead thoughts of strength should be put in their place. Just remember every time you think of yourself as being weak, in some way you are making yourself so by thinking you are. Our mental conditions make us what we are. Just watch yourself and see how much time you waste in worrying, fretting and complaining. The more of it you do the worse off you are.

Just the minute you are aware of thinking a negative thought immediately change to a positive one. If you start to think of failure, change to thinking of success. You have the germ of success within you. Care for it the same as the setting hen broods over the eggs and you can make it a reality.

You can make those that you come in contact with feel as you do, because you radiate vibrations of the way you feel and your vibrations are felt by others. When you concentrate on a certain thing you turn all the rays of your vibrations on this. Thought is the directing power of all Life’s vibrations. If a person should enter a room with a lot of people and feel as if he were a person of no consequence no one would know he was there unless they saw him, and even if they did, they would not remember seeing him, because they were not attracted towards him. But let him enter the room feeling that he was magnetic and concentrating on this thought, others would feel his vibration. So remember the way you feel you can make others feel. This is the law. Make yourself a concentrated dynamo from which your thoughts vibrate to others. Then you are a power in the world. Cultivate the art of feeling, for as I said before you can only make others feel what you feel.If you will study all of the great characters of history you will find that they were enthusiastic. First they were enthusiastic themselves, and then they could arouse others’ enthusiasm. It is latent in everyone. It is a wonderful force when once aroused. All public men to be a success have to possess it. Cultivate it by concentration. Set aside some hour of the day, wherein to hold rapt converse with the soul. Meditate with sincere desire and contrite heart and you will be able to accomplish that which you have meditated on. This is the keynote of success.

“Think, speak and act just as you wish to be, And you will be that which you wish to be.”

You are just what you think you are and not what you may appear to be. You may fool others but not yourself. You may control your life and actions just as you can control your hands. If you want to raise your hand you must first think of raising it. If you want to control your life you must first control your thinking. Easy to do, is it not? Yes it is, if you will but concentrate on what you think about.

For he only can That says he will.

How can we secure concentration? To this question, the first and last answer must be: By interest and strong motive. The stronger the motive the greater the concentration.–Eustace Miller, M. D.

The Successful Lives Are the Concentrated Lives. The utterly helpless multitude that sooner or later have to be cared for by charity, are those that were never able to concentrate, and who have become the victims of negative ideas.

Train yourself so you will be able to centralize your thought and develop your brain power, and increase your mental energy, or you can be a slacker, a drifter, a quitter or a sleeper. It all depends on how you concentrate, or centralize your thoughts. Your thinking then becomes a fixed power and you do not waste time thinking about something that would not be good for you. You pick out the thoughts that will be the means of bringing you what you desire, and they become a material reality. Whatever we create in the thought world will some day materialize. That is the law. Don’t forget this.

In the old days men drifted without concentration but this is a day of efficiency and therefore all of our efforts must be concentrated, if we are to win any success worth the name.

Why People Often Do Not Get What They Concentrate On. Because they sit down in hopeless despair and expect it to come to them. But if they will just reach out for it with their biggest effort they will find it is within their reach. No one limits us but ourselves. We are what we are today as the result of internal conditions. We can control the external conditions. They are subject to our will.

Through our concentration we can attract what we want, because we became enrapport with the Universal forces, from which we can get what we want.

You have watched races no doubt. They all line up together. Each has his mind set on getting to the goal before the others. This is one kind of concentration. A man starts to think on a certain subject. He has all kinds of thoughts come to him, but by concentration he shuts out all these but the one he has chosen. Concentration is just a case of willing to do a certain thing and doing it.

If you want to accomplish anything first put yourself in a concentrating, reposeful, receptive, acquiring frame of mind. In tackling unfamiliar work make haste slowly and deliberately and then you will secure that interior activity, which is never possible when you are in a hurry or under a strain. When you “think hard” or try to hurry results too quickly, you generally shut off the interior flow of thoughts and ideas. You have often no doubt tried hard to think of something but could not, but just as soon as you stopped trying to think of it, it came to you.

LESSON IX. CONCENTRATION CAN OVERCOME BAD HABITS

Habits make or break us to a far greater extent than we like to admit. Habit is both a powerful enemy and wonderful ally of concentration. You must learn to overcome habits which are injurious to concentration, and to cultivate those which increase it.

The large majority of people are controlled by their habits and are buffeted around by them like waves of the ocean tossing a piece of wood. They do things in a certain way because of the power of habit. They seldom ever think of concentrating on why they do them this or that way, or study to see if they could do them in a better way. Now my object in this chapter is to get you to concentrate on your habits so you can find out which are good and which are bad for you. You will find that by making a few needed changes you can make even those that are not good for you, of service; the good habits you can make much better.

The first thing I want you to realize is that all habits are governed consciously or unconsciously by the will. Most of us are forming new habits all the time. Very often, if you repeat something several times in the same way, you will have formed the habit of doing it that way. But the oftener you repeat it the stronger that habit grows and the more deeply it becomes embedded in your nature. After a habit has been in force for a long time, it becomes almost a part of you, and is therefore hard to overcome. But you can still break any habit by strong concentration on its opposite.

“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits–practical, emotional, and intellectual–systematically organized, for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny whatever the latter may be.”

We are creatures of habits, “imitators and copiers of our past selves.” We are liable to be “bent” or “curved” as we can bend a piece of paper, and each fold leaves a crease, which makes it easier to make the fold there the next time. “The intellect and will are spiritual functions; still they are immersed in matter, and to every movement of theirs, corresponds a movement in the brain, that is, in their material correlative.” This is why habits of thought and habits of willing can be formed. All physical impressions are the carrying out of the actions of the will and intellect. Our nervous systems are what they are today, because of the way they have been exercised.

As we grow older most of us become more and more like automatic machines. The habits we have formed increase in strength. We work in our old characteristic way. Your associates learn to expect you to do things in a certain way. So you see that your habits make a great difference in your life, and as it is just about as easy to form good habits as it is bad, you should form only the former. No one but yourself is responsible for your habits. You are free to form the habits that you should and if everyone could realize the importance of forming the right kind of habits what a different world this would be. How much happier everyone would be. Then all instead of the few might win success.

Habits are formed more quickly when we are young, but if we have already passed the youthful plastic period the time to start to control our habits is right now, as we will never be any younger.

You will find the following maxims worth remembering.

First Maxim:

“We must make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”

Second Maxim:

“In the acquisition of a new habit as in the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.”

The man that is in the habit of doing the right thing from boyhood, has only good motives, so it is very important for you that you concentrate assiduously on the habits that reinforce good motives. Surround yourself with every aid you can. Don’t play with fire by forming bad habits. Make a new beginning today. Study why you have been doing certain things. If they are not for your good, shun them henceforth. Don’t give in to a single temptation for every time you do, you strengthen the chain of bad habits. Every time you keep a resolution you break the chain that enslaves you.

Third Maxim:

“Never allow an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.” Here is the idea, you never want to give in, until the new habit is fixed else you undo all that has been accomplished by previous efforts. There are two opposing inclinations. One wants to be firm, and the other wants to give in. By your will you can become firm, through repetition. Fortify your will to be able to cope with any and all opposition.

Fourth Maxim:

“Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.”

To make a resolve and not to keep it is of little value. So by all means keep every resolution you make, for you not only profit by the resolution, but it furnishes you with an exercise that causes the brain cells and physiological correlatives to form the habit of adjusting themselves to carry out resolutions. “A tendency to act, becomes effectively engrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain `grows’ to their use. When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost.”

If you keep your resolutions you form a most valuable habit. If you break them you form a most dangerous one. So concentrate on keeping them, whether important or unimportant, and remember it is just as important for this purpose to keep the unimportant, for by so doing you are forming the habit.Fifth Maxim:

“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.”

The more we exercise the will, the better we can control our habits. “Every few days do something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved or untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return, but if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily insured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volation, and self-denial in unnecessary things. “He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.”

The young should be made to concentrate on their habits and be made to realize that if they don’t they become walking bundles of injurious habits. Youth is the plastic state, and should be utilized in laying the foundation for a glorious future.

The great value of habit for good and evil cannot be overestimated. “Habit is the deepest law of human nature.” No man is stronger than his habits, because his habits either build up his strength or decrease it.

Why We Are Creatures of Habits. Habits have often been called a labor-saving invention, because when they are formed they require less of both mental and material strength. The more deeply the habit becomes ingrained the more automatic it becomes. Therefore habit is an economizing tendency of our nature, for if it were not for habit we should have to be more watchful. We walk across a crowded street; the habit of stopping and looking prevents us from being hurt. The right kind of habits keeps us from making mistakes and mishaps. It is a well known fact that a chauffeur is not able to master his machine safely until he has trained his body in a habitual way. When an emergency comes he instantly knows what to do. Where safety depends on quickness the operator must work automatically. Habits mean less risk, less fatigue, and greater accuracy.

“You do not want to become a slave to habits of a trivial nature. For instance, Wagner required a certain costume before he could compose corresponding parts of his operas. Schiller could never write with ease unless there were rotten apples in the drawer of his desk from which he could now and then obtain an odor which seemed to him sweet. Gladstone had different desks for his different activities, so that when he worked on Homer he never sat among habitual accompaniments of his legislative labors.”

In order to overcome undesirable habits, two things are necessary. You must have trained your will to do what you want it to do, and the stronger the will the easier it will be to break a habit. Then you must make a resolution to do just the opposite of what the habit is. Therefore one habit must replace another. If you have a strong will, you can tenaciously and persistently concentrate on removing the bad habit and in a very short time the good habit will gain the upper hand. I will bring this chapter to a close by giving Doctor Oppenheim’s instructions for overcoming a habit:

“If you want to abolish a habit, and its accumulated circumstances as well, you must grapple with the matter as earnestly as you would with a physical enemy. You must go into the encounter with all tenacity of determination, with all fierceness of resolve–yea, even with a passion for success that may be called vindictive. No human enemy can be as insidious, so persevering, as unrelenting as an unfavorable habit. It never sleeps, it needs no rest.

“It is like a parasite that grows with the growth of the supporting body, and, like a parasite, it can best be killed by violent separation and crushing.

When life is stormy and all seems against us, that is when we often acquire wrong habits, and it is then, that we have to make a gigantic effort to think and speak as we should; and even though we may feel the very reverse at that moment the tiniest effort will be backed up by a tremendous Power and will lift us to a realization never felt before. It is not in the easy, contented moments of our life that we make our greatest progress, for then it requires, no special effort to keep in tune. But it is when we are in the midst of trials and misfortunes, when we think we are sinking, being overwhelmed, then it is important for us to realize that we are linked to a great Power and if we live as we should, there is nothing that can occur in life, which could permanently injure us, nothing can happen that should disturb us. So always remember you have within you unlimited power, ready to manifest itself in the form which fills our need at the moment. If, when we have something difficult to solve, we would be silent like the child, we can get the inspiration when it comes; we will know how to act, we will find there is no need to hurry or disturb ourselves, that it is always wiser to wait for guidance from within, than to act on impulse from Without.

LESSON X. BUSINESS RESULTS THROUGH CONCENTRATION

A successful business is not usually the result of chance. Neither is a failure the result of luck. Most failures could be determined in advance if the founders had been studied. It is not always possible to start a money-making business at the start. Usually a number of changes have to be made. Plans do not work out as their creators thought they would. They may have to be changed a little, broadened it may be, here and there, and as you broaden your business you broaden your power to achieve. You gain an intense and sustained desire to make your business a success.

When you start a business you may have but a vague notion of the way you will conduct it. You must fill in the details as you go along. You must concentrate on these details. As you straighten out one after another, others will require attention. In this way you cover the field of “the first endeavor” and new opportunities open up for you.

When you realize one desire, another comes. But if you do not fulfill the first desire, you will not the second. The person that does not carry his desires into action is only a dreamer. Desire is a great creative force, if it is pure, intense and sustained. It is our desires that keep stirring us up to action and they will strengthen and broaden you if you make them materialize.

Every man who achieves success deserves it. When he first started out he did not understand how to solve the problems that afterwards presented themselves, but he did each thing as it came up in the very best way that he could, and this developed his power of doing bigger things. We become masters of business by learning to do well whatever we attempt. The man that has a thorough knowledge of his business can of course direct it much more easily and skillfully than the man who lacks that knowledge. The skilled business director can sit in his private office and still know accurately what is actually being done. He knows what should be done in any given time and if it is not accomplished he knows that his employees are not turning out the work that they should. It is then easy to apply the remedy.

Business success depends on well-concentrated efforts. You must use every mental force you can master. The more these are used the more they increase. Therefore the more you accomplish today the more force you will have at your disposal with which to solve your problems tomorrow.

If you are working for someone else today and wish to start in a business for yourself, think over carefully what you would like to do. Then when you have resolved what you want to do, you will be drawn towards it. There is a law that opens the way to the fulfillment of your desires. Of course back of your desire you must put forward the necessary effort to carry out your purpose; you must use your power to put your desires into force. Once they are created and you keep up your determination to have them fulfilled you both consciously and unconsciously work toward their materialization. Set your heart on your purpose, concentrate your thought upon it, direct your efforts with all your intelligence and in due time you will realize your ambition.

Feel yourself a success, believe you are a success and thus put yourself in the attitude that demands recognition and the thought current draws to you what you need to make you a success. Don’t be afraid of big undertakings. Go at them with grit, and pursue methods that you think will accomplish your purpose. You may not at first meet with entire success, but aim so high that if you fall a little short you will still have accomplished much.

What others have done you can do. You may even do what others have been unable to do. Always keep a strong desire to succeed in your mind. Be in love with your aim and work, and make them, as far as possible, square with the rule of the greatest good to the greatest number and your life cannot be a failure.

The successful business attitude must be cultivated to make the most out of your life, the attitude of expecting great things from both yourself and others. It alone will often cause men to make good; to measure up to the best that is in them.

It is not the spasmodic spurts that count on a long journey, but the steady efforts. Spurts fatigue and make it hard for you to continue.

Rely on your own opinion. It should be as good as anyone’s else. When once you reach a conclusion abide by it. Let there be no doubt, or wavering in your judgment. If you are uncertain about every decision you make, you will be subject to harassing doubts and fears which will render your judgment of little value. The man that decides according to what he thinks right and who learns from every mistake acquires a well balanced mind that gets the best results. He gains the confidence of others. He is known as the man that knows what he wants, and not as one that is as changeable as the weather. The man of today wants to do business with the man that he can depend upon. Uncertainties in the business world are meeting with more disfavor. Reliable firms want to do business with men of known qualities, with men of firmness, judgment and reliability.

So if you wish to start in business for yourself your greatest asset, with the single exception of a sound physique, is that of a good reputation.

A successful business is not hard to build if we can concentrate all our mental forces upon it. It is the man that is unsettled because he does not know what he wants that goes to the wall. We hear persons say that business is trying on the nerves, but it is the unsettling elements of fret and worry and suspense that are nerve-exhausting and not the business. Executing one’s plans may cause fatigue, enjoyment comes with rest. If there has not been any unnatural strain, the recuperative powers replace what energy has been lost.By attending to each day’s work properly you develop the capacity to do a greater work tomorrow. It is this gradual development that makes possible the carrying out of big plans. The man that figures out doing something each hour of the day gets somewhere. At the end of each day you should be a step nearer your aim. Keep the idea in mind, that you mean to go forward, that each day must mark an advance and forward you will go. You do not even have to know the exact direction so long as you are determined to find the way. But you must not turn back once you have started.

Even brilliant men’s conceptions of the possibilities of their mental forces are so limited and below their real worth that they are far more likely to belittle their possibilities than they are to exaggerate them. You don’t want to think that an aim is impossible because it has never been realized in the past. Every day someone is doing something that was never done before. We are pushing ahead faster. Formerly it took decades to build up a big business, but today it is only but a matter of years, sometimes of months.

Plan each day’s activities carefully and you can reach any height you aim at. If each thing you do is done with concise and concentrated thought you will be able to turn out an excellent quality and a large quantity of work. Plan to do so much work during the day and you will be astonished to see how much more you will do, than on other days, when you had not decided on any certain amount. I have demonstrated that the average business working force could do the same amount of work in six hours that they now do in eight, without using up any more energy. Never start to accomplish anything in an indecisive, indefinite, uncertain way. Tackle everything with a positiveness and an earnestness that will concentrate your mind and attract the very best associated thoughts. You will in a short time find that you will have extra time for planning bigger things.

The natural leader always draws to himself, by the law of mental attraction, ideas in his chosen subject that have ever been conceived by others. This is of the greatest importance and help. If you are properly trained you benefit much by others’ thoughts, and, providing you generate from within yourself something of value, they will benefit from yours. “We are heirs of all the ages,” but we must know how to use our inheritance.

The confident, pushing, hopeful, determined man influences all with whom he associates, and inspires the same qualities in them. You feel that his is a safe example to follow and he rouses the same force within you that is pushing him onward and upward.

One seldom makes a success of anything that he goes at in a listless, spiritless way. To build up a business you must see it expanding in your mind before it actually takes tangible shape. Every great task that has ever been accomplished has first been merely a vision in the mind of its creator. Detail after detail has had to be worked out in his mind from his first faint idea of the enterprise. Finally a clear idea was formed and then the accomplishment, which was only the material result of the mental concept, followed.

The up-to-date business man is not content to build only for the present, but is planning ahead. If he does not he will fall behind his competitor, who is. What we are actually doing today was carefully thought out and planned by others in the past. All progressive businesses are conducted this way. That is why the young business man of today is likely to accomplish more in a few years than his father did in all his life. There is no reason why your work or business should fag you out. When it does there is something wrong. You are attracting forces and influence that you should not, because you are not in harmony with what you are doing. There is nothing so tiring as to try to do the work for which we are unfitted, both by temperament and training.

Each one should be engaged in a business that he loves; he should be furthering movements with which he is in sympathy. He will then only do his best work and take intense pleasure in his business. In this way, while constantly growing and developing his powers, he is at the same time rendering through his work, genuine and devoted service to humanity.

Business success is not the result of chance, but of scientific ideas and plans carried out by an aggressive and progressive management. Use your mental forces so that they will grow and develop. Remember that everything you do is the result of mental action, therefore you can completely control your every action. Nothing is impossible for you. Don’t be afraid to tackle a difficult proposition. Your success will depend upon the use you make of your mind. This is capable of wonderful development. See that you make full use of it, and not only develop yourself but your associates. Try to broaden the visions of those with whom you come in contact and you will broaden your own outlook of life.

Are You Afraid of Responsibilities? In order for the individual soul to develop, you must have responsibilities. You must manifest the omnipotence of the law of supply. The whole world is your legitimate sphere of activity. How much of a conqueror are you? What have you done? Are you afraid of responsibility, or are you ever dodging, flinching, or side stepping it. If you are, you are not a Real Man. Your higher self never winces, so be a man and allow the powers of the higher self to manifest and you will find you have plenty of strength and you will feel better when you are tackling difficult propositions.

LESSON XI. CONCENTRATE ON COURAGE

Courage is the backbone of man. The man with courage has persistence. He states what he believes and puts it into execution. The courageous man has confidence. He draws to himself all the moral qualities and mental forces which go to make up a strong man. Whereas, the man without courage draws to himself all the qualities of a weak man, vacillation, doubt, hesitancy, and unsteadiness of purpose. You can therefore see the value of concentration on courage. It is a most vital element of success.

The lack of courage creates financial, as well as mental and moral difficulties. When a new problem comes, instead of looking upon it as something to be achieved, the man or woman without courage looks for reasons why it cannot be done and failure is naturally the almost inevitable result. This is a subject well worthy of your study. Look upon everything within your power as a possibility instead of as merely a probability and you will accomplish a great deal more, because by considering a thing as impossible, you immediately draw to yourself all the elements that contribute to failure. Lack of courage destroys your confidence in yourself. It destroys that forceful, resolute attitude so important to success.

The man without courage unconsciously draws to himself all that is contemptible, weakening, demoralizing and destructive. He then blames his luck when he does not secure the things he weakly desires. We must first have the courage to strongly desire something. A desire to be fulfilled must be backed by the strength of all our mental forces. Such a desire has enough commanding force to change all unfavorable conditions. The man with courage commands, whether he is on the battlefield or in business life.

What is courage? It is the Will To Do. It takes no more energy to be courageous than to be cowardly. It is a matter of the right training in the right way. Courage concentrates the mental forces on the task at hand. It then directs them thoughtfully, steadily, deliberately, while attracting all the forces of success, toward the desired end. Cowardice on the other hand, dissipates both our mental and moral forces, thereby inviting failure.

As we are creatures of habits, we should avoid persons that lack courage. They are easy to discover because of their habits of fear in attacking new problems. The man with courage is never afraid.

Start out today with the idea that there is no reason why you should not be courageous. If any fear-thoughts come to you cast them off as you would the deadly viper. Form the habit of never thinking of anything unfavorable to yourself or anyone else. In dealing with difficulties, new or old, hold ever the thought, “I am courageous.” Whenever a doubt crosses the threshold of your mind, banish it. Remember, you as master of your mind control its every thought, and here is a good one to often affirm, “I have courage because I desire it; because I need it; because I use it and because I refuse to become such a weakling as cowardice produces.”

There is no justification for the loss of courage. The evils by which you will almost certainly be overwhelmed without it are far greater than those which courage will help you to meet and overcome. Right, then, must be the moralist who says that the only thing to fear is fear.

