Three Things

by Elinor Glyn

The wave of complete materialism which passed over Europe during what we call the Victorian period discouraged any personal investigation of forces beyond what could actually be proved by the senses. Numberless examples of natural phenomena were laughed to scorn as the illusions of the ignorant. People read their Bibles, wherein there are countless instances shown of the power of thought, and never dreamed of applying the teaching to themselves. How such a materialistic age ever accepted Christ’s miracles is a matter for wonderment, although now, looked at from the point of view of those who have investigated the currents of nature, the miracles are merely a proof of Jesus’ divine understanding of these currents and forces in their greatest measure. We modern people are only as yet at the experimental stage, and hedged in by timidity and custom, but there is no reason why we should not advance if we desire to do so.

Think how the power of thought showed itself about the Titanic disaster! There is no need now to go over its hysterical effects upon us on land, how in our misery and anxiety we praised and blamed from excitable imagination, before any actual facts could be known to justify either course. But let us instead try to imagine what in its glorious form it did upon that great ship on the night of her overwhelming.

Everything seems to have been calm and in fair order. Why? Because it has been now proved that the majority of those on board did not think the ship could sink. Only a limited number of men knew that she not only could, but would, and these glorious and splendid souls did their duty to the last, with the awful knowledge of certain death in their hearts. Their names should be written in letters of gold—heroes, indeed! But, meanwhile, the power of thought had kept all calm, and had permitted the saving of the women and children without panic.

Think for a moment what would have happened if the passengers of all classes had been aware, from the first moment of the collision, that all were bound to go down who could not find places in the boats. The power of thought would then have created a mad panic of fear which no officers’ pistols could have kept in check, and which might have produced a rush upon the lifeboats which would have swamped them all. But as it was, the power of thought in the few individuals who realised the general peril, was used by them in a godlike suppression of their own emotion, which produced an answering vibration of calm in the majority under their care.

I do not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a concrete illustration of what I wish to write about—the power of thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each individual for the benefit of the community—not from the desire to use this opportunity to circulate propaganda for any of the new ethical teachings, but simply from a common-sense point of view to see what good we can get out of a belief that is, I suppose, common to them all.

Now let us consider what most of us do actually know about this power of thought. We all are aware that no picture can be painted, no machinery invented, before a clear vision of it has been realised in the creator’s brain. Not a single conscious action can be put into motion and force without its having first occurred to the imagination. The painter’s hand and brush would be of no avail undirected by his brain or mind, which has first mentally visualised what it wishes to create in fact. Draw the analogy from this, and you will see that what you think about must have an enormous bearing upon your life. If thought, when inspired by desire, is strong enough to cause the hand to reproduce the vision of the imagination of the artist, this is an incontestable proof that thought is a very strong force indeed. You will agree with this if you—each individual who is reading these words—begin to examine yourself with truth.

Admitted, then, that you perceive the force of thought. Now consider what miserable thinking is likely to bring you. It, according to the analogy above, can only eventually attract for you in fact the miserable conditions that you have dwelt upon in imagination. If, on the contrary, you think constantly of fine and prosperous things, you must by this reasoning, be connecting yourself with the currents which can bring them in their material form.

Therefore, every time you say “I am ill,” or think “I am ill,” are you not helping the illness to materialise? because the power of thought, which you cannot deny as the initial cause of every action, has then been turned to aid the condition of ill health.

Supposing for some cause you really are ill, why then help this evil state to augment by your thoughts? Rather impede its progress as far as you can by creating good-thought conditions.

You may reply, “But I am constantly doing this, and yet nothing good comes.” Pause and use your common sense by remembering that for twenty—thirty—forty years perhaps, when you did not analyse matters, you were laying up for yourself numberless stumbling-blocks by wrong thinking, which according to the law we are discussing must be surmounted before you can start on a clear road. And the reason why you do not immediately receive the result of your good thoughts is that you are still under the action of your bad ones. But if you recognise this law of the power of thought, you need not incur for yourself any further debts to pay.