3. Deal, in the imagination, with facts and essential reality alone. 4. Fill mind with wholly admirable material. 5. Put the Will-sense into the imagination. 6. Make the imagination a conscious and intelligent instrument. Use it for practical purposes. 7. Beware of the "squint" brain. Look at things squarely and without prejudice. 8. Do not fall in love with the wonderful for its own sake. 9. Do not permit the imagination to dwell upon any one thing, nor upon any one quarter of thought or life, for long at one time. 10. Provide for the imagination the greatest variety of material. 11. Rigidly exclude from the realm of fancy all imaginary ills, and especially misconceptions about men or reality. Guard against deception here. Fourthly. In Regard to Self-perception. I. 2. Do not suffer mind to become morbid. Subject the testimony of the senses and of mind to the closest scrutiny of reason. 3. Maintain in all seasons the healthy mood. Keep up your supply of ozone. 4. Live among wholesome people. 5. Companion only with large and vigorous truths. 6. Thrust the Will into all perception of self. Banish the dream-mood. Turn a hurricane in on hallucinations. 7. Become familiar with self-perception in every phase: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touch, muscular consciousness, nerve-testimony; feeling, memory, imagi nation, reason, Will, moral states. Be absolute master here. Fifthly. In regard to Self-control. I. Habituate normal and right actions. 2. Eliminate eccentricities. 3. Study and overcome your personal faults. 4. Destroy immoral, injurious and obnoxious habits. Expend no unnecessary amount of force in legitimate effort, and none at all in illegitimate. 5. 6. Welcome criticism; but sift it thoroughly, and then act upon results. 7. Never gratify impulse or desire if either offers a single chance of permanent injury to the highest tone of mind. 8. When about to lose self-control, anticipate consequences, and foresee especially what you may be required to do in order to regain position. Make discipline an ally, not an enemy. 9. 10. II. Unite belief in self with faith in man. 12. 13. Keep the loftiest ideals fresh in thought. Never, for an instant, lose consciousness of self as a willing centre of power. SEVENTH PRINCIPLE. "There is nothing which tends so much to the success of a volitional effort as a confident expectation of its success." Cultivate, therefore, the Mood of Expectancy. THE RIDDLE. What ho! Sir Watchman of the eye All round the tumbling main; "Tis as the captain saith," quoth eye; "All round the mighty sky – No more nor less see I." Now, tell me, empty hole of life, If thou thyself art blind? "Tis as the captain saith," quoth eye; "All round the mighty sky — No more nor less see I." Now, Captain, pray the riddle clear; And that's the secret full, I fear, Of many a good ship's grave." "I am the captain's self," quoth eye; "Who scans the mighty sky. No more nor less am I." CHAPTER IX. EXERCISES FOR THE EYE. T IS estimated that the human eye is capable of distinguishing 100,000 different colors, or hues, and twenty shades or tints of each hue, making a total of 2,000,000 color sensations which may be discriminated. If we consider the infinite variations in the color of earth, of plants and their blossoms, of clouds, in fact of all natural objects, such an estimate as this hardly seems excessive."- Dr. Harold Wilson. THEORY OF THIS CHAPTER. The whole mind in the eye; The eye an index of white honesty; The straight line the path of power. a mes Epictetus said: "Did God give the eyes for nothing? And was it for nothing that He mingled in them a spirit of such might and cunning as to reach a long way off and receive the impression of visible forms senger so swift and faithful? Was it for nothing that He gave the intervening air such efficacy, and made it elastic, so that being, in a manner strained, our vision should traverse it? Was it for nothing that He made Light, without which there were no benefit of any other thing?" PRELIMINARY. The eye exists for the supreme power of Will. Eye, ether, light, are ministers to the soul. The eye may be brightened in its gaze by energetic summonsing of consciousness. Emotions of joy, fear, hate, love, desire, aversion, illustrate this deepening influence of energy within. These emotions may be simulated, as on the stage, at the imperious call of Will. If so, one may acquire a keen eye, without the assistance of these feelings, by sheer and persistent resolution. The present chapter is to deal with the eye. It may, nevertheless, be here said that it partakes of a law which obtains with all the organs of sense: "A process set up anywhere in the centres reverberates everywhere, and in some way or other affects the organism throughout." Effort at Will-growth by means of exercise of the senses will bring this law into action. Each particular variety of practice will more or less affect the whole man —that is, the central Will. Vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch depend upon certain stimulations from without - as mechanical (touch), molecular (taste and smell), physical (sight, hearing), muscular (muscle sense), vital (sense of life). But at times the required stimulation may arise within the nervous system. Examples: In referring to certain hallucinations, a Boston physician said, "The cerebral processes by which vision is produced may not only be started in the brain itself, but when so started, they are identical with those set going by an objective stimulus in the ordinary way." Professor Sully says: "A man who has lost his sight may be able to picture visible objects. The brain is now able to act independently of external stimulation, having acquired a disposition so to act through previous exercises under external stimulation." Two remarks may now be made: The Will has power to concentrate energy upon a given point in the organism. "By fixing the attention. |