Never let another’s opinion affect you; he cannot tell what you are able to do; he does not know what you can do with your forces. The truth is you do not know yourself until you put yourself to the test. Therefore, how can someone else know? Never let anyone else put a valuation on you.

Almost all wonderful achievements have been accomplished after it had been “thoroughly” demonstrated that they were impossibilities. Once we understand the law, all things are possible. If they were impossibilities we could not conceive them.Just the moment you allow someone to influence you against what you think is right, you lose that confidence in yourself that inspires courage and carries with it all the forces which courage creates. Just the moment you begin to swerve in your plan you begin to carry out another’s thought and not your own. You become the directed and not the director. You forsake the courage and resolution of your own mind, and you therefore lack the very forces that you need to sustain and carry out your work. Instead of being self-reliant you become timid and this invites failure. When you permit yourself to be influenced from your plan by another, you are unable to judge as you should, because you have allowed another’s influence to deprive you of your courage and determination without absorbing any of his in return so you are in much the same predicament, as you would be in if you turned over all your worldly possessions to another without getting “value received.”

Concentrate on just the opposite of fear, want, poverty, sickness, etc. Never doubt your own ability. You have plenty, if you will just use it. A great many men are failures because they doubt their own capacity. Instead of building up strong mental forces which would be of the greatest use to them their fear thoughts tear them down. Fear paralyzes energy. It keeps us from attracting the forces that go to make up success. Fear is the worst enemy we have.

There are few people that really know that they can accomplish much. They desire the full extent of their powers, but alas, it is only occasionally that you find a man that is aware of the great possibilities within him. When you believe with all your mind and heart and soul that you can do something, you thereby develop the courage to steadily and confidently live up to that belief. You have now gone a long way towards accomplishing it. The chances are that there will be obstacles, big and little, in your way, but resolute courage will overcome them and nothing else will. Strong courage eliminates the injurious and opposing forces by summoning their masters, the yet stronger forces that will serve you.

Courage is yours for the asking. All you have to do is to believe in it, claim it and use it. To succeed in business believe that it will be successful, assert that it is successful, and work like a beaver to make it so. Difficulties soon melt away before the courageous. One man of courage can fire with his spirit a whole army of men, whether it be military or industrial, because courage, like cowardice, is contagious.

The man of courage overcomes the trials and temptations of life; he commands success; he renders sound judgment; he develops personal influence and a forceful character and often becomes the mentor of the community which he serves.

How to Overcome Depression and Melancholia. Both of the former are harmful and make you unhappy. These are states that can be quickly overcome through concentrating more closely on the higher self, for when you do you cut off the connection with the harmful force currents. You can also drive away moods by simply choosing and fully concentrating on an agreeable subject. Through will power and thought control we can accomplish anything we want to do. There is wonderful inherent power within us all, and there is never any sufficient cause for fear, except ignorance.

Every evil is but the product of ignorance, and everyone that possesses the power to think has the power to overcome ignorance and evil. The pain that we suffer from doing evil are but the lessons of experience, and the object of the pain is to make us realize our ignorance. When we become depressed It is evidence that our thought faculties are combining improperly and thereby attracting the wrong force-currents.

All that it is necessary to do is to exercise the will and concentrate upon happy subjects. I will only think of subjects worthy of my higher self and its powers.

LESSON XII. CONCENTRATE ON WEALTH

It was never intended that man should be poor. When wealth is obtained under the proper conditions it broadens the life. Everything has its value. Everything has a good use and a bad use. The forces of mind like wealth can be directed either for good or evil. A little rest will re-create forces. Too much rest degenerates into laziness, and brainless, dreamy longings.

If you acquire wealth unjustly from others, you are misusing your forces; but if your wealth comes through the right sources you will be blessed. Through wealth we can do things to uplift ourselves and humanity.

Wealth is many persons’ goal. It therefore stimulates their endeavor. They long for it in order to dress and live in such a way as to attract friends. Without friends they would not be so particular of their surroundings. The fact is the more attractive we make ourselves and our surroundings the more inspiring are their influences. It is not conducive to proper thought to be surrounded by conditions that are uncongenial and unpleasant.

So the first step toward acquiring wealth is to surround yourself with helpful influences; to claim for yourself an environment of culture, place yourself in it and be molded by its influences.

Most great men of all ages have been comparatively rich. They have made or inherited money. Without money they could not have accomplished what they did. The man engaged in physical drudgery is not likely to have the same high ideals as the man that can command comparative leisure.

Wealth is usually the fruit of achievement. It is not, however, altogether the result of being industrious. Thousands of persons work hard who never grow wealthy. Others with much less effort acquire wealth. Seeing possibilities is another step toward acquiring wealth. A man may be as industrious as he can possibly be, but if he does not use his mental forces he will be a laborer, to be directed by the man that uses to good advantage his mental forces.

No one can become wealthy in an ordinary lifetime, by mere savings from earnings. Many scrimp and economize all their lives; but by so doing waste all their vitality and energy. For example, I know a man that used to walk to work. It took him an hour to go and an hour to return. He could have taken a car and gone in twenty minutes. He saved ten cents a day but wasted an hour and a half. It was not a very profitable investment unless the time spent in physical exercise yielded him large returns in the way of health.

The same amount of time spent in concentrated effort to overcome his unfavorable business environment might have firmly planted his feet in the path of prosperity.

One of the big mistakes made by many persons of the present generation is that they associate with those who fail to call out or develop the best that is in them. When the social side of life is developed too exclusively, as it often is, and recreation or entertainment becomes the leading motive of a person’s life, he acquires habits of extravagance instead of economy; habits of wasting his resources, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, instead of conserving them. He is, in consequence, lacking in proper motivation, his God-given powers and forces are undeveloped and he inevitably brings poor judgment to bear upon all the higher relationships of life, while, as to his financial fortunes, he is ever the leaner; often a parasite, and always, if opportunity affords, as heavy a consumer as he is a poor producer.

It seems a part of the tragedy of life that these persons have to be taught such painful lessons before they can understand the forces and laws that regulate life. Few profit by the mistakes of others. They must experience them for themselves and then apply the knowledge so gained in reconstructing their lives.

Any man that has ever amounted to anything has never done a great deal of detail work for long periods at any given time. He needs his time to reflect. He does not do his duties today in the same way as yesterday, but as the result of deliberate and concentrated effort, constantly tries to improve his methods.The other day I attended a lecture on Prosperity. I knew the lecturer had been practically broke for ten years. I wanted to hear what he had to say. He spoke very well. He no doubt benefited some of his hearers, but he had not profited by his own teachings. I introduced myself and asked him if he believed in his maxims. He said he did. I asked him if they had made him prosperous. He said not exactly. I asked him why. He answered that he thought he was fated not to experience prosperity.

In half an hour I showed that man why poverty had always been his companion. He had dressed poorly. He held his lectures in poor surroundings. By his actions and beliefs he attracted poverty. He did not realize that his thoughts and his surroundings exercised an unfavorable influence. I said: “Thoughts are moving forces; great powers. Thoughts of wealth attract wealth. Therefore, if you desire wealth you must attract the forces that will help you to secure it. Your thoughts attract a similar kind of thoughts. If you hold thoughts of poverty you attract poverty. If you make up your mind you are going to be wealthy, you will instil this thought into all your mental forces, and you will at the same time use every external condition to help you.”

Many persons are of the opinion that if you have money it is easy to make more money. But this is not necessarily true. Ninety per cent of the men that start in business fail. Money will not enable one to accumulate much more, unless he is trained to seek and use good opportunities for its investment. If he inherits money the chances are that he will lose it. While, if he has made it, he not only knows its value, but has developed the power to use it as well as to make more if he loses it.

Business success today depends on foresight, good judgment, grit, firm resolution and settled purpose. But never forget that thought is as real a force as electricity. Let your thoughts be such, that you will send out as good as you receive; if you do not, you are not enriching others, and therefore deserve not to be enriched.

The man that tries to get all he can from others for nothing becomes so selfish and mean that he does not even enjoy his acquisitions. We see examples of this every day. What we take from others, will in turn, be taken from us. All obligations have to be met fairly and squarely. We cannot reach perfection until we discharge every obligation of our lives. We all realize this, so why not willingly give a fair exchange for all that we receive?

Again I repeat that the first as well as the last step in acquiring wealth is to surround yourself with good influences–good thought, good health, good home and business environment and successful business associates. Cultivate, by every legitimate means, the acquaintance of men of big caliber. Bring your thought vibrations in regard to business into harmony with theirs. This will make your society not only agreeable, but sought after, and, when you have formed intimate friendships with clean, reputable men of wealth, entrust to them, for investment, your surplus earnings, however small, until you have developed the initiative and business acumen to successfully manage your own investments. By this time you will, through such associations, have found your place in life which, if you have rightly concentrated upon and used your opportunities, will not be among men of small parts. With a competence secured, you will take pleasure in using a part of it in making the road you traveled in reaching your position easier for those who follow you.

There is somewhere in every brain the energy that will get you out of that rut and put you far up on the mountain of success if you can only use the energy.

You know that gasoline in the engine of an automobile doesn’t move the car until the spark comes to explode the gasoline.

So it is with the mind of man. We are not speaking now of men of great genius, but of average, able citizens.

Each one of them has in his brain the capacity to climb over the word impossible and get into the successful country beyond.

And hope, self-confidence and the determination to do something supply the spark that makes the energy work.

LESSON XIII. YOU CAN CONCENTRATE, BUT WILL YOU?

All have the ability to concentrate, but will you? You can, but whether you will or not depends on you. It is one thing to be able to do something, and another thing to do it. There is far more ability not used than is used. Why do not more men of ability make something of themselves? There are comparatively few successful men but many ambitious ones. Why do not more get along? Cases may differ, but the fault is usually their own. They have had chances, perhaps better ones than some others that have made good.

What would you like to do, that you are not doing? If you think you should be “getting on” better, why don’t you? Study yourself carefully. Learn your shortcomings. Sometimes only a mere trifle keeps one from branching out and becoming a success. Discover why you have not been making good–the cause of your failure. Have you been expecting someone to lead you, or to make a way for you? If you have, concentrate on a new line of thought.

There are two things absolutely necessary for success–energy and the will to succeed. Nothing can take the place of either of these. Most of us will not have an easy path to follow so don’t expect to find one. The hard knocks develop our courage and moral stamina. The persons that live in an indolent and slipshod way never have any. They have never faced conditions and therefore don’t know how. The world is no better for their living.

We must make favorable conditions and not expect them to shape themselves. It is not the man that says, “It can’t be done,” but the man that goes ahead in spite of adverse advice, and shows that “it can be done” that “gets there” today. “The Lord helps those that help themselves,” is a true saying. We climb the road to success by overcoming obstacles. Stumbling blocks are but stepping stones for the man that says, “I can and I Will.” When we see cripples, the deaf and dumb, the blind and those with other handicaps amounting to something in the world, the able-bodied man should feel ashamed of himself if he does not make good.

There is nothing that can resist the force of perseverance. The way ahead of all of us is not clear sailing, but all hard passages can be bridged, if you just think they can and concentrate on how to do it. But if you think the obstacles are unsurmountable, you will not of course try, and even if you do, it will be in only a half-hearted way–a way that accomplishes nothing.

Many men will not begin an undertaking unless they feel sure they will succeed in it. What a mistake! This would be right, if we were sure of what we could and could not do. But who knows? There may be an obstruction there now that might not be there next week. There may not be an obstruction there now that will be there next week. The trouble with most persons is that just as soon as they see their way blocked they lose courage. They forget that usually there is a way around the difficulty. It’s up to you to find it. If you tackle something with little effort, when the conditions call for a big effort, you will of course not win. Tackle everything with a feeling that you will utilize all the power within you to make it a success. This is the kind of concentrated effort that succeeds.

Most people are beaten before they start. They think they are going to encounter obstacles, and they look for them instead of for means to overcome them. The result is that they increase their obstacles instead of diminishing them. Have you ever undertaken something that you thought would be hard, but afterwards found it to be easy? That is the way a great many times. The things that look difficult in advance turn out to be easy of conquest when once encountered. So start out on your journey with the idea that the road is going to be clear for you, and that if it is not you will clear the way. All men that have amounted to anything have cleared their way and they did not have the assistance that you will have today.

The one great keynote of success is to do whatever you have decided on. Don’t be turned from your path, but resolve that you are going to accomplish what you set out to do. Don’t be frightened at a few rebuffs, for they cannot stop the man that is determined–the man that knows in his heart that success is only bought by tremendous resolution, by concentrated and whole-hearted effort.

“He who has a firm will,” says Goethe, “molds the world to himself.”

“People do not lack strength,” says Victor Hugo; “they lack Will.”

It is not so much skill that wins victories as it is activity and great determination There is no such thing as failure for the man that does his best. No matter what you may be working at, at the present time, don’t let this make you lose courage. The tides are continually changing, and tomorrow or some other day they will turn to your advantage if you are a willing and are an ambitious worker. There is nothing that develops you and increases your courage like work. If it were not for work how monotonous life would at last become!

So I say to the man that wants to advance, “Don’t look upon your present position as your permanent one. Keep your eyes open, and add those qualities to your makeup that will assist you when your opportunity comes. Be ever alert and on the watch for opportunities. Remember, we attract what we set our minds on. If we look for opportunities, we find them.

If you are the man you should be, some one is looking for you to fill a responsible position. So when he finds you, don’t let your attention wander. Give it all to him. Show that you can concentrate your powers, that you have the makeup of a real man. Show no signs of fear, uncertainty or doubt. The man that is sure of himself is bound to get to the front. No circumstances can prevent him.

LESSON XIV. THE ART OF CONCENTRATING BY MEANS OF PRACTICAL EXERCISES

Select some thought, and see how long you can hold your mind on it. It is well to have a clock at first and keep track of the time. If you decide to think about health, you can get a great deal of good from your thinking besides developing concentration. Think of health as being the greatest blessing there is, in the world. Don’t let any other thought drift in. Just the moment one starts to obtrude, make it get out.

Make it a daily habit of concentrating on this thought for, say, ten minutes. Practice until you can hold it to the exclusion of everything else. You will find it of the greatest value to centralize your thoughts on health. Regardless of your present condition, see yourself as you would like to be and be blind to everything else. You will find it hard at first to forget your ailments, if you have any, but after a short while you can shut out these negative thoughts and see yourself as you want to be. Each time you concentrate you form a more perfect image of health, and, as you come into its realization, you become healthy, strong and wholesome.

I want to impress upon your mind that the habit of forming mental images is of the greatest value. It has always been used by successful men of all ages, but few realize its full importance.

Do you know that you are continually acting according to the images you form? If you allow yourself to mould negative images you unconsciously build a negative disposition. You will think of poverty, weakness, disease, fear, etc. Just as surely as you think of these will your objective life express itself in a like way. Just what we think, we will manifest in the external world.

In deep concentration you become linked with the great creative spirit of the universe, and the creative energy then flows through you, vitalizing your creations into form. In deep concentration your mind becomes attuned with the infinite and registers the cosmic intelligence and receives its messages. You become so full of the cosmic energy that you are literally flooded with divine power. This is a most desired state. It is then we realize the advantages of being connected with the supra-consciousness. The supra-consciousness registers the higher cosmic vibrations. It is often referred to as the wireless station, the message recorded coming from the universal mind.

There are very few that reach this stage of concentration. Very few even know that it is possible. They think concentration means limitation to one subject, but this deeper concentration that brings us into harmony with the Infinite is that which produces and maintains health.

When you have once come in contact with your supra-consciousness you become the controller of your human thoughts. That which comes to you is higher than human thoughts. It is often spoken of as Cosmic Consciousness. Once it is experienced it is never forgotten. Naturally it requires a good deal of training to reach this state, but once you do, it becomes easier each time to do, and in the course of time you can become possessed of power which was unknown to you before. You are able to direct the expression of almost Infinite Power while in this deeper state of concentration.

Exercises In Concentration. The rays of the sun, when focused upon an object by means of a sun glass, produce a heat many times greater than the scattered rays of the same source of light and heat. This is true of attention. Scatter it and you get but ordinary results. But center it upon one thing and you secure much better results. When you focus your attention upon an object your every action, voluntary and involuntary, is in the direction of attaining that object. If you will focus your energies upon a thing to the exclusion of everything else, you generate the force that can bring you what you want.

When you focus your thought, you increase its strength. The exercises that follow are tedious and monotonous, but useful. If you will persist in them you will find they are very valuable, as they increase your powers of concentration.

Before proceeding with the exercises I will answer a question that just comes to me. This person says after he works all day he is too tired to practice any exercise. But this is not true. We will say he comes home all tired out, eats his supper and sits down to rest. If his work has been mental, the thought which has been occupying his mind returns to him and this prevents him from securing the rest he needs.

It is an admitted fact that certain thoughts call into operation a certain set of brain cells; the other cells, of course, are not busy at that time and are rested. Now if you take up something that is just different from what you have been doing during the day, you will use the cells that have not done anything and give those that have had work to do a rest. So you should regulate the evenings that you have and call forth an entirely different line of thought so as not to use the cells which you have tired out during the day. If you will center your attention on a new thought, you relieve the old cells from vibrating with excitement and they get their needed rest. The other cells that have been idle all day want to work, and you will find you can enjoy your evenings while securing needed rest.

When once you have learned to master your thoughts, you will be able to change them just as easily as you change your clothes.

Remember, the real requisite of centering is to be able to shut out outside thoughts–anything foreign to the subject. Now, in order to control your intention first gain control over the body. This must be brought under direct control of the mind; the mind under the control of the will. Your will is strong enough to do anything you wish, but you must realize that it is. The mind can be greatly strengthened by being brought under the direct influence of the will. When the mind is properly strengthened by the impulse of the will it becomes a more powerful transmitter of thought, because it has more force.The Best Time to Concentrate Is after reading something that is inspiring, as you are then mentally and spiritually exalted in the desired realm. Then is the time you are ready for deep concentration. If you are in your room first see that your windows are up and the air is good. Lie down flat on your bed without a pillow. See that every muscle is relaxed. Now breathe slowly, filling the lungs comfortably full of fresh air; hold this as long as you can without straining yourself; then exhale slowly. Exhale in an easy, rhythmic way. Breathe this way for five minutes, letting the Divine Breath flow through you, which will cleanse and rejuvenate every cell of brain and body.

You are then ready to proceed. Now think how quiet and relaxed you are. You can become enthusiastic over your condition. Just think of yourself as getting ready to receive knowledge that is far greater than you have ever received before. Now relax and let the spirit work in and through you and assist you to accomplish what you wish.

Don’t let any doubts or fears enter. Just feel that what you wish is going to manifest. Just feel it already has, in reality it has, for just the minute you wish a thing to be done it manifests in the thought world. Whenever you concentrate just believe it is a success. Keep up this feeling and allow nothing to interfere and you will soon find you have become the master of concentration. You will find that this practice will be of wonderful value to you, and that rapidly you will be learning to accomplish anything that you undertake.

It will be necessary to first train the body to obey the commands of the mind. I want you to gain control of your muscular movements. The following exercise is especially good in assisting you to acquire perfect control of the muscles.

Exercise 1

Sit in a comfortable chair and see how still you can keep. This is not as easy as it seems. You will have to center your attention on sitting still. Watch and see that you are not making any involuntary muscular movements. By a little practice you will find you are able to sit still without a movement of the muscles for fifteen minutes. At first I advise sitting in a relaxed position for five minutes. After you are able to keep perfectly still, increase the time to ten minutes and then to fifteen. This is as long as it is necessary. But never strain yourself to keep still. You must be relaxed completely. You will find this habit of relaxing is very good.

Exercise 2

Sit in a chair with your head up and your chin out, shoulders back. Raise your right arm until it is on the level with your shoulder, pointing to your right. Look around, with head only, and fix your gaze on your fingers, and keep the arm perfectly still for one minute. Do the same exercise with left arm. When you are able to keep the arm perfectly steady, increase the time until you are able to do this five minutes with each arm. Turn the palm of the hand downward when it is outstretched, as this is the easiest position. If you will keep your eyes fixed on the tips of the fingers you will be able to tell if you are keeping your arm perfectly still.

Exercise 3

Fill a small glass full of water, and grasp it by the fingers; put the arm directly in front of you. Now fix the eyes upon the glass and try to keep the arm so steady that no movement will be noticeable. Do this first for one moment and then increase it to five. Do the exercise with first one arm and then the other.

Exercise 4

Watch yourself during the day and see that your muscles do not become tense or strained. See how easy and relaxed you can keep yourself. See how poised you can be at all times. Cultivate a self-poised manner, instead of a nervous, strained appearance. This mental feeling will improve your carriage and demeanor. Stop all useless gestures and movements of the body. These mean that you have not proper control over your body. After you have acquired this control, notice how “ill-at-ease” people are that have not gained this control. I have just been sizing up a salesman that has just left me. Part of his body kept moving all the time. I just felt like saying to him, “Do you know how much better appearance you would make if you would just learn to speak with your voice instead of trying to express what you say with your whole body?” Just watch those that interview you and see how they lack poise.

Get rid of any habit you have of twitching or jerking any part of your body. You will find you make many involuntary movements. You can quickly stop any of these by merely centering your attention on the thought, “I will not.”

