for,' 
 
 W 
 
Class 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
The Power of Silence 
 
 tAn Interpretation of Life in its Relation to Health 
 and Happiness 
 
 BY 
 
 HORATIO W. DF 
 
 It* tfU* 
 
 " Ye taught my lips a single speech 
 
 And a thousand silences 
 
 Emerson 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 
 
 1895 
 
^•a* 
 
 ^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 1895 
 
 HORATIO W. DRBSSBR 
 
 Oeo. H. ELLtS, PRINTER, 141 FRANKLIN STREET, BOSTON. 
 
Eo mv Jat&et anfl fRatfytv, 
 
 JULIUS A. DRESSER, 
 ANNETTA G. DRESSER, 
 
 THIS YOLUME IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The present volume is the outgrowth of more than 
 a half-century of inquiry on the part of those to whom 
 the author is chiefly indebted. This inquiry began with 
 the researches of Dr. P. P. Quimby, of Belfast, Me., 
 who devoted more than twenty years to the investigation 
 of mental phenomena in relation to health and happiness. 
 With him the author's father and mother were associated 
 for several years previous to his death in 1866, and from 
 him they learned many practical truths of the inner life. 
 But Dr. Quimby left no published work, and they were 
 long prevented by adverse circumstances from making 
 any public use of his investigations. Yet they never lost 
 sight of his teaching. It became a life with them, and 
 bore the test of all the experiences in the category of 
 sorrow and suffering. They created a home atmosphere 
 of hope, of quiet strength and healthy inquiry, into which 
 it was a rich heritage to be born. 
 
 Out of these household discussions grew in time many 
 courses of lectures delivered to small audiences in Boston 
 and elsewhere. The following pages represent the last 
 
of these courses, delivered in Boston during the past year 
 by the author in co-operation with Mrs. A. G. Dresser. 
 Chapter II., on "The Immanent God," has already 
 appeared in pamphlet form ; and the kind reception ac- 
 corded it has led to the revision and publication of the 
 other papers in the series. In this task the author has 
 been constantly guided by the advice and suggestion of 
 Mrs. Dresser, to whom he is especially indebted for the 
 subject matter of the concluding chapter. The volume 
 may, therefore, be fairly taken to represent our co-operative 
 thought, and in a way to reflect the lives of the two pioneer 
 workers in this field, whose unsparing devotion was, for us, 
 the best evidence of its truth while thev were still here. 
 
 H. W. D. 
 
 481 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass., 
 March 25, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. Introductory 9 
 
 II. The Immanent God 17 
 
 III. The World of Manifestation .... 48 
 
 IV. Our Life in Mind 71 
 
 V. The Meaning of Suffering 104 
 
 VI. Adjustment to Life 131 
 
 VII. Poise 161 
 
 VIII. Self-help 191 
 
I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 One characteristic stands out above all others 
 in the century of thought now rapidly drawing 
 to a close. It is an age of persistent and un- 
 sparing inquiry, of search for causes, sources, 
 origins. It is not content with faith alone, but 
 seeks reasons. The distinctions between schools 
 and systems of thought are fading out in the 
 light of the larger sympathy and sense of 
 brotherhood which the age inspires. The ideal 
 of a universal human society, a universal sci- 
 ence, and a universal religion, is already dawn- 
 ing upon us. Students of history, of nature, of 
 human thought and society, are endeavoring to 
 draw an accurate picture of the world-life of the 
 past out of which the present has necessarily 
 proceeded. There is a new demand made upon 
 man, — to understand himself in the light of all 
 the causes that have operated to produce him, 
 his thought, his daily experience, his joy and 
 suffering. This desire to know the origin of 
 beings and things as a progressing whole gives 
 the clue to the method and purpose of the pres- 
 ent volume. 
 
IO 
 
 Its first object is to be helpful, but not in the 
 traditional way. It urges no mere acceptance of 
 its doctrine, proposes no name for its theory, 
 and claims neither originality nor finality for its 
 teaching. It offers reasons for certain phases of 
 the inner life which have hitherto remained 
 mysterious. It is offered as a possible stimulus 
 to systematic and patient inquiry. But it has a 
 far deeper object than this, a purpose in which 
 it will fail unless it be perfectly clear from the 
 outset that this volume is something more than 
 a restatement of the great and beautiful truths 
 which were enunciated so long ago. 
 
 This purpose will become apparent by consid- 
 ering the difference between one person and an- 
 other. Life is a problem which has for each an 
 individual solution. No one can wholly solve it 
 for us or take from it the element of personal 
 responsibility. It has its own particular history 
 and meaning in each individual case. Differ- 
 ence in temperament and in experience gives in- 
 finite variety to these personal solutions*-/ The 
 utmost that one individual can do for another is 
 to enunciate the principles which underlie all 
 experiences, however varied. Truth is not truth 
 for us until we have made it our own through 
 reflection, until we have applied it in daily life 
 
 It is hoped, then, that the reader will stop 
 every important point, as the discussion ap 
 
II 
 
 proaches daily life, to make the thought his own 
 through quiet realization of its spirit and its 
 meaning. Let him pause in restful silence to 
 ask, without forcing himself to think, What does 
 this mean for me? How does it explain, how 
 does it accord with my experience? Have I 
 ever devoted time and reflection — alone with 
 my deepest self — to realize the full bearing of 
 the profoundest and sublimest truths of life? 
 Have I ever made them my own and actualized 
 them in daily life, or is there still a chasm be- 
 tween theory and practice? 
 
 If the reader will keep this practical object 
 constantly in view, unsuspected applications of 
 well-known truths will become apparent before 
 the volume is finished. 
 
 This book does not, however, advise rigorous 
 self-analysis of the personal self alone. It 
 seeks a way of escape from narrowing introspec- 
 tion and self-consciousness. It seeks the Origin 
 of all consciousness and all life. It proceeds on 
 the principle that man cannot fully understand 
 himself without constant reference to the omni- 
 present Spirit in whom he lives, and that in this 
 profoundest wisdom is to be found the one un- 
 failing resource in every moment of need. It is 
 not an inquiry alone. It is a chapter from life, 
 an appeal to life, and aims to give the thing 
 itself, so far as possible, instead of talking about 
 
12 
 
 it. The principles on which it insists are the 
 outgrowth of experience emphasized by reason. 
 It therefore appeals both to the reason of the 
 reader and to those deeper feelings which find 
 their reason in our relationship to the great 
 Over-Soul. How else can one hope to unite 
 philosophy and life? 
 
 It is obviously better to be true to all aspects 
 of life as it appears from the angle of one's own 
 temperament and experience than to force all 
 facts into a particular system. The deepest 
 facts are usually slighted, if not excluded, by 
 the latter process. No formula seems large 
 enough to cover all we know and feel. There is 
 an element in experience that always eludes us. 
 i Some experiences can never be told. They are 
 part of us. They are sacred, and one hesitates 
 to speak of them. Yet one can suggest them, 
 ior at least let it be known that in these rarest 
 jmoments of existence one seemed most truly to 
 live. Only in this way does the soul, or that 
 part of us which is most truly individual, find 
 partial expression in language. Only in this 
 way does the unfetterec!*?£*^show its freedom 
 from prejudice and dogma. Allegiance to a 
 person or tlie%^ limits one to the particular 
 view of life represented by that person or theory. 
 To claim finality for one's system of thought 
 would be equivalent to affirming that progress 
 
shall end with that particular discussion. Our 
 theories serve us well so long as we remember 
 that life itself is larger. 
 
 Life, then, is large, and demands a broad way 
 of thinking about it. To the majority, it is 
 true, life is a mystery into which it is futile to 
 delve too deeply, or it is a series of experiences 
 at once so contradictory and fragmentary that no 
 one can deduce any meaning from them. We 
 have no sense of what our total self means. 
 We suffer, and we seek relief. We are absorbed 
 in the present, in its needs and woes, unaware 
 that our whole past lives, our inheritance and 
 our temperament, may affect this bit of suffer- 
 ing nature which for the moment limits our 
 thought. Thus experience everywhere lacks 
 perspective. Our thinking is painfully narrow. 
 We do not look far enough. We live as though 
 time were soon to cease, and prudence would not 
 permit us an hour for quiet reflection. 
 
 Yet a new phase, and to some the happiest 
 phase, of life begins when we become conscious 
 of our intimate relation to eternity, when we 
 stop hurried thought, and try quietly to realize 
 what life means as a progressing whole. If life 
 be one, and reveal one purpose, one God, can 
 any other interpretation be rational, will the 
 parts ever assume their true relationship in our 
 minds except when viewed in the light of the 
 
14 
 
 whole? If all power be one, and resident in the 
 universe, acting through something or somebody, 
 can we not discover how it is acting, and thereby 
 learn the course of events as related to our own 
 lives? Can we not become adjusted to the situ- 
 ation as it actually is, and stop this continual 
 rebellion, this sense of dis-ease and lack of har- 
 mony with the inevitable? Possibly our suffer- 
 ing is largely unnecessary, and is caused by our 
 own attitude. Possibly, too, it has a deeper 
 meaning than we had suspected. 
 
 B^ before we can bring about a change of at- 
 titude, before we can realize the power of si- 
 lence, we must have a firm basis to stand upon, 
 we must know what that power is. The pres- 
 ence of an unwordable element in our deepest 
 experience is no excuse for vagueness. The 
 thoughtful mind of to-day is no longer content 
 with mere scepticism or with mere unproved 
 assertion. We must have a reason for our faith: 
 otherwise it is no faith at all, and the first try- 
 ing experience will set us once more adrift at 
 the mercy of fear and opinion. 
 
 Finally, then, this book aims to be positive 
 and hopeful, in spirit and in teaching. Its first 
 proposition is : — 
 
 Experience is best explained by its immediate 
 environment. The truth is involved in the very 
 nature of the beings and things by which we are 
 
15 
 
 surrounded. It only needs to be evolved or 
 made explicit. All power is immanent. It 
 works through something. Man should not look 
 beyond his own nature, his own temperament, 
 inheritance, education, until he is compelled to 
 do so in order to find an adequate explanation of 
 his experience. He should have a clear concep- 
 tion of the closely related events out of which 
 his own life has proceeded as an inevitable conse- 
 quence, just as the river is enlarged and shaped 
 in its course by its tributaries and the country 
 through which it flows, yet never rises higher 
 than its source. In a word, he must know his 
 origin, both immediate and remote. He must 
 start with his own personal experience, but 
 should not stop until he have traced it to the 
 very Source beyond which thought can never go. 
 This inquiry leads us to a consideration of the 
 subject of subjects, on which one most of all 
 hesitates to speak, — the nature and life of God. 
 In pursuing this inquiry, the aim will be to use 
 simple, untechnical language, with no historical 
 references and as little dry reasoning as possi- 
 ble. Although this method is open to adverse 
 criticism, it unquestionably serves the purpose 
 of the book, namely, to deal directly with the 
 thing itself out of which grow both philosophy 
 and life. Truth is a sphere into which we must 
 break somewhere. If our inquiry lead us finally 
 
i6 
 
 to the Reality itself, we shall feel it and know 
 it, and lay little stress on the mere words and 
 forms that led us to the Spirit beneath them. 
 Let us, then, make the start in some well-known 
 fact of existence, which shall lead as quickly as 
 possible to that on which all existence depends. 
 
II. 
 
 THE IMMANENT GOD. 
 
 Some knowledge of the law of cause and effect 
 lies at the basis of all systematic reflection. 
 When a message is flashed over the wires from 
 town to town, or the electric car transports us 
 quickly and easily through the city streets, we 
 know beyond all question that some cause has 
 produced the effect which serves us so readily. 
 The ease and rapidity with which the effect 
 results do not deceive us. We may know little 
 about the force in question ; but we know that it 
 acts in unvarying accordance with certain laws, 
 the understanding of which enables us to control 
 it. We learn further that every cause has its 
 antecedent. The electricity is generated with 
 energy derived ultimately from the sun. The 
 motion of the ship, as it sails before the wind, 
 is likewise traceable from wind to sun, from the 
 sun to the very primal source of the motion 
 which caused our universe to be. And we stop 
 here only because we know not the antecedent of 
 this first activity. 
 
 The chain of related causes and their subse- 
 quent effects is in reality endless. I Without a 
 
18 
 
 cause nothing can happen, nothing ever hap- 
 pened; and with an eternally active cause in the 
 world something must always happen. ") Every 
 cause, every effect, every event in the history of 
 the universe and in our own lives, is inseparably 
 connected with this infinite series, extending far 
 backward into the irrevocable past, and poten- 
 tially related to an ever-dawning future. If we 
 start with the simple motion of the hand, or the 
 reflex nerve-action which preceded it, and seek 
 its cause, we inevitably end with this untrace- 
 able series of closely related events, which be- 
 wilders the thought by its vastness. 
 
 What does all this signify? When did cause 
 and effect begin? An absolute beginning is 
 simply unthinkable. One all-embracing series 
 of causes and effects must have existed eter- 
 nally, of which our world and its activity is a 
 part, and of which all future activity will be an 
 outgrowth. Furthermore, if the motion of my 
 arm is related causally to the activity of my 
 whole body, to my brain, to my physical and 
 mental environment, to my parents and to thou- 
 sands of others who have thought and acted 
 before me, to the world, the sun, — in a word, to 
 all activity throughout eternity, — then the sub- 
 stance moved is no less a part of eternity. 
 
 To grasp this thought fully, try for a moment 
 to conceive the absence of all existences in the 
 
*9 
 
 universe, and then imagine the creation or ap- 
 pearance of something or of some being in this 
 infinite void. Such an event is utterly incon- 
 ceivable, since something could not be a product 
 of nothing, and every result must have an effi- 
 cient and substantial cause. If, then, some- 
 thing can neither be made from nothing, nor 
 something become non-existent, the sum total 
 of substance must ever be the same. It can be 
 modified, evolved, or dissolved, but must itself 
 be eternal. 
 
 Try now to imagine a condition of things in 
 which there should be no motion, and conceive 
 the beginning of motion in the illimitable and 
 perfectly inert universe which you have conjured 
 up. Once more the attempt is futile. Ab- 
 solute and universal rest, like a perfect void, 
 is inconceivable. Something moving would be 
 needed wherewith to start motion, just as some- 
 thing substantial must have existed before a 
 new product could result. If only one parti- 
 cle moved, then something moving must have 
 caused its motion ; and, if it moved once only, 
 all existing particles would be set in motion, 
 since all particles are causally correlated. Mo- 
 tion could not cease, since only a moving power 
 could stop it, and there would be no power to 
 stop this inhibiting force. 
 
 The cessation of motion, then, like its incep- 
 
20 
 
 tion, is unthinkable. If it were not continuous, 
 eternal, it could never have become a fact. 
 Moreover, motion implies not only a continuous, 
 all-embracing series of causes and effects, but 
 the existence of the eternally moving substance 
 already postulated. Motion also means change 
 from place to place, from one condition to an- 
 other. Change in turn implies the experience 
 of rhythm or interval in motion, which we call 
 time. Change also implies the experience of 
 space, or the extension in three directions of 
 that which is moved. Thus an eternally exist- 
 ing substance, uncreated and never-ceasing 
 motion, infinite time and infinite space, are in- 
 separably connected. Any particular substance, 
 motion, interval, or space must be part of a 
 great unitary whole which includes yet tran- 
 scends them all. There is cause and effect, 
 duration between them, extension of that which 
 is moved or affected, eternal motion, and an 
 ever-moving something whose infinite activity is 
 thus characterized. Out of these we have con- 
 structed the universe in imagination, and this 
 grand result is implied in the simple statement 
 that every effect has a cause. 
 
 And what does this reasoning further signify? 
 That there is one, and only one, eternal, omni- 
 present Reality, whence came all that ever ex- 
 
21 
 
 isted, or ever will exist, which includes and is 
 all that ever proceeds from it, the one, ultimate, 
 all-embracing Cause, which needs no farther 
 explanation. It is self-existent, uncreated, in- 
 destructible, at once the basis and the essence of 
 all being, the one source to which all activity is 
 ultimately traceable. It is simply Reality, — 
 that for which we need seek no proof, since we 
 are compelled to assume it in the very reasoning 
 whereby we hope to prove its existence. It 
 simply is, its own best reason for being. It is 
 substance and power; it is life and conscious- 
 ness itself, the knowledge of the existence of 
 which is the one surest possession of human 
 intelligence. It is, if you will, the infinite 
 Spirit, the eternal Father, the unseen and per- 
 manent basis of the visible and transient series 
 of causes and effects which constitute world- 
 experience and human life. It is the great 
 Whole, to which there is no space and no time, 
 no beginning and no ending, whose activity is 
 continuous, and whose substance is all there is, 
 to which we are ultimately led if we pursue our 
 reasoning to its last conclusion. 
 
 Were we to conceive the existence of a vast 
 number of causes in place of the one Reality, 
 these causes would still be correlated; they 
 could not be independent, since every cause is 
 the resultant of some antecedent cause, and no 
 
22 
 
 reality could be independent but the all-inclu- 
 sive origin of which we are speaking. The last 
 cause, could we conceive an end to the infinite 
 chain, would still be a unit, uncreated and eter- 
 nal, and would therefore be the sum total of 
 all that ever could exist. Otherwise stated, if 
 there were more than one reality, then these 
 other realities would possess activity and sub- 
 stance revealed in space and time. No one of 
 these realities would be omnipresent, indepen- 
 dent, or self-existent. There would still exist 
 an all-uniting, omnipresent Reality which would 
 be the life and substance of all others and su- 
 perior to all limitations of space and time. 
 For the origin, being the All, is therefore in- 
 finite, including yet transcending all bounds, 
 including and revealing itself through all forms 
 and qualities. 
 
 When, therefore, we speak of a being or sub- 
 stance with limitations, when we give names 
 and assign attributes, such as "God is love," 
 we mean some portion of this one eternal, omni- 
 present, all-sufficient Reality, the one sub- 
 stance, the one life, the sum total of all that 
 actually exists. Could we know this one, could 
 we define it, we should be this one. It is 
 known to us through its infinite self-revelation 
 as the universe. This universe of the correlated 
 many must exist for one supreme purpose and be 
 
23 
 
 governed by one transcendent law. Could we 
 state this law and define this purpose, we should 
 once more be this one which the many reveal. 
 We may define it as intelligence, power, love, 
 substance. But we have not defined It, but 
 rather a certain attribute or manifestation as we 
 know it. We may say that we know him, mean- 
 ing a personal God. But we know him only in 
 the one phase which appeals to our finite intelli- 
 gence. The Reality is still the basis of all 
 phases, of all attributes, of all manifestations of 
 power and form. 
 
 Again, we may deem him imperfect, and ac- 
 tively engaged in thinking out his mighty prob- 
 lems, of which this great, pulsating universe of 
 ours is the objective representation, part by part 
 corresponding to his thought, and our lives rep- 
 resenting some special phase of this problem. 
 But why, then, this definiteness of motive, re- 
 vealed alike in all the kingdoms of nature, this 
 co-operation toward an apparently preconceived 
 end, if he is merely experimenting with us ? 
 Would not this limited being be part of a larger 
 Self, who knew all things from eternity, and is 
 unlimited, infinite, and utterly beyond all defi- 
 nition? Conceive and define him as we may, 
 there still remains a Reality which no statement 
 describes, which ever recedes as we seek to 
 grasp it, but which is all we mean when we use 
 
the terms "God," "Spirit," "life," "the uni- 
 verse," — yet more, which we cannot deny, since 
 we assume it before we deny it, which imbues 
 our thought with its presence, — yes, is our 
 thought, is the thinker, the all in all. 
 
 But I have thus far spoken of God only as 
 the transcendent Reality which no language can 
 define, a Reality which some dismiss as the 
 unknowable, while others conceive it in purely 
 mechanical terms. It follows from the fore- 
 going that he is also immanent, that, whatever 
 he may be as the absolute Reality, he is known 
 in part to us as the God of our life and of our 
 world. While, then, in one sense there can be 
 no space and no immanency to an All, we must 
 consider the relationship of the whole to its 
 parts, and see how the world of manifestation of 
 the Many proceeds necessarily from the nature 
 of the One. 
 
 We have seen that the events of life and of 
 the universe are causaHy correlated, that they 
 are joined in an unbroken series. And, since 
 this series of events is part of a great unit, and 
 there is only one Reality, all activity originates 
 within and never outside this Reality. It is 
 impossible, then, that some man-like God 
 should have impressed his energy upon the 
 primeval nebulous mass, and then retired we 
 know not where, or that he should have made 
 
25 
 
 the world out of nothing in six days, and then 
 interfered with it from time to time by miracu- 
 lous providences. For there is no extra-natural 
 Deity. The sum total of substance and force 
 does not change. And evolution, not creation,H 
 is the law of life. 
 
 The manifold changes which have brought the 
 world to its present state, the endless working 
 of force against force, of animal against animal, 
 and man against man, and the ups and downs of 
 human history, are probably just as important 
 and require the divine presence just as much as 
 the impulse which first brought our world into 
 being. Either, then, — note the alternative, — 
 God put forth his own being as the world, im- 
 manent yet transcendent, and is with it, trans- 
 forming it through phenomena, as much now, in 
 this age, in these changing times, in this room, 
 as in the irrevocable ages of the past, or there is 
 no God at all. For whatever exists is a part of 
 and within the one Reality. Nature's God, the 
 immanent God, is the only possible God. Let 
 me repeat. Either God is revealed through the 
 cohesive force which holds matter together, and 
 holds the planets in their positions in space, 
 through the love which draws man to man, and 
 the fortunes and misfortunes which characterize 
 his progress, through the insensible gradations 
 by which our politics are changing and our own 
 
26 
 
 conflicts are making us true men and women, 
 or there is no divine Father at all; for science 
 tells us of no other development but that of 
 ever-gradual and never-ceasing evolution, due to 
 resident forces. 
 
 Life, then, all life, yours and mine, all that 
 holds it together and links it with the eternal 
 forces of the universe, is a continuous, divine 
 communication. There is no separation be- 
 tween our own souls and that Spirit in whom, 
 in the most literal sense, we live and move and 
 have our being, between the world in which we 
 live and that eternal Reality of whose substance 
 and of whose activity it is a part. The life 
 which sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, 
 and awakens to consciousness in man, is the 
 same, the one great life, which is revealed just 
 as clearly in the fortuitous changes that spur us 
 on to progress as in the exact movements of the 
 planets. All nature reveals God. The sea, the 
 sky, the mountains, the complex life of great 
 cities, the simple life of the country, the admi- 
 ration of the poet, the thought and feeling of all 
 men, all nations, all books, all churches, all re- 
 ligions. All thinkers, all artists and lovers of 
 the beautiful, are feeling after him. All state 
 in their own terms, and according to their de- 
 gree of intelligence, the conception of a divine 
 Father, which I have tried to make clear as it 
 
27 
 
 appears to me; namely, that he is nature, yet 
 more than nature, personal, yet more than per- 
 son ; on the one hand, the great unit, omni- 
 present force and substance whence all things 
 and beings proceed, impersonal, infinite, un- 
 known, transcendent, indefinable; on the other 
 hand, relatively known, finite, immanent, per- 
 sonal; an intelligent power, large enough to 
 be the author of all life, and near enough so that 
 Jesus could name him Father, and so that we 
 can perceive his activity in our daily lives; an 
 omnipresent Reality, whose complete nature is 
 revealed in the total universe, and so much as 
 we can comprehend in our own lives; a Spirit 
 which has no form, but which all forms reveal; 
 a God who is unknown and unperceived in this 
 larger and deeper sense, except by those who 
 have thought and suffered deeply, he whom we 
 refuse to recognize when we look afar into the 
 heavens for a god of our own fancy; a God 
 who is not only immanent, but is that in which 
 he dwells, — a continuous, all-pervasive, all-per- 
 vaded Spirit; a Friend who is just as near to 
 us in this present happy moment as in the count- 
 less aeons of eternity of which this fleeting mo- 
 ment is an integrant part. 
 
 Do we realize what this nearness means, what 
 it is to dwell with God consciously? Let me 
 try to bring him yet nearer. 
 
28 
 
 Sometimes one seems to look far into the eyes 
 of a friend and to see the soul gazing from un- 
 seen depths in return; and, as the face softens 
 into a smile, one draws still nearer to that elu- 
 sive somewhat called the human spirit, as it 
 lends life and beauty to the features, itself in- 
 visible, yet so plainly revealed that one can 
 almost locate its vanishing touch. There are 
 days in the country in summer — noticeably in 
 June and September — when a divine stillness 
 seems to rest over all the world. We feel an 
 unwonted and indescribable peace which lifts us 
 above our petty selves to the larger Self of eter- 
 nal restfulness which nature's calm suggests. 
 We almost worship nature at such a time, so 
 near it brings us to the Spirit which imbues 
 the very vibrations of the atmosphere. Again, 
 when standing near some grand mountain, or 
 when looking far into the clouds at sunset, we 
 seem to perceive the strength and the vanishing 
 glory of him who is almost revealed to our long- 
 ing eyes, yet forever remains beyond our keenest 
 vision. 
 
 And, if we push our analysis still farther, do 
 we not discover that all that is best and dearest 
 in human life, all that is most useful in nature, 
 is like this retreating beauty of a soft landscape: 
 the mechanism is visible, but the beauty is of 
 the mind? I saw my friend, you say. Yet you 
 
2 9 
 
 only saw his face, not his soul, just as you see 
 the world, but not the Life which animates it. 
 You feel love, you use wisdom, you reap the 
 inner benefits of goodness; but all is intangible. 
 No one ever saw force : we see and make use of 
 its effects. Yet no one doubts its existence. 
 We know it through its manifestations. And 
 some affirm that there is no dense material, 
 simply varied modes of motion of one infinite 
 force, of one underlying Reality; while other 
 philosophers describe the universe as a system 
 of ideas produced in us by the great Reality 
 behind all phenomena. Whatever the ultimate 
 nature of matter may be, and this is a question 
 which we cannot profitably discuss here, it is 
 evident that the Reality is somehow made known 
 to us. No one denies it, yet no one ever saw 
 it; so intimate is the association between mo- 
 tion and that which moves, between cause and 
 effect. 
 
 The retreating beauty of nature, then, seems 
 typical of our deepest associations with the 
 Father, a union to which Emerson has given 
 the best expression in his "Over-Soul." We 
 are conscious of the human part; and, when in 
 times of sorrow we seem comforted from on 
 high, we are dimly aware of the divine. Yet 
 we cannot grasp it : we can only affirm that God 
 resides in and is the source of our being, just as 
 
3o 
 
 the grandeur of nature resides in a landscape 
 whose beauty we can never locate. Take love, 
 take wisdom, start with any quality in human 
 life which points to a common nature, and, trac- 
 ing it to its source, one's thought is lost in con- 
 templation of the great Reality which must be 
 all these qualities, since there could be but one 
 perfect love and wisdom, which all share in 
 greater or lesser degree, just as surely as the 
 force with which I move my arm is related to 
 the power which, from all time, has caused the 
 planets to revolve and the infinite series of 
 causes and effects to be active. 
 
 Were we not thus a part of the one omni- 
 present Reality, there would then be some place 
 where the Reality does not exist; and it would 
 not then be omnipresent. Unless our activity 
 is due ultimately to the one life, then there is 
 an existence independent of it; and this we have 
 proved impossible. Our consciousness, our life, 
 our intelligence, must blend with the infinite 
 life and consciousness; and this larger life 
 must therefore be all of yet more than our own. 
 Since this Reality is omnipresent, and is the 
 sum total of all that exists, we must be part of 
 it in order to exist at all, and as dependent on it 
 as the plant on the sunlight. And, since it 
 must be conscious in order to be aware of its 
 own existence, it must know us as a part of 
 
31 
 
 itself. Thus, then, there is no escape from the 
 conclusion that we are part of the great Reality, 
 or God, that we reveal him when we truly love 
 and serve and are really wise, that he knows us 
 as a part of himself, that we have no power 
 wholly our own, and that we do not exist apart 
 from, but as a part of, this great Over-Soul. 
 
 In such a realization as this, that we blend in 
 consciousness and in love with the ever-renew- 
 ing Life, and that we reveal more and more of 
 the divine nature as we ascend in the scale of 
 being, lies a real way of escape from morbid 
 self-interest, introspection, self-consciousness, 
 want of confidence, and the feeling of one's own 
 insignificance. To know that our highest love, 
 our deepest thought, our truest self, is not 
 wholly our own, but, in so far as it is unself- 
 ish, is divine, — this it is to have something in 
 which we can trust and on which we can rely, 
 which shows us what we are, not as weak human 
 beings which we vainly try to understand by 
 self-analysis, but what we are as particles of the 
 divine nature. Thus the painful thought is lost 
 in the consciousness of divine nearness, just as 
 though a particle of sunlight should become 
 aware of its relation to all sunlight and to the 
 sun. And what a pleasure it is to view nature 
 and human life with an ever-deepening con- 
 sciousness of this divine background! Truly, 
 
32 
 
 there is no time for complaint, or even for suf- 
 fering, so far as suffering is self-caused, if we 
 dwell in this pure region of thought, where 
 we look upon the good and true as an outburst 
 of the divine, and all else as slowly evolving 
 toward this realm of goodness, where the land- 
 scape suggests the beauty which it so well typi- 
 fies, and where our own hardships lead us, not 
 into the realm of complaint, but into the land of 
 inquiry, of genuine desire to know what God is 
 doing with us. 
 
 But the question still remains, How can the 
 infinite become finite? How can a perfect God 
 know imperfect man, with all his woes and 
 struggles? Why should he create? The answer 
 is contained in what we have already said con- 
 cerning the one Reality. 
 
 Continuity of motion is one of the attributes 
 of that Reality, the activity of which originates 
 within itself, and is never self-destructive. 
 Eternal self-interaction is the cause of eternal 
 self-manifestation. The Reality has therefore 
 never been without manifestation. Although it 
 is the One, it must ever have been the Many : it 
 must ever have been at once finite and infinite, 
 since it is not simply an undivided whole, but is 
 the sum of all its parts, each one of which, like 
 the figures i, 2, 3, is finite. Motion could not 
 
33 
 
 spring suddenly out of a perfectly simple, inert 
 unit. Even an ultimate cause must be substan- 
 tial and active from eternity, and have some- 
 thing on which to act. We need not then try to 
 conceive the beginning of this universe, for it 
 never had a beginning except in its transitory 
 aspects. Nor need we conceive a motive for the 
 first manifestation of the one Reality, since 
 it could not exist without manifestation; and 
 whatever appears is at once a part of itself and 
 an outgrowth of that which has actively existed 
 throughout eternity. 
 
 The One is the sum total of all possibilities: 
 it is eternally the Many, either actually or po- 
 tentially. If it be actually the Many, then 
 there is always somewhere all possible forms of 
 manifestation. If the One be only potentially 
 the Many, then we are bound to conceive it as 
 progressively manifested in a world-order like 
 our own, and must expect a continuance of the 
 series until the whole has been expressed in 
 finite form. The One, then, must ever have 
 been perfect in every possible sense of the word, 
 but only perfect through its transcendent unify- 
 ing of the Many, either immediately or progres- 
 sively making itself known to itself, and thereby 
 giving the One an eternal object. 
 
 Put in more familiar phraseology, Could a 
 perfect being exist without some object of his 
 
34 
 
 love and wisdom, without some manifestation 
 whereby he should know himself? And, if God 
 is perfect intelligence, does he not know all 
 possibilities, both of divine and of human ac- 
 tion? Is he not present in the very struggles 
 and conflicts which we try so hard to reconcile 
 with his unfailing love? 
 
