618 Transac tions. — Miscellaneous. 



ledge that with the cultivation of the nerve forces too great 

 preponderance must be given to their exercise, and this at 

 the expense of other parts of the human constitution. 



Is it possible to so govern the mind and will that they 

 may have a good effect upon the body instead of ill, and may 

 recuperate instead of wasting the physical powers? I believe 

 that it is so possible, and will proceed to lay before you my 

 reasons for considering that in many cases our maladies and 

 weaknesses are the effects of causes within our own control. 

 We are startled year by year with the increasing lists of 

 victims of certain diseases to which the human frame is liable. 

 It is true that skilful surgery has advanced to such perfection 

 that operations once deemed almost certainly fatal are now 

 not only performed daily, but are executed with the very 

 slightest risk to life. On the other hand, diseases such as 

 cancer, tuberculosis, Bright's disease, and other scourges of 

 modern life, appear to be continually widening their fields 

 of advance. My impression is that, although deadly maladies 

 cannot be cured by any action of the mind if they have once 

 obtained firm foothold, even as it would be impossible for 

 the mind to perform a difficult surgical operation, still the 

 preparatory processes, the seed-time if not the harvest of 

 death, can be beneficially neutralised to a degree at present 

 hardly understood. 



Here W'e must plainly distinguish at once between direct 

 thought and the general habit of thinking — i.e., feeling. 

 Of course, we know that our thoughts are sometimes con- 

 ditioned by the state of the bodily health. For instance, the 

 man whose liver is out of order will see things in a jaundiced 

 manner ; he will almost certainly be a pessimist ; while the san- 

 guine man — the man who never knew he had a liver, whose 

 blood gushes healthily through his veins — will think cheerfully 

 of life and its surroundings. What we do not recognise so 

 clearly is that by thinking directly, by effort of the will, by 

 concentration of the desire in a certain 4 direction, we may 

 influence our general state of feeling, and so produce a 

 reflex action on the bodily functions. If we allow our 

 thoughts to dwell upon gloomy subjects — some twopenny 

 loss, some fancied slight, some possible calamity that may 

 never arrive — are we not inducing a habit of feeling that 

 may more or less prepare our bodies to act as seed-beds of 

 disease ? On the other hand, is it not possible, by concen- 

 trating our force of will into meditation on brighter subjects, 

 by leaving the contemplation of evil — especialh' other peoj^le's 

 evil, and the sinfulness of our neighbours — we may make the 

 blood flow more healthily and banish the black humours for 

 which we have blamed our innocent hvers, and, indeed, from 

 which the poor liver itself may be suffering ? 