If you are in the habit of letting noises upset you, just exercise control; when the door slams, or something falls, etc., just think of these as exercises in self-control. You will find many exercises like this in your daily routine.

The purpose of the above exercises is to gain control over the involuntary muscular movement, making your actions entirely voluntary. The following exercises are arranged to bring your voluntary muscles under the control of the will, so that your mental forces may control your muscular movements.

Exercise 5

Move your chair up to a table, placing your hands upon it, clenching the fists, keeping the back of the hand on the table, the thumb doubled over the fingers. Now fix your gaze upon the fist for a while, then gradually extend the thumb, keeping your whole attention fixed upon the act, just as if it was a matter of great importance. Then gradually extend your first finger, then your second and so on until you open the rest. Then reverse the process, closing first the last one opened and then the rest, and finally you will have the fist again in the original position with the thumb closed over the finger. Do this exercise with the left hand. Keep up this exercise first with one hand and then the other until you have done it five times with each hand. In a few days you can increase it to ten times.

The chances are that the above exercises will at first make you “tired,” but it is important for you to practice these monotonous exercises so you can train your attention. It also gives you control over your muscular movement. The attention, of course, must be kept closely on each movement of the hand; if it is not, you of course lose the value of the exercise.Exercise 6

Put the right hand on knee, both fingers and thumb closed, except the first finger, which points out in front of you. Then move the finger slowly from side to side, keeping the attention fixed upon the end of the finger. You can make up a variety of exercises like these. It is good training to plan out different ones. The main point you should keep in mind is that the exercise should be simple and that the attention should be firmly fixed upon the moving part of the body. You will find your attention will not want to be controlled and will try to drift to something more interesting. This is just where these exercises are of value, and you must control your attention and see it is held in the right place and does not wander away.

You may think these exercises very simple and of no value, but I promise you in a short time you will notice that you have a much better control over your muscular movements, carriage and demeanor, and you will find that you have greatly improved your power of attention, and can center your thoughts on what you do, which of course will be very valuable.

No matter what you may be doing, imagine that it is your chief object in life. Imagine you are not interested in anything else in the world but what you are doing. Do not let your attention get away from the work you are at. Your attention will no doubt be rebellious, but control it and do not let it control you. When once you conquer the rebellious attention you have achieved a greater victory than you can realize at the time. Many times afterwards you will be thankful you have learned to concentrate your closest attention upon the object at hand.

Let no day go by without practicing concentrating on some familiar object that is uninteresting. Never choose an interesting object, as it requires less attention. The less interesting it is the better exercise will it be. After a little practice you will find you can center your attention on uninteresting subjects at will.

The person that can concentrate can gain full control over his body and mind and be the master of his inclinations; not their slave. When you can control yourself you can control others. You can develop a Will that will make you a giant compared with the man that lacks Will Power. Try out your Will Power in different ways until you have it under such control that just as soon as you decide to do a thing you go ahead and do it. Never be satisfied with the “I did fairly well” spirit, but put forward your best efforts. Be satisfied with nothing else. When you have gained this you are the man you were intended to be.

Exercise 7

Concentration Increases the Sense of Smell. When you take a walk, or drive in the country, or pass a flower garden, concentrate on the odor of flowers and plants. See how many different kinds you can detect. Then choose one particular kind and try to sense only this. You will find that this strongly intensifies the sense of smell. This differentiation requires, however, a peculiarly attentive attitude. When sense of smell is being developed, you should not only shut out from the mind every thought but that of odor, but you should also shut out cognizance of every odor save that upon which your mind, for the time, is concentrated.

You call find plenty of opportunity for exercises for developing the sense of smell. When you are out in the air, be on the alert for the different odors. You will find the air laden with all kinds, but let your concentration upon the one selected be such that a scent of its fragrance in after years will vividly recall the circumstances of this exercise.

The object of these exercises is to develop concentrated attention, and you will find that you can, through their practice, control your mind and direct your thoughts just the same as you can your arm.

Exercise 8

Concentration on the Within. Lie down and thoroughly relax your muscles. Concentrate on the beating of your heart. Do not pay any attention to anything else. Think how this great organ is pumping the blood to every part of the body; try to actually picture the blood leaving the great reservoir and going in one stream right down to the toes. Picture another going down the arms to the tips of the fingers. After a little practice you can actually feel the blood passing through your system.

If, at any time, you feel weak in any part of the body, will that an extra supply of blood shall go there. For instance, if your eyes feel tired, picture the blood coming from the heart, passing up through the head and out to the eyes. You can wonderfully increase your strength by this exercise. Men have been able to gain such control over the heart that they have actually stopped it from beating for five minutes. This, however, is not without danger, and is not to be practiced by the novice.

I have found the following a very helpful exercise to take just before going to bed and on rising in the morning: Say to yourself, “Every cell in my body thrills with life; every part of my body is strong and healthy.” I have known a number of people to greatly improve their health in this way. You become what you picture yourself to be. If your mind thinks of sickness in connection with self you will be sick. If you imagine yourself in strong, vigorous health, the image will be realized. You will be healthy.Exercise 9

Concentrating on Sleep. What is known as the water method is, although very simple, very effective in inducing sleep.

Put a full glass of clear water on a table in your sleeping room. Sit in a chair beside the table and gaze into the glass of water and think how calm it is. Then picture yourself , getting into just as calm a state. In a short time you will find the nerves becoming quiet and you will be able to go to sleep. Sometimes it is good to picture yourself becoming drowsy to induce sleep, and, again, the most persistent insomnia has been overcome by one thinking of himself as some inanimate object–for instance, a hollow log in the depths of the cool, quiet forest.

Those who are troubled with insomnia will find these sleep exercises that quiet the nerves very effective. Just keep the idea in your mind that there is no difficulty in going to sleep; banish all fear of insomnia. Practice these exercises and you will sleep.

By this time you should have awakened to the possibilities of concentration and have become aware of the important part it plays in your life.

Exercise 10

Concentration Will Save Energy and Appearance. Watch yourself and see if you are not in the habit of moving your hands, thumping something with your fingers or twirling your mustache. Some have the habit of keeping their feet going, as, for instance, tapping them on the floor. Practice standing before a mirror and see if you are in the habit of frowning or causing wrinkles to appear in the forehead. Watch others and see how they needlessly twist their faces in talking. Any movement of the face that causes the skin to wrinkle will eventually cause a permanent wrinkle. As the face is like a piece of silk, you can make a fold in it a number of times and it will straighten out of itself, but, if you continue to make a fold in it, it will in time be impossible to remove it.

By Concentration You Can Stop the Worry Habit. If you are in the habit of worrying over the merest trifles, just concentrate on this a few minutes and see bow needless it is; if you are also in the habit of becoming irritable or nervous at the least little thing, check yourself instantly when you feel yourself becoming so; start to breathe deeply; say, “I will not be so weak; I am master of myself,” and you will quickly overcome your condition.

Exercise 11

By Concentration You Can Control Your Temper. If you are one of those that flare up at the slightest “provocation” and never try to control yourself, just think this over a minute. Does it do you any good? Do you gain anything by it? Doesn’t it put you out of poise for some time? Don’t you know that this grows on you and will eventually make you despised by all that have any dealings with you? Everyone makes mistakes and, instead of becoming angry at their perpetrators, just say to them, “Be more careful next time.” This thought will be impressed on them and they will be more careful. But, if you continually complain about their making a mistake, the thought of a mistake is impressed on them and they will be more likely to make mistakes in the future. All lack of self-control can be conquered if you will but learn to concentrate.

Many of you that read this may think you are not guilty of either of these faults, but if you will carefully watch yourself you will probably find that you are, and, if so, you will be greatly helped by repeating this affirmation each morning:

“I am going to try today not to make a useless gesture or to worry over trifles, or become nervous or irritable. I intend to be calm, and, no difference what may be the circumstances, I will control myself. Henceforth I resolve to be free from all signs that show lack of self-control.”

At night quickly review your actions during the day and see how fully you realized your aim. At first you will, of course, have to plead guilty of violation a few times, but keep on, and you will soon find that you can live up to your ideal. After you have once gained self-control, however, don’t relinquish it. For some time it will still be necessary to repeat the affirmation in the morning and square your conduct with it in the evening. Keep up the good work until, at last, the habit of self-control is so firmly fixed that you could not break it even though you tried.

I have had many persons tell me that this affirmation and daily review made a wonderful difference in their lives. You, too, will notice the difference if you live up to these instructions.

Exercise 12.

Practice Talking Before a Glass. Make two marks on your mirror on a level with your eyes, and think of them as two human eyes looking into yours. Your eyes will probably blink a little at first. Do not move your head, but stand erect. Concentrate all your thoughts on keeping your head perfectly still. Do not let another thought come into your mind. Then, still keeping the head, eyes and body still, think that you look like a reliable man or woman should; like a person that anyone would have confidence in. Do not let your appearance be such as to justify the remark, “I don’t like his appearance. I don’t believe he can be trusted.”

While standing before the mirror practice deep breathing. See that there is plenty of fresh air in the room, and that you are literally feasting on it. You will find that, as it permeates every cell, your timidity will disappear. It has been replaced by a sense of peace and power.

The one that stands up like a man and has control over the muscles of his face and eyes always commands attention. In his conversation, he can better impress those with whom he comes in contact. He acquires a feeling of calmness and strength that causes opposition to melt away before it.

Three minutes a day is long enough for the practice of this exercise.

Look at the clock before you commence the exercise, and if you find you can prolong the exercise for more than five minutes do so. The next day sit in a chair and, without looking at the picture, concentrate on it and see if you cannot think of additional details concerning it. The chances are you will be able to think of many more. It might be well for you to write down all you thought of the first day, and then add to the list each new discovery. You will find that this is a very excellent exercise in concentration.Exercise 13

The Control of Sensations. Think how you would feel if you were cool; then how you would feel if you were cold; again, how you would feel if it were freezing. In this state you would be shivering all over. Now think of just the opposite conditions; construct such a vivid image of heat that you are able to experience the sensation of heat even in the coldest atmosphere. It is possible to train your imagination until you do this, and it can then be turned to practical account in making undesirable conditions bearable.

You can think of many very good exercises like this. For instance, if you feel yourself getting hungry or thirsty and for any reason you do not wish to eat, do not think of how hungry or thirsty you are, but just visualize yourself as finishing a hearty meal. Again, when you experience pain, do not increase it by thinking about it, but do something to divert your attention, and the pain will seem to decrease. If you will start practicing along this line systematically you will soon gain a wonderful control over the things that affect your physical comfort.

Exercise 14

The Eastern Way of Concentrating. Sit in a chair with a high back in upright position. Press one finger against the right nostril. Now take a long, deep breath, drawing the breath in gently as you count ten; then expel the breath through the right nostril as you count ten. Repeat this exercise with the opposite nostril. This exercise should be done at least twenty times at each sitting.

Exercise 15

Controlling Desires. Desire, which is one of the hardest forces to control, will furnish you with excellent exercises in concentration. It seems natural to want to tell others what you know; but, by learning to control these desires, you can wonderfully strengthen your powers of concentration. Remember, you have all you can do to attend to your own business. Do not waste your time in thinking of others or in gossiping about them.

If, from your own observation, you learn something about another person that is detrimental, keep it to yourself. Your opinion may afterwards turn out to be wrong anyway, but whether right or wrong, you have strengthened your will by controlling your desire to communicate your views.

If you hear good news resist the desire to tell it to the first person you meet and you will be benefited thereby. It will require the concentration of all your powers of resistance to prohibit the desire to tell. After you feel that you have complete control over your desires you can then tell your news. But you must be able to suppress the desire to communicate the news until you are fully ready to tell it. Persons that do not possess this power of control over desires are apt to tell things that they should not, thereby often involving both themselves and others in needless trouble.

If you are in the habit of getting excited when you hear unpleasant news, just control yourself and receive it without any exclamation of surprise. Say to yourself, “Nothing is going to cause me to lose my self-control. You will find from experience that this self-control will be worth much to you in business. You will be looked upon as a cool-headed business man, and this in time becomes a valuable business asset. Of course, circumstances alter cases. At times it is necessary to become enthused. But be ever on the lookout for opportunities for the practice of self-control. “He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that ruleth a city.”

Exercise 16

When You Read. No one can think without first concentrating his thoughts on the subject in hand. Every man and woman should train himself to think clearly. An excellent exercise is to read some short story and then write just an abridged statement. Read an article in a newspaper, and see in how few words you can express it. Reading an article to get only the essentials requires the closest concentration. If you are unable to write out what you read, you will know you are weak in concentration. Instead of writing it out you can express it orally if you wish. Go to your room and deliver it as if you were talking to some one. You will find exercises like this of the greatest value in developing concentration and learning to think.

After you have practiced a number of these simple exercises read a book for twenty minutes and then write down what you have read. The chances are that at first you will not remember very many details, but with a little practice you will be able to write a very good account of what you have read. The closer the concentration the more accurate the account will be.

It is a good idea when time is limited to read only a short sentence and then try to write it down word for word. When you are able to do this, read two or more sentences and treat similarly. The practice will produce very good results if you keep it up until the habit is fixed.

If you will just utilize your spare time in practicing exercises like those suggested you can gain wonderful powers of concentration. You will find that in order to remember every word in a sentence you must keep out every thought but that which you wish to remember, and this power of inhibition alone will more than compensate for the trouble of the exercise. Of course, success in all of the above depends largely upon cultivating, through the closest concentration, the power to image or picture what you read; upon the power, as one writer expresses it, of letting the mountains of which we hear loom before us and the rivers of which we read roll at our feet.Exercise 17

Concentration Overcomes Bad Habits. If you have a habit that you want to get rid of, shut your eyes and imagine that your real self is standing before you. Now try the power of affirmation; say to yourself, “You are not a weakling; you can stop this habit if you want to. This habit is bad and you want to break it.” Just imagine that you are some one else giving this advice. This is very valuable practice. You, in time, see yourself as others see you. The habit loses its power over you and you are free.

If you will just form the mental image of controlling yourself as another person might, you will take a delight in breaking bad habits. I have known a number of men to break themselves of drinking in this way.

Exercise 18

Watch Concentration. Sit in a chair and place a clock with a second hand on the table. Follow the second hand with your eyes as it goes around. Keep this up for five minutes, thinking of nothing else but the second hand, This is a very good exercise when you only have a few minutes to spare, if you are able to keep every other thought in the stream of consciousness subordinate to it. As there is little that is particularly interesting about the second hand, it is hard to do this, but in the extra effort of will power required to make it successful lies its value. Always try to keep as still as possible during these exercises.

In this way you can gain control over nerves and this quieting effect is very good for them.

Exercise 19

Faith Concentration. A belief in the power to concentrate is of course very important. I purposely did not put this exercise in the beginning where it naturally belongs because I wanted you to know that you could learn to concentrate. If you have practiced the above exercises you have now developed this concentration power to a considerable extent and therefore you have faith in the power of concentration, but you can still become a much stronger believer in it.

We will say that you have some desire or wish you want fulfilled, or that you need some special advice. You first clearly picture what is wanted and then you concentrate on getting it. Have absolute faith that your desires will be realized. Believe that it will according to your belief be fulfilled. Never, at this time, attempt to analyze the belief. You don’t care anything about the whys and wherefores. You want to gain the thing you desire, and if you concentrate on it in the right way you will get it.

A Caution. Never think you will not succeed, but picture what is wanted as already yours, and yours it surely will be.

Self-Distrust. Do you ever feel distrust in yourself? If You do, just ask yourself, which self do I mistrust? Then say: my higher self cannot be affected. Then think of the wonderful powers of the higher self. There is a way to overcome all difficulties, and it is a delight for the human soul to do so. Instead of wasting precious thought-force by dreading or fearing a disagreeable interview or event, instead devote the time and concentrated thought in how to make the best of the interview or event and you will find that it will not be as unpleasant as you thought it would be. Most of our troubles are but imaginary, and it is the mental habit of so dreading them that really acts as a magnet in attracting those that really do come. Your evil circumstances are created or attracted by your own negative, fears and wrong thoughts, and are a means of teaching you to triumph over all evils, by discovering that which is inherent within yourself.

You will find it helpful in overcoming self-distrust, to stop and think, why you are, concentrating your forces, and by so doing you become more closely attached to the higher self, which never distrusts.

LESSON XV. CONCENTRATE SO YOU WILL NOT FORGET

A man forgets because he does not concentrate his mind on his purpose, especially at the moment he conceives it. We remember only that which makes a deep impression, hence we must first deepen our impressions by associating in our minds certain ideas that are related to them.

We will say a wife gives her husband a letter to mail. He does not think about it, but automatically puts it in his pocket and forgets all about it. When the letter was given to him had he said to himself, “I will mail this letter. The box is at the next corner and when I pass it I must drop this letter,” it would have enabled him to recall the letter the instant he reached the mail box.

The same rule holds good in regard to more important things. For example, if you are instructed to drop in and see Mr. Smith while out to luncheon today, you will not forget it, if, at the moment the instruction is given, you say to yourself something similar to the following:

“When I get to the corner of Blank street, on my way to luncheon, I shall turn to the right and call on Mr. Smith.” In this way the impression is made, the connection established and the sight of the associated object recalls the errand.

The important thing to do is to deepen the impression at the very moment it enters your mind. This is made possible, not only by concentrating the mind upon the idea itself, but by surrounding it with all possible association of ideas, so that each one will reinforce the others.

The mind is governed by laws of association, such as the law that ideas which enter the mind at the same time emerge at the same time, one assisting in recalling the others.

The reason why people cannot remember what they want to is that they have not concentrated their minds sufficiently on their purpose at the moment when it was formed.

You can train yourself to remember in this way by the concentration of the attention on your purpose, in accordance with the laws of association.

When once you form this habit, the attention is easily centered and the memory easily trained. Then your memory, instead of failing you at crucial moments, becomes a valuable asset in your every-day work.

Exercise in Memory Concentration. Select some picture; put it on a table and then look at it for two minutes. Concentrate your attention on this picture, observe every detail; then shut your eyes and see how much you can recall about it. Think of what the picture represents; whether it is a good subject; whether it looks natural. Think of objects in foreground, middle ground, background; of details of color and form. Now open your eyes and hold yourself rigidly to the correction of each and every mistake. Close eyes again and notice how much more accurate your picture is. Practice until your mental image corresponds in every particular to the original.

Nature is a Wonderful Instructor. But there are very few who realize that when we get in touch with nature we discover ourselves. That by listening to her voice, with that curious, inner sense of ours, we learn the oneness of life and wake up to our own latent powers.

Few realize that the simple act of listening and concentrating is our best interior power, for it brings us into close contact with the highest, just as our other senses bring us into touch with the coarser side of human nature. The closer we live to nature the more developed is this sense. “So called” civilization has over developed our other senses at the expense of this one.

Children unconsciously realize the value of concentration–for instance: When a Child has a difficult problem to solve, and gets to some knotty point which he finds himself mentally unable to do–though he tries his hardest–he will pause and keep quite still, leaning on his elbow, apparently listening; then you will see, if you are watching, sudden illumination come and he goes on happily and accomplishes his task. A child instinctively but unconsciously knows when he needs help, he must be quiet and concentrate.

All great people concentrate and owe their success to it. The doctor thinks over the symptoms of his patient, waits, listens for the inspiration, though quite unconscious, perhaps, of doing so. The one who diagnoses in this way seldom makes mistakes. An author thinks his plot, holds it in his mind, and then waits, and illumination comes. If you want to be able to solve difficult problems you must learn to do the same.

LESSON XVI. HOW CONCENTRATION CAN FULFILL YOUR DESIRE

“It is a spiritual law that the desire to do necessarily implies the ability to do.”

You have all read of “Aladdin’s Lamp,” which accomplished such wonderful things. This, of course, is only a fairy story, but it illustrates the fact that man has within him the power, if he is able to use it, to gratify his every wish.

If you are unable to satisfy your deepest longings it is time you learned how to use your God-given powers. You will soon be conscious that you have latent powers within capable when once developed of revealing to you priceless knowledge and unlimited possibilities of success.

Man should have plenty of everything and not merely substance to live on as so many have. All natural desires can be realized. It would be wrong for the Infinite to create wants that could not be supplied. Man’s very soul is in his power to think, and it, therefore, is the essence of all created things. Every instinct of man leads to thought, and in every thought there is great possibility because true thought development, when allied to those mysterious powers which perhaps transcend it, has been the cause of all the world’s true progress.

In the silence we become conscious of “that something” which transcends thought and which uses thought as a medium for expression. Many have glimpses of “that something,” but few ever reach the state where the mind is steady enough to fathom these depths. Silent, concentrated thought is more potent than spoken words, for speech distracts from the focusing power of the mind by drawing more and more attention to the without.

Man must learn more and more to depend on himself; to seek more for the Infinite within. It is from this source alone that he ever gains the power to solve his practical difficulties. No one should give up when there is always the resources of Infinity. The cause of failure is that men search in the wrong direction for success, because they are not conscious of their real powers that when used are capable of guiding them.

The Infinite within is foreign to those persons who go through life without developing their spiritual powers. But the Infinite helps only he who helps himself. There is no such thing as a Special “Providence.” Man will not receive help from the Infinite except to the extent that he believes and hopes and prays for help from this great source.

