Power of Will E-Book

Frank Channing Haddock

• Herausgeber: Stargatebook
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

THIS book comes to you as a Well-wisher, a Teacher, and a Prophet.
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".
But remember! This book cannot think for you;
 
THAT IS THE TASK OF YOUR MIND.
 
This book cannot give you greater power of Will;
 
THAT IS FOR YOURSELF TO ACQUIRE BY THE RIGHT USE OF ITS CONTENTS.
 
This book cannot hold you to persistence in self-culture;
 
THAT IS THE TEST OF YOUR 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.
 
ALL NOW RESTS WITH YOU
 

Leseprobe

POWER OF WILL

FRANK CHANNING HADDOCK

Edition 2024 by Stargatebook

All rights are reserved

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART I - THE WILL AND SUCCESS

Chapter 01 - The Will and Its Action

Chapter 02 - Tests of Will

Chapter 03 - The Conduct of Life

Chapter 04 - Diseases Of The Will

Chapter 05 - Training Of The Will

Chapter 06 - Training Of The Will Continued: A Study Of Moods

Chapter 07 - Some General Rules

PART II - THE WILL AND SENSE CULTURE

Chapter 08 - Suggestions For Practice

Chapter 09 - Exercises For The Eye

Chapter 10 - Exercises For The Ear

Chapter 11 - Exercises In Taste

Chapter 12 - Exercises In Smell

Chapter 13 - Exercises In Touch

Chapter 14 - Exercises For The Nerves

Chapter 15 - Exercises For The Hands

Chapter 16 - Exercises In Steadiness

Chapter 17 - General Health

PART III - MENTAL REGIME

Chapter 18 - Exercises In Attention

Chapter 19 - Attention In Reading

Chapter 20 - Attention In Thinking

Chapter 21 - Exercises In Memory

Chapter 22 - Exercises In Imagination

Chapter 23 - Some Diseases Of The Imagination

PART IV - DESTRUCTION OF HABIT

Chapter 24 - Destruction Of Immoral Habits

Chapter 25 - Correction Of Other Habits

PART V - CONTACT WITH OTHER PEOPLE

Chapter 26 - The Will In Public Speaking

Chapter 27 - Control Of Others

Chapter 28 - The Child's Will

Chapter 29 - Conclusion: The Symmetrical Existence

INTRODUCTION

How To Study "Power of Will"

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, 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.

How To Use The Exercises

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 newer 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; 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.

The Only Possible Way To Develop Will 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 counselor 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

It CAN and WILL produce results for you.

Yours for Success,

PREFACE

THIS book comes to you as a Well-wisher, a Teacher, and a Prophet.

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".

But remember! This book cannot think for you;

THAT IS THE TASK OF YOUR MIND.

This book cannot give you greater power of Will;

THAT IS FOR YOURSELF TO ACQUIRE BY THE RIGHT USE OF ITS CONTENTS.

This book cannot hold you to persistence in self-culture;

THAT IS THE TEST OF YOUR 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.

ALL NOW RESTS WITH YOU

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

"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.

And so, good fortune attend both the book and the student.

Statement of General Principles

1. The goal of evolution is psychic person. Person acts behind the mask of body. The basic idea of person is self-determined unfoldment. The central factor in such unfoldment is Will. Will is a way person has of being and doing. A certain complex of our ways of being and doing constitutes mind.

Mind operates on two levels: one on that of awareness, the other on that of the subconscious. In the subconscious realm of person, the evolutionary phases of heredity, habit, established processes, exhibit. In the field of awareness, the phase of variation, both by reason of external stimulus and by reason of psychic freedom, appears.

But organized person is inherently restless. The Will exhibits the law of discontent. Restlessness of organism develops Will. Person unfolds by control and use of Will. The Will must take itself in hand for greatest personal completeness.

2. Personal life is a play between powers without and powers within the central function of Will. Personal life ends in subjection to such external powers, or rises to mastery over them.

3. The Will grows by directed exercise. Exercise involves the use of its own instruments; body, mind, the world. The only method which can strengthen and ennoble Will is that which puts into action itself in conjunction with its furniture. This method, persistently followed, is certain to give to the Will mighty power, and to enlarge and enrich person.

The Science of Our Present Ideal

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 fibers, 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 into 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.

PART I - THE WILL AND SUCCESS

Chapter 01 - The Will and Its Action

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.

Disagreements as to interpretations do not destroy facts.

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 question d. 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.

PRESENT DEFINITIONS

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.

The Will is "the Soul Itself Exercising Self Direction."

"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 the air without machinery. In such cases there may be desire to act, us 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?"

The Will and Its Action

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.

PRESENT THEORY OF WILL

"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 this case other motives have instantaneously, perhaps unconsciously, constituted Sufficient Reason for inaction, or for action opposed to that immediately before considered.

We thus perceive four steps connected with the act of willing:

1. Presentation in mind of something that may be done;

2. Presentation in mind of motives or reasons relating to what may be done;

3. The rise in mind of Sufficient Reason;

4. Putting forth in mind of Volition corresponding to Sufficient Reason

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.

FREEDOM

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 not exist, but if there is any Will in mind, it is free.

Will may be weak, but within the limitation as 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 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.

What this book shall accomplish for the reader depends solely upon himself.

Chapter 02 - Tests of Will

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.

1. In an energetic single act; here it may be called the Dynamic Will. The Will so acting is not necessarily ideal. " Rousseau," says Carlyle, "has not depth or width, nor calm force for difficulty; the first characteristic of true greatness. A fundamental error, to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion fits, though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man."

2. In a series of acts conducted with force and related intelligently to a given end; here the Static Will discharges in dynamic actions its store of accumulated power.

Acts of Will may be described as Explosive, Decisive, Impelling, Restraining, Deliberative, Persistent. These forms of Will are exhibited in connection with Physical, Mental, Moral states of the man.

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

GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF WILL

1. The strong Will is master of the body. 2. The right Will is lord of the mind's several acuities.

3. The perfect Will is high priest of the moral self

According to Your Will

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 gat 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 ordinary supposed, the body is the servant of the Will. The furious thing he 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.

According to Your Will

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 without 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 some 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 something 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 fiber 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.

"When the Will fails, the battle is lost."

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.

Here is the empire of man's true constitution.

1. Resolute Will scorns the word "impossible."

2. The strong Will of large and prolonged persistence condemns whatever is unreasonable.