Some of our foremost scientists now believe that the cells composing each organ form a sort of cooperative community intelligence which presides over that particular organ. They hold that the bodily organs have what may be termed minds of their own, and are vitally connected with the so-called spinal column brain and the solar plexus brain, as well as with the brain proper. This theory is borne out in fact. We know how quickly the stomach sympathizes with the mental att.i.tude, how it responds to our thoughts, our emotions; also how quickly the heart, the kidneys respond to our mental states--fear, worry, joy, anxiety, love, hate, jealousy, whatever emotion dominates us.

If there were not a very intimate connection between the brain and the stomach (and the same principle applies to the heart, the kidneys and other organs) the digestion would not be affected so seriously by our changing moods and emotions. Inasmuch as it is so affected, is it not reasonable to a.s.sume that the stomach cells are influenced by the thought which you project into them? Is it not reasonable to a.s.sume that by sending into these cells black, gloomy, discouraging pictures of indigestion and dyspepsia you injuriously affect them? If these cells have intelligence, and if they respond instantly to our different mental states, as we know they do, isn't it natural that they should be correspondingly affected by our opinion of them, by our lack of confidence in them, our suspicion of their ability to digest our food properly, by our constant complaining of our stomach and our miserable digestive apparatus?

Give a dog a bad name and you might as well kill him, is an old saying.

In the same way, impress, force home on your stomach, your heart, your liver, or any other bodily organ the conviction that it is inefficient, weak, good for nothing, and in addition swallow a mouthful of mental dyspepsia with every mouthful of food, and, sooner or later, it will accept your verdict and be just what you claim it is.

In other words, instead of handicapping them by wrong thought, we must give our bodily organs a fair chance to do their legitimate work. If we expect them to act perfectly, as the Creator intended they should, we must treat them as we would treat our children. We must by right thinking help them to be normal instead of making them abnormal by doubting, being suspicious of them. We must visualize them as our co-workers, our partners, our friends, not as our enemies, our tormentors.

Just think of the horrible pictures of their various organs people get from medical books, which describe minutely symptoms of diseases which they imagine they have! Many people never visualize a normal picture of themselves. They never think of themselves as the perfect beings G.o.d intended them to be. What they hold constantly in mind is a picture of an abnormal, diseased, weak, defective creature. They picture their stomach, their liver, their kidneys, their heart in a diseased, imperfect condition. Instead of regarding them as friends, as members of the same family, they look on them as malicious enemies who cause them constant suffering. "Oh," they cry out, "I've got such a miserable stomach! I can't eat anything. Everything I eat hurts me." "My treacherous old heart, how it pumps. I can't walk or do any of the things I like because of it." "My liver is all upset. I seem to be out of kilter everywhere. My kidneys are affected, my back troubles me, and really I might as well be dead!"

Such horrible visualizing and belittling of the hard-working bodily organs would ruin the health of the best trained athlete. If you would be a friend to yourself, you must be a friend of your organs, which are so intimately and sympathetically connected with your brain-mind--the central station of your body. You must believe in their perfection, in their normal functioning. You must picture them trying to help you to carry out your great life purpose instead of working at cross purposes with you. You must have confidence in them, think of them as your friends instead of enemies handicapping your success and ruining your chances in life. Replace the pictures of diseased organs with their opposites, pictures of their wholeness, their completeness, their soundness, and you will find yourself coming into health and power.

a.s.sume the victorious att.i.tude, and think of yourself as an absolutely perfect being, divine, immortal, possessing superb health, a magnificent physique, a vigorous const.i.tution, a sublime mind.

Every morning when you rise, before you go to bed at night, and whenever you think of it during the day, stoutly affirm the fact of your perfection physically, mentally and morally. Constantly a.s.sert mentally, and, when alone, orally, "I am health because I am of G.o.d. G.o.d is my life, He is the great creative Power that sustains and upholds me every instant. This Power is perpetually re-creating me, and trying to keep me up to the ideal, the original plan of my being when I was created. I shall cooperate with it to-day, and every day. I shall aim to be perfect, even as my Father."