Concentrate on What You Want and Get It. The weakling is controlled by conditions. The strong man controls conditions. You can be either the conqueror or the conquered. By the law of concentration you can achieve your heart’s desire. This law is so powerful that that which at first seems impossible becomes attainable.

By this law what you at first see as a dream becomes a reality.

Remember that the first step in concentration is to form a Mental Image of what you wish to accomplish. This image becomes a thought-seed that attracts thoughts of a similar nature. Around this thought, when it is once planted in the imagination or creative region of the mind, you group or build associated thoughts which continue to grow as long as your desire is keen enough to compel close concentration.

Form the habit of thinking of something you wish to accomplish for five minutes each day. Shut every other thought out of consciousness. Be confident that you will succeed; make up your mind that all obstacles that are in your way will be overcome and you can rise above any environment.

You do this by utilizing the natural laws of the thought world which are all powerful.

A great aid in the development of concentration is to write out your thoughts on that which lies nearest your heart and to continue, little by little, to add to it until you have as nearly as possible exhausted the subject.You will find that each day as you focus your forces on this thought at the center of the stream of consciousness, new plans, ideas and methods will flash into your mind. There is a law of attraction that will help you accomplish your purpose. An advertiser, for instance, gets to thinking along a certain line. He has formed his own ideas, but he wants to know what others think. He starts out to seek ideas and he soon finds plenty of books, plans, designs, etc., on the subject, although when he started he was not aware of their existence.

The same thing is true in all lines. We can attract those things that will help us. Very often we seem to receive help in a miraculous way. It may be slow in coming, but once the silent unseen forces are put into operation, they will bring results so long as we do our part. They are ever present and ready to aid those who care to use them. By forming a strong mental image of your desire, you plant the thought-seed which begins working in your interest and, in time, that desire, if in harmony with your higher nature, will materialize.

It may seem that it would be unnecessary to caution you to concentrate only upon achievement that will be good for you and work no harm to another, but there are many who forget others and their rights, in their anxiety to achieve success. All good things are possible for you to have, but only as you bring your forces into harmony with that law that requires that we mete out justice to fellow travelers as we journey along life’s road. So first think over the thing wanted and if it would be good for you to have; say, “I want to do this; I am going to work to secure it. The way will be open for me.”

If you fully grasp mentally the thought of success and hold it in mind each day, you gradually make a pattern or mold which in time will materialize. But by all means keep free from doubt and fear, the destructive forces. Never allow these to become associated with your thoughts.

At last you will create the desired conditions and receive help in many unlooked-for ways that will lift you out of the undesired environment. Life will then seem very different to you, for you will have found happiness through awakening within yourself the power to become the master of circumstances instead of their slave.

To the beginner in this line of thought some of the things stated in this book may sound strange, even absurd, but, instead of condemning them, give them a trial. You will find they will work out.

The inventor has to work out his idea mentally before he produces it materially. The architect first sees the mental picture of the house he is to plan and from this works out the one we see. Every object, every enterprise, must first be mentally created.

I know a man that started in business with thirteen cents and not a dollar’s worth of credit. In ten years he has built up a large and profitable business. He attributes his success to two things–belief that he would succeed and hard work. There were times when it did not look like he could weather the storm. He was being pressed by his creditors who considered him bankrupt. They would have taken fifty cents on the dollar for his notes and considered themselves lucky. But by keeping up a bold front he got an extension of time when needed. When absolutely necessary for him to raise a certain sum at a certain time he always did it. When he had heavy bills to meet he would make up his mind that certain people that owed him would pay by a certain date and they always did. Sometimes he would not receive their check until the last mail of the day of the extension, and I have known him to send out a check with the prospect of receiving a check from one of his customers the following day. He would have no reason other than his belief in the power of affecting the mind of another by concentration of thought for expecting that check, but rarely has he been disappointed.

Just put forth the necessary concentrated effort and you will be wonderfully helped from sources unknown to you.

Remember the mystical words of Jesus, the Master: “Whatsoever thing ye desire when ye pray, pray as if ye had already received and ye shall have.”

LESSON XVII. IDEALS DEVELOPED BY CONCENTRATION

Through our paltry stir and strife, Glows the wished Ideal, And longing molds in clay, what life Carves in the marble real.–Lowell.

We often hear people spoken of as idealists. The fact is we are all idealists to a certain extent, and upon the ideals we picture depends our ultimate success. You must have the mental image if you are to produce the material thing. Everything is first created in the mind. When you control your thoughts you become a creator. You receive divine ideas and shape them to your individual needs. All things of this world are to you just what you think they are. Your happiness and success depend upon your ideals.

You are responsible for every condition you go through, either consciously or unconsciously. The next step you take determines the succeeding step. Remember this; it is a valuable lesson. By concentrating on each step as you go along, you can save a lot of waste steps and will be able to choose a straight path instead of a roundabout road.

Concentrate Upon Your Ideals and They Will Become Material Actualities. Through concentration we work out our ideals in physical life. Your future depends upon the ideals you are forming now. Your past ideals are determining your present. Therefore, if you want a bright future, you must begin to prepare for it today.

If persons could only realize that they can only injure themselves, that when they are apparently injuring others they are really injuring themselves, what a different world this would be!

We say a man is as changeable as the weather. What is meant is his ideals change. Every time you change your ideal you think differently. You become like a rudderless boat on an ocean. Therefore realize the importance of holding to your ideal until it becomes a reality.

You get up in the morning determined that nothing will make you lose your temper. This is your ideal of a person of real strength and poise. Something takes place that upsets you completely and you lose your temper. For the time being you forget your ideal. If you had just thought a second of what a well-poised person implies you would not have become angry. You lose your poise when you forget your ideal. Each time we allow our ideals to be shattered we also weaken our will-power. Holding to your ideals develops will-power. Don’t forget this.

Why do so many men fail? Because they don’t hold to their ideal until it becomes a mental habit. When they concentrate on it to the exclusion of all other things it becomes a reality.

“I am that which I think myself to be.”

Ideals are reflected to us from the unseen spirit. The laws of matter and spirit are not the same. One can be broken, but not the other. To the extent that ideals are kept is your future assured.

It was never intended that man should suffer. He has brought it upon himself by disobeying the laws of nature. He knows them so cannot plead ignorance. Why does he break them? Because he does not pay attention to those ideals flashed to him from the Infinite Spirit.

Life is but one continuous unfoldment, and you can be happy every step of the way or miserable, as you please; it all depends upon how we entertain those silent whisperings that come from we know not where. We cannot hear them with mortal ear, but from the silence they come as if they were dreams, not to you or me alone, but to everyone. In this way the grandest thoughts come to us, to use or abuse. So search not in treasured volumes for noble thoughts, but within, and bright and glowing vision will come to be realized now and hereafter.

You must give some hours to concentrated, consistent, persistent thought. You must study yourself and your weaknesses.

No man gets over a fence by wishing himself on the other side. He must climb.

No man gets out of the rut of dull, tiresome, monotonous life by merely wishing himself out of the rut. He must climb.

If you are standing still, or going backward, there is something wrong. You are the man to find out what is wrong.

Don’t think that you are neglected, or not understood, or not appreciated.

Such thoughts are the thoughts of failure.

Think hard about the fact that men who have got what you envy got it by working for it.

Don’t pity yourself, criticise yourself.

You know that the only thing in the world that you have got to count upon is yourself.

LESSON XVIII. MENTAL CONTROL THROUGH CREATION

I attended a banquet of inventors recently. Each inventor gave a short talk on something he thought would be accomplished in the future. Many very much needed things were spoken of. One inventor spoke of the possibilities of wireless telephone. Distance, he said, would shortly be annihilated. He thought we would soon be able to talk to the man in the submarine forty fathoms below the surface and a thousand miles away. When he got through he asked if there were any that doubted what he said. No one spoke up. This was not a case of tactful politeness, as inventors like to argue, but a case where no one present really doubted that the inventor’s vision would, in the future, materialize.

These shrewd men, some real geniuses, all thought we would in time be able to talk to those a thousand miles away without media. Now, if we can make an instrument so wonderful that we can send wireless messages a thousand miles, is there any reason why we should not through mental control transmit messages from one person to another? The wireless message should not be as easy to send as the projected thought.

The day will come when all business will employ highly developed persons to send out influences. These influences will be so dominating that employees will be partly controlled by them and so you will profit more and more by your mental powers and depend on them to draw to you all forces of a helpful nature. You will be constantly sending out suggestions to your employees and friends. They will receive these unconsciously, but in case yours is the stronger personality they will carry them out the same as if you had spoken them.

This is being done even today. A finely organized company secures the combined effort of all its men. They may be each doing a different kind of work, but all work to bring about the very best results. The whole atmosphere is impregnated with a high standard of workmanship. Everyone feels he must do his best. He could not be in such surroundings and be satisfied to do anything but his best work.

A business will succeed only to the extent that the efforts of all are co-ordinated towards one result. At least one person is needed to direct all toward the desired end. The person at the head does not have to exactly outline to the others what steps to take, but he must possess the mental power of control over others.

An up-to-date business letter is not written in a casual, commonplace way today. The writer tries to convey something he thinks the receiver will be interested to know. In this way he awakens a responsive spirit. Sometimes just the addition of a word or two will change a letter of the matter-of-fact style to one that compels a response. It is not always what is actually in a letter, but the spirit which it breathes that brings results. That intangible something that defies analysis is the projected thought of the master that brings back the harvest that it claims.

But we should not always claim success for ourselves only. If you are anxious that some friend or relative should succeed, think of this person as becoming successful. Picture him in the position you would like to see him in. If he has a weakness, desire and command that it be strengthened; think of his shortcomings which belong to his negative nature as being replaced by positive qualities. Take a certain part of the day to send him thoughts of an up-building nature. You can in this way arouse his mental powers into activity, and once aroused, they will assert themselves and claim their own.

We can accomplish a great deal more than many of us are ready to believe by sending to another our direct, positive and controlling suggestions of leadership, but whether a man is a success or not is greatly determined by the way he acts on the suggestions he receives.

We either advance or decline. We never stand still. Every time we accomplish something it gives us ability to do greater things. The bigger the attempt undertaken, the greater the things accomplished in the future. As a business grows, the head of the business also has to grow. He must advance and be ever the guiding influence. By his power to control, he inspires confidence in those associated with him. Often employees are superior to their employers in some qualities, and, if they had studied, instead of neglected their development, they could have been employers of more commanding influence than those whom they serve.

Through your mental power you can generate in another enthusiasm and the spirit of success, which somehow furnishes an impetus to do something worth while.In concentrated mental control, there is a latent power more potent than physical force. The person becomes aware that the attitude of the mind has a power of controlling, directing and governing other forces. He has been placed in an attitude capable of acquiring that which he desires.

All of us no matter how strong we are, are affected by the mental forces of our environment. There is no one that can remain neutral to influences. The mind cannot be freed from the forces of a place. If the environment of your place of business is not helpful, it will be harmful. That is why a change of position will often do a person a great deal of good.

No person was ever intended to live alone. If you are shut up with only your own thoughts you suffer from mental starvation. The mind becomes narrow; the mental powers weaken. Living alone often causes some of the milder forms of insanity. If children do not play with those their own age, but associate with only older people, they will take on the actions of the older people. The same is true of older persons if they associate with people younger than they are. They take on the spirit of youth. If you wish to retain your youth you need the influences of youth. Like attracts like all over the world.

The thought element plays a great part in our lives. Every business must not only command physical effort but it must also command thought effort. There must be co-ordination of thought. All employers should aim to secure employees that think along similar lines. They will work in fuller sympathy with each other. They will better understand each other. This enables them to help each other, which would be utterly impossible if they were not in sympathy with each other. It is this that goes to make up a perfect organization, which directs and influences them toward the one end. Instead of each person being a separate unit, each one is like a spoke in a big wheel. Each member carries his own load, and he would not think of shirking. Anyone working in such an atmosphere could not help turning out his best work.

All great leaders must be able to inspire this co-operative spirit. They first secure assistance through their mental control. They then make their assistants realize the value of mental control. Soon there is a close bond between them; they are working toward a single purpose. They profit by their combined effort. The result is that they accomplish much.

If your business is conducted in the right spirit, you can instill your thoughts and your ideas into your employees. Your methods and ideas become theirs. They don’t know it, but your mental forces are shaping their work. They are just as certain to produce results as any physical force in nature.

The up-to-date business man of the future is going to take pains to get his employees to think and reason better. He will not want them to become depressed or discouraged. There is time that instead of being wasted he will endeavor to have them use in concentrated effort that will be profitable to both employer and employed. There must be more of the spirit of justice enter into the business of the future.

There is a firm I know that will not hire an employee until he has filled out an application blank. No doubt those that fill it out think it is foolishness, but it is not. A capable manager can look over this application blank and pretty nearly tell if this person will fit into his management. The main thing he wants to know is the applicant’s capacity for efficient co-operative effort. He wants persons that have faith in themselves. He wants them to realize that when they talk of misfortunes and become blue they are likely to communicate the same depressing influence to others. The up-to-date manager wants to guard against hiring employees who will obstruct his success.

You must realize that every moment spent in thinking of your difficulties of the past, every moment spent in bad company is attracting to you all that is bad; is attracting influences that must be shaken off before you can advance.

Many firms prefer to hire employees that never worked before so that they have nothing to unlearn. They are then not trained, but have no bad business habits to overcome. They are more easily guided and grasp the new methods more effectively because they are not contrary to what they have already learned. They are at once started on the right road, and as they co-operate readily they receive the mental support of the management in learning the methods that have been perfected. This inspires confidence in themselves and they soon become efficient and, finally, skilled workers.

Most big business firms today employ efficiency experts. Each day or week they are in a different department. They earn their money because they familiarize persons with very little business experience with plans that has taken the “expert” years of training and much money to perfect.

The attitude we take has a great deal more to do with our success than most of us realize. We must be able to generate those forces that are helpful. There is a wonderful power in the thought rightly controlled and projected and we must through concentration develop this power to the fullest possible extent.

We are surrounded by many forces of which we know but little at present. Our knowledge of these is to be wonderfully increased. Each year we learn more about these psychic forces which are full of possibilities of which we are not even dimly conscious. We must believe in mental control, learn more about it, and use it, if we want to command these higher powers and forces which will unquestionably direct the lives of countless future generations.

LESSON XIX. A CONCENTRATED WILL DEVELOPMENT

New Method. You will find in this chapter a most effective and most practical method of developing the will. You can develop a strong one if you want to. You can make your Will a dynamo to draw to you untold power. Exercises are given which will, if practiced, strengthen your will, just as you would strengthen your muscles by athletic exercises.

In starting to do anything, we must first commence with elementary principles. Simple exercises will be given. It is impossible to estimate the ultimate good to be derived from the mental cultivation that comes through these attempts at concentration. Even the simple exercises are not to be thought useless. “In no respect,” writes Doctor Oppenheim, “can a man show a finer quality of will-power than in his own private, intimate life.” We are all subjected to certain temptations. The Will decides whether we will be just, or unjust; pure of thought; charitable in opinion; forbearing in overlooking other’s shortcomings; whether we live up to our highest standard. Since these are all controlled by the Will, we should find time for plenty of exercises for training of the will in our daily life.

You, of course, realize that your will should be trained. You must also realize that to do this requires effort that you alone can command. No one can call it forth for you.

To be successful in these exercises you must practice them in a spirit of seriousness and earnestness. I can show you how to train your will, but your success depends upon your mastery and application of these methods.

New Methods of Will-Training. Select a quiet room where you will not be interrupted; have a watch to determine the time, and a note-book in which to enter observations. Start each exercise with date and time of day.

Exercise 1

Time decided on. Select some time of the day when most convenient. Sit in a chair and look at the door-knob for ten minutes. Then write down what you experienced. At first it will seem strange and unnatural. You will find it hard to hold one position for ten minutes. But keep as still as you can. The time will seem long for it will probably be the first time you ever sat and did nothing for ten minutes. You will find your thoughts wandering from the door-knob, and you will wonder what there can be in this exercise. Repeat this exercise for six days.

10 P. M. 2nd Day.

Notes. You should be able to sit quieter, and the time should pass more quickly. You will probably feel a little stronger because of gaining a better control of your will. It will brace you up, as you have kept your resolution. 10 P. M. 3rd Day.

Notes. It may be a little harder for you to concentrate on the door-knob as perhaps you had a very busy day and your mind kept trying to revert to what you had been doing during the day. Keep on trying and you will finally succeed in banishing all foreign thoughts. Then you should feel a desire to gain still more control. There is a feeling of power that comes over you when you are able to carry out your will. This exercise will make you feel bigger and it awakens a sense of nobility and manliness. You will say, “I find that I can actually do what I want to and can drive foreign thoughts out. The exercise, I can now see, is valuable.”

10 P. M. 4th Day.

Notes. “I found that I could look at the door-knob and concentrate my attention on it at once. Have overcome the tendency to move my legs. No other thoughts try to enter as I have established the fact that I can do what I want to do and do not have to be directed. I feel that I am gaining in mental strength, I can now see the wonderful value of being the master of my own will-force. I know now if I make a resolution I will keep it. I have more self-confidence and can feel my self-control increasing.

10 P. M. 5th Day.

Notes. “Each day I seem to increase the intensity of my concentration. I feel that I can center my attention on anything I wish.

10 P. M. 6th Day.

Notes. “I can instantly center my whole attention on the door-knob. Feel that I have thoroughly mastered this exercise and that I am ready for another.”

You have practiced this exercise enough, but before you start another I want you to write a summary of just how successful you were in controlling the flitting impulses of the mind and will. You will find this an excellent practice. There is nothing more beneficial to the mind than to pay close attention to its own wonderful, subtle activities.Exercise 2

Secure a package of playing cards. Select some time to do the exercise. Each day at the appointed time, take the pack in one hand and then start laying them down on top of each other just as slowly as you can, with an even motion. Try to get them as even as possible. Each card laid down should completely cover the under one. Do this exercise for six days.

1st Day.

Notes. Task will seem tedious and tiresome. Requires the closest concentration to make each card completely cover the preceding one. You will probably want to lay them down faster. It requires patience to lay them down so slowly, but benefit is lost if not so placed. You will find that at first your motions will be jerky and impetuous. It will require a little practice before you gain an easy control over your hands and arms. You probably have never tried to do anything in such a calm way. It will require the closest attention of your will. But you will find that you are acquiring a calmness you never had before. You are gradually acquiring new powers. You recognize how impulsive and impetuous you have been, and how, by using your will, you can control your temperament.

2nd Day.

Notes. You start laying the cards down slowly. You will find that by practice you can lay them down much faster. But you want to lay them down slowly and therefore you have to watch yourself. The slow, steady movement is wearisome. You have to conquer the desire of wanting to hurry up. Soon you will find that you can go slowly or fast at will.

3rd Day.

Notes. You still find it hard to go slowly. Your will urges you to go faster. This is especially true if you are impulsive, as the impulsive character finds it very difficult to do anything slowly and deliberately. It goes against the “grain.” This exercise still is tiresome. But when you do it, it braces you up mentally. You are accomplishing something you do not like to do. It teaches you how to concentrate on disagreeable tasks. Writing these notes down you will find very helpful.

4th Day.

Notes. I find that I am beginning to place the cards in a mathematical way. I find one card is not completely covering another. I am getting a little careless and must be more careful. I command my will to concentrate more. It does not seem so hard to bring it under control.

5th Day.

Notes. I find that I am overcoming my jerky movements, that I can lay the cards down slowly and steadily. I feel that I am rapidly gaining more poise. I am getting better control over my will each day, and my will completely controls my movements. I begin to look on my will as a great governing power. I would not think of parting with the knowledge of will I have gained. I find it is a good exercise and know it will help me to accomplish my tasks.

6th Day.

Notes. I begin to feel the wonderful possibilities of the will. It gives me strength to think of the power of will. I am able to do so much more and better work now, that I realize that I can control my will action. Whatever my task, my will is concentrated on it. I am to keep my will centered there until the task is finished. The more closely and definitely I determine what I shall do, the more easily the will carries it out. Determination imparts compelling force to the will. It exerts itself more. The will and the end act and react on each other.

7th Day.

Notes. Now try to do everything you do today faster. Don’t hurry or become nervous. Just try to do everything faster, but in a steady manner.

You will find that the exercises you have practiced in retardation have steadied your nerves, and thereby made it possible to increase your speed. The will is under your command. Make it carry out resolutions rapidly. This is how you build up your self-control and your self-command. It is then that the human machine acts as its author dictates.

You certainly should now be able to judge of the great benefit that comes from writing out your introspections each day. Of course you will not have the exact experiences given in these examples, but some of these will fit your case. Be careful to study your experiences carefully and make as true a report as you can. Describe your feelings just as they seem to you. Allow your fancies to color your report and it will be worthless. You have pictured conditions as you see them. In a few months, if you again try the same exercises, you will find your report very much better. By these introspections, we learn to know ourselves better and with this knowledge can wonderfully increase our efficiency. As you become used to writing out your report, it will be more accurate. You thus learn how to govern your impulses, activities and weaknesses.

Each person should try to plan exercises that will best fit his needs. If not convenient for you to practice exercises every day, take them twice or three times a week. But carry out any plan you decide to try. If you cannot devote ten minutes a day to the experiments start with five minutes and gradually increase the time. The exercises given are only intended for examples.Will Training Without Exercise. There are many people that do not want to take the time to practice exercises, so the following instructions for training the will are given to them.

