Body

The Power Book Library

Volume One

Power of Will

By FRANK CHANNING HADDOCK, M.S., PH.D.

Author of "POWER FOR SUCCESS," "CULTURE of COURAGE."

"Practical PSYCHOLOGY,^" "Business POWERS "Creative PERSONALITY

A Practical Companion

Book for Unfoldment

of the Powers of Mind

In Three Parts

EMBRACING

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF A GROWING WILL;

DIRECT CONTROL OF THE PERSONAL FACULTIES;

AND SUCCESS IN THE CONDUCT OF AFFAIRS.

THREE-HUNDRED-FIFTH EDITION

(25,000 copies)

1919

The Pelton Publishing Company

Meriden, Conn.

(L. N. FOWLER S Co., 7 Imperial Arcade Ludgate Circus, London.)

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My first recommendation is to carefully and methodically read the book from beginning to end. Do not skip about, but take each lesson in regular order. Mentally absorb as much of what you read as you can, marking in the margins, or making other note of such paragraphs or sections as afford instructions which you feel particular need of. Return to them later on.

Try each day to put into practical use in your personal affairs and your associations with other people, the principles you have found in the lessons.

As you come to the lessons in Sense Culture, beginning on page 127, do not "peter out" and allow your original resolution to develop will power to be balked, just because there are some exercises.

Remember this, all that you will ever know in this world, every iota of knowledge you will ever possess, comes to you through your Five Senses. A child without Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste or Smell never would gain any knowledge, it would be but a physical machine absolutely devoid of the ability to know, think, reason or understand.

Therefore, the greatest opportunity in your life is the opportunity to learn how to make your five senses yield you greater brain powers. And to this end Dr. Haddock has in the second division, "The WILL and SENSE CULTURE," given you the most elaborate and successful exercises ever arranged to multiply the powers of your Senses, through which your knowledge and success may be enhanced.

There are exercises for the Eye 11 of them; then come 10 for the Ear; 9 for Touch ( a separate lesson for each Sense.) It is best to take three or four exercises from each lesson and work on these 5 sets for the period of 10 days. If time will not allow so many, then take but two exercises from each of the five lessons in Sense culture.

After the ten day period, drop the exercises, and take as many more new ones from each of the five lessons. In this way, you will have covered all of the exercises in the five lessons on Sense culture in three or four ten day periods. Many have asked if they were to take but one exercise and do that for ten days before taking another. No!. Take several at a time and from several of the lessons.

The same plan of practice also covers lessons beginning on page 177; The Nerves; Hands; Steadiness etc. In lessons on Attention; Attention in Reading; Attention in Thinking also appear problems to work out, but these are straight away methods for development of Brain power.

Commenting up the fact that there are dozens of exercises in the book, and your possible thought that you won't have time to practice them, I say that you can no more acquire powers of Mind, Will and Success by merely passively reading about them, than you could become a Sandow by simply reading all the books in existence about muscle.

ACTUAL PRACTICE -- ACTUAL EXERCISE OF THE BRAIN POWERS is the only method under the sun that will yield you INCREASED POWERS. Therefore with joy hail the arrival of this book which shows you the direct road, which provides tested exercises for your personal improvement.

As previously mentioned, it seems a good plan to first read the book from beginning to end, not stopping during the, first reading to work out all of the exercises. TAKE THEM UP FOR METHODICAL PRACTICE AFTER YOU HAVE COMPLETED A GENERAL READING OF THE BOOK.

Look upon "POWER OF WILL" as a guide and consellor and a mine of golden information, a master instructor that will show you how to make the most of your God given mental forces, but which can be made the most of -- ONLY THROUGH ACTUAL EXERCISE. Return to it again and again and always will you find new values. Don't part with it just because there may be parts of it you can't use right now you CAN use it later on.

If I may be allowed a personal word, when I began the study of "POWER OF WILL" I was an $8 a week bill clerk. What I learned from the book by CONTINUED study of its pages made a fortune for me and not only that, it developed an intellect. And those are the very things you seek, else you would never have sent for the book

NOT Training in the well known Arts, Sciences or Businesses, but Cultivation of the Real Personality for Successful Living in any Art, Science or Business.

One Science/Art stands Supreme: The Science-Art of Successful Being, Successful Living, Successful Doing.

You are invited to enter one or more of the Eight Highways and to share in the labor and rewards of many nowon the path of personal betterment.

It will become a Teacher if you will honestly try to secure mental reaction upon it; that is, if you will resolve to THINK, to Think with it and to Think into it.

It will be Prophet of a higher and more successful living if you will persistently and intelligently follow its requirements, for this will make yourself a more complete "Manual of the Perfected Will".

This book is not magical. It promises nothing occult or mysterious. It is simply a call to practical and scientific work.

If you will steadfastly go on through the requirements marked out, this book will develop within you highest wishes of welfare for self, it will make you a teacher of self, it will inspire you as a prophet of self brought to largest efficiency.

"POWER OF WILL" has been a pioneer in its chosen field -- the only book of its kind, the only kind of its class, the only class in the world. A number of writers, literary and otherwise, have since followed the pathway thus pointed out, some of them exhibiting scant regard for magnanimity, that virtue which, seemingly demanded by the much exploited "New Thought," is without spiritual littleness and is ever fair in acknowledgments. The author bids all such, take and confess if they are true knights of the larger age, but, an' they cannot stand so high, take for their own that which birth forbids creating, since our world life is so great, and in its abundance every mind may claim to live, even that of the humblest parasite. "Many a frog masquerades in the costume of a bird."

The kindness with which the book has been received, its literary deficiencies being overlooked in view of its practical purpose, and the evidences given by students that the work has helped many to a larger growth and a better self handling, have inspired the present revision.

The volumes of the Power-Book Library have sought always to be clear, plain, practical, sane and helpful, and neither chicanery nor suspicious "occultism" has to the author been conscious in mind or mood or work. The study of these books will vastly multiply the power of the man or woman, with or without a school education. Scholarship does not necessarily mean power, but the Library promises personal power whether the student be educated or uneducated, provided he is of average intelligence.

To all who follow the instructions, there will unfold, in the measure of effort and capacity, the four great fundamentals: Will Power, Mind Power, Magnetism and Practical Ability. This is a positive assurance.

As the present edition goes to press there is an army of over 100,000 students of "Power of Will." This is a record unequaled by any other book of a similar nature in the history of literature. With thousands of warm letters of praise from people in all walks of life who are being helped to a quick realization of their most cherished ambitions, the author feels that his long labor in preparing the following lessons has not been in vain.

The goal of the book before you may be presented by the following quotations from "Brain and Personality," by William Hanna Thomson, M.D.:

"A stimulus to nervous matter effects a change in the matter by calling forth a reaction in it. This change may be exceedingly slight after the first stimulus, but each repetition of the stimulus increases the change, with its following specific reaction, until by constant repetition a permanent alteration in the nervous matter stimulated occurs, which produces a fixed habitual way of working in it. In other words, the nervous matter acquires a special way of working, that is, of function, by habit.

"From the facts which we have been reviewing, we arrive at one of the most important of all conclusions, namely, that the gray matter of our brains is actually plastic and capable of being fashioned. It need not be left with only the slender equipment of functions which Nature gives it at birth. Instead, it can be fashioned artificially, that is, by education, so that it may acquire very many new functions or capacities which never come by birth nor by inheritance, but which can be stamped upon it as so many physical alterations in its protoplasmic substance.

"This well demonstrated truth is of far reaching significance, because it gives an entirely new aspect to the momentous subject of Education." It would seem to be perfectly evident that the more direct the efforts of education become, that is to say, the more surely attention is concentrated upon the alteration for improvement of nervous matter and the development of mental powers rather than to the mastering of objective studies, many of which must prove of little benefit in actual life, the more nearly will education approach its true goal, power in self and ability for successful handling of self with all its powers. This is the method of The Power-Book Library, the ideal of which is, not mastery of books, but sovereign use of the growing self. Most persons conceive of education vaguely as only mental, a training of the mind as such, with small thought that it involves physical changes in the brain itself ere it can become real and permanent. But as perfect examples of education as can be named are ultimately dependent upon the sound condition of certain portions of the gray matter which have been educated for each work. The brain must be modified by every process of true special education.