 Unless some change take place, even in a per- 
 fect universe there could be no object of divine 
 knowledge; and, if a change take place, there 
 must be some consciousness of it. Further- 
 more, an infinite being would at least have a 
 desire to know itself, to vary its pure monoto- 
 nous self-consciousness; and, unless it had such 
 a desire, it could never become perfect, since it 
 must want to know itself not only through its 
 foreseeing intuition, but through the realization 
 of its own foresight, through self-experience and 
 manifestation of all its attributes. 
 
 The infinite Self, or God, must, then, have 
 thought and desire, or some form of conscious- 
 ness transcending what we denote by these 
 words. He must reveal and know himself part 
 by part, as the finite, as the world, as man, in 
 human love and aspiration, in order to know his 
 total self. For, if we have come into being un- 
 necessarily, then some other god rules, and not 
 the all-wise Father in whom we believe, and 
 who seems to need us. The very effort to be 
 
35 
 
 rational, the act of self-knowledge, consists in 
 separating off some portion of the infinite in 
 such manner that it shall represent a phase of 
 the total life. And are we not just such differ- 
 ing aspects of a common nature, with our varied 
 temperaments and our diverse ideas? 
 
 Since, then, the infinitely self-conscious Real- 
 ity includes within itself all possibilities of 
 thought and action, before its boundless con- 
 templation must pass all that could ever be 
 thought. God must see the outcome of all these 
 thoughts, were they to be objectified in outer 
 life, with all the suffering involved, and then 
 chooses, if we admit the possibility that our 
 world-order might have differed from the present 
 system, and fixes upon the system which he pro- 
 ceeds to realize. He must, then, know of our 
 petty lives and our suffering, our longings and 
 what they mean, or else we are greater than the 
 cause that produced us. He must have all in- 
 telligence, all power, since whatever exists, that 
 is he. He must surely have chosen the world- 
 order which should most fully reveal his wish 
 and nature; and, if that nature is one of perfect 
 and unchanging wisdom and unending love, it 
 follows that the universe was brought forth in 
 love, and that it is the best possible world- 
 order. It follows, also, that this plan of mani- 
 festation cannot be altered, since it reveals the 
 
36 
 
 nature of the only Reality that could ever exist, 
 since nothing could change that Reality, and 
 since it possessed and put all wisdom into a 
 plan which otherwise would have defeated its 
 object. There must, then, be a will or purpose 
 in this world-order. For, if it had no purpose, 
 it was called forth by a non-intelligent reality, 
 it is simply mechanical, evolution has no deep 
 meaning, our desire for reasons is without a 
 basis, and there is no reality which includes our 
 intelligence, and we have misinterpreted nature 
 when we deemed it the product of intelligence. 
 
 In order, then, to grasp this wholeness of 
 relationship of the great world-order, let us 
 once more adopt the imperfect figures of human 
 speech, and conceive this Reality as an infinitely 
 wise, an all-loving, all-containing, all-animat- 
 ing Thinker, in whose comprehension the shin- 
 ing worlds of space and the tiniest atoms 
 whereof matter is made are grouped in one 
 transcendently perfect system of self-realization ; 
 through whose measured reflection are evolved 
 planets such as our own, unvarying in their law 
 because he is unchangeable, requiring ages of 
 time because his reflection is measured and sure, 
 definite in shape and known to us as matter be- 
 cause his purpose is rational, and because reason 
 consists in establishing bounds, and through 
 
37 
 
 whose tender care we are led onward to con- 
 scious union in thought and deed with his pur- 
 pose for us. Our earth, then, is a part of the 
 great rational life of God. It has its definite 
 orbit and a definite history; it follows unchang- 
 ing laws just because it is part of a thoroughly 
 rational life. It is distinct from other spheres 
 of the infinite activity, just because its history 
 fulfils a purpose, and is therefore moral. It is 
 finite, because it is a part only of this morally 
 rational life. And so, let me repeat, with you 
 and me. We are expressions of the infinite 
 life, yet are finite just because the all-seeing 
 intelligence means one thing in your life, and 
 something else in mine. We are imperfect, 
 incomplete, because we join with others to form 
 his meaning; and^he has not yet reflected our 
 lives to their perfect conclusion, -i- a process 
 which we are confident he will complete, though 
 it take eternity. 
 
 Such a figure as this, the relation of a thinker 
 to his progressive system of thoughts, seems 
 most nearly to approximate the nearness which 
 human speech can barely suggest. I am trying 
 to show that God knows us, even though we fail 
 to know him, that he has a purpose with us 
 which he is even now executing, that he is the 
 completing Sell without which our lives have 
 little meaning, the knower and the known, the 
 
38 
 
 thinker and the thoughts, the builder and the 
 built, the sustainer and the love which sus- 
 tains, the limiter whose will we know as fate, 
 and as matter, without whom we are as naught, 
 with whom as gods. 
 
 In those rarest moments of human life when 
 the soul, in the peaceful isolation of the woods, 
 by the sea, or in the quiet of the library, is 
 lifted above itself and made aware of its kinship 
 with the Father, have you not been conscious of 
 just such relationship as this? Has not God 
 seemed for the moment to belong to you alone, 
 as though in the unsearchable depth of his love 
 he lived for you? Yet were you not conscious 
 that the Spirit which then moved you to silence 
 is the same which speaks throughout the count- 
 less spheres of the universe? What a divine 
 joy would life be could we always maintain this 
 consciousness of the inner presence! But are 
 we not apt to forget this nearness, to fear, to 
 worry, and to act as though we were independent 
 of the great Reality, the all-seeing Father, with- 
 out whom we could not be? 
 
 The present paper is simply an attempt to 
 lend system to these rare moments of uplifting, 
 that we may become more conscious of the 
 divine inflow. /And what is life for, in the 
 deepest sense, if it be not to bring us to con- 
 sciousness of its source and its import^ Is it 
 
39 
 
 not in our moments of earnest thought, when we 
 reflect on experience and learn its meaning, that 
 we grow? And, if mankind were judged on the 
 basis of real worth, would not so much avail as 
 we really are as thinking, helpful souls, — that 
 part of us which, as we hope, survives all 
 change ? 
 
 Man may be called a point of energy, a centre 
 of application of divine Power. His conscious- 
 ness, his will, if he be aware of his eternal 
 birthright, is a vantage-point whence the infinite 
 Thinker views the world and thereby knows 
 himself. But the infinite Self seems to act 
 through the majority of men almost by force, for 
 they seem unaware of his presence. They are 
 moved in throngs, and spurred along by suffer- 
 ing, because in their shortsightedness they fear 
 and oppose the moving which is for their deepest 
 good. As Emerson puts it, "We are used as 
 brute atoms until we think, then we use all the 
 rest." Yet, if this world-order is the best pos- 
 sible order, the love of God must be just as 
 clearly manifested in the struggles which carry 
 us along until we think as in our moments of 
 repose. It is character that avails, that seems 
 to be the purpose of our contests ; and character 
 is the result of determined effort to surmount 
 the obstacles we are compelled to meet until we 
 learn to live above our troubles. The experi- 
 
40 
 
 ences of evil and suffering seem justified by 
 their outcome, since we should know nothing 
 without experience. 
 
 Without contrast and comparison we could 
 not interpret experience. Without darkness and 
 evil we should not know light and good, even if 
 we were perfect at the start, since our perfec- 
 tion, like that of a God without manifestation, 
 would simply be an unrealized ideal. It is the 
 one who has lived and suffered, conquered, 
 thought, and practised his own truest wisdom, 
 who moves with fate. He is no longer as one 
 among thousands, but himself a mover, a sharer 
 of power, co-operating in intelligent companion- 
 ship with the Father. Then dawns the Christ- 
 consciousness, with its accompanying life of 
 self-sacrifice; and the faithful soul enjoys a 
 personal relationship with God, whom he now 
 knows through actual experience to be literally 
 the All. 
 
 But our realization of the immanence of God 
 must do more for us than simply to furnish a 
 rational and intuitive basis for belief in an 
 omnipresent Reality. A lasting benefit and 
 mental freedom come from systematic thinking 
 about life, as well as a measure of inner repose 
 when we have pushed through doubt to settled 
 conviction. But the real test of faith comes in 
 
41 
 
 moments of trouble and periods of discourage- 
 ment and sickness. If we say that we believe 
 in God, and then worry, doubt, and fear, and 
 return to our selfish life, then we do not yet 
 know the omnipresent Comforter./ To act as 
 though we really believed that God is in his 
 world, in our own souls, concerned in our daily 
 experiences, and ready to strengthen us in any 
 need whatsoever, — this is a genuine test of 
 faith. To lift our thoughts to him habitually, 
 not periodically, as if we really expected to get 
 health and help from him, instead of asking for 
 the impossible, — this is genuine prayer. 
 
 Do we put our faith to such a test? Do we 
 try to trust God fully, understandingly, with a 
 deep conviction that it is his life, his power, 
 that is pressing upon us through what we call 
 the remedial forces of nature, through the very 
 life of the body ? Do we wait for guidance 
 when we are perplexed? Do we try to see the 
 divine meaning, the outcome of our experience 
 as an integrant part of a great world-experience? 
 Do we let this life come as it may from the di- 
 vine source, without rebellion, without doubt, 
 carrying before us an ever-renewed ideal of our- 
 selves as happy, useful, in good health, every 
 day in our experience having some meaning in 
 the divine economy? Do we turn from matter 
 to the Reality behind it : from the body to the 
 
4 2 
 
 soul that moulds it, now in this fashion, now in 
 that, by the power of thought; from the ills 
 which seem so real while we dwell upon them 
 to the inner self which can become so strong 
 that we shall have no ills whatever except those 
 which are essential to our truest evolution ? 
 
 I am not asking these questions from the 
 point of view of some ideal theory. There are 
 earnest souls who make this practical realization 
 of the immanence of God the basis of a system 
 of healing at once removed from all formulas 
 of suggestion, assertion, denial, and from all 
 methods of physical cure. To such the over- 
 whelming power which accompanies this reali- 
 zation and the desire to help the sufferer is 
 everlasting evidence of its truth. And all hyp- 
 notic processes would be as superfluous as they 
 would be irreverent in the presence of this 
 divine power, alike inspiring humility and confi- 
 dence in its renewing strength. 
 
 Nor am I advocating mere religious faith in 
 God, or an easy-going optimism which assures 
 us that somehow all will come out well. I am 
 pleading, first, for a scientific interpretation of 
 the world ; secondly, for a conception of an 
 underlying Reality, an indwelling Spirit, large 
 enough to give continuous life to this world; 
 and, finally, for wise adjustment to and intel- 
 ligent co-operation with the impulses which 
 
43 
 
 spring from this indwelling life. I advocate 
 that interpretation of life which places the re- 
 sponsibility largely on ourselves, which teaches 
 us not to lean on systems of thought and on 
 people in whom we believe and whom we permit 
 to do our thinking for us, but encourages us to 
 look within and to find in our own souls an 
 ever-present resource. 
 
 ( Deep within every human soul there is a dor- 
 mant intuition which, if it be quickened, will 
 guide us, as unerringly as the instinct of the 
 dove, to our centre, to our home in God. There 
 are those who, aware of this divine instinct, 
 await its word and rely on its guidance with just 
 as much assurance as the most ardent believers 
 in science await her profound conclusions. 
 They make almost no plans, but look upon the 
 task which comes to them to do as bearing some 
 relation to the great life of the All. Their 
 faith is based on accurate and long-continued 
 observation of the phenomena of the inner life, 
 on oft-repeated proof that help and guidance are 
 ready for those who listen confidently and recep- 
 tively. Is there not a possibility here, an ever- 
 present yet universally neglected resource, ca- 
 pable of bringing such usefulness and joy into 
 existence as we have never dreamed of? 
 
 It seems unbusinesslike to await impressions, 
 to trust. Yet the merest reflection proves that 
 
44 
 
 all life reposes on trust. The reputation of a 
 business house can be ruined in an hour, if its 
 standing be seriously questioned and the report 
 be noised about. With all that science has told 
 us about nature's laws, we are still compelled to 
 take the world on trust. We fall quietly asleep 
 at night, believing that the day will dawn to- 
 morrow, that no calamity will befall our world, 
 that it will be safe to depend on nature's forces. 
 Nature has never deceived us, and we believe 
 she never will. Yet we do not know what may 
 happen. We run a thousand risks each day, in 
 the streets, in the cars, everywhere, with perfect 
 composure. Can we not carry our trust a bit 
 farther and understand that on which we should 
 rely, and not only rely upon it, but call upon it 
 for aid? Is God less watchful, is he any less 
 present in the realm where thought controls and 
 leads us into fear and dis-ease or into trust and 
 composure, according to our direction of mind? 
 If gravitation holds the earth in its position in 
 space, may it not be that its spiritual counter- 
 part, the love of God, sustains our souls in their 
 progress, and provides for us in ways which we 
 have scarcely suspected? Yet how many of 
 those who say, God is love, stop to realize 
 the world of meaning in that little sentence? 
 There is healing and comfort in such realization. 
 Let me suggest it briefly in closing. 
 
45 
 
 The omnipresent Reality, or immanent God, 
 must love the world he has brought forth to re- 
 veal him, and therefore must appreciate and love 
 you and me as parts of it. He must have caused 
 it to evolve from love or desire, for otherwise he 
 would have been compelled to cause its exist- 
 ence. Had he been compelled against his will, 
 the existence of a compeller would be implied; 
 and this is impossible, since there is but one 
 Reality. Since he is the All, he is all the love 
 there is; and, since he must of necessity reveal 
 himself in order to have an object of his inex- 
 pressible devotion, he must have put himself 
 forth in love. And, if he brought us here in 
 love, he must care for our continued welfare, 
 since he is unchangeable. If he cares for us, he 
 must have had a loving purpose in causing us to 
 exist; for he was not compelled to bring us into 
 being. He is all-wise, and could not have 
 brought us here without knowing his own pur- 
 pose. No one can defeat his purpose since 
 he alone exists. His purpose cannot be self- 
 destructive, nor can he wish us harm, since he 
 called us forth in love. If he loves us, he must 
 be with us, since a distant God is impossible, 
 and would be cold and unfeeling, while the true 
 God is our larger, our diviner self, nearer to us 
 than thought, closer than thought can imagine. 
 His relation to us must ever be intimate, since 
 
4 6 
 
 there is no power, no substance, no space, to 
 separate us. Therefore we are not in any sense 
 apart from him. We exist with him in a rela- 
 tionship typified by that of a child in its 
 mother's arms. He is our Father, though infi- 
 nite in power and wisdom. Nothing can pre- 
 vent us from enjoying his love, his help, his 
 peace, his inspiring guidance, but our own fail- 
 ure to recognize his presence. Let us, then, be 
 still and know his love, his indwelling presence. 
 Let us test it fully, and learn what it will do for 
 us if we never worry, never fear, never reach out 
 and away from this present life. Let us absorb 
 from his love as the plant absorbs from the sun- 
 light; for our spirits, like the plants, need daily 
 nourishment. 
 
 Can we estimate the value of such quieting 
 reflection as this, if it be renewed day by day? 
 Sometimes a text of Scripture, a poem, or a 
 piece of soft music, will bring it to us. Some- 
 times we must seek the solitude of nature ere 
 the Spirit come; for it is the Spirit that is the 
 essential, and not, I insist, any form of words, 
 or assertions, or suggestions. Silently and un- 
 observed, the Spirit will breathe upon us if we 
 reflect, if we wait for it in stillness day by day. 
 It will not come if we doubt, if we fear, or — 
 note this especially — if our own thought be too 
 active; for the Spirit never intrudes. It lets us 
 
47 
 
 go our own way if we choose : it comes, we 
 know not how, if we trust. \A11 it asks is re- 
 ceptive listening., Then all an unselfish human 
 being would wisely ask is ours. 
 
 It steals into our consciousness when we think 
 deeply, to guide, to strengthen, to heal, to en- 
 courage. The great secret of life is to know 
 how, in our own way, to be receptive to it, how 
 to read the message of its inner whispering. 
 The sure method of growing strong in realiza- 
 tion of its nearness is to believe it will come if 
 we listen, to trust it in moments of doubt as the 
 lost hunter trusts his horse in the forest, to have 
 an ideal outlook, and then renew our realization 
 day by day, ever remembering that, as this 
 Spirit is the only Reality, the one power, the 
 one love, we live in it, and with it, and there is 
 naught to separate us from its ever-watchful 
 care, its ever-loving presence. 
 
III. 
 
 THE WORLD OF MANIFESTATION. 
 
 One grand truth is evident at every point in 
 the foregoing discussion : Every atom, every 
 event, every soul in the universe, is imbued with 
 the immanent Presence; and life is a constant 
 sharing of its power. Whatever be the start- 
 ing-point in our interpretation of experience, 
 whether in some truth of human reason, some 
 cherished insight of the inner life, or in some 
 simple fact of the outer world, there is no logi- 
 cal stopping-place short of absolute certainty 
 that God exists as the one all-inclusive, omni- 
 present Reality. We may evade the point or 
 deviate into agnosticism, through undue regard 
 to the limitations of finite consciousness; but 
 our own deepest nature is never satisfied until 
 we make the escape into the Universal. Once 
 free, the conclusion seems a necessity of thought, 
 at once satisfactory, convincing, and unanswera- 
 ble. It holds true for all time. It is the prop- 
 erty of all who think, and lies latent in every 
 fact of life, suggesting a wonderful broadening 
 and deepening of human experience when this 
 
49 
 
 one greatest truth shall become a permanent 
 factor in our daily thought. 
 
 The temptation is strong to turn at once to a 
 consideration of that daily thought, and to ask, 
 What is man? But, if we are to understand 
 man in the light of his entire origin, we must 
 still continue to study him in relation to his en- 
 vironment. Mental states are more apt to be 
 deceptive than physical. One is inclined to 
 read too much in them, and to draw erroneous 
 conclusions. If we are to conceive the inner 
 life in accurate terms, we must take our start far 
 within the limits of the well-known outer world. 
 We shall then have a firm basis on which to rest 
 the more important superstructure. And, if we 
 keep the realization of God's immanence ever 
 before us, the discussion will not seem dry. 
 We have already found it convenient to make 
 certain distinctions in order to add intelligibil- 
 ity and vividness to our conception of God, and 
 the beauty of the conception which thus grew 
 upon us was its inclusiveness. We lost no 
 deeply cherished conviction in thinking of him 
 as the one omnipresent Reality. We shall only 
 add to our deepening knowledge of him in con- 
 sidering him as the basis of his own well-ordered 
 world of manifestation, if we remember that 
 every part of it is instinct with his life. 
 
 We have concluded that in the nature of God 
 
5o 
 
 as the only Reality lies the necessary reason for 
 the existence of our world and of our individual 
 selves; for he must be infinitely self-conscious, 
 he must have self-expression, in order to have 
 an object for that boundless love which we 
 believe him to possess. He is therefore both 
 subject and object, both the knower and the 
 known, the transcendent Whole, the immanent 
 Life made known through the parts, and the 
 varied universe through which he is partly 
 perceived. 
 
 Moreover, this double aspect of the One is 
 repeated throughout the universe of the many; 
 and by tracing it out we shall find a practical 
 solution to many vital problems. The world of 
 manifestation becomes for finite beings a uni- 
 verse of mind and matter, apparently dissimilar 
 in their nature, yet in reality identical in the 
 One in whose transcendence their unity is hid- 
 den. The relation of God to matter is therefore 
 just as intimate as his relation to the human 
 soul, for whatever exists is a part of and within 
 the one Reality. We cannot, then, consistently 
 deny the existence of matter. To make such a 
 denial is equivalent to asserting the non-exist- 
 ence of the one Reality, and therefore of our 
 sensations, since all that we experience has some 
 cause outside ourselves; and we know our own 
 existence only as it is related to this outer Real- 
 
ity. Matter surely exists. Mind exists. How 
 they are related in consciousness we shall soon 
 consider. But we must begin with matter as 
 a real existence, as a part of God, imbued with 
 his immanent life, and in no sense independent 
 of him. The one Reality must be the basis and 
 substance, and the only basis and substance, of 
 all that we call matter, just as truly as it is the 
 Life that is active in every moment and in every 
 incident of our inmost being. 
 
 It is undeniable that the world of matter 
 which you and I contemplate may have no exter- 
 nal existence precisely as we perceive it. Sci- 
 ence tells me that certain ether waves impinge 
 on my retina, and form an image of some exter- 
 nal object, which in turn is translated into an 
 idea, and interpreted according to my education. 
 Certain other rays indirectly produce ideas in 
 your mind, and are interpreted according to your 
 education. The outer object may be the same 
 in both cases; but the ideas caused by it may be 
 quite different, owing to our different states of 
 mind. I never see exactly the same object 
 which you contemplate, nor do either of us as 
 minds actually see the object at all, since we 
 know the object by means of ideas. We are un- 
 able even to dissociate the actual sensation and 
 the perception based on a lifetime of experience 
 and thought by which we interpret it. Nor do 
 
52 
 
 we hear the same sound, perceive the same 
 colors, nor smell the same odors. But the exist- 
 ence of something real which causes the sensa- 
 tions no one can seriously question. Even an 
 uninterpreted sensation makes us partially aware 
 of something not ourselves. We may be scien- 
 tifically aware that the sensation is in and not 
 outside of our minds, and that we interpret it 
 through ideas; but the object that produces the 
 sensation is not necessarily an idea. When the 
 hand encounters a masonry wall, we are sure of 
 the existence of an external force which meets 
 and effectually withstands all the pressure we 
 are able to exert. There is no room for doubt 
 here. 
 
 Nor can we question the existence of accurate 
 knowledge about the outer world. The chain of 
 causes running back into infinity with which this 
 discussion began is such a fact of certain knowl- 
 edge. We know that certain effects will be pro- 
 duced on us under certain conditions, — for 
 example, putting the hand into a fire. These 
 outer conditions are there just the same, regard- 
 less of any interpretation of ours. Our interpre- 
 tation may or may not correspond to the facts 
 and explain the relations of objects. We did 
 not create those conditions nor arrange objects in 
 certain relations. They are independent of all 
 minds. There must then be certain actual rela- 
 
53 
 
 tions existing between objects and external to us 
 which cause in us our definite experiences; for 
 instance, of the alternation of day and night, the 
 sensations of heat and cold, the experience of 
 cause and effect, the reign of law, and the suc- 
 cessive conditions of evolution. But, if they 
 are actual relations, they must be qualities of 
 the one Reality. They must be characteristics 
 of his world of manifestation, since nothing real 
 can exist independent of him. If, therefore, we 
 study them, if we study nature and natural law 
 as expressions of the very consciousness, the 
 very reason, the very life of God, we shall not 
 be stopped by materialism, we shall not be 
 weighed down by matter, but ever draw nearer 
 and nearer to the Spirit behind it. 
 
 Matter, then, is not a mere phenomenon, any 
 more than is the mind that partially knows it. 
 Ultimately it is a real substance. It is part 
 of the one enduring Reality, the cause or series 
 of causes of the world of sense-experience. It 
 is the real substance partially perceived and 
 judged according to our opinions and tempera- 
 ment : it is the means whereby we contemplate 
 the One. Reality is both the universe as God 
 knows it and the God who knows it. As matter, 
 it is his meaning, his purpose made manifest: 
 it is God realizing himself in definite form, the 
 tangible expression of his purpose holding man 
 
54 
 
 in the straight and narrow pathway of progress, 
 the Spirit put in limited form so that we can 
 grasp it. 
 
 But enough of the abstract. If there is now 
 no possibility of misunderstanding the point of 
 view of this book in regard to the existence of 
 matter, we are ready to consider those qualities 
 of matter the understanding of which is most 
 essential to what follows. The full bearing of 
 this driest part of our inquiry will not be evi- 
 dent until the last chapter. We shall then see 
 how the best known facts of the outer world 
 clarify the vaguer facts of the inner life, and 
 reveal the secret of self-help. 
 
 Our first experiences in life are fragmentary 
 sensations from this outer world. That the world 
 is shrouded in manifold illusions is evident from 
 the very outset. The infant has no sense of dis- 
 tance, and some people spend a lifetime without 
 learning to judge accurately of certain distances 
 on sea and land. There is no sense of the rela- 
 tion of things and events until the understand- 
 ing has again and again been called into play. 
 Thus sensation in time becomes perception, and 
 the mind plays a part of increasing importance 
 and value in our daily life. We strike a wall, 
 and feel a jarring sensation. We go out into 
 the sunlight, and feel a sense of warmth. As 
 
55 
 
 experience widens and our convictions become 
 more mature, we associate these experiences, 
 distinguish between cause and effect, and de- 
 duce from their invariable sequence a statement 
 called a law. We affirm that, "As a man sows, 
 so shall he reap," that nothing happens without 
 a natural cause. Yet we are apt to forget our 
 own generalizations; and the fact that men still 
 sin, still cherish anger, uncharitable and unfor- 
 giving thoughts, shows that the majority of men 
 are suffering for just this simple knowledge 
 that action and reaction are equal, that no event 
 happens uncaused. 
 
 Now, Science does not forget; and among her 
 numerous generalizations there are four of par- 
 ticular value in our present discussion. 
 
 I. The fragmentary events of life have been 
 reduced to a system. Nature is not a mere 
 chaos, in which conflicting forces eternally war 
 upon each other, but is an order, a unit, a whole, 
 in which part is adjusted to part, like one vast 
 mechanism. Law everywhere reigns supreme. 
 There are no eternally warring forces, for all 
 force is one. We think of heat, light, electric- 
 ity, vital energy, as so many separate forces. 
 Yet they can be transmuted into each other. 
 One force revealed in varying modes of motion 
 gives rise to all the events in the great mechan- 
 ism. Science only waits to know what this 
 
56 
 
 force is, in order to understand the secret of the 
 universe. 
 
 2. In our early experience we are apt to think 
 of matter as dead or inert. Science shows us 
 that it is everywhere alive and nowhere inert, 
 not even in the great rock foundations of our 
 earth. It is probably molecular in structure: it is 
 composed of little moving particles in a constant 
 state of rapid vibration, and separated from each 
 other like the stars and planets. It exists in a 
 series of forms and substances ranging from the 
 hard granite through less compact forms, solids, 
 liquids, gases, and the attenuated nerve-tissues 
 which approach the nature of mind. Further- 
 more, a single substance — for instance, water — 
 passes successively through the three states of 
 solid, liquid, and vapor, the integration and dis- 
 integration of matter in various forms being one 
 of the most striking phenomena of material life. 
 Even the earth's atmosphere has recently been 
 reduced to liquid and solid forms. The chemi- 
 cal process called combustion is capable of lib- 
 erating in an incredibly short space of time all 
 the solid materials of a vast wooden building, 
 and transforming them into so many invisible 
 gases, leaving only a heap of ashes to attest the 
 ruin. Nothing is stable in material form, noth- 
 ing can resist the subtle, invisible manifestations 
 of the one force, interpenetrating the particles 
 
57 
 
 of matter, setting them into rapid vibration or 
 causing them to appear and disappear in ever- 
 varying combinations. 
 
 This may be illustrated by putting large shot 
 into a receptacle until it be filled. There will 
 still be spaces for smaller and smaller shot, then 
 for a liquid, and finally for a gas. The chemist, 
 starting with a liquid, — for instance, water in 
 an air-tight jar, — and heating it to the form of 
 steam until it fills the jar, may still repeat the 
 process by adding alcohol, raising that to a 
 vapor, then adding ether, and so on, showing 
 that there are still unfilled spaces between the 
 molecules which finer substances and forces 
 might occupy. 
 
 The same is obviously true of the human 
 body. We may first consider it as a unit, then 
 as a collection of organs, an aggregation of mi- 
 nute cells, and a system of microscopic molecules. 
 No bone is so dense but it may be penetrated, 
 no space so fine between the particles that the 
 particles may not be drawn closer together or be 
 thrown wider apart without disturbing the unity 
 of the body. 
 
 We are well aware of expansion and contrac- 
 tion due to heat and cold. The muscles become 
 tense under the power of a sudden emotion. They 
 are relaxed and expanded in a state of repose. 
 In the child the muscles are moved quickly and 
 
58 
 
 easily, without stiffness and other restrictions, 
 and while the muscles are active the health is 
 generally good. In old age partial ossification 
 takes place, and the currents of the body can no 
 longer circulate freely. Density and contraction 
 occur in many cases of disease; and the problem 
 is simply to drive the particles farther apart, to 
 break up the density, just as the block of ice is 
 transformed into the less dense condition of 
 water. Everywhere in nature there is expansion 
 and contraction, due fundamentally to the driv- 
 ing apart or the drawing together of molecules 
 and atoms. The radiation of the sun's energy is 
 just such a driving apart, while the moon is cold 
 and contracted from loss of heat. The sun's 
 energy is once more concentrated in the form of 
 organic life, and is taken into the body to be 
 expanded and assimilated, but not until it has 
 once again been put in motion by the power of 
 heat. Heat is the medium of chemical change, 
 and many of our misinterpreted sensations called 
 disease are simply due to this natural expansive 
 power breaking up some dense obstruction 
 or inharmony in the body. A corresponding 
 change, accompanied by a sensation of heat, 
 takes place in the brain when for some reason 
 considerable power is called into a certain 
 region. 
 
 The principle is fundamental. We shall find 
 
59 
 
 it of great use in the concluding chapter; for 
 there we shall see how the subtler forces of 
 thought act on matter, causing it to expand or 
 contract, because it can penetrate the finest 
 spaces. Probably the law of composition is the 
 same in all cases; and the particles, if such 
 exist, in the purest grade of substance are capa- 
 ble of penetrating any and all other substances 
 or forces. It may be in this way that Spirit is 
 supreme, using and revealing itself through all 
 lower forms, making itself known to the very 
 lowest, not by jumps, but by insensible degrees, 
 so that there shall be no break in the divine con- 
 tinuity and no separation between the transcend- 
 ent Spirit, its going forth as the immanent Life 
 and its manifestation through that in which it 
 dwells. 
 
 3. But nature is not only a law-governed unit, 
 a mechanism animated by a single force, in 
 which the varying substances are composed of 
 minute particles. It is also a live organism, in 
 which each part, each organ, pulsating with 
 energy and instinct with life, has some meaning 
 as related to the whole. Of this great unitary 
 organism, throbbing with life from star to atom, 
 man is an integrant part. He is related to it so 
 closely that he seems in fact the central figure, 
 whose life was prophesied from the very dawn 
 of being. History, religion, science, literature, 
 
6o 
 
 present this relationship in a thousand different 
 lights; and now a new science of sociology and 
 ethics is taking shape in men's minds, showing 
 that society is also an organism in which each 
 man owes some duty to his human brotherhood. 
 
 To make this relationship perfectly clear, 
 think for a moment what this great natural sys- 
 tem means. In an organism no part is complete 
 in itself, but supplements and depends on all the 
 other parts. No part can in itself be perfect, 
 since it would then be a separate organism. 
 The cog-wheel may be perfectly constructed, a 
 truly wonderful contrivance; yet it is useless 
 unless it fit in exactly to some machine which 
 is incomplete without it. The musical note, 
 however pure, has no meaning for us unless it 
 be sounded in unison with others. 
 
 The same is true of man. He cannot live in 
 isolation. He is not good alone. He must 
 have a particular gift or occupation, in order that 
 perfection may at least be approximated by the 
 whole. He is a dependent being, and in turn 
 contributes his little share of benefit. Count- 
 less ages elapsed ere he could exist at all, and 
 every one of the innumerable hosts that preceded 
 him lived and struggled that he might be born. 
 From those who labor day by day come the food, 
 the clothing, and the homes which make con- 
 tinued life possible. Numberless thousands of 
 
6i 
 
 minds have thought out and formulated that 
 which to-day constitutes our knowledge of art, 
 science, history, literature, and philosophy; and 
 the largest contribution to our knowledge made 
 by a single mind seems wonderfully small, our 
 own original thought infinitesimally smaller. 
 Each of these incidental forces in the worlds 
 of nature, of society and thought, about which 
 we think so rarely, contributes its share to 
 the shifting series of experiences called life, 
 each plays its part in the great organism; and 
 there would seem to be no just system of knowl- 
 edge which does not consider them all, no logi- 
 cal stopping-place short of universal religion, 
 universal ethics, a deep love for and co-operation 
 with the brotherhood of man. 
 
