The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland.

  • Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/136 (page 48)
    CHAPTER IV. Forethought. “ Post fata resurgo. ” “ What is forethought may sleep—’tis very plain, But rest assured that it will rise again.” “ Forethought is plan inspired by an absolute Will to carry it out.” It may have struck the reader as an almost awful, or as a very wonderful idea, that man has within himself, if he did but know it, tremendous powers or trans- cendental faculties of which he has really never had any conception. One reason why such bold thought has been subdued is that he has always felt according to tradition, the existence of superior supernatural (and with them patrician) beings, by whose power and patronage he has been effectively restrained or kept under. Hence gloom and pessimism, doubt and despair. It may seem a bold thing to say that it did not occur to any philoso- pher through the ages that man, resolute and noble and free, might will himself into a stage of mind defying devils and phantasms, or that amid the infinite possibili- ties of human nature there was the faculty of assuming the Indifference habitual to all animals when not alarmed. But he who will consider these studies on Self-Hyp- notism may possibly infer from them that we have in- deed within us a marvelous power of creating states of mind which make the idea of Pessimism ridiculous. For it renders potent and grand, pleasing or practically use- ful, to all who practice it, a faculty which has the great advantage that it may enter into all the relations or acts of life; will give to everyone something to do, something to occupy his mind, even in itself, and if we have other occupations, Forethought and Induced Will may be made to increase our interest in them and stimulate our skill. In other words, we can by means of this Art