pendous. CHAPTER II. The Mind (Continued). ECAUSE the mind is not an impalpable, insubstantial quantity, wholly independent of the body, its influence on our lives is the more marvellous and stu As the mind and body are so essentially correlated that no action in the one leaves the other without an impress, the permanency of their mutual activities is the more apparent. The movement of the mind does not merely glance athwart the surface of the brain, and thence fly off into space, as a sun ray seems to sport with a struggling plant. But precisely as the sun ray deposits in the growing vegetable some of its own substance and thus builds up its framework, so the glancing thought sinks into the material substance of the brain and fashions its form and essence. And precisely as the substance of the sun ray can never again be demolished, but will continue to exist in some form even after the vegetable is dissolved, so the thought that the mind impresses on the nerve substance is never lost, but continues to vibrate even after the substance of the body is dissolved in dust. In this sense, thoughts are things, as sunbeams are substance and form. A thought never dies, as no motion ever absolutely expires. Somewhere its impetus is felt throughout the infinite, and some time will be discerned amid the vast forces of the world. Thoughts are not only things; they are also incarnate characters. They become organized into living beings which betimes control us. The novel writer may create his characters, but, once created, they become his guide and inspiration. They speak from the pages to him and answer the problems that confront him. Like spiritual forms they make their entrances and exits to the solitary auditor who indites their deeds on the excited pages. They become to him as real, yea, more real, than the men and women he meets in the streets and shops. A literary critic was recently amazed to find a character he well knew, a demoralized poet, so literally portrayed in a current novel, that he was sure the writer must have known him. Yet he could not bring himself to believe that the woman who wrote the novel in view could have intimately known a character so degenerate and debased. Such a fact alone would comprom ise and defame her. Yet he made bold to ask her, for he could not imagine how the writer, an Englishwoman, could know this dreamy and unhappy wight whom she depicted as one of her conspicuous characters. What was the critic's amazement to learn from her own lips that she had never seen him in the flesh nor knew that he had a bodily existence. "Yet," she said, "he is better known to me than a man in the flesh could be he is more real, more consciously present, than any physical being I ever knew." HOW MENTAL IMAGES ARE MADE. It is within this dream world within a dream world, this deeper self of ourselves, where the master tragedies and simpler comedies of life are oft enacted. Some image rises suddenly before us, not a visual form but a figment of the brain, that commands, overawes, amazes us, as without protest we yield to its approach. This mystic monitor oft prompts us to speech and deed we little contemplated. This weird abductor oft leads us astray o'er wandering and misleading paths we had ne'er anticipated. Once do I well remember, while yet a callow youth, an uncanny experience that still perplexes me. I had committed a lengthy speech, which I was to deliver before a large audience on a stated occasion. It was my first public effort, and my teacher had coached and groomed me well for the ordeal. I had committed the piece so well that neither he nor I anticipated any treachery of memory. I succeeded in the early part of the speech admirably without a hint of failure. Then suddenly my mind became a blank; I could not recall the next sentence or any future sentence to which, in my despair, I might leap for rescue. I paused and began to feel the cold chills creeping down my spine. My instructor was sitting close behind me on the platform. Imagine my immense relief when I heard him distinctly pronounce the first word of the fugitive sentence that had so mercilessly fled from my memory! I finished then without another halt. As soon as the congratulations ceased and my teacher and I were alone I grasped his hand and thanked him heartily for his kind help. But what was my greater amazement when I learned that he was wholly ignorant of my embarrassing predicament, had not observed my hazardous pause, and disavowed having either prompted or even thought of prompting me! Whence then came that salutary voice? What uncanny spirit hovered nigh whose blessed whispering rescued me from disgrace? Was it not a submerged thought, a past experience, a buried memory, that seizing the moment of my mental vacuity, rushed in and smote the chords of my auricular organs, till they resounded with familiar speech? Was it not the echo of the inward voice I had so often heard in the silent rehearsals transmuted into audible resonance by the strain of the imagination? How often long buried memories come ranging down the corridors of the mind, startling by their weird anachronism the unsuspecting soul! For years the past experience, the shape of some emasculated thought, has lain unsuspected in the tomb of oblivion, when suddenly its resurrected form appears even more vivid than at the first impression. During the Spanish-American war, General Joe Wheeler was engaged in the attack on San Juan Hill. Suddenly he saw the Americans run with a wild rush and roar up the hill clamoring for victory. Following them he shouted: "Up and at them, boys, the Yanks are running"! For thirty years the image of the retreating forces of the Union soldiers he had seen somewhere during the Civil War lay silently entombed in the mausoleum of his soul. When, suddenly, he little suspecting, the stone of the tomb is rolled away and the vivid form of the ancient experience rises before him to deceive his suddenly bewildered vision. How this comes to pass is no longer so much a |