There is a great restorative power in the mere resolve to be well, strong and vigorous, in affirming and tenaciously holding the perfect ideal of ourselves which the Creator had in His plan of us. There is a re-creative force in the realization that any departure from this ideal means departure from G.o.d, from perfect health, from the reality of the perfect physical, mental and moral being planned by Him.

You will be surprised to see how this mental att.i.tude, this visualized physical ideal, will be reproduced in the body.

The mind is the body builder, the great health sculptor, and we cannot surpa.s.s our mental model. If there is a weakness or flaw in the thought model, there will be corresponding deficiencies in the health statue. As long as we think ill health, doubt our ability to be strong and vigorous, as long as we hold the conviction of the presence of inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, look upon ourselves as victims instead of conquerors of ill health, in short, as long as the mental model is defective perfect health is impossible.

Joyous, abounding health can be established just as anything else can be established, by right thinking and right living, by thinking health instead of disease, thinking strength instead of weakness, harmony instead of discord, thinking true thoughts instead of error thoughts, love thoughts instead of hatred thoughts, health thoughts, upbuilding thoughts instead of destructive tearing down thoughts.

A great many regular physicians now, and all soon will, show patients how they can make use of the great healing, medicinal power of thought, the miracle of right thinking, which unites them with the Force back of the flesh. They will show each patient what att.i.tudes of mind, what affirmations and what auto-suggestions will tend to keep him in harmony; they will teach him the healing use of suggestion. The physician of the future will use largely for his remedies, ideas, mental att.i.tudes, and suggestions.

The time will come when parents and teachers will realize the tremendous force, the character-building power in the affirmation of health, wholeness, completeness, harmony. They will teach children to exert this power that will drive out discord and dispel disease. They will impress upon the young that affirmation of perfect ideals, holding in mind the model of a perfect man, a perfect woman, not the one marred, crippled, shorn of strength and beauty by violation of mental law, or by vicious living, will protect them from all a.s.saults from without and from within.

If that mind was always in us which was in Christ, the mind that gives health, peace and happiness, that perpetuates harmony, truth and beauty, we should never know discord of any kind. Perfect health would be the rule and not the exception, because we should never transgress the laws of our being.

CHAPTER XII

YOU ARE HEADED TOWARD YOUR IDEAL

Faith and the ideal still remain the most powerful levers of progress and of happiness. JEAN FINOT.

If we are content to unfold the life within according to the pattern given us, we shall reach the highest end of which we are capable.

We tend to grow into the likeness of the things we long for most, think about most.

The G.o.ds we worship write their names on our faces.

EMERSON.

In Hawthorne's story, "The Great Stone Face," we have an impressive ill.u.s.tration of the power of an ideal. One's memory holds a vivid picture of its hero, whose mind had dwelt from childhood on the local tradition that a man-child should be born whose face would resemble that of the mountain profile above the little hamlet of his nativity; and that this child would eventually become the leader and savior of the people. So whole-heartedly did he believe the legend, so earnestly did he long for its fulfillment, and so constantly did his eyes dwell on the prophetic profile, that unconsciously his own features changed until, outwardly as well as inwardly, he completely embodied the ideal which his mind had absorbed.

On every hand we see ill.u.s.trations of the transforming power of the ideal. It is outpictured in the faces we see in the street, in trains and shops, in theaters and churches, wherever people congregate.

How quickly we can select from a crowd of strangers the successful business man. His initiative, leadership, executive ability, speak out of his face and manner. The same is true of men in other vocations,--of the scholar, the clergyman, the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor, the farmer, the day laborer. Go into any inst.i.tution, factory, store, or other place of business and you can quickly detect the nature of the ideals outpictured in the faces, in the expression, in the manner of the people you see there. Visit Sing Sing and you will see the power of the ideal which has worked like a leaven in its inmates. The criminal suggestion, the criminal thought, the criminal ideal is reflected in the faces of those who visualized crime, planned and thought out its details long before they committed the criminal act.