 4. The most important truth remains. This 
 beautifully organized thing of life, with its won- 
 derful law-governed parts and its co-operation of 
 beings and things, was not made suddenly or out 
 of hand. It has grown out of that which eter- 
 nally existed. Slowly, as the seed matures in 
 the ground and prepares the way for the burst- 
 ing bud and the blooming plant, everything in 
 nature, so far as we know, from the raising of 
 continents to the development of man, has taken 
 place and reached its present condition by in- 
 sensible degrees. To-day is the product of yes- 
 terday, and yesterday of the day before, and so on 
 
62 
 
 indefinitely. Each cause is the effect of another 
 cause more remote. The life of the tree comes 
 from the sun millions of miles away, but it 
 comes through something. Its energy is stored 
 up in the organic and inorganic materials imme- 
 diately surrounding the tree, and through the heat 
 and light transformed from the solar rays by the 
 earth's atmosphere. The immediate environ- 
 ment, ancestry, and experience give rise to all 
 living things; and all life finds its origin in 
 a single omnipresent source. Evolution is the 
 only law yet discovered which in any way ac- 
 counts for the origin of our world. When one 
 pauses to consider what this law is as a universal 
 principle, it becomes evident that there could be 
 no other. 
 
 Yet it is easy to misunderstand this principle. 
 To many evolution simply means the derivation 
 of man from some lost ancestor, a belief which 
 generally arouses a feeling of repugnance; or it 
 means that the existence of God is not necessary 
 under this theory, and one naturally lays it aside 
 as irreligious. Yet evolution would be of little 
 value if it were not a universal law, just as well 
 exemplified in the growth of the tree as in the 
 development of new species or of a planet from 
 a mass of nebula. It would have no ultimate 
 meaning unless it proved the presence of God at 
 every step in the great world process. 
 
63 
 
 In the foregoing chapter we have seen that the 
 whole problem is immensely simplified by the 
 knowledge that all life is immanent, that 
 the activity of beings and things is due to 
 the power resident in that which lives and 
 grows. 
 
 If God is immanent in one portion of the uni- 
 verse, he must be immanent in all. If he gives 
 rise to a world and its people, he must be with 
 the world in order for it to endure. This much 
 is clear: it only remains to discover, as far as 
 possible, the series or gradations of power and 
 substance whereby Spirit makes itself known 
 to and revealed as the lowest forms of being, and 
 to note the successive stages through which all 
 beings pass in their upward growth. 
 
 This latter task is the work of natural science; 
 and year by year her workers are collecting 
 evidence, classifying facts, inquiring into the 
 causes of variation, the influence of environ- 
 ment, the effect of use and disuse, the transmis- 
 sion of acquired variations, and all other prob- 
 lems connected with development. Every fact 
 makes our knowledge of the immanent God more 
 secure. Every datum supplies a link in the in- 
 finite series of causes and effects, a series prob- 
 ably no less systematic than the mathematical 
 series from one to a thousand, from a thousand 
 to a million, in which not one figure can be 
 
64 
 
 omitted. Every factor plays its inevitable part. 
 Every step bears some relation to its anteced- 
 ent and its consequent. And all facts, all 
 forces, all events, are related to the entire uni- 
 verse of to-day, of yesterday, of eternity. There 
 is no break in nature's organism, but one con- 
 tinuous series of closely related events. There 
 are no jumps, but only the gradual unfolding, 
 when it is ready, of all that is involved in the 
 budding organism. 
 
 One need only observe the social and political 
 changes going on to-day, class contending with 
 class and party with party, in order to discover 
 every aspect of this universal principle. We 
 forget this law sometimes, and undertake to 
 force events, we endeavor to convince ourselves 
 that there is a royal road to success; but we soon 
 discover that we can omit no steps. 
 
 The seed planted in the ground, like the new 
 idea sown in a wilderness of conflicting opinion, 
 contains an indwelling principle of life, which 
 causes it to develop along certain lines and along 
 no others. It partakes of the soil. It grows 
 and absorbs nutriment from the sunlight, it 
 matures slowly, it is dependent solely on what 
 it has within and what closely surrounds it. Its 
 growth may be hastened within certain limits, 
 but only by introducing a new factor. The life 
 of the plant which it becomes in due time is a 
 
65 
 
 type of all evolution. It is growth, not by crea- 
 tion out of nothing, but through the transfor- 
 mation of that which already exists into some- 
 thing different. Its growth is due to the 
 interaction of part on part. Its transmutation 
 into another species can only result through 
 the modification, the introduction into its own 
 life of some new element. The new element 
 once introduced, whether in the organic or the 
 inorganic worlds, in society, in politics, in re- 
 ligion, a change is sure to result; and one need 
 only await its coming. 
 
 But we have the best evidence in our own 
 lives; and the chief problem, laying aside all 
 discussion of particular theories of evolution, is 
 to discover the actual course of events in daily 
 experience, to learn how far we have gone in the 
 upbuilding of character and soul, to aspire and 
 to co-operate with the immanent forces of our 
 own being. 
 
 We have an excellent example of what evolu- 
 tion means in the growth of our own ideas. We 
 are born with a certain set of opinions on mat- 
 ters of religion, politics, and the like. There 
 is a strong tendency toward conservatism ; and 
 we are inclined to think like our parents, and 
 even to cherish and defend the dogmas which 
 have come down to us. But with each experi- 
 ence, each new book, each new acquaintance 
 
66 
 
 with the world and with people, which makes an 
 impression on us, a new factor enters into our 
 thought ; and the only way to avoid progress is 
 to avoid contact with progressive people. 
 
 So well is this understood by certain leaders 
 of thought that they forbid their followers to 
 read outside of established lines; for they know 
 that, if people think, they will change. Ideas 
 have a resident, a stimulating life, especially 
 when they come fresh from the minds of those to 
 whom the world's mental progress is due. They 
 speak to us in books. They compel our assent 
 through reason and through people. And, once 
 sown in the mind, they work a wonderful trans- 
 formation, until they burst forth with all the 
 power of firm conviction. 
 
 Yet the transition is ever gradual and law- 
 governed, like the growth of the tree. No idea 
 is established without controversy. We turn it 
 over, weigh it, and view it in all its aspects, 
 just as new social and political institutions grow 
 out of controversy and long experience. The 
 power of conviction comes only when the last 
 objection has been met. We are involuntarily 
 as moderate and painstaking as Nature herself. 
 If perchance we forget the natural method, and 
 jump at conclusions, we discover no way of mak- 
 ing them sure but to go back and supply all the 
 steps. If an idea appeals to us at once, it is 
 
6/ 
 
 because thought and experience have already 
 prepared the way for its acceptance. We cannot 
 force a full-grown idea into the mind of another 
 any more than nature can be interfered with 
 from without. We are compelled to seek a 
 starting-point, to discover some idea already 
 existing in the mind of the other person, and 
 lead on gradually from the known to the un- 
 known. Nor can we create a new philosophy or 
 originate any idea which has no basis in experi- 
 ence. Whether we will or no, we must take 
 cognizance of universal human knowledge, and 
 develop our own thought from that. Psychology 
 shows that even the wildest and most absurd 
 fancies of the imagination are in some way prod- 
 ucts of experience. 
 
 Our own deepest self challenges us to find any 
 possible method of growth and change except 
 that of patient evolution, the great world-wide 
 process of "continuous progressive change, ac- 
 cording to unvarying laws, and by means of resi- 
 dent forces." * ^The process once called creation 
 is as long as time itself, as wide as the uni- 
 verse. It is going on to-day. It will never 
 cease until its great task be completed. It is 
 thorough, painstaking, gradual, and sure. It is 
 economical, careful, and direct, making use of 
 every incident, every possible factor, every so- 
 
 * Le Conte, " Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought," Part i, p. 8. 
 
68 
 
 called chance, so that in human life joy, sorrow, 
 hardship, success, heredity, disposition, environ- 
 ment, education, society, and thought, are called 
 into use; and all these factors have their mean- 
 ing, their bearing on the ideal result. "The 
 ideal is immanent in the real." The aspiring 
 force speaks through the slightest incident 
 of experience. The all-powerful, omnipresent 
 Spirit aspires through, co-operates with, and 
 seeks co-operation from the individual soul to 
 whom it is ever trying to make itself known. 
 God is immanent in evolution. 
 
 In order to make this intimate relationship of 
 God and his world of manifestation clear and 
 vivid, let us try for a moment to conceive the 
 long series of forces and substances, interpene- 
 trating and blending with each other, and de- 
 scending from the central Love down through the 
 immanent life, the higher attributes of man, the 
 soul, the realm of mind, the physical and chem- 
 ical forces, gravitation, cohesion, electricity, and 
 the particles of matter, and all the volatile sub- 
 stances to the liquids, solids, and finally to the 
 hard rock. Or, starting with the supposed 
 nebulous mass out of which our universe grew, 
 let us pass slowly upward through the vast 
 cycles of cosmic time, the thought of which adds 
 depth and meaning to the conception of God. 
 Let us pause in silence until we feel the spirit 
 
69 
 
 of the ages. Good visualizers will probably call 
 up some mental picture which suggests these 
 vast stretches of time. Out of the gradually 
 cooling mass which at length takes shape as our 
 earth we shall see the dawn of life, and the 
 moderate, patient, purposeful transition from the 
 inorganic to the organic kingdoms, the long 
 periods in which one form of animal life suc- 
 ceeded and won supremacy over another, the 
 change from the rank vegetation of the carbonif- 
 erous period to the graceful forms of to-day, the 
 raising of continents and mountains, the retreat 
 of the great ice-sheets which once covered large 
 portions of the northern hemisphere, and the dim 
 outlines of that far distant society, the herding 
 together of men, out of which grew modern civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 Thus we come at last to the dawn of human 
 history. The epochs of the past unfold before 
 us with new meaning. We note how period 
 has grown out of period, event out of event. 
 Thought becomes overpowered by the vastness 
 and complexity of civilized life in its endless 
 phases, its manifold contributions to the arts 
 and sciences. The great truths of religion and 
 philosophy, the great souls of history, claim our 
 attention at last; and thus the thought turns 
 once more to the one Reality which this long 
 evolutionary process suggests. 
 
7o 
 
 One's personal thought is lost in contempla- 
 tion of the Universal. One is momentarily 
 lifted above the present, above the world of 
 human life, into the life of worlds, of the uni- 
 verse, — yes, the very life of God, of which one 
 seems to contemplate but one of its infinite 
 phases. One feels and knows that the human 
 self is part of this great Life, which no words 
 can describe. One communes with the Essence 
 itself, the All-thing, the Spirit, the Love. 
 Matter seems like a mere symbol as compared 
 with this its real meaning. The Life which 
 manifested itself so long ago in the primeval 
 history of the earth returns to consciousness in 
 man, and recognizes through him its own tran- 
 scendent source. The soul knows the great 
 unity henceforth, whatever be the phase of it 
 contemplated. It habitually turns from the uni- 
 verse to God and from God to his great world of 
 manifestation. 
 
IV. 
 
 OUR LIFE IN MIND. 
 
 Certain aspects of the outer world now stand 
 out clearly before us. The universe is an order, 
 a system, an organized whole, in which each 
 being and thing bears some relation to all 
 others. Everything is related, not alone through 
 its dependence on its neighbors, but through the 
 law of cause and effect, the one fundamental 
 force, substance, and life, and the law by which 
 all things come into being. The outer world 
 seems to be composed of independent forms and 
 hard substances. Yet all forms are transient. 
 The dense material dissipates into invisible 
 gases and ultimate particles ; and we find noth- 
 ing permanent until we turn to the realm of the 
 invisible and persistent Power which underlies 
 these shifting forms. Even the constant quali- 
 ties of matter must have their basis in a more 
 substantial Reality in order to be constant at 
 all. Matter is eternal only so far as it inheres 
 in this self-existent Reality. It is law-gov- 
 erned only because the One is unchangeable. 
 And, finally, it has no satisfactory meaning for 
 us until we view it as the very consciousness, 
 
72 
 
 the objectified life of God himself, of the God 
 who is in his world, immanent in evolution and 
 immanent in the soul. 
 
 The Reality of the outer and inner worlds, 
 then, is one. Everything exists in God; and 
 we, existing in him, contemplate and know his 
 conscious manifestations, in part. We do not 
 simply feel matter as so many distinct objects. 
 We do not simply feel sensations of light, heat, 
 and cold. An object, a blow, a sense of 
 warmth, does not come directly to the soul. 
 The object must be understood, the blow must 
 be perceived and reported, the feeling of warmth 
 must be translated into an idea. We feel, and 
 also know that we feel, force or matter in some 
 of its forms. The simple act of feeling and 
 knowing implies the existence not only of an 
 outer world from which our sensations come, but 
 of a conscious being to whom that world is made 
 known. These very words become intelligible 
 to the reader only as they call up ideas; and 
 back of these ideas, following one another in 
 rapid succession in the reader's consciousness, 
 is the reader himself contemplating, thinking 
 over these ideas, and associating them with what 
 reflective experience has already made clear. 
 
 Even the materialist must admit this; for, in 
 affirming that matter alone exists, he is simply 
 stating a product of his reason. He has put cer- 
 
 
73 
 
 tain ideas together, and evolved them into a 
 system. This system of ideas is to him all 
 absorbing. It is his habitual mode of thought, 
 and colors his entire conscious experience. As 
 a natural consequence, he neglects one aspect of 
 that experience. He forgets the real nature of 
 his ideas, affirming that mind is a mere flame, 
 a product or outgrowth of matter. But even in 
 admitting this he surrenders the stronghold of 
 materialism, since by his own admission this 
 flame is conscious; and consciousness is the 
 fundamental fact of existence. It involves all 
 that we are, all that we know, desire, and feel, 
 the whole universe, and the great Thinker 
 himself. 
 
 State the case as strongly as we may for mate- 
 rialism, we are more certain that mind exists, 
 for we know matter only through mind; and the 
 materialist must account for this deepest aspect 
 of life with all that it involves. In fact, it is 
 futile to deny either the subjective or the objec- 
 tive aspects of life; for the two have evolved 
 together. They are present in our first experi- 
 ence; and the infant, reaching for the picture on 
 the distant wall, and trying to locate the objects 
 about him, is making the first discrimination be- 
 tween them. He soon gets some idea of space, 
 for he finds that he cannot reach the picture on 
 the wall. He learns to know one person from 
 
74 
 
 another. He distinguishes between his body 
 and himself; and, finally, he becomes conscious 
 of himself as a being that can feel and will. 
 Part of all that he sees, feels, hears, or in any 
 way experiences is due to his understanding 
 from the moment his discriminating conscious- 
 ness is quickened. The world becomes compre- 
 hensible to him as fast as he himself develops to 
 comprehend it. Gradually his emotions and his 
 knowledge play a greater and greater part in his 
 life, until he develops a personal atmosphere, 
 which projects itself into the outer world. Im- 
 pulse and imagination in time give place to rea- 
 son, but the thought of the man is no less influ- 
 ential in its effect on his life, he is just as truly 
 leading a life of mind; and every business trans- 
 action, every pain and pleasure, is largely de- 
 pendent on the confidence or belief he puts 
 into it. 
 
 But all this is apt to be forgotten. Man for- 
 gets that he is a soul with a body, that he is 
 primarily a conscious being, contemplating ideas 
 and influenced by thought. Some thought is 
 always prominent with him. He is always de- 
 voted to something. He shapes and controls 
 things by his thought. Yet, just because the 
 influence of thought is constant and is a fact of 
 the commonest experience, he is unmindful of 
 its real power and the real nature of his life. 
 
75 
 
 He seems to be leading a material life, and 
 accordingly permits himself to be overcome by 
 that which is material. But even here it is 
 belief which governs his conduct. As a con- 
 scious being, he could be governed by nothing 
 else. Every act of conduct is due to a direc- 
 tion of mind; and the mind shapes the conduct, 
 and draws to itself whatever corresponds to the 
 thought, just as truly and in the same way as a 
 magnet attracts particles of iron. As this may 
 not be fully evident, it is well to consider the 
 influence of thought at some length; for in this 
 neglected factor of human experience we shall 
 find the greatest help in the problems of health 
 and happiness. 
 
 It is evident first of all that the impression 
 made upon us by a given experience depends 
 largely upon the opinion we put into it. Let a 
 company of people of varied tastes, prejudices, 
 and education read a thoughtful book, listen to 
 a speaker of decided opinions, or attend an en- 
 tertainment of considerable merit, and their 
 comments will display a wonderful variety 
 of opinion. Diametricalty opposed opinions on 
 political, religious, and philosophical questions 
 have been maintained ever since man began to 
 reflect. A slight or a very marked divergence 
 of opinion separates mankind into little groups 
 
7 6 
 
 and sects the world over. Each sect offers its 
 opinions as truth. Everywhere people accept 
 and are influenced by opinions with surprising 
 readiness. Thousands of people have been made 
 miserable and thrown into a state of excitement 
 because in their fear and ignorance they ac- 
 cepted the teachings of dogmatic theology about 
 sin and a future state, to say nothing of the 
 slavery to medical opinion and the untold suffer- 
 ing that has grown out of it. The credulity, 
 the gullibility of human nature is one of its pro- 
 foundest weaknesses; and I need only refer to it 
 to suggest its bearing on our mental life. It 
 is a guiding factor with the majority of people, 
 and opens the door to the control of the weak by 
 the clever, the strong, and the unprincipled. 
 Every one is deceived at times through this 
 inherent eagerness to believe rather than to 
 understand, and the influence of prejudice is so 
 subtle that only the keenest and most discerning 
 minds are able to eliminate it to any marked 
 degree. 
 
 We are so accustomed to obey certain ideas 
 that we are scarcely aware of their power over 
 us, or how true it is that "the world is what 
 we make it." We are born with a set of ideas, 
 born members of sects and parties in which the- 
 ory, practice, and prejudice have become one. 
 Our religion, education, and even our fears are 
 
77 
 
 prepared for us by other minds. Every oppor- 
 tunity is given us to develop along traditional 
 lines, and it is deemed almost a blasphemy to 
 have ideas of our own. Even if in later life one 
 be quickened in a new direction, it is almost 
 impossible to overcome and cast aside these 
 deeply rooted opinions and prejudices. 
 
 We do not stop to question our beliefs. Prej- 
 udice will not permit it. People, as a rule, pre- 
 fer to accept opinion without attempting to prove 
 or disprove it. They are bored, — and it is a 
 most lamentable fact, — they are bored by rea- 
 sons and proof. It seems never to have occurred 
 to them that man is free, and sure of his own in- 
 dividuality and the truth, only so far as he has 
 gone with a rational process of thought. The 
 tendency to think for one's self — the most help- 
 ful and healthy tendency in man — is crushed 
 out in its infancy; and our whole system of tra- 
 ditional education and religion tends to shape 
 man's belief for him. It is only when some 
 unusually original or self-reliant thinker breaks 
 through the hard and fast lines of rut-bound 
 thinking that any ideas of fundamental value are 
 given to the world. The non-sectarian and un- 
 prejudiced man of science is a very late product 
 of evolution; and even he is prejudiced against 
 many religious questions, and as rigorously ex- 
 cludes all facts that lie without the boundaries 
 
78 
 
 of natural science as the most bigoted conserva- 
 tive rules out the doctrines of the radical. The 
 love of truth is not yet strong enough to make 
 us seek universal truth rather than particular 
 opinion. We think we know. Preconception 
 blinds our eyes on every hand. We give credit 
 to this man or this sect, as though there could 
 be a monopoly of truth, when a little reflection 
 would show that truth is universal, and does not 
 hold because any man enunciates it, or because 
 any sect champions it, but because it is inherent 
 in the nature of things and persons. 
 
 It is a revelation to most people to discover 
 the power of fear in their own lives. It enters 
 into their religion. It often inspires the preju- 
 dice which stifles unbiassed inquiry. It enters 
 into every detail of daily life. We are appre- 
 hensive, as a race. We picture calamities of 
 every description, and dread the worst. The 
 sensational press furnishes constant material for 
 fear. We fear to eat this and that. We dread, 
 anticipate, and really put ourselves in the best 
 attitude to take certain diseases; and we live in 
 constant fear of death. And fear is simply an- 
 other form of opinion. It runs back to our will- 
 ingness to believe rather than to think for our- 
 selves. It is based on ignorance, increases in 
 intensity with the degree of superstition, and 
 vanishes when we understand the law of develop- 
 ment, of cause and effect. 
 
79 
 
 But the one who knows the law and obeys it 
 without fear, the scientific man or the seer, just 
 as truly as the savage, is building his own world 
 from within. The world is just as large and 
 just as intelligible as his own ability to inter- 
 pret it. The artist discovers qualities in the 
 outer world which actually do not exist for other 
 people. He detects certain lights and shades, 
 certain undulations of the landscape, and an 
 endless variety of transformations during the 
 four seasons of the year. A scientific man will 
 discover evidences of glaciation, and read a long 
 and most interesting history from a rock which, 
 may be a worthless obstacle to the farmer. 
 Even the beautiful Alps were once deemed so 
 many obstructions to travel before the love of 
 natural scenery was developed. The same scene 
 viewed by the novelist, the historian, the war- 
 rior, the man of business, the savage, presents 
 just so many different aspects, depending upon 
 their training and the class of facts which serve 
 their purpose. It may be comical, it may be 
 tragical, it may inspire happiness, sorrow, 
 comfort, dread, chagrin, pity, and suggest a 
 thousand different ideas to the beholder. All 
 these aspects may have some basis in fact, but 
 they are not complete pictures of the outer 
 world. They are individual phases of it. We 
 see things as we are. 
 
8o 
 
 The difference, then, is deeper than education 
 alone. There are natural tastes, likes and dis- 
 likes, affinities and sentiments, rendering the 
 saying "What is one man's meat is another's 
 poison " equally applicable to the inner world. 
 Passion colors the world according to its nature 
 and intensity. Experiences, dispositions, theo- 
 ries, differ, and project themselves into every 
 fact of life. One thinker is persistently opti- 
 mistic, despite all that life brings of pain and 
 misery; another is no less strong in his pes- 
 simism: while a third is so bigoted that he can- 
 not be urged to take a fair view of anything, not 
 even of his own persistently biased nature. 
 
 The very fact that the world is so large, that 
 the one Reality is only known to us in part, or 
 so far as experience has made it known, shows 
 that our interpretations must differ, and that the 
 difference is in us. Indeed, one may seriously 
 question if the limitations of temperament will 
 ever be overcome, if one man can ever describe 
 life except as he sees it, modified by the general 
 knowledge of the race. Perhaps that very feeling 
 of individuality is fundamental in the thought of 
 God, is the divine consciousness focalized in a 
 given direction. If so, it is each one's duty to 
 cultivate this profoundest individuality, and dis- 
 cover just what God means through it, what 
 aspect of life one is best able to interpret. 
 
8i 
 
 This deeper life in mind must then take the 
 place of the superficial world of opinion. The 
 dogmas and influences of other people must be 
 rigorously excluded until, in moments of silence 
 and quiet reflection, one learns the divine point 
 of view through the individual man. 
 
 Thus the individual thinker penetrates deeper 
 and deeper in his analysis of our life in mind, 
 until his consciousness seems to blend with the 
 universal Thinker, of whose consciousness all 
 life is a part. His means of knowing the outer 
 world, and the influence of opinion, of preju- 
 dice, education, and temperament, prove to him 
 that he lives in mind. But now he discovers a 
 yet deeper reason, and once more happily makes 
 his escape from the narrowing effects of mere 
 self-consciousness into the greater consciousness 
 of the Universal. 
 
 The difference between one person and an- 
 other, then, is fundamental. One has only to 
 try to put one's self in the mind of a friend in 
 order to realize this wonderful difference. Let 
 the friend be one's closest companion, one's 
 mother or brother, whom one has known inti- 
 mately from infancy; and even here the transi- 
 tion is impossible. There is something that we 
 cannot grasp, because it is the friend's experi- 
 ence, and can never be ours. Personality, — - what 
 is it, whence came it, and what does it mean? 
 
82 
 
 Your world and my world, how much alike, yet 
 how utterly dissimilar! and how many and varied 
 the aspects of a single personality as presented 
 to different people, all equally true perhaps, all 
 drawn out from a single source under ever-chang- 
 ing conditions! Self exists within self, — the 
 social self, the self of impulse and emotion, and 
 the self of reason, the conscious self and the 
 subconscious, wherein we turn over and view 
 ideas in all their aspects until they become 
 fixed habits of thought, the fleeting ephemeral 
 self, which reveals itself in an endless variety of 
 moods, opinions, and feelings, and the perma- 
 ment self which we call soul, that deeper con- 
 sciousness which blends with the Self of selves. 
 But some self is always uppermost. To this 
 we are for the moment devoted, and it is this 
 more superficial self or direction of mind that 
 we are most concerned with in this chapter. One 
 fact remains true of all personalities, however 
 great the difference between them. They are 
 all conscious beings. On the one hand come 
 impressions from the world of matter. On the 
 other come thoughts and influences in the sphere 
 of mind. The two unite in consciousness, and 
 form the world of mental life, or our interpreta- 
 tion of the great organized whole of which we 
 are part. In the centre exists man. Looking 
 one way, all that he sees is apparently material. 
 
83 
 
 Looking in the other, all appears to be mind. 
 When he seeks their unity, he finds it alone in 
 the conscious self which underlies them both, 
 which therefore makes his whole life mental, 
 and which is to be explained only by reference 
 to the one Self. 
 
 But our mental life is not made up of percep- 
 tions, emotions, and other conscious ideas alone. 
 There is a more subtle form of thought influence 
 than any we have yet considered. The rapid 
 development of hypnotism has opened up a phase 
 of this influence which throws much light on the 
 nature of mind. The mind is even more suscep- 
 tible to the power of suggestion than to the 
 power of opinion. Opinion itself often comes 
 in the form of suggestion, and carries a hypnotic 
 influence with it. Indeed, the influence, the so- 
 called magnetism, that accompanies the spoken 
 or written word, is often more effective than a 
 strong argument. The strong sway the weak in 
 this way; and positive minds draw negative 
 minds about them, which merely reflect the 
 thought of the leader. Auto-suggestion is also 
 a powerful factor in our mental life, and is often 
 used, greatly to the benefit of the health. People 
 emulate each other through unconscious sugges- 
 tion. People are drawn into all sorts of fash- 
 ions, fads, and influences through these silent 
 
8 4 
 
 suggestions. Every one, in fact, has some 
 strange experience to relate nowadays, illustra- 
 tive of occult influence, hidden and unsuspected 
 communications between mind and mind, and 
 the remarkable effect of thought upon the body 
 in the cause and cure of disease. 
 
 Every sensitive person is also aware of mental 
 atmospheres surrounding persons and places, just 
 as the odor emanates from and surrounds a rose. 
 This is especially noticeable in a church or in 
 some great cathedral where for ages men have 
 bowed in worship in accordance with their par- 
 ticular form of religion, and have left their in- 
 fluence behind them. Every household, town, 
 or city has its peculiar mentality, the analysis 
 of which reveals the characteristics of the minds 
 that produce it. A wonderfully stimulating at- 
 mosphere pervades a great university, causing a 
 marked change in the thought, the manners, and 
 even the dress of the novice, who, if he be espe- 
 cially susceptible, is often over-stimulated by it. 
 Wherever man has lived and thought, these at- 
 mospheres have been left behind him. They are 
 associated with chairs where people have sat for 
 some length of time. They are associated with 
 clothing, and a change of clothing is therefore 
 sufficient at times to change the state of mind. 
 They come with books and letters sometimes 
 revealing more of the personality that sends 
 
85 
 
 them forth than the person would wish. They 
 draw people together, and cause them to think 
 alike. There is an atmosphere about some 
 people that warns one not to come too close, 
 while in other cases there is instant affinity and 
 sympathy. One occasionally meets people 
 whose very presence is a lasting stimulus and 
 an inspiration. One seems to take away some- 
 thing besides the mere memory of a noteworthy 
 interview; and some people forget their troubles, 
 lose their aches and pains, and are immensely 
 benefited by simply talking with a helpful 
 friend. Some people compel attention or obedi- 
 ence by their presence, and exact a surprising 
 amount of service and homage from other people. 
 Character, then, is not only written in the 
 face, expressed in conduct and language, but is 
 sent forth as a thought atmosphere. Atmos- 
 pheres impinge and leave their impressions on 
 each other, revealing the nature, thought, and 
 feeling of the personality which gives rise to 
 them. This is evidently the reason why first 
 impressions are usually correct, and why depres- 
 sion and other states of feeling are passed from 
 mind to mind. Some delicately organized peo- 
 ple find it inadvisable to go into society except 
 at rare intervals ; for they get entangled in these 
 amospheres, and do not know how to throw them 
 off. Others seem to have the happy art of leav- 
 
86 
 
 ing a part of themselves behind, of making every 
 one else happy, yet never yielding their own 
 personality to any contaminating influence. 
 
 But thought communications are not limited 
 by time or space. One sometimes feels that a 
 friend is about to call or write just before the 
 actual visit is made or the letter received. 
 People in different parts of the world working 
 along parallel lines of thought sometimes make 
 the same invention or discovery at the same 
 time. The phenomena of thought transference 
 are too well authenticated to need proof here, 
 although I have the exact data of many experi- 
 ences in my own life, and thought communi- 
 cation has long been a matter of common 
 occurrence. The evidence in favor of a constant 
 stream of mental influences passing from mind 
 to mind is in fact overwhelming, and the mere 
 data are not as important as the principle im- 
 plied in their occurrence. 
 
 Some still dismiss such experiences as mere 
 coincidences, or deem them of little value when 
 the communication takes place between friends; 
 but those who, like the writer, have taken note 
 of the exact words, of time and place in which 
 the message came, and have immediately re- 
 ceived a letter from the distant friend contain- 
 ing precisely the same data, know beyond all 
 doubt that the experience was no mere happen- 
 
87 
 
 ing, and the very fact that such communications 
 are common between those who are in sympathy 
 is a proof of their occurrence. We recognize our 
 friends' communications because we know their 
 mental atmosphere. Other messages may come 
 and produce no conscious impression on us, be- 
 cause we are ignorant of their source. They are 
 mere impersonal thoughts, that slip into the 
 consciousness almost as our own; and oftentimes 
 we learn that these supposed original thoughts 
 are common to the intellectual life of our time, 
 and are "in the air." Whereas telepathic com- 
 munications with a friend, like the sound of a 
 familiar voice, have some meaning for us, and 
 put us in touch with the friend's personality. 
 It is not necessary, then, that certain words be 
 transmitted and recorded in order to prove telep- 
 athy; for the mere directing of one's thought 
 toward another is sufficient to make one's self 
 known. In writing a letter, one naturally thinks 
 of the person to whom it is to be sent; and this 
 alone is sufficient to open up thought communi- 
 cation, and perhaps reveal the contents of the 
 letter. The communication is its own evidence, 
 and suggests a principle far more important 
 than any experiential attempts to repeat it under 
 exact conditions. 
 
