The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

Some time ago, during one of our periodical business crises, some newspapers made merry over a statement of President Wilson that the condition of the United States, illustrated by the fact that eighty thousand freight cars were at the time side-tracked along the lines of one of our great railroads alone, could be changed by psychology. One of these papers sarcastically suggested that if we should take a dose of the psychology remedy and go to sleep somewhere in the misty, cloudy lands of theory, and dream that those eighty thousand empty freight cars were moving, we should see them move.

Now, in spite of newspaper skepticism, I believe that the psychology remedy if applied in every financial, business, or other crisis would prove absolutely effective. If all the people of this country would persistently hold a mental attitude of faith in our prosperity, which is the birthright of the inhabitants of this land of plenty; if they would have faith that our vast resources would enable us to carry on business, regardless of conditions in Europe or elsewhere, and if they would act in accordance with their faith, there would be no idle freight cars, no lack of work, no lack of money at any time.

It is the mental attitude of the people of the United States that causes financial panics and recurrent "hard times." And there is something dead wrong in a state of mind which produces periodical crises, intervals of nationwide stagnation in a land with resources great enough to make every one of its citizens rich, in a land where the State of Texas alone could give every one of them a better living than the majority get to-day.

Before we can make business conditions stable we must have faith in the stability of our limitless wealth, in the opulence of the earth over which the Creator has given us control. We have got to hold the prosperous vision, to see better times with the mental eye, not dimly in the future, but now, to have more faith in our Maker, in our nation, in ourselves individually.

Why, if we analyze the matter, we will see that our unparalleled national prosperity has been built up largely by psychology. Its foundations had their root in the faith of our forefathers, in their belief in our country's possibilities.

We all know that faith has preceded every achievement in the world's history. The activities of the whole country to-day are based upon psychology, upon the mental attitude, the faith, the hope, the expectation of its inhabitants.

"Without a vision the people perish," and when our vision, our faith, shrivels, when it is obscured or displaced by doubt, fear, anxiety, lack of confidence, all our activities suffer accordingly.

With abundant crops, with a lowering death rate and increasing longevity of our people, with constantly growing educational facilities, America ought to register every day of every year a high water point of prosperity. But when a large portion of the people lack faith in the future, when, from time to time, uncertainty is in the air, when everybody is doubting and fearing, waiting to see what is coming next, of course business will stagnate. It will follow the prevailing mental attitude, hesitate, waver, doubt, stand still like the idle freight cars.

We are just beginning to see that faith is as much a real force as is electricity. It is faith that removes mountains—mountains of difficulty, of opposition, of doubt, of distrust. It clears the track of all obstructions. It makes stepping stones of stumbling blocks. Faith is the most powerful, the most sublime of human attributes. Without it the bottom would drop out of civilization. It is the fundamental principle of life. Faith is the basis of health, of success, of happiness, of love itself. It believes in, hopes, trusts, clings to the loved one in spite of all faults and sins. It is faith that heals, that achieves, that hopes. The very feeling of harmony between ourselves and our God, that which gives assurance, a sense of protection and of safety which nothing else can give, is born of our faith in Him, in whom we live and move and have our being.

We must realize and appreciate more and more our divinity, the fact that we are made in the image of our Creator and that we must partake consciously of His qualities. Then we will have more faith in our powers. When we are conscious of having qualities like His we can rise above apparent limitations, above hereditary weakness. It is all preëminently a question of holding the right thought—the thought that builds, the thought that creates, that produces, the thought that we have within us unlimited possibilities, which can be realized. A sublime self-faith is absolutely indispensable to all great achievement.