CHAPTER XII
YOU ARE HEADED TOWARD YOUR IDEAL
Faith and the ideal still remain the most powerful levers of progress and of happiness. Jean Finot.
If we are content to unfold the life within according to the pattern given us, we shall reach the highest end of which we are capable.
We tend to grow into the likeness of the things we long for most, think about most.
The gods we worship write their names on our faces.
Emerson.
In Hawthorne's story, "The Great Stone Face," we have an impressive illustration of the power of an ideal. One's memory holds a vivid picture of its hero, whose mind had dwelt from childhood on the local tradition that a man-child should be born whose face would resemble that of the mountain profile above the little hamlet of his nativity; and that this child would eventually become the leader and savior of the people. So whole-heartedly did he believe the legend, so earnestly did he long for its fulfillment, and so constantly did his eyes dwell on the prophetic profile, that unconsciously his own features changed until, outwardly as well as inwardly, he completely embodied the ideal which his mind had absorbed.
On every hand we see illustrations of the transforming power of the ideal. It is outpictured in the faces we see in the street, in trains and shops, in theaters and churches, wherever people congregate.
How quickly we can select from a crowd of strangers the successful business man. His initiative, leadership, executive ability, speak out of his face and manner. The same is true of men in other vocations,—of the scholar, the clergyman, the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor, the farmer, the day laborer. Go into any institution, factory, store, or other place of business and you can quickly detect the nature of the ideals outpictured in the faces, in the expression, in the manner of the people you see there. Visit Sing Sing and you will see the power of the ideal which has worked like a leaven in its inmates. The criminal suggestion, the criminal thought, the criminal ideal is reflected in the faces of those who visualized crime, planned and thought out its details long before they committed the criminal act.
Whatever we hold in our minds, dwell upon, contemplate, whatever is dominant in our motives, will stand out in our flesh so that the world can read it. Many absolutely authentic cases of stigmata are recorded in the lives of medieval saints, on whose bodies appeared an exact reproduction of all the wounds of the crucified Christ. Some of these cases were in convents and monasteries, and were the result of long and intense concentration of the mind of the subject upon the physical sufferings of Christ. Frequently the phenomena occurred after the austerities of Lent, during which the monks and nuns had focused more intensely and steadily upon the tortures of the Savior's passion and death.