By willing and realizing, the will grows. Therefore the more you will, the more it grows, and builds up power. No matter whether your task is big or small, make it a rule to accomplish it in order to fortify your will. Form the habit of focusing your will in all its strength upon the subject to be achieved. You form in this way the habit of getting a thing done, of carrying out some plan. You acquire the feeling of being able to accomplish that which lies before you, no matter what it is. This gives you confidence and a sense of power that you get in no other way. You know when you make a resolution that you will keep it. You do not tackle new tasks in a half-hearted way, but with a bold, brave spirit. We know that the will is able to carry us over big obstacles. Knowing this despair never claims us for a victim. We have wills and are going to use them with more and more intensity, thus giving us the power to make our resolutions stronger, our actions freer and our lives finer and better.

The education of the will should not be left to chance. It is only definite tasks that will render it energetic, ready, persevering and consistent. The only way it can be done is by self-study and self-discipline. The cost is effort, time and patience, but the returns are valuable. There are no magical processes leading to will development, but the development of your will works wonders for you because it gives you self-mastery, personal power and energy of character.

Concentration of the Will to Win. The adaptability of persons to their business environment is more a matter of determination than anything else. In this age we hear a good deal of talk about a man’s aptitudes. Some of his aptitudes, some of his powers, may be developed to a wonderful extent, but he is really an unknown quality until all his latent powers are developed to their highest possible extent. He may be a failure in one line and a big success in another. There are many successful men, that did not succeed well at what they first undertook, but they profited by their efforts in different directions, and this fitted them for higher things, whereas had they refused to adjust themselves to their environment, the tide of progress would have swept them into oblivion.

My one aim in all my works is to try and arouse in the individual the effort and determination to develop his full capacities, his highest possibilities. One thing I want you to realize at the start, that it is not so much ability, as it is the will to do that counts. Ability is very plentiful, but organizing initiative and creative power are not plentiful. It is easy to get employees, but to get someone to train them is harder. Their abilities must be directed to the work they can do. They must be shown how, while at this work, to conserve their energy and they must be taught to work in harmony with others, for most business concerns are dominated by a single personality.

Concentrating on Driving Force Within. We are all conscious, at times, that we have somewhere within us an active driving force that is ever trying to push us onward to better deeds. It is that “force” that makes us feel determined at times to do something worth while. It is not thought, emotion or feeling. This driving force is something distinct from thought or emotion. It is a quality of the soul and therefore it has a consciousness all its own. It is the “I will do” of the will. It is the force that makes the will concentrate. Many have felt this force working within them, driving them on to accomplish their tasks. All great men and women become conscious that this supreme and powerful force is their ally in carrying out great resolutions.

This driving force is within all, but until you reach a certain stage you do not become aware of it. It is most useful to the worthy. It springs up naturally without any thought of training. It comes unprovoked and leaves unnoticed. Just what this force is we do not know, but we do know that it is what intensifies the will in demanding just and harmonious action.

The ordinary human being, merely as merchandise, if he could be sold as a slave, would be worth ten thousand dollars. If somebody gave you a five thousand dollar automobile you would take very good care of it. You wouldn’t put sand in the carburetor, or mix water with the gasoline, or drive it furiously over rough roads, or leave it out to freeze at night.

Are you quite sure that you take care of your own body, your own health, your only real property, as well as you would take care of a five thousand dollar automobile if it were given to you?

The man who mixes whiskey with his blood is more foolish than a man would be if he mixed water with gasoline in his car.

You can get another car; you cannot get another body.

The man who misses sleep lives irregularly–bolts his food so that his blood supply is imperfect. That is a foolish man treating himself as he would not treat any other valuable piece of property.

Do you try to talk with men and women who know more than you do, and do you LISTEN rather than try to tell them what you know?

There are a hundred thousand men of fifty, and men of sixty, running along in the old rut, any one of whom could get out of it and be counted among the successful men if only the spark could be found to explode the energy within them now going to waste.

Each man must study and solve his own problem.

LESSON XX. CONCENTRATION REVIEWED

In bringing this book to a close, I again want to impress you with the inestimable value of concentration, because those that lack this great power or, rather that fail to develop it, will generally suffer from poverty and unhappiness and their life’s work will most often be a failure, while those that develop and use it will make the most of life’s opportunities,

I have tried to make these lessons practical and I am sure that many will find them so. Of course the mere reading of them will not do you a great deal of good, but, if the exercises are practiced and worked out and applied to your own individual case, you should be able to acquire the habit of concentration in such measure as to greatly improve your work and increase your happiness.

But remember the best instruction can only help you to the extent to which you put it into practice. I have found it an excellent idea to read a book through first, and then re-read it, and when you come to an idea that appeals to you, stop and think about it, then if applicable to you, repeat it over and over, that you will be impressed by it. In this way you can form the habit of picking out all the good things you read and these will have a wonderful influence on your character.

In this closing chapter, I want to impress you to concentrate on what you do, instead of performing most of your work unconsciously or automatically, until you have formed habits that give you the mastery of your work and your life powers and forces.

Very often the hardest part of work is thinking about it. When you get right into it, it does not seem so disagreeable. This is the experience of many when they first commence to learn how to concentrate. So never think it a difficult task, but undertake it with the “I Will Spirit” and you will find that its acquirement will be as easy as its application will be useful.

Read the life of any great man, and you will generally find that the dominant quality that made him successful was the ability to concentrate. Study those that have been failures and you will often find that lack of concentration was the cause.

“One thing at a time, and that done will

Is a good rule as I can tell.”

All men are not born with equal powers, but it is the way they are used that counts. “Opportunity knocks at every man’s door.” Those that are successful hear the knock and grasp the chance. The failures believe that luck and circumstances are against them. They always blame someone else instead of themselves for their lack of success. We get what is coming to us, nothing more or less. Anything within the universe is within your grasp. Just use your latent powers and it is yours. You are aided by both visible and invisible forces when you concentrate on either “to do” or “to be.”

Everyone is capable of some concentration, for without it you would be unable to say or do anything. People differ in the power to concentrate because some are unable to Will to hold the thought in mind for the required time. The amount of determination used determines who has the strongest will. No one’s is stronger than yours. Think of this whenever you go against a strong opponent.

Never say “I can’t concentrate today.” You can do it just the minute you say “I will.” You can keep your thoughts from straying, just the same as you can control your arms. When once you realize this fact, you can train the will to concentrate on anything you wish. If it wanders, it is your fault. You are not utilizing your will. But, don’t blame it on your will and say it is weak. The will is just the same whether you act as if it were weak or as if it were strong. When you act as if your will is strong you say, “I can.” When you act as if it were weak you say, “I can’t.” It requires the same amount of effort, in each case.

Some men get in the habit of thinking “I can’t” and they fail. Others think “I can” and succeed. So remember, it is for you to decide whether you will join the army of “I can’t” or “I can.”

The big mistake with so many is that they don’t realize that when they say “I can’t,” they really say, “I won’t try.” You can not tell what you can do until you try. “Can’t” means you will not try. Never say you cannot concentrate, for, when you do, you are really saying that you refuse to try.

Whenever you feel like saying, “I can’t,” say instead, “I possess all will and I can use as much as I wish.” You only use as much as you have trained yourself to use.

An Experiment to Try. Before going to bed tonight, repeat, “I am going to choose my own thoughts, and to hold them as long as I choose. I am going to shut out all thoughts that weaken or interfere; that make me timid. My Will is as strong as anyone’s else. While going to work the next morning, repeat this over. Keep this up for a month and you will find you will have a better opinion of yourself. These are the factors that make you a success. Hold fast to them always.Concentration is nothing but willing to do a certain thing. All foreign thoughts can be kept out by willing that they stay out. You cannot realize your possibilities until you commence to direct your mind. You then do consciously what you have before done unconsciously. In this way you note mistakes, overcome bad habits and perfect your conduct.

You have at times been in a position that required courage and you were surprised at the amount you showed. Now, when once you arouse yourself, you have this courage all the time and it is not necessary to have a special occasion reveal it to you. My object in so strongly impressing this on your mind is to make you aware that the same courage, the same determination that you show at certain exceptionable times you have at your command at all times. It is a part of your vast resources. Use it often and well, in working out the highest destiny of which you are capable.

Final Concentration Instruction. You now realize that, in order to make your life worthy, useful and happy, you must concentrate. A number of exercises and all the needed instruction has been given. It now remains for you to form the highest ideal that you can in the present and live up to that ideal, and try to raise it. Don’t waste your time in foolish reading. Select something that is inspiring, that you may become enrapport with those that think thoughts that are worth while. Their enthusiasm will inspire and enlighten you. Read slowly and concentrate on what you are reading. Let your spirit and the spirit of the author commune, and you will then sense what is between the lines–those great things which words cannot express.

Pay constant attention to one and one thing only for a given time and you will soon be able to concentrate. Hang on to that thought ceaselessly until you have attained your object. When you work, let your mind dwell steadily on your task. Think before you speak and direct your conversation to the subject under discussion. Do not ramble. Talk slowly, steadily and connectedly. Never form the hurry habit, but be deliberate in all you do. Assume static attitudes without moving a finger or an eyelid, or any part of your body. Read books that treat of but one continuous subject. Read long articles and recall the thread of the argument. Associate yourself with people who are steady, patient and tireless in their thought, action and work. See how long you can sit still and think on one subject without interruption.

Concentrating on the Higher Self. Father Time keeps going on and on. Every day he rolls around means one less day for you on this planet. Most of us only try to master the external conditions of this world. We think our success and happiness depends on us doing so. These are of course important and I don’t want you to think they are not, but I want you to realize that when death comes, only those inherent and acquired qualities and conditions within the mentality–your character, conduct and soul growth–will go with you. If these are what they should be, you need not be afraid of not being successful and happy, for with these qualities you can mold external materials and conditions.

Study yourself. Find Your Strong Points And Make Them Stronger As Well As Your Weak Ones And Strengthen Them. Study yourself carefully and you will see yourself as you really are.

The secret of accomplishment is concentration, or the art of turning all your power upon just one point at a time.

If you have studied yourself carefully you should have a good line on yourself, and should be able to make the proper interior re-adjustments. Remember first, last, and always, Right thinking and right Living necessarily results in happiness, and it is therefore within your power to obtain happiness. Anyone that is not happy does not claim their birthright.

Keep in mind that some day you are going to leave this world and think of what you will take with you. This will assist you to concentrate on the higher forces. Now start from this minute, to act according to the advice of the higher self in everything you do. If you do, its ever harmonious forces will necessarily insure to you a successful fulfilment of all your life purposes. Whenever you feel tempted to disobey your higher promptings, hold the thought

“My-higher-self-insures-to-me-the-happiness-of-doing-that-which -best-answers-my-true-relations-to-all-others.”

You possess latent talents, that when developed and utilized are of assistance to you and others. But if you do not properly use them, you shirk your duty, and you will be the loser and suffer from the consequences. Others will also be worse off if you do not fulfil your obligations.

When you have aroused into activity your thought powers you will realize the wonderful value of these principles in helping you to carry out your plans. The right in the end must prevail. You can assist in the working out of the great plan of the universe and thereby gain the reward, or you can work against the great plan and suffer the consequences. The all consuming fires are gradually purifying all discordant elements. If you choose to work contrary to the law you will burn in its crucible, so I want you to learn to concentrate intelligently on becoming in harmony with your higher self. Hold the thought: “I-will-live-for-my-best. I-seek-wisdom, self-knowledge, happiness-and-power-to-help-others. I-act-from-the-higher-self, therefore-only-the-best-can-come-to-me. The more we become conscious of the presence of the higher self the more we should try to become a true representative of the human soul in all its wholeness and holiness, instead of wasting our time dwelling on some trifling external quality or defect. We should try to secure a true conception of what we really are so as not to over value the external furnishings. You will then not surrender your dignity or self respect, when others ignorantly make a display of material things to show off. Only the person that realizes that he is a permanent Being knows what the true self is.

The Sixth Sense Its Cultivation and Use

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The Sixth Sense Its Cultivation and Use

THE SIXTH SENSEITS CULTIVATION AND USE

by Charles Henry Brent

CHAPTER I

THE SIXTH SENSE

By the Sixth Sense I mean the Mystic Sense, or that inner perceptive faculty which distinguishes man from the highest below him and allies him to the highest above him. So distinctive among created objects is it of man that it might, not inaptly, be characterized as the Human Sense. It is used for no one exclusive purpose; on the contrary it is only under its operation that man’s activities, one and all, become human. In its nature it differs essentially from the bodily senses though we are justified in thinking of it as a sense because its function is, like them, to perceive and to afford food for thought.

The five bodily senses originally, in the first stages of evolution, were, and, in their ultimate aspect are, one sense—the sense of touch. By means of it plant, mollusc and worm relate themselves to the universe of which they are a part. By degrees the single sense, in the evolutionary process, finds opportunity and occasion for specialization. Sight is extraordinarily sensitized touch by means of which form and color are perceived, and the distant object comes bowing to our feet; the stars, leaping across space, are converted into intimate friends, and earth’s farthest horizon lies at our door. Hearing is touch localized and specialized so as to be capable of perceiving the vibrations caused by the impact of one body upon another; its enlarged capacity classifies sound in such a way as to offer its mutations and subtleties for our use and pleasure as the weaver offers his threads to the loom. Smell is that specialization of touch, uniquely delicate, supposed by Maeterlinck to be still in its earlier stage of development in human kind, which responds to the stimulus of those otherwise intangible exhalations called odor. Lastly, taste is touch specialized so as to discern the inner properties of food stuff; taste is the testing sense. Mere touch determines the existence, specialized touch the character and niceties of matter of the physical universe.

As indicative of the unity of the animal senses and the coöperative sympathy between them, it is noteworthy that when one sense is impaired or destroyed, the others diligently endeavor to supply its absence, the entire body playing the part as far as possible of eye or ear or both, and each remaining sense growing extraordinarily acute so as to take on somewhat of the character of the most nearly affiliated or the neighbor sense. The blind man can almost see with ears and hands, the deaf can almost hear with eyes. The senses that are left strain, not without a measure of success, to convey to the brain impressions for which they are not congenitally adapted.

The organic differences in the bodily senses, then, find a close unity in functional similarity, all the sensory nerves grouping themselves under the head of touch. The Mystic Sense, likewise, first comes to our attention as a simple faculty of perception by which we gain cognition of that department of reality that transcends bodily touch and its sub-divisions, but study reveals that its unity is ordered complexity, as in the case of all developed endowments. Broadly speaking it is the sense which relates man to the spiritual or psychic aspect of reality. It puts us into relation with the spiritual order of which we are a part. It finds room for exercise, gains its freedom, and reaches its highest development in this sphere, beginning operations at the point where the bodily senses are compelled by inherent limitations to halt. It discerns the innermost character, use, value of the objective, and differentiates between the human and the animal estimate of things. Indeed it has in it that which is not of this world or order. It soars beyond human and mundane affairs and steeps its wings in Divine altitudes where the throne of God is set. Not only does it perceive but it also lays hold of and appropriates that phase of reality which lies beyond the unaided reach, or eludes the grasp, of all the rest of our faculties in their happiest combination, and therefore of any one of them independently. It takes the material gathered by physical contact with the world of sight and sound, and presents it to the mind for rationalizing operations. More than that, it comes back freighted with wealth gathered in explorations in regions where neither body nor reason can tread, converting life’s dull prose into poetry and song.

The most alert and indispensable of endowments, it is at once sociable with the remainder of man’s faculties, external and internal, and jealously independent of them saving of human consciousness alone. In its higher stages of development it accepts suggestions from all, dictation from none. Its manner is courteous and its mode of approach one of promptings and hints. The sphere of every other faculty is its sphere where it is content to play the modest part of a handmaiden, never usurping functions already provided for, although it has a sphere of its own whither not even reason can follow. It is supplementary to all, contradictory to none. Without its exercise there can be no progress or growth. It has its origin in a groping instinct, its final development in orderly activities capable of increasingly clear classification. Body, intellect, character, moral and religious, are under its influence and dependent upon its beneficent operations. It plays upon the body, contributing to its health and efficiency; it gives wings to the intellect, making it creative and productive, capable of formulating hypotheses and venturing upon speculation; it converts the seemingly impossible into the normal, bringing moral ideals within reach of the will, without which improvement in character would be a matter of chance; it unfolds the Divine to the human and forms a nexus between here and beyond, now and to-morrow, finite and infinite, God and man. It looks not only up but down, making the nature outside of us intelligible to the nature inside of us and friendly with it. If it peoples the stars, it also makes a universe of the atom. It is mysterious, recollective, emotional, intuitive, speculative, imaginative, prophetic, minatory, expectant, penetrative. As it moves up or down with equal freedom, so it reaches backward or forward, is attached or detached at will, in its operations.The Sixth Sense, or, to be more accurate, the second group of senses, has its specialized functions, difficult as it is to analyze with accuracy this most spiritual endowment of human personality, the inner gift of touch. It has specializations parallel to those of the bodily senses. Sight, hearing and testing are its functions. So clear eyed is it that it can see with the nicety of an eye aided by the microscope, so sensitive to voices that the lowest whispers impart a message, so critical as to test values with a precision and swiftness that surpass the taste and smell which tell us what is sweet and what unsavory.

If it be argued that I am but dilating on certain aspects of mind, I am not concerned to deny that all may be comprehended under that convenient blanket-word. But they are as distinct from the rationalizing media as from the will.

The nearest approach to a satisfactory substitute for the term “mystic sense” in terms of the reason is “conceptual reason.” It furnishes us with the thought of a faculty which has procreative or generative properties capable of being fertilized by intercourse with that which is separate from and higher than itself. Its first activity is to lay itself over against that which, though partaking of its own nature, is not itself. It is not self-fertilizing and can conceive or beget only after having perceived and apprehended.[1] It has constant regard for an objective and communication with it.

The operation of the Mystic Sense is summed up in the single word faith, which is described as the giving substance to that which is hoped for, the testing of things not seen.[2] There is no objection to letting the world faith cover the whole working of the Mystic Sense, provided it is not restricted to a severely religious meaning. It is thus that it is commonly understood, or at any rate when applied in other connections it is assumed to be the working of a different faculty from that exercised in the sphere of religion. In its distinctively religious meaning, faith is the operation of the Mystic Sense in its highest employment. There is no one faculty that is reserved exclusively for religious employment. The fact is that religious faith is no more separate from the processes of the Mystic Sense which appropriate health for the body, hypotheses for the mind, working principles for the man of action, and ideals for the character, or independent of them, than the act of physical perception, which enables us to touch the stars, is separate from that use of the sensory nerves which relates us to the book we handle, or independent of it. They are both the result of a single faculty, or group of faculties, operating in different altitudes. Faith will be accepted in these pages as a philosophic term. Thus we speak of scientific faith, moral faith, and religious faith with equal appropriateness, meaning the Mystic Sense operating respectively in the interests of the scientific, of the moral, and of the religious.

The Mystic Sense has for its workshop the uplands of life in the rarefied atmosphere of ideas and ideals. It is at once a super-sense giving us a bird’s-eye view of the universe which is not permitted at close quarters, and a sub-sense bringing before our attention the contents hidden beneath the surface of things. There are not two worlds, objective and subjective respectively, but two aspects of one world—things as they are in their absolute and ultimate being, and things as they are relatively or as apprehended by our cognitive powers. Our conception of the truth is a distortion or falls short of the truth, and it is our aspiration to bring about such a coincidence as will make the relation of subject to object perfect. We draw the thing as we see it for the God of things as they are now, not to-morrow only, the sole difference being that to-morrow our painting will be truer to the original and consequently more artistic than now. All objective is immediately reduced by man, by subconscious or conscious process, into subjective, so that we may for the sake of convenience talk of subjective and objective phases of reality, the subjective being human, partial, progressive, the objective being divine, absolute, and final.

There is an objective physical world and an objective psychic or spiritual world, the latter being immanent in the former, though not limited by it, so that every material object has spiritual contents. The spiritual is no more an inside without an outside than the physical is an outside without an inside. Each has its phase of reality, though in the ultimate analysis the physical is dependent for its value upon its spiritual capacity. The physical has a non-sensible inside which to be discerned calls for distinctively human as distinguished from mere animal powers of perception. Dimly in animal life there is a recognition of inner character in objects—hostility, affinity, nourishment and the like are instinctively sensed; but here deep perception stops except where, by reason of what is called domestication or association with man, certain human characteristics are faintly imaged in dog or horse.