 It is probable that we are living related lives, 
 that we are not only members of one another 
 
88 
 
 through the all-encompassing Spirit, but that we 
 are bound each to each by ties of thought. 
 Mental man, then, is not an isolated creature any- 
 more than is physical man, but is part of a psy- 
 chical organism, in which every thought plays 
 its part and has its effect just as truly as the 
 events in the physical world or in the social 
 organism; or, better, that for conscious man 
 there is but one organism, of which we contem- 
 plate now its physical, now its social, its men- 
 tal, its ethical and spiritual phases, according 
 to the line of thought or the self which chances 
 to be uppermost. If this be so, and if the 
 events of this purely mental phase of life be 
 law-governed, correlated, and causally connected 
 with its other phases, there can be no real chasm 
 between mind and matter or between thought 
 and soul or spirit. There must be some means 
 of communicating between mind and mind, be- 
 tween thought and matter; and, while it is not 
 possible to supply all the steps in the transition 
 at this early stage of the inquiry, certain facts 
 have already been ascertained which are of the 
 greatest importance in the present discussion. 
 
 Many students of thought transference and of 
 other facts of our mental life have found it nec- 
 essary to postulate the existence of a subtle 
 substance, which, like the luminiferous ether, 
 conveys thought vibrations from mind to mind, 
 
8 9 
 
 precisely as the sun's energy is brought to our 
 earth. It is far more probable that the commu- 
 nication takes place in this way than through 
 the journeying of the soul from place to place; 
 for, although some people have the ability to 
 discover and describe things at a distance, there 
 is little reason to believe that the soul ever 
 leaves the body until the change called death 
 occurs. Nor is it probable that the soul or 
 spirit projects itself at any great distance. The 
 thought wave probably passes through this finest 
 form of ether, just as waves of sound are trans- 
 mitted through the air, setting up vibrations in 
 the recipient corresponding to those in the 
 sender. Sound, light, heat, color, and the mo- 
 tion caused by wind on the surface of water are 
 transmitted in this way; and one would natu- 
 rally look for the same law in the realm of 
 thought. In nature, then, it is the energy, the 
 wave-motion, that is transferred, and not the 
 object which gives rise to it. Every sound 
 makes an impression on the atmosphere capable 
 of setting up a corresponding vibration in the 
 ears of all who are within a certain distance. 
 In a similar manner each thought is probably 
 registered on this subtle ether; and those who 
 are open to it through sympathy or some com- 
 mon interest become aware of it or unconsciously 
 receive the benefit of it. Minds of a like order 
 
go 
 
 are thus enabled to think together. The new 
 thoughts of one stimulate those who are ready to 
 respond, while thoughts that do not concern us 
 pass off like sound in a desert, where there is no 
 one to hear. Sympathy, receptivity, is the prime 
 requisite in conscious thought communication. 
 Yet, if there be an intermental substance, all 
 minds must be open to it in some degree, and 
 the most potent influences may be received un- 
 consciously. 
 
 This ethereal substance in which our minds 
 seem to be bathed is probably molecular in 
 structure; yet it is obviously finer than electric- 
 ity or the luminiferous ether, and is capable of 
 penetrating the most minute spaces, just as the 
 coarser gases interpenetrate the molecules of 
 liquids and solids. It is evidently the finest 
 grade of matter, and is immediately responsive 
 to the slightest possible thought activity. On 
 the one hand, it is probably like thought, or 
 thought sent forth and condensed, just as the 
 breath is condensed on a frosty morning, and on 
 the other, like matter in its more ethereal forms. 
 It may therefore be called thought matter or 
 spiritual matter, since it apparently supplies the 
 connection between spirit and matter, and par- 
 takes of both. In addition to the general inter- 
 mediary between mind and mind there must then 
 be a personal mentality, which gives shape to 
 
9i 
 
 individual thought. This has already been in 
 part described as mental atmosphere, and evi- 
 dently proceeds from the personality, just as 
 heat is seen rising from the ground on a warm 
 day. It may be conceived as a wonderfully sen- 
 sitive impression plate, jelly-like in texture, 
 responding to the slightest possible change of 
 thought, and performing an office similar to that 
 of the earth's atmosphere, the minute particles 
 of which catch the solar rays, and radiate them 
 to the earth's surface in the form of heat and 
 light. From it the transition is probably made 
 directly to thought on the one hand and to bod- 
 ily changes on the other, for it evidently pene- 
 trates the finest spaces in every portion of the 
 physical body. Its existence therefore explains 
 why thought can mould the body in causing and 
 curing disease, and gives a reason for the su- 
 premacy of mind. In recent literature it is de- 
 scribed as an uprush from the subliminal or 
 subjective self; and it is probably in this sur- 
 rounding atmosphere or uprush that faces, forms, 
 and other shapes are seen, as well as a large 
 class of phenomena known as hallucinations. 
 Whatever be the nature of this ethereal sub- 
 stance, it is evident, then, that it gives shape 
 to thought. Dr. Quimby,* who, so far as I am 
 aware, was the first to discover and describe this 
 
 * See Preface. 
 
92 
 
 aspect of it, called it spiritual matter, since it 
 possesses qualities characteristic of both matter 
 and spirit. Into it, according to his descrip- 
 tion, are sown all sorts of ideas and erroneous 
 opinions, fear, and beliefs about disease, which 
 condense and germinate like seeds in the 
 ground, producing changes in the body corre- 
 sponding to the states of spiritual matter. He 
 therefore distinguished between the mind which 
 can be changed by thought and the mind which 
 cannot change, which he called Wisdom. His 
 own researches led him to make this distinction, 
 and with him the existence of spiritual matter 
 was no hypothesis, but a fact of experience. It 
 was an object of perception with him. He could 
 describe its changes, and was himself conscious 
 of changing it when he explained some error to 
 a person in trouble or sickness. His discovery 
 therefore supplied the connecting link in the 
 mental cause and cure of disease, which has been 
 the means of relieving so much suffering during 
 the past half-century. 
 
 It is evident, then, that this spiritual matter is 
 also in close connection, if not partly synony- 
 mous, with the unconscious or, more properly, 
 the subconscious mind, the physiological aspect 
 of which is known as unconscious cerebration. 
 The conscious thought evidently descends to the 
 plane of the subconscious when it is dismissed 
 
93 
 
 by the will or the attention. It may than take 
 form as spiritual matter, and be reflected in the 
 body, or it may simply be turned over in the 
 mind until the idea becomes a permanent factor 
 in our mental life. It is a well-known fact that 
 during this subconscious process new light is 
 thrown on difficult questions, and the perplexing 
 problem which we dismiss from consciousness at 
 night is often solved for us in the morning. 
 Whence came the new solution? Have we not 
 arrived once more at the general conclusion of 
 this book; namely, that "we lie open on one 
 side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the at- 
 tributes of God " ? * This openness is greater 
 during sleep; and it is probably then that the 
 mind gets many of its new ideas from the very 
 source of wisdom, the mind that cannot change, 
 the All-knowledge. 
 
 One mind is thus revealed within another, 
 like organism within organism in nature. The 
 problem becomes more complicated as we pro- 
 ceed; and in this great question — namely, the 
 origin of our ideas — is involved the very mys- 
 tery of life itself. But, not to complicate our 
 present discussion, it is sufficient to say that 
 this intermediary shades off into all the aspects 
 of our life in mind. As it approaches the finest 
 forms of matter in the physical body, it gives 
 
 * Emerson, "The Over-Soul." 
 
94 
 
 rise to physical sensation, causing density, con- 
 traction, or expansion, according to the nature 
 of the thought. As it vibrates or extends to 
 other minds, it becomes thought transference, 
 or, more accurately, the medium of thought 
 transmission. Descending to the realm of the 
 partly conscious, it becomes the subconscious 
 mind, and is connected with the subjective or 
 deepest self. Rising to the plane of definite 
 thought, it blends with the conscious mind, by 
 which it can be moulded like clay in the hands 
 of the potter. At death it is probably separated 
 forever from physical sensation, leaving the 
 ability to communicate through its more spirit- 
 ual aspect an indestructible quality of the soul. 
 Now that we have made the transition from 
 matter to mind as well as our imperfect knowl- 
 edge would permit, it becomes evident that the 
 thought which changes matter is of far more im- 
 portance than the actual process. There must 
 then be some fundamental law which governs 
 alike in our transitory and permanent mental 
 states, and gives unity to the aspects of the 
 inner life which we have passed in hasty re- 
 view. As this law is of great practical impor- 
 tance, it is necessary to approach a definition of 
 it by degrees. 
 
 If we observe a little child at play, we notice 
 
95 
 
 that it turns from this sport to that, from one 
 plaything to another, as rapidly as its attention 
 is attracted. The first indication of definite 
 growth in the baby's mind is this fixing of its 
 baby eyes and its blossoming consciousness on 
 some attractive object. The observant mother 
 early learns to govern the child largely through 
 its interested and skilfully directed attention. 
 A little later she discovers that it is far better 
 both for the present and the permanent good of 
 the child never to call it naughty, and thereby 
 to call more attention to its unruliness, but to 
 interest it in some new play, or carefully and 
 persistently to point out the better way, until 
 it shall have become all-absorbing. Later still, 
 when the child develops ways of its own, its 
 persistence or wilfulness is still attention fixed 
 on some cherished plan. The student so ab- 
 sorbed in his book that he is oblivious of the 
 conversation going on about him illustrates the 
 same power of a fixed direction of mind. The 
 performance of skilled labor consists largely in 
 the cultivation and concentration of the atten- 
 tion, together with the necessary manual ac- 
 companiment. The art of remembering well 
 depends largely on the attention one gives to 
 a speaker or book. That speaker or book is in- 
 teresting which wins and holds our attention. 
 That thought or event influences us which makes 
 
9 6 
 
 an impression, and becomes part of our mental 
 life through the attention. We learn a lan- 
 guage, grasp some profound philosophy, or ex- 
 perience the beneficial effect of elevating 
 thought, rid ourselves of morbid, unhealthy, or 
 dispiriting states of mind with their bodily ex- 
 pressions, in proportion as we dwell on some 
 ideal or keep before us some fixed purpose, until 
 by persistent effort the goal be won. 
 
 What is hypnotism but an induced direction 
 of mind suggested by the hypnotist? When the 
 subject is under control, and hypnotized, for 
 example, to see a picture on the wall where 
 there is none, the whole mind of the subject is 
 absorbed in seeing the supposed picture, and 
 there is no time nor power left to detect the 
 deception. Many self-hypnotized people are 
 equally at the mercy of some idea which is the 
 pure invention of their fears. Insanity best of 
 all illustrates the nature of a direction of mind 
 pure and simple, with the wonderful physical 
 strength which sometimes accompanies the dom- 
 ination of a single idea. All strongly opinion- 
 ated people, those whom we call cranks, the 
 narrow-minded, the creed-bound, the strongly 
 superstitious, illustrate the same principle, and 
 from one point of view are insane, — insane so 
 far as they allow a fixed state of mind to control 
 their lives and draw the stream of intelligence 
 
97 
 
 into a single channel : whereas the wisely 
 rounded-out character, the true philosopher, is 
 one who, while understanding that conduct is 
 moulded by thought, never allows himself to 
 dwell too long on one object, but seeks all-round 
 development. 
 
 The point for emphasis, then, is this: that in 
 every experience possible to a human being the 
 direction of mind is the controlling factor. In 
 health, in disease, in business, in play, in relig- 
 ion, education, art, science, in all that has been 
 suggested in the foregoing, the principle is the 
 same. The directing of the mind, the fixing of 
 the attention or will, lies at the basis of all con- 
 duct. The motive, the intent, the impulse or 
 emotion, gives shape to the entire life; for con- 
 scious man is always devoted to something. 
 Let the reader analyze any act whatever, and he 
 will prove this beyond all question. 
 
 The whole process, the law that as is our 
 direction of mind so is our conduct, seems won- 
 derfully simple and effective when we stop to 
 consider it. Yet we are barely conscious of the 
 great power we exercise in every moment of life. 
 We are not aware that, in the fact that the mind 
 can fully attend to but one object at a time, 
 lies the explanation of a vast amount of trouble, 
 and that by the same process in which we make 
 our trouble we can get out of it. 
 
9 8 
 
 Yet we know from experience that our painful 
 sensations increase when we dwell on them, and 
 that we recover most rapidly when we are ill if 
 we live above and out of our trouble. On the 
 other hand, we know that a wise direction of 
 thought persisted in, or the pursuit of an ideal 
 without becoming insanely attached to it and 
 impatient to realize it, marks a successful career. 
 Without the generally hopeful attitudes of mind 
 embodied by our best churches, and expressed in 
 our beliefs about the world, we should hardly 
 know how to live in a universe where there is so 
 much that is wicked and discouraging, and so 
 much that is beyond our ken. 
 
 We are ever choosing and rejecting certain 
 ideas and lines of conduct to the exclusion of 
 certain others, and into our choice is thrown all 
 that constitutes us men and women. The pres- 
 ent attitude of the reader is just such a direc- 
 tion of mind; and this book, like the world at 
 large, means just as much or as little as the 
 reader is large and wise in experience. In the 
 same way this book, or any other, reveals the life 
 and limitations of its author. It cannot tran- 
 scend them, it cannot conceal them; for in 
 some way, through the written or spoken word 
 or through thought atmosphere, personality ever 
 makes itself known. The law of direction of 
 mind is evidently no less exact than any which 
 
99 
 
 science has formulated. The world is what we ' 
 make it, because only so much of it is revealed 
 as we can grasp. In whatever direction we turn 
 our mental search-light, those objects on which 
 it falls are thrown into sudden prominence for 
 the time. The world is dark and full of gloom 
 only so long as we dwell upon its darkest as- 
 pects, and do not look beyond them. There are 
 endless sources of trouble about us. On the 
 other hand, there are innumerable reasons to be 
 glad if we will look at them. We can enter 
 into trouble, complaint, worry, make ourselves 
 and our friends miserable, so that we never enjoy 
 the weather or anything else. Or we can be 
 kind, charitable, forgiving, contented, ever on 
 the alert to turn from unpleasant thoughts, and 
 thereby live in a larger and happier world; for 
 the choice is ours. If we fear, we open our- 
 selves to all sorts of fancies, which correspond 
 to our thought, and cause them to take shape. 
 If we communicate our fears to friends, their 
 thought helps ours. If we get angry, jealous, 
 act impetuously, we suffer just in proportion to 
 our thought. If we pause to reflect, to wait a 
 moment in silence, until we are sure of our duty, 
 we experience the benefit of quiet meditation. 
 
 We invite what we expect. We attract what 
 we are like. Let one understand this, and one 
 need never fear. The law is perfect, and the 
 
IOO 
 
 protection sure. Our safety lies in wisdom ; 
 and, were we wise enough, we should probably 
 have no fears at all. It is the explanation of 
 our actual situation in this well-ordered world, 
 dwelling near the heart of an omnipotent Father, 
 that sets us free, and makes us masters of our 
 own conduct. It should not therefore be a new 
 source of terror to learn that we are beset by all 
 sorts of subtle influences and hypnotic forces, or 
 to be told that our own thought directions are 
 largely instrumental in causing misery, dis-ease, 
 and trouble of all sorts. These wrong influ- 
 ences cannot touch us. Our own mental atmos- 
 phere, our whole being, is a protection against 
 them, if we have reached a higher plane. There 
 must be a point of contact in order for one mind 
 to affect another, some channel left open, some 
 sympathy, just as there must be a certain affinity 
 in order for two persons to form a mutual friend- 
 ship. Our safety, our strength, lies in knowing 
 our weakness, in discovering that the law of 
 direction of mind is fundamental in every mo- 
 ment of human life. If after that we go on in 
 the same old way, complaining, fearing, think- 
 ing along narrow lines, and submissively accept- 
 ing the teaching of others, it will not be because 
 we do not understand the law. 
 
 Out of the mass of impressions and opinions 
 which for the most people constitute mental life, 
 
IOI 
 
 we can weed out those that bring harm, and de- 
 velop those that are helpful. The economy of 
 cultivating right thoughts is thus at once appar- 
 ent. Matter is obviously just as much of a 
 weight and a prison as we make it by our habit- 
 ual thought. Looking one way, we enter into 
 matter, or density. Looking in the other, we at-' 
 tract that which is spiritual, or quickening. 
 Ideas have power over us in proportion as we 
 dwell on them exclusively. It is a matter, then, 
 of real economy, of necessity, to view ourselves 
 and our habitual ideas from as many directions 
 I as possible, just as one goes away from home in 
 .order to break out of the ruts into which one 
 inevitably falls by living constantly in one 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Man leads a life of mind, then, because he is 
 a conscious being, because the stream of con- 
 sciousness is turned now into this channel, now 
 into that, and can only take cognizance of a 
 relatively large aspect of the world by the broad- 
 est, least prejudiced, and most open-minded 
 turning from one phase of it to another. He 
 has a distinct individuality, for which he is per- 
 sonally responsible, which it is his duty to pre- 
 serve and to develop. It is through this, if he 
 think for himself, that the keenest light is cast 
 upon things; for it is the fundamental direction 
 of consciousness, and ultimately blends with the 
 
102 
 
 Self who knows all directions. Next in order 
 comes daily experience, shaped by education, in- 
 herited beliefs and tendencies and whatever 
 leads it into a given channel. After these fixed 
 directions of mind come the mere fleeting influ- 
 ences, — mental pictures, fears, atmospheres, per- 
 plexities, and troubles, affecting the thought 
 superficially, yet possessing a tendency to strike 
 deeper into the being, and become fixed habits 
 through subconscious mental activity. The 
 law is everywhere the same; namely, that the 
 conscious direction of mind, supported by 
 the whole personality, is all-controlling for 
 the time, since the mind can fully attend to but 
 one object at once. Its application to daily life 
 is at once apparent. 
 
 There is one consideration, however, which it 
 is well to bear constantly in mind. The funda- 
 mental or ultimate direction of mind and the 
 states of consciousness caused by the outer world 
 are not of our own making: they are founded on 
 the one Reality. We cannot wholly build the 
 world from within. Science is trying to dispel 
 all illusions, so that we may see it nearer as 
 it really is. Our world is not a mere fleeting 
 show. We cannot change it by an act of will 
 or a simple caprice. It only yields within cer- 
 tain limits. Our world experience has a fixed 
 and natural order. It is a system, both in its 
 
103 
 
 subjective and its objective aspects, a growth. 
 Man is a progressive being. He is not yet com- 
 pleted, and the law of his growth is evolution. 
 He may hinder that growth in a thousand differ- 
 ent ways; and much depends on his attitude 
 toward it, as we shall see in the next chapter. 
 But he only changes the world as it appears to 
 him, not as it exists in reality. Co-operation 
 with it, with evolution, is his one greatest les- 
 son. To learn how to adjust himself to the 
 organism of which he forms a part is his great 
 task, and the law of aspiration by which all 
 evolution is guided is the direction of mind 
 which is for him the one essential. His follies 
 and fears will die of inanition. His harmful 
 states of mind will cease to trouble him if he 
 refuse them the attention which is their life. 
 The source of the mental organism, in which 
 he is a factor, is just as truly the immanent 
 Life as the outer order of nature. It has a cer- 
 tain tendency, which he can follow if he will; 
 and, if he follow it consciously and reflectively, 
 his thought will constantly lead him back to 
 the great Originator, in whom the worlds of 
 nature and of our mental life become one. 
 
V. 
 
 THE MEANING OF SUFFERING. 
 
 It was evident from the very outset of our 
 inquiry into the origin and nature of things 
 that we were considering a system, an organized 
 whole. Events in that system move steadily 
 forward with a certain rhythm. Everything is 
 related to something else, cause leads to cause, 
 and every fact suggests some relationship to an 
 infinite whole. Indeed, it is difficult to see how 
 a universe could exist unless its substances and 
 forces were somehow unified in an ultimate, 
 orderly whole, which should include them all; 
 for a chaotic, an evil, and, therefore, a self-de- 
 structive universe is clearly an impossibility. 
 A universe must be good, — that is, it must fulfil 
 a purpose, intrinsically and extrinsically, in the 
 light of the whole and in the light of the parts, — 
 in order to exist. It must have a meaning. It 
 must spring from a self-existent Reality, which 
 knows that meaning, inspires that purpose, and 
 is at least as orderly as the universe itself. 
 That our own world-system is just such an 
 orderly progressive whole is proved by the exist- 
 ence of an exact science describing it. 
 
105 
 
 But what chance has man in such a progres- 
 sive system ? Everything seems to be deter- 
 mined. Long before he can take a hand in his 
 career, fate has apparently chosen for him. In- 
 heritance compels him to suffer for the sins of 
 his parents. He is born into a world of misery, 
 from which he vainly tries to escape. Life is a 
 conflict at its best; and, even though he were 
 free from the pangs of sorrow and suffering, 
 there is a stern necessity which apparently car- 
 ries him resistlessly forward to a destiny not of 
 his own choosing. 
 
 One fact, however, of fundamental importance 
 qualifies all that we know about the world of 
 necessity. That world resistlessly makes itself 
 known in a certain manner. But man is pri- 
 marily a conscious being. He seems to be the 
 product of environment, and his. thought, his 
 feeling, a mere ephemeral outgrowth of matter. 
 Yet deeper than feeling, deeper than all that 
 holds him in bondage to matter, is his individ- 
 uality; and through this speaks a Power which 
 renders all things possible. No two men are 
 alike. No two interpretations of a world 
 which is everywhere governed by the same laws 
 are wholly identical. A personal element en- 
 ters into every phase of human experience, 
 Life, with all its pains and pleasures, is largely 
 what we make it by our thought. Thought is a 
 
io6 
 
 subtle moulding power, and is capable of direct- 
 ing or hindering the forces of nature. Behind 
 the stream of consciousness is the human will, 
 choosing and giving shape to it. The direction 
 of mind is the tendency which gives shape to 
 physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual con- 
 duct. The idea is the foremost factor in every 
 aspect of experience. These two facts — namely, 
 that the infinite Power is trying to make some- 
 thing of us through oar individuality, and that 
 everything, happiness, misery, health, and dis- 
 ease, depends on our attitude toward that Power 
 — explain the very mysteries of suffering and 
 evil, at least so far as our limited knowledge 
 can make them clear. 
 
 The first and most helpful thought to bear 
 in mind, then, alike in the interpretation of 
 a given case of suffering or evil and in those 
 moments of pain when the soul reaches out for 
 help, is that the Power is with us here and now, 
 immanent in the very soul that needs help and 
 in the very trouble from which we wish to be 
 free. If one keep this realization ever in mind, 
 remembering what that Power is and how it is 
 made known, if one never forget the outcome, 
 the meaning of it all, instead of dwelling on the 
 sensations and the actual process by which one 
 is becoming free, one's thought need never be 
 oppressed by a sense of the stern necessity which 
 
107 
 
 compels one to suffer; nor will it become en- 
 tangled in matter, as though that were the all in 
 all. 
 
 Once more, then, the opinion we put into a 
 thing determines its effect upon us. The direc- 
 tion of mind is fundamental. We become like 
 that which we feed upon. If we go regularly to 
 the theatre, if we read sensational and realistic 
 novels, if we are intent on making money, if we 
 live for pleasure or self alone, we draw the 
 thought into a channel corresponding to the 
 ideas on which the mind habitually dwells. If 
 we associate with those who are morally and 
 spiritually our superiors, we are made better by 
 giving them our attention. If we investigate a 
 certain line of phenomena alone, we become 
 specialists, if not extremely narrow, in our way 
 of thinking. If we reason, the world becomes 
 rational to us; and our fears and vagaries die for 
 want of an intelligible basis. Best of all, if we 
 dwell upon the ideal Self, which is making the 
 most of us it can, the whole life is made purer 
 and more unselfish. But most vital of all is the 
 thought of the last chapter; namely, that, if we 
 look toward matter, toward physical sensation 
 and disease, we call forth the energies in that 
 direction, and build up through the subcon- 
 scious mind and the spiritual matter a condition 
 which corresponds to it, whereas, if we maintain 
 
io8 
 
 a happy, hopeful state of mind, there is a corre- 
 sponding expansion and lightness of the whole 
 being. 
 
 The nature of suffering is therefore already in 
 part explained; for, if our beliefs and directions 
 of mind have such a powerful influence in the 
 mere interpretation of matter, they must be 
 equally powerful in determining our states of 
 suffering. Recent literature has gone so far as 
 to affirm that all disease is mental, a mere error 
 of the mind. Yet it is evident from the fore- 
 going discussion that the direction of mind is not 
 all. It is the controlling factor, but is at times 
 itself controlled. People do not consciously 
 think themselves into disease or simply believe 
 they have a certain malady. The subconscious 
 mind, wherein we turn over and make our own 
 the ideas and impressions that come to us, is a 
 far more potent factor in our experience than the 
 mere conscious thought. The influence of our 
 opinions and habitual beliefs, our fears and tra- 
 ditional theories of disease, is so subtle, so 
 closely connected with every aspect of life, that 
 we are almost wholly unconscious of its power 
 over us. We do not see how our states of mind 
 can become translated into bodily conditions; 
 and consequently we do not include these subtle 
 effects in our interpretations of disease, until we 
 learn that the direction of mind carries the 
 
109 
 
 whole energy of the being with it, because it 
 takes form in spiritual matter. Human experi- 
 ence is most surely what we make it by our 
 thought, but in that one word "thought" is in- 
 volved the whole individuality and being of 
 man. Our inquiry has taught us little if it 
 have not shown conclusively that experience is a 
 synthesis of objective and subjective elements; 
 that even in the simple experience of physical 
 sensation there is present not only the substan- 
 tial basis for which the materialist contends, but 
 also the thought, the conscious ego, which 
 makes our life primarily mental. If the reader 
 will bear this dual aspect of experience in mind, 
 he cannot misunderstand this chapter. 
 
 It is clear, then, that suffering is a state of 
 the whole individual. Every one who has given 
 much attention to the subject of disease from 
 this broader point of view must be convinced of 
 this. In fact, from this point of view it makes 
 little difference what the physical malady be 
 called; for on the disposition of the patient de- 
 pends the nature and intensity of the disease. 
 Back of all chronic invalidism there is usually a 
 selfish nature or one that is hard to influence, 
 whose traits of character are made known in 
 every aspect of the disease. On the other hand, 
 an unselfish person, devoted to a life of self- 
 denial, or one who is absorbed in congenial work, 
 
no 
 
 is apt to be freest from disease. Those who 
 have time and money to be ill, those who live in 
 and for themselves, and have nothing to take 
 their thought away from physical sensation, 
 never lack for some symptom out of which they 
 can develop ill-health; and the whole practice 
 and theory of disease are ready to co-operate in 
 this process. 
 
 The very fact that so much depends on the 
 temperament and beliefs of each individual ren- 
 ders it difficult to describe the causes of disease. 
 Some people are so very hard to influence in any 
 way, and are so tenacious of a condition when 
 they get into it, that a very simple malady may 
 be worse than a much-dreaded disease in a case 
 where the disposition is pliable. The structure 
 is tight and unyielding in many cases. People 
 are too exacting, too intense in thought and ac- 
 tion, or too opinionated and self-assertive to be 
 easily moved. In such cases the struggle is 
 always severe when it comes, and nature has a 
 hard task to overcome so much rigidity. Many 
 suffer from mere want of the action that comes 
 from physical exercise. Some live too much in 
 the so-called spiritual phase of life, and are out 
 of adjustment to the every-day life of the world. 
 Others are starving for spiritual food, and are 
 in need of mental quickening, if not of severe 
 intellectual discipline. Narrow religious opin- 
 
Ill 
 
 ions have a cramping effect on the whole life, 
 both mental and physical. The tendency to \ 
 nervous hurry is responsible for a large propor- 
 tion of the more modern ailments. People dwell 
 in fixed and narrow directions of mind, until 
 they become cranky or insane. 
 
 Worry and fear play an important part in all 
 varieties of disease, and some people have 
 scarcely a moment's freedom from some torment- 
 ing belief or mental picture. Ill-will, want of 
 charity, jealousy, anger, or any emotion which 
 tends to draw one into self, to shut in and con- 
 tract, is immediate in its effect; for, if it be 
 continued, it disturbs the whole being, it is re- 
 flected in the spiritual matter, and finally in the 
 body, where it is treated as if it were a physical 
 disease. Unrealized ambition, suppressed grief, 
 continued unforgiveness, dwelling in griefs and 
 troubles instead of living above them, disap- 
 pointments, and a thousand unsuspected causes, 
 which impede the free and outgoing expression 
 of the individuality, have a corresponding effect 
 on the outer being. 
 
 We may as well turn at once, then, to the 
 fundamental principle involved in all suffering; 
 for there are as many kinds and causes of disease 
 as there are people. Disease is not an entity 
 which can seize us any way, regardless of our 
 own condition. Whenever there is a disturbed 
 
112 
 
 condition which invites it, there is some cause of 
 this disturbance back of the mere physical state, 
 just as thought influences affect us through some 
 sympathetic channel or not at all. Let us, 
 then, define disease as mal-adjustment to the 
 forces that play upon us, and see if this defini- 
 tion will hold true in all cases of suffering. If 
 so, we shall find the road to health to be wise 
 adjustment to the real conditions of life. We 
 shall eliminate disease not by fighting it, not by 
 studying its causes or doctoring its physical 
 effects, but by seeing the wisdom of the better 
 way. When we learn that it is a matter of 
 economy never to rehearse the symptoms of dis- 
 ease, never to get angry, never to cherish ill- 
 will, revengeful or unforgiving thoughts, never 
 to make enemies, but always to be charitable 
 and friendly, kind, good-natured, and hopeful, 
 we shall not need to be told how we caused our 
 own dis-ease; nor shall we need to say, "I will 
 not think these wrong thoughts any more," for 
 they will die out of themselves. 
 
 It is universally admitted that there is a nat- 
 ural healing power resident in the body. This 
 power is common to all, or nearly all, forms of 
 organized life; and by observation of the higher 
 animals we have learned how thoroughly and 
 quickly it can cure under favorable conditions. 
 
H3 
 
 Many people have learned to relax and to keep 
 quiet, like the animals, by giving nature a free 
 opportunity to heal their maladies. No one has 
 ever discovered limits to this power, and some 
 are firmly convinced of its ability to heal nearly 
 every possible disease. It can knit bones to- 
 gether. If one meet with an injury or merely 
 get a splinter into one's finger, it immediately 
 goes to work in accordance with certain laws. 
 There is a gathering about the injured part, and 
 an outward pressure tending to expel any obsta- 
 cle foreign to the body. Every one knows that 
 the healing process is impeded or quickened ac- 
 cording to the way we deal with it, and it be- 
 comes evident on a still closer study of the 
 question that our opinions and fears have a 
 strong effect upon this natural process. The 
 whole process is simple and fairly well under- 
 stood, so far as a mere injury is concerned. We 
 rely upon it, and know how to adjust ourselves 
 to it. But what happens when the equilibrium 
 of the body has been interfered with in another 
 way, and the vital functions impeded ? Do we 
 wait as patiently for nature to heal us as when 
 we meet with an accident? No, nine times out 
 of ten we mistake its cause, call it a disease 
 which we think we have taken, misinterpret our 
 sensations, and resist the very power which 
 vainly tries to heal us. This resistance, inten- 
 
H4 
 
 sified by dwelling upon sensation and careful 
 observation of symptoms, adds to the intensity 
 of the suffering, until the trouble becomes pro- 
 nounced, if not organic or chronic. Yet all 
 suffering is the same from the inner point of 
 view, and should be treated in the same general 
 way. 
 