We can make our own brains, so far as special mental functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have Wills strong enough to take the trouble. By practice, practice, practice, the Will stimulus will not only organize brain centers to perform new functions, but will project new connecting, or, as they are technically called, association fibres, which will make nerve centers work together as they could not without being thus associated. Each such self created brain center requires great labor to make it, because nothing but the prolonged exertion of the personal Will can fashion anything of the kind." And, since the use of any human power tends to its growth, such labor as that suggested in the pages of this book cannot fail both to develop brain centers and also to unfold mind's power in Will.

It is the masterful personal Will which makes the brain human. By a human brain we mean one which has been slowly fashioned into an instrument by which the personality can recognize and know all things physical, from the composition of a pebble to the elements of a fixed star. It is the Will alone which can make material seats for mind, and when made they are the most personal things in the body.

In thus making an instrument for the mind to use, the Will is higher than the Mind, and hence its rightful prerogative is to govern and direct the mind, just as it is the prerogative of the mind to govern and direct the body.

It is the Will, as the ranking official of all in man, who should now step forward to take the command. We cannot overestimate the priceless value of such direction, when completely effective, for the life of the individual in this world. A mind always broken in to the sway of the Will, and therefore thinking according to Will, and not according to reflex action, constitutes a purposive life. A man who habitually thinks according to purpose, will then speak according to purpose; and who will care to measure strength with such a man?

In short, the world has yet to learn, once for all, that men are not to be justified nor condemned by such superficial things about them as their opinions. Set the will right first, and men's opinions will follow suit, as soon as they have opportunities for knowing better; but the will remaining perverted, not the opportunities for knowing of an eternity will avail.

In fact man reigns here below only because he is responsible, and it is his will alone which makes him responsible.

Not a few of those whom they have known started out apparently well equipped, so far as mental gifts and opportunities for education and of social position could enable them to go far and ascend But one by one they lagged and suffered themselves to be outstripped by others, whom perhaps few suspected at the start would reach the first rank before them, because they appeared so much inferior in mental powers to the men whom ultimately they outdistanced wholly. Will direction explains it all. What is the finest mental machine in this life without will power?

That majestic endowment (the Will) constitutes the high privilege granted to each man apparently to test how much the man will make of himself. It is clothed with 'powers' which will enable him to obtain the greatest of all possessions; self possession. Self possession implies the capacity for self restraint, self compulsion and self direction; and he who has these, if he live long enough, can have any other possessions that he wants.

And so, in the foregoing, you discover the reason and need for training your power to will. "It is the will that makes the man."

Your brain matter is your sole workshop for success in this world, and possibly the next too. What you do with this mysterious substance, the lines of action which you open up in it, the freedom with which thought processes are allowed to operate, the skill and swiftness with which you transform the mind's energy into visible reality, all rests with your will. You have in your brain an inexhaustible wealth. You can so develop your power of will that it will command the luxuries, the accomplishments, the marked successes, which potentially lie dormant in every human being.

Well spake the philosopher who said: "You are the architect of your own career." But the real wonder worker that builds your life structure in this world is: POWER OF WILL.

There has been altogether too much talk about the secret of success. Success has no secret. Her voice is forever ringing through the marketplace and crying in the wilderness, and the burden of her cry is one word, will. Any man who hears and heeds that cry is equipped fully to climb to the very heights of life. If there is one thing I have tried to do through these years it is to indent in the minds of the men of America the living fact that when they give Will the reins and say 'Drive!' they are headed toward the heights, - Dr. Russell H. Conwell.

The human Will involves mysteries which have never been fathomed. As a "faculty" of mind it is, nevertheless, a familiar and practical reality. There are those who deny man's spiritual nature, but no one calls in question the existence of this power. While differences obtain among writers as to its source, its constitution, its functions, its limitations, its freedom, all concede that the Will itself is an actual part of the mind of man, and that its place and uses in our life are of transcendent importance.

The Will is sometimes defined as the "faculty of conscious, and especially of deliberative action." Whether the word "conscious" is essential to the definition may be questioned. Some actions which are unconscious are, nevertheless, probably expressions of the Will; and some involuntary acts, are certainly conscious. All voluntary acts are deliberative, for deliberation may proceed "with the swiftness of lightning," as the saying goes, but both deliberation and its attendant actions are not always conscious. A better definition of the Will, therefore, is "THE POWER OF SELF DIRECTION."

This power acts in conjunction with feeling and knowledge, but is not to be identified with them as a matter of definition. Nor ought it to be confounded with desire, nor with the moral sense. One may feel without willing, and one may will contrary to feeling. So the Will may proceed either with knowledge or in opposition thereto, or, indeed, in a manner indifferent. Oftentimes desires are experienced which are unaccompanied by acts of Will, and the moral sense frequently becomes the sole occasion of willing, or it is set aside by the Will, whatever the ethical dictates in the case.

The Will is a way a person has of being and doing, by which itself and the body in which it dwells are directed. It is not the Will that wills, any more than it is the perceptive powers that perceive, or the faculty of imagination that pictures mental images.

"By the term Will in the narrower sense," says Royce. "one very commonly means so much of our mental life as involves the attentive guidance of our conduct." When person employs this instrumental power, it puts forth a Volition. A Volition is the willing power in action.

All Volitions are thus secondary mental commands for appropriate mental or physical acts. Obedience of mind or body to Volitions exhibits the power of the Will.

No one wills the impossible for himself. One cannot will to raise a paralyzed arm, nor to fly in the air without machinery. In such cases there may be desire to act, but always mind refuses to will, that is, to put forth a Volition, which is a secondary command, when obedience, of the mind itself, or of the body, is known to lie beyond the range of the possible.

The Will may be regarded as both Static and Dynamic. In the one case it is a Power of Person to originate and direct human activities; in the other case, it is action of person for these ends.

Thus, one is said to be possessed of a strong Will (the static) when he is capable of exerting his mind with great force in a Volition or in a series of Volitions. The quality of his Will is manifest in the force and persistence of his Volitions or his acts. The manifested Will then becomes dynamic: his Volitions are the actions of the mind in self direction.

Hence, the Will is to be regarded as an energy, and, according to its degree as such, it is weak, or fairly developed, or very great. It is related of Muley Molue, the Moorish leader that, when lying ill, almost worn out by incurable disease, a battle took place between his troops and the Portuguese, when, starting from his litter at the great crisis of the fight, he rallied his army, led them to victory, and then instantly sank exhausted, and expired."

Here was an exhibition of stored up Will power. So, also, Blondin, the rope walker, said: "One day I signed an agreement to wheel a barrow along a rope on a given day. A day or two before I was seized with lumbago. I called in my medical man, and told him I must be cured by a certain day; not only because I should lose what I hoped to earn, but also forfeit a large sum. I got no better, and the evening before the day of the exploit, he argued against my thinking of carrying out my agreement. Next morning when I was no better, the doctor forbade my getting up. I told him, 'What do I want with your advice? If you cannot cure me, of what good is your advice?'

When I got to the place, there was the doctor, protesting I was unfit for the exploit. I went on, though I felt like a frog with my back. I got ready my pole and barrow, took hold of the handles and wheeled it along the rope as well as ever I did. When I got to the end I wheeled it back again, and when this was done I was a frog again.

What made me that I could wheel the barrow? It was my reserve Will. Power of Will is, first, mental capacity for a single volitional act: A powerful Will, as the saying is, means the mind's ability to throw great energy into a given command for action, by itself, or by the body, or by other beings. This is what Emerson calls "the spasm to collect and swing the whole man."

The mind may, in this respect, be compared to an electric battery; discharges of force depend upon the size and makeup of the instrument; large amounts of force may be accumulated within it; and by proper manipulation an electric current of great strength may be obtained. There are minds that seem capable of huge exercise of Will power in single acts and under peculiar circumstances, as by the insane when enraged, or by ordinary people under the influence of excessive fear, or by exceptional individuals normally possessed of remarkable mental energy. So, power of Will may, as it were, be regarded as capable of accumulation. It may be looked upon as an energy which is susceptible of increase in quantity and of development in quality.