There is no antagonism between the physical and the spiritual. The physical world is to man a medium through which phases of the spiritual are reached. The only antagonism there can be is that which arises by an attempt to use the material without regard for its full spiritual contents or inside. Were not the physical universe a sacrament it would be a phantasm. If man divorces the inside from the outside with a view to gratifying his physical senses he abdicates his character as a man to become an animal; if to feed anything less than his entire selfhood, he presents the spectacle of arrested development. The bodily senses alone can get at the full content, the deep inside of nothing, no matter how pronounced its objectivity, “The truly real is a thing that has an inside.”[3] The more pronounced or attractive the external substance and form of a material object and the closer we are to it, the greater the difficulty for the average character to gain cognition of its spiritual essence. “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God.”[4] Even those who place an undue valuation upon the material, whether possessed of wealth or not, have a like difficulty in penetrating into the internal realm which lies beneath and around as well as above and within the external.[5] It is absurd for men to expect to sense the spiritual except with spiritual faculties. The physical world is perceived by a sensory apparatus of the same substance as that of the physical world; the spiritual world is perceived by a sensory apparatus of the same substance as that of the spiritual world. There must be an inherent affinity between the thing apprehended and the organ apprehending. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually proved.[6]Reality is a term too often confined to that which can be expressed in terms of bodily senses; whereas it is that which has existence in heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, and which, apart from human perception, though in a minimum degree or passively, plays upon and affects man and his universe, but which reaches its highest potentiality manward when, by the volitional operation of human faculties it is subjectively apprehended and finds permanent place in his consciousness. Reality is that which supports and feeds the subconscious life by the pressure of its mere existence or laws of being, but which is capable of bestowing larger gifts in proportion to the degree in which it receives conscious admission into the activities of personal experience. It is a law of spiritual or psychic, as well as of physical, existence that every part is related to every other part and influenced by it through either attraction or energy. In the case of inanimate matter mere spacial propinquity or distance determines the measure of attraction or energy of object upon object, but where sentient beings are concerned the reaction of conscious volition on environment is the determining factor regulating the degree of influence released.

The search for the real in internal processes cannot ignore the external. Conversely the activities of the workaday world cannot summarily dismiss the internal.[7] The physical senses have a modest but indispensable part to play under the primacy of the Mystic Sense. The normal use of the Mystic Sense does not make a mystic. The healthily developed man is mystical though not a mystic. His dominating sense is that of the spirit, not that of the flesh. A mystic, technically defined, is a specialist in the subjective or internal, just as a collector is a specialist in the objective or external. There is no danger in either extreme except so far as its votary adopts an exclusive attitude toward its seeming opposite (which really is its complement), or toward the balance of human thought and life. A deliberate and persistent use of the Mystic Sense without respect for the objective would be subversive of all progress and a reversion to chaos. “The progress of thought consists in gradually separating the series of objective and universally valid, from that of subjective experiences. In the measure that their confusion prevails, man is, to all intents and purposes, mad; and it is this note of insanity that characterizes medicine and religion in their early stages. Dreams and reality are mixed up; subjective connections are objectified.”[8] If the objective and the subjective may not be divorced and set at odds against one another, neither may they be confused. Both errors would result in disorder and hopeless perplexity.

The serious crux is how, in the realm of the spiritual and the physically intangible, to distinguish between the real and the seeming, the true and the false. This it is the function of the Mystic Sense to do aided by the full complement of inner faculties. In a measure the Mystic Sense, like the bodily senses, acts automatically, but like them it needs special training in order to separate phantasm from reality, to determine values, and to grade and classify ideals until they reveal themselves to be ordered unity, not less but more mysterious because more intelligible or apprehensible by the whole man. The first principle to lay down is that no man can treat himself as a unit or credit the findings of his Mystic Sense with absolute or final authority until he has tried them by some valid corporate test. Neither sight, nor hearing, nor touch, used without regard to the experience of others and respect for it, can fail to lead us astray. The conclusions of the wisest and the competent register themselves from age to age, coming to us in the shape of beneficent authority to prevent a man from repeating work that has already been done and well done. Verification is not contemptuous of authority, though he flouts authority, indeed, who ignores it in a process of individualistic experiments. Pure individualism at best can apprehend but a fragment of reality and at worst declines into eccentricity or even insanity. Those who are really educated recognize their relation to a social whole and bring the results of their sense perceptions, before accepting their verdict, to be tested by the age-long, man-wide experiences of humanity as formulated in the accepted conclusions of their generation and found in its institutions and customs. Universal experience is never wholly but only approximately infallible, yet accurate enough to be authoritative for corrective purposes. By respectful attention to it, individual judgment is checked in possible error and at the same time is given opportunity to offer its own contribution to the totality of knowledge, a contribution which may endorse, modify, or enlarge that already reached. In this way only is society preserved from becoming a mob of eccentrics and fanatics, each whirling in his own little circle. Commerce, art, science, letters, government, religion—in short every department of life you can think of requires such a mode of procedure for the protection of reality in its varied manifestations and for the protection of the individual against himself. But in no conditions is a social checking off of findings more essential than in the psychic or spiritual realm. Mystical experience organizes itself or is consciously organized in a sufficient degree to give men that high kind of freedom which comes to us when we act with constant reference to the fact that we are members one of another, so that the experience of the human race is ours wherewith to enrich ourselves. A mystic of the type of St. Theresa, who could hardly see the objective in her rush past form to reach idea, could not be distinguished from the inmate of a madhouse who insists that his tinsel crown is the diadem of a Napoleon, unless she interpreted her personal experience in relation to the spiritual consciousness of Christendom. “Once,” writes this saint, “when I was holding in my hand the cross of my rosary, He took it from me into His own hand. He returned it; but it was then four large stones incomparably more precious than diamonds: the five wounds were delineated on them with the most admirable art. He said to me that for the future that cross would appear so to me always, and so it did. The precious stones were seen, however, only by myself.”[9] A madman would have omitted the last sentence. Her mystical experience was individual though it preserved for its foundation a background of universal experience. It united her to her fellows, instead of separating her from them.The law of use is as applicable to the Mystic Sense as to the rest of the gifts and endowments which make up the completeness of human personality. Its exercise enlarges its capacity and quickens its general efficiency; if used through the whole range of its opportunities, it becomes a hardy faculty, trustworthy in every sphere where its responsibility lies; specialization of operation in one direction, to the partial neglect of other departments open to it, produces acuteness in one direction and dulness in other directions which is characteristic of specialists in science; if the specialization is so exclusive as to shut off observation and consideration of every interest but one, there must ensue lop-sided growth and maimed personality.

It is the purpose of this book to trace the operation of the Mystic Sense in normal manhood through the major departments of human experience in order to encourage greater confidence in this wonderful gift, to appeal for a more comprehensive use of it, and to indicate how it may be cultivated.

NOTE TO CHAPTER I.

Von Hügel in his study of the _Mystical Element of Religion_ concludes that there is “no distinct faculty of mystical apprehension.” In a passage following this contention (vol. ii, pp. 283, 284), he so states his position as to make it possible for me to start from a contradictory assertion and reach his conclusion. We agree that mysticism is “not everything in any one soul, but something in every soul of man.”

The entire passage reads as follows:

“Is there, then, strictly speaking, such a thing as a specifically distinct, self-sufficing, purely Mystical mode of apprehending Reality? I take it, distinctly not; and that all the errors of the Exclusive Mystic proceed precisely from the contention that Mysticism does constitute such an entirely separate, completely self-supported kind of human experience. This denial does not, of course, mean that soul does not differ quite indefinitely from soul, in the amount and kind of the recollective, intuitive, deeply emotive element possessed and exercised by it concurrently or alternately with other elements,—the sense of the Infinite within and without the Finite springing up in the soul on occasion of its contact with the Contingent; nor, again, that these more or less congenital differences and vocations amongst souls cannot be and are not still further developed by grace and heroism into types of religious apprehension and life, so strikingly divergent, as, at first sight, to seem hardly even supplementary the one to the other. But it means that, in even the most purely contingent-seeming soul, and in its apparently but Institutional and Historical assents and acts, there ever is, there can never fail to be, some, however, implicit, however slight, however intermittent, sense and experience of the Infinite, evidenced by at least some dissatisfaction with the Finite, except as this Finitude is an occasion for growth in, and a part-expression of, that Infinite, our true home. And, again, it means, that even the most exclusively mystical-seeming soul ever depends, for the fulness and healthiness of even the most purely mystical of its acts and states, as really upon its past and present contacts with the Contingent, Temporal, and Spacial, and with social facts and elements, as upon its movement of concentration, and the sense and experience, evoked on occasion of those contacts or of their memories, of the Infinite within and around those finitudes and itself.

“Only thus does Mysticism attain to its true, full dignity, which consists precisely in being, not everything in any one soul, but something in every soul of man; and in presenting at its fullest, the amplest development, among certain special natures with the help of certain special graces and heroisms, or what, in some degree, and form, is present in every truly human soul, and in such a soul’s every, at all genuine and complete, grace-stimulated religious act and state. And only thus does it, as Partial Mysticism, retain all the strength and escape the weaknesses and dangers of would-be Pure Mysticism, as regards the mode and character or Religious Experience, Knowledge, and Life.”

If my interpretation of this writer be correct, he terms that a “recollective, intuitive, deeply emotive element” which I conceive to be a mystic faculty or sense. The fact that it pervades every part of human personality does not disqualify it from claiming the dignity of a distinctive faculty. It bears a similar relation to the higher endowments of personality which the ether bears to light and to the call of world to world. The Mystic Sense is the enabling faculty, which makes man human. Its pervasiveness does not detract from, rather does it enhance, its distinctness. To call it an element seems to clothe it in a vagueness which its character does not merit. If man were merely a phase of matter, we could employ the term element with propriety. That which _can_ be only an element in a universe, at any rate _may_ be a faculty or sense in man.

CHAPTER II

IN RELATION TO HEALTH

There is nothing so multiple in its composition, and yet nothing so seemingly simple, so unit-like a unity, as normal personality—a normal character englobed by a normal body. Normality is the product of a two-fold force, the true interrelation between the organs of the body and a similar interrelation between the inner faculties, culminating in a rhythmic interaction between the two. The normal man acts in the completeness of his manhood in all that he does, never adopting the rôle of either mere machine or mere ghost. In so far as the inside and the outside of man work as a unity, the dignity of human personality manifests itself; any departure from harmony approaches that dangerous borderland beyond which lies disintegration and disorder. Disease is a lack of rhythm, a note in the scale out of tune. Health is harmony.

Up to the time that consciousness of existence awakens, the processes of life operate under the stimulus and protection of the human and physical environment which surround the infant. With the immediate effect of suitable shelter and wholesome nourishment we are fairly conversant. As to just what direct or indirect influence psychic surroundings have upon the subconscious life of a baby, we are not in a position to dogmatize, though we can arrive inferentially at certain rational probabilities.

Apparently the infant, and certainly the child, is extraordinarily sensitive to subtle forces. Acting upon this supposition the Christian Church from the beginning, by a symbolic and sacramental act, has aimed to thrust children deep into the bosom of God by the rite of baptism, and claimed for them not only a place but a place of chief importance in the spiritual society. Instinctively the mother, with exquisite solicitude, whispers her ideals for the future of her offspring into the ears of the babe at her breast, talking as though to one whose consciousness were awake. In this way Samuels have been raised to Israel. At the close of each day the mother bids her child sleep by singing lullabies and hanging mystic poppies over wide-awake eyes. She speaks in the highest type of language, in poetry adorned with song, to this little unconscious scrap of humanity. In other words her mystic sense is pressing upon the mystic sense of her child as naturally and fittingly as her arms fold the infant body and her lips touch its cheek.

Unless positive proof to the contrary is adduced, it is safe to believe that it makes a great difference to the child’s after life of what sort its psychic environment is during its first years on earth, whether the minds about it are healthy, expressing themselves healthily, whether the tone of family life is hopeful and spiritual. Though it cannot finally determine the course that the child’s life will take, at any rate it affords the best opportunity for making it a worthy course. My conviction is, that the difference between good and bad psychic environment for a baby is the same as that between healthy and unhealthy vegetable environment for a young plant. An infant abandoned by its mother to the care of nurses and servants, be the provision for its animal comfort and safety what it may, begins life with a minimum of opportunity. Man is not born mere animal but man from the first breath. Therefore from the first breath he needs man’s surroundings. In order that his latent character may have its best chance, he ought to be given the most congenial human environment available. If there is no conscious self, at any rate there is a subconscious self, struggling at a very early moment by baby smiles and frets, gropings and babblings to utter itself. Psychology seems to have reached at least this conclusion—that the subconscious is, that it is the fundamental part of man, that it is his most sensitive self, never relinquishing that which it grasps and grasping everything that touches it.

Psychic forces may influence mightily the subconscious life of an infant and promote healthy character, but have they any effect on physical well-being? The reply would seem to be that, if at any time in the span of a lifetime they work beneficently in this direction, it is probable that they do so from the outset. It would be sheer waste of time to adduce arguments to prove that healthy minds conduce directly to healthy physique. The difficulty is to find the limit of such influence, so vast is it. Physical well-being, however, is not an end in itself, and it is a subversion of the human order to aim at health of mind or character in order that our physique may be improved. So nicely is human nature proportioned and adjusted that it is doubtful whether a person could achieve physical health by becoming good with that sole end in view. Physical health is not essential to a high degree of human efficiency, though health of character is and therefore must be sought first because of its priceless value. But it is our just assumption that a child with a healthy body is more likely to have a normal inner personality than if it had a sickly body. Outer and inner health act and react and interact so that it is equally true to say that, given a healthy mind and disposition, other things being equal, the body will have the best opportunity of being normal and, whatever its condition, of being used to the best advantage. There can be no consideration of higher importance than to make a child sensitive as soon after birth as possible, to his psychic, moral, and mystical environment. It will conduce to loftiness of character and, for aught we know, to useful longevity and vigor of physique.

Only soulless animals can be satisfied with physical splendor or count muscle sufficient in itself. Man by virtue of his manhood can never live according to merely animal laws. His animal nature itself is ultimately weakened if he does. In proportion as he has fine physique he must develop a fine mind and character. If not, unrestrained passion and ruin stare him in the face. The body finds its full meaning and so its possibilities, only when the soul has discovered itself and claimed its liberty. It is then alone that a whole army of anxieties and fears is scattered, leaving the body free and joyously adventurous, ready to identify its movements with those of the soul. Consequently it is not illogical or untrue to say that the first requisite for physical efficiency of a child is to insure that whatever its subconscious life is able to drink in should be sweet, wholesome, and strong. The tone of domestic life, the character of the child’s attendants, the whole expanse of human bosom on which it lies and from which it receives nourishment, ought to be as near what one would wish it to be if from the first the little babe had a conscious as well as a subconscious self, and were a morally responsible and not a mere non-moral agent. There can be a healthy domestic environment for the keen-eyed, deep-seeing child only when it has been preceded by a similar environment for the baby. What the tone was for the purely subconscious, it will be for the conscious life when it awakes. Therefore even though parents are skeptical of their influence upon infant subconsciousness, they cannot dispense with attention to its character if they hope to bring beneficial pressure to bear on the child’s conscious life. From the first they must learn to deal with a baby as a moral being, impressionable beyond observation.When we turn to man’s conscious life and the relation between health of body and a healthy consciousness we are on more demonstrable ground. Experience has proved that our external and internal faculties work in sympathy with one another. If the body is distressed, the inner consciousness droops; if the inner consciousness becomes morbid or out of sorts, the body, though not always actually falling ill, loses in efficiency. Yet, let it be added, the body is less able to bear psychic illness than the inner self to bear physical illness. The body can never turn psychic suffering into nerve and muscle, but the psychic nature can weave malady into genius through the powerful operation of the Mystic Sense.

To be healthy is a commendable ambition. Being in good health, our desire is to become as immune as may be to disease, or being ill to give ourselves the best chance of recovery. Health is preserved by keeping body and mind in close relation to health-giving processes. It is not our concern to discuss in this connection questions of diet, sanitation, hygiene, exercise and similar aids to the promotion of health. Their value is of the first order and may not be ignored or discounted. But just now we are concerned with another part of human nature which has much to do in determining our condition of body—the sense which furnishes us with ideals.

The objective of an ideal is found in the idea flowing from the mind of God. It is as real to the Mystic Sense as a flower is to sight and smell. An ideal is the reflection of God’s idea and is distorted or true according as the sense which perceives ideas is healthy or diseased. The Mystic Sense relates us to ideas, and enables us to touch, test, see and hear them, as truly as our bodily senses enable us to touch, test, see and hear the world of matter, form and sound. A healthy ideal is a vitalizing force, an unhealthy ideal is an invitation to disease. Ideals are subjectified ideas.

In the course of the development of that most experimental of all sciences, medicine, not only has dosing been reduced to a minimum, but also the natural recuperative powers of the patient have been discovered and are relied upon. The physician tries to open, for the sick, doors into nature’s healthiest rooms. The patient being placed in a vitalizing environment is expected by the use of his will and Mystic Sense to respond to it. The physician alone can do but half the work. The will, and not only the willingness, to live, a mystical laying hold of the idea of health, is in all cases a valuable, in some an indispensable, factor in the process of recovery. The suggestion of health predisposes to health; the suggestion of disease is provocative of disease. Medicine may be both a material curative and a sacrament of health.

The habit of our day has been such as to create in us a marked pathological consciousness. The very process which, by slow degrees, has been driving disease to the wall, has produced in us a sensitiveness to the idea of disease that is inimical to health. The discovery of the causes of disease has peopled the imagination, even of those who have never looked through a microscope, with an army of hostile germs to the obscuration of those superior influences which conduce to well-being, until we have become chronically nervous of the hidden perils which beset our path. Insignificant pains are construed into the symptoms of the last disease discussed in the papers or the advertisement of a proprietary nostrum. Momentary fluctuations in health send us tripping with anxious brow to the doctor. Dabbling in pathology is an undesirable occupation, especially for the young. The wrappers of patent medicines, let alone the medicines themselves, have caused more agony than peace of mind and have been more provocative of disease than of health. Happily we are emerging from the patent medicine stage.

A therapeutic consciousness ought to be the normal consciousness. The forces which make for life are in excess of those which make for death. The universe would go into steady decline were not the dominant forces salutary, and life would flicker out like the wick of a candle guttered in its socket. There is an inexhaustible fund of vitality open to man and we are competent to draw upon it so that we shall receive a maximum rather than a minimum. Part of the function of science is to put man into such a relation to the nature outside of him as to place the wholesome and remedial at his disposal, preventing disease by immunizing him from it. It is the common laws of health which are the most important. With the curious inconsistency which characterizes many human beings, we frequently see men adhering to some vigorous regimen of secondary or doubtful importance, while all the time they are flagrantly disobeying some primary law of health. The unity between the outer and the inner necessitates not only an intelligent and scientific treatment but also that which is mystical and more or less mysterious. Prayer, which is at once an appeal to the Source of Life to let loose saving health in our direction and an opening up of our being for the reception of hidden and unknown aid, is a higher form of psychic effort than either suggestion or auto-suggestion in that it includes both, though not precluding the concurrent use of either. Auto-suggestion looks only for self-induced benefit to the patient by application to an impersonal ideal; prayer does not think merely to apprehend a passive or indifferent remedy, but also to be apprehended by healthful, forceful Personality, like but superior to our own. A prayer to the ether would have in its reflex effect a totally different influence on the petitioner from a prayer to what was conceived to be a personal God. Similarly the quality of the virtue which is the result of mere ethical culture is as different from that which is the product of correspondence with the Christian’s God as cotton is from linen. Nor is it that God is inactive until we pray. He is operating to the uttermost that our listless or passive or antagonistic personality will allow. The highest personality can do his best to the object of his love only when the latter adopts a responsive and co-operative attitude. The feeble spot in much, if not most, prayer, is that it asks without importunity, or importunes without appropriating. The Mystic Sense must reach up until it feels the hand containing the gift, and take the gift as its own. Auto-suggestion is a lame term indicating the application of the ideal to the defective. Suggestion is a similar application on the part of another to a companion. With a background of prayer, the insomnia patient can with profit watch the dream sheep go through the hedge, or lay himself in the cradle of old nursery rhymes, or welcome to his bedside the veiled legions of slumber as they troop forth on their silent errand from the presence of Him who giveth His beloved sleep.Faith, which is simply the highest operation of the mystic sense, is as necessary to the complete work of healing as in the days when Jesus said, “According to thy faith be it unto thee.” It appropriates to the full the remedial contents of scientific agencies which, under its touch become sacramental, and clothes the life in the soft robe of unanxious peace and serene cheerfulness. It is easy enough for a well man to talk to the sick concerning the desirability and curative value of a therapeutic consciousness. The depressed soul resents the necessity of being called upon to act independently of the body and in opposition to it. Most patients, too, for the time being are inclined to count each one his own case unique. But the Mystic Sense is wonderfully elastic. Cheerfulness comes by being cheerful, hope by being hopeful, calmness by being calm, healthymindedness by being healthyminded. This is the work of the Mystic Sense living in the realm of vigor even when the body is in distress. When the Mystic Sense goes exploring in high altitudes it never comes back empty handed. Even when it fails to return with health of body, it holds in its grasp health of mind. A blithe spirit in a feeble body can accomplish more than a sluggish spirit in a robust body. There are two kinds of healthymindedness—temperamental and acquired. The latter is the most powerful and may be had by anyone who cultivates his Mystic Sense.

The extent to which the Mystic Sense works toward a cure cannot be formulated. It varies with conditions. Of this we can be assured. It is always salutary, frequently indispensable. Diseases caused or induced by an abuse or morbid use of the imagination cannot be banished without the aid of the Mystic Sense as the chief agent. The imagination must be cured before the sickness can be cured, and there are instances when the cure of the imagination is the cure of the disease. That is none the less a disease, the seat of which is in the psychic, rather than in the physical part of self.

Two things remain to be said. First, our day is laying a dangerous accent on the value of mere physical life in man. It tends to foster physical self-consciousness and is an aspect of degrading materialism. All the efforts being put forth in the direction of making it possible for the physically feeble to survive, are dangerous, unless followed up by commensurate efforts to make them lit as characters. Mere existence and mere longevity are false gods.

