Indeed, a physician testifying in the London law courts stated that softening of the brain was a common malady of the rural laborers of England. Their brains, he said, rather rusted out from lack of brain exercise, than wore out, and at an age from sixty-five to seventy-five they usually died of apoplexy or some similar disease. In contrast to the farmers, he cited judges and similar hard brain-workers who lived much longer and kept their mental powers.
When Solon, the Athenian sage, was asked the secret of his strength and youth, he replied that it was “learning something new every day.” This belief was general among the ancient Greeks—that the secret of eternal youth is “to be always learning something new.”
There is the basis of a great truth in the idea. It is healthful activity that strengthens and preserves the mind as well as the body, and gives it youthful quickness and activity. So if you would be young, in spite of the years, you must remain receptive to new thought and must grow broader in spirit, wider in sympathy, and more and more open to fresh revelations of truth as you travel farther on the road of life.
But the greatest conqueror of age is a cheerful, hopeful, loving spirit. A man who would conquer the years must have charity for all. He must avoid worry, envy, malice, and jealousy; all the small meannesses that feed bitterness in the heart, trace wrinkles on the brow, and dim the eye. A pure heart, a sound body, and a broad, healthy, generous mind, backed by a determination not to let the years count, constitute a fountain of youth which every one may find in himself.
“Here, then,” says Margaret Deland, “are the three deadly symptoms of old age: selfishness, stagnation, intolerance. If we find them in ourselves, we may know we are growing old—even if we are on the merry side of thirty. But, happily, we have three defences, which are invulnerable; if we use them, we shall die young if we live to be a hundred. They are: sympathy, progress, tolerance. The men or women who have these divine qualities of sympathy, progress, and tolerance are forever young; their very existence cries out to the rest of us, sursum corda! ”
“The best is yet to bet!
The last of life
For which the first was made.”
Chapter XX.
How To Control Thought
Ordain for thyself forthwith a certain form and type of conduct, which thou shalt maintain, both alone, and, when it may chance, among men.—Epictetus.
IT is possible to change the character of the mind by habitually controlling the thought. There is no reason why we should allow the mind to wander into all sorts of fields, and to dwell upon all sorts of subjects at random. The ego, the will power, or what we call the real self, the governor of the mind, can dominate the thought. With a little practice, we can control and concentrate the mind in any reasonable way we please.
Attention, therefore, controlled by the will and directed by reason and higher judgment, can so discipline the mind and thought that they will dwell on higher ideals, until high thinking has become a habit. Then the lower ideals and lower thinking will drop out of consciousness, and the mind will be left upon a higher plane. It is only a question of discipline.
Many and varied are the methods prescribed by various writers for gaining desired thought control, but on comparing them there is, after all, much in common, and that is the simplest and most practical part The more elaborate formulae and mysticism may be left to those who enjoy such exercises.
“It is not possible to give explicit directions for an American substitute for Hindu Yoga practice,” says W. J. Colville, “as the general needs of the Anglo-Saxon race are not the same outwardly as those of their dark-skinned Oriental brethren; but the great words concentration and meditation are just as forceful and full of meaning in the West as in the East. To concentrate on one’s beloved goal, to see before the mental eye the prize as though it were already won, while we are all the while intensely conscious of moving nearer to its extemalization, is so to place ourselves in relation with all that helps us on our way, that one by one obstacles vanish, and what seemed once too hard for human strength to accomplish appears now plain and even simple. The greatest need of all is to keep the goal in sight and not let interest flag or inward vision waver.
“A good lesson for all to practise is to take some special aspiration into the silence, and there realize its fulfillment with all the intensity of your visualistic ability. See yourself in the very place in which you most desire to be engaged, in the very work you would love best to accomplish. A little persistent industry in this exercise will soon relieve the intellect of worry, and gradually open up the understanding to perceive how to accomplish the otherwise unaccomplishable. There is no substitute for work in all the universe, therefore let none imagine that a state of inoperative, dreamy contemplation is one to be recommended. Outward work must follow inward contemplation. True meditation does not absolve us from the need of making effort, but it is a means for revealing to us what efforts we need to make and how to make them.”
Something the same process is recommended by a writer who says: “Go into the silence, concentrate your mind, polarize thought, breathe in the power and strength that is ever within the reach of all, and in unlimited supply, from which nothing but our own action or rejection can cut us off.”
“The atmosphere about us is a product of thought. Thought makes it what it is, and thought alone can change it when it will,” says Floyd B. Wilson, in “Paths to Power.” “The atmosphere that marks strong individuality is universally conceded to be the product of the invisible emanation of thought centred on an idea. Your atmosphere, being a product of thought, must receive all its power and force through the creative energy that gives it existence.
“Our proposition as to control, therefore, now reduces itself to this: If we know ourselves masters of our mental apparatus, we know we can control our thoughts and thus dictate our atmosphere. If, in silence, daily, we hold ourselves passive—receptive for the particular good we most desire—we open the way for the creation of the atmosphere that is sought. One must come to these sittings as nearly passive as possible; but above all free from doubt. To many it will be found serious work to learn to hold themselves passive. The moments spent in this way will do more to advance you to the end than any other thing you can do.”
Speaking more especially of the means of controlling the thought for the benefit of the body, Charles Brodie Patterson says: “Let us keep the mind clear and bright, fill it with wholesome thoughts of life, and be kindly in our feelings toward others. Let us have no fear of anything, but realize that we are one with universal power—that power which can supply our every need; that health, strength, and happiness are our legitimate birthright, that they are ever potential in our inner lives, and that our bodies may express them now. If we take this mental attitude and adhere steadfastly to it, the body will very soon manifest health and strength.”
In the light of these various directions from those who have drawn them from the experience of themselves and of others, it does not seem so difficult for one to raise his standard of living very materially by forcing into his thoughts the higher and forcing out the lower.
If you surround yourself with a positive atmosphere, that is, if you keep all negatives, all destroyers, all thoughts that suggest discord, disease, disaster, and failure out of your mind, and hold there only those words and thoughts which create, which upbuild, you will very soon change the character of your entire mind, so that you will