The Will is not only a dynamic force in mind, it is also secondly, a power of persistent adherence to a purpose, be that purpose temporary and not remote, or abiding and far afield in the future; whether it pertain to a small area of action or to a wide complexity of interests involving a lifelong career. But what it is in persistence must depend upon what it is in any single average act of Volition. The Will may exhibit enormous energy in isolated instances while utterly weak with reference to a continuous course of conduct or any great purpose in life. A mind that is weak in its average Volitions is incapable of sustained willing through a long series of actions or with reference to a remote purpose. The cultivation, therefore, of the Dynamic Will is essential to the possession of volitional power for a successful life.

"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link." Development of Will has no other highway than absolute adherence to wise and intelligent resolutions. The conduct of life hinges on the Will, but the Will depends upon the man. Ultimately it is never other than his own election. At this point appears the paradox of the Will: The Will is the soul's power of self direction; yet the soul must decide how and for what purposes this power shall be exercised.

It is in such a paradox that questions of moral freedom have their origin. The freedom of the Will is a vexed problem, and can here receive only superficial discussion. The case seems to be clear enough, but it is too metaphysical for these pages.

"The Will," says a French writer," is to choose in order to act." This is not strictly true, for the Will does not choose at all. The person chooses. But in a general or loose way the Will may be now defined as a power to choose what the man shall do.

The choice is always followed by volition, and Volition by appropriate action. To say that we choose to act in a certain way, while abstaining from so doing, is simple to say either that, at the instant of so abstaining, we do not choose, or that we cease to choose.

We always do what we actually choose to do, so far as mental and physical ability permit. When they do not permit, we may desire, but we do not choose in the sense of willing. In this sense choice involves some reason, and such reason must always be sufficient in order to induce person to will.

A Sufficient Reason is a motive which the person approves as ground of action. This approval precedes the act of willing, that is, the Volition. The act of willing, therefore, involves choice among motives as its necessary precedent, and decision based upon such selection. When the mind approves a motive, that is, constitutes it Sufficient Reason for its action in willing, it has thereby chosen the appropriate act obedient to willing. The mind frequently recognizes what, at first thought, might be regarded as Sufficient Reason for Volition, yet refrains from putting forth that Volition. In thus case other motives have instantaneously, perhaps unconsciously, constituted Sufficient Reason for inaction, or for action opposed to that immediately before considered.

As Professor Josiah Royce remarks in "Outlines of Psychology," "We not only observe and feel our own doings and attitudes as a mass of inner facts, viewed all together, but in particular we attend to them with greater or less care, selecting now these, now those tendencies to action as the central objects in our experience of our own desires." "To attend to any action or to any tendency to action, to any desire, or to any passion, is the same thing as 'to select,' or 'to choose,' or 'to prefer,' or 'to take serious interest in,' just that tendency or deed. And such attentive (and practical) preference of one course of conduct, or of one tendency or desire, as against all others present to our minds at any time, is called a voluntary act." This is in effect the view of the author taken ten years before the writing of the first edition of the present work.

A motive is an appeal to person for a Volition. "A motive cannot be identified with the Volition to act, for it is the reason of the Volition. The identification of motives and Volitions would involve us in the absurdity of holding that we have as many Volitions as motives, which would result in plain contradiction." And, it may also be remarked, a motive is not an irresistible tendency, an irresistible tendency is not a desire, and a desire is not a Volition. In short, it is impossible to identify a Volition or act of Will with anything else. It is an act, sui generis.

But while motives must be constituted Sufficient Reasons for willing, the reason is not a cause; it is merely an occasion. The cause of the act of Will is the person, free to select a reason for Volition. The occasion of the action of Volition in mind is solely the motive approved.

Motives are conditions; they are not causes. The testimony that they are not determining conditions stands on the validity of the moral consciousness. The word "ought" always preaches freedom, defying gospelers and metaphysicians of every pagan field.

Moreover, the phrase "freedom of will" is tautology, and the phrase "bondage of will" is contradiction of terms. To speak of the freedom of the Will is simply to speak of the Will's existence. A person without power to decide what he shall do is not a complete organism.

Will may be weak, but within the limitations of weakness, freedom nevertheless obtains. No bondage exists in the power of person to will somewhat. Bondage may obtain in the man, by reason of physical disorders, or of mental incapacity, or of moral perversion, or perhaps, of environment. For the Will "does not sensate: that is done by the senses; it does not cognize: that is done by the intellect; it does not crave or loathe an object of choice: that is done by the affections; it does not judge of the nature, or value, or qualities of an object: that is done by the intellect; it does not moralize on the right or wrong of an object, or of an act of choice: that is done by the conscience (loosely speaking): it does not select the object to be chosen or to be refused, and set it out distinct and defined. known and discriminated from all others, and thus made ready, after passing under the review of all the other faculties, to be chosen or refused by the Will: for this act of selecting has already been done by the intellect."

The operations of the sense perceptions, of the intellect and of the moral powers may thus be inadequate, and there may be great difficulty in deliberating among motives, and even inability to decide which motive shall rule, but these weaknesses obtain in the mind or the man, they do not inhere in the Will. This does not surrender the freedom of the Will by shifting it from a faculty the definition of which makes it free to the person which may or may not be free, because any bondage of person has before it actual freedom as the result of development, education and moral influences. The action of Will is not determined by motive but by condition of person and to a degree, except under the oppression of disease, the person may always raise any motive to the dignity of Sufficient Reason.

Most people experience some bondage to evil, but the bondage of evil lies in the fact that the evil self tends to select a motive whose moral quality is of a like character. Accountability springs from this, that evil has been permitted to establish that tendency. A force endowed with intelligence, capable of forming purposes and pursuing self-chosen ends may neglect those rules of action which alone can guide it safely, and thus at last wholly miss the natural ends of its being."

As Samuel Johnson says: "By trusting to impressions a man may gradually come to yield to them and at length be subject to them so as not to be a free agent, or, what is the same thing in effect, to suppose that he is not a free agent."

As to the doctrine of necessity, no man believes it. If a man should give me arguments that I did not see, though I could not answer them, should I believe that I did not see? Hence the sway and the value of moral character in the arena of Will. A person of right character tends to constitute right motives Sufficient Reason for Volitions.

The Will, therefore, is under law for it is a part of the universal system of things. It must obey the general laws of man's being, must be true to the laws of its own nature. A lawless Will can have no assignable object of existence. As a function in mind it is subject to the influences of the individual character, of environment and of ethical realities. But in itself it discloses that all Volitions are connected with motives or reasons, that every Volition has its sufficient Reason, and that no Volition is determined solely by any given reason. To suppose the Will to act otherwise than as required by these laws is to destroy its meaning. A lawless Volition is not a free Volition, it is no Volition. Lawless Volition is caprice. Capricious Volitions indicate a mind subject to indeterminate influences. When an individual is in such a state, we say that he is a slave, because he is without power to act intelligently for a definite purpose and according to a self chosen end.

Will is not free if it is not self caused, but to be self caused, in any true sense, it must act according to the laws of its own being. Law is the essence of freedom. Whatever is free is so because it is capable of acting out unhindered the laws of its nature.

The Will cannot transcend itself. It is not necessary that it should transcend its own nature in order to be free. A bird is free to fly, but not to pass its life under water. A bird with a broken wing cannot fly; nevertheless flight is of the freedom of bird-nature. And limitations upon bird-nature are not limitations upon such freedom. Induced limited states of individual minds cannot set aside the free ability of Will to act according to its fundamental nature.

The following, written of Howard the philanthropist, is a good illustration of the Will (a) as static, (b) as dynamic, (c) as an energy, (d) as controlled by the mind, (e) as free, and (f) as determined by character, what the individual makes himself to be: The (c) energy of his (a) determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been (b) shown only for a short time on particular occasions, it would have appeared a vehement impetuosity; but, by being unintermitted, it had an equability of manner which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of anything like turbulence or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity, (d) kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the (f) character of the individual (e) forbidding it to be less."

Howard was an illustration of Emerson's meaning when he said: "There can be no driving force, except through the conversion of the man into his Will, making him the Will, and the Will him." Human nature is a huge commentary on this remark. Man's driving force, conquering fate, is the energy of the free Will.