It is haply justifiable for men of low breed, who honestly think this life the only one, to grasp at all its available gifts, and struggle to retain it on any terms for as long a period as may be. But not so among those who have risen to a knowledge of the meaning of immortality, even in its lesser aspects, of the perpetuation of the nation and the race, and the persistence of a man’s work and influence among men after he himself has vanished. For such there is a higher food than mere life, beside which mere survival looks cheap and worthless.

“A man must live, we justify Low shift and trick to treason high, A little vote for a little gold To a whole senate bought and sold, By that self-evident reply.

But is it so? Pray tell me why Life at such cost you have to buy? In what religion were you told A man must live?

There are times when a man must die, Imagine, for a battle-cry, From soldiers, with a sword to hold,— From soldiers, with the flag unrolled,— This coward’s whine, this liar’s lie,— A man must live!”[10]

There is, however, a type of heroism which is not as uncommon as it seems to be for it is hidden—the type to which Kipling refers when he says:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on, when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”—

and once more we quote from another writer:

“Let us, for one thing, never forget that physical health is not the true end of human life, but only one of its most important means and conditions…. Death may and should be risked, the slow but certain undermining of the physical health may be laudably embarked on, if only the mind and character are not damaged, and if the end to be attained is found to be necessary or seriously helpful, and unattainable by other means.”[11]

Secondly, special and mystical means of promoting or regaining health must have as a background the accumulated knowledge and scientific skill of the day. If there are individual exceptions here and there, they go to prove the rule. We can no more ignore the history of medical and chemical science, the findings of the microscope and laboratory, without disaster, than we can cut our country off from the traditions, laws and customs of yesterday without similar results. On the other hand, it is at least equal folly to flout or discredit the mystical experience of the ages. Human life, individually and corporately, is a unit, and due recognition must be given to all that goes to make it up.

CHAPTER III

IN RELATION TO THOUGHT

The mind includes the Mystic Sense in somewhat a similar way to the manner in which the body includes the physical senses. But the Mystic Sense can be, indeed must be, considered as a distinct faculty having a peculiar function in the formation of that product of the mind called thought, which is “the effort to win over facts to ideas, or to adjust ideas to facts.”[12] The Mystic Sense can and does operate when the rationalizing faculty is reverently silent, and by its operation prepares new material for pure reason to consider.

There is no specifically intellectual organ. It is the whole man which apprehends knowledge just as it is the whole man and not an exclusively religious part of him, which apprehends and is apprehended by eternities and infinities. It is popularly supposed that science and mathematics call for the exercise of one set of faculties, and philosophy and religion another. Whereas the truth is that the same faculties are used for all alike in pretty much the same relation to one another. The Mystic Sense is as indispensable to science as it is to piety. Its method of operation is precisely the same in the one sphere as in the other.

We can best appreciate the important part the Mystic Sense plays in science by a survey of the foundations of accepted scientific fact. The whole body of our knowledge concerning the material universe is constructed upon a few ultimates, chief among them being the ether and the atom. The physical senses, so busy in that workshop of science, the laboratory, cease to be important when we deal with these fundamentals. The discoverer of ether never perceived it by touch, taste, smell, sight or hearing. Newton postulated it because he said it was a necessity, exactly as we postulate the existence of God. How could there be attraction across the measureless spaces which separate worlds if there were not some intangible substance? The ether was therefore discovered to order by the Mystic Sense and accepted because it proved a good working hypothesis. We are solemnly told by physicists that it is an “elastic solid,” a “pervasive fluid,” a “tenuous substance.” And yet when we chase this elusive something into a corner we find it to be “that which undulates,” a form of motion—well, so is a field mouse!

Again the atomic theory, first conceived by the Greeks, was restated by Dalton more than 2,000 years later, who brought it down “from the clouds to the laboratory and factory.” But neither Dalton nor anyone else ever touched an atom, saw an atom, heard an atom, smelt an atom, or tasted an atom, ultimate of matter that it is. The physicist claims, however, “that though he cannot handle or see them, the atoms and molecules are as real as the ice-crystals in the cirrhus clouds that he cannot reach—as real as the unseen members of a meteoric swarm whose death glow is lost in the sunshine, or which sweep past us unentangled in the night”—that the atoms are in fact “not merely helps to puzzled mathematicians, but physical realities.”[13] All this may be so. Nevertheless both the ether and the atom are so little material as to escape physical perception as completely as a ghost, and so nearly spiritual as to be perceived by the Mystic Sense with sufficient clearness to enable the scientist to use them as his fundamental hypothesis. If this reasoning be true, the ultimate of matter is spiritual and not material!

As with the ether so with the atom, it was a scientific necessity. The Mystic Sense contributed it to the laboratory, where it has been contentedly accepted as the ultimate of matter, until the other day, when someone opened the window of the atom to discover that it was a huge universe, of which a β corpuscle or electron was the least particle, related to the atom as a mote dancing in the sunbeam is to the room where it is. No sense but the Mystic Sense has yet sensed the electron. Not only, then, has science accepted the findings of the Mystic Sense, but, having accepted them, it has in the main not had reason to distrust them and continues confidently to base its research upon the foundation thus laid.

The freshest of more recent scientific discoveries, evolution, is as much the child of the Mystic Sense as of inductive reasoning. It was the Mystic Sense of ancient philosophers, exploring the unseen, which first descried it on the horizon as the sailor at the masthead spies the distant land. Darwin was the helmsman who steered the ship to port. He rationalized it and applied it as a working hypothesis. It is instructive to note that Darwin began his career with a rather acute sense of the mystical. He had a keen appetite for poetry, and pictures, and the music in King’s College Chapel “gave him intense pleasure, so that his backbone would sometimes shiver.”[14] He even began preparation for Holy Orders. In later life the interests that meant so much to him in youth died. “My mind,” he says, “seems to have become a kind of machine for finding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” It would be more accurate, perhaps, to explain this loss, not by atrophy but by too narrow specialization. His Mystic Sense and powerful imagination were not dead. They were centred on a single object. Having developed his Mystic Sense in one or all the ways open to him, a man may abandon its use in every direction but one. Christian worship, poetry, music prepare the Mystic Sense for that daring creation of hypotheses characteristic of Darwin. Without his power of hypothesis he could never have become more than a mere collector of the jackdaw order. He is his own best witness to the truth of this assertion. He says, “I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposite to it,” adding that he could not remember “a single first formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or modified.”It is one of the chief functions of the Mystic Sense to present hypotheses. Without hypothesis the reason is a shorn Samson. A goal must be postulated, otherwise the wood could not be seen for the trees, and the intellect would be hopelessly lost in a tangle of underbrush and smothered by the weight of its own learning. “While theory is aimless and impotent without experimental check, experiment is dead without some theory passing beyond the limits of ascertained knowledge to control it. Here, as in all parts of natural knowledge, the immediate presumption is strongly in favor of the simplest hypothesis; the main support, the unfailing clue, of physical science is the principle that, nature being a rational _cosmos_, phenomena are related on the whole in the manner that conceptual reason would anticipate.”[15] Generalization of a tentative character precedes and gives a starting point for induction. Hypothesis is more often the child of intuitive processes which capture thought by quick assault than of slower and more analyzable forces. First comes hypothesis, then the accumulation of data, finally, when all available evidence is in, rejection and the adoption of fresh hypothesis, or modification, or verification. “A bundle of disconnected facts is only the raw material for an investigation: their mere collection is the very earliest stage in the process; and even while collecting them there is nearly always some system, some place, some idea under trial.”[16] The spiritual contents of the physical universe are, in part, evolution, the ether, the atom and such like. They bear material names, but they are ideas, out of reach of our sensory nerves, and capable of being perceived, first dimly and then clearly, only through the Mystic Sense. They form the allegorical department of scientific thought, and are to the reality as the Apocalypse is to the Kingdom of Heaven.

It would be without special gain, however easy, to multiply illustrations of the princely place which the Mystic Sense holds in scientific research. Let us, therefore, turn for a moment to mathematics with its array of imperturbable digits and prosaic facts. No sooner does the mathematician begin to move, than he finds it necessary to call to his aid the self-same faculty, which furnishes the physicist with his ether and atoms, and enables the worshipper to pray. Else how could he explore the fifth dimension, and define a line as having length without breadth, or a plane superficies as having only length and breadth, or a point as having no parts? It is not astonishing that the mathematician, “Lewis Carroll,” was the author of those most delicious imaginative works of immortal fame, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” His vocation prepared and trained him for his avocation, and his avocation gave him new efficiency in his vocation. That which made him able to write the story of dreamland equipped him as an able scholar—the use in proper relation to his other mental gifts of the Mystic Sense. Similarly it is not surprising, but to be expected that Bacon, Pasteur, and Kelvin were, each in his own degree, religious men. They are the normal men of science, La Place, Huxley, and Haeckel being eccentrics and developed in a lop-sided way.

Invention, to turn to the department of practical science, relates the same story. Long before men saw, they dreamed. The locomotive was a vision before it was a fact; the aeroplane began as an idea, stinging men into adventurous experiment, before it spread its wings above the earth; men talked across vast spaces in thought before the earliest cable ticked its message, or the wireless system enthralled us by its wizardry. The Mystic Sense is prophetic and sees to-morrow as though it were to-day, dimly first and then with increasing clearness. “Without much dim apprehension, no dear perception; nothing is more certain than this.”[17]

Still once more, when we turn to literature the Mystic Sense is a pole-star. History is a museum of the curios of yesterday, a pile of bones, a series of occurrences, a collection of bald facts as cold and bare as a heap of pebbles, until the Mystic Sense enters the sterile valley and brings with it the breath of life. An idiot with a memory can collect past facts as easily as a wee toddler can collect shells on the sea shore and to as good purpose. But it needs a man who, however vast his stock of information, possesses a developed Mystic Sense to classify facts and reveal their insides. Facts never tell the truth to an unimaginative mind. There is a higher form of accuracy and a deeper presentation of reality than a bare statement. Figures and prose, taken alone, are blind guides.

In normal childhood the Mystic Sense gets admirable training through the poetry and imaginative literature that belongs to the nursery in every nation. It is justly considered improper to confine a child’s education to the multiplication table, scientific statement, religious dogma, and the memorizing of historic fact. The kindergarten, be its merits or defects what they may, is an endeavor to rouse the young mind to accurate observation and calculation through the imaginative faculty. Allegory, fable, and multiplied illustration form the natural vehicle for imparting knowledge to the young. The abstract is unintelligible, the bald is uninteresting; vivid description, poetical and highly colored, is the main road to knowledge. Care is taken to introduce fact in its best and prettiest clothing. Human life has a craving for the beautiful which is a phase of strength and an aspect of the real. Literature is the recorded expression of human life and thought, colored by the character of its various authors.[18] Art is literature on canvas, in vibrant sounds, and in stone.Poetry is a necessary and not an ornamental part of literature. It is to a large extent the mystical embodiment of prose, or perhaps it would be truer to say that it bears somewhat the same relation to prose that hypothesis does to science. At any rate it is the distinctive literature of the Mystic Sense. It is the literature of the young nation just as much as it is of the young child. The earliest and the most permanent literature extant is either poetry or poetical in idea. Imagination, a child of the Mystic Sense, which runs wild unless disciplined, was born earlier than more sober offspring of the mind. Poetry is the parent of prose. The habit of the nursery or schoolroom is the reproduction on a small scale of the method of history—first poetry, then prose. He rules a nation who furnishes it with songs. There is no firmer foundation for national life than a great legendary epic or a garland of folk songs. The better, if not the larger, part of the Old Testament is poetic. Even the historical books do not pretend to be history as Gibbon and Green are history. Legend and history had not been distinguished from one another in those days. Legend is usually elaborately colored interpretation of fact where the actual occurrence has been lost in the interpretation, to such an extent that it can never be recovered or can only be guessed at. By subjective process, somewhat akin to reflection or digestion, the objective gains a new and transfigured self apart from and independent, it may be, of the original object. Thus legend is over-subjectified history. The outside is ignored for the sake of the inside.

Poetry and wholesome fiction must find permanent place in the life of a normal man. Do not delude yourself into thinking that your chief or only guides in life are logic and sense perception. They are not. Intuition and sentiment lead you twice for every once these others do. It is so much more comfortable, not to say honest and reasonable, to acknowledge frankly the primacy of your leaders, than to follow them and pretend all the while that you are following other guides, which is a species of disloyalty. Scientist, inventor, mathematician, man of letters, alike are not quite true to fact when they claim that pure reason and an exclusive process of induction control their mental operations. I would raise the question whether there is any such thing as the exclusively inductive method. Is it not truer to speak of the deductive-inductive than of the inductive? The Mystic Sense, with its adventurous and sometimes blundering progress, holds so important a place that without it logic and induction would be as grist without a mill. To reach knowledge by “pure reason” is as impossible as to reach the sun with a stepladder. Even supposing it were possible to bring bare reason over against bald fact, the result would reach only a degree beyond the achievement of a pig that counts, or a jackdaw that gathers a store of glittering objects.

I have heard scrupulous people complain of the effect of fairy lore, nursery fables, and imaginative traditions like that of Santa Claus, upon child life. It may be a question to consider, but it is dealing with a mote rather than with a beam. Cheap current literature, and the psychologically false story, which is characteristic of many of our magazines, are far more of an injury to heart and mind than the imaginative excesses of the nursery. The objection to the latter is not in the substance, but in the unnecessary attempts to deceive and to confuse objective and subjective in the child mind. Santa Claus is a harmless creature viewed as the Spirit of Christmas. When he is turned into a chimney god to whom written or spoken prayers are offered, it is another matter. Who can withstand the pathos of the little sister’s death, resulting from her petition before the fireplace for a new toy for her baby brother? The flames took her and turned her into a burnt sacrifice to Santa Claus.

Supply is usually responsive to demand and the amount of imaginative literature and versifying in the journals of the day is a fair indication of the appetite for that which stimulates the Mystic Sense in letters. Also its hectic character is indicative of the wild state of the psychic life of the readers. The normal is counted uninteresting, and the abnormal, in incident and character, is portrayed. A steady diet of such reading leaves unhealthy blotches, indelible and disfiguring, on human life. Even in more serious literature the story of the abnormal may be given too great prominence. Valuable as the late Professor James’s _Varieties of Religious Experience_ may be, it has the fault of studying the abnormal as though it were the ordinary, leaving the great stretches of healthy religious experience practically untouched. If a physiologist were to give his main attention to men with one green and one brown eye, or with the heart on the right instead of the left side, or some kindred peculiarities, the sum total of his research would not contribute much to our knowledge of the normal man.

To conclude: every man who respects his mind, be his vocation what it may, has need to guard his Mystic Sense from defilement, and afford it opportunity for development. In what is technically known as education great stress is laid on proportion and subject matter. This is no less a necessity in maturer life than it is in youth. The same result ensues upon reading anything that comes to hand, that ensues upon eating anything that comes to hand. So important a thing is it, not only that we should be able to create hypotheses, but also that our hypotheses should be sound, that we must furnish our Mystic Sense with the same safeguards and stimulus that we afford our physical senses.

CHAPTER IV

IN RELATION TO CHARACTER

Good character is the reaction upon the whole self caused by the Mystic Sense as a habit visioning, and the will claiming, the excellent. It is the result on personality of a sustained effort to transcend the existing relation to life and its conditions, a state of chronic dissatisfaction with the progress and achievement of the moment, which makes the good mediocre by contrasting it with the superior and coveting the best conceivable as man’s right and heritage.

The Mystic Sense is always finding a more excellent way. Excepting when taught to play casuistical tricks, it does not look for the conventionally proper, or rest comfortably in it.[19] It launches out into that noble freedom which, from a group of probabilities, selects that which is farthest removed from suspicion of selfish considerations and promises ultimately the best social results. On the other hand it is not disregardful of the accepted code of morals. This it takes as its foundation, individualizing it for personal use, and boldly submitting propositions for improvement to the social conscience for approval, modification, or rejection. Such approval, modification, or rejection is never a purely formal matter registered in the dictum of a tribunal but rather the culmination of a process akin, in the moral sphere, to that which is termed “natural selection” in the physical sphere.

Character and morality are not synonymous. Strong character may be good or bad, the latter being the result of the active exercise of the will in a conflict with goodness; it is the transformation of evil from a mere negation into a positive, personal force by conscious volition. But our study is of good character and its cultivation, so that when the word “character” is used the determinative “good” is understood.

Character is the result of the correspondence of personality with the best that it knows. It is measured by the faithfulness with which it responds to opportunity. A man with small opportunity, who is scrupulously conscientious in availing himself of all the privilege afforded him, becomes a stronger character than another, who, with his great opportunity, is less loyal in his use of it. Of course the greatest character is that which knows ideal virtue and consistently aims to bring up life to its level. Character is determined by reaction upon environment, external and internal. There are many suitable environments possible for every character, more than there are unsuitable ones, as the vicissitudes of most lives testify. Character is thus bound up closely with individual personality and is never abstract, as morality is in the science of ethics. Character is created and disclosed by that phase of experience in which the Mystic Sense is busied in photographing ideals on the film monopolized by the actual to the discomfiture and obliteration of the latter. Better to-morrows are obtruded on poor to-days, partly by virtue of the fact that the Mystic Sense is naturally in constant contact with the ideally best, sensing and appropriating it just as the body, without conscious effort on our part, senses and appropriates light and air, and partly because, either feebly or vigorously, most men claim for themselves by deliberate volition a larger life than that which is.

The possession of character is the sole justification of self-respect. Self-respect ensues upon the growth of character, and is to character what perfume is to the flower. It is due to the consciousness of having within ourselves that which is worthy—not mere moral acquiescence but something we have made peculiarly our own by active effort. It is a high form of the consciousness which inspires an inventor when he has constructed a piece of mechanism. Self-respect is a witness to our having been individualized and is indifferent to external possessions or aught that is our own by virtue of favor and chance rather than by merit. Self-respect runs into self-conceit and stagnation when it rests content with that which is. It never dawdles in its movements nor loafs on the street corners. Self-respect becomes self-contempt and self-abasement when our attention is turned from our cherished ideals and actual progress, and fixed upon our defects and failures. Penitence is not a bar but a necessity to character and its fragrant effluence, self-respect.

Character calls for and expects communal respect in the same degree that it receives self-respect. Reputation should be commensurate with character. It is possible for men to have the unmerited respect of their fellows without having self-respect. This is due to the practice of deceit, conscious or unconscious, which enables them to simulate character and have appearance without corresponding reality. To the man of character, it is as truly a pain to be overestimated as to be underestimated. He can afford to lose his reputation, though he can never be exempt from the keen pain involved. In the process of achieving character, the great frequently, if not always, have to endure the withholding of respect on the part of the community. Seldom does a man make a contribution to progress without being temporarily at least discredited by those whom most of all he is aiming to benefit. Self-respect towers at such moments. A man of character will trust himself when all men doubt him but make allowance for their doubting, too; he will wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, won’t deal in lies, or being hated won’t give way to hating.[20]

Ideals become tasks and tasks become character in social experience. “A talent,” says Goethe, “shapes itself in stillness, but a character in the tumult of the world.” “That which would have remained only a quality in (our Lord), if He had stayed in the desert, becomes a life when He goes forth into the world.” The ultimate test of a man’s worth is his character and not his degree of morality—his power of volitional reaction upon environment, objective and subjective.Every man at some time during his career,—most men for a considerable portion of it, and many from beginning to end,—covets character. Those who fail to claim it for themselves seldom fail to admire it in others. Frequently they put as much effort into pretending they have it as would win for them the real thing. They pay the price of gold for tinsel. Character has commercial value and sometimes men are honest according to law solely because it is politic, or polite according to social requirement because it pays. But the honesty and courtesy of such men are not virtues. They are handmaidens of covetousness. They contribute nothing to self-respect. They have no moral content, and serve only to aid in bolstering up a vicious characteristic. However, it is a tribute to the kingliness of character that, either for its market value or because of its inherent worth, men clothe themselves in its appearance when they do not seek the substance.

The substance may be had by every man. Man not only is, but also acknowledges himself to be, responsible for what he is. He makes the confession when he keeps his worst self from the public gaze even though it promises him no special gain. The extreme to which the sense of personal responsibility and accountability goes is evidenced by the fact that, though _for others_ we find it difficult to believe in the closing of the possibility of self-improvement and ultimate loss fixed and final, many, perhaps most of us, think and act _in our own case_ as though _we at least_ shall be held strictly accountable for our character and reap as we live. If we had no responsibility for what we were and did, there would be no room for shame, were we to be publicly known to be exactly what we are. Rob Henley’s poem of its defiant note and we are in the presence of sober fact:

“It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll— I am the Master of my fate— I am the Captain of my soul.”

Character, like fruit, gets rich flavor through living in a climate of extremes which give robustness by threatening very existence. The story of the transgression of Adam and his consort is illustrative rather than singular. The temptation set was the very stiffest to which human life, being what it is, could be subjected—a demand for self-discipline and obedience to mysterious law. It is interesting that the first recorded strain put upon the human will was not to do rather than to do. Seemingly it was the limitation of freedom, the restriction of choice, the narrowing of experience. In no other conditions could man have had a chance to gain character. Had our first human ancestors won their day without lapse, every succeeding generation would have had to do the same. You cannot inherit character. You must win it. Temptation is never eliminated from human life, as we know it. Its conquest in one form opens the door to its appearance in another form. Our earliest human ancestors having known the higher chose the lower. But this did not, either in their own case or in that of their offspring through a thousand generations, close the door to the attainment of character. Human life begins in conditions which threaten character and therefore becomes eligible for character. The complaint that there are those in the world who, because of hopeless environment, never have an opportunity, finds sympathetic echo in every heart, but it does not absolve us from responsibility to our own opportunity.

