[continued...]
What is more, these pearls of thought
are veritable seed. They will enter
some mind where they will take
root--being uttered--and they spring
up in wonderful things, and bring
forth fruit heretofore unknown in the
world.
The mere speaking one’s
highest thought is beneficial in more
ways than one. Thought smothered in
the brain dies inoperative. The power
to create is vested in the spoken
word, and not in the one that
perished before it was born. Thought
is the beginning of effort. If effort
dies before its beginning no one is
benefited. The speaking it forth is a
step toward its actualization in
practical form.
But the speaking of our highest
thought is, above all things,
beneficial to ourselves. In speaking
the new, strong thought we speak
ourselves into new strength. We take
a step forward that establishes us in
our own opinion, ahead of where we
were, and calls upon us for a fresh
accession of courage in maintaining
the advanced position. It leaves no
chance for shirking the consequences
of our new ideas. They are spoken,
and being spoken we know that their
effort is inevitable, and we grow
bolder in standing for their
defense.
Our ideas may be wrong. Very well.
When they are spoken we shall soon
see whether they are wrong or right.
They can only be truly judged when
seen, and why should our foolish,
personal pride stand between the
knowledge of the truth and us? He who
is not willing to become a fool for
truth’s sake has not yet
entered the sacred precinct where
true self-culture begins.
If truth were already understood
and demonstrated, all we would have
to do would be to learn it as
children learn their school lessons.
But it is an unknown thing in its
higher character, and there is no way
to get it but by listening to its
suggestions as they arise within
ourselves, projecting themselves in
strange thoughts and ideas, not
unmixed with our former beliefs, and
therefore not altogether reliable.
But such as they are we must be true
to them. We must stand by them
unflinchingly. We must give them
utterance. We must allow them to
speak themselves into observation,
even though to do so is to bring upon
ourselves the misconception of those
who will not learn, the jealousy of
others who have opinions of their own
for sale, and the scorn of the
fossilized rulers of public opinion
who hold the unthinking majority in
their deadly clutches.
There is a law involved in this.
It is part of the Law of Growth. To
him who is faithful to the best he
knows, whether that best is of great
value or [165] not, the law
guarantees a fuller and better and a
constantly increasing revelation of
truth.
And so it pays to be a fool for
truth’s sake. He who is a fool
for truth’s sake manifests a
fidelity that shows him related
through desire to all the good there
is in the whole universe. His very
foolishness is a draft on an
unfailing bank of indescribable
riches, which, as he goes on, will
crown him in the eyes of the whole
world a god in stature and power.
To be true to your own native
thought, and to speak it freely, and
to weigh it well, and to hold it in
calm, dispassionate comparison with
your previous thought, and with the
thoughts of others, this is
self-culture. It is self-development;
it is growth.
It is natural growth. It is
growing out of yourself as the tree
and the bulb grow. It is the only
saving growth. Would the bulb grow by
supinely observing the growth of the
tree? No; it must pull out of itself
the Life Principle latent in it. The
Life Principle latent in the tree is
for the tree. The tree cannot grow
for the bulb, nor the bulb for the
tree. Individualization is the intent
of the Law. Each thing stands for
itself, and grows out of itself. To
know how to grow out of one’s
self is self-culture. And this is
what the new thought called Mental
Science teaches.
To grow out of ourselves gives us
new strength daily. It banishes
disease; it strengthens every mental
faculty; it makes the memory over
new; it doubles many times
one’s power of
concentration.
And the power of concentration is
actual life. It is the opposite of
diffusiveness. Diffusiveness is
death.
Is it any wonder, then, that the
self-culture I have described should
heal the sick and strengthen the
individual in all the relations of
life?
“Seek first the kingdom of
heaven and all other things shall be
added unto you.” But where is
the kingdom of heaven? The same voice
has told us that it is within.
It is within. And there is a door
in every human organism that opens up
to its outflow.
It is in original thought--at
present so broken and perplexed and
unsatisfactory in our perception of
it. But it is the precious stuff out
of which--in its further
development--we will build the heaven
we long for.
Heaven, like every other thing, is
a growth. Native thought is today
feeding and shaping it even here on
earth, and will go on feeding and
shaping it all through the ages.
Genuine self-culture is the main
factor in the evolution of every
ideal.
“He who continues to be
passively molded prolongs his infancy
to the tomb.” He who molds
himself can avoid the tomb.
Self-culture is the making of
men.
And the first step in the
direction of self-culture is to
resolve to follow truth no matter
where it leads.
Channing says: “Self-culture
begins in the deliberate and solemn
resolution to make the best of our
own powers.” He also says:
“The first grand condition of
success is a willingness to receive
the truth, no matter how hard it
bears on one’s self.”
To sever our connections most
absolutely and positively with every
form of the world’s present
belief is the only hope of the race
today.
This will be the beginning of that
form of self-culture that means
nothing less than the utmost
salvation of the man, soul and
body.
I strive for the highest in sight.
I will be satisfied with nothing
short of the very best my mind
suggests.
Partial salvation is no salvation.
Give me the knowledge that saves
utterly. I want it even though its
acquisition shatters every idol I
ever cherished.
And, indeed, this is precisely
what it will do, for it is our old
beliefs that are our idols. It is
they that hold us bound to the dead
past. It is they that rivet our eyes
in the back of our heads. It is they
that must be abandoned forever.