Said Dr. Edward H. Clarke : "The Will or Ego who is only known by his volitions, is a constitutional monarch, whose authority within certain limits is acknowledged throughout the system. If he chooses, like most monarchs, to extend his dominions and enlarge his power, he can do so. By a judicious exercise of his authority, employing direct rather than indirect measures, he can make every organ his cheerful subject. If, on the other hand, he is careless of his position, sluggish and weary of constant vigilance and labor, he will find his authority slipping from him, and himself the slave of his ganglia."

That you have a great world of opportunity awaiting your determination to possess it, is evidenced by this stirring view from the pen of C.G. Leland. "Now the man who can develop his will, has it in his power not only to control his moral nature to any extent, but also to call into action or realize very extraordinary states of mind, that is faculties, talents, or abilities which he never suspected to be within his reach. All that Man has ever attributed to the Invisible World without, lies, in fact, within him, and the magic key which will confer the faculty of sight and the power to conquer is there.

We have now finished our brief survey of the theory of Will power. The idea has been to make clear to you the place which Will power occupies in your life, to stimulate you to an immediate, determined, and pleasurable, nay, profitable training in this kingly force within your possession.

The seat of the Will seems to vary with the organ through which it is manifested; to transport itself to different parts of the brain, as we may wish to recall a picture, a phrase, or a melody; to throw its force on the muscles or the intellectual processes. Like the general-in-chief, its place is everywhere in the field of action. It is the least like an instrument of any of our faculties; the farthest removed from our conceptions of mechanism and matter, as we commonly define them."- O.W.Holmeses.

The developed Will manifests itself, as has been suggested, in two general ways.

Remembering that the Will is always the mind's power of self-direction, we now suggest certain:

Mastery of the body is frequently seen in remarkable instances of physical control. All voluntarily acquired habits are examples. Though a given habit becomes automatic, it yet represents a long and persistent application of Will, and, as often, perhaps, the present exercise of Volition directing and maintaining actions that are apparently unconscious.

The singer's use of voice exhibits trained impulse; the musician's manipulation of his fingers, habituated movements; the skilled rider's mastery of his limbs in most difficult feats and unexpected situations, spontaneous response to mind; the eloquent orator, celerity of muscular obedience to feeling. In all these and similar cases the Will must act, coordinating particular movements with general details of Volition: with the ultimate purpose in view. Indeed, the specific activities that make up the complex physical uses of the human body in all trades of skill demand supervision of the Will as an adequate explanation. The person may not be conscious of its sovereign acts, but it is the power upon the throne.

Underlying those states of the soul of which it is immediately aware are conditions not formulated in consciousness, which nevertheless constitute its highest powers. If these exhibitions of "second nature" involved no immediate action of Will, the very exercise and training of Will which look to their attainment would, so far forth, defeat the end in view; they would weaken rather than develop Will.

The Unconscious or Subconscious Mind plays a vast role in human life. The reader is referred to the author's work "Practical Psychology" for further study of that important subject. The mind, again, has the power to summon, as it were, a special degree of intensity of Will, and to throw this with great force into a particular act. This may be done during a repetition of the act, while the repetition is going on "automatically," as it is said. Does such intensity imply that no Will has hitherto been exerted? We know that in such cases we put forth a more energetic Volition.

The human eye may be made to blaze by the application of Will power to the act of gazing. The hearing may be made more acute by willing that all other sensations shall be ruled out of consciousness. By focusing the attention upon the terminal nerves the sense of touch is vastly quickened, as, for example, in the case of the blind. Muscular effort accomplishing a certain amount of work while Will is but lightly applied, becomes terrific when the whole man wills himself into the act.

Certain stimulations of mind, as fear, or love, or hate, or hope of reward, or religious excitement, or musical influence, or insanity, rouse the Will at times to vast proportions in its feats with muscle and limb.

The Olympic contests and modern exhibition games, rescues from fire or wave, woman's defense of her offspring, prolonged exertion of political speakers and evangelists, and Herculean achievements of enraged inmates of insane hospitals, furnish examples.

So, also, the Will accomplishes wonders through its power of inhibition. Under fear of detection the hiding criminal simulates the stillness of death. Pride often represses the cry of pain. In the presence of the desperately ill, love refuses the relief of tears. Irritated nerves are controlled under maddening conditions. Certain nervous diseases can be cured by the Will. Habits of the body, such as facial twitching, movements of the hands or limbs, etc., are controlled, and mannerisms of private and public life are banished. Sounds are shut out of consciousness in the act of reading. Strong appetites are denied indulgence. Pronounced tendencies in general physical conduct are varied. Attitudes of body are assumed and maintained at the cost of great pain.

Even more than is ordinarily supposed, the body is the servant of the. Will. The curious thing here is that so little attention is given to the training of Will in this capacity.

The right Will is the lord of the mind's several faculties. A familiar example is seen in the act of attention. Here the soul concentrates its energies upon a single object, or upon a number of objects grouped together. A striking example may be noted in the fact that we can smell either one of two odors, brought to the nostrils by means of paper tubes, in preference to the other, by simply thinking about it. This is a good illustration of abstraction induced by the Will. The degree of exclusiveness and force with which the mind engages itself upon a single line of action represents the cultivation of the persistent Will. If the Will is strong in this respect, it is probably strong in what is called "compound attention," or that considering state of mind in which it holds deliberative court among motives, facts, principles, means and methods relating to some possible end of effort or goal of conduct.

Thus the person wills intense consciousness of physical acts or states. One, for example, who studies profoundly the relation of physiology to psychology, exhibits great powers in willed attention, embracing largest sensations, and taking note of minutest variations with the greatest nicety. The child in learning to walk manifests admirable ability in this regard. Vocal exercises demand utmost attention of mind to musical notes, their effects upon the ear, and the manner and method of their attainment and execution. Musical instruments are also mastered in this way alone. All use of tools and instruments makes large demand upon the Will, and in proportion to their delicacy, complexity, and the difficulty of handling properly, is this demand increased. "Great skill, great Will," may be written as the general law in this regard.

So, also, as previously suggested, the power of the eye, ear and end nerves is frequently increased by application of mental energy thrown forcibly into the sense perception involved.

The action and capacity of the lungs may be developed by intelligent attention, a style of walk may be cultivated, and habits of speech entirely reorganized. Where pronounced ability in such cases has been acquired, the cost of willed attention has been enormous.

A test of Will may be further seen in the degree of attention exerted in reading. Much is dignified as reading that is not so. In true reading the mind is focused upon the printed page. Kossuth said, "I have a certain rule never to go on in reading anything with out perfectly understanding what I read." That was true reading.

Equally concentrated must be the mind of the artist in painting, and that of the musician in mastering a difficult composition. An artist who painted three hundred portraits during a year, said: " When a sitter came, I looked at him attentively for half an hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. I wanted no more. I put away my canvas and was ready for another sitter. When I wished to resume my first portrait, I took the man and sat him in the chair, when I saw him as distinctly as if he had been before me in his own proper person."

A similar story is elated of the sculptor David. Wishing to execute the bust of a dying woman without alarming her, he called upon her as a jeweler's man, and in a few moments secured a mental portrait of her features, which he afterward reproduced in stone. So Blind Tom listened with "rapt attention" to a complicated musical composition, and instantly repeated it, exactly as played before him, including errors. In part, concentrated attention is the secret of genius.

In sustained thinking the Will manifests one of its noblest aspects. The mind must now plunge into the depths of a subject, penetrate by driving force into its minutest details, and follow out the ramifications of its utmost complexities, concentrating upon fact, reality, relation, etc., with great power, and comparing, conjoining, separating, evolving, with tireless persistency. Napoleon was gigantic in all these particulars. Senator Carpenter, of Wisconsin, used to seclude himself in his law library the night before some important case was docketed for trial, and feel, think and care for nothing else until morning, utterly absorbed in the mastery of its problems.

So Byron was wont to immure himself with brandy and water and write for many consecutive hours in the elaboration of his poems. The success of Hegel is in part explained by the fact that he took a manuscript to his publishers in Jena on the very day when the battle of that name was fought, and to his amazement, for he had heard or seen nothing, he found French veterans, the victorious soldiers of Napoleon, in the streets. Mohammed falling into lone trances on the mountains above Mecca, Paul in Arabia, Dante in the woods of Fonte Abellana, and Bunyan in prison, form eloquent illustrations of the necessity of mental seclusion and concentration in order to arrive at great mental results."

