Three Things

by Elinor Glyn

And to recognise it as a law you have only to use your common sense to see that it is not conceivable that thoughts can have no effect outside your own brain. They cannot be wasted and go into nothingness, they must strike some answering vibration somewhere, and it is surely rational to suppose they will strike the kindred vibration rather than some totally different one, as the Marconi messages strike the pole in tune to them. At least, it is worth while trying to believe this, because if you can it will make you happier.

Alas! I am not a scientist who can dogmatically prove every fraction of my beliefs. I only want to awaken my readers to think for themselves upon this interesting subject, for the facts are there for us all to investigate, unaided by scientists, if we will.

So without any more argument, shall we take it for granted that you are with me thus far, and have seen my point? Yes. Then let us examine what our thoughts do for us.

For example, let us suppose a man has a disease which is believed to be incurable. His thoughts tell him so constantly, and the thoughts of his friends, often expressed in words, convince him still further of his misfortune. He is certain nothing he can do will make it better, and any remedy that is applied will only meet with failure. He has made his mental picture of an incurable disease; and so he is helping the material result to accomplish itself. But, as hope springs eternal in the human breast, he still goes from doctor to doctor for fresh advice, while unconsciously nullifying the benefit he might receive from doing so by his attitude of mind in holding the belief that nothing can cure him. We must all of us know of cases like this, and have seen the gradual increase in the person’s illness.

Now supposing that the starting-point is the same; the disease certainly is there, but the man is determined not to aid and augment this state of things, so whenever the thought presents itself that he has an incurable disease he persistently banishes it and replaces it with one that he will grow well. He will be aiding that condition; he will be making himself the pole in tune to receive the answering vibrations of his mental picture. He will know that he must be drawing to himself every chance that science has up till this time of the world’s day been able to invent or discover for the betterment of such a disease as his. He will know that he is giving nature a free hand, and as far as he is able, he is opening every door to the probability that he may grow well. Now, if we admit the power of thought, we must admit it has power to go both these ways. Is it not worth while trying to think good things for ourselves, then, instead of evil ones?

It does not seem possible, as I understand some assert, that by mere thinking and believing we can cure even a broken arm. Because, although the principle may be right in its eventuality, no one on earth can be quite advanced enough yet to draw these forces to himself sufficiently strongly to demonstrate it as Christ did. But we are at the stage when, by our thoughts, we can certainly aid physical means of betterment. Thus when we or our friends are ill, it lies in our own hands whether we will aid or retard our or their recovery.

Long years ago, before any of these psychic waves were discussed or given the least credence, I remember a very celebrated American doctor telling me, as a curious fact, that he often got his patients over the crisis of typhoid fever by telling them cheerfully beforehand that the dangerous moment was passed, and they were not to worry over the seemingly worse physical sensations they were perhaps about to experience—these were only the reaction. In that way, he said, he removed the amount of fear from the mind of the patient which otherwise might have been enough to cause the extra exertion to the heart which would have proved fatal at the critical moment. The power of thought, you see, and nothing else, then saved them.

To continue this line of reasoning in mental, not physical, things. Supposing you feel angry and resentful towards some one, and you send out thoughts of hate and ill-will. The pole in tune to such feelings in that person will answer and return them to you, and a condition of evil will be created. But supposing that, when perhaps the justly angry and resentful thoughts present themselves, you replace them instantly with kind and loving ones. You will have disconnected yourself with the evil thoughts of the other person, they can no longer reach you, and if he has any good in him you will have connected yourself with that good, and so peace can be established.

All this is common sense, which is the only attitude of mind with which to approach any new suggestion that we may get benefit from it, and not through our arrogant ignorance dismiss it as nonsense, until we have proved it to be such. A hundred years ago the telephone would have been considered either as magic or the vapourings of a madman if an individual had tried to explain it. We say that “France is developing a new spirit,” we say “A wave of discontent seems to be passing over such and such a community,” we are thus unconsciously admitting the power of forces beyond the perceptible. Why cannot we instantly grasp, then, what the power of our everyday thought is doing for us, and how careful we should be in its direction to avoid augmenting the current of foolish and harmful ones—because unity is strength. There are many grains of good to be got out of all new ethical teachings, if only they can be sifted by common sense. The unfortunate part is, that very often it is only the faddists who expound them, and they go off at a tangent. One reads several pages of illuminating matter, and then, perhaps, one comes upon a chapter devoted to proving that mankind must train itself to live upon nuts or uncooked vegetables! Or that the only way to learn concentration is for the pupil to school himself mentally to stare for so many minutes at an imaginary spot in the solar plexus!

Common sense revolts, although many may not be sufficiently trained to make the deduction that if God, the omnipotent, original, all-dominating dynamo, gave the flesh of bird, beast and fish, and the fruits and vegetables of the earth for mankind to feed upon, it is a little ridiculous for one sect to eliminate as food all but the special part of these aliments of which it approves. Thus, common sense being affronted, all the rest of the teaching is likely to fall upon stony ground and only be received by the faddists in tune to this particular argument. No theory for the betterment of mankind will succeed now with the mass of people or make any lasting mark upon time unless its basic principle can stand practical dissection.