 From this point of view the natural restora- 
 tive power, the evolutionary force, or the spirit, 
 in whatever form the immanent Life appeal to 
 us, is ever trying to make itself known. On 
 the physical plane it is ever ready to free the 
 body from any obstacle or inharmony, and re- 
 store the natural equilibrium. It is continually 
 purifying, cleansing, throwing off, all that is for- 
 eign. It is trying to free us from any inheri- 
 tance which may cause trouble or suffering. It 
 begins with us where it left off with our parents. 
 Wherever we are weak, unfinished, undeveloped, 
 that weak point, that undeveloped state, or that 
 animal residuum, if one still be partly animal, 
 and not man, is the seat of pressure from within 
 of this same power, trying to make us better and 
 purer. It ever penetrates nearer and nearer the 
 centre of one's being, and the reason why a dis- 
 turbance like the grippe is different each time it 
 comes is evidently because the individual has 
 changed. If one be exposed to the cold, to an 
 atmosphere of contagious disease, of depression, 
 
u5 
 
 or whatever the influence, the power is still 
 there to protect and to heal. In all natural 
 functions the power is with us, fully competent 
 to secure their free and painless activity. It 
 works through instinct and impulse for our wel- 
 fare. On a higher plane it is operative in char- 
 acter, urging us to be unselfish, to understand 
 the law of growth, and to obey it. On the 
 spiritual plane it is ever ready to guide and to 
 inspire us, but apparently, not so aggressive 
 here, since so much depends on our own recep- 
 tivity and desire to learn. On all these planes 
 the power is pressing upon us from within, 
 trying to expand from a centre, just as the rose- 
 bud expands or as the seed develops when its 
 resident life is quickened. It is the power of 
 God. It is beneficent, good, evolutionary, call- 
 ing for trustful co-operation and restfulness on 
 our part. We need not go anywhere or think 
 ourselves anywhere to find it ; for it is with us 
 in every moment of experience, but usually un- 
 known, rejected, and opposed. 
 
 If, then, it be asked why passion is so persist- 
 ent, why evil has such power, why disease is so 
 positive and real, there can be but one answer. 
 The reality lies in the Power that is active with 
 us, the suffering, the evil, the dis-ease in our 
 mal-adjustment to it, in our ignorance of its nat- 
 ure and its purpose with us. There is some- 
 
n6 
 
 thing in us to be overcome, some obstacle, some 
 inharmony. The restorative power is trying to 
 free us from it; and, as it comes in contact with 
 it, friction results. There is an agitation of the 
 particles, made known to us as pain. This sen- 
 sation we resist, not understanding it; and it 
 becomes painful in proportion to our resistance 
 to it. It grows more intense with every effort 
 to endure it, to get rid of it, to doctor it; and 
 so many sympathetic sensations are developed 
 in different parts of the body, each with a differ- 
 ent name, that it would hardly come within the 
 province of this book to describe them. Every- 
 thing depends on what opinion we put into the 
 sensation at the outset; for the thought gives 
 shape to the whole process, and either helps or 
 hinders it. 
 
 To illustrate. The case was reported not long 
 ago of a lady who was suffering with severe neu- 
 ralgia. In her despair she was walking the 
 floor, and her physician said the pain would not 
 be relieved for forty-eight hours. Word came 
 to her from one who had learned that much suf- 
 fering is due to resistance to the remedial power 
 to "let it come." The effect was immediate. 
 The lady had been nerving herself to endure the 
 pain, thereby increasing the intensity which first 
 caused it; and the message revealed the whole 
 process to her. She relaxed mentally, and sur- 
 
ii7 
 
 rendered the hold by which she had tried to 
 endure the pain, became quiet, and fell asleep. 
 This case is typical of a thousand others. 
 
 Again, those whose task it is to do considera- 
 ble mental work learn after a time when they 
 have worked long enough ; for, if they work be- 
 yond a certain point, they become aware of press- 
 ure in some part of the head, from which a 
 reaction is likely to follow. This is especially 
 noticeable in learning a new language, taking 
 up a study requiring close concentration, or any 
 new occupation, art, science, or any form of 
 physical exercise to which one is unaccustomed. 
 One is soon conscious of fatigue, because the 
 task is a new one, and habits have not yet been 
 formed. The general tendency is to give up to 
 the feeling of fatigue. Many become discour- 
 aged at this point, and give up study or exercise, 
 saying that it makes them tired, and they cannot 
 bear it. 
 
 What is this sense of fatigue? It is evidently 
 due to the calling of power into a new direction. 
 The new thought clarifies. It comes into con- 
 tact with dense matter, with an uncultivated 
 portion of the being, physical as well as mental; 
 and, meeting with resistance, friction of some 
 sort is the natural result. But this friction does 
 not mean that one cannot exercise or study. It 
 means the formation of a new habit and direc- 
 
1x8 
 
 tion of mind, and the best work is done after 
 one has passed this hard place. It calls upon 
 one to wait a little while, and let the agitation 
 cease, let the new power settle down and become 
 one's own. It is nature telling one to be less 
 intense for the moment, and to extend the limit 
 of one's activity little by little. 
 
 It is a mistake, then, to give up to a feeling 
 of tired and of pain. By giving up to it, one's 
 thought is put upon it, with the result that it 
 is increased, until the consciousness is absorbed 
 in physical sensation. Rightly understood, pain 
 is the conflict of two elements, a higher and 
 purer element coming in contact with a lower, 
 and trying to restore equilibrium. It is reme- 
 dial. It is beneficent, the most beneficent of all 
 nature's arrangements, the best evidence of the 
 unceasing devotion and presence with us in 
 every minutest detail of life of a resident restor- 
 ative power. Through it we are made aware 
 that we have a life not wholly our own that cares 
 for us, and is capable, perfectly competent, to 
 take us through any possible trouble, since it is 
 there only for our own good, since it is itself 
 thoroughly good. 
 
 But it is obviously the power that one should 
 think of, and not of the sensation. In this way, 
 if one be determined to see the good, to think of 
 the outcome, one will live out of and above the 
 
iiq 
 
 sensation; for all these thoughts help. The 
 consciousness is either turned in one direction 
 or the other. It either helps or it hinders. 
 One either moves with, thinks with the current 
 of life, or tries to stem it. In one direction 
 the thought is turned into matter, in the other 
 toward spirit. In one direction toward self, 
 with a tendency to withdraw, shut in, contract; 
 in the other, toward the higher Self that is with 
 us, telling us to be wiser, toward all that is 
 happy, hopeful, and expanding. 
 
 These two mental attitudes may be illustrated 
 by the sensation one experiences on a very cold 
 day. When one comes in sudden contact with 
 the cold, the first impulse is to shiver, to draw 
 in and contract, whereas all who have tried it 
 know that by simply letting it come, by opening 
 out instead of shutting in, one does not feel as 
 cold, and no harm results. In the former case, 
 as in all instances of suppressed grief, fear, or 
 any emotion which causes one to withdraw into 
 self, that which has been shut in must be opened 
 out. This the natural restorative power tries at 
 once to do. A pull or a painful sensation in 
 some part of the body is the result ; and, mistak- 
 ing the sensation, the person, full of fear, con- 
 tracts more intensely, causing the sensation to 
 increase, until nature can only restore equilib- 
 rium by a violent reaction, which receives the 
 name of some well-known disease. 
 
120 
 
 But why do we resist ? why do we withdraw 
 into ourselves and into consciousness of physical 
 sensation? Obviously, because we are ignorant 
 of the Power that is moving upon us. We have 
 been educated to believe that disease is a phys- 
 . ical entity. We put the wrong thought or 
 some borrowed opinion into our feelings. The 
 fears and sympathetic words of friends help the 
 process. The possible symptoms we are likely 
 to suffer are graphically described, the memory 
 of past experiences of suffering is called up, 
 until finally the whole diseased condition is 
 pictured out before us, and the thought is every 
 moment becoming more firmly fixed in the wrong 
 direction. Our whole environment tends to 
 keep us in ill-health; and disease is literally 
 made by man out of a simple condition, from 
 which nature would have freed us had she been 
 given opportunity. 
 
 In order, then, to understand how we resist 
 and cause our own suffering, we must recall the 
 central thought of the preceding chapter. Life 
 is primarily mental. It is the conscious ego 
 that knows and feels the suffering. The sensa- 
 tion, the pain, the suffering, is in consciousness. 
 It is mental, and every conscious state is in- 
 terpreted according to the wisdom of the think- 
 ing ego behind it. Here is the starting-point of 
 all subsequent experience in the outer world. 
 
121 
 
 As we start, as we believe, as we think, so will 
 be our experience, our suffering, or our good 
 health. The reader need only pause to consider 
 all that this means, to see the full bearing of a 
 state of mind, in order to understand the whole 
 process; for the entire personality, education, 
 temperament, and the physical activities are car- 
 ried with the direction of mind, and, if the 
 direction be into matter, into the belief and fear 
 of disease, nature has just so much more resist- 
 ance to overcome. 
 
 The leading thought of this chapter will 
 therefore be lost unless the reader understand 
 disease from its mental side, unless it be clear 
 that the whole process is mental ; for, if this 
 discussion have simply called up pictures of 
 suffering and the memory of the reader's own 
 struggles, without showing what lay beneath 
 them, it has wholly failed in its purpose, and 
 aptly illustrated the power of a wrong direction 
 of mind. We are in search of a way out of suf- 
 fering; and, if it is now clear that the entire 
 mental attitude enters into our diseases, causing 
 resistance and pain, it must also be clear that 
 the same energy sent out in the right direction 
 will be of the greatest help in securing health. 
 
 Here is a vital truth. The discovery that by 
 maintaining a quiet, trustful, reposeful state of 
 mind, inspired by genuine understanding of the 
 • 
 
122 
 
 process that is actually going on, the whole 
 being is kept open, permitting the natural activ- 
 ities to operate unimpeded and without suffer- 
 ing. It is of such vital importance that the 
 remaining chapters of this volume will be 
 devoted to a consideration of this most helpful 
 attitude, and how to maintain it. Here is the 
 turning-point away from matter, mental pictures 
 of suffering and theories of disease into spirit 
 and the stronger, purer, higher life, where one 
 never speaks of one's self as diseased, but where 
 the same Power which once made itself known 
 through suffering, because one opposed it, now 
 causes good health, because one moves with it. 
 Here is the way of escape from the narrowing 
 thought of life in the present, in time, into a 
 hopeful realization of what one's experience 
 means as a part of eternity; and, when one con- 
 templates the end, the outcome, one is no longer 
 entangled in consciousness of the means, the 
 process. 
 
 The first point to note is that one cannot 
 judge by physical sensation, but should look 
 beyond it. In sensitive natures the sensation of 
 pain is very much exaggerated, and is no guide 
 at all. Sometimes the sensation is so keen and 
 the pressure reduced to such a fine point that 
 one's consciousness is like a caged bird flutter- 
 ing about in a vain endeavor to escape. Shut in 
 
123 
 
 there with such intense activity, the wildest 
 fears are aroused when there is no real cause 
 for alarm. The trouble is simply very much re- 
 stricted. The Power is pressing through a very 
 narrow channel; and relief will come in due 
 time if one be quiet, patient, not trying to en- 
 dure the pain, but letting the Power complete 
 its task. 
 
 The second point is to remember that the res- 
 ident Power, or Life, is always with us, and to 
 think of that Life instead of dwelling upon our 
 troubles. What a change would come over the 
 moral world if this realization were to become a 
 permanent factor in daily life! for there is obvi- 
 ously no exception to the omnipresence, the 
 love, of God. If one accept the doctrine of 
 God's immanence, there is no logical stopping- 
 place in favor of the elect. If God dwells with 
 one, he dwells with all, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously. If he has some purpose with one, he 
 has some meaning in the lives of us all. No 
 man, then, is inherently wicked. There are no 
 heathen. No one is lost or ever could sink so 
 low that the same Spirit that had a meaning in 
 his sin could not carry him through it to a 
 conscious realization of what that meaning is?) 
 Once more the vital question is, What is the 
 divine meaning of it all? For, if a person or 
 an act has a meaning, that person or deed is 
 
124 
 
 not and cannot be wholly evil, and to say that 
 any act of wickedness happens despite the divine 
 power is to deprive that power of the very in- 
 finity and wisdom by virtue of which both God 
 and the universe exist. When the emotions are 
 touched, the struggle is apt to be very intense, 
 and more likely to be misunderstood. The im- 
 manent Life, moving upon man where he is 
 weak and undeveloped, through instinct, pas- 
 sion, and impulse, produces restlessness, which 
 in turn causes him to rush now into this thing 
 and now into that, and perhaps commit a crime 
 even before he is aware of what he is doing. 
 The very tendencies and instincts which would 
 guide him in his development, if he understood 
 them, are misdirected. An impulse blesses or 
 curses, according to the opinion of it, the atti- 
 tude towards it, and the way in which it is 
 followed, blindly or intelligently. Man never 
 conquers himself by self-suppression any more 
 than by indulgence, but by adjustment to the 
 forces of his own being. 
 
 The meaning of much of our moral suffering 
 and evil is, then, to teach the right use of our 
 powers; and moral misery and degradation will 
 probably continue until the lesson be learned. 
 All cases of sickness, misery, evil, wrong, de- 
 mand better self-comprehension. If there be one 
 genera] meaning which applies to them all, it is, 
 
125 
 
 in one word, progress, — the effort of the Spirit 
 to give us freedom. If we understood this, we 
 should have a larger sympathy and charity for 
 the whole human race, and be spared much suf- 
 fering over the sins and crimes of others, and 
 should look for the meaning, the Spirit, behind 
 all wrong acts and all degraded lives. 
 
 The one great question, then, in all problems 
 of suffering and evil, whether in personal expe- 
 rience, in history, in the animal world, or in 
 present human society, is this : What is God 
 doing with us? What is the ideal toward which 
 the immanent Life is moving through us? All 
 secondary questions reduce themselves to this ; 
 for everything goes to show that the universe is 
 a system, an organism, an adjustment of means 
 to ends for the benefit and development of the 
 whole, inspired by one grand purpose, and pro- 
 ceeding from a Spirit that put all wisdom into 
 the great world-plan. We did not make the 
 world-order. We cannot change it; and, if our 
 life in it be full of misery, it is for us to dis- 
 cover how we make that misery, how we rebel, 
 how we resist, and what the order means for us 
 and through our lives. 
 
 If a nation be torn by internal troubles, by 
 wars and wrangling of conflicting parties, it is 
 evident that it has not yet learned the great les- 
 
126 
 
 son of human brotherhood, and that its troubles 
 must continue in one form or another until it 
 discover what the evolutionary energy means, 
 what it is trying to make known through these 
 very conflicts. Our own nation, standing as it 
 does for freedom, progress, and industry, has 
 already made a great advance toward this larger 
 fellowship as compared with its more warlike 
 neighbors and competitors. It will undoubtedly 
 be the first nation also to settle the conflict 
 between rich and poor; for here, too, it has 
 brought the issue forward more rapidly than 
 other nations. It is learning one of the great 
 lessons of evolution; and the poor must suffer 
 until the two classes learn their respective and 
 brotherly relations to each other, their need of 
 each other, and their common goal. 
 
 Contest and controversy will continue in the 
 same way between science and religion, between 
 the great religions and the sects into which 
 many religions are divided, until men learn that 
 all truth is one and universal, and does not de- 
 pend on any book or any person, but is the in- 
 herent property of all, trying to make itself 
 known through these very controversies, and 
 revealed in every fact of life. Theory and prac- 
 tice will also be at variance until it be clear that 
 they are one, that what a man does he believes, 
 regardless of his boasted theory. Impulse or 
 
127 
 
 instinct will be man's guide until he learns 
 what is behind it, until he stops to reflect and 
 to act intelligently with, not against, the forces 
 of his own being; for thoughtlessness is the be- 
 h\ setting sin of man. A large proportion of the \j 
 p crimes committed by him would be prevented if m 
 -If) he stopped to consider the consequences, not 
 only the suffering which would be caused to 1 
 others, but his own severe punishment, caused 
 solely by his own acts, because action and reac- 
 tion are invariably equal. 
 
 Suffering, then, is intended to make man 
 think. Behind all experience moves one great 
 aspiring Power, developing and perfecting the 
 world. It moves straight toward its goal un- 
 ceasingly and without permanent hindrance. 
 Wherein man is adjusted to it, he is already free 
 from suffering. He moves with it, and knows 
 how to be helped by it. But wherein he still 
 acts ignorantly, he suffers, and is obviously sure 
 to be in conflict until he understands the law of 
 growth. Man has been defined as a pleasure- 
 loving animal. He is lazy, and will postpone 
 thinking for himself or try to shift his respon- 
 sibility until he learns that everything depends 
 on the development of individuality and of indi- 
 vidual thought. But a day comes when he be- 
 gins to reflect and to see the meaning of it all. 
 
128 
 
 Everywhere, in the outer world, in history, in 
 politics, in religion, he finds two forces contend- 
 ing with each other. Turning to his own nature, 
 he finds the same, a higher, a rational, a moral 
 and spiritual self contending with a lower, an 
 impulsive, an animal self. He sees that he 
 must obey the one and neglect the other, or, 
 better, lift the other to a higher plane. He 
 sees that evil is a relative term, depending on 
 our point of view, and that conduct which seems 
 perfectly justifiable on one plane of existence is 
 condemned on a higher plane, where different 
 standards prevail. It becomes clear that virtue 
 or goodness can only be attained through an ex- 
 perience full of contrasts and friction, an experi- 
 ence which calls out the best that is in us, — 
 true sympathy, love, and character. The mean- 
 ing of his own mysterious past becomes clear. 
 He sees the rich compensation for all that he 
 has suffered in the wisdom and character it has 
 brought him. And, finally, in this far-reaching 
 adjustment of means to ends he recognizes the 
 love of God, and proves to his own satisfaction 
 that love really dwells at the heart of the 
 universe. 
 
 The discovery, then, that there is no escape 
 from the operation of cause and effect, neither 
 mental nor physical, is a turning-point in the 
 progressive career of man; for the majority still 
 
129 
 
 persuade themselves that they will somehow be 
 excused. Suffering is only necessary to bring 
 us to a knowledge of the law, to bring us to 
 a certain point; and it will persist until that 
 point be reached. Our experience of to-day is 
 conditioned by our past life. It is what we have 
 passed through which alone makes it possible for 
 us to stand where we do to-day. Consequently, 
 what we do and think to-day will largely govern 
 our experience of to-morrow and of all future 
 days. Fate has not decided everything for us 
 after all; for it was by our own consent, uncon- 
 sciously, thoughtlessly, and consciously, that we 
 suffered. Our fate is that through our individ- 
 uality something is bound to come forth, for the 
 resistless power of Almighty God is behind it. 
 Our freedom lies in choosing whether to move 
 with progress or against it; for man may evi- 
 dently continue to sin, to oppose, and misuse 
 the very power that would bless him, and to 
 postpone the lesson which at sometime and some- 
 where he is fated to learn. If, then, in any 
 case the result will sometime be the same, it is 
 a matter of economy to learn the real course of 
 events as soon as possible, since the law of ac- 
 tion and reaction is eternal. 
 
 As hard, then, as it may seem to be compelled 
 to suffer the results of our own unwise conduct, 
 it is in this discovery that we learn the meaning 
 
13° 
 
 of suffering and the way out of it. Once more, 
 then, we must look beyond physical sensation to 
 the conscious man behind it, choosing, willing, 
 determining his conduct and his pain or pleasure 
 by his direction of mind. It is impossible in 
 one chapter to consider suffering in all its 
 phases; but, if this central thought be clear, if 
 the reader has stopped to consider the intimate 
 relationship of God to man in every moment of 
 life, these neglected problems will be equally 
 clear, for that relationship must be universal. 
 Not all suffering is evolutionary. Not every 
 evil act has its discernible meaning. Most of 
 our suffering is purely incidental, passing off 
 without leaving us any the wiser; but all suffer- 
 ing, all evil, may become evolutionary. Every 
 slightest experience will teach us something if 
 we question it, and will yield its message of 
 hope. This is the chief value of all experience 
 and of the present discussion; for the final mean- 
 ing of suffering is hope, the last word of this 
 chapter is "hope," the message of the Spirit as 
 it speaks to us in moments of despair, in times of 
 trouble, throughout life, throughout history, in 
 all evolution, is a grand inspiring Hope. 
 
VI. 
 
 ADJUSTMENT TO LIFE. 
 
 In one of the mos<" secluded of Alpine valleys, 
 where the steam whistle has never broken the 
 native stillness, nor the progress of science in- 
 truded on the confines of mediaeval tradition, 
 lies one of the most remarkable villages in 
 the world. The traveller, as he enters this 
 unique town, feels that he has suddenly stepped 
 into another world ; for the people inspire him 
 with an unwonted reverence, and an atmosphere 
 of Sabbath stillness rests over all the valley. 
 One all-controlling idea pervades the town, and 
 is alike absorbing to every man, woman, and 
 child that lives there. The village is Oberam- 
 mergau; and here once in ten years representa- 
 tives of all civilization come to witness the 
 world-renowned Passion Play. For hundreds of 
 years this play has been given ten summers in 
 a century by these simple peasants, and their 
 entire lives are devoted to preparation for it. 
 To take the part of the Christ is the summit of 
 their ambition. They feel it a solemn duty to 
 give the play, and from childhood their lives 
 are shaped by this ambition. In order to repre- 
 
132 
 
 sent a certain character, they practise the most 
 careful self-denial. They try to mould their 
 lives in accordance with the qualities of that 
 character, and they dwell on it and rehearse it 
 year in and year out. And this is why they are 
 so remarkable. They are shaped by an ideal. 
 They have one object in view, and in their peas- 
 ant simplicity and catholic faith they are willing 
 to exclude every other. When they appear in 
 the play, they make no affectation. They sim- 
 ply represent in actual life what they have so 
 long dwelt upon as an ideal. And this ideal has 
 left its stamp on everything associated with the 
 town and its people. 
 
 It is a rare privilege for the student of the 
 human mind to be among these people for a 
 time, and to witness the play; for there in 
 actual practice and in striking simplicity is the 
 ideal of all character-building, of all co-opera- 
 tion with evolution, of all adjustment to life, — 
 namely, to have an object in view which we 
 never lose sight of, and which we gradually real- 
 ize, day by day and year by year. Life for the 
 most of us is vastly more complicated than for 
 the peasant of Oberammergau ; but the principle 
 of character-building is just the same, and just 
 as simple and effective. 
 
 What this principle is we have been consider- 
 ing from the very start; that is, to learn the real 
 
133 
 
 conditions of our progressive life, to gain some 
 knowledge of the deepest law of our being, and 
 then to conform our conduct to those conditions 
 and that highest law. We find ourselves part of 
 a great Reality, made known to us through in- 
 ternal and external sense, everything which 
 reveals it being real. This simple act of con- 
 sciousness, even though we know the Reality 
 immediately, is immensely complicated; and 
 our interpretation alike of its nature and of 
 its meaning depends on temperament, education, 
 mental and physical surroundings, and a hundred 
 other conditions. Opinion, belief, fear, preju- 
 dice, hypnotic influences, and various subtle 
 forces enter into and color our thought. We 
 misinterpret sensation. We become the prey of 
 our own fancies, and yield to the stronger minds 
 about us. We are ignorant of the forces that 
 play upon us, and consequently are not adjusted 
 to them. We suffer, and we witness a vast 
 amount of suffering which we seem powerless to 
 prevent. But one law characterizes our conduct 
 both in health and in disease. The central 
 thought in consciousness for the moment or 
 through habit, the direction of mind, shapes our 
 lives, so that we really lead a life of mind. We 
 live in a world partly of our own making, partly 
 the product of all past evolution, both mental 
 and physical, but a world which happily reveals 
 
134 
 
 a progressive order to which we can adjust our- 
 selves in co-operation with the Spirit behind 
 and within it, a world which has a purpose, a 
 meaning with us, and with our individuality, 
 which experience is trying to make plain. 
 
 It is evident, then, that at every step in 
 our inquiry we must discriminate between the 
 higher Self which never changes, which has a 
 meaning in our lives, which possesses us, needs 
 us, is sufficient for us, and the lower self which 
 is constantly changing, obeying now this whim 
 and now that. In proportion as we make this 
 discrimination and obey the higher Self are we 
 free from conflict and suffering, and adjusted to 
 life. If we abandon our fears, cease to com- 
 plain, to rebel, and learn the real economy of 
 our situation in life, then this higher Self has | 
 free access to us. It meets no opposition. Its 
 purpose is made known without suffering. We 
 enjoy the only true freedom in co-operation with/ 
 the omnipresent Helper, whom we once de- 
 spised. Gradually, a simple system of conduct 
 and of adjustment to life takes shape in our 
 minds, until, like the peasant preparing to take 
 part in the play, we know no other ideal. To 
 suggest this ideal so far as one person can 
 indicate it for another is the purpose of this 
 chapter. 
 
i35 
 
 But let us first be perfectly sure that we 
 understand how conduct is shaped by an idea. 
 
 When we leave our home, for instance, to go 
 to the business portion of the town or city in 
 which we live, it is usually because we have 
 some definite object in view. Our conduct for 
 the time is guided by a transient desire; and, 
 in order to carry out this desire, we adjust our- 
 selves to a certain arrangement of natural phe- 
 nomena, and make use of certain mechanisms 
 invented by man. We take a car or carriage. 
 We are compelled to follow certain streets in 
 order to reach our destination. We must avoid 
 collision with other people, with electric cars 
 and carriages. We must good-naturedly take 
 the situation as we find it. And all these ac- 
 tions are governed, almost unconsciously to us, 
 by a single desire; and we keep this end in view 
 until we attain it. 
 
 Thus we might analyze the conduct of any day 
 or any moment, and find that wish or desire con- 
 trols everywhere. In learning a language, we 
 keep the object in view of reading and speaking 
 it with fluency, and calmly work for years until 
 we attain it. We make an invention because we 
 need or desire it. The need or desire opens us 
 to the means of fulfilling our wish. The artist 
 has an ideal in view which he is ever striving 
 to realize on canvass or in marble. Literature 
 
136 
 
 takes such form as our desires give it, modified 
 by the degree of cultivation we have attained. 
 We change the character of our buildings, of our 
 homes, of our institutions, our philosophy, our 
 religion, our conceptions of the divine nature, 
 just as rapidly as we ourselves change, and to 
 the degree that our ideals and circumstances are 
 modified by these inner changes. We endeavor 
 to understand nature, life, history, our entire 
 surroundings better. We then readjust our- 
 selves in conformity to our better wisdom. And 
 in every wise readjustment we are compelled to 
 adopt nature's sure and measured method of evo- 
 lution. We look for changes in and through 
 the very conditions of politics and society, of 
 moral and spiritual degenerateness, which we 
 once sought to revolutionize from the outside. 
 
 All this seems simple and evident enough 
 when one's attention is called to it. But do we 
 follow this easiest and most natural of methods 
 when we try to transform character and to secure 
 better health by mental means ? Are we not apt 
 to say, This shall be so; to exert our wills, to 
 forget the higher Self, to strain after ideals, to 
 claim that which is not yet true and can only 
 progressively become so, to expect to transform 
 ourselves too quickly, to dwell in thought some- 
 where way off in the clouds or in the distant fut- 
 ure, instead of wisely adjusting ourselves to the 
 
137 
 
 eternal now? Is the will really so powerful 
 that it can abolish time? What is the will, and 
 what is the nature of its power? 
 
 When I raise my arm and move my hand, the 
 various motions which I am compelled to make 
 seem to be controlled by my will. Yet I know 
 very little about that apparently simple process. 
 The hand and arm are moved by certain muscles, 
 the muscles by a certain nervous discharge, 
 which obeys definite laws utterly beyond the 
 power of my will to control. I simply desire 
 my hand to move in a particular way; and, lo ! 
 a wonderful mechanism, perfected by nature long 
 ago, is set into activity. The complex motions 
 by which I move my arm and hand are matters 
 of habit rather than of will, and I use nature's 
 mechanism almost unconsciously. The whole 
 body responds to my thought in the same man- 
 ner, and the great outside world goes on al- 
 most regardless of my will. 
 
 What, then, is my will? Has it no power? 
 Simply this, says the new psychology, as 
 expounded by Professor James, — attention. 
 "Whatever determines attention determines 
 action." The child ceases his play, and turns 
 his whole activity in some new direction because 
 his attention has been attracted. We thread our 
 way among the obstructions of a busy thorough- 
 fare because our thought is fixed on some distant 
 
138 
 
 object. The hypnotist shapes the conduct of his 
 subject when he has gained control of the sub- 
 ject's attention. 
 
 Will is a direction of mind with a definite 
 object in view. It is the mental or conscious 
 side of physical conduct, and as such it wields 
 great power. It is thought fixed in and calling 
 force into a given channel. Will uses power. 
 It gives definite shape to power. It opens one 
 to power, so that "I will" is equivalent to "I 
 am ready." A person with a strong will is one 
 who persistently keeps a desired object in view. 
 The human power lies in the desire, the divine 
 or natural in that which fulfils it. Here is a 
 very important distinction. By longing for an 
 object we unconsciously put ourselves in an atti- 
 tude to attain it. We gravitate toward it. We 
 exclude everything else in our efforts to attain 
 it. All else is merely overdoing the matter. 
 
 Again and again we forget that will is 
 a directing power, and act as though it were a 
 force which we must exert. But my will alone 
 is powerless to move my arm. I will to move 
 it, and at the same time co-operate with nature's 
 mechanism and my own well-established habits. 
 If I kept saying, "I will move it," "Now I will 
 move it," it would remain motionless. By say- 
 ing, "I will do this," "I will have things thus 
 and so," we are apt to get into a nervous strain, 
 
139 
 
 to assert our own power, our own selfishness, as 
 though the human will were all-powerful. Self- 
 conceit and ignorance of the larger and diviner 
 life accompany such self-assertion, and close the 
 door to the higher power. The Spirit quietly 
 withdraws at the approach of such assertion. 
 
 The little flower, bursting from the bud into 
 the glad sunshine, lifts up and opens itself to 
 the light and warmth. It is openness, readi- 
 ness, receptivity that is demanded of us. The 
 thought put into the mind at night which wakes 
 one at a given hour in the morning has its effect 
 if we trust, not if we are anxious lest we over- 
 sleep. New ideas and new power seldom come 
 to us while we scrutinize our mental processes 
 and try to catch and to control the inspiration as 
 it comes. But ideas and wishes sown in the 
 mind like seed seem to have a wonderful power 
 of growth and possibility of fulfilling our de- 
 sires. The wisely chosen ideal modifies our life 
 by a scarcely discernible process when it is thus 
 sown in confidence and expectation. We only 
 know that in a thoughtful moment we saw our 
 error, and concluded that it would be wiser to 
 act thus and so, and then dismissed the thought l 
 quietly and trustfully. 
 
 The process is wonderfully simple if it be not 
 overdone, like the little boy who digs up his 
 garden every day to see if his seeds be growing. 
 
140 
 
 Some have mastered it sufficiently so that the 
 night's rest depends largely on their last 
 thoughts before losing consciousness in slumber, 
 or have learned to 'control the thoughts of an 
 entire day by giving them wise direction in the 
 morning. There is a wonderful possibility here 
 for those who learn how to co-operate with their 
 own deepest evolution, through wise and trustful 
 adjustment to it. It is probable, too, that a 
 large part of our troubles and many a painful 
 malady would be cured by the same simple 
 means if we could once learn the art of patient, 
 restful adjustment, if we would let nature heal 
 us without resistance or interference. But we 
 nerve ourselves to endure, and thereby resist nat- 
 ure's remedial power. We are impatient to get 
 well, forgetting that there is a natural law of re- 
 covery, and that nature tends to restore the lost 
 equilibrium as rapidly, and only as rapidly, as 
 it can be done well. 
 