It is familiarly known that one of the secrets of concentration is interest in the matter in hand. But the mind's interest may be enhanced by persistent assertion of its power of Will. Study, resolutely continued, bores into the subject considered, and, discovering new features, finally induces absorbed attention of an increased degree. School work furnishes many illustrations of this reward of Will. The mind may be wrought up, by long attention to matters of thought, to a state of great activity. As with mechanical contrivances, so with Will; initial movements of mind, weak at first, acquire by continuance an enhanced power. "We can work ourselves up," as one has said, "into a loving mood, by forcing the attention and the train of ideas upon all the kindness and affection that we have experienced in the past."

Similarly in regard to other emotions and states of the soul. The activity of reasoning is no exception. It is a mistake to suppose that great intellectual achievements are products alone of what is called "inspiration." The processes of reasoning, composing, speaking, all exhibit the power of Will to develop interest and beget a true inspiration as well as to hold the mind in the grip of a subject. Lord Macaulay thus sought facility in the preparation and writing of his History. Anthony Trollope made it a rule, while writing a work of fiction, to turn off a fixed number of pages each day, and found his rule not a hindrance, but a help. In jury trials advocates talk on for hours against some supposedly obstinate juryman, and legislative halls frequently witness "speaking against time." In both cases the orator's mind develops special and unexpected interest and power.

The strength of the Will is, again, notably shown in the action of memory. Mental energy usually "charges" the soul by the process of " memorizing." But some facts are blazed into the abiding self, as it were, by the power of great interest. The storing act of mind in education, as it is commonly understood, requires Will in a very especial sense.

Listless repetition of lessons accomplishes little. Attention, concentration, the forcing of interest, must take this kingdom by a kind of violence. A phrase like, "Remember! yes, remember!" suggests the victorious attitude of mind.

Macaulay, fearing that his memory might fail, deliberately set himself to the task of its test and further development. William H. Prescott, who wrote his histories with greatly impaired eyesight, trained his memory so thoroughly that he could perform mentally the work required for sixty pages before dictation. Francis Parkman and Charles Darwin acquired prodigious memories under similar difficulties.

Some minds are naturally endowed with great powers in this respect, but the really useful memories of the world exhibit the driving and sustaining action of Will.

Memory is always involved in imagination. The mind which is a blank as to its past can form no memory pictures. In its noblest character, the imagination exhibits compulsion, purpose, control. Milton must summon in luminous array the majestic images of Paradise Lost. Does Angelo see his immortal shapes without the direction of Will? Do the phantoms of the ideal world come unbidden to the arena of thought? Undoubtedly fantasies and hallucinations may troop across the plains of mental vision in capricious freedom, as when Luther saw the devil, or Goethe beheld in his sister's home a picture by Ostade; and these may frequently tyrannize over the mind with terrible power, as when Kipling's civilian of India became "possessed" by the " Phantom 'Rickshaw." But the hallucinations of disease often yield to treatment of physical improvement and resolute Will.

It is significant that Goethe, relating the experience above referred to, says: " This was the first time that I discovered, in so high a degree, the gift, which I afterwards used with more complete consciousness, of bringing before me the characteristics of this or that great artist, to whose works I had devoted great attention." That the power of creating such luminous mental vision can be acquired by strenuous Will may be doubted; but there are minds that have frequent flashes of clear pictorial inner sight, in which objects seem to appear with all the vividness of sunlit reality, although they can never command this experience at will. If possessed, the gift, as Goethe calls it, is, however, subject to summons and control, as seen in his case and in that of many artists. A secondary quality of mental vision, in which ideas of things, more or less vague and confused, and similar assemblages of objects, arise, is, by common testimony a matter of determined cultivation.

Professions which require regular public speaking, as of the ministry or the law; the massing of facts before the mind, as in the trial of jury cases; the forming of material shapes and their organization into imaginary mechanisms, as in invention; the grasp of details and comprehensive plans, as in large business enterprises and military operations; all furnish illustrations of the truth that not original endowment alone, but energetic exercise of Will, is requisite to success.

Ideas, relations, objects and combinations may be made more vivid and real by resolution of mind and persistent practice. Failures in these fields are frequently due to the fact that the Will does not force the mind to see things as details and as complex wholes. The strong Will enables the mind to recall, with growing intensity, objects, mechanisms, assemblages of facts and persons, outlines of territory, complex details and laws of enterprise, and airy fancies and huge conceptions of the worlds of real life and of ideal existence.

The imagination is the pioneer of progress in religion, industry, art and science; but as such it is not a lawless necromancer without deliberate purpose. The spirit that summons, guides and controls it is the soul's mysterious power of self direction. And this power is equally susceptible of being so developed as to indicate selection and exclusion of clamoring images.

Hence it would seem that the mind may train and develop its own power of willing. When cultivation and improvement of Will are sought, we may say, "I will to will with energy and decision! I will to persist in willing! I will to will intelligently and for a goal! I will to exercise the Will according to the dictates of reason and of morals!"

Some men are born with what are called "strong Wills." If these are to be reasonable Wills as well, they must be trained. For the most part Will would seem to develop and to acquire some thing of the "sweet quality of reasonableness," under life processes which are more or less unconscious and unpurposed so far as this end is concerned; nevertheless, the exigencies of "getting on" are constant and unappreciated trainers. Discipline knocks men about with ruthless jocularity. "A man who fails, and will not see his faults, can never improve."

Here is a grim visaged, and oftentimes humorous schoolmaster who gives small pity to his pupils. They must needs acquire some power of Will or demonstrate themselves, not human, but blockheads. Much of life's suffering is due to the fact that force of Will is neither developed nor trained by conscious intelligent effort, and is more often devoid than possessed of rational moral quality.

This is a curious thing, that the Will is left, like Topsy, "to grow up." Why value this power, yet take it "catch-as-catch-can"? Why hinge success upon it, yet give it so little conscious attention? Why delegate its improvement to the indirection of "hard knocks," and disappointment cankering resolution, and misfortune making water of life's blooded forces, and all manner of diseases destroying the fine fibre of mind's divine organism? Why neglect the Will until consequence, another name for hell, oftentimes, has removed "heaven" by the diameter of the universe?

James Tyson, a Bushman in Australia, died worth $25,000,000. "But," he said, with a characteristic semi-exultant snap of the fingers, "the money is nothing. It was the little game that was the fun!" Being asked once, "What was the little game? " he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to him " Fighting the desert. That has been my work. I have been fighting the desert all my life, and I have won! I have put water where was no water, and beef where was no beef. I have put fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads. Nothing can undo what I have done, and millions will be happier for it after I am long dead and forgotten."

"The longer I live," said Fowell Buxton, whose name is connected in philanthropy with that of Wilberforce, "the more certain I am that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is ENERGY, INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION, a purpose once fixed, and then Death or Victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two legged creature a MAN without it. "The power, then, of such resistless energy should with resistless energy be cultivated.

The perfect Will is high Priest of the moral self. Indeed, a true cultivation of Will is not possible without reference to highest reason or ideas of right. In the moral consciousness alone is discovered the explanation of this faculty of the soul. A great Will may obtain while moral considerations are ignored, but no perfection of Will can be attained regardless of requirements of highest reason. The crowning phase of the Will is always ethical.

Napoleon exhibits the strong continuous Will. Washington illustrates the persistence of moral resolution. Jesus incarnates the Will whose law is holiness.

The Will that possesses energy and persistence, but is wanting in reasonableness and moral control, rules in its kingdom with the fool's industry and the fanatical obstinacy of Philip the Second. "It was Philip's policy and pride to direct all the machinery of his extensive empire, and to pull every string himself. The object, alike paltry and impossible, of this ambition, bespoke the narrow mind." Thus has Motley described an incarnation of perverted willfulness.

If the "King" will not train himself, how shall he demand obedience of his subjects, the powers of body, mind and spirit? This is the "artist" of whom Lord Lytton sang: "All things are thine estate; yet must Thou first display the title deeds, and sue the world. Be strong; and trust High instincts more than all the creeds"

A recent writer along these lines puts it pithily when he says: "In respect to mere mundane relations, the development and discipline of one's will power is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power of will

It is a part of the divine nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismark and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can be no more stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will."

