manufactures.
It matters little whether you absorb idea in this way, and use it as your own, from minds whose bodies are visible to you or invisible. You still remain the mere borrower. You hurt thereby the power of making your own peculiar shade of individuality of light.
If spirits finding an impressional organization thrust their thought continually upon it through their own desire for expression, make it a perpetual mouthpiece, talk or write through such person continually, they may do a great injustice and injury. No matter how high or useful their thought, yet this pouring of ideas continually through one mind begets habit and desire of doing nothing else but talk or write or act, or perform some one thing continually. This will cause the person to grow all on one side. The balanced mind, the harmonious and organized adjustment of qualities necessary for the begetting of more and more originality, must come also of seeing and participating in all possible shades and kinds of life, as well as pure and unselfish motive. You need to mingle and sympathize with all manner of people, all manner of employments, all manner of professions, to make your own conceptions characterized by the greatest originality. You will then (unselfish motive being implied) not be a patchwork of borrowed bits from all with whom you come in contact; but a mosaic, of which every idea taken from others and grafted on your own has an individuality peculiarly your own.
V.
THE LAW OF SUCCESS.
Thoughts are Things.
Success in any business or undertaking comes through the working of a law. It never-comes by chance: in the operations of nature’s laws, there is no such thing as chance or accident. The so-called accidental tumbling of the stone from the mountain-side is the result of forces which have been acting in that stone through countless ages.
You and your fortunes are no more the things of chance than is the tree from its earliest growth. You are the product of the elements, and that product through the working of a law. You can, as you find out the law, make of yourself whatever you please.
Your thought, or spirit, and not your body, is your real self.
Your thought is an invisible substance, as real as air, water, or metal. It acts apart from your body; it goes from you to others, far and near; it acts on them, moves and influences them. It does this whether your body be sleeping or waking.
This is your real power. As you learn how this power really acts; as you learn how to hold, use, and control it,—you will do more profitable business, and accomplish more in an hour than now you may do in a week. You will continually increase this power by exercise. This, and only this, was the basis of the miracles, the magic or occult power of ancient times.
Your prevailing mood, or frame of mind, has more to do than any thing else with your success or failure in any undertaking. Your mind is that amount of thought-substance which has come together during countless ages, and after using many physical bodies. The mind is a magnet. It has the power, first of attracting thought, and next of sending that thought out again. You do not, of yourself, make your thought: you only receive and feel it as it comes to you.
What kind of thought you most charge that magnet (your mind) with, or set it open to receive, it will attract most of that kind to you. If, then, you think, or keep most in mind, the mere thought of determination, hope, cheerfulness, strength, force, power, justice, gentleness, order, and precision, you will attract and receive more and more of such thought-elements.
These are among the elements of success. These qualities are of thought-element as real things as any we see or feel. The more you set the magnet in this direction, the stronger it grows to attract these elements.
Whatever of thought you think or receive, you send from you again, an invisible substance to act on others.
Your own thought is now in the air, acting on and attracting to you of its kind the thought of others, whose bodies you may never have seen. The people you are in the future to meet, who may help or damage your fortunes, are those whose thought in like manner sent far from their bodies has already met and mingled with your own. That attraction tends to bring you together in the body. It will certainly bring you together in some form of existence.
When determined thought meets determined thought, and unites on a similar purpose, a double power for success comes of such union, be the bodies used by such thought, mind, or spirit, in the same house or a thousand miles apart. But if you are thinking most of the time discouragement or anger, or any form of ill-temper, you are sending hundreds and thousands of miles away from your body this thought-element of discouragement, hopelessness, or anger, literally a part of your unseen self. It attracts, meets and mingles with the same thought-element similarly sent out by others (parts of such people). So it attracts you to them, your partners in misery. You hurt each other’s health and fortune.
A thought attracts thought of like kind. Keep any thought fixed in your mind, say the thought of strength or health, and you attract to you more and more of the thought-element of strength and health. Keep in mind the idea of force, “go-ahead,” push, and you attract to you in element that which gives you force, push, and go-ahead.
So long as you are in a confident, determined, serene frame of mind, having some special aim in view based on right and justice, so long are you moving in this way the strongest silent power of your thought in attracting to you the persons you need to co-operate with. If your aim is not based on right and justice, you will still move this silent power of your mind, but it will not affect results so beneficial to you as your thought based on your highest idea of right.
If you wish to gain through deceit and craft, you can do so. You will attract, by the same law and method, deceitful and dishonest thought in advance of its body. You will then work with the dishonest in the body. Dishonest mind herds together through a natural law. The dishonest are certain to injure each other at last in some way.
A thought, be it good or bad, is a thing or construction of unseen element as real as a tree, a flower, a clock. It is already-made before you think or receive it, as your mind through its mood, frame, or attitude attracts it. As you think it, you put it out again to act, move, or influence others. But your thought spoken or whispered in the privacy of your room is put out with more force so to act on others than if you merely “think it.” And if two or more persons talk together without wrangle or disagreement on a common purpose in any business, they send out a proportionately greater volume of force to work on other minds relative to such business. If your company so putting out thought-element or force do not agree, if they are angry and wrangle with each other, the force so sent from them is injurious to that business. If they talk peacefully, and will set aside individual preferences or prejudices in order to work out the common purpose in view, the thought or force they generate is constructive, and acts favorably on other minds far and near to advance that business.
So whenever you think, you are affecting your fortunes for good or ill; and whenever you talk to others, you are making a force still greater to make or lose for you health, friends, and money. Every thought of yours, silent or spoken, has a literal value.
If you receive (that is, think) the thought that you cannot succeed in any undertaking, that thought also goes out, meets and attracts other discouraged, despondent “I can’t” thought, brings you nearer and nearer the hopeless, fretting people’s bodies it is in advance of, injures your health and all pushing business ability, and brings you at last in personal contact with people who only help to ruin each other.
You are working then your thought-power for nonsuccess. You can use this power