 There is a difference, then, between ignoring 
 a trouble, between neglecting to take proper 
 care of ourselves, and that wise direction of 
 thought which in no way hinders while it most 
 surely helps to remedy our ills. There is strong 
 reason for believing that there is a simple, nat- 
 ural way out of every trouble, that kind Nature, 
 which is another name for an omniscient God, is 
 
141 
 
 ever ready to do her utmost for us. We can go 
 through almost any experience if we feel that 
 the power residing within is equal to the occa- 
 sion. When we cease to look upon any experi- / 
 ence as too hard, we have made a decided step/ 
 in wise adjustment to life. Life itself becomes' 
 easier and happier when we make this grand 
 discovery that within each human soul there is 
 a sufficient resource for every need along the 
 line of the individual career. We can conquer 
 anything that lies between us and our destiny. 
 It would be strange, indeed, if, granting that an 
 infinitely intelligent Spirit sent us here for 
 some purpose, this were not so. It would be 
 strange, too, if any experience in the individual 
 career were without its meaning in the divine 
 economy. If, then, we can assume this, too; if, 
 in place of the cruel fate which, as we thought, 
 cheated us out of our just dues and defeated our 
 hopes, there is a larger Fate that somehow 
 needed for us just what we passed through, there 
 is no room for regret, no cause for complaint, 
 since in regretting and complaining we are find- 
 ing fault with Omniscience itself. It is not for 
 us to say that life is not worth living. Our life, 
 such as it is, belongs to a grander Life, to which 
 we must ever turn in order to see the meaning 
 of our own. And experience becomes infinitely 
 pleasanter the moment we realize the futility of 
 all regret, complaint, and opposition. 
 
142 
 
 It is equally necessary to note the difference 
 between wise adjustment to circumstances which 
 for the time being we cannot alter, and that utter 
 contentment and ease in our surroundings which 
 leads to inactivity and invalidism. Some 
 people are too well adjusted to their environ- 
 ment. They need a sudden stirring, like an 
 alarm of fire, to wake them up. They do not 
 grow. They are selfish, and lack even the rudi- 
 ments of true self-denial, as though the world 
 existed for their own benefit. Or perhaps they 
 are self-satisfied, and fail to see the need of 
 further mental evolution. They are very well 
 
 , contented, polite and agreeable, so long as noth- 
 
 '■ ing comes to disturb them ; and they take care 
 that nothing shall disturb them, so far as their 
 
 tpower extends. If they are sick, every one must 
 become a servant. Every sensation is watched 
 and carefully nursed. Everything must give 
 way to their wishes. Everybody must help the 
 matter on by expressions of sympathy and de- 
 votion. But place such people on their own re- 
 sources, put them where something does come 
 to disturb them, and they are utterly helpless. 
 Progress brings conflict. We need to be stirred 
 once in a while, and put where we must show 
 
 | what we are really worth. Then comes the real 
 test. If we are adjusted, not to some transient 
 set of circumstances which we personally try to 
 
 
143 
 
 maintain undisturbed, but to life as a whole so 
 far as we understand it, we shall be able to meet 
 any emergency, to meet it manfully, trustfully, 
 and contentedly. There is no better test of 
 one's philosophy than at these times, when we 
 are called upon to act as if we believed it true. 
 There is no better way to prepare for such 
 emergencies than to meet the circumstances of 
 daily life as though we were superior to them. 
 
 It is a matter of economy for ourselves, it is 
 a source of happiness to ourselves and our 
 friends, if we habitually look for the good wher- 
 ever we go, and in this way show our superiority 
 to all that is belittling and mean. We shall 
 soon find no time left for complaint and discour- 
 agement if we undertake this happy task with a 
 will. We shall discover new traits of character 
 in our friends, new sources of enjoyment in triv- 
 ial things, and new pleasures even in the 
 weather, that potent cause of useless complaint 
 and regret. New beauties will reveal them- 
 selves in nature and in human life. We shall 
 gradually learn to see life through the artist's 
 eyes, to look for its poetry, its harmony, its di- 
 vine meaning. 
 
 The traveller in foreign lands is compelled to 
 meet experience in just such a happy mood as 
 this. He knows that each day is bound to bring 
 its annoyances; and he determines to meet 
 
144 
 
 them philosophically, and, if possible, to see 
 their comical side. In a foreign land one makes 
 it an occupation to hunt up all that is curious 
 and interesting. The spirits are quickened, 
 enthusiasm is aroused; and one notices a hun- 
 dred little effects, changes, and beauties in sky 
 and landscape, on the street and in people, that 
 are passed unnoticed at home. We make note 
 of them in order to describe them to our friends. 
 Imagination lends its charm even to the most 
 disagreeable experiences, and all our journey- 
 ings stand out in the vistas of memory painted 
 in golden hues. 
 
 Such experiences should give us the cue in 
 looking for the good at home. It is well, too, 
 in matters of disagreement with friends, to pre- 
 serve the same large spirit and breadth of view, 
 remembering that we have more points of agree- 
 ment than of disagreement with them, that we 
 all belong to the same infinite Love, and all 
 mean the same great truth; but we cannot quite 
 say it. It is rather better to be tolerant, to 
 have a large charity for people, than to expect 
 them to be like ourselves. (One person of a 
 kind is usually enough.^ God apparently needs 
 us all. N < Those who haveHearned to think, espe- 
 cially those who realize the meaning of evolu- 
 tion, are usually aware of their faults; and 
 encouragement is what they most need. People 
 
145 
 
 I do nearly as well as they can under the circum- 
 | stances and with their scant wisdom. If we 
 know a better way, it will become evident to 
 \ them if we practise it. If they offend us or get 
 j angry, we have all the more cause for charity 
 » and good feeling. We need not suffer in such a 
 case unless we put ourselves on the same plane, 
 / and get angry, too. There is no quicker or 
 more smarting rebuke than to receive an affront 
 in silence or in perfect good feeling. There is 
 no better evidence of a large and generous nat- 
 ure than immediately to forgive and to forget 
 every injury, and thereby to be superior to the 
 petty feelings of resentment, pride, and unfor- 
 giveness, which work mischief alike to the one 
 who holds them and to the one who has done the 
 injury. We are surely to blame if we suffer, 
 since everything depends on our own attitude. 
 If we thus give our attention to building up 
 character, broad, charitable, and true, the wrong 
 thoughts will disappear through mere lack of 
 attention. Psychology once more helps us here, 
 and says that we can attend to but one object at 
 a time. Science tells us, too, that in the evolu- 
 tion of the animal world organs which remain 
 unused ultimately disappear, while the develop- 
 ment and perfection of an organ accompanies its 
 use. We need not then reason our erroneous 
 thoughts away. Usually, it is sufficient to see 
 
146 
 
 that we are in error, to learn that all these fears, 
 resentments, morbid thoughts, and complaints 
 affect our health and happiness. The explana- 
 tion is the cure. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to analyze sensation and 
 try to discover the various moods that cause our 
 trouble. No one who has passed through the 
 torments of self-consciousness, to find only one's 
 own insignificant self looming up through the 
 introspective mist, like a repellent spectre from 
 which one would fain be free, will ever advise 
 another to brave these torments. The human 
 self with the divine Self as a background is the 
 only picture of the inner life which one can bear 
 to look at long. This picture will paint itself. 
 The other is of our own vain contriving. In 
 those moments of calm reflection when one 
 ceases to analyze self, and lays aside the cares 
 of the busy world, the deeper consciousness will 
 be quickened. One falls into a gentle reverie. 
 Pleasant memories and mysterious experiences 
 come before the thought. One sees wherein one 
 has failed to practise one's truest wisdom, or 
 sees the meaning of some experience that seemed 
 hard and inexplicable at the time. Then, as 
 one gradually turns in thought from personal 
 experience to the larger experience of humanity 
 in its relation to the great Over-Soul, all these 
 varied events and personalities will be knit to- 
 
147 
 
 gether in relations unsuspected before. One 
 will have new glimpses of truth, — that deeper 
 truth which comes unbidden, but which is ever 
 ready to make itself known when one is intui- 
 tively awake and receptive. 
 
 A synthesis of these spontaneous reflections 
 will give one more genuine knowledge of self 
 than any purely introspective process. And 
 likewise in any moment of trouble or sickness, 
 when we need help, it is better to open out like 
 the flower, receptively, quietly, expectantly, 
 conscious of the nearness of the divine Helper, 
 than to pursue our own thought, and try to solve I 
 the difficulty. We are too active as a rule, too 
 sure of our own way, too much absorbed in our 
 own plans and fears. The Spirit demands but 
 little of us, quiet, lowly listening; but it does 
 ask this much. Here is the real power and 
 value of silence. All that we perceive in these 
 happy moments spent in quiet reflection has a 
 lasting effect upon us. It is then that we grow. 
 It is then that ideals take shape, and become 
 permanent directions of mind. It is then that 
 we get newly adjusted to life; for, after all, this 
 task is never completed. Something new and 
 perplexing is ever coming to test us ; and always 
 there is this one resource, to find our inward 
 centre, and there to stand firm and contented. 
 
 It is also in these more deeply reflective mo- 
 
148 
 
 merits that we learn our own limitations and 
 possibilities. We become aware of that deepest 
 tendency which lies at the basis of temperament 
 and personality, through which the great Spirit 
 speaks. We learn a deeper and truer self-reli- 
 ance, which ultimately means trust in God. We, 
 learn through experience when to obey this; 
 inner moving and when the impulse is merely 
 our own personal desire. In a word, conduct 
 reduces itself to one simple rule : Study to know 
 when you are moving along the lines of your 
 own deepest nature, your own keenest sense of 
 what is wise and right, and when you are off 
 the track. It is right and necessary to have cer- 
 tain standards by which conduct may be judged, 
 to have a philosophy which teaches one to look 
 on all sides of an issue and to reason carefully. 
 It is well to look to friends, to public teachers 
 and books, for help in all humility and willing- 
 ness to learn. But standards vary. The con- 
 science of a people changes from age to age. 
 Even intuition must be verified, r It must find 
 support in reason, and undergo the test of ex- 
 perience. The surest and simplest method, for 
 those who have become aware of such guidance, 
 is to await the divine emphasis, to act when the 
 whole being speaks, to move along those lines in 
 which no faculty of one's being interposes an 
 obstacle. All ultimate questions of right and 
 
149 
 
 duty should obviously be settled within the 
 sacred limits of one's own personality, where 
 the great God speaketh, if he speaks at all. 
 "The soul's emphasis is always right," says 
 Emerson. 
 
 To some this doctrine may seem the essence 
 of individualism, urging one, as it does, to find 
 a ready resource for all trouble in one's own 
 nature. Yet, rightly interpreted, it is by no 
 means selfishly exclusive, any more than that 
 ideal of human society towards which, in the 
 opinion of many thinkers, the present evolution 
 of the social order has all the while been tend- 
 ing; that is, it seeks to give the individual 
 mental freedom and free opportunity for devel- 
 opment within the limits of what is required of 
 him as a member of society. We have thus far 
 considered the problem of adjustment in its 
 simplest form. All that has been said in the 
 foregoing chapters properly enters into the ques- 
 tion, — the nature and relationship of the imma- 
 nent God to his manifestations, and all that we 
 know about those manifestations. The world is 
 an organism. Society is an organism. Human 
 minds as well as human customs and social in- 
 stitutions are evolving together. One by one, / 
 and individual by individual, we are knit to- 
 gether in one great mental, social, and universal 
 
150 
 
 fabric. Each need, each aspect of the organism, 
 the adjustment of part to part and of means to 
 ends, demands special consideration. We owe 
 certain duties to ourselves in order to preserve 
 our physical well-being, in the fulfilment of 
 which we are aided by all that science has dis- 
 covered concerning the human body, its evolu- 
 tion, its care, and the need of exercise. We 
 owe other duties to our fellow-men in order to 
 preserve the well-being of society; and in this 
 we receive greater aid each year through the 
 rapidly advancing theories of moral conduct, of 
 universal religion and sociology. We need and 
 long to know what is right in all cases, to know 
 what is our duty. Ethics enters into every act 
 and thought of human life. We owe it to our- 
 selves, to our neighbor, to the universal brother- 
 hood or the divine fatherhood, to be doing 
 something in particular all the time, to choose 
 this line of conduct and reject that. And this 
 knowledge of duty should rest on a scientific in- 
 terpretation of the universe, on a study of life in 
 its total relations, including the discovery, so 
 far as we can make it, of whither events are 
 tending. 
 
 No one can think deeply about life without 
 considering these larger issues. But, even in 
 approaching the problem of adjustment in its 
 simpler and more individual aspects, we discover 
 
i5i 
 
 many ways in which we can pay our large debt 
 to society. One cannot develop very far beyond 
 the less thoughtful masses without leading them 
 on; and, since man is an imitative creature, there 
 is no surer way of helping him than by setting 
 him a nobler example. Our uncharitable, our 
 fault - finding and fear - carrying words and 
 thoughts are just as harmful to others as to our- 
 selves. When we overcome these wrong habits 
 of thought, our friends will not be slow in notic- 
 ing the change. With the advent of a wiser 
 habit of looking for the good, of getting encour- 
 agement out of everything, and of disposing of 
 our troubles in a quiet way ourselves, instead of 
 burdening others with them, the reaction on our 
 associates will prove wonderfully helpful. 
 
 This doctrine, then, says in a word, Be unself- 
 ish; have an ideal outlook; see yourself as you 
 would like to be, healthy, happy, well-adjusted 
 to life, helpful, wisely sympathetic, and ever 
 ready with an encouraging word, looking for the 
 good, growing strong in wisdom and power, 
 patiently awaiting occasions, yet always suffi- 
 ciently occupied, so that you will have no time 
 to be annoyed, fearful, restless, or morbid. It 
 points out new ways in which we can be of ser- 
 vice to our fellow-men. It makes us aware of 
 our own responsibility, and shows us that life is 
 
152 
 
 an individual problem. It warns us never to 
 look upon that problem as too difficult to solve, 
 if we approach it moderately, hopefully, and full. 
 of cheer. 
 
 Is it not a duty we owe ourselves and other 
 people to be supremely happy, forever young in 
 spirit? We have all met those whose very being 
 seems to thrill from some unseen source of hap- 
 piness, who seem to know by instinct that all is 
 good. What influence can resist such a power, 
 and what trouble can long weigh down such a 
 bounding spirit? It is like the glad song of the 
 birds, which will not let us be melancholy, or 
 the feeling of worship for the source of all good, 
 which wells up in the presence of some beautiful 
 landscape. It is health. It opens one to the! 
 renewing, the indwelling energy, by which we 
 exist, whereas fear contracts, and causes one to 
 shut out that energy. There is something pro- 
 foundly unhealthy in our thought if any trouble 
 whatever leads one to suppress this happy ten- 
 dency. Its source is eternal, its spirit peren- 
 nial. Its power in counteracting the selfish and 
 morbid tendencies in life is boundless. It is 
 not to be sought for its own sake alone. It is 
 not the end of life. It is rather the spontaneous 
 accompaniment of the highest usefulness, the 
 deepest worship, the truest love, the greatest 
 thankfulness, the profoundest repose and trust in 
 
 
153 
 
 God. It is the truest sanity. It marks a well- . 
 balanced mind. Science and philosophy do not 
 always satisfy the soul. Reason leaves room for 
 doubt. Pessimism and despair are ready to fol- 
 low, if we do not check them by some happy j 
 thought. The greatest assurance, the one that 
 never fails, is this indefinable somewhat, this f 
 happy restfulness, which no doubt can shake, 
 this feeling that we are right, this sublime faith, ! 
 this unfathomable intuition, which leaves no 
 barrier between the soul and its perennial 
 source. A sense of trust and thankfulness wells 
 up with this deep assurance, a feeling of joy in 
 the blessing of existence, which defies the sub- 
 tlest scrutiny, which unites the simplicity of * 
 childhood with the profoundest reaches of man- 
 hood's thought. It is well to take note of its 
 conditions when it comes, to observe what a 
 range of thought and sentiment is opened up by 
 genuine happiness, and then, when the spirit of 
 depression weighs heavily upon us, to recall 
 these conditions, to let the morbid thought lan- 
 guish for mere want of attention, to stir one's 
 self, to arouse a forced happiness if one cannot 
 shake off the heavy spirit in any other way. 
 
 It is a matter of economy to be happy, to view 
 life and all its conditions from the brightest 
 angle. It enables one to seize life at its best. 
 It expands the soul. It calls power to do our 
 
154 
 
 bidding. It renews. It awakens. It is a far 
 truer form of sympathy than that mistaken sense 
 of communion with grief and suffering which 
 holds our friends in misery instead of helping 
 them out of it. It is a far nobler religion than 
 that creed which causes one to put on a long 
 face, and look as serious as possible. Once 
 more, there is something wrong in our philoso- 
 phy if it sanctions melancholy and pessimistic 
 thoughts. We have not yet looked deep enough 
 into life. We have never got beyond being im- 
 pressed by the sadder and gloomier side of life. 
 We are still thinking and acting contrary to, not 
 in harmony with, the happy world of nature by 
 which we are surrounded. By maintaining this^ 
 mournful attitude, we show our want of faith in 
 the goodness of things as much as when we fear. 
 A deep, unquenchable spirit of joy is at once the 
 truest evidence that we believe in the benefi- 
 cence of the Father, and that we have penetrated 
 deep enough into life's mystery to see how best, 
 most economically, most courageously and help- 
 fully to take it. 
 
 Patience, too, is a word that suggests much 
 that is needful in the adjustment to life. Hard, 
 indeed, is it for some to abide nature's time, 
 hard to eliminate the idea that creation was 
 completed long ago. Consider for a moment the 
 
155 
 
 vast age of our fair earth, how many aeons of 
 cosmic time it revolved in space ere vegetation 
 appeared, and then pass in imagination down 
 through the long cycles of struggle and develop- 
 ment which led the way to the production of the 
 first man, a creature with whom we would not 
 own kinship. History is still young. It is 
 made to-day with unwonted rapidity, and one 
 can hardly keep pace with the advancing times. 
 Yet nature is just as moderate as ever, and our 
 century is but the bursting bud of ages of meas- 
 ured preparation. Long ago the ancient Greeks 
 spoke for beauty of form. Long ago Jesus spoke 
 for the beauty of service. Not so long ago 
 Luther spoke for freedom of conscience and 
 reason. Slowly the great world is brought 
 round to the perception of these great prophets, 
 who stand like guide-posts, indicating the will 
 of the Most High. 
 
 Progress is just as measured in human life. 
 We cannot hasten matters. We may as well 
 accept the conditions of progress as we find 
 them, and not postpone our lesson. My experi- 
 ence of to-day is the outcome of my experience 
 of yesterday, of my past life, and is conditioned 
 by it. My intuition tells me of grander experi- 
 ences to come. It furnishes ideals. But I can- 
 not enjoy those experiences now, I cannot 
 realize the ideals now, because I cannot omit 
 
1 5 6 
 
 one step in my progress. I am ready, in the 
 full sense of the word, only for the step which 
 logically follows the one I am just now taking. 
 I must not overreach nor get into a nervous 
 strain. I must not let my thoughts dwell on the 
 future. I must not be anxious nor assert my 
 own will, for I do so at the peril of my health 
 and happiness. I ought rather to live in the 
 eternal now, and to understand my experience 
 in the light of cause and effect. I must build 
 my new future by gradual modification of the 
 shifting present. I must select and reject, 
 choose and neglect. 
 
 For, despite the fact that this endless chain of 
 causes and effects, whereof my fleeting experi- 
 ence is a part, is law-governed and fate-driven, 
 I have a wonderful amount of freedom. I can 
 not only choose between accepting life's condi- 
 tions trustfully, contentedly, making the most 
 that is good out of them, and rebelliously com- 
 plaining at them all, I can not only make of the 
 world what I put into it, and thus regulate my 
 own happiness and misery, but I can cause infi- 
 nite misery to other people. I can sin, I can 
 degrade myself lower than the animals, I can be 
 thoroughly wicked and mean, — • all within cer- 
 tain limits, — I can make of myself what I will; 
 but I can never escape the torments, the inevita- 
 ble results of my own acts. Not all the creeds, 
 
157 
 
 1/ not all the good men, not all the prayers and 
 
 sacrifices in the world, can ever change natural 
 
 * law, or save me from the heaven or the hell 
 
 ( which I am preparing for myself by my daily 
 
 » conduct. What I am thinking and doing day by 
 
 1 day is resistlessly shaping my future, — a future 
 
 j in which there is no expiation except through my 
 
 own better conduct. No one can save me. No 
 
 one can live my life for me. It is mine for bet- 
 
 ' / ter or for worse. If I am wise, I shall begin 
 
 j, to-day by the simplest and most natural of all 
 
 processes to build my own truer and better 
 
 , world from within. As surely as the great 
 
 | world of human thought comes round to the posi- 
 
 / tion of one man, so surely does the whole fabric 
 
 \ of personal thought and action respond to our 
 
 'i will. We have only to wait, to be patient, to 
 
 ;l renew our ideals day by day, to remember that 
 
 ; ^ ideas have life, regenerative life, and a natural 
 
 U law of growth. Nature and our own subcon- 
 
 ( scious mind will do the work for us. 
 
 I Here, then, is evidently the secret of the 
 
 whole matter. To look persistently toward the 
 
 light, toward the good, toward what we would 
 
 rather be, and as we would rather feel when we 
 
 are suffering, with some happy prospect in view 
 
 if we are morbid, with some deed of kindness in 
 
 mind if we are idle and in need of something 
 
 which shall absorb and fix the attention. Such 
 
158 
 
 will-power as this is irresistible. It is the God 
 and one that make a majority. 
 
 Adjustment to life, then, is an individual 
 problem, and varies with temperament, sur- 
 roundings, and habits of thought. Its princi- 
 ples are universal. First, to realize in bur own 
 way the truth of Chapter II., that there is but 
 one Reality, or God; that we live in God; that 
 God lives in us; that he is completing us, mov- 
 ing upon us through the forces, the events, the 
 world in which he resides, through our weaker 
 nature, through our faults, through the conflicts 
 which we have so long misinterpreted, through 
 pain, through happiness, and all that constitutes 
 experience; that we have no power wholly our 
 own, but that we use and are used by divine 
 power; that we are equal to any task, any emer- 
 gency, any struggle, for that great Reality is all 
 there is. It is all power. God is here. Help 
 is near. We need not go anywhere for it. It 
 is omnipresent. It abounds. It comes to us in 
 proportion to our receptivity to it, our faith in 
 it, our happiness, our hope, our patience. Then 
 to choose wisely what we wish to be in co-opera- 
 tion with the immanent Life, since "whatever 
 determines attention determines action " ; to see 
 one's self not in the introspective, but in the 
 divine light; to be practical in the choice of 
 
159 
 
 ideals ; to be ever happy, ever young, ever hope- 
 ful, and never discouraged. Conduct is thus the 
 conscious adjustment of our acts to the purpose 
 of the deeper Self so far as we know that 
 purpose. 
 
 But can we practise all this? If we could, 
 our doctrine would be of little value. We must 
 have ideals, — ideals which we can begin to real- 
 ize to-day; and our discussion has been of some 
 use, if it has shown the necessity of modera- 
 tion, of quiet, trustful imitation of the methods 
 whereby the great world of nature has come into 
 being. 
 
 Every one who has dwelt for a season in that 
 joyous world of the larger hope, where one is 
 lifted above self, above space and time, so that 
 one seems related to the revolving orbs of space 
 and to the limitless forces of the universe, knows 
 that there is a sudden, almost painful descent 
 to the realities of every-day life. Life is a con- 
 stant readjustment. It requires a daily renewal 
 of one's faith, and then a return to the tasks, 
 the struggles, which at times well-nigh weigh us 
 down. It means repeated failure. It means a 
 thorough test of all that is in us. It often 
 means trouble and discouragement whenever 
 one gets new light and regenerative ideas, since 
 a period of darkness similar to the decay of the 
 seed in the ground follows every incoming 
 
 y 
 
i6o 
 
 of greater power. But it is priceless knowledge 
 to know that we are equal to the occasion. It 
 is a long step toward self-understanding when 
 we learn to see in facts that once caused discour- 
 agement profound reasons for hope and cheer. 
 It is a decided step toward self-mastery when 
 we learn to meet these ups and downs, these 
 regenerative periods, in a broadly philosophical 
 spirit, at once superior to our circumstances 
 and to the thoughts and fears which once held 
 us in their power. It is fortunate, indeed, if 
 we no longer deem life's task too hard, if our 
 faith be sufficiently strong to sustain us through 
 the severest tests, thereby proving our fitness 
 to be made better, our willingness to persist, 
 though all be dark, with an iron determination 
 to succeed. 
 
VII. 
 
 POISE. 
 
 The one essential, alike in the interpretation 
 of life and in wise adjustment to its inevitable 
 conditions, is the knowledge that there is one, 
 and only one, Reality, whose being therefore 
 transcends and includes our own and all that can 
 ever form an object of our thought. All else is 
 contained in this, all else follows from this, if 
 we pursue our inquiry far enough to learn what 
 that Reality is and how it is made known. The 
 supreme problem is to know how best, most eco- 
 nomically, most healthfully and happily, to take 
 the eternal order, not simply as we find it in the 
 outer world, but as it is made known within as 
 a part of the life, of the very consciousness and 
 substance, of that one Reality. For, if this is 
 literally true, if the world-system is the self- 
 realization of an infinite God, it behooves us to 
 know it, to make this knowledge the guiding 
 principle of life, since the universe cannot then 
 be a world sent out from Deity, apart from him, 
 the product of mere caprice, to be some time de- 
 stroyed, when the caprice shall change. It must 
 endure as long as eternity shall last. It could 
 
l62 
 
 no more be destroyed than the self-existent 
 Reality, whose consciousness it is. The world- 
 plan could not be changed without departing 
 from the highest wisdom and purest love which 
 God must possess in order to be the one Reality. 
 
 There is the strongest reason, then, for taking 
 life as it really is in this largest sense, since it 
 must be part of the best possible world-plan in 
 order to be a fact at all and be self-preserving. 
 Everything that occurs in your life and mine 
 must have some meaning in this world-plan, for 
 nothing could come forth at random from an in- 
 finite wisdom. There is no other reality, and 
 we have no independent life. To let this one 
 purpose have free expression through us, so far 
 as it relates to our individual career, — this is 
 life in its deepest and happiest sense, this is 
 health and poise. 
 
 But, before considering this final element in 
 the problem of adjustment, let us ask, What is to 
 be the ultimate outcome of life's aspiration? 
 What is the real meaning and purpose behind all 
 these mysterious experiences and trials? Is it 
 not the development of a soul, and is it not 
 for lack of spiritual self-possession that we are 
 whiffed about by opinions and fears? What is a 
 soul? One may as well try to define the larger 
 Self, from whom, as we are persuaded, the soul's 
 noblest aspirations come. Yet we know per- 
 
i63 
 
 fectly well what we mean until we are asked to 
 define it; and we have some conception of that 
 eternal realm of thought, superior at once to 
 space and to time, where the poets and philoso- 
 phers dwell who speak words of comfort to the 
 soul. Our own deepest reflection transports us 
 there, and we seem larger as a result of our med- 
 itation. There are experiences that call us out 
 of and above ourselves, noticeably those that 
 make one acquainted with grief in its larger 
 sense; and the soul seems to expand with the 
 new experience. We know when, on the one 
 hand, a man's soul speaks through his words, 
 and when, on the other, he says one thing with 
 his lips and thinks another, thereby trying to 
 conceal his soul. The whole being speaks 
 through a perfectly genuine act, through truly 
 ethical conduct. We mean something genuine, 
 something honest, appealing, and true, bespeak- 
 ing that indefinable thing called personality. 
 It is a part of what we call character and temper- 
 ament. It is that which endears one to those 
 whose life gives us a glimpse of God, and makes 
 one feel assured that life, if it produces such a 
 thing as this, is well jvorth all its hardships. 
 It is the test of all that is dearest and truest in 
 human experience. It is that which transcends, 
 yet gives unity to the physical, the intellectual 
 and moral man. Through it comes that wisdom 
 
164 
 
 which leads men to act better than they know, 
 which bids one be calm when there is seem- 
 ingly reason to fear and grieve, which assures 
 one that all will be well even when reason opens 
 the way to the profoundest doubts. It is the 
 meeting-point of the eternal, never-changing 
 Spirit with the ever-varying experiences of 
 human life; and many feel confident that we are 
 far enough on the eternal side, so that life will 
 be continuous from this experience on, so that 
 we can affirm personal immortality. 
 
 Our deepest life, then, is a continuous incom- 
 ing of renewing, sustaining power welling up 
 from the heart of the universe into the spirit of 
 man, a continuous, divine communication en- 
 gaged in the rearing of a soul. The deepest self 
 is not physical, nor even intellectual. It is 
 spiritual. We are spirits now, in germ it may 
 be; but, in so far as we are conscious of our life 
 in God, that consciousness will probably never 
 be broken. Man is not a body with a soul, but 
 a soul or spirit, which in every well-poised per- 
 son is master of the body and of the powers of 
 thought. 
 
 Now, if the soul stands uppermost in impor- 
 tance, it is our first duty to keep the soul on top. 
 Many people work so hard at their vocations that 
 their souls have no room to expand. They are 
 lawyers, doctors, financiers, with whom business 
 
i6 5 
 
 stands first, not men in this spiritual sense of 
 the word. Anything which subordinates the 
 soul, and prevents man from taking all that be- 
 longs to him as a free spirit in a beneficent 
 world, any mistaken sense of humility or self- 
 suppression, has a harmful effect on the whole 
 life, and is evidently as far from a normal atti- 
 tude as strong self-conceit. If one have con- 
 tinued impulses to do good, and suppress them, 
 a reaction is sure to follow. It is better to ex- 
 press the impulse, even in a slight way, if one 
 cannot realize one's deepest and fullest desire. 
 Theological creeds often suppress the soul. 
 One feels a desire to be larger, freer, and to 
 think for one's self. Want of charity, continued 
 fault-finding, the attempt to do a task that is 
 beneath one, narrows the soul. Love, of the 
 truer sort, broad thinking, open-heartedness, 
 happiness, expands it, and has a marked effect 
 on the health. Sacrifice of individuality to the 
 control of a stronger mind suppresses the soul. 
 Education often crushes out originality. 
 
 Now, we were evidently designed to be free, to 
 have strong, manly individuality. It is well, 
 therefore, to consider wherein we are held down 
 by people and circumstances, and to discover 
 how we are cramping our souls. The soul 
 should be master, and the powers of thought 
 should be free. Do we not yield part of our 
 
1 66 
 
 manhood or womanhood the moment we give way 
 to worry, to continued grief or discouragement ? 
 On the other hand, is not the realization of what 
 we are as living, growing spirits, who use the 
 body as an instrument, and control it by 
 thought, who dwell with God and need never 
 fear any permanent harm, — is not this the way to 
 free ourselves most rapidly from all that would 
 hold us down? We have all experienced those 
 calmer moments when we quietly faced our 
 fears, our doubts, and our wavering opinions, 
 and as calmly dismissed them, henceforth power- 
 less because we saw their utter absurdity. Half 
 the battle is won when we see our error, and real- 
 ize the possibilities of the soul. We are mo- 
 mentarily masters of the situation. We are 
 more truly and profoundly ourselves, we discover 
 our inner centre, and become poised, grounded 
 on eternal reason and calm in eternal peace. 
 This is at once the highest use of the will and 
 the truest spiritual self-possession; for it is in 
 these moments of calm decision, when we real- 
 ize our relationship to eternal power, that the 
 mind changes, and brings all things round to 
 correspond to our deep desire. The ideal of 
 daily conduct is to maintain this inward repose, 
 to keep it steadily and persistently in view, to 
 regain it when we lose it, to seek it when we 
 need help, to have a calm centre within which is 
 
i6 7 
 
 never disturbed, come what may, — -a never-yield- 
 ing citadel of the higher Self. 
 