Yet it is always the righteous will which accomplishes the more lasting victories, the will which demonstrates that all who grant its demands will be sharers in a mutual advance and profit. The use of will power regardless of other interest "riding rough shod over everything in its path" is headed for a precipice.

Resolve is what makes a man manifest; not puny resolve, not crude determinations, not errant purpose, but that strong and indefatigable Will which treads down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down the heaving frost lands of winter; which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men giants." - IK Marvel

The thing that is, and creates human power, as the author remarks in "Business Power," is the Will. Theoretically, the Will is the man. Practically, the Will is just a way the man has of being and doing. The Will is man's inherent nature tendency to act to do something. This tendency to act in some way must act on itself, take itself in hand so to speak, in order that it may act intelligently, continuously, and with a purpose. Will is itself power; but unfolded, controlled and directed power in man is Will self mastered, not man mastered nor nature mastered. The man mastered and nature mastered Will goes with the motive or impulse which is strongest. The self mastered Will goes with the motive which the self makes greatest, and with mere impulse in very slight degree so far as the life of intelligence is concerned. The self mastered Will can do anything, within reason; and reason in this connection should be conceived in its highest human sense. The function of Will is like that of steam. It must be powerful, under control, and properly directed. The power of Will may be developed, but only through controlled and directed action. The control may be acquired, but only through willed and directed action. The direction may be determined, but only through willed and controlled action. When Will is self developed, self mastered, self directed, it only needs proper application to become practically all powerful.

In the conduct of life every form in which the normal Will manifests itself is demanded for success. These forms are:

The Static Will, or Will in reserve, constitutes original source of energy. As heat, light, and life are rooted in the sun, so are varied Volitions sent forth from this central seat of power, exhibiting the Dynamic Will.

The Explosive Will illustrates the mind's ability for quick and masterful summoning of all its forces. The sudden rush of the whole soul in one compelling deed seems sometimes next to omnipotence.

Persistence of Will involves "standing," sto - stare -- sistere, and "through" - per; "standing through." The weakness of otherwise strong men may be revealed in life's reactions. "Having done all, to stand," furnishes many a deciding test. This phase of Will is not exhausted in the common saying, "sticking to it," for a barnacle sticks, and is carried hither and thither on a ship's bottom. Persistence involves adherence to a purpose clean through to a goal.

The abiding mind necessitates the Impelling Will. The Impelling Will suggests an ocean liner, driving onward, right onward, through calm and storm, for a determined goal. Sixty years of that kind of direct motion must summon Will to all its varied activities.

It is curious, too, that the noble quality of Will power observed in impelling persistence, depends upon the paradox of restraint. An engine without control will wreck itself and its connected machinery. The finest racing speed is achieved under bit and mastery. In man the power that drives must hold back. The supremest type of man exhibits this as a constant attitude. Success in life depends upon what the writers call the Will's power of inhibition. Here we have the Restraining Will.

At times the character of Will is also manifest in its ability to forbid obedience to a thousand appealing motives, and even to bring all action to a full stop and "back water," in order to a new decision, a new immediate or ultimate goal. Hence life is full of demands for quick decisions and resistless massing of resources squarely upon the spur of exigency. This suggests the Decisive Will

Such are some of the forms of Will which are required for the conduct of affairs, whether ordinary or extraordinary. Even a slight analysis of the matter would seem to suggest that there can be no tonic like the mental mood which resolves to will.

Here is a treatment from deepest laboratories of the soul insuring health. A purposeful mind says, sooner or later, "I RESOLVE TO WILL." After a time that phrase is in the air, blows with the wind, shines in star and sun, sings with rivers and seas, whispers with dreams of sleep and trumpets through the hurly-burly day. Eventually it becomes a feeling of achievement saturating consciousness. The span knows now the end, because all prophecies have one reading.

He has begotten the instinct of victory. It is not as a blind man, however, that he walks. His ineradicable conviction sees with the eye of purpose. If his purpose is approvable at the court of conscience, all roads lead to his Rome.

Men fail for lack of Some Aim. Their desires cover the entire little field of life, and what becomes theirs does so by accident. Multitudes of people are the beneficiaries of blundering luck.

Everywhere Some Aim would make "hands" foremen, and foremen superintendents; would conduct poverty to comfort, and comfort to wealth; would render men who are of no value to society useful, and useful men indispensable.

The man who is indispensable owns the situation. The world is ruled by its servants. The successful servant is king.

But better than Some Aim, which, because it need be neither long headed nor long lived, is a player at a gaming table, is One Aim, by which all fortune is turned schoolmaster and good fortune is labeled "reward by divine right." The true divine right of kings is here alone.

The soul that resolves to will One Aim, makes heavy and imperious call on the nature of things. For, while many understand that the individual must needs adjust himself to life, few perceive the greater law, that life is forever engaged in a desperate struggle to adjust itself to the individual. It is but required of him that he treat life with some degree of dignity, and make his election and plea sure by putting mind in the masterful spell of some One ultimate Aim to which all things else shall be subordinated.

Some Aim has luck on its side. One Aim has law. Some Aim may achieve large things, and occasionally it does; One Aim cannot fail to make the nature of things its prime minister.

Life does not always yield the One Aim its boon in exact terms of desire, because men often fall at cross purposes with endowment; but life never fails to grant all the equities in any given case.

In the long run every man gets in life about what he deserves. The vision of that truth embraces many things which the objector will not see. The objector mistakes what he desires for what he deserves.

Hence the importance of self discovery in life's conduct. It is probably true that every man has some one supreme possibility within his makeup. The purposeful Will usually discovers what it is.

Buried talents are always "fool's gold." One thing settled -- the Ultimate Aim -- and talents begin to emerge by a divine fiat.

The revelation of power may, indeed, be made while Will roams in quest of a purpose, but, that purpose found, Will looks for its means and methods; and discovers them within.

William Pitt was in fact born with a definite aim in life. "From a child," says a recent writer, "he was made to realize that a great career was expected of him, worthy of his renowned father. This was the keynote of all his instruction."

General Grant is said to have been called "Useless Grant" by his mother. He discovered himself at Shiloh, after some pottering with hides and leather which was not even preliminary, but Grant always "stuck to the thing in hand," so far as it was worth while doing so. When war brought his awareness of self to the point of definite meaning, he found every detail and the largest campaigns eminently worth the while of a Will which had at last uncovered its high way." The great thing about him," said Lincoln, "is cool persistency of purpose. He is not easily excited, and he has got the grip of a bulldog. When he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off."

The One Aim is always a commentary on character. It is not difficult to see why life needs Some Aim. Why it should concentrate upon One Aim suggests the whole philosophy of human existence. Nero had One Aim, and it destroyed the half of Rome. Alexander the Great had One Aim and he died in a debauch. The One Aim may involve selfishness, crimes, massacres, anarchy, universal war, civilization hurled to chaos. One Aim assassinated Garfield, ruined Spain, inaugurated the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, gave birth to the "unspeakable Turk," devised a system of enmity against existing orders and institutions, threatens to throw Europe into revolutionary carnage, and, in a thousand ways, has power to light the pyre of civilization's destruction. One Aim is no more descriptive of Heaven than it is of Hell.

The climax of Will, therefore, is possible under moral considerations alone. Character, which is the sum total of a man's good (moral) qualities, furnishes a third phrasing for Will's purpose, the Righteous Aim.

Will with Righteous Aim creates character. Character, with Righteous Will, creates Noblest Aim. Character, with Noblest Aim, creates Righteous Will.

The relation between the man, the aim, the Will, is dependent and productive. There is really no high justification for One Aim if it be not best aim. Life is ethical. Its motives and its means and its achievements justify only in aims converging to its utmost moral quality.

It is here that possession of Will finds explanation, as elsewhere remarked. Below man there is no supreme sovereignty of Will; all is relative and reflex. But this sovereignty furnishes its reason in moral self development, in moral community relations, in moral oneness with Deity.

So true is it that righteousness alone justifies the existence of the human Will that the fittest development of the power comes of its moral exercise. Above the martyr who founds a material government the world places with eager zeal that soul who establishes by his death a kingdom of religion.

