"Men imagine," says Emerson, "that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue and vice emit a breath every moment."
With children, above all, it is not sufficient to refrain from the expression of negative ideas; we must avoid harbouring them altogether. Unless we possess a bright positive mind the suggestions derived from us will be of little value.
The idea is gaining ground that a great deal of what is called hereditary disease is transmitted from parent to child, not physically but mentally—that is to say, by means of adverse suggestions continually renewed in the child's mind. Thus if one of the parents has a tendency to tuberculosis, the child often lives in an atmosphere laden with tuberculous thoughts. The little one is continually advised to take care of its lungs, to keep its chest warm, to beware of colds, etc., etc. In other words, the idea is repeatedly presented to its mind that it possesses second-rate lungs. The realisation of these ideas, the actual production of pulmonary tuberculosis is thus almost assured.
But all this is no more than crystallised common-sense. Everyone knows that a cheerful mind suffuses health, while a gloomy one produces conditions favourable to disease. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine," says the writer of the Book of Proverbs, "but a broken spirit drieth the bones." But this knowledge, since it lacked a scientific basis, has never been systematically applied. We have regarded our feelings far too much as effects and not sufficiently as causes. We are happy because we are well; we do not recognise that the process will work equally well in the reverse direction—that we shall be well because we are happy. Happiness is not only the result of our conditions of life; it is also the creator of those conditions. Autosuggestion lays weight upon this latter view. Happiness must come first. It is only when the mind is ordered, balanced, filled with the light of sweet and joyous thought, that it can work with its maximum efficiency. When we are habitually happy our powers and capabilities come to their full blossom, and we are able to work with the utmost effect on the shaping of what lies without.
Happiness, you say, cannot be ordered like a chop in a restaurant. Like love, its very essence is freedom. This is true; but like love, it can be wooed and won. It is a condition which everyone experiences at some time in life. It is native to the mind. By the systematic practice of Induced Autosuggestion we can make it, not a fleeting visitant, but a regular tenant of the mind, which storms and stresses from without cannot dislodge. This idea of the indwelling happiness, inwardly conditioned, is as ancient as thought. By autosuggestion we can realise it in our own lives.
CHAPTER VII
THE GENERAL FORMULA
We saw that an unskilled golfer, who imagines his ball is going to alight in a bunker, unconsciously performs just those physical movements needful to realise his idea in the actual. In realising this idea his Unconscious displays ingenuity and skill none the less admirable because opposed to his desire. From this and other examples we concluded that if the mind dwells on the idea of an accomplished fact, a realised state, the Unconscious will produce this state. If this is true of our spontaneous autosuggestions it is equally true of the self-induced ones.
It follows that if we consistently think of happiness we become happy; if we think of health we become healthy; if we think of goodness we become good. Whatever thought we continually think, provided it is reasonable, tends to become an actual condition of our life.