Whatever we hold in our minds, dwell upon, contemplate, whatever is dominant in our motives, will stand out in our flesh so that the world can read it. Many absolutely authentic cases of stigmata are recorded in the lives of medieval saints, on whose bodies appeared an exact reproduction of all the wounds of the crucified Christ. Some of these cases were in convents and monasteries, and were the result of long and intense concentration of the mind of the subject upon the physical sufferings of Christ. Frequently the phenomena occurred after the austerities of Lent, during which the monks and nuns had focused more intensely and steadily upon the tortures of the Savior's pa.s.sion and death.

If the contemplation of those tortures, the constant mental picturing of the sufferings of the G.o.d-man, the soul's great sympathy with its ideal could change the very tissues of the body, could reproduce on it the actual physical marks of the cruel spear in the side, of the nails in the hands and feet and of the thorns in the head, think of the wonderful possibilities in the reversal of these thoughts and this picturing. Think of what the contemplation of the wonderful work accomplished by the Savior on earth, of the constant mental picturing of His glorious life, of His tenderness, and love for humanity, of His power and dignity, of His continual outpouring of Himself in service; think of what the constant holding of such an ideal, such a model, and the perpetual effort to realize it would do for the race!

We tend to become like what we admire, sympathize with and persistently hold in mind. The hero of "The Great Stone Face" became the counterpart of his ideal. The history of Christianity is a continuous record of the power of the ideal to raise men and women to their highest power. St.

Paul, one of the most conspicuous of these examples, is so possessed, so enthused by the inspiration of his great model, that he cries, "I live, not I, but Christ in me."

"The contemplation of perfection is always uplifting." Nothing so strengthens the mind, enlarges manhood, or womanhood, widens the thought, as the constant effort to measure up to high ideals. The struggle to better our best, to make our highest moments permanent, the continual reaching of the mind to the things above and beyond, the steady pursuit of the ideal, which constantly advances as we pursue, is what has led the race up from savagery to twentieth century civilization.

A great artist was one day found by a friend in tears in his studio.

When asked the cause of his distress, he replied, "I have produced a work with which I am satisfied, and I shall never produce another." It is said he never did. The inspiration that had urged him on was his ideal. That kept him always striving to improve on what he had previously done. Without it there was nothing to strive for.

Without an ideal there is no growth; and where there is no growth there is retrogression. Without a vision the people perish. Nothing in the universe is static. None of us stands still. We are all traveling in some direction, either forward or backward. Everything depends on the ideal.

What we admire and aspire to enters into the very texture of our being, becomes a part of us. If we had the power to a.n.a.lyze any individual, we could tell what books he had read, could detect the type of his friends and a.s.sociates, and could name his heroes; that is, we could tell what ideals had actuated him.

Parents and teachers should urge upon the young the importance of hero worship, of choosing the highest human ideals. Our lives are molded chiefly after the pattern of the ideals of our youth, and there is no danger of too much hero worship, if only the heroes are worthy.

History is full of examples of the powerful influence of ideals upon our great men. It is said that Alexander the Great always carried a copy of Homer's "Iliad" in his pocket, and that he never tired of reading about Achilles, the great hero, whom he was ambitious to resemble. Many a young man in this country who has been inspired, encouraged and stimulated by Lincoln's career, has not only lived a grander life and made a truer success because he modeled his life after that of his hero, but he has developed many qualities in common with Lincoln which otherwise might have lain forever dormant. Many a young officer in our army is more efficient because of his imitation of Grant and Lee, the ideals which haunted his dreams and which have ever urged him up and on.

It is of the utmost importance to choose our ideal early in life, a high and beautiful ideal, that shall be our pole star, the highest, brightest light we know. A recent writer says: "My advice to all those just starting to travel life's turnpike is:

"'Don't start until you have your ideal.

Then don't stop until you get it.'"

Of course we all have ideals of some kind when we are young; but how many of us keep them even till middle age? What young man has entered into active life without an ideal before him of what he is going to do, and how the world is going to be bettered by him? What young girl but who, leaving school, life smiling before her, dreams of the ideal love she will find, the ideal happy home she will make, and the beautiful work she will do in life with the ideal man of her girlish dreams by her side? But do the youth and the maiden hold these ideals throughout the years, with the strength of conviction that overcomes all difficulties, or do they abandon them with the first discouragement and settle down into a commonplace existence with interest in nothing above the material?

To youth, naturally, come glorious ideals, not only of what one's own life is to be, but of what life in general should be,--the ideal man, the ideal woman, the ideal social system,--and with all these is a vague desire or intention to help toward their fulfillment. But too often the result of disappointment in the effort to better conditions is, first, to give up the hope of realizing the ideal, and then to abandon the ideal itself. Here is where the great danger of retrogression comes in.

Unless the ideal be held with a tenacity that no failure or disappointment can relax, it is apt to fade away after the first ardor of youth is past.

One of the greatest aids to the preservation of the youthful ideal in all its freshness and beauty is to recall frequently, daily, the moral heroes who first gave one a glimpse of one's possibilities and aroused one's ambition. Read the special books, or particular chapters which fired you to emulate some n.o.ble character. Renew yourself mentally by visualizing the life and work of men and women who have wrought n.o.bly for humanity. Think of the Washingtons, the Franklins, the Lincolns, the Emersons, the Ruskins, the Florence Nightingales, the Jane Addams, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Frances Willards, and you will be strengthened to resist the debasing influence of the fierce compet.i.tion for wealth and preferment, even for mere subsistence, which in so many instances pushes out of sight the aspirations and ideals of youth. Keep constantly in mind the grand characters whose achievements aroused you to n.o.ble thoughts and endeavor in the springtime of life and your standards will never drop. Character always develops according to the pattern within us. No artist could paint the face of Christ with the model of Judas before his mental vision. No great character can ever be built with low, groveling ideals in the mind.

The constant struggle to measure up to a high ideal is the only force in heaven or on earth that can make a life great, beautiful and fruitful.

If we would ever accomplish anything of worth, if we would ever establish our oneness with the Creator, and accomplish the work He sent us here to do, we must live up to our ideal.

With eyes fixed on this ideal, we must work with heart and hand and brain; with a faith that never grows dim, with a resolution that never wavers, with a patience that is akin to genius, we must persevere unto the end; for, as we advance, our ideal as steadily moves upward.

"The situation that has not its duty, its ideal," says Carlyle, "was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free.

Fool! the ideal is in thyself."

Never were truer words spoken. Wrapped up in every human being there are divine energies which, if given proper direction, will develop the ideal from stage to stage. Who sees a sculptor at work upon a block of marble sees what appears to be only a mechanical performance. But, out of sight in the sculptor's brain, there is a quiet presence we do not perceive; and every movement of the hand is impelled by that shining thought within the brain. That presence is the ideal. Without it he would be a mason; through it he becomes an artist.

"The ideal is the real." By it we shape our lives as the sculptor shapes the image from the rough marble. External means alone will not accomplish this. You must lay hold of eternal principles, of the everlasting verities, or you never can approach your ideal. Your first advance toward it lies in what you are doing now, in what you are thinking. Not on some far-off height, in some distant scene, or fabled land, where longing without endeavor is magically satisfied, will we carve out the ideal that haunts our souls, but "here and now in this poor, mean Actual, here or nowhere is our ideal!"

In the humble valley, on the boundless prairie, on the farm, on sea or on land, in workshop, store, or office, wherever there is honest work for the hand and brain of man to do,--within the circ.u.mscribed limits of our daily duties, is the field wherein the outworking of our ideal must be wrought.