 It is evident, then, that the whole of human 
 life, and all that we have considered in the fore- 
 going chapters, may be restated with deeper 
 meaning in terms of soul, or spiritual, experience. 
 The soul must learn what it is and why it is 
 here. It must gain this knowledge by actual 
 experience, in order to learn the value of right 
 conduct, in order to learn that there is a Wis- 
 dom, a Love, that is equal to all occasions)/ It 
 must descend into density, or matter, and become 
 acquainted with darkness and sin, in order to dis- 
 cover the meaning of life and become conscious 
 of itself as an individualization of God. It 
 struggles upward and forward to completion. It 
 is ever trying to come forth and express itself; 
 and, when man comes to consciousness of what 
 it means to develop a soul, and of the divine 
 trend in his personal life, he no longer resists 
 this deep moving. He comes to judgment 
 in his own soul, and sees how he might have 
 acted more wisely. With this deeper conscious- 
 ness comes readjustment to life and more soul 
 freedom. His soul finds better expression 
 through the body, not in some future existence 
 or in another body, but here and now ; for even 
 its experiences in the flesh are soul experiences, 
 
1 68 
 
 and demand, not punishment in the flesh at some 
 distant time, but better and truer conduct in the 
 eternal now. 
 
 If anything is purposeful in the universe, then 
 it is the life, the aspiration and character, the 
 soul of man, as it passes from stage to stage in 
 its progressive experience, unfolding and giving 
 to the light the divinity involved in its very 
 being. It is the knowledge of this permanent 
 factor in so much that is passing and trivial 
 which gives one poise and strength to pass 
 through any experience without fear that it may 
 prove too hard. 
 
 People disturb us. They narrate their 
 troubles and describe their sensations with pain- 
 ful minuteness of detail. Crowds, city rush 
 and noise, deprive us of our peace. Be as watch- 
 ful as we may, we find ourselves going off on a 
 tangent, on a tirade of fear, or on a round of 
 gloomy thoughts. We are misunderstood, ill- 
 used, and wronged. Our faith is tested to the 
 utmost, and we are pushed to the wall. There 
 is obviously just one wise course to pursue in 
 all such cases. Not to be disturbed, not to 
 enter into the painful narration, not to rush 
 with the crowd nor to countenance gloomy 
 thoughts, not to feel uncharitable, revengeful, 
 or unforgiving, since one will only add more 
 trouble, but to regain one's poise by such 
 
i6 9 
 
 thoughts and realizations of who we are as pro- 
 gressive beings, and what the Power is that is 
 with us, as the occasion may suggest. Find your 
 centre, learn to know your home in God and 
 what he is doing with you, and you can safely 
 let the great world go on, and let nature's organ- 
 ism right all wrongs and heal all hurts. 
 
 I need hardly remind the reader that it is not 
 so-called will power that invites this repose, but 
 the higher and truer will explained in the fore- 
 going chapter; for self-assertion plainly defeats 
 one's object. People who are strong in them- 
 selves alone obviously have no poise in this 
 deeper sense, as a soul experience. Those who 
 reach out after the ideal as though it were some- 
 where afar off and not immanent in the real, who 
 look forward to the future with a nervous strain 
 instead of living in the present, where help is 
 alone to be found, lose what little poise they 
 have, and fly aloft on a burst of enthusiasm. 
 The consciousness is concentrated wherever we 
 send our thought; and, if we reach out or pray 
 to God as a distant being, the thought is sent 
 away from its proper sphere. It were better not 
 to have ideals at all than to strain after them, 
 and assert that they shall become facts at once; 
 for nature's method of measured transformation 
 through evolution is the only wise and health- 
 giving course to pursue. 
 
170 
 
 To know that everything we need is within, 
 here and now, this is poise. Realization, not 
 assertion, is the method of this book, — a real- 
 ization which teaches through actual communion 
 with it that there is an omnipresent Wisdom to 
 which we can turn at any moment and in any 
 place, of which our being partakes, and which is 
 so near to us that we have no wisdom, no power, 
 no life wholly our own. 
 
 We are so accustomed to think of the divine 
 nature as wholly unlike and separated from our 
 own character that it is long ere we can make 
 this realization a fact of daily consciousness. 
 We have taken credit to ourselves for qualities 
 which inhere in the very Essence itself. We 
 have limited our worship of God to one day in 
 the week, to one place of prayer, and sought his 
 revelation in one book. Dogmas have crystal- 
 lized about us, and we have hardly dared to think 
 for ourselves. Yet a little reflection shows that 
 we are, that we must be, partakers of an omni- 
 present Love; that not the Bible alone nor any 
 other sacred book, but every book through which 
 the soul of its author speaks untrammelled, every 
 divinest impulse, all that spurs man on to prog- 
 ress, all that is most sacred, is a revelation of 
 God, for he is not an exclusive, but an inclusive 
 God. This being so, we obviously do not know 
 ourselves, do not possess ourselves, and have no 
 
i;i 
 
 permanent centre of repose, until we discover 
 this inward kingdom of heaven. 
 
 When we discover it, life seems just so much 
 the larger and better worth the living. We 
 learn that there is something within that will 
 teach man better than any mere thought of his 
 own, that he has a wellspring of guidance and 
 inspiration in his own soul. It gives quietness 
 and comfort to know this fact. Nearly every 
 one has had such guidance at times, sudden 
 warnings of approaching danger and impressions 
 not to do this or that; and help has often come 
 to us during sleep. But this realization of the 
 nearness of All-knowledge gives a reason for 
 such experiences, and encourages one to believe 
 that they can be cultivated and relied on. 
 Then, too, it gives one confidence and strength 
 of a truer sort, not in self, self-consciousness, 
 and the products of one's own intellectual devel- 
 opment, but in that larger Self which is crowded 
 out by all sentiments of pride and self-satisfac- 
 tion. One loses fear, one ceases to worry about 
 one's friends and to suffer for wrongs that one is 
 powerless to prevent, when this realization be- 
 comes a fixed habit of thought; for, if God, and 
 not man, is behind events, we can safely trust 
 the universe to him, and not only the universe, 
 but our friends, our suffering and ignorant fel- 
 low-beings, and our own souls. The sense of 
 
172 
 
 officiousness is displaced by a feeling of patient 
 trustfulness, and we spare ourselves a deal of 
 unnecessary suffering; and I need hardly add 
 that one not only gains greater repose, but that 
 the health is immensely benefited, since the dis- 
 ease-making directions of mind no longer have 
 a chance at us. 
 
 Education of the truer sort brings poise; for 
 it develops individuality, health, and strength 
 of intellect, which in turn means health and 
 strength of body. Physical exercise, music, or 
 any line of work which rounds out the character 
 and acts as a balance wheel, is essential for the 
 same reason, since it draws the activities out of 
 narrow and therefore unhealthy directions of 
 mind. Those who are very intense in disposi- 
 tion often find it necessary to exercise vigorously, 
 in order to counteract this extreme mental activ- 
 ity, until by degrees they become less and less 
 intense, and learn to work moderately and 
 easily. There is an easiest, simplest way of 
 doing everything, with the least degree of strain 
 and nervous anxiety. We do not learn it while 
 we hold ourselves with the grip of will-power, 
 when we try to work our brains, and force the 
 activities into a given channel. "Self-posses- 
 sion forgets all about the body when it is using 
 it." It interposes no obstacle to the physical 
 and mental forces. It discovers the easiest 
 
173 
 
 method of concentration through inward repose, 
 and finds in this quiet restfulness the greatest 
 protection from nervous reaction and fear. 
 
 Poise, then, is a word of degrees. Many have 
 it on the physical plane, and are apparently sel- 
 dom disturbed in their physical life. Syste- 
 matic physical exercise brings control of the 
 muscles of the body, and with this control a cer- 
 tain degree of poise. In learning to play a 
 musical instrument, one gains it through long 
 training; and we say of a great musician that he 
 has repose, that he plays or sings without effort. 
 But one may have bodily repose, yet have no 
 repose of character, and may be the victim of 
 a veritable whirlwind of nervous excitement 
 within. Those who are aware of their own 
 mental development and soul growth are usually 
 conscious of touching a deeper and deeper 
 centre, and with each experience comes added 
 poise and readjustment to life. Every trying 
 experience demands a strengthening of one's 
 faith or a deepening of one's self-possession; for 
 the natural tendency is to fear, worry, and 
 doubt. We are not sure of ourselves until we 
 have met and undergone the test of a se- 
 vere experience. Any experience, then, that 
 strengthens this inward repose is rather a bless- 
 ing than a hardship. Is it too much to say that 
 we can become equal to any experience whatever, 
 
174 
 
 and meet it unmoved within, in quiet trust and 
 perfect faith? Surely, the possibility is worthy 
 of our consideration. 
 
 If we have proved to our satisfaction that two 
 and two make four, and that the result will 
 always be the same, we are undisturbed by those 
 who affirm that the result should be five. So far 
 as we have rationalized experience and discov- 
 ered certain laws, our conviction is no less cer- 
 tain, because nature, like mathematics, is a 
 system on which we can rely. If the reader is 
 convinced that God is immanent, or that evolu- 
 tion, so far as science has described it, is a true 
 statement of life's process of becoming, this 
 knowledge furnishes a basis on which to reason. 
 It gives poise and inspires trust. To be sure, 
 the conditions may change, and other forces enter 
 in to counteract and modify the results in a 
 given case. To the forgetfulness of this fact is 
 due the tenacity with which some people cling 
 to their beliefs, simply because they are unaware 
 of these modifying circumstances and causes. 
 Doctors seem justified in affirming that disease 
 is a physical thing, that organic and chronic dis- 
 eases cannot be cured by mental means, because 
 as a class they are unaware of the deeper aspects 
 both of the cause and the cure of disease. But 
 the exceptions only go to strengthen our faith, 
 since every effect is like its cause, unless a new 
 
175 
 
 element be introduced. Then it is invariably 
 different. The laws hold true universally; and, 
 if the reader has grasped the few great but 
 highly important laws of human life, he can now 
 rise superior to moods and experiences, troubles 
 and illness, which once would have caused fear, 
 doubt, and a great amount of unnecessary suffer- 
 ing. Simply to know that every event has an 
 adequate cause, that action and reaction are 
 equal, that experience depends on our attitude 
 towards it, and that with a change of mind, a 
 new directing of the will, the forces of our being 
 are brought round to correspond with it, — with- 
 out any further effort on our part, — this simple 
 knowledge is enough to give us poise, and make 
 us masters of our fate. 
 
 One's method of adjustment to life or one's 
 optimism need not necessarily be the philosophy 
 of this book. There are as many approaches to 
 it as there are temperaments, and this is just the 
 point of this chapter. ••'' Have a method. Have a 
 soul of your own. Be your true self. Think, 
 realize, reflect, until you have a measure of un- 
 borrowed conviction, which establishes a centre 
 of repose, and is a source of happiness and con- 
 tentment, — a centre which yields to no outer 
 tumult, but is ever receptive to the divine Self; 
 which never harbors fear or doubt, no matter 
 what the wavering self may say; which never 
 
1 7 6 
 
 wavers, never forgets that the individual belongs 
 to the Universal, never relaxes its hold of the 
 deepest, the truest, the most spiritual in life, 
 come what may, be it sorrow, illness, or any 
 calamity which life may bring; a centre which 
 you will probably discover at last rests on the 
 love of God for its strength, making it part of 
 eternity and of all power and substance, though 
 it be but a point in the infinite whole. And, 
 when you lose this poise, regain it, as though 
 you would say, "Sit still, my soul: thou at least 
 must not lose thy composure nor thy awareness 
 of the eternal presence of God." 
 
 Those who are nervously inclined will find it 
 necessary to stop themselves many times a day 
 when they discover that they are under too great 
 pressure. They will find themselves hurrying 
 unnecessarily or inwardly excited. Oftentimes 
 all that is needed in order to prevent serious 
 mental and physical trouble is to take off this 
 pressure, and find this quiet inward centre. It 
 is wonderfully refreshing and removes fatigue to 
 relieve the pressure and open the spirit to the 
 healing power. Simply to turn away from self, 
 and all that destroys repose, to the Self which 
 knows nothing but peace, is sufficient to give 
 one help and strength at any time and in any 
 place. The wise direction of mind opens the 
 door to help. If we trust, if we expect it, the 
 
177 
 
 help will come, whereas the effort to make it 
 come will put an obstacle in its pathway. 
 
 To know how to rest, this is the great need of 
 our hurrying age. We are too intense, too ac- 
 tive. We have not yet learned the power and 
 supremacy of the Spirit, nor the value of quiet, 
 systematic thinking. We struggle after ideas. 
 We read this book and that, and go about from 
 place to place in search of the latest and most 
 popular lecturer, instead of pausing to make our 
 own the few great but profoundly simple laws 
 and truths of the Spirit. We are unaware of the 
 power and value of a few moments of silence. 
 Yet it is in our periods of receptivity that we 
 grow. Not while we actively pursue our ideas 
 do we get the greatest light. Oftentimes, if 
 the way be dark, and we can get no help, it is 
 better to cease all striving, and let the thoughts 
 come as they may, let the Power have us; for 
 there is a divine tendency in events, a tendency 
 in our lives which we can fall back on, which 
 will guide us better than we know, if we listen, 
 laying aside all intensity of thought, and letting 
 the activities settle down to a quieter basis. 
 Here is the vital thought of this book, its most 
 urgent appeal to suffering humanity and the soul 
 in need. Part of its teaching can only be veri- 
 fied by experience, and must seem merely theo- 
 
i 7 8 
 
 retical to many readers. But here is a thought 
 that is for every one, a simple, practical thought, 
 that leads to and includes all the rest. Let us 
 pause for a time, think slowly and quietly, and 
 not leave it until we have made it our own. 
 
 Silence invites the greatest power in the 
 world, the one Power, the one Life. Let us be 
 still in the truest and deepest sense of the word, 
 and feel that Power. It is the All in all. It 
 knows no space. It knows no time. Its slight- 
 est activity is universal and eternal. It sur- 
 rounds us here and now, in this present life, 
 this beautiful world of nature, of law and order, 
 this inner world of thought and the soul. It is 
 the supreme wisdom and perfect love. It knows 
 no opposition. There is naught to disturb its 
 harmonious, measured, and peaceful activity. It 
 is beauty and peace itself. Its love and peace 
 are present here with us. Let us then be still. 
 Peace, peace, there is nothing to fear. In this 
 one restful happy moment we have won the 
 peace of eternity, and it is ours forever. 
 
 Who that has communed with the Power of 
 silence in this way can do justice to the unspeak- 
 able joy of that one moment of rest and peace? 
 It is not a thought alone or a suggestion that 
 brings it. It is something more than so-called 
 thought. It is inner stillness. It is the recep- 
 tivity of the soul. It opens one to the thing 
 
 
179 
 
 itself, the eternal Peace. Many will find it 
 difficult at first to banish other thoughts; and it 
 is better not to force the stillness to come, but 
 to let the agitation cease by degrees, letting the 
 thoughts come until x they quiet down for mere 
 want of conscious attention. When at last the 
 thought no longer wanders here and there, but is 
 poised in the present moment, and the feeling of 
 peace becomes uppermost, it is better to cease 
 definite thought altogether, and simply enjoy the 
 silence. One will then have a sense of incom- 
 ing power and of newness of life which no other 
 experience can bring. This may not be the 
 result at first, because it is only after repeated 
 trials that one learns how to become still. One 
 may even be made more nervous by the simple 
 thought of stillness. It is often easier to real- 
 ize this peace for another than for one's self, but 
 the result will in time be the same. The con- 
 sciousness will be drawn away from self and 
 physical sensation; and this, after all, is the 
 one essential, to rise above self into the nobler 
 world of altruism and the Spirit. 
 
 Some have found it helpful to set aside fifteen 
 minutes each day for quiet receptivity of this 
 deeper sort. Then, when times of trouble and 
 suffering come, one will not lose one's self-pos- 
 session, but will know how and where to find 
 help. 
 
 V 
 
i8o 
 
 The instance is related of a student in the 
 university of Leipzig who was in such an intense 
 state of nervous strain that the students and pro- 
 fessors were much alarmed at his condition. By 
 some good advice he took up the habit of sitting 
 quietly by himself for about fifteen minutes each 
 day, in absolute silence, maintaining as nearly 
 as possible a state of perfect composure and 
 muscular rest, banishing all thought and all 
 activity. In a short time he made a very no- 
 ticeable improvement, and finally recovered his 
 health. The mere effort of maintaining an easy, 
 relaxed state of mind and body had relieved him 
 of the inward pressure. He had unconsciously 
 realized the power of silence, and it had healed 
 him. 
 
 If one fails utterly at first to gain this silent 
 repose, and becomes still more restless, one 
 should hot feel discouraged. That is just the 
 moment to rejoice and to know that one has suc- 
 ceeded. The experience is the same in all 
 efforts of reform. The first result is to stir up 
 and encounter opposition. 
 
 Suppose for a moment that the reader is impa- 
 tient, and, seeing the error of his ways, decides 
 to exercise self-control. Very likely he will 
 lose his patience on the very first occasion, and 
 act or speak impulsively. Discouragement natu- 
 rally follows ; and the reader forgets one of the 
 
great laws of growth, — the law, namely, that a 
 period of darkness, of regeneration, of sharp 
 contact with all that can rouse itself into oppo- 
 sition, follows the reception of new light, of 
 greater power. Conservatism and habit are ever 
 ready to rise up, and say that there shall be no 
 reform. All healthy changes are evolutionary, 
 not revolutionary. We forget that an idea, like 
 a seed, has life, and, if sown in the mind, will 
 grow. We forget the outcome. We often 
 falsely accuse ourselves of sin, when the relapse 
 is really due to a firm determination to be bet- 
 ter. If we keep the end in view, if we have an 
 ideal outlook, we can safely let the disturbance 
 be what it may. Quiet persistence is the word. 
 Each effort to renew our ideal adds to its 
 evolutionary power. "Keep your eye fixed on 
 the eternal, and your intellect will grow," says 
 Emerson. , 
 
 One's first real success in attaining this inner 
 repose sometimes comes alone with nature when, 
 standing in silence under the pines and thinking 
 in harmony with their whispering or awed by 
 some grand mountain scene, one freely and fully 
 yields to the spirit, the calm, the rhythm of 
 one's surroundings. Afterwards one can return 
 in thought to the mountain summit, where the 
 eternal silence of the upper air was so deeply 
 impressive. Or one can imagine one's self by 
 
1 82 
 
 the sea, where the ceaseless ebb and flow of the 
 surf on a sandy shore once quieted the troubled 
 spirit, or afloat at sea on a beautiful June day, 
 listening to the regular play of the waves along 
 the steamer's side. Any thought which sug- 
 gests silence will produce the result, until one 
 gets in the habit of thinking in harmony with 
 the rhythm of nature, just as one can learn to 
 rise and fall with the motion of a steamer as it 
 responds to the steady waving of the ocean. 
 
 Everything in nature seems to have its ebb 
 and flow, its alternation of day and night, of 
 activity and rest, the one blending into the other 
 throughout the seasons and the centuries. The 
 strains of a grand symphony carry one in thought 
 to this region of rhythmic alternation. One is 
 glad enough at times to lay aside present prob- 
 lems and everything that is modern, and read 
 the great authors who wrote for all time, or read 
 some history or scientific work which transports 
 one to the past, and gives one a sense of time, 
 of the long ages and the periods through which 
 the earth has passed and man has worked his way. 
 
 There seems to be a corresponding rhythm in 
 human life, with its ups and downs, its joys and 
 sorrows, its successes and its failures. Yet the 
 interval is often too long for our short-sighted 
 discernment. In the night of trouble and de- 
 spair we forget that the day will surely dawn 
 
i»3 
 
 again. We occasionally emerge into remem- 
 brance of what it all means, and we think that 
 now at last all will go well. Then comes the 
 descent. We are plunged once more into the 
 depths, where the facts of life are seen at 
 the close, pessimistic range; and once more our 
 memory fails to hold over. But in due time 
 these contrasted experiences fall into a system, 
 if we reflect on their meaning. We are awed by 
 the eternal fitness of things. A stronger hand 
 and a profounder will than our own is revealed 
 in the fabric of our soul, which no purely human 
 effort could have knit together. We are almost 
 ready to affirm that whatever is is right. 
 
 It is true we make many apparent mistakes. 
 Within certain limits we seem to have an infi- 
 nite choice. We are conscious of wrong-doing. 
 We deliberately sin sometimes, and we have 
 much to regret. Yet a time comes when many 
 of these experiences yield up their meaning. 
 We justify mistakes in the light of their out- 
 come. Each hour of conflict had its place in 
 teaching part of life's great lesson. A world 
 of truth flashes upon us through the memory of 
 some wrong act; and we question the wisdom of 
 the slightest regret, since we have acted so much 
 better than we knew. This soul-experience, 
 this personal evidence that we have been guided, 
 is for many the strongest assurance that our 
 
1 84 
 
 world-order is the best possible order. They 
 are conscious of being led to certain lines of 
 conduct at the right moment. They see their 
 humble place in the world, and await the next 
 step in quiet expectancy. One may as well tell 
 them they have no eyes as to deny this inward 
 guidance, for it leads them from task to task 
 with a certain system. If it does not tell them 
 what to do, it at least opposes no obstacle, like 
 the famous daemon of Socrates. It either speaks 
 definitely or it opens the way to the soul in re- 
 pose, not the soul that thinks it knows how to 
 act, and gives the deeper Self no room to speak. 
 One cannot hasten it. One cannot always dis- 
 cern the proper course until the proper moment. 
 It often comes unexpectedly, causing humility 
 and surprise that so much should be given us. 
 But the right thought comes in the fitness of 
 time to those who quietly await it. 
 
 Thus one is drawn at last out of the narrow 
 prison of one's own self-consciousness and physi- 
 cal sensation into this larger thought of the 
 whole. It gives rest and trust to feel one's self 
 part of a fabric so wonderfully and systemati- 
 cally woven, where the world-plan is not alone 
 concerned with the selfish needs of one man, 
 nor the wrongs which one would like to see 
 swept away because we do not see their meaning, 
 
185 
 
 but with the total needs of all as related to the 
 total universe. 
 
 One loses all sense of time and space under 
 the power of this grand thought of the transcen- 
 dent wholeness which shades off into eternity. 
 This transient thought of ours, this divine mo- 
 ment of time, is a part of that eternity. It 
 links the limitless future with the irrevocable 
 past. It is just as important, just as truly a part 
 of eternity, as any moment could ever be. We 
 learn that we are in eternity now, not that it 
 is something to come. We try to comprehend 
 what it means, in eternity now, in infinite time, 
 in boundless space, or, better, above all time 
 and space, where one Power, one law, holds all 
 events together, where each and all are insepa- 
 rable and necessary parts of the one Reality. 
 
 If we dwell in eternity, why need we hurry in 
 soul, whatever bodily hurry may be required? 
 Why should we not dwell here in the everlast- 
 ing now, instead of reaching off somewhere in 
 thought, anticipating the future and death, as 
 though there would ever be a break in the stream 
 of life? If we, as souls, dwell, in eternity, is 
 not our life continuous? It surely cannot die if 
 it enlarges into the infinite, eternal life, else it 
 would not be life, but mere physical change. 
 Even in physical disintegration there is no an- 
 nihilation, not even the minutest particle is ever 
 
1 86 
 
 lost. Can we believe anything less of the soul? 
 Must we not believe more; namely, that the 
 aspiring consciousness and sense of individual- 
 ity remain unbroken? If the great Father has 
 a purpose with us, however infinitesimal as ap- 
 plied to you and me, it must be a part of his in- 
 finite life; and there is nothing to break its con- 
 tinuity. 
 
 In some of us has been born a desire to live 
 forever. It is probable that we are no more re- 
 sponsible for that desire than for our deepest 
 faith in God. In the supremest moments of 
 human life it is he who stands by us, not we by 
 our faith in him, and we would fain doubt him 
 if we could; but we never quite persuade our- 
 selves that he will fail to fulfil every deepest 
 desire and justify all the conditions in which we 
 have been placed, though it take forever. There 
 are times when we seem to dwell in a region 
 where all is good and wise and true; for we have 
 momentary glimpses of the sublime wholeness of 
 things, the sublime reason, the sublime end,, a 
 region where, if we have not all power, we at 
 least have as much as we can make our own, and 
 a faith that knows no doubt. Yet it is no credit 
 to us that we have this faith, this belief in God. 
 We did not originate it. 
 
 If I display goodness towards another, I par- 
 take of the nature of God in some degree. The 
 
i8 7 
 
 love of God speaks through the heart of the 
 mother. It must be a part of the infinite love, 
 since we all belong to him; and, if we had any 
 power wholly independent of him, all men, all 
 things, would be independent of him. There 
 would be no fundamental unity, no omnipresent, 
 inclusive Reality, no universe as we know it. 
 The life, the power, the goodness, the love, the 
 groundwork of the universe, of men, and of the 
 soul, must be the all-inclusive Self; and human 
 nature, however individual in its history, must 
 be at each moment in some measure dependent 
 on the Universal. One's soul is not one's self 
 alone. It is also God's emphasis of some 
 phase of his own nature, the attention of God 
 fixed on some object. One's unquenchable faith 
 is ultimately God's unfailing love. We believe 
 in him because he knows us, because he pos- 
 sesses us, you and me, and uses, has need of us, 
 because he has made us aware of his presence. 
 He loves us, and we trust him because we must. 
 He has aroused interest in our minds in the 
 deepest problems of life, — problems which it 
 will take eternity to solve; and, if we long to 
 solve them, we may thus know that we are so 
 far immortal, because this interest is funda- 
 mentally the eternal purpose of God. 
 
 This realization of our oneness with the un- 
 
i88 
 
 thinkably great and eternal, which brings us just 
 as near to it and makes us just as much part of 
 it here and now in this present moment as 
 though we were this great wholeness, and had 
 lived from all time, is strengthened by consider- 
 ing our indebtedness to the world. Here we are 
 in this beautiful, beautiful world. How won- 
 derfully it is wrought! How systematically it 
 has evolved, governed by exact laws and ani- 
 mated by unvarying forces ! It is our own home. 
 We can rely upon it and on that heaven-taught 
 instinct which guides its creatures better than 
 the combined wisdom of all mankind. What 
 a delight to exist! What exceptional pleasures 
 come to us at times among the mountains, by 
 the winding streams, the peaceful valleys, the 
 great ocean, inspiring awe alike in storm and 
 calm, and ever suggestive of that Whole which 
 unites us all! Days are continually recurring 
 which stand out above many others because of 
 some charming scene in nature, some impressive 
 communion with the spirit of the woods or the 
 hills, while the dreariest day in winter or the 
 most barren landscape in nature will yield its 
 gift of beauty if we seek it. The poet and the 
 artist see all this, and live in a diviner world 
 because they are watchful. But the beauty is 
 there for us all, to inspire contentment if we 
 need it, to reveal the good if we look for it, and 
 
1 89 
 
 do not let the habit of narrating and seeking 
 only the bad control us, and to make us thankful 
 and trustful when we consider its deep signifi- 
 cance, its correspondence to the beauty of law 
 and order, of need and supply in the inner life. 
 
 Then, too, the beauty of human character 
 more than all else endears one to life, and gives 
 one joy in existence. Two or three noble 
 friends are all the world to some people. Where 
 they are is home, and where they are is always 
 happiness and contentment. One is constantly 
 being touched by little acts of kindness and de- 
 votion. Sometimes in the country, even among 
 a simple folk, one draws very near to the heart 
 of humanity. One is moved beyond words, for 
 nothing conceals the honest hearts that reach 
 out to one in all their native feeling and sincer- 
 ity. Such experiences have a wonderful effect 
 upon the recipient when put beside the darker 
 aspects of life, — with those undeniable evi- 
 dences of wickedness which might otherwise al- 
 most persuade one that human life is corrupt to 
 the core. 
 
 Omit these darker experiences we cannot in 
 trying to cast our thought into some sort of sys- 
 tem ;/but in daily life we are too inclined to 
 dwell on them, especially to enlarge upon our 
 own woes, to describe every detail, so that as a 
 result our friends form harmful mental pictures 
 
190 
 
 of them. We are apt to contemplate these 
 darker facts, and never get beyond them. We 
 stay in gloomy surroundings, and then call the 
 world ugly. It is well once in a while to pass 
 in review all that should cause us joy and thank- 
 fulness, to ascend the mountain, whence we can 
 look beyond the ugly spots and see their re- 
 lation — and, after all, it is a beautiful one — 
 to the great landscape beyond. x 
 
 f I do not speak alone as one who has stood on 
 the mountain top, and thought the world beauti- 
 
 / ful, bat as one who has suffered keenly and crit- 
 ically in the darksome vales below, who has met 
 
 I with the severest losses and suffered the deepest 1 
 disappointments, and has had a most intense 
 
 * nature to overcome. Our poise is worth little if I 
 
 / it fail to give strength and composure in any J 
 possible experience, and to be itself strengthened 
 
 / by the newest trial. The experiences and real- 
 izations suggested in this chapter prepare the 
 way for the severer tests of actual life. If we 
 habitually realize what it means to dwell with 
 God, what the soul is, and how it is approaching 
 completion, and keep the ideal of adjustment to 
 life ever before us, pausing in silent receptivity 
 whenever we become too intense, into the 
 thought will steal the renewing and strengthen- 
 ing Power, which will prepare us for the day of 
 sorrow and the hour of supreme suffering. 
 
VIII. 
 
 SELF-HELP. 
 
 We have now considered the general attitude 
 toward life whereby the vital truths of the Spirit 
 may become concrete in daily experience. We 
 have found that attitude to consist in the recog- 
 nition of what man is as a progressive being, and 
 in wise co-operation with the indwelling Life 
 which resistlessly carries him forward to comple- 
 tion. / There is a tendency, a guidance, in the 
 soul of man which will lead him onward if he 
 will listen for it./ It will guide him in every 
 detail of life, it will help him in every moment 
 of trouble. It is with all men, it is used by all 
 men ; for otherwise they could not exist. But 
 to the majority it is unknown and unrecognized, 
 simply because they use it unconsciously; and to 
 assure them that they can have such guidance 
 seems to them the merest folly. To know it, 
 and to distinguish between the merely personal 
 thought or inclination and this diviner moving, 
 is to live the higher life, — a life which seems 
 infinitely better and happier the moment one 
 learns to make this most helpful discrimination. 
 To turn to it in times of doubt and trouble is to 
 
192 
 
 regain one's poise, to become adjusted to life, to 
 gain the truest self-help. 
 
 Ordinarily, it is sufficient to hold this possi- 
 bility in mind, and to maintain an ever-deepen- 
 ing consciousness of our life with the infinite 
 Father. Contaminating influences cannot then 
 touch us, fear will have no power over us, we 
 shall respect this inner voice rather than the 
 opinions of men, and escape a large proportion of 
 the ills which neither the mind nor the flesh is 
 heir to. | This realization will add a meaning, 
 a depth and beauty to life, which the reader who 
 has not yet made it a factor in daily experience 
 can hardly imagine. Simply to discover that so 
 much depends on our mental attitude is of itself 
 sufficient knowledge to work a wonderful change 
 in the lives of those who ever bear this vital 
 truth in mind; for, if we begin life afresh, with 
 a determination to see only the good, the real 
 meaning and spirit of things, it will be impossi- 
 ble for our old habits of thought, our fears and 
 inherited notions about disease, to win their way 
 into consciousness. The road to better health, 
 to unhoped-for happiness and freedom, is open 
 before us. The better health shall be ours if we 
 have the will, for nothing can resist the power 
 of thought : the body, our fixed directions of 
 mind, and even our temperaments will yield 
 when we learn how to use this marvellous power. 
 
193 
 
 But there are experiences when we need some- 
 thing more than this general knowledge of how 
 to take the deepest life just as it is; and, in 
 order to make the application of the foregoing 
 principles perfectly clear, so that the reader will 
 not only know what to do in times of trouble and 
 suffering, but how to help a fellow-sufferer, let 
 us once more consider the actual process of 
 change in mind and body. 
 