Much is made of heredity by those who know little or nothing of the controversies which gather about the study of its operation. The popular interpretation presses hard upon its thorns and forgets even the existence of its blossoms. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,” is the dominating thought which, by exclusive consideration, diseases the mind of many a man until his whole imaginative nature is employed in the service of some congenital, or supposed congenital, weakness to make him its victim. In this way fatalism is induced. Fatalism is a disease of the Mystic Sense which substitutes acquiescence for reaction. It is the straw committing itself to the river, not the oarsman using the current to his own advantage. Acquiescence is too tame a virtue for man, if indeed it be a virtue at all.

Whatever credit we give to heredity for endowing us with the tendencies of our evil forbears, we must give it equal credit for endowing us with those of our good forbears. If you are determined to be fatalistic, be so fairly, recognizing the possible transmission of every kind of tendency. Conscious acceptance of gifts of strength from the past is a powerful counter-irritant to defend us against a real or imagined inheritance of weakness.

The problem of heredity is obscured by the fog of controversy which just now envelopes it. We must remember that the main questions in doubt are its method, and extent, and our ability to intervene so as to modify or improve its operations. Science very cautiously says that “heredity suggests, though it would be rash to say it is proved, that man is almost entirely the product of inborn factors which are hardly affected by [physical] environment.”[21] “Given parents of certain constitution, it can be said with confidence that _on the average_ a certain proportion of their offspring will have such and such characters.” “Both [the Biometrician and Mendelian] agree that what is present in the germ-cell will be present in the individual, and that external conditions as a rule play but a small part in determining its appearance.” “Almost entirely,” “hardly affected,” “on the average,” “a certain proportion,” “as a rule,” form a relatively large group of qualifying clauses in three short sentences. When we know more certainly the mechanism by which heredity operates we shall be better able by eugenics and physiological or mechanical processes to combat its evils and foster its benefits. In the meantime there is no call for us to stand idle. If man were mere animal it would be another matter, but he is not. His Mystic Sense, which links him to a superior order, has steadily differentiated him from all below him. It has enabled him to transcend environment. By means of it he can acquire character even if the laws of transmission should forbid him to pass it on to his offspring by congenital endowment. It is a finer and stronger thing to improve steadily the tradition of family or race by a series of successive personal conquests and achievements than to gain exemption from evil tendencies by the more or less mechanical process of procreation. Release from temptation is not necessarily a benefit, and is never as productive of character as the gift of ability to defeat it. Frequently all that is needed is inspiration, mystical and human, to enable a man to rise above his evil inheritance and habit. Evil tradition is as real and destructive a phase of heredity as inborn weakness, whereas on the other hand _noblesse oblige_. It is rather the tradition of the family trait of intemperance than a transmitted physical peculiarity that keeps the line of drunkards unbroken. Children must not be allowed to suppose that they can be excused from struggle. Being prepared for all temptations as a normal part of experience they are least likely to become victims of any: being made expectant of all virtues, they may perchance glean some.Our environment is our opportunity, particularly in those spots where it is uncongenial and threatening. To chafe and fret is to increase the inimical possibilities of difficulty. To think of it except with the intention of mastering it is weakening and depressing. To remove it with our own hands rather than have another remove it, if it be moveable, or, should it be immoveable, to weave it as material into our scheme of life, using its rough threads to the last stand, is to achieve character. A man must either fit his burden to his back or his back to his burden, if he desires to remain man. They are rare exceptions in mankind who have not capacity for so doing, if not by themselves, at any rate in a sympathetic social setting. A burdened life by the free use of the Mystic Sense may become a privileged life. Introduce fearlessness and experimental curiosity into hardship, and you get romance which keeps the wings of life moving and mounting, and makes the world of men around look up in aspiring wonder.

“There is no storme but this Of your owne Cowardise That braves you out; You are the storme that mocks Your selves; you are the rocks Of your owne doubt: Besides this feare of danger, ther’s no danger here; And he that here feares danger, does deserve his feare.”[22]

The Mystic Sense has an inner ear. Through it conscience delivers its message by means of which we come to know and understand the meaning of ought and ought not. Ready response to conscience is to be coveted above all things, especially where conscience has been trained and illumined. A friend once wrote me, a few days before his death, that he had come to see that what pretended to be education was no education at all unless it included the development of conscience. But mere knowledge of right and wrong, ought and ought not, does not impart goodness. To be aware that vice injures and virtue blesses is desirable but insufficient. There is not less vice among those who know than there is among those who do not know ethics, other things being equal, excepting where education is conceived to be something more than the imparting of information.

Sometimes nations and individuals covet character without being ready to pay the whole price for it. They give admirable facilities for the development of certain phases of training essential to character, but exclude that deciding factor which determines whether or not they may be woven into character. Influences from other sources may come in to repair wilful neglect, but, if not, the training goes for nothing so far as character is concerned. Public schools can never give character its best opportunity without a practical recognition of religion. Purely secular education, the imparting of learning including the science of ethics, without religion in church and home to supplement it, is a doubtful blessing at best. The current idea of secular education is not new. During the French Revolution its leaders mapped out what appeared to be a satisfactory programme of instruction. It was desired to have moral training, first without religion or with the “Worship of Reason,” then with a minimum of religion. The priests were suffered to continue as being at any rate moral policemen, but Danton planned to supplant them by _officiers de morale_. All experiments were of no avail. “_La morale populaire … cherche encore_,” it was pathetically complained, “_un point d’appui solide_.” Then came freedom to worship, and later the Concordat reintroduced the old religious order, partially, it is true, because the people could or would not live without it, but largely for the sake of morals.

If religion without morality becomes superstitious sentiment, morality without religion becomes for the average man inoperative ethics and ultimately a pitiless judge. There is no more oppressive tyrant than a high ethical code with a will, untrained, uninspired, and helpless to respond. It becomes a mocking and cruel Nemesis viewing with indifference its writhing victims. The Chinese Classics are preserved by the wonderful nation who produced them, as a literary treasure instead of as a practical code of conduct—the sure fate of the Bible apart from the Christian Church.

It is too late in the day to pretend that morality and religion are synonymous, however intimate their relationship, or that the end of religion is to make men good. Righteousness, which is the Christian term for morality, is to be had only in part by the practice of embracing the excellent and bathing our mystic self in the fountain of ideals. The type of righteousness thus created can never be aught than self-conscious, like an overdressed woman, or a gaudy painting. The Mystic Sense must occupy itself in still higher altitudes. Having come from God and being partaker of His nature, it must aspire to Him. The end of life is religion, and the end of religion is to know God. The purest type of righteousness, experienced or conceivable, is created by our having as our dominant ambition to know the only God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. The net result is Christian Character.

CHAPTER V

IN RELATION TO RELIGION

The operation of the Mystic Sense in relation to religion is commonly called faith. Conversely, faith under another name is that operation of the Mystic Sense which promotes health of body, which affords a starting point for all intellectual, scientific, and other productive pursuits, which leads character from strength to strength. The subjective conditions under which, and the spheres in which, the Mystic Sense is employed, differ. But the faculty itself and its _modus operandi_ are always the same. Just as the sense of bodily sight which views the dirt beneath our feet is the same sense which contemplates the blue sky, so the inner sense of sight which perceives an electron, an ideal, or a hypothesis is the same sense which sees God. It is as possible to see God as to see a hypothesis, and as possible (not more and probably less), to see a hypothesis as to see God.[23]

It is fitting that the most exalted operation of the Mystic Sense should be dignified by a distinctive term, provided that in so doing no room is given for the implication that there is a faculty, or set of faculties, used in religion alone. A man has religious capacity because he is man, and not because he is a specially favored individual of his kind. Man, unless he abdicates his manhood, a task so difficult as to verge on the impossible, must live by his Mystic Sense; he must keep touch with the unseen, or cease to be a man. To be a man, rounded and proportioned, complete and splendid, he must use his Mystic Sense not merely here and there but everywhere. The Mystic Sense has as true an existence in the whole personality, and relation to it, as the physical sense of touch, and is as acutely sensitive to the stimulus of the spiritual phase of reality as the body is to that of the material. It is analogous to all the sub-divisions of the nervous system but chiefly to sight and hearing, the most distinguished of the senses.[24]

To perceive an ideal is as real a sensation as to look at a flower. An impression is left behind not unlike the photograph of the flower retained on the retina of the eye and revived by act of memory and will. But the visualizing has nothing to do with physical sense perception, and the part of the personality thus impressed is spiritual. To characterize tactual sensation of the body as real necessitates a like characterization of the tactual sensation of the spirit. If it be argued that in the latter relationship there is no certainty as to what is phantasm and what reality, let it be remembered that the history of science is largely a series of corrections of imperfect sense records. A highly developed power of observation with ability for accurate registration and correlation is the distinguishing feature of culture. The Mystic Sense, like the bodily senses, is capable of increasingly accurate perception by skilful and disciplined use. It takes its beginnings in gropings like the awkward jerks of a baby’s limbs, and develops into ordered and reliable movement by exercise and experiment, which includes mistakes and the profit accruing to the experience. Superstition bears the same relation to faith that a false scientific hypothesis bears to ascertained fact. The Mystic Sense in its infant working catches a distorted view of the ideal, as when Darwin propounded his conception of heredity by pangenesis, and leads us astray in science; in like manner in religion a glimpse, through a mist of ignorance and moral deficiency, of the Absolute, eventuates in superstition. Both are necessary stages in the training of the Mystic Sense. Similarly to the way in which the theory of pangenesis stimulated discussion and research so as to aid the Mystic Sense to a more accurate perception of the true hypothesis of the manner of heredity, the superstitions of the nations conceived in sincerity, crude and even repulsive though they be, have contributed to the complete knowledge of God and His character which forms our most valuable heritage.

It is not hazardous to say that the ideals and hypotheses which are still waiting for the cognition of the Mystic Sense transcend gloriously those thus far apprehended. This means that science is in its infancy. It is equally true to assert that religion, so far from having fallen into decline, is but girding itself to scale heights impatient to feel the tread of human feet. That which is good and true in itself must persist, whatever its crudeness and blemishes. The Mystic Sense in relation to religion is only at the beginning of its history. Human, that is mystic, life began at so remote a period as to be beyond the reach of research. The operation of the Mystic Sense through many thousands of years[25] prior to human records led the way to that ordered approach to God which we call religion. The possibilities of its growth for the race at large are indicated and emphasized by individual instances taken from the common crowd. The world is just at this moment engrossed in seeing that every one should have an opportunity of developing fine physique and of acquiring information. It is assumed that under proper conditions a high average may be reached. The same is to be postulated for the development of the Mystic Sense in relation to the highest and best in religion. Under a sufficient stimulus the average man will be able to apprehend what now is reached only by a minority. This, however, can not come to pass until a whole world of men strain their inner eye and quicken their inner ear in the same direction, each contributing of his own strength to the rest, and all to each.

The history of Christianity and its immediate progenitor, Judaism, is the record of the highest development of the Mystic Sense in religion. In the course of its progress the Absolute rises from a dim shadow to the greatest Reality. It is distinctively the religion of orderly and rational mysticism. At first, men, feeling the working of the Mystic Sense, used it in a childish way. What was splendid in them would be culpable in us. Abraham could consider it a call of God to slay his son: a man of to-day could only think of it as a monstrous crime against God and society, revolting even to contemplate. It marked a stage in the rationalizing of faith when at the last moment Abraham saw mystically that it was not God’s purpose that any human being should ever do at His bidding an inhuman deed.The most perfect individual life of faith ever lived was that of Jesus Christ. His Mystic Sense never erred. He was never so exclusively Divine as not to be completely human. He was God living the life of man. He walked by faith, not by sight. Visions and ecstasies found rare and momentary place in His experience. He reached His goal by the use of those gifts and endowments which we have in common with Him, and proclaimed forever to the race of men that it is the simple, steady, patient exercise of the Mystic Sense toward a God who is revealed as Love, which exalts human life and puts it in the way of winning incomparable power and beauty. His reply to the query, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God, is, This is the work of God, that ye _believe_—believe on Him whom He hath sent. Further, He makes the astounding prophecy, Assuredly I announce that he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do. The early Christians were distinguished from their fellows as men who exhibited in high degree the faculty of belief so as to be in a unique sense “Believers,” and their religion was one in which faith played so prominent a part as to merit the name of “The Faith.” The whole Christian era has been an era of faith or the exercise of the Mystic Sense. No great work can be found in it, in science, literature or religion which has not been made possible by the stimulus given to faith by the influence of Jesus. Miracles do not cease to be miraculous when they cease to be mysterious, and the Christian centuries are strewn with such miracles—many of them, works of healing and moral restoration, as great as those of Jesus. But the greater works than His still lie before us when we have sufficiently shed materialism and committed ourselves more implicitly to the life of faith.[26]

The disappearance into the spirit world of Jesus has made that world human,[27] so that the Mystic Sense can be as truly at home in it as it is in scientific research. He prepared for His withdrawal thither by centring the attention of His friends upon it. His manifestations after His death on the cross were primarily to the Mystic Sense of His followers. That is to say, those unaccustomed to use the Mystic Sense in a religious way were incapable of seeing Him. It was impossible for Him to show Himself to the irreligious or enemies of God. This does not mean that it was only to the Mystic Sense of believers that He manifested Himself, but also to their bodily senses by way of the Mystic Sense. There is much that comes to the cognizance of the Mystic Sense through physical perception, and unless there is a refined and cultured nervous organism there is no mystical connotation. A Peter Bell could not find the mystical in nature.

“A primrose by a river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.”

The same primrose to a Linnæus or an Asa Gray would reveal an unseen world. Conversely, there are some things which cannot affect our physical being except by the way of mystical experience. Striking instances of this sort have been suitably termed by von Hügel “psycho-physical.” They are possible only where there is extraordinary sympathy between the mystical and physical, the latter having been made very completely the servant of the former. Only the mystic, or the specialist in the use of the Mystic Sense, is eligible for such experiences. The tremendously real fellowship with the Risen Lord of the disciples was of an ecstatic or psycho-physical order. It degrades the Resurrection manifestations to overemphasize their physical reality as though this, rather than the mystical, were the important feature. Their dominant note is spiritual. The physical perception came through the mystical. The experience of the disciples could not be reproduced in after times with other men, for the necessary conditions were wanting. Here and there among spiritual giants there is a well authenticated psycho-physical experience, but it is of phenomenal rather than of spiritual or moral value. And yet it is within our power to see the Christ as really and effectively as the Apostles did, though not wholly after the same manner.

St. Paul did not begin his life of faith when he had his psycho-physical experience on the road to Damascus. He reached there a turning point in its history. He was converted, turning his mystic powers in a new direction. Those who were with him were not sufficiently developed to see all that he saw or hear all that he heard.[28] His vision of Jesus was momentary but his life of faith was continuous. If faith was at its beginning when Abraham made his venture, it reached an illustrative and inviting climax when St. Paul made his. It was greater for St. Paul to espouse the cause of the Christ than to have a vision of Jesus. The phenomenal or extraordinary does not always culminate in such courage and devotion as his. It was because he was a mystic that he had his vision, not because he had a vision that he became a mystic. The Apostles who knew Jesus in the flesh had a lesser opportunity for faith than St. Paul who saw Him but once and then after psycho-physical fashion, and who never apprehended Him with all his bodily senses like those who saw “with their eyes” and “beheld,” and whose “hands handled” the Word of Life. It was fitting that St. Paul should give Christianity the impetus which made it a world religion. The highest development of faith has assigned to it the biggest undertaking. St. Peter with undeveloped intellectual gifts and faith based on sight could not do what St. Paul with highly developed reason and singular faith could do. The Risen Jesus Himself declared that faith dependent upon physical or psycho-physical experience is of a lower order than that in which the mystic sense is independent of phenomenal action of the bodily sense—Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.The great multitude of mortals will always be outside of psycho-physical experiences. There is no religious loss in the fact. Rather the contrary. That which gives the soul its permanent hold upon moral and spiritual realities and regard for them in mystics is not their rare psycho-physical experiences, but the same exercise of the Mystic Sense in the daily round of commonplace religious duty which is open to every human being, with like wonderful results upon character. A phenomenal spiritual occurrence in the case of one who was not living a religious life would be a mere wonder, perhaps even productive of spiritual harm.[29] Such experiences are never to be sought for. If they come their peril is not less than their inspiration.

“The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we need to ask, Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us daily nearer God.”

It is a great barrier to religious effort among the crowd, for those living the life of faith, to give the impression that their experience is one of a series of ecstasies. It is no more so than is that of a student of science or higher mathematics. It is the life of faith open to all men which forms the religious life of the best men and the best religious life of all men—the constant placing of God before the Mystic Sense in a way not dissimilar from that in which the scientist approaches his hypothesis.

“Think not the Faith by which the just shall live Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven, Far less a feeling fond and fugitive, A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given; It is an affirmation and an act That bids eternal truth be present fact.”

Though the Mystic Sense is not the sole religious faculty, it holds the primacy here as in every distinctively human activity. Used with reason its operation becomes reasonable or rational faith. Its opposite is not reason but sight, that is to say, the unaided findings of the bodily senses of which sight, being the most princely, is representative. Hence St. Paul’s contrast—we walk by faith, not by sight. Even here it is hardly fair to say there is antagonism. Sight is the enemy of faith only when it refuses to be an ally. Sight sees, faith in-sees and therefore fore-sees. Sight has boundaries which it cannot pass. Faith has horizons which retreat as it advances.

Faith has become increasingly rational as the world has grown older and experience has been added to experience. Its explorations in the world of ideals have been more frequent and daring with the advance of time. Consequently the man of to-day makes his flights thitherwards with a fulness of assurance on rational grounds or grounds of high probability which would have been impossible to an Abraham. If the triumphs open to faith have multiplied, so have the deterrent forces holding it back or set in battle array to thwart or otherwise impair it. The commonest injury wrought upon faith is the deflecting of it from the worthy to the unworthy or less worthy. If a man’s Mystic Sense, acute in other directions, is dormant or sluggish in religion, the reason is usually to be found, I think, in circumstances analogous to those which make a student of _belles lettres_, for instance, indifferent to science, or a philosopher careless of the exploits of commerce, cases of which are not wanting. The mind finds higher pleasure among certain persons in being exclusive and technical than in being catholic. So the Mystic Sense can fall short of its highest employment simply because there is not in its possessor the will to employ it commensurately with its capacity. The explanation why some men are not actively religious must be sought elsewhere than in the contention that they are short a faculty. The Mystic Sense, which by virtue of their humanity they possess, is not employed by them religiously from whatever reason—defective interest, prejudice, antagonism, environment. Nevertheless the same inner sense is pushed to its fullest activity in other directions. The faculty which by a daring leap fixes on the evolutionary hypothesis, or with imaginative subtlety suggests the plot of a novel, is the self-same one which enables us to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” The consideration of vicious men who are irreligious does not come within the purview of this discussion. Religion and vice are mutually exclusive, though piety and immorality are not, so that we have the anomaly of immoral character revelling in pious practices.

One thing remains to be said. The use of the Mystic Sense in religion, more perhaps than in any other sphere, cannot begin and end in individualism. It is requisite for each to submit the results of his mystic excursions and explorations to the conclusions of the most advanced religion. Mystic observation and experience must have the support and purification of universal mystic experience that will distinguish between the false and the true, phantasm and reality, and deliver the individual from eccentricity and extravagance. In other words, a church is more necessary than a chamber of commerce, a national government, or an academy of science. Mystic experience must be organized like all other experience. As the world grows older and man wiser, organization develops and broadens. National societies and alliances become international and a parliament of man seems a reasonable goal toward which to press. Human life in its individual aspect finds its fullest freedom in organization and not apart from it. The idea of the Catholic Church is as old as Christianity. One Body, one spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, said St. Paul before Christianity was fifty years old—and the use of the Mystic Sense independently of organized Christian experience cannot hope to reach valuable results. Reformers of religion are eccentrics and detract from their service so far as they ignore the religious experience of the ages by assuming exclusive positions or lifting a doctrine out of its setting. Our Lord never broke with the faith of His fathers. His last act was to partake of the Passover according to the law. It was the Jews who broke with Him. He came not to destroy but to fulfill. The only setting for any one part of the truth is all the rest of the truth. The only relationship big enough for any one man is all the rest of mankind. When at last the disturbed and broken Christian Church comes to rest in the large scheme of unity planned by its Founder, then the mystical life of man will gain a power and splendor which now is but a vision and a hope.

* * * * *

This concludes my endeavor to credit the Mystic Sense with that dignity and position of importance which belongs to it by right. The attempt is crude and the brilliant vision which I had at the beginning of my task has become dimmer under the process of putting it into words. Whatever has been written stands as a contribution of thought and experience which cannot be of much value until it has been purified from the dross of individualism through the findings of religion and science, and lost in the great volume of truth to which I submit it with reverence and loyalty.