[166] These beliefs were born in
the infancy of the race; and that
they should hold us now, when it is
time, and more than time, that we
should outgrow them, is a disgrace to
our intelligence, and to the
barbarism we call our
civilization.
Therefore, I say, let them all go.
Cease to hold them in your mind with
that brute force, that muscular
tension, born of fear.
For the tenacity with which you
hold these old beliefs comes from the
fear that in all the universe there
is nothing better, or nobler, or
higher than they. You do not know
that, in a broad sense, there is no
evil; that the universe is a
universe, or a whole or unbroken and
absolute good; that when you have
outgrown one good, another and better
awaits your acceptance.
You cling to the old until it
becomes dead lumber in your hands,
and you are dead lumber with it.
And all because you are afraid.
Afraid of what? Afraid of the mighty
opulence of good that is omnipresent;
that simply awaits your renunciation
of the old beliefs--founded on
fear--to fill you with health,
strength, power and beauty.
“Knowledge is power,”
said the old writers. Knowledge is
the recognition of truth; the seeing
of truth; and to see truth is to be
truth. To be truth is to be saved to
the utmost, body and soul, for truth
is imperishable. It never dies.
Have we truth now? Are we
harmonious and happy now? I say no!
Much less are we so now than even one
hundred years ago. One hundred years
ago the race was in a measure one
with its beliefs. At least its
beliefs were less antagonistic with
its surroundings then than now, and
its conditions were more harmonious.
Therefore it was less diseased and
less sinful.
By “less sinful” I
mean that it violated the set beliefs
of the race less. So that in looking
back it is a common cry that that
time was better than this.
But this is not so. The present
time is best. The present time is
more intellectual; but the more
intellectual we become the more out
of harmony are we with the old
beliefs that refuse to change on
account of a certain set order of
things, held in place by a set order
of professions for which there is no
earthly and no heavenly use, and
which will all disappear as soon as
the people have learned to trust the
unknown, instead of fearing and
dreading it as they now do.
For the unknown--so dreaded
now--is our savior.
Are the theories--the beliefs--of
the present day saving us?
Disease and death are our only
foes. Are present beliefs saving us
from them?
Evidently Jesus taught the
salvation of the body. And when the
Jews met him in argument with an
attempt to refute the glorious
ideality that marked every utterance
that he made, and cited the fathers
of the old dispensation as their
authority, his answer, so short, so
simple, so masterly and effective,
was only: “Your fathers are
dead.”
And these words I repeat to the
advocates of the old beliefs. There
is no salvation in them. The very
promulgators of them are dead. And
those who now contend for them--not
because their ancestors believed in
them--are dying rapidly and horribly.
Diseases are multiplying instead of
diminishing.
A man’s knowledge is not a
distinct possession. It is the man
himself. And because this is so, it
was said in the old time that a man
is what his beliefs make him.
But really there are no beliefs
now. We do not truly believe the old
beliefs now. We are in a transitional
place between the reign of the old
beliefs and the formulation of better
beliefs; more humane beliefs; beliefs
that trust the good more, and fear
the evil less; beliefs, in fact, that
will surely discard all evil as a
governing power, and put faith only
in the soul’s most cherished
[167] ideal that already proclaims
the omnipotence, omniscience and
omnipresence of good.
Self-culture today is founded in
the deliberate intention of the
individual to move forward in the
direction pointed out by his noblest
desires; dropping, in the meantime,
every one of the old, established
beliefs--long enough, at least, to
prove their fitness or unfitness to
serve him on the steady road to
progression he proposes to tread.
To acquire the new truths, the old
ones, which have served their purpose
in race growth and now have become
errors, must be unloaded from the
mind. The pilgrim in search of truth
must start out unhampered and
free.
The beginning of self-culture is
to get rid of the old. We must not
hesitate to cast every particle of
the long accumulation of dead lumber
overboard, and take for our compass
the soul’s noble and supreme
desire that points always in the
direction of the highest
happiness.
We do not know, and cannot even
imagine, the incidents leading to it.
We may go through dark experiences to
find it, but faith in it will always
guide us aright, and it will be
ours.
To believe in your desire--which
forever points onward and upward;
from grosser to finer; from ignoble
to noble; from poverty to opulence;
from disease to health; from the
repulsive to the beautiful; from
death to life--this will lead you
aright; this is the prayer of faith.
The simple belief in your own
desire--firm, unquestioned,
undoubted--this will lead your steps
up out of the wretched conditions
that surround you into those ideal
conditions of which you are
constantly dreaming.
What have you been believing in
heretofore? Stop a moment and
reflect.
Do you not see that you have been
believing in your fears--the fears
that quite obscured and made light of
your desires? I am sure you have been
doing this the larger part of your
life. I want to tell you that there
is a well-defined line between the
positive and negative poles of your
being, and it is found right in the
place where you cease to believe in
your fears and begin to believe in
your desires and hopes.
A belief in your fears keeps you
on the death side of this line, where
every form of sickness and poverty
and helplessness will be your
lot.
A belief in your desires or
aspirations, will place you on the
other side of this line--the upward
side of it--where you will realize
that there is nothing but good, and
where there is no disease, no
poverty, no pain and no death.
This is a tremendous thing that I
am writing, but there is no truer
truth than it.
The difference between trusting
our fears and trusting our desires,
or putting faith in our prayers, is
the difference between poverty and
opulence; between sickness and
health; between old age and immortal
and ever progressing youth; between
life and death.