 In considering the qualities and composition 
 of matter in Chapter III., we learned that the 
 phenomenon of expansion and contraction is one 
 of its most noticeable characteristics. Turning 
 to the mental world, we found the same principle 
 repeated; namely, that thoughts are harmful or 
 healthful to the degree that they expand and con- 
 tract the inner being. Fear, jealousy, anger, 
 and all selfish or belittling emotions have a ten- 
 dency to draw one into self, to shut in and re- 
 strict the activities, impeding the natural life 
 and restorative power of the body, and develop- 
 ing a condition from which, if it be long main- 
 tained, nature can only free us by a violent reac- 
 tion : whereas a pleasurable emotion, such as one 
 feels when listening to a familiar melody or the 
 strains of a great symphony, causes the whole 
 individual to expand, and sends a thrill to the 
 utmost extremities of the being. 
 
194 
 
 There is a whole vocabulary of words in com- 
 mon use expressing the warmth and coldness of 
 human beings. In fact, the two faculties of in- 
 tellect and emotion, or head and heart, are often 
 taken as types of these fundamental characteris- 
 tics; and we speak of this church as cold and 
 intellectual, that one as warm and spiritual, — so 
 hard it is for one to combine the two. 
 
 Again, considering emotion alone, we speak of 
 warm-heartedness. It seems to be out-going, 
 expansive; and, if one give to another or do some 
 act of kindness, that act has a tendency to repeat 
 itself. The person is touched on whom the favor 
 is conferred, and immediately feels a desire to 
 reciprocate, or to show kindness to another. On 
 the contrary, let the emotion be selfish, let the 
 person decide to do a mean act, and there is an 
 instant withdrawing, a self -contract ion and nar- 
 rowing of the soul. Happiness, joy, genuine 
 pleasure, and self-denial are expansive emotions, 
 and oftentimes wonderfully catching. With the 
 one emotion comes self-forgetfulness and lack of 
 restraint : with the other comes self-conscious- 
 ness and painful awareness of sensation. Love 
 is warm : selfishness is cold. Happiness ex- 
 pands : fear contracts. 
 
 Thus we might pass in review the whole cate- 
 gory of human emotions ; and, if we could trace 
 their physical effect on the minuter portions of 
 
195 
 
 the body, we should probably discover thit the 
 molecules are either drawn together or thrown 
 apart by each emotion. When the shock is too 
 great, whether the emotion be one of joy or 
 sorrow, death results. There is evidently, then, 
 a state of equilibrium where, on the one side, the 
 body is harmoniously open and free from restric- 
 tions, and where, on the other, the mind is also 
 open or in repose. 
 
 This emotional effect, with its accompanying 
 physical changes, may be further illustrated by 
 the sudden and marvellous cures which have 
 taken place in all ages, and are occurring to-day. 
 It is a well-known fact that these wonderful 
 cures usually occur either among people of strong 
 faith or among ignorant and superstitious — in 
 other words, highly emotional — people. The 
 alleged cures performed through the agency of 
 sacred relics, at holy shrines, at Lourdes, and 
 other well-known wonder-working centres, are 
 wrought almost wholly among strongly supersti- 
 tious people, who are ready to accept certain be- 
 liefs with all the energy of their being. 
 
 It is a truism to-day to affirm that miracles are 
 impossible. The whole fabric of nineteenth- 
 century science rests on the knowledge that law 
 is universal. If, then, such cures occur, — and 
 they are too widely attested to doubt them, — 
 they must take place in accordance with a certain 
 
196 
 
 principle. This principle is evidently the one 
 already suggested; namely, that the bodily con- 
 dition changes when the emotions are touched, — 
 not only in sudden cures, but in all that consti- 
 tutes the emotional life. And the reason is 
 found in the existence of the subtle intermediary 
 known as spiritual matter, which immediately 
 responds to the slightest change of feeling, and 
 translates it into the bodily condition. 
 
 The stronger the emotion, other things being 
 equal, the more remarkable the effect or cure. 
 Emotion of a certain sort — noticeably, expectant 
 attention accompanied by implicit faith on the 
 part of an invalid before a sacred relic — has a 
 wonderfully expansive and liberating effect on 
 the body. The whole thought is concentrated on 
 what is about to occur; the individual is lifted 
 above self by the emotional experience; and the 
 physical forces are no longer hampered by fear, 
 morbid awareness of sensation, and the thousand 
 and one feelings which interfere with the natural 
 restorative power of the body. The emotion 
 frees, opens the body, so that the interpenetrat- 
 ing forces may once more circulate between the 
 particles. Density is broken up. An expansion 
 takes place; and a process of change which 
 usually occupies many weeks or months is com- 
 pleted in a short time, resulting in the cure of 
 many so-called incurable diseases. 
 
197 
 
 Here, then, is an important fact underlying 
 the entire process of cure and self-help : a change 
 for the better results when the emotions are 
 touched, when some thought or feeling penetrates 
 to the centre, freeing the soul, and causing an 
 expansion of the whole being. Something must 
 quicken the activities and rouse the individual to 
 new life. Bed-ridden invalids and lame peo- 
 ple have been known to rush out of burning 
 buildings, or forget themselves in their eagerness 
 to rescue a person in danger, completely recover- 
 ing their health through the sudden change of 
 mind. In other cases, where the patient is self- 
 ish in disposition, the chief task is to find some 
 way in which the person shall begin to live for 
 other people, some interest which shall take the 
 thought out of self, and thereby open the person 
 to the healing power. Whatever be the method 
 employed, — the use of physical remedies, prayer, 
 foreign travel, — anything that arouses the confi- 
 dence, the affection, the interest, or even the 
 credulity of the sufferer, will produce the same 
 result. On the other hand, any remedial means 
 which fails to move or touch the soul is of little 
 efficacy in effecting a cure. The problem, then, 
 is to discover the method whereby the individual 
 shall most quickly and easily be touched, so that 
 the healing power shall have full and immediate 
 access to the troubled soul. 
 
198 
 
 But what causes the emotional change ? Why 
 is it that so many people who receive no benefit 
 from medicine are cured by forgetting self and 
 becoming absorbed in some benevolent work? 
 If ignorant and superstitious people can be cured 
 quickly because they are credulous, if cures of 
 all kinds and among all classes largely depend on 
 the faith or confidence put into the remedial 
 means, is there not some deeper law which gov- 
 erns all cases, by the discovery of which the 
 intelligent can be cured as quickly as the super- 
 stitious? 
 
 There can be but one answer to these ques- 
 tions. It is the thought, the mental attitude, 
 the direction of mind, which governs the whole 
 process. Before the sudden cure can result, 
 there must be faith, expectant attention; and, if 
 the person have implicit faith, the whole indi- 
 vidual is governed by this one powerful direction 
 of mind. The emotional experience uncon- 
 sciously opens the soul to the Life or Spirit, 
 which, like heat, enters into and expands the 
 whole being, just as the warm sunlight penetrates 
 the very fibre of the plant. It is the Spirit that 
 performs the cure, not the personal thought or 
 faith. The human part consists in becoming re- 
 ceptive, in withdrawing the consciousness from 
 self and physical sensation, and becoming ab- 
 sorbed in the expected cure. The personal self, 
 
the fears and wrong thoughts, have stood in the 
 way, and barred the door where the Spirit sought 
 to enter. The new direction of thought changes 
 all this, and makes way for the Spirit. It is a 
 redirecting of the will ; and in the wise use of 
 the will, as we have seen, lies the greatest human 
 power, while its misuse is the most potent cause 
 of trouble. 
 
 Of all known forms of the one energy, then, 
 thought is the most powerful, the most subtle, 
 and, probably, the least understood. Used igno- 
 rantly, it brings us all our misery; used wisely, 
 its power of developing health and happiness is 
 limitless. It is essential to a just understanding 
 of it, and to the knowledge of how to help one's 
 self, that the reader bear in mind the central 
 thought of each of the foregoing chapters. For 
 we have learned that all power acts through 
 something; and, in order to understand how 
 the realization of the Spirit can break up an or- 
 ganic or chronic physical disease, so called, one 
 must remember how such a disease is built up, 
 and what the power behind thought really is. 
 
 We have seen that the inherited beliefs, the 
 borrowed opinions and fears, the troublesome 
 mental pictures, the description of symptoms 
 made by doctors, and the whole thought process 
 whereby a disease is made out of a disturbance 
 which nature would have cured, had she been 
 
200 
 
 permitted, is impressed upon the spiritual matter, 
 and then reflected in the body. All this must be 
 changed — the mental attitude, the spiritual 
 matter, and the physical body — by another and 
 more powerful direction of mind, not of the per- 
 sonal self alone, but a realization which, con- 
 sciously and intelligently, opens the individual 
 to the healing power, to the same Power on 
 a higher plane, which unconsciously heals the 
 ignorant enthusiast at the shrine, but leaves him 
 no wiser, because he has no understanding of it. 
 
 To many people it seems impossible that 
 a person in a quiet attitude of mind can wield 
 such power as this, and actually penetrate with 
 the power of the Spirit to the very core of a dis- 
 eased state and break it up, overcoming density 
 and contraction in the muscles and tissues of the 
 body which no physical remedies can affect. Yet 
 this has been done repeatedly, and done, too, by 
 those who knew precisely what they were doing 
 and how they did it. The right use of this 
 quiet, penetrating thought is a science, and every 
 detail of this present analysis of the healing 
 process is based on actual experience in perform- 
 ing just such cures. 
 
 The whole matter is simplified by remember- 
 ing that the body is composed of minute parti- 
 cles, which may be driven farther apart by the 
 attenuated substance which forms the connecting- 
 
201 
 
 link between thought and the physical state. 
 Matter is not an inert mass : it is imbued with 
 Life; and thought can penetrate to that resident 
 Life, and become consciously connected with it. 
 The power used by thought is greater than the 
 power which binds the particles together; for it 
 is the Spirit, and it can become the master, and 
 is, in fact, constantly used by man in a masterful 
 way, with scarcely a suspicion of the wonderful 
 power he is wielding. 
 
 i. The first fact to note, then, is that the 
 power of self-help is with us, like the air we 
 breathe, awaiting our openness to it. In the 
 moments of calm decision before referred to, 
 when we master our fears or decide upon this 
 better conduct in preference to that sinful act, 
 we do not have to fix the decision in mind, and 
 say, "This shall be so." The decision itself is 
 an act of will, like the desire to move the arm, and 
 is put into effect unconsciously to us. In the 
 same way the ideal of adjustment to life, and the 
 daily effort to gain one's poise, is effective in 
 proportion to the clearness and strength of our 
 thought and the confidence we put into it. The 
 first essential is a healthier and wiser habit of 
 thought, for the ideas that we have inherited and 
 grown up with are narrow and cramping to the 
 soul. It is our personal duty to have the right 
 thought : our own organism will see that it is 
 
202 
 
 executed. We do not need to fight the wrong 
 thoughts, nor argue them away. It is enough for 
 man to sow the new seed : nature will attend to 
 its growth. 
 
 If the reader has carried out the suggestions 
 of Chapter I., and tried to actualize these vital 
 truths in daily life, or to realize the power of 
 silent receptivity, it must already be clear that 
 this is the most direct method of touching the 
 inner centre. For, with the realization of the 
 near presence of the immanent Spirit comes the 
 conviction that it is competent, more competent 
 than we, to minister to our truest and deepest 
 need. A quieting influence, a sense of power 
 and restfulness, steals upon us, removing all fear 
 and doubt. The mere effort to become inwardly 
 still is sufficient to awaken this sense of power, 
 as though one were for the moment a magnetic 
 centre toward which radiate streams of energy. 
 And, if the reader has sought this silence in 
 order to get relief from pain or some other un- 
 comfortable sensation, there was doubtless a 
 consciousness of pressure or activity in some part 
 of the being, as though the resident power were 
 trying to restore equilibrium. To unite in 
 thought with this quickening power is, in gen- 
 eral terms, the first step in the process of self- 
 help by the silent method. 
 
 There is, obviously, no general rule which 
 
203 
 
 should govern the thought process, because no 
 two troubles and no two individuals are wholly 
 alike. Sometimes one needs mental rousing; 
 and the thought should be clear, strong, and de- 
 cisive. Again, there should be little active 
 thought ; and, on general principles, the central 
 thought of this volume — the power of silence — 
 is at once the quickest and surest means of self- 
 help. It is this power, and the attitude which 
 invites it, which one should be conscious of, — 
 not of the pain, the fatigue, or the depression 
 from which one wishes to be free. This power 
 or Spirit is shut out during trouble : there is 
 resistance to it, and contraction in some part of 
 the body. In order to overcome this resistance, 
 one should open out inwardly, try to find the in- 
 ward centre where the power is pressing through, 
 or the centre of repose described in the foregoing 
 chapter ; and simply to search for it, and to rely 
 upon this quickening power, is sufficient not only 
 to draw the thought away from physical sensa- 
 tion, but to be immensely refreshed by the re- 
 newing presence. For, through this experience 
 of receptivity — it is an experience rather than 
 a process of thought — one becomes connected 
 with a boundless reservoir of life and healing 
 power. The healing process is, in fact, one 
 form of receiving life. We do not originate life. 
 We use it, we are animated by it ; for it already 
 
2C4 
 
 exists. Our individual life is a sharing of uni- 
 versal life. We possess it by living it ; and to 
 partake of it is the commonest yet the highest 
 privilege of man. 
 
 In order to make this experience vivid and 
 clear, let us compare the soul to the budding life 
 which is trying to open its petals and expand 
 into a beautiful flower. The soul has been 
 through a round of experiences in ignorance of 
 their meaning. It has come into rude contact 
 with the world, and has sought to withdraw from 
 the world's wickedness and misery. In thus 
 withdrawing, it has shut into a narrow space the 
 mental pictures and remembrances of the experi- 
 ences that were repulsive to it. It has narrowed 
 and cramped itself into this prison of its own 
 selfhood, unaware that it was thereby shutting in 
 experiences which must some time be opened out. 
 
 In the mean time the resident life, active in 
 the soul, as in the bud, is trying to expand it, 
 and to open it out into the sunlight of truth. 
 This activity, being misunderstood, causes fear; 
 and the soul, in ignorance, withdraws still more, 
 cramping itself this time with the sanction of 
 medical opinion. 
 
 Now, the thought of the one who understands 
 this inner process penetrates to the centre where 
 the imprisoned soul is trying to come forth, and 
 
205 
 
 gradually sets it free. For it is the nature of 
 these deep realizations of the Spirit to cause 
 expansion, to touch the soul ; and the accompa- 
 nying power is equal to overcoming any obstruc- 
 tion in its pathway. The expanding process may 
 not always be pleasant, and oftentimes one feels 
 restless and impatient to have it completed. It 
 may require long and trustfully persistent effort 
 to overcome a condition of long standing, for 
 people do not easily yield their opinions and 
 beliefs. At times it is only necessary to open 
 one's self in silence for a few moments in order 
 to take off the pressure and become wonderfully 
 refreshed. Again, one has to try all methods, — 
 to read a comforting book; to think of some 
 friend, or a person in distress to whom one would 
 like to be of service; to rouse one's self with 
 a firm determination to rise above this trouble- 
 some difficulty, to push through it with a persist- 
 ently positive thought, or do anything which 
 shall quiet the inner centre and take one out of 
 self. 
 
 But in all cases one should approach this expe- 
 rience with a quiet confidence that the resident 
 power is fully equal to the occasion. It is here 
 with the imprisoned soul. Help abounds. The 
 Spirit awaits our co-operation. We belong to it. 
 We need not fear : we only need be open to it, 
 to let it come, to let it have us and heal us. It 
 
206 
 
 knows our needs, and is never absent from us. 
 We are not so badly off as we seemed, nor is 
 there any reason for worry or discouragement. 
 Peace, peace ! Let us be still, quiet, restful, 
 and calm. Let us know and feel the eternal 
 Presence which is here to restore us, and to calm 
 the troubled waters with its soothing love and 
 peace. 
 
 In due time, if this realization be repeated 
 until one learns how to be still and receptive, 
 one will surely become conscious of benefit and 
 a quickening of the whole being. The mere 
 form of words is nothing, and the above expres- 
 sions are simply used in the hope that they may 
 suggest the indescribable; for, once more, it is 
 the Spirit which is the essential, the power be- 
 hind the words, the experience which all must 
 have in order to know its depth and value. 
 
 The ability to concentrate is the secret of self- 
 help by this method of realization, and this is 
 an art which each man learns in his own way. 
 There must be a certain degree of self-possession, 
 in order to hold the attention in a definite direc- 
 tion; and, if one have not yet developed this 
 ability, it is well to approach this deeper realiza- 
 tion by degrees, according to the method of 
 Chapter VI. The process of silent help is, in 
 fact, one of adjustment to the actual situation 
 in the moment of trouble, — the realization that, 
 
207 
 
 individually, one has little power, even of the 
 will, as compared with this higher Will, but that 
 all that is demanded of the individual will is co 
 operation. God seems to need us as much as we 
 need him. He asks thoughtful receptivity, and 
 readiness to move with the deepest trend of the 
 individual life. The whole experience is rather 
 a wise directing of the will or attention, a real- 
 ization rather than a process of active thought. 
 The adjustment, the poise, the experience of 
 silence, is a realization. The moment comes 
 when the individual has nothing to say : the 
 power of conscious thought becomes subordinated 
 to a higher power, the Spirit. One cannot 
 speak. One can only observe in silent wonder, 
 in awe at the presence of such power, which the 
 individual feels incompetent to control. This, 
 in a word, is the highest healing, the most effec- 
 tive, the least personal, and the hardest to de- 
 scribe. One can only say : Here is the Life, 
 the Love, the Spirit. I have dwelt with it for 
 a season. Go thou to the fountain-head. It 
 will speak to you, and be its own evidence. 
 
 This experience may be further described as 
 a settling down into the present life. In all 
 cases of illness there seems to be a withdrawing 
 of the spiritual matter or body, as though the 
 person were partially disconnected from the phys- 
 ical body for the time being. This is espe- 
 
208 
 
 cially noticeable in cases of nervous shock and 
 nervous strain, — that high-strung tendency which 
 is made known through the voice, when the 
 whole individual seems to be living in the top of 
 the head. In such cases the effort should be to 
 keep soul and body together and never let the 
 one pull away from the other, to come down into 
 the living present, to cease striving after ideals 
 and dwelling in certain high-strung directions of 
 thought, and never to invite any thought or ex- 
 perience which tends to take one away from wise 
 and healthful adjustment to the eternal now. 
 This is one of the quickest and most effective 
 means of self-help, — this settling down, down, 
 calmly and quietly, into one's deeper and larger 
 self, into present usefulness and equanimity, 
 where reside the greatest strength and the great- 
 est power. 
 
 But sometimes one is unable to penetrate to the 
 Source of all knowledge and to connect in 
 thought with the Omnipresent Life. The Spirit 
 seems far from one, and one feels wholly sepa- 
 rate from it. In such cases it is better to make 
 the realization more personal, just as one would 
 rely on a friend who is ready to perform the 
 slightest service and be a constant comfort dur- 
 ing severe illness. One would naturally be 
 drawn to such a friend in ties of close sympathy 
 
2og 
 
 and trust. In moments of weakness and despair 
 the friend would be one's better self, full of hope 
 and cheer. It is in such times as this that our 
 friends are nearest and dearest to us, that we 
 open our souls to them and show what we really 
 are. The mother's love, the friend's devotion, 
 is thus the means of keeping many a soul in this 
 present life when all other means have failed, — 
 failed because they could not touch the soul, 
 — whereas the communion of soul with soul 
 through the truest affection opens the door to 
 that higher Love which thus finds a willing 
 object of its unfailing devotion. 
 
 Now, if in moments of trouble like these the 
 reader will turn to the Spirit as to an intimate 
 friend, help will surely come. The higher Self 
 is still with one, but it is shut out. It is near, 
 it is ready, like the friend, to help us, to guide, 
 to strengthen, to advise, and to bestow comfort. 
 One is momentarily disconnected with it and 
 unaware of its promptings. One's personal self 
 and activity stand in the way. The human will, 
 fear, and all sorts of opinions have intruded, 
 causing the Spirit to withdraw, and placing an 
 obstacle in its pathway. To still the active per- 
 sonal self and let the real Self have us, to stand 
 aside completely and let the Spirit return and fill 
 the entire being, is, in a word, the secret of 
 self-help in this as in all cases. 
 
2IO 
 
 This is not easily done at first, and one is apt 
 to force the wrong thoughts out of mind or try 
 to reason them away. One often hears people 
 say that they do not wish to think these wrong 
 thoughts, but they cannot help it. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that one has a feeling of 
 ill-will toward another, some unpleasant memory, 
 or feels sensitive in regard to some word or act of 
 a friend. Instead of trying to put away the un- 
 pleasant feeling by thinking about it, one should 
 call the friend to mind and think of his or her 
 good qualities, think of something pleasant, some 
 good deed or some happy memory; for there is 
 surely some good quality in every person. Very 
 soon the unpleasant thought will disappear, and 
 love and charity will take its place. It was not 
 necessary to force it away, for one cannot hold 
 both love and hatred at the same time. This 
 exactly describes the way out of all difficulties, 
 as simply and briefly as it can be told. 
 
 In endeavoring to find the good side of the per- 
 son who has said the unkind word or acted impul- 
 sively, one soon becomes en rapport with the 
 friend's soul, the real, the truest, and deepest 
 person, who did not mean to act unkindly and 
 who now regrets the unkindness. One's feeling 
 of peace and forgiveness reaches the other soul, 
 if the process be carried far enough to include 
 both individuals in this quiet realization. One 
 
211 
 
 is lifted above the petty, belittling self to that 
 higher plane of spiritual poise and restfulness. 
 One has found one's own soul; and to find this, 
 in moments of trouble, discouragement, sorrow, 
 or sickness, — this is self-help. 
 
 Here is the inner kingdom of heaven, — a 
 whole kingdom, — where dwells all Love, Wis- 
 dom, and Peace, whence we can draw power at 
 our need and become readjusted to life. Here 
 is where the permanent consciousness should 
 abide. Here is the home of the greatest happi- 
 ness and the truest health, — a happiness and a 
 health which only ask our recognition in order 
 to become fully and consciously ours in daily 
 life, morally, intellectually, and physically, 
 lending an unwordable joy to every moment of 
 existence. 
 
 2. On the intellectual plane it is usually more 
 difficult to find the inward centre and to realize 
 the power of silence. The generally accepted 
 opinions and education prevent one from getting 
 into this higher state. Its own knowledge, its 
 pride of intellect and assurance, make it diffi- 
 cult for the mind to surrender; and there is con- 
 sequently much more resistance to be overcome. 
 One is apt to forget that, so far as one has 
 thought out the truth, that truth is universal : 
 it is not the property of the individual alone. 
 The very intellect whereby the truth was discov- 
 
212 
 
 ered is a product or gift of the immanent Life, is 
 an individualization of the larger Intellect, — just 
 as life is a sharing of the immanent and bounti- 
 ful Life in which we dwell, and of which we are 
 not in any sense independent. Only the mere 
 opinion or belief is purely personal ; and it is 
 usually just this personal element that stands in 
 the way, some harmful or borrowed opinion, 
 which prevents one from getting real wisdom. 
 It is humility, willingness to learn, which opens 
 one to the All-knowledge within; and, if one 
 approach this experience in a purely intellectual 
 attitude, one is not likely to feel the warmth of 
 the Spirit, since everything depends on the re- 
 ceptivity or direction of mind. 
 
 In such cases, as, in fact, in all cases of 
 trouble and suffering, the mind revolves in a 
 channel that is too narrow. One needs to escape 
 into a larger life, out of this narrow sphere of 
 consciousness which has dwarfed and limited 
 one's development. The very principles, the 
 very habits, whereby one becomes devoted to a 
 certain line of work to the exclusion of all 
 others, causes the mind to flow in given chan- 
 nels, and never to pass beyond them. If this 
 process be long continued, with but little rest or 
 recreation, nature is sure to rebel, and to warn us 
 that we must be wiser and broader in our think- 
 ing. And probably the surest way of getting out 
 
213 
 
 of ruts, and thereby avoiding the long list of 
 troubles, ending in insanity, which result from 
 the constant pursuit of one idea, is to realize 
 our relation to the universal Life in which our 
 own qualities of intellect and power inhere, and 
 which demands of us all-round development, that 
 we may come into full self-possession and com- 
 plete soul-freedom. Rightly used, then, the in- 
 tellect is the basis : it gives the only firm basis 
 on which to rest the superstructure of the spirit- 
 ual life. 
 
 3. On the physical plane the first essential is 
 to explain to the sufferer that the healing power 
 is present in the body, ready to restore all hurts, 
 and that, if the person will keep still, like the 
 animals, all will go well. On this plane one is 
 in need of a wise counsellor to restore confidence 
 and allay fear. The healing power meets with 
 little or no resistance in the child; and, if medi- 
 cine be kept away, and no disturbing influence or 
 fear be allowed to interfere with the natural proc- 
 ess, the mother can better fill this office than 
 any one else. But here, as on all planes and in 
 all cases, there is a grand opportunity for the 
 wise physician, who, instead of making a diag- 
 nosis of the sick person, describing symptoms 
 and giving medicine, shall quietly explain the 
 healing process, and how one should become ad- 
 justed to it. In all cases of sickness the sufferer 
 
214 
 
 needs comfort, needs to be told how to relax and 
 take off the resistance ; and in all finely organ- 
 ized people some understanding of the inner 
 process already described is essential, in order 
 to explain the keen and subtle sensations which 
 would otherwise arouse the wildest fears. What 
 a change would come to sick and suffering hu- 
 manity if all physicians would adopt this helpful 
 method, and cease all this disease-creating talk 
 about symptoms, — if people would throw off all 
 slavery to medical opinion ! The best doctors 
 would still have plenty to do, and there would 
 still be need of the skilful surgeon. The world's 
 suffering would be infinitely less, and we should 
 then have an army of men striving to teach all- 
 round self-development and good health. 
 
 4. In order to help those who are unable to get 
 this inner help themselves, the first step is to 
 find this same inner centre, and to realize for 
 another the same peace and rest which is re- 
 quired for one's self. This should usually be ac- 
 companied by an audible explanation of the inner 
 process, and how best to become adjusted to it. 
 One person can help another only so far as one's 
 own soul is developed in knowledge of and open- 
 ness to the immanent Life. But during the quiet 
 realization for another the same process will be 
 caused in the other, if the person be receptive. 
 One should therefore have confidence that help 
 
215 
 
 will come to the recipient, — not through one's 
 personal self, but through the quickening of this 
 same Power within the receptive soul ; and with 
 this trust uppermost, and a deep desire to help 
 the other person, a good result is sure to follow. 
 
 There is no effort to make a hypnotic sugges- 
 tion in this experience of helping another, nor 
 any attempt to transfer one's thought or feeling, 
 but a realization of the needs and possibilities of 
 the other soul. One cannot be in the presence 
 of a person who is thus aware of the very pres- 
 ence and power of the Spirit without feeling 
 the effect, consciously or unconsciously. Simply 
 to meet a person who has spiritual repose is suffi- 
 cient to cause a beneficial effect. To express it 
 in the phraseology of Oriental thinkers, the same 
 vibration is set up in the recipient ; and there are 
 those whose perception is so keen that they can 
 detect the changes in vibration during a quiet 
 sitting with a patient who is receiving help by 
 the silent method. 
 
 It is only necessary for these intuitively acute 
 people to become en rapport with another person 
 in order to perceive at once how, to continue the 
 same phraseology, that person is vibrating, or, 
 more accurately, the surrounding atmosphere or 
 spiritual matter which reveals the state of mind. 
 If the agitation be intense, it must be stilled, 
 not by entering into the agitation, but by keep- 
 
216 
 
 ing free from it, standing on the outside of it, — 
 just as one would observe any change taking 
 place in the outer world. The vibrations will 
 gradually change, the agitation will cease, there 
 will be a tendency on the part of the recipient to 
 draw deep breaths, and finally a general feeling 
 of quiet invigoration will displace the agitated 
 condition both of mind and body. It may' take 
 many sittings to produce such a change as this ; 
 but the process is, in general terms, the same, — 
 namely, a gradual quieting of all agitation by 
 penetrating nearer and nearer the centre where 
 the resident life meets resistance, and maintain- 
 ing a quiet realization of the Power that is pro- 
 ducing the cure. 
 
 5. But the best and most lasting self-help, 
 after all, is that wiser habit of thought, that 
 larger helpfulness, for which this whole volume 
 pleads; for it is what we think and dwell upon 
 habitually that moulds character and sheds its 
 influence on the people about us. Our inquiry 
 has taught us to look beneath matter to its under- 
 lying Reality, and behind physical sensation to 
 the mind where it is perceived. We have found 
 the origin of man, first, in the immanent Life of 
 which he is a part, and of which he is an indi- 
 vidual expression ; and, secondly, in the world 
 of mind, where his beliefs and impressions 
 gather to form his superficial self. To know the 
 
217 
 
 one Self from the other, to be adjusted to its 
 resistless tendency, to obey it, to do nothing 
 contrary to it, as far as one knows, is the highest 
 righteousness, the most useful life, and the 
 truest religion. Here is the one essential, the 
 life that is most worthy of the man aware of his 
 own origin and of his own duty. 
 
 There are many problems involved in an inter- 
 pretation of life which we have neglected in this 
 inquiry, — noticeably, those connected with the 
 religious life and the great religious teachers. 
 We have everywhere met an element that is in- 
 communicable, that must be lived and practised 
 in order to be known. There is much that can 
 only be understood through patient investigation, 
 much, too, that would well repay scientific inves- 
 tigation. Facts and possibilities are revealed 
 through careful study of the inner process which 
 throw a flood of light alike on the nature of mind 
 and on the mystery of life. The thought is 
 well-nigh overwhelmed by the scope and meaning 
 of these inner experiences. It seems almost im- 
 possible even to suggest such insights and expe- 
 riences to the general reader; for one must talk 
 enigmatically at times, and rely on the reader's 
 forbearance and willingness to test that which 
 can only be proved through a similar experience. 
 But it is everything to know that such possibil- 
 ities exist, and to make a step toward their real- 
 
218 
 
 ization. It is enough at first to be turned in the 
 right direction ; to feel that help is for us, and 
 only awaits our receptivity; to have some ink- 
 ling of the great Power of silence. All else will 
 come in due course if one have a deep desire 
 for it. And, if we have considered the one es- 
 sential, and begun to realize its deep meaning 
 for ourselves and for our fellow-beings, the larger 
 and more complex life of the outer world will be 
 explained by the light and wisdom from within. 
 For, who shall limit the possibilities of the 
 one whose life is centred in this spiritual con- 
 sciousness, the one who knows the Real, and can 
 tell it from the transient and illusive? Do we 
 have more than the faintest glimmering of our 
 own possibilities, — we who live beholden to 
 matter, as if it were the all in all ? Have we 
 really begun to live, are we even half what we 
 should be, whiffed about as we are by opinions 
 and fears, at the mercy of other minds and of 
 our own unconquered selves ? Half the facts of 
 life go to show that man is a product of matter, 
 and his thoughts and feelings mere effects of a 
 fateful outer cause. The other half show that 
 he is a master, — a master in embryo, it may be, 
 but a sharer of the only Life and the only Power 
 by virtue of his individual will and his invinci- 
 ble power of thought. Life and all it brings 
 him, ultimately, depends on his own wisdom and 
 
219 
 
 the intelligence he puts into it. He is weak and 
 fearful, at the mercy of matter and passion, only 
 as long as he lacks understanding. To know self 
 and overcome it, to know the law and obey it, — 
 this is the sum of righteousness ; and all that 
 duty demands of us at first is to make the start, 
 to remember nature's law of growth, and persist- 
 ently to keep the great end in view. 
 
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