This sharpening of sense discrimination is accomplished by means of the conscious attention to the various images.
The sharpening of sense discrimination with the assistance of the mental standard supplied by the various representations of former sense impressions involves a change in the sense organ itself if we include in the organ, as we must, its nerve connections with the brain and with other organs.
§ 165
This is how we may conceive the effect of mind upon body. The imagination, composed of its various qualities of images visual, auditory and other, involves the change in the sense organ and in the brain and the other organs connected. We are thus being changed continually, both body and mind, by impressions coming from without and by the reverberations of these impressions that are known as mental images.
Is it any wonder that the drama, and lately the moving picture, is recognized as one of the deepest transmuting influences in human life?
§ 166
Every sense impression is a suggestion. It is a psychological axiom that every idea tends to work itself out into an act on the part of the person that accepts the idea. This is the basis of hypnotism and any form of non-hypnotic suggestion.
It is evident then, that the sense impressions received every second of our waking life (together with the images or reverberations of these impressions that continue to live in the unconscious and appear only occasionally in consciousness) accumulate suggestive force. It is evident that every individual is subjected from birth to a continuous stream of suggestions, some of which he accepts (among them the most often repeated ones).
If these suggestions are formed of images (conscious or unconscious) of health, happiness and triumphant activity, they will be accepted and constitute a pattern for the entire life activity of this individual. And the same is true vice versa.
The impressions thus received constitute the content of the imagination and this content produces either well-being or ill-being (not to say illness) in the individual so influenced.