The Static Will furnishes energy in abnormal life. The Explosive Will murders. The Persistent Will may exhibit in obstinacy and national crimes. The Impelling Will is sometimes hugely reckless. The Restraining Will has its phases in "mulishness" and stupidity. The Decisive Will is frequently guilty of wondrous foolhardiness. Idiocy, insanity, senility, savagery and various forms of induced mania represent the Will in disorder, without a master and working pathos fathomless or tragic horror.

If, then, we ask, "Why One Aim in life?" The names of Socrates, Buddha, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, William of Orange, Gladstone, Washington, Wilberforce, Lincoln, may be offset by those of Caligula, the Medici, Lucretia Borgia, Philip the Second. Asking, "Why the Righteous Aim?" troop before the mind's expanding eye all holy heroes and movements "in the tide of time"; and no counterpoise appears, for all is great, all is good.

Moral purpose, however, is no prestidigitator. The Will, set on all good things for ultimate goal, is still merely the mind's power of self-direction. All requisites for strong Will anywhere are demands here. Inasmuch as the moral aim involves the whole of life. Will, making for it, requires the ministry of cultivated perceptions: seeing things as they are, especially right things; developed sensibilities: sensitive toward evil, capacious for good; a large imagination: embracing details, qualities, consequences, reasons and ultimate manifold objects; active, trained and just reasoning faculties: apprehending the incentive, utility and inspiration of truth; and deep and rich moral consciousness: nourishing the Will from inexhaustible fountains of legitimate self complacency.

In other words, the moral Will which alone is best Will, demands of its owner constant and adequate consideration, of plan, of means, of methods, of immediate and ultimate end.

The successful conduct of life is always hinged upon "This one thing I do." Where such is really the law of conduct, the world beholds an aroused soul. "The first essential of success," said a great bank president, "is the fear of God."

A live man is like a factory working on full time. Here is creation; every power at labor, every function charged with energy, huge action dominating the entire situation, and yielding valuable products. This man puts his body into the thing in hand, mightily confident. His mental being does not detail itself off in "gangs," but swarms at it with that tirelessness which makes enthusiasm a wonder. His intuitions flash, impel, restrain, urge resistlessly, decide instantly, presiding genii of limited empires. Reasoning faculties mass upon questions vital, and hold clear court, till justice be known. If he be right souled man, he emerges, Will at the fore, from Decalogue and Mountain Sermon daily, squaring enterprise with the Infinite.

The whole man, swinging a great Will, conserves himself. Why must there be discussions on selfishness and self-interest? A sound soul is always a best soul. A selfish soul is never sound. But a sound soul must continue sound. Altruism begins with the self. Society needs the whole man, all there is of him, and always at his best. Hence the nature of things makes it law that a man shall endeavor to make the most of himself in every way which is not inimical to soundness. This is the first principle of holiness, wholeness, soundness. As that is worked into conduct, the second principle appears, Service.

For the service of a sound soul the Universe will pay any price. And here again emerge some old and common rules. It is function of Will to resolve on preservation of bodily health, mental integrity and growth, and moral development. In the eye of that high resolution no detail is without importance. A trained Will regards every detail as a campaign.

Power of Will is an accretion. Force is atoms actively aggregated. The strong Will is omnivorous, feeding upon all things with little discrimination. Pebbles, no less than boulders compose mountains. The man who cannot will to stick to trifles and bundle them into importants, is now defeated. The keynote of success is drudgery.

Drudgery stands at every factory door, and looks out of every store window. If drudgery be not some where in a book, it is not worth the reading. Inspiration stands tiptoe on the back of poor drudgery. The antecedents of facile and swift art are the aches and sorrows of drudgery. The resistance of angels collapses only after Jacob has found his thigh out of joint, and yet cries: "I will not let thee go!" Jesus had to climb even Calvary.

An English Bishop said truly: "Of all work that produces results, nine-tenths must be drudgery." Really great poets, prose-writers and artists verify this remark. Edmund Burke bestowed upon his speeches and addresses an immense amount of painstaking toil. Macaulay's History cost almost incalculable labor. The first Emperor of Germany was an enormous worker. Indeed, taking the world "by and large," labor without genius is little more incapable than genius without labor.

Kepler, the astronomer, carried on his investigations with prodigious labor. In calculating an opposition of Mars, he filled ten folio pages with figures, and repeated the work ten times, so that seven oppositions required a folio volume of 700 pages. It has been said that "the discoveries of Kepler were secrets extorted from nature by the most profound and laborious research."

It was the steadiness of Haydn's application to his art which made him one of the first of modern musicians. He did not compose haphazard, but proceeded to his work regularly at a fixed hour every day. These methods, with the extremest nicety of care in labor, gave him a place by the side of Mozart, who, while possessed of the genius of facility, was nevertheless thoroughly acquainted with drudgery.

And there can be no drudgery without patience, the ability to wait, constancy in exertion with an eye on the goal. Here is a complex word which readily splits into fortitude, endurance and expectation. It is kaleidoscopic in its variations. In the saint's character patience is a lamb; in that which builds an industry or founds an empire, it is a determined bulldog.

"Genius is patience," said Davy ; "what I am I have made myself." Grant was patient: "Once his teeth got in, they never let go." The assiduous Will is first principle in achievement, whether of men or nations. The indefatigable purpose is prophet of all futures.

Put the "King on his Throne" (your Will) is no dull monarch of obstinacy. Reason defies inertia. "We say that Will is strong whose aim," remarks Th. Ribot, "whatever it be, is fixed. If circumstances change, means are changed; adaptations are successfully made, in view of new environments; but the center toward which all converges does not change. Its stability expresses the permanency of character in the individual."

All things come to the net of this rational indefatigability. As Carlyle says of Cromwell: "'that such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntington Farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged strongest man in England, requires no magic to explain it. For this kind of man, on a shoemaker's bench or in the President's chair, is always 'Rex, Regulator, Roi' : or still better, 'King, Koenig,' which means Can-ning, Able man.

And this same adaptive pursuit of the main thing has made of Cromwell's and Carlyle's England the First Power in Europe. As William Matthews has said: "The 'asthmatic skeleton' (William HI.) who disputed, sword in hand, the bloody field of Landon, succeeded at last, without winning a single great victory, in destroying the prestige of his antagonist (Louis XIV.), exhausting his resources, and sewing the seeds of his final ruin, simply by the superiority of British patience and perseverance. So, too, in the war of giants waged with Napolean, when all the great military powers of the continent went down before the iron flail of the 'child of destiny,' like ninepins, England wearied him out by her pertinacity, rather than by the brilliancy of her operations, triumphing by sheer dogged determination over the greatest master of combination the world ever saw."

It was identically this that led, in American history, to the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington, and to the last interview with Lee, a great soul, an heroic Christian fighter, a consummate " Can-ning man, Able-man."

To a Will of this sort defeats are merely new lights on reason, and difficulties are fresh gymnastics for development of colossal resolve, and discouragements are the goading stimuli of titanic bursts of energy.

By means of a cord, which passes from his artificial hand up his right coat-sleeve, then across his back, then down his left coat-sleeve to the remainder of his left arm, an American editor has achieved success. He is enabled to close the fingers of his artificial hand and grasp his pen. By keeping his left elbow bent, the tension of the string is continued, and the artificial fingers hold the pen tightly, while the editor controls its course over the paper by a movement of the upper arm and shoulder. By this means, without arms, he has learned to write with the greatest ease, and more rapidly and legibly than the average man of his age who has two good hands. For ten years, he has written with this mechanical hand practically all of the editorials, and a very large amount of the local and advertising matter that has gone into his paper."

"Suppose," said Lord Clarendon to Cyrus W. Field, talking about the proposed Atlantic Cable, "you don't succeed? Suppose you make the attempt and fail, your cable is lost in the sea, then what will you do?" "Charge it to profit and loss, and go to work to lay another." To suppose the iron Will to fail is to suppose a contradiction of terms.

Perhaps no historic character has more perfectly illustrated this element of success than William of Orange, to whom Holland the Wonderful owes more than to any other son in her brilliant family. "Of the soldier's great virtues." writes Motley, "constancy in disaster, devotion to duty, hopefulness in defeat, no man ever possessed a larger share. That with no lieutenant of eminent valor or experience, save only his brother Louis, and with none at all after that chieftain's death, William of Orange should succeed in baffling the efforts of Alva, Requesens, Don John of Austria, and Alexander Farnese, men whose names are among the most brilliant in the military annals of the world, is in itself sufficient evidence of his warlike ability."

These men great and world famed, were, however, men only. They were but Intellects working with the" King on his Throne." It is a statement which points every other man to his ultimate goal that they achieved through that common endowment, power of Will.

The conduct of life hinges on the strength and quality of Will more than any other factor. The cry for "opportunity" is essentially weak; opportunity crowds upon the imperious Will. The mediocrity of men is too largely of their own creation.

Gladstone, with large faith in the "commoners," said truly: "In some sense and in some effectual degree, there is in every man the material of good work in the world; in every man, not only in those who are brilliant, not only in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those who are dull."

Every normal educated man, deep in his heart believes that by the proper conduct of his life he can become great, or at least win a measure of success that puts him far ahead of the mediocre millions. But as "rest and inertia" is the law of matter, he gradually gives in to this law and is shackled by it. He becomes, speaking "in the large," too lazy to forge on toward the higher goals. It is here that incessant use of will power is required.

"The education of the will should be begun, contradictory as it may seem, by assuring yourself you can do what you wish to do, and assuring yourself on the principles of auto suggestion. Of course no amount of will power can accomplish impossible aims. By "what you wish to do" we mean the ambitions proper to your intelligence and place in life. Not to set yourself an impossible task, is half the battle. A mighty will with no intelligence behind it is foiled everywhere; and without scruple it becomes a menace to the world's peace. So "choose right, and more forwards."

Mechanical obedience (in the treatment of disease, and of mind as well as of body) is but one half the battle; the patient must not only will, he must believe. The whole nature of man must be brought to the task, moral as well as physical, for the seat of the disease is not confined to the body; the vital energies are wasted; the Will, often the mind, are impaired. Fidelity of the body is as nothing if not reinforced by fidelity of the soul." - Dr. Salisbury.

The Will may become diseased. Disease is "want of ease," that is, of comfort, arising from the failure of functions to act in a normal manner. It is then, "any disorder or depraved condition or element," physical, mental or moral.

A disease of the Will may be defined as a more or less permanent lack of action, normal, (a) to the individual, (b) to sound human nature in general. When a person's Will is more or less permanently disordered with reference to his normal individual activity, we have a case for medical treatment. When a person's Will is more or less permanently disordered with reference to the normal human standard, we have a case for education.

Strictly speaking, a disease of the Will is a disease of the self, inasmuch as it is the self that wills. But there are phases of the Will, practically to be regarded as diseases, which manifest themselves in the midst of otherwise normal conditions of mind, and these are, therefore, mentioned under the third division above.

Diseases of Will coming under the head of diseased mind are shown in insanity. In almost all cases of mental variation from the normal standard, the Will is more or less affected. This follows because insanity is "a prolonged departure of the individual's normal standard of thinking, feeling and acting." The standard is that of the individual, not that of normal human nature. Always the action of the Will depends largely upon the individual's way of thinking and feeling. Insanity often clearly defines, and thus separates from, diseases of Will in the so called normal mind. In cases of insanity the Will, considered as power in mind to put forth some kind of Volition, may remain with more or less strength, but is either weakened or controlled by physiological conditions or false ideas. The " King" is here dethroned. In diseases of Will which are subject to education not medical, the " King " remains in his normal position as ruler, but is weak, or erratic, or permanently irrational as to the standard of average human conduct.

There are some cases of diseased Will in the illy-developed mind which show paralysis of power, all other functions remaining normal. Thus, a sudden great emotion may paralyze the volitional action, such as fear, or anger, or joy. Inability to will may also obtain temporarily in reverie or ecstasy, or as seen in curious experiences common to most people when the self wishes to act, but seems for the time unable to put forth the necessary Volition. Such paralysis runs all the way from momentary to prolonged or total. In the latter cases we have again subjects for medical treatment, as when one person was two hours in trying to get his coat off, or was unable to take a glass of water offered.

Whether the difficulty in cases of illy-developed mind is physiological, or a mere lack of belief in one's power to will a given act, the outcome is the same. For the time being, the Will is dead, or the mind, as to willing, is in a state of deadlock. It cannot put forth a Volition in the desired direction. Hence it is evident that feeling, desire, thinking, judgment, conscience, are not always determinative of Will action. The action of mind in willing is as distinct as the action of mind in imagining, recalling, reasoning, or apprehending right and wrong. For example, why, in a state of indecision as to getting up of a cold winter morning, do you suddenly find yourself shivering on the floor and wondering how it happened that you are out of bed? It needs but to fix that state of irresolution or inability for a period, to show the mind in a deadlock of the Will.

Willing is a matter of mental states. The illy-developed self may will neither correctly nor strongly. Whether or not it can do so depends upon many things which are discussed in the Third Part of this book. Of the mind in general it is said that "willing, in intensity ranges up and down a scale in which are three degrees; wishing, purposing and determining. Weak Volition wishes, resolute Volition purposes, while strong Volition acts." But Volition does not wish; this is an act of mind. As one has said; "I may desire meat, or ease from pain; but to say that I will meat or ease from pain is not English."

Weak Volition is the Will exerting itself weakly. Strong Volition indicates mental energy in the act of willing. Resolute Volition is strong Volition continued. The facts in this connection are as follows:

When the state of mind is predominantly that of desire merely, its act in willing may be weak or indecisive. When the mind greatly approves a given desire and determines that to be purpose, its Volition becomes strong. The energy with which itself or the body obeys Volition, and if the purpose is remote, continues to obey, measures the intensity of the willing act.

Now, what are called diseases of the Will under our second division, are simply ill-conditions of the self immediately going out in the act of willing, or of the mind engaged in the realm of the sensibilities, the imagination, the reasoning faculties and the moral consciousness, as realities capable of influencing the action of the Will.

For "the ultimate reason of choice is partly in the character, that is to say, in that which constitutes the distinctive mark of the individual in the psychological sense, and differentiates him from all other individuals in the same species," and partly in possible ideals, following which he may more or less change that distinctive character.

"It is the general tone of the individual's feelings, the general tone of his organism, that is the first and true motor. If this is lacking the individual cannot exercise Will at all. It is precisely because this fundamental state is, according to the individual constitution, stable or fluctuating, continuous or variable, strong or weak, that we have three principal types of Will; strong, weak and intermittent, with all intermediate degrees and shades of difference between the three. But these differences, we repeat, spring from the character of the individual, and that depends upon his special constitution." And it is precisely because "this fundamental state is, according to the individual constitution," subject to education and improvement, so that, if fluctuating, it may become stable, if variable it may become continuous, if weak, it may become strong, that this book is written.

A good Will may or may not act quickly: that depends upon the individual's constitution; but it is marked by power when it does act.

A good Will may or may not persist: that depends upon the constitution and the dictates of personal wisdom: but when personal wisdom succeeds in influence, the Will holds steadfastly to the thing in hand.

The highest type of Will reveals "a mighty, irrepressible passion which controls all the thoughts of the man. This passion is the man, the psychic expression of his constitution as nature made it." Historic examples are seen in Caesar, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. In the next lower grade the above harmony between the outer conduct and the inner purpose is broken by various groups of tendencies, working together, but opposing the central purpose. The man is switched off the main track. Francis Bacon was called "the greatest, the wisest and the meanest of mankind," having diverged from the highest line of rectitude, and Leonardo da Vinci, following Art, yet yielded to the seductions of his inventive genius, and produced but one masterpiece.

A third grade is seen where two or more main purposes alternately sway the individual, none ruling for long, each influencing the conduct in turn. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two beings in one person, each possessing a strong Will for himself, but unable to cope with the tendencies of the other. A multiplication of such diverting purposes denotes a still further degradation of the Will.

In this division we have before us, not the mind as acting, but the willing act of the mind. Whether the Will be exercised rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, is not now the question in hand. That question refers simply to Will power, or the naked Will; just as, if an individual's muscular power were in question, the morality or the wisdom of its use might be variously estimated, itself being swift or slow, weak or strong, capable of endurance or easily exhausted. The Will is what it is, regardless of the direction or the quality of its exercise.

Disease of Will, as considered in the third class, is limited to two general forms: want of power and want of stability. But these general divisions resolve themselves into more specific cases, as follows: