FORGING 
 PASSION 
 
 l?iliKZi^33i 
 
 Mary Everest Boole 
 

 Fnuc. 
 
 LIBRARY. 
 
THE FORGING OF PASSION 
 INTO POWER 
 
THE 
 
 FORGING OF PASSION 
 INTO POWER 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY EVEREST BOOLE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 
 1911 
 
EDUC 
 
 PSYCH. 
 
 UBRARY 
 
If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." 
 
 Psalm 139. 
 Forge and transform my passion into power." 
 
 Frederic W. H. Myers. 
 
 374153 
 
TLO 
 H. M. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 FRANCES OBRENOVITCH 
 
 ADVISER OF 
 
 THE TEMPTED AND DESPAIRING 
 
 IN A LAND OF SLAVES 
 
On the few occasions when you and I have 
 met^ we have disagreed on nearly every point 
 of which we have spoken. 
 
 'But we are linked together by a three- 
 fold cord. We have in common the friend- 
 ship of '''■Frances Ohrenovitch" and also 
 that nostalgia of the abyss and that passion 
 for the despised and rejected which have been 
 the common basis of character of the greatest 
 saints and the most abandoned sinners^ the 
 most hopeless mental wrecks and the most 
 eminent scientific discoverers of all ages. 
 
 31. E. ». 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 1. INTRODUCTORY .... 
 
 2. THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 3. ECONOMY OF FORCE 
 
 4. DESTRUCTIVE MANIA 
 
 5. SUICIDAL MANIA .... 
 
 6. MORALITY AND ART 
 
 7. SEX INSTINCTS .... 
 
 8. PROTECTIVE INSTINCTS . 
 
 9. BALANCE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 
 
 10. THE INVERT CONSCIOUSNESS . 
 
 11. THE FIXING OF GOOD HABITS 
 
 12. CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND 
 
 13. HYPERESTHESIA — ADUMBRATIONS — HALLUCINA 
 
 TIONS— HYSTERIA 
 
 14. MOBILITY AND DECISION 
 
 15. THE STEADYING OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 16. TEACHER-LUST .... 
 
 17. THE NEW IDEA OF ORDER . 
 
 II 
 
 13 
 
 21 
 28 
 32 
 
 34 
 42 
 46 
 55 
 65 
 72 
 
 85 
 
 92 
 
 III 
 
 115 
 132 
 
 136 
 141 
 
 M5 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In matters of external advantage the poor must feed 
 on the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table. In 
 the mental science of how to suspend passion so as to 
 convert it into power, the inverse rule holds good. Or 
 perhaps it would be a truer statement of the case if we 
 said that the same rule holds good in both realms, but 
 the classification is inverted : the rich in the goods of 
 this world have to ask for crumbs which fall from the 
 table of the others. 
 
 Many of the world's wealthy ones appear to be sin- 
 cerely desirous to give to us more than crumbs of their 
 external advantages. But there seems to be some 
 insuperable obstacle in the way. The poor in money, 
 health, sanity, culture, and reputation are always with 
 us, and the other poor, the poor in the science of forging 
 passion into power, are with us too. 
 
 Perhaps one reason why the world's favoured ones 
 find it difficult to reach us either to give or to receive 
 effectively, is that we, the poor, do not reach each other. 
 Perhaps if we were more generous to each other, the 
 current thus set flowing might draw with it the possi- 
 bility of effective currents being set flowing across 
 barriers made by worldly prosperity. 
 13 
 
1 4 Preface 
 
 I hope in this volume to introduce to each other 
 various kinds of persons who, in various ways, have 
 successfully learned the great art of converting passion 
 into power. 
 
 If, or in so far as, any of the world's favoured ones 
 should at some future day read, and in any manner 
 profit by, the following pages, what they receive will be 
 a gift from the poor to the rich, from the sick to the 
 healthy, from those who have lacked the advantages of 
 education to those who have enjoyed them, from patients 
 in lunacy wards to commissioners in lunacy, from over- 
 worked and struggling illegitimate children to their 
 sheltered and well-cared-for legitimate cousins, from 
 Asia to Europe, from Celts to Anglo-Saxons, from de- 
 spised and oppressed races to their conquerors, from the 
 hooligan class to the respectable, from Jews to Christen- 
 dom, from benighted and superstitious orthodox Jews to 
 their liberal and enlightened co-religionists, from every- 
 thing that is despised and rejected to whosoever is 
 honoured by the world. 
 
 But for the present we, the less favoured ones, are 
 going to have a little talk together. 
 
 Of those who have assisted in accumulating the in- 
 formation contained in this work, such as are still in the 
 flesh can claim their share of credit (or discredit?) if 
 they like to do so. There is a word or two that must 
 be said about some who have passed into the Silent 
 Land. 
 
 Nicolas Antoine Boulanger. — Left school a hopeless 
 dunce, who could not learn algebra. Died in his fortieth 
 year, a good mathematician, and a famous engineer. 
 Was one of the Enyclopaedists. Left behind him writ- 
 
Preface 1 5 
 
 ings from which it appears evident that he had recovered 
 the Ancient Secret Method used in Egypt and India 
 for training scientific men, engineers, and prophets. 
 
 John Boole. — Made shoes, shortly after the date of the 
 French Revolution, in an underground and sometimes 
 very damp cellar in London. Kept a French dictionary 
 in the drawer with his tools. Set up a shoemaker's 
 shop in Lincoln. After his death, his widow, being 
 congratulated on the achievements of her son, a dis- 
 tinguished mathematician, replied : " Yes ; George is a 
 clever lad. But did you know his father, sir ? He was 
 a philosopher." 
 
 George Everest. — Went to India at sixteen years old, 
 in the service of the East India Company. Put himself 
 under the tuition of natives of India. Learned from 
 them Oriental languages, religion, and philosophy, and 
 taught himself European mathematics from books. 
 Became Surveyor-General of India. 
 
 George, soft of the above-named Johti Boole. — Earned 
 his own living from the age of fifteen and a half. Was 
 prevented from going to college by the necessity of 
 assisting to maintain his parents and younger brothers. 
 Became distinguished in logic and mathematics. 
 
 James Hinton. — Began life at about fifteen as cashier 
 in a woollen-draper's shop. Wrote books on morph- 
 ology and psychology that considerably affected the 
 trend of science. 
 
 David Marks. — Was brought up at the Jews' Free 
 School, and earned his own living from the age of four- 
 teen. In his youth no honourable careers were open to 
 Jews, except as teachers among their own people, and, 
 being really much attracted by the New Testament, the 
 
1 6 Preface 
 
 brilliant boy was terribly tempted for some years to 
 make a profession of Christianity in order to open up for 
 himself a possibility of entering some university. But 
 by the age of twenty he had finally taken his resolution ; 
 to use his own expression, he had decided that " there 
 was life in the old ship yet." He came to the conclusion 
 that the best Christianity for a Jew is to conduct himself 
 and his ritual so that Jesus Christ, if He were on earth, 
 might worship beside him with satisfaction. Never were 
 more significant words uttered in London than when 
 David Marks said to his congregation at Berkeley Street : 
 " If the Founder of Christianity came back to earth, 
 where would He be to-day? In church? No, but here 
 with us, repeating the Shemang Israel as a good Jew 
 should, and as He did when on earth." 
 
 On his ninetieth birthday David Marks received con- 
 gratulations and thanks from Jews all over the world 
 for having pioneered the way for Israel from slavery and 
 superstition towards culture and progress. 
 
 But the reformer, in his anxiety to purify the old 
 Hebrew ritual from superstitious and misleading accre- 
 tions, left out several elements of overwhelming import- 
 ance to our knowledge of the methods of culture in 
 use in the Sacred Past where men were trained in the 
 science of prophecy. These elements have mercifully 
 been preserved for us by old-fashioned Jews in Russia 
 and Poland and the Ghetto quarters of East London : — 
 " This strange people, wading through the ages, bearing 
 on their shoulders the burden of their great trust." 
 
 Lucy Everest Boole. — Never at any college. Learned 
 chemistry in order to qualify to act as dispenser or 
 shop assistant in pharmacy. Became Fellow of the 
 
Preface 1 7 
 
 Institute of Chemistry, Lecturer on Chemistry, and 
 Head of the Chemical Laboratories at the London 
 School of Medicine for Women. 
 
 " Frances',' only child of an Irish gentleman of good 
 family who died early, leaving her a ward of the English 
 Court of Chancery, During an illness which supervened 
 on the death of her mother, she was found, by a jury 
 consisting of two or three English doctors (who were 
 not her peers), guilty of two crimes, viz., incapacity 
 for taking care of money, and the habit of using Oriental 
 imagery to express thoughts too subtle or too sublime 
 to find expression in ordinary English. She was 
 imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. The familiarities and 
 spiritual promiscuity of such places being intolerable to 
 her sensitive instincts, she took refuge in a mode of self- 
 protection often resorted to in such cases : she set up 
 a claim to be called Queen, and surrounded herself with 
 a sort of mock court etiquette. She took the title of 
 " Queen of Servia " (Land of Slaves), and the signature 
 " Frances Obrenovitch," and occupied herself in studying 
 psychology and in acting as a sort of confidante, con- 
 fessor, or chaplain to such of the patients (and they were 
 not a few) as she could induce to listen to her exhorta- 
 tions. I met her when she had been already four years 
 in captivity; she was, I think, the grandest spiritual 
 force which ever came into my life. She was so little 
 under any real delusion about her title that from the 
 time she realised my respect for her spiritual instincts 
 she forbade me to kiss her hand, or to address her as 
 "your Majesty." She suffered terribly from the constant 
 companionship of lunatics, some of whom were vicious, 
 and of doctors and nurses, all of whom were ignorant of 
 
 2 
 
1 8 Preface 
 
 psychology, and, though kindly and well-meaning, often 
 hideously irreverent. I offered to procure her freedom 
 by taking out a certificate as lunatic attendant and 
 getting her consigned to my care. The temptation to 
 consent was evidently very great. But she had scruples 
 about hampering my work and career ; and, after a few 
 days of heroic struggle with herself, she not only refused 
 to accept my offer, but gave me to understand that the 
 continuance of our friendship depended on my abstain- 
 ing in future from putting such temptation in her way. 
 To her I owe nearly all that I know about adumbrations 
 and nostalgias ; about the conditions under which 
 hallucinations become fixed, and the manner in which 
 they can be dispersed ; about the formation of protective 
 optical illusions and the prevention of dangerous delu- 
 sions. She gave me my first clear insight into the 
 systematic use of Oriental imagery as an organic 
 scientific notation. To her also I owe — though without 
 her knowledge — my clear perception of how a person 
 like myself may be led into crime ; for, had Frances ever 
 for one hour so far lost her head as to express a wish to 
 be avenged, there is no telling what I might not have 
 been tempted to do. But Frances never lost her self- 
 control or her spiritual judgment; her own influence 
 over others gave to her both an awe-struck sense of her 
 own responsibility, and a respectful sympathy with all 
 persons in any kind of responsible position. Though 
 revolutionary in every fibre of her being, she would 
 never allow a disrespectful word to be said of any official 
 person in her presence without rebuking it. 
 
 " Vengeance is Mine," says the Eternal Pulsator. 
 Had Frances remained at large, she would have been 
 
Preface 19 
 
 known only as a pious and well-meaning, but somewhat 
 eccentric, lady. By incarcerating her, her guardian 
 made of her a valuable factor in that great chain of 
 inter-racial sympathies which is so rapidly making all 
 races subject to the British crown aware of certain 
 subtle dangers to which they expose themselves by 
 trusting English officials. 
 
 There was another woman, whose name shall be 
 wrapped in silence. She was the "illegitimate" 
 daughter of a well-to-do man. She refused to accept 
 from her "honourable" father the insolent patronage 
 which such men offer to those who have inherited 
 their own pride; preferring to face the struggle for 
 life in a world of strangers. She bequeathed, to 
 some who have helped me, a large share of hereditary 
 intellectual power, and a determination to base a true 
 morality on solid fact, and not to be satisfied with any 
 imitation constructed of parchments tied together with 
 red tape, smeared over with white paint, and stuffed 
 with corruption. 
 
 MARY EVEREST BOOLE. 
 
THE FORGING OF PASSION 
 INTO POWER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 This is a book for those who have leisure to think. 
 To the hasty reader and the careless critic it has 
 nothing to say, beyond bidding them God-speed in the 
 perusal of any kind of literature which suits their state 
 of mind. 
 
 I am writing for such persons as these : — 
 
 For the voyager to far countries, who can take one or 
 two small volumes in his small luggage. It may help 
 him to prepare for a better understanding of the relation 
 between the people he is leaving behind and those 
 whose acquaintance he is about to make. 
 
 For the young mother, who has a little time to read 
 on Sunday evening after her baby has gone to sleep, 
 and plenty of time to think over what she has read 
 while she makes its clothes or holds it to her breast. 
 It may help her to steer the child into something like 
 its true place in the world in which it will have to live. 
 
 For the cloistered sister who is beginning to wonder 
 why she cut herself off from the joys which other 
 
22 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 women prize — provided, that is to say, that she has 
 the courage to ask the question of God, and wait to 
 hear His answer ; not thinking it necessary to stun 
 herself, as the heathen do, with vain repetitions of pious 
 statements which she does not believe but only thinks 
 she ought to believe. 
 
 For the lady of the demi-monde'. — provided she has 
 the courage to face her situation calmly in the morning 
 hours; not thinking it necessary to stun herself all 
 day long with noise, drink, affectations, and the strum- 
 ming of unmusical tunes on some unmusical instrument. 
 
 For the man or woman condenmed by circumstances 
 either to a life of monotonous drudgery or to one of 
 dreary idleness, or to a still more dreary round of so- 
 called social duties, which are not really due to anyone, 
 and of so-called social pleasures which do not please. 
 
 For the man who knows he has something to tell the 
 world, but has not found his way to any adequate mode 
 of utterance. 
 
 For the paralytic confined to his chair. 
 
 For the felon confined in a gaol. 
 
 And, last and chiefly, for the patient in the lunatic 
 asylum. 
 
 For any and all who have, temporarily or finally, 
 drifted out of the main current of social life into some 
 stagnant (and perhaps muddy) backwater. 
 
 Whoever the reader is, he or she will find the under- 
 standing of the book much facilitated by interposing at 
 least one night between the end of one chapter and 
 the beginning of the next. 
 
 Dear friends, never suppose that, because you your- 
 selves are unable to swim in mid-channel, therefore 
 
Introductory 23 
 
 you are cut off from the great joy of delivering your 
 message to your fellow-men and women. 
 
 Thoughts are facts ; and they can pass through 
 barriers impenetrable to human bodies. 
 
 Let me help you, if I can, to understand yourselves. 
 If you once do that, believe me, you will somehow 
 succeed in getting the world to understand you. 
 
 I want to help you, if you will allow me, to learn 
 the art (for it is an art, quite as much so as music and 
 painting) of the orderly arrangement of thought. 
 
 It is a common mistake to suppose that the Art of 
 Thinking can be learned only by thinking of what are 
 called "learned" topics. This is not the case. The 
 finest music is made not by clashing together heavy 
 masses of gems or of precious metals, but by " scraping 
 the guts of a cat with hairs from the tail of a horse." 
 But you must do the scraping according to the Laws 
 of Music. 
 
 The Art of Thinking can be learned, and practised, 
 with very homely and even unbeautiful material to 
 think about. It is said that the finest poetry in the 
 Yiddish language was written by a man who toiled 
 seventeen hours a day in a factory and lived in a 
 hideous tenement of New York. 
 
 A man in prison once wrote to a woman outside : — 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make. 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds, innocent and quiet, take 
 That for a hermitage." 
 
 People who are well-to-do, free and cultured, and 
 who live in beautiful surroundings, admire those lines 
 
24 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 and find enjoyment in reading them ; but you, who 
 are in prison, say, and say truly, that they bring no 
 message of comfort to you ; stone walls do make a 
 prison for you, and you see no use in pretending to 
 deny it. 
 
 You are quite right. Those who offer you things 
 written by other people by way of consolation, mistake, 
 it seems to me, the whole lie of the situation. Can you 
 imagine the delight of writing those verses ; of feeling 
 the music of them flow into one from some Source Unseen, 
 and through one out into the world ? The material out 
 of which the man built up his verses consisted of: — stone 
 walls and iron bars. Whatever the material, the joy of 
 the artist in the act of creating harmony under 
 inspiration is the same. 
 
 " I am a lonely man," said he ; 
 
 " The storm-tossed mariner, alone, 
 Echoing back the wild wind's moan, 
 Breathes not my loneliness," said he. 
 " All alone ; all unknown ; 
 Like the sun, like the moon." 
 
 "There is," I said, "a loneliness 
 That lights the soul like fireflies 
 Dim twinkling under darkening skies ; 
 'Tis near akin to happiness. 
 All alone it hath shone. 
 Like the sun, like the moon." 
 
 " I'm not a manly man," said he ; 
 " A worm upon the path, I fear 
 The fight for life is too severe. 
 They've crushed me under foot," said he. 
 " All alone, nothing won, 
 Myself I seem to shun." 
 
Introductory 25 
 
 "A worm there is, a worm," said I, 
 
 " That strives to ghmmer on the earth, 
 A light for all. Is that not worth 
 A life as in the changeful sky? 
 
 Shines the moon, shines the sun 
 Not unknown unto One." 
 
 The writer of these lines had no literary skill, and 
 could not write good rhyme and rhythm ; but he could, 
 and did, weave the symptoms and symbols of mere 
 melancholic passion into exquisitely organic imagery ; 
 he translated the sense of hopeless loneliness into the use- 
 ful solitude of the light-house, and the sensation of being 
 abject like a worm into the vision of a glow-worm. Do 
 you think he felt abject or lonely while he was writing 
 these lines ? His passion had become transformed into 
 power. 
 
 Perhaps some reader may feel inclined to say that his 
 mind is neither innocent nor quiet ; that he has nothing 
 to think of except anger, hatred, and unsatisfied lusts. 
 That is not quite true of anybody ; still, let that pass. 
 I am neither parson nor moralist; it is no part of my 
 function to tell you that such passions are wicked. They 
 are, in their own way, not bad material for art. If you 
 have nothing to think about except stormy passions 
 and desires, think about them ; but think about them 
 truly according to the laws of your own thinking 
 machinery. We cannot all acquire skill in weaving 
 words into harmonious verse, but we can all be artists 
 in thought and group ideas harmoniously. Whatever 
 you have to think about, learn to think according to the 
 Laws of Thought. 
 
 If you are on a long voyage across a monotonous 
 
2 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 ocean, learn to think artistically, not only about the sea 
 and sky and the sailors' work, but also about the fact of 
 monotony. 
 
 If you have become a criminal after being brought up 
 " respectably," as it is called, learn to think artistically 
 about the relations and the contrast between what is 
 called respectability and what is called crime. 
 
 If, on the contrary, you were brought up by thief 
 parents, and have nothing in your memory but a life of 
 more or less successful dodging of the police, learn to 
 think artistically about the relations between your class 
 and the police : — there is plenty that needs thinking out 
 in that matter, and the world would be the better for 
 hearing what you have to say about it. 
 
 And you, young mother, you at least have plenty of 
 thought-material close at hand, in your baby's cries and 
 smiles. He will begin to cut his teeth presently, and 
 the first use he will wish to make of them will be to 
 bite you. You have to decide whether you will allow 
 him to do so or not. Decide it carefully, according to 
 what you know of your child's heredity ; not forgetting 
 to take into account the amount of your own stamina 
 and power of endurance. Do not forget that, in this 
 matter more perhaps than in any other — 
 
 " As we chose in small things always 
 We must choose at last in great ; 
 For 'tis then the gods deny us 
 Our own hand upon our fate." ' 
 
 Now you are going to ask me whether or not you 
 shall let baby cut his teeth upon your flesh ! How 
 
 1 Mary Ellen Hinton. 
 
Introductory 27 
 
 should I know? I am an artist, not a quack-doctor 
 with a universal prescription to suit all constitutions. 
 Whether a baby ought or ought not to bite his mother, 
 depends, as I said, on his heredity and the extent of 
 her powers of endurance ; also on her and the father's 
 conception of the meaning and use of family life. On 
 the father's conception especially. I am trying to teach 
 you, not a code suited to all families, but the Art of 
 Thinking on the facts presented to you by your own 
 life and circumstances. 
 
 And you, whom the world calls mad, you at least 
 can have no lack of material for thought. And you 
 well know — some of you — that the so-called "sane" 
 world is ignorant of much which you have seen, and 
 hideously irreverent to much that you feel to be sacred. 
 Pull yourselves together, friends, and learn to deliver 
 your message in such-wise that the outer world must 
 listen, and revere. You do not, you cannot, doubt the 
 value of your own message to the world ; many of you 
 are certified " megalomaniacs " because you cannot be 
 got to disbelieve it. What you most long for is 
 that someone in the outer world should believe in it 
 with you. Courage, friends ; I believe in it, — because 
 I have seen. Now, therefore, let us, who understand 
 each other, learn some logic together, and write so 
 that the world shall understand something of which 
 you have caught a glimpse, and which you know to be 
 part of the scientific framework round which must be 
 organised anything which could claim the right to 
 describe itself as an organic art of thinking. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 For learning the art of the orderly arrangement of 
 thought, no previous^Kv^O^ledge is necessary of logic 
 or of any science whatever. Whac ib necessary is a 
 willingness on the part of the readers not to iO^r^t but 
 to aid the writer in furnishing their minds with simple 
 imagery, derived from various departments of human 
 life, including science. 
 
 The imagery will be used, not in order to prove any 
 doctrine, but to facilitate the orderly arrangement of 
 thought material. When we are trying to put our 
 household goods in order, we find it useful to provide 
 ourselves with convenient shelves, racks, and hooks on 
 which to store them ; when we are trying to put our 
 thoughts in order, we find it advisable to fasten up in 
 our memories a convenient framework of imagery on 
 which we can register our thought-processes. 
 
 Let us think of Time as a mass of water in a pool or 
 
 tank. That is to say, Time Past is the water. Time 
 
 Future shall be represented by the air above it. Water 
 
 is continually coming slowly in at the top of the pool, 
 
 and trickling away below into cavernous depths out 
 
 of sight. 
 
 The surface of the pool represents Time Present. 
 28 
 
The Training of the Imagination 29 
 
 Now let us represent the consciousness of an individual 
 by a stick floating at the surface of the pool. On one 
 end of the stick is written "Emotion and Sensation"; 
 on the other, " Action and Influence." 
 
 Please get this idea fixed up in your mind, before 
 you read any further. Little precautions of this kind 
 go a great way towards conferring clearness of under- 
 standing and preventing fogginess and misapprehension 
 of a writer's meaning. Get the vision fixed quite firmly ; 
 it is not a mere ornament, but a hook on which you are 
 going, presently, to hang a weight, perhaps a heavy one. 
 
 We have supposed the stick lying flat on the surface 
 of the water. As long as it does so, it represents 
 a consciousness lying wholly in the present time. 
 
 Doctors and other teachers sometimes tell us very 
 glibly that sanity and health, and all that deserves to 
 be called " normal," consist in being " adapted to one's 
 environment " ; all which is not so they call " abnormal." 
 This mode of speaking is capable of being interpreted 
 in two senses. As usually understood, it is very false, 
 misleading the utterers even more than the hearers 
 — as indeed slip-shod phrases of doubtful meaning 
 usually do. 
 
 Let us look at our mind-picture of the floating stick. 
 
 As long as it lies horizontal it represents what we 
 may call the commonplace condition of the conscious- 
 ness, which is what some people really mean when they 
 use such words as " sanity " and " health." 
 
 The most commonplace consciousness wabbles slightly 
 up and down at times ; so that one end dips a little way 
 back, or down, into the Past, and the other a little 
 way forward, or up, into the Future. 
 
3° The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 But there are other conditions of consciousness besides 
 the commonplace ones : — genius, asceticism, insanity, 
 idiocy, criminal tendency, melancholy, suicidal mania, 
 all that is eccentric, abnormal, or out of line with the 
 commonplace average proceedings of the age in which 
 the individual lives. All of these can be represented by 
 a more serious tilting of the stick ; or by its being bent, 
 or half broken, so that both ends dip at once into the 
 Past, or one half may dip into the Past and the other 
 still be in the Present. 
 
 What does all this prove? Nothing whatever. 
 What is it leading up to ? I do not know. What is the 
 use of it all ? That all depends on the use which you 
 may choose to make of it. I have provided the entrance- 
 hall of your house of thought with a rack, such as my 
 experience has shown me is of convenient form for 
 arranging things on. At present, our business is to see 
 that the rack is in proper order and well fixed up. 
 Exercise your imagination at your leisure, in picturing — 
 or, as it is sometimes called, visualising — the floating 
 stick. Shut your eyes and see it — first in one condition, 
 then another. See it stiff and straight, then bent; then 
 half broken. Picture it always with its labels on : at 
 one end " Emotion and Sensation," at the other 
 " Action and Influence." Picture it, first with one end 
 dipping down, then the other; then bent so that both 
 ends dip ; with the emotion end floating, then the other 
 end. Go on with this exercise till the slightest exertion 
 of your will sufifices to put clearly before your mental 
 vision a picture of the stick in any condition or position 
 that you think of 
 
 Now, the problem of forging Passion into Power is 
 
The Training of the Imagination 3 1 
 
 that of changing any position of the stick which repre- 
 sents a condition of the consciousness that is not 
 commonplace and that is undesirable, into some 
 position which represents a desirable one. Which 
 positions represent undesirable states and which desir- 
 able ones, we shall see as we go on. For the present, 
 the business on hand is to familiarise your imagination 
 with the stick in all its possible positions. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ECONOMY OF FORCE 
 
 Surely the secret of Moral Agriculture is to hitch 
 one's Plough to the Great Pulsator and make manure of 
 the devil. 
 
 There is no cure for the world's evils except linking 
 them together in suitably assorted pairs, in such-wise 
 that they neutralise the evilness of each other. 
 
 There can be no adequate supply of heat-force till we 
 convert into heat the great devastating meteorological 
 forces. 
 
 There will be no stop to the supply of criminal classes 
 till the brutal and rowdy type of hooligan is trained as 
 magnetic healer to the over-sensitive, over-intellectual, 
 over-conscientious, over-refined type of man and woman. 
 
 There will be no stopping the spread of insanity till 
 different types of abnormal neurosis act as magnetic 
 healers to each other. 
 
 There can be no sound scheme of education till we 
 know how to assort children in pairs and link them so 
 that they give each other a strong impetus towards some 
 desirable end. 
 
 There is no real solution of the sanitation problem or 
 the food-supply problem till we devise good systems of 
 sewage-farming and of earth-to-earth burial. I am glad 
 32 
 
Economy of Force 3 3 
 
 to take this opportunity of stating my conviction that 
 cremation and burying under stone are polar mistakes. 
 Cremation may be necessary in cases of zymotic disease 
 until we have devised something better. But I feel 
 convinced that the scientific solution is that every carcase 
 of man and beast shall be buried underground and a 
 fruit-tree planted over it. The superstition against 
 eating fruit grown on the dead bodies of one's friends 
 is a good specimen of the wasteful and distracting kind 
 of idolatry which keeps the world in bondage. What 
 are fruit-trees for, if not to forge and transform cannibal- 
 istic selfishness into sacramental joy ? While we eat 
 meat, we are obliged to cut the lives of creatures short, 
 because those which die a natural death are unsuitable 
 for food. But fruit lives on that which has died at its 
 own time. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DESTRUCTIVE MANIA 
 
 We are going to think to-day about a Passion which is 
 neither innocent nor quiet. It is known by many 
 names. It occurs in nearly all small children, and is 
 then called "love of mischief." In boys between the 
 ages of seven and twelve it is called either " cruelty and 
 spite " or " fine manly spirit," according to the religious 
 and moral point of view of the speaker. 
 
 In quite commonplace persons it begins at about 
 twelve years old to die down or be absorbed, recurring 
 afterwards only in occasional gentle oscillations. When 
 one of these mild fits comes on, the individual, if wealthy, 
 takes a few days or weeks of shooting at birds or 
 beasts reared on purpose. If poor, he flings stones at 
 sparrows, or goes rat-hunting ; or teases his mother or 
 sister; or punches the head of his little brother. But 
 in individuals who are more "out of the common " the 
 dip of the stick is deeper and more serious. 
 
 If one of these larger oscillations seizes a Malay, he 
 is said to " run amok " and is hanged by the English. 
 In a regiment of English soldiers, it is called " martial 
 ardour," and rewarded with medals and public receptions. 
 If it seizes a wealthy Englishman, he provides himself 
 with elaborate killing apparatus and goes off to shoot 
 34 
 
Destructive Mania 35 
 
 big game, and is called an "adventurous spirit." If it 
 seizes a band of hobbledehoys of the so-called " working 
 class," they come in collision with the police and the 
 orderliness of the town, and are called hooligans. If 
 it comes with special violence to an adult, he makes a 
 murderous assault on somebody, and the passion is 
 described in the newspapers either as vile and brutal 
 violence, or as homicidal mania, according to the taste 
 and fancy of the doctors who give evidence at his trial. 
 In the former case he is hanged; in the latter he is 
 confined at Broadmoor "during his Majesty's pleasure." 
 And there, to all outward seeming, is an end of his 
 influence on society. 
 
 (You and I, friends, know very well that there is not 
 an end of his influence. What is the good of pretending 
 to believe that which we know is not true ? You in the 
 condemned cell know very well that the world will 
 be, in some respects, different hereafter, according to 
 whether you do or do not pull yourself together and 
 think clearly during the few days you still have to live 
 on earth.) 
 
 All the above-mentioned names denote conditions 
 not indeed exactly similar. They differ as the same note 
 differs when played on violin, pianoforte, trumpet or 
 flute. The differences are due to overtones, or colour- 
 tones. The relation between them concerns those whose 
 business it is to orchestrate, or organise, that complex 
 symphony known as human society. Let us hope they 
 understand the delicate intricacies of their work. For 
 us, the business on hand is simpler ; we have to find out 
 what our note itself is by the help of a simple tuning- 
 fork. 
 
36 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 What is the impulse to kill, to hurt, to destroy ? 
 
 For countless generations the existence of any tribe 
 depended on all the male members of it (at least) hunting 
 habitually. To kill was the primary duty ; the penalty 
 for neglecting it was : — starvation for oneself and one's 
 wife and children, as well as more or less of injury to 
 one's tribe. 
 
 Try to make a mind-picture of this state of things. 
 One's livelihood depended on being able to kill, and 
 skilful at killing. The man who disliked that business 
 was an object of contempt. He who was slack or 
 indifferent about it was an idler, a fool. All respectabil- 
 ity, fame, honour and glory centred round extra clever- 
 ness in, and love of, killing creatures. 
 
 Just think of it ! The man who could see a rabbit or 
 pheasant without trying to kill it took the same rank 
 in the estimation of his neighbours as does now the 
 vagabond loafer who leaves his family to starve or be 
 supported by the parish. 
 
 Then there arose quarrels between different tribes of 
 men. The safety of one's wife and children, as well as 
 one's duty to one's tribe, depended on one's being 
 skilful in killing, and willing to kill, men. The man 
 who could see a member of an alien tribe without 
 trying to hurt him was regarded as we now regard the 
 mother who is slack in ridding her children of vermin, 
 or in disinfecting after an invasion of fever-microbes. 
 
 There were, in those days, neither butchers nor stand- 
 ing army; to kill was the duty of every male, and of 
 many females as well, for countless generations. 
 
 And we have to remember that the finer and more 
 perfect the specimen, whether of rival or of prey, the 
 
Destructive Mania 37 
 
 more emphatically it became the duty of the good man 
 to exterminate it. Traces of this principle linger here 
 and there in various strange little freaks of sensuous 
 pleasure which students of sensation have noticed. We 
 all do homage to it when we try and make our dinner 
 tables " look attractive." We profess to be shocked at 
 the ruffian who is prompted by the beauty of a picture 
 to poke his stick through the canvas ; but we all expect 
 our lady guests to be stimulated by the beauty of our 
 peach to stick teeth into it, by the decorative skill of our 
 cook to demolish her works of art. This is the mild 
 form, suited to our present state of civilisation, of the 
 impulse which makes a certain kind of person poke holes 
 in pictures, scribble in valuable books in public libraries, 
 and chip bits off beautiful statues and historic buildings. 
 
 What we have to do is to register and fix in our minds 
 the idea that every time the mistress of a house sanctions 
 her table and the food on it being made to look beauti- 
 ful, she is recognising in her family and guests the 
 existence of that same instinct which, in some of its 
 manifestations, we call ruffianly brutality ; the instinct, 
 namely, which causes the presence of what we feel to be 
 beautiful, i.e. the finished product of nature's evolution 
 or man's toil, to act as a stimulus to the desire to crush 
 and to destroy. In the case of the peach, the ancient 
 instinct necessary for the self-preservation of the tribe 
 has been transmuted into an artistic refinement which 
 tends towards the higher education of the race ; in the 
 case of the iconoclast, into a form unsuited to the present 
 conditions of society, and antagonistic to its higher 
 evolution. 
 
 Time has gone on and things have changed. It is no 
 
38 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 longer everyone's duty to kill. And the consciousness 
 of some people floats on that surface which we call the 
 Present, or only slightly wabbles away from that surface. 
 They know nothing of the Past except from reading 
 books — books mostly written at the present time, imbued 
 with the feeling of the Present. Or if the book is old 
 these people do not understand it, for their own conscious- 
 ness supplies no clue to its meaning. 
 
 But there are some whose very flesh, their muscles, 
 nerves, brain-tissue, are saturated with the instinct of 
 fidelity to the Past. They understand ! 
 
 We have one instance of this fleshly fidelity to the 
 Past in the existence of what are called dowsers. For 
 many generations, there being no books, all scientific 
 principles were taught by object-lessons. A large 
 number of these lessons were connected with rituals 
 carried on by means of freshly-cut branches or wands, 
 which were moved about in various positions. A main 
 subject of science, a main motive for study, were supplied 
 by the need for finding water or metallic ores. Most 
 things in Nature give off some effluvium or force peculiar 
 to themselves ; and these forces affect us, often without 
 our knowing it. And there are still people, sometimes 
 whole families, whose arms begin to tingle when they 
 touch fresh-cut branches of certain trees ; and whose 
 fingers twitch if, while holding the branch, they pass 
 over water or a vein of metal. The dowser is one in 
 whom fidelity to what was the sacred duty of his 
 ancestors is embedded in nerve and muscle ; he has a 
 fleshly lust to repeat their ceremony. The word " lust," 
 we must remember, means " list," desire, impulse. When- 
 ever we wish to do anything, not for any reason, but 
 
Destructive Mania 39 
 
 only because we " like " to do it, find it agreeable, we 
 are gratifying a /«j-/. If our nerves and muscles desire 
 to do the thing, it is a fleshly lust. Much confusion has 
 been caused by using the words " fleshly lust" only in a 
 bad sense. The dowser has a fleshly lust to twitch his 
 stick when he passes over water. At the touch of the 
 water's subtle effluvium the sensation end of his conscious- 
 ness takes a plunge back into the Past. When I touch 
 a dowsing rod my consciousness takes a plunge into the 
 Past. I have never tried to find water; but I feel the 
 tingle in my arms ; and the stick has often helped me 
 to see ancient mathematicians and other wizards at their 
 v.'ork. Much of the best of my published work on 
 mathematical teaching has been done by the " accidental " 
 stimulus of touching a divining or dowsing rod. 
 
 I have had homicidal impulse at the touch of other 
 stimuli. When I was quite young, I used to speculate 
 on the problem why I did not try to kill someone who 
 worried me. It was not love of my parents that 
 hindered me ; in those moods I was incapable of love. 
 It was not fear of consequences ; in those moods I was 
 incapable of fear. It was not regard for God ; I con- 
 sidered that God made me as I was and could not 
 reasonably be angry with anything I did. It was — I 
 always came back to the same conclusion — it was that 
 I thought that if I killed anyone the police or the hang- 
 man or someone would stop my working for algebra. 
 Besides, I felt that all stormy passions in themselves 
 interfered between me and algebra. Hate and revenge- 
 fulness, as well as love and fear, vanished, like burned 
 paper, when they threatened to interfere between me 
 and algebra. 
 
40 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 That means, as I now know, that some wizard ancestor 
 of mine had stronger hold on my brain-tissue than the 
 ancestors whose business was killing people. 
 
 You, my friend in the condemned cell, were in 
 different case from me ; perhaps you had no mathe- 
 matical ancestor ; or, if you had, his hold on you was 
 weak. 
 
 But surely there is no crime and no disgrace in 
 having had a preponderance of ancestors who did their 
 duty in protecting and feeding their families instead of 
 mooning over pencils and compasses. 
 
 What, then, was your crime? That no one showed 
 you how to forge your Passion of ancestral impulse into 
 Power to do something useful for the Present or the 
 Future. No one showed you how. But that negative 
 fact is the crime of collective Humanity, not that of any 
 individual. You and I will do our best to redeem it, by 
 showing someone else how. 
 
 Eugene Sue has done something in that direction, by 
 asserting that the man who has fits of "homicidal 
 mania " {i.e. impulse to kill folks) ought to be trained 
 as a butcher. 
 
 Feather-headed people who look only on the surface of 
 things will say that butchers who like to kill must be 
 brutes. People who do what they like, when they like, 
 as they like, and only because they like, do, it is true, 
 become not really honest brutes, but something which it 
 is an insult to a decent wild beast to compare it with. 
 But those who are trained to do only what they dislike 
 become machines. Those who are trained to do what 
 they like, when they ought, and because they ought, 
 become artists. The man who dislikes killing things. 
 
Destructive Mania 4^ 
 
 if he becomes a butcher for convenience, or from a 
 mistaken sense of duty, thinks as little as may be of his 
 trade ; works carelessly ; perhaps drowns thought in 
 drink or dissipation ; kills badly ; inflicts suffering. But 
 the man who loves to kill owing to latent ancestral 
 passion for serving the community by killing can be 
 trained to fix his whole mind on the business of killing 
 in the manner which the best sense of the community 
 decrees to be the best. 
 
 Eugene Sue's suggestion, therefore, is not quite as wild 
 as it seems to some people. 
 
 It will be well, just here, to shut your eyes and 
 meditate for a few moments on the floating stick. 
 
 Crooked or broken sticks can dip one end down into 
 the Past, while the other floats in the Present. Or both 
 ends may hang down into the Past. But a straight, 
 firm stick cannot dip one end into the Past without the 
 other rising into the Future. And its rise into the 
 Future will be exactly proportional to its dip into the 
 Past. 
 
 What does this prove ? Nothing, I repeat ; nothing. 
 I am not proving theories, but furnishing your imagina- 
 tion with instruments for the organising of thought 
 material. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SUICIDAL MANIA 
 
 In the north of Europe and of Asia (and probably also 
 in other parts of the world) there used to prevail an idea 
 that it was cowardly and selfish to lay on one's tribe the 
 burden of one's support after one could no longer serve 
 it by hunting or in war. Everyone who survived till 
 old age was bound to kill himself or be put to death by 
 his friends. The imagination of all young persons, for 
 many generations, was filled with the idea of suicide 
 as both a duty and an inevitable fate. What wonder, 
 then, that in some families a sudden fit of rever- 
 sion to ancestral type produces an impulse towards 
 suicide? 
 
 It was also desirable to prevent the tribe from being 
 burdened with the weakly. Infanticide (as a preferable 
 alternative to the desertion and exposure of the weakly 
 young) thus became the duty of many parents ; of many 
 for whom, owing to the strength of their parental 
 affection, infanticide partook far more of the character 
 of a higher kind of suicide than of anything which can 
 legitimately be called homicide. The killing of a weakly 
 child is now a crime. The impulse towards killing a 
 beloved infant is (rightly) now considered a symptom of 
 in-sanity, i.e. a not healthy form of reversion ; not 
 
Suicidal Mania 43 
 
 rational action, but the " fleshly lust " (reversion to former 
 duty). 
 
 The force stored up in ancestral infanticidal impulse 
 needs guiding towards present uses. 
 
 The guiding of it has been made difficult, owing to 
 the fact that popular feeling in the matter has been 
 distorted by ministers of varying religions: distorted, 
 indeed, in three ways. When the community requires 
 from the individual any painful sacrifice, the feelings of 
 the person called on to make it are soothed and narcot- 
 ised by an appeal to the religious emotions. Cutting 
 one's own throat because one is old is called " cutting 
 Runes to Odin " ; infanticide is called " giving one's baby 
 back to the tribal god." This, of itself, while consoling 
 to the immediate sufferer, tends to deepen the tendency 
 to repeat the same action. But, besides this, priests, 
 from a spirit of routine, continue to claim the accustomed 
 sacrifice to the gods, after the well-being of the tribe no 
 longer requires it ; this, by unnecessarily prolonging the 
 custom, gives to the atavistic impulse an extra strong 
 hold on posterity. 
 
 At last, the incongruity between the conscience of the 
 tribe and the priestly code of ethics becomes too glaring 
 to be any longer tolerated ; the strain reaches a breaking 
 point ; a revolution or movement of reform takes 
 place, and a fresh set of priests are appointed, willing 
 to preach, as duty to the gods, whatever customs suit 
 the present condition of the tribal conscience. But these 
 new priests are not content to enjoin the new code of 
 duty, and explain that the old is now out of date ; they 
 talk of the former duties as " sins," and treat the 
 " fleshly " impulse to revert to those duties as a proof of 
 
44 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 man's " fallen " and " corrupt " nature. They even go the 
 length of asserting that the gods who enjoined the 
 sacrifice when it was a real tribal duty necessary for the 
 very existence of the community were not true gods 
 but " devils." They thus blur the lines of historic feeling 
 and confuse the consciousness of the new generation, 
 making physical fidelity to ancestral type a disgrace 
 instead of a glory. 
 
 It is a matter of historic fact that, though martyrdom 
 and the fact of being for a time despised and rejected 
 may ennoble an individual, yet whatever is chronically 
 thrust into darkness tends to take on de-graded and 
 distorted forms. If the atavistic consciousness is habit- 
 ually despised it becomes degraded ; distorted conscious- 
 ness involves distorted nerve and brain conditions, and 
 converts what was a mere harmless reposeful plunge 
 into the Past into some non-natural and possibly novel 
 mode of truly vicious action. All real vices and non- 
 natural lusts are generated by this moral perversion. 
 Honour thine Ancestral Past that thine own days may 
 be long and healthy. Instead of despising our ancestral 
 modes of life, we should revert to them, whenever 
 possible, in all ways not harmful in the Present. Do 
 not children stand the strain of the modern school-life 
 all the better for spending vacations camping out of 
 doors, picnicking in woods, and climbing trees, like their 
 savage ancestors ? 
 
 The first step towards the eradication from our people 
 of the suicidal and infanticidal manias should be the 
 instituting of religious services in honour of those who, 
 in the past, killed themselves or their offspring for the 
 good of the tribe. This would serve to arrest the 
 
Suicidal Mania 45 
 
 tendency to act on mere nervous impulse, because it 
 would deepen the sense that one's life and those of one's 
 children are not one's own, to deal with according to 
 one's fleshly impulses, but the property of the com- 
 munity, to be held in trust for it, and disposed of only 
 in accordance with its real needs. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MORALITY AND ART 
 
 James Hinton gave the title " The Art of Thinking " to 
 
 one of his essays. The words were chosen deliberately 
 
 and with the intention of their being taken in the full 
 
 sense of their literal meaning, the artistic use of 
 
 thought. To arrive at a full sense of what this implies, 
 
 we must come to an understanding as to what is meant 
 
 by the word Art. 
 
 The cultivation of any physical sense passes through 
 
 three principal stages or modes of use. There is, first, 
 
 discrimination evoked in response to some necessity for 
 
 self-protection. A keen power of discriminating among 
 
 colours, or shapes, or sounds, helps an animal or a savage 
 
 man in finding his prey, or in escaping his foes. But 
 
 when a discrimination sense has reached a certain pitch 
 
 of congenital power, the mere exercise of it begins to be 
 
 in itself a pleasure, and almost a necessity of health. 
 
 The infant delights in mere noise, in the mere exercise 
 
 of its faculty of distinguishing one sound from another. 
 
 So it is with shapes and colours ; the mere exercise of 
 
 the sense faculty is a delight, quite apart from any 
 
 question of safety or advantage to be gained by skill. 
 
 Absence of things to look at is an actual privation. 
 46 
 
Morality and Art 47 
 
 Finally, it begins to be perceived that certain combina- 
 tions of colour or form or sound are more pleasing to 
 the sense than others. When this point is reached, art 
 is born. 
 
 Two conditions must exist before a mode of training 
 has a right to call itself art-training. The first is that 
 it shall cultivate the power of combining impressions 
 received as separate. Art-training must, it is true, 
 cultivate the power of discrimination also, and to a very 
 high degree ; but the discrimination must ultimately 
 serve the purpose of combination, or there is no art. 
 An insect might feel the note D flat beautiful, because 
 that is the pitch of its mate's voice, and, when the scale 
 is played on a violin, may discriminate very keenly 
 between D flat, the beautiful, and D natural, hideous to 
 its instincts because sung by the bird which devours its 
 tribe ; but this is not art. The musician also dis- 
 criminates between D natural and D flat, but he knows 
 nothing of one of these being preferable to another ; his 
 business with each of them, in his capacity of sound- 
 artist, is to judge under what conditions they shall be 
 combined (either in a chord or in sequence) with each 
 other and with other notes. The tester, who detects the 
 presence of foul gas in a tin of preserved meat by a 
 slight tap on the cover, must have his power of auditory 
 distinction cultivated to a high pitch, but he selects the 
 one sound as " good " and the other as " evil " ; in this 
 there is no attempt at combination, therefore no art. 
 
 The second condition which characterises art-training 
 proper is that each combination shall be made in obedi- 
 ence to the dictates of the art-instinct itself, unwarped 
 by any other considerations. This point needs a little 
 
4 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 clearing up. The amount and kind of elements among 
 which combinations are to be effected may be limited to 
 any degree, by all sorts of considerations, beforehand ; 
 but, the limits once decided on, the act of choice, within 
 those limits, must be pure and undisturbed, or it is not 
 an act of art. The workman who goes with fivepence 
 to a village shop where there are two tins of Aspinall's 
 enamel, and who chooses the green rather than the blue 
 to make a pattern on his red door, because he likes it 
 better, does an act of art ; within narrow restrictions, 
 but still, art. Nay, the man who, having no money to 
 spare, finds a half-empty tin of enamel thrown away, 
 and brings it home, and decides either to put a rim of 
 the green paint on his door because " it do zim to I as it 
 'ud look purty," or to leave the door plain because 
 " when I did zee that there green atween the door and 
 the ivy, I didn't zim to fancy it," has, in either case, 
 done an act of art ; he has selected, among his limited 
 stock of possibilities, a certain combination rather than 
 another, because the one suited his art-sense (at its 
 present level of culture) better than the other. But the 
 person who, with boundless resources at command, is 
 swayed, at the moment of choice, by any other con- 
 sideration than " it do zim to I," is not doing an art-act. 
 All this has nothing to do with any question of selfish- 
 ness or the reverse. The man may be ornamenting the 
 cottage for his own pleasure only, or for that of the wife 
 with whom he hopes to enjoy it, or as a parting gift to 
 his sister before he leaves home never to return. The 
 point is this : — Whatever be his motive for decorating, 
 if he selects his decoration as the actual shades strike his 
 eye when seen in combination, he is exercising his art- 
 
Morality and Art 49 
 
 faculty ; whereas no choice of colour is an exercise of 
 colour-art if it be swayed by any other considerations 
 than the laws of the eye itself. And it matters little 
 whether the motive be: "I'll wear a green ribbon 
 because green is the patriotic colour just now," or "This 
 combination is considered correct just now," or " The 
 Duchess of Somewhere wore this at the last Court ball " ; 
 in either case some consideration other than the pleasure 
 of the chooser's eye determines the choice ; and therefore 
 there is (so far as the eye is concerned) no art. Art- 
 faculty exerts itself in subjection to no laws except 
 those of the choosing organ, whatever that may be. 
 
 The organ develops first as a mere discriminating 
 organ, under pressure of the action of other organisms. 
 But when fully established as a discriminating organ, 
 it then sets up its own code of laws. When an organ 
 selects and combines in obedience to its own laws only, 
 we call its action " art." When such writers as Ruskin 
 and Hobson make their passionate claim for some 
 opportunity for art-culture on behalf of the masses, what 
 they primarily mean is that there should be no class of 
 the community living under such conditions that each 
 organ and faculty is exerted only according to laws 
 belonging to some other department of life; there 
 should come into the life of every citizen opportunities for 
 exercising his faculties, each according to its own laws. 
 
 The horror of association felt by a weak tribe for the 
 war-paint or war-cry of a fiercer neighbour tribe, the 
 disgusted contempt of a dominant caste for the colour 
 of the pariah's badge — these are factors in evoking the 
 keen discrimination which is the first essential of art- 
 culture. But when once the artist has come, we must 
 
 4 
 
so The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 expect from him no deference to prejudices of associ- 
 ation ; he has one function only in connection with the 
 hateful tint or note, viz., to combine it with other tints 
 or notes in such a manner as to cause men to realise 
 that it adds to the beauty of the whole. This point we 
 must remember if we are to attach any adequate mean- 
 ing to the expression " Art of Thinking." The Art of 
 Thinking is that mode of dealing with thoughts which 
 is related to our mental faculties of discrimination as 
 the form and colour arts are to our powers of form and 
 colour discrimination, as the art of musical composition 
 is to the faculty of distinguishing between different 
 notes. It is the art of combining thoughts, not in sub- 
 servience to any external need or law, but in accordance 
 with the laws of the Thinking-organ itself 
 
 The Science which underlies the Art of Thought-com- 
 bination is called Mathematics. Mathematics stands 
 related to the Art of Thinking somewhat as the science 
 of harmony and counterpoint does to the art of music. 
 
 It so happens that the laws of thought-combination 
 were first discovered when men were trying to think 
 truly about number, quantity, and size ; and for that 
 reason a great many persons assert that mathematics is 
 the science of number, size, and quantity. This assertion 
 is pure nonsense. 
 
 Persons who have outgrown the delusion about 
 mathematics being the science of number and size, speak 
 of it as a sort of "Logic." This is a little nearer the 
 mark, but only a little. Logic can become mathematical, 
 and, as Gratry said, when it does so it acquires wings, 
 whereas before it had only feet. 
 
 It seems to me a pity that children should, in most 
 
Morality and Art 5 ^ 
 
 cases, know nothing of mathematics except as related 
 to ideas of number and size. Any parents who may 
 wish to do so can make, of such arithmetic, algebra, and 
 geometry as are taught in schools, a genuine introduction 
 to the Art of Thinking. This can be done without adding 
 to the child's intellectual labour, by occasional little half- 
 jesting remarks at home.^ 
 
 We cannot evolve any art of combinations, harmonies, 
 and sequences, till we are provided with a multiform, 
 strong, and accurate sense of discrimination between the 
 elements to be combined. Nature's way of providing 
 us with the necessary discrimination is first to make 
 personal or tribal safety depend on that discrimination, 
 on seeking one thing and avoiding its opposite ; next, 
 to set up an hereditary instinct to feel as " good " that 
 which our ancestors found by experience to be good, and 
 as " evil " what experience taught them to avoid. The 
 instinct to avoid certain things because they are " evil " 
 is the necessary preliminary to any development of art. 
 
 But the Art-Creator, when he appears on the scene, 
 begins by sweeping the verdicts of experience and of 
 instinct into the limbo of forgotten superstitions, not 
 because art is lawless, but because it has laws of its own, 
 and tolerates no other legislator. Till it may be master 
 of the situation, it (art) stays away. 
 
 Now we are going to fit our House of Thought with 
 a new implement of orderliness. 
 
 The leaders of a tribe have been trying their consci- 
 entious best, for countless generations, to foster in the 
 young a habit, an instinct, when they hear a certain 
 
 ' My text-book, Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, contains a 
 suggestion of such domestic jokes. 
 
52 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 note, to scamper instantly towards it because it is the 
 cry of some animal which ought to be caught for food, 
 and, when they hear a certain other note, to scuttle 
 away and hide, because it is the cry of some beast of 
 pre)'' too powerful for them to cope with. 
 
 A Jubal appears among the tribe, an inventor of 
 music ; he has got hold of some sort of gut or fibre 
 which will twang a variety of notes. The children stand 
 round him, inquisitive, wondering, half-frightened yet 
 spell-bound. What is he doing? Demoralising them. 
 Blurring the lines of distinction between " good and evil." 
 Destroying, bringing to naught, the work of ages. 
 
 Can you conceive the wrath of the Leaders ? 
 
 Yet thus, and thus alone, can any art be born into 
 the world ; at that cost, and no lesser one, does art exist. 
 
 And observe that the precursor of music is not even 
 making music ; he is only making senseless noise. He 
 is sweeping away the laws of tribal ethics; and he is 
 not keeping even those of counterpoint, for they are 
 not yet evolved. 
 
 Between the Law-Abiders and the Art-Creator there 
 must always come " The Law-Breaker." If the note of 
 the awful beast of prey is ever beautiful, it is so, even on 
 art's own showing, only when put in certain specifically 
 right relations to other sounds ; and the criminal lunatic 
 Jubal is not putting it in right relations at all ; he is 
 no good anyway ; Anathema ; away with him ; crucify 
 him ! 
 
 And indeed, though art cannot be born unless some- 
 one has courage to break the laws of tribal self-pre- 
 servation, neither can music be born in a chaotic 
 confusion of disorderly noises. It will not do for 
 
Morality and Art 53 
 
 everyone to twang guts and ignore tribal duty. The 
 Law-breaker, therefore, must not demoralise the tribe ; 
 until at least he knows how to teach them a higher 
 Law. He must be isolated from his kind ; he will be 
 during his earth -life The Misunderstood One; the 
 Eternal Scape-goat, who bears the sins of the world ; 
 "outside the camp, though inside the veil." If he is 
 the true destined Revealer he will not think the price 
 too high to pay for this privilege. If he is not that, 
 then isolation is the best thing for him ; it gives him 
 the opportunity to meditate on the folly of meddling 
 in dangerous experiments without sufficient warrant 
 or preparation. 
 
 Latent heat and potential light are stored up during 
 the composition of a body ; sensible heat and visible 
 light are given off during decomposition. 
 
 True economy consists in not disturbing the storage, 
 except under conditions which facilitate the force given 
 off in decomposition passing into the composition of 
 a body of higher evolution. 
 
 But there are people who think that it is always a 
 good thing to set light free, regardless of the question 
 whether anything of higher evolution than the candle 
 will profit by it ; and there are people who think that 
 it is always economical to abstain from lighting a candle, 
 no matter who, and what, needs the light. 
 
 The Bases of Morality for the Law-Breaker 
 
 The game of skittles is more interesting when played 
 with a trained hand and eye than when played at 
 random. 
 
54 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 If life is to be all beer and skittles it is advisable 
 not to put the beer-bottles among the skittles, at least 
 until after we have drunk the beer. 
 
 Only a cockney cares for shooting barn-door fowls. 
 
 Only a cad poaches on his neighbour's preserves as 
 long as he has woods of his own. (The excuse for 
 the village poacher is that society has robbed him of 
 his woods.) 
 
 The true gentleman likes shooting dangerous wild 
 beasts better than shooting pheasants, even if they are 
 his own. 
 
 Ethics is a fence put up to protect our neighbour's 
 barnyard. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SEX INSTINCTS 
 
 From the dawn of organic life on this planet up to the 
 appearance of civilised man, every race of organisms was 
 forced to provide food for creatures not of the same race. 
 Each race was therefore bound, under penalty of extinc- 
 tion, to propagate in great excess of the amount required 
 to maintain its own numbers. 
 
 Pause for a moment and think. For countless ages, 
 the whole evolution of everything depended upon every- 
 body putting into the world a thousand times as many 
 fertilised eggs as ever were intended to come to maturity. 
 Everyone's duty was to give to some other race, as food, 
 a thousand eggs or babies for one that was to be reared. 
 Slowly, very slowly, there has crept in an idea, im- 
 perfectly carried out even yet, of protecting the young, 
 of not allowing other races to feed on one's babies. 
 Man has cleared off, at least from all the main centres 
 of civilisation, all of the larger races (lions, tigers, wolves, 
 etc.) which show any desire to eat the flesh of human 
 babies ; but we have not even yet accomplished the 
 extinction of the parasites and microbes who devour 
 human flesh. So that even still over-propagation 
 is to some slight extent the duty of some people. 
 That is to say, propagation somewhat in excess 
 55 
 
5 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 of what would be normal if everyone lived to die of 
 old age. 
 
 For all our ancestors, from the first organic creature 
 up to a few generations ago, an amount of propagating 
 activity which would necessarily be highly inconvenient 
 at the present time was a solemn duty. I am using the 
 words "solemn" and "duty" advisedly. Duty is that 
 which is due, and everything is solemn which tends 
 towards the organising of a higher organism. It does 
 not follow that the individual felt solemn or was conscious 
 of his duties. For all practical and psychological 
 purposes an enormous amount of over-propagation was 
 a solemn duty to our ancestors. It is so to rabbits and 
 wild birds still. For us it is no longer a duty. But the 
 impulse remains in the shape of a fleshly lust. What 
 are we going to do with it ? 
 
 The first thing to do with it is to treat it always in 
 thought and word with the utmost reverence which it 
 is in our nature to feel for anything. 
 
 What have we done with it ? 
 
 We have made of it the subject of irreverent jesting 
 and of far more irreverent moralising. 
 
 Can one conceive of anything more hideously and 
 grotesquely irreverent than the attitude of a priest who 
 celebrates the Eucharist after prefacing it by a sermon 
 in which he denounces, as the inspiration of the devil, 
 that very condition in man to which, as it exists in the 
 wheat and vine plants, he owes the possibility of having 
 his bread and wine to consecrate ? 
 
 Normal sex-action is fertile contact between suitably 
 differentiated polars. This may take place either in the 
 generative organs or in the brain. 
 
Sex Instincts 57 
 
 When we sing the invocation "Veni, Creator," we 
 invite Adonai to make fertile this contact of polars. 
 When this happens in the organs of generation we call 
 it fecundation ; when it happens in the brain we call it 
 inspiration (artistic, poetic, prophetic, or spiritual 
 inspiration, as the case may be). 
 
 The problem with which Humanity is confronted is 
 that of diverting the atavistic excess of desire for con- 
 tact of polars from the physically fertilisable organs to 
 that spiritually fertilisable organ which we call " brain," 
 and so to increase the genius of the race while keeping 
 its numbers down to manageable proportions. The 
 difficulty of the problem has been enormously complicated 
 by the action of moralists. 
 
 Nowhere is the action of moralists in increasing 
 immorality so clearly to be seen as in connection with 
 the sex impulse ; and it is therefore in this chapter that 
 I propose to describe it. 
 
 Probably no human being, possibly no mammal or 
 bird, has ever experienced sex-action for the first time 
 without at least a momentary impression of the Presence 
 of something so sacred that all else which is held sacred 
 Is to this new impression as shadow is to substance. If 
 this momentary Revelation of Sacredness comes to a 
 virgin mind cumbered with no previous ideas, it runs 
 smoothly along the course of its normal evolution to its 
 normal goal : — a quickening of the power of sympathy 
 and a development of the power of altruism. The 
 individual is then free to decide whether, when, and 
 under what conditions, he shall repeat the act, according 
 to his circumstances and to such knowledge as he 
 possesses, guided by the additional sympathy and 
 
5 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 altruism left behind by the act itself. He will take his 
 own liking only as one of many factors which have to be 
 taken into account in deciding his course of action: — 
 as we all do in the case of a liking for peaches, or a 
 desire to enjoy music or pictures. 
 
 But if the sudden sense of sacredness comes into con- 
 flict with some preconceived idea of degradation, evil, or 
 triviality, in the sexual act, the effect is somewhat like 
 that of a collision between two trains running in opposite 
 directions. Wreckage of something or other is certain 
 to occur ; and the answer to the question what shall 
 escape from that wreckage is a matter of what we call 
 " accident," by which we mean that it depends on causes 
 over which we have no control. 
 
 Consciously or unconsciously, the man is confronted 
 with the questions : — "If that was not sacred, then what 
 else can be so? If that Presence was the devil, then 
 what is the use of God ? " Even if his conscious thought 
 does not ask those questions, his flesh and blood and 
 marrow and unconscious mind ask them, and insist on 
 their being answered. 
 
 The following are some ot the answers given in the 
 wreck of body and mind : — 
 
 I. God is in Nature, and whatever is natural is holy. 
 The individual seeks the opposite sex as freely as a wild 
 animal does; forgetting that the proceedings of wild 
 animals are consonant to the true order of Nature only 
 where there is abundant room for healthy children to 
 roam about in and plenty of carnivorous birds and 
 beasts to rid society of sickly and superfluous ones. The 
 original nerve-wreckage is helped into intellectual con- 
 fusion by the double sense of the word " natural " ; it is 
 
Sex Instincts 59 
 
 used sometimes as meaning that which we feel impelled 
 to do because the doing of it was, for our ancestors, con- 
 sonant to the true order of evolution at their level of 
 progress, sometimes as meaning consonant to the true 
 order of evolution for our stage of progress. People 
 mistakenly suppose that what is natural in the former 
 sense is necessarily so in the latter. 
 
 2. Some persons " return to nature " in a different way 
 from that just described. They deliberately turn their 
 backs on temptation, live in the country and almost 
 in isolation ; tire themselves with manual labour ; adopt 
 a poor diet; and avoid the society of the opposite sex, 
 and everything which can stimulate receptivity to Adonai, 
 the fertiliser at either pole of their nerve-battery. They 
 think that they " find God in Nature," because they use 
 their senses on observing His work outside of themselves. 
 They watch the effect of fertilisation on non-human 
 creatures, as a substitute for becoming fertile themselves. 
 
 3. Some come to the conclusion that there is neither 
 God nor devil ; nor anything but illusion. They 
 cynically decide to make a constant amusement of the 
 sensations which indicate the touch of that Adonai- 
 Adonis, whom all normal instinct hails as God, but 
 whom moralists proclaim to be the devil. 
 
 4. Sometimes the bewildered conscience fluctuates 
 backwards and forwards, alternately yielding to the 
 overwhelming inspiration of the " Adona'i," and then 
 calling Him "devil" in a fit of" repentance." 
 
 5. Sometimes the individual gives up the attempt to 
 find his way himself amid the illogical tangle, and hands 
 over the business of guiding him to some priest, pastor, 
 moralist, or "Salvationist," not unfrequently the very 
 
6o The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 same who originally did the mischief. This, of course, 
 is the consummation most desired by the moralising 
 gentry, who take occasion to magnify their office. 
 
 6. Sometimes the very physical nervous structure 
 of the man, or of his posterity, is wrecked, and sets 
 up for itself a variety of anomalous sensations, desires, 
 and lusts, such as no wild beast could conceive the 
 nature of Whereupon moralists take the opportunity 
 to point a moral about the fallen and corrupt nature 
 of man. Now, whoever else may have the right to 
 indulge in lamentations about the fallen and corrupt 
 nature of a wrecked railway train, it is evident that 
 those who put in its way the obstacle which caused 
 the disaster can have no such right. Moralists and 
 teachers of religion have not sufficiently taken to heart 
 the great truth that whatever organ of the body is 
 thought of while the religious emotions are active 
 tends to become turgid and excitable. They seize 
 upon children at the critical age, and preach sexual 
 abstinence as a religions duty ; with the inevitable 
 consequence of making it, in many cases, an over- 
 whelmingly difficult one. They should leave that 
 topic entirely in the hands of unemotional medical 
 advisers, and reserve religious emotion — if they must 
 stir it at all — as a stimulus for the faculties which it is 
 desirable to stimulate into action.^ No such thing as 
 
 ^ The above applies to religious emotions, such as are roused by 
 thinking about the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, the sorrows 
 of the Madonna, and the ecstatic utterances of saints. All such 
 topics may seem to give self-control for a time, but are prone to 
 leave dangerous reactions unless the force generated is immediately 
 carried off in some active work. They are therefore most safely 
 employed as stimulus to beneficence and the doing of duties. The 
 
Sex Instincts 6 1 
 
 a sound system of education can be evolved till it is 
 accepted that receptivity of Adonai' the Fertiliser is 
 the inalienable birthright of all creatures ; it is the 
 glory and privilege of Man to direct, at any given 
 time, at which pole of his nerve-battery Adonai shall 
 descend. 
 
 Ants and bees have contrived a scheme of morality 
 in which large numbers of the community are kept 
 physically infertile, apparently without evolving any 
 compensating receptivity for fresh intellectual inspira- 
 tion. All the industry, the altruism, and the magnificent 
 organisation of these highly civilised peoples have not 
 prevented arrestation of development and of progress. 
 Nor do they succeed in preventing us — barbarians as 
 we are compared with them — from appropriating to 
 our own use the results of the bees' toil, robbing ant 
 nurseries to feed our tame fish, and scalding out the 
 ants in millions whenever we find them inconvenient 
 to ourselves. The message of these arrested civilisa- 
 tions to ours is : — Beware of irreverence to Adonai the 
 Fertiliser ; for He will not let them pass guiltless who 
 slight Him or blaspheme His Holy Name. 
 
 Now, young mother, I know what you want to ask. 
 What are you to say to your boy " before he goes to 
 school " ? It is not my business, as I remarked before, 
 to form conclusions for you, or to dictate what you 
 shall say or do ; I am trying to help you to learn the 
 Art of Thinking for yourself There are two or three 
 obvious truths which it would be well to get soaked 
 into your own mind before the child is old enough to 
 
 same caution does not apply to calm religio-philosophical absorption 
 in the thought of the Infinite Unseen. 
 
62 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 talk, and two or three mental habits which he had 
 better form before he goes out into the world of school. 
 
 For yourself, take notice that the two more important 
 faculties, that of thought and that of generation, are 
 slowly passing through the same process of evolution 
 which the faculties of sight and hearing have already 
 passed through. Having been evolved, under pressure 
 of the struggle for life, as implements of racial pre- 
 servation, they are being gradually transformed into 
 instruments of creative art and channels of spiritual 
 inspiration. Read over again the last chapter and 
 apply it to the art of generating progeny. Learn 
 what you can about Nature's wide variety in the 
 matter of marriage customs.^ This will help you to 
 clear your mind of insular and narrow ideas. 
 
 For your child, accustom him, from infancy, to realise 
 consciously the sacredness of order and sequence. 
 Bring it home to his consciousness that people are 
 not trusted to walk down stairs till they have shown 
 that they can walk steadily on the floor; that one is 
 not trusted to handle costly and delicate objects till 
 one knows how to handle common ones carefully ; 
 that one is not allowed to experiment with dangerous 
 explosives or poisons till one has shown oneself capable 
 of dealing properly with the more harmless kinds of 
 chemicals. 
 
 Let him see what an ugly, miserable thing is a flower 
 whose protecting sheath has been torn away before the 
 proper time. 
 
 ' Grant Allen's Story of the Plants is a simple, cheap, useful 
 little book, and contains a large quantity of information on the 
 subject. 
 
Sex Instincts 63 
 
 Accustom him to the idea that Church is a great 
 Drama, in which all are actors and nobody a mere 
 audience; and that the silence, solemnity, and orderliness 
 enforced there are rehearsals intended to get people into 
 the right habit and attitude in which to approach the 
 really sacred facts of Life. 
 
 Then " before he goes to school " tell him that the 
 organs by means of which children are made are the 
 most delicate and the most sacred things with which we 
 have to do; that he may ask you any questions he likes 
 about them, and you will answer him if you can ; but 
 that till he is quite grown up he must not experiment 
 with them ; and had better not listen to the talk of 
 children who know nothing of order and sequence. 
 
 When he asks questions, answer him according to the 
 best of your own judgment at the time. He is your 
 child, not mine ; I cannot tell exactly what ought to 
 be said to him. 
 
 If you are under the delusion that you, or I, or any- 
 one else knows now what opinions the best and purest 
 people will be holding, or what line of action they will 
 be taking, in sex matters, in twenty years from now, 
 pray occupy some of your thinking-time in shaking 
 yourself free from it. 
 
 But if anything can be said to be clear and certain 
 on the sex-question, it is that a person who is going to 
 try extra-legal experiments should not entangle with 
 his own life that of any woman who would not have 
 associated herself with him had she known it, and 
 especially he should not have children by such a woman. 
 Therefore give your child the habit of understanding 
 that a promise once made must be kept, even if the 
 
64 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 keeping of it should prove more inconvenient than at 
 first seemed likely; and that whoever is not prepared 
 to keep a promise at all costs, should, at all costs, forego 
 the convenience of making it. 
 
 There are whispers in the air of a great discovery in 
 America about sex-action, which seems likely to 
 revolutionise all our ideas on the subject. It has always 
 been known to occultists that each form of worship of 
 the concrete, from the purest Christian ecstasy to the 
 most degraded fetish-worships, has its exact analogue 
 in some form of sex-action, passion, or emotion. But 
 modern occultists knew of no sex-analogue to the calm, 
 unemotional, passionless absorption of soul and mind in 
 adoration of The Non-conceivable Unity, which is the 
 secret of the force of Israel. This missing link has now 
 been recovered : the lost secret, apparently, of the higher 
 and purer Mysteries of Egypt and the East. No one 
 can form any conception of how this discovery may 
 influence our whole conceptions of sex morality. The 
 best that any mother can do now is to pray and strive 
 that her child may grow up worthy to take a manly 
 part in the revolution which is obviously preparing. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PROTECTIVE INSTINCTS 
 
 It must by this time be evident that there are many of 
 us for whom moralists and teachers of religion can do 
 little that is really valuable to help us to forge passion 
 into power. The most they can do or are willing to do 
 for those I am addressing is to provide crutches for 
 individuals whose legs they have broken. 
 
 And what about our advisers on the medical side? 
 
 The higher the grade of evolution of any creature, the 
 greater the variety of dangers to which it is exposed. 
 But also the greater the variety of its self-protecting 
 instincts. Genius is exposed to many dangers from 
 which the commonplace are free, but develops, when 
 left to itself, instincts of self-protection which the common- 
 place neither possess nor need. Now almost every 
 instinct developed by genius, for its own moral pro- 
 tection, is registered in medical books as a symptom of 
 insanity. Consequently parents and teachers discourage 
 young genius from guarding itself from deteriorating 
 influences under the impression that the self-protecting 
 precautions " look crazy." As James Hinton said, the 
 reason the world is not saved is that the faculties which 
 could save it are trampled, by the insincerity of our 
 systems of education, into mad-houses, or gaol-s, or early 
 65 5 
 
66 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 graves, or worse. The insincerity is for the most part 
 not conscious or voluntary on the part of teachers : it is 
 mainly due to the fact that they assume it to be their 
 duty to trample down and exterminate precisely those 
 instincts which ought to be most carefully cultivated. 
 Muddle is made, not so much by what we say, or what 
 we do, or what we consciously think, as by what we take 
 for granted. Teachers take for granted that they ought 
 to eliminate everything which it pleases the medical 
 profession to catalogue under the heading : — " Symptoms 
 of insanity." Things will begin to clear up when it is 
 recognised that many kinds of insanity are symptoyns of 
 the mistaken confidence of parents and teachers in the 
 wisdom of the medical profession. Things are beginning 
 to mend, however, since the admission of women to that 
 profession ; women doctors started with a freer hand ; 
 they do not feel bound by the conventions of mediaeval 
 nonsense which have so long satisfied, and which now 
 hamper, their brothers of the craft. But they can do 
 little to help us unless we have courage to help ourselves 
 and them. It is for us, the patients, " the dreamers, the 
 derided, the mad, blind men who see',' to take the matter 
 into our own hands and decide that our instincts shall 
 not be trampled into the mud by any theories of either 
 doctors or priests. 
 
 When I was Librarian at Queen's College, two girls, 
 devoted friends and constant companions, were reckoned 
 by the authorities as among the best moral influences 
 of the place. They have turned out remarkable women, 
 gifted with high and pure moral instincts. When they 
 were aged respectively sixteen and seventeen, they con- 
 sulted me in a difficulty. They had discovered that 
 
Protective Instincts 67 
 
 when they were together their conversation fell to a 
 lower moral level than either would have carried on with 
 anyone else. They had resolved to take themselves in 
 hand and not to indulge any more in the foolish gossip 
 of which they were ashamed. But, finding themselves 
 relapsing into it, they had determined not to talk to 
 each other for the future except on necessary college 
 business. So much they had settled by the light of their 
 own instincts of purity, without the aid of any human 
 advice. They now wanted me to advise them how to 
 prevent it getting about college that they had quarrelled. 
 In this particular case I was able to afford the necessary 
 shelter to the dear children ; I invited them to read with 
 me occasionally in my private apartment, and advised 
 them to come up the main stairway on those occasions, 
 together, in full view of other pupils. 
 
 But this was an evasion of the real difficulty, accident- 
 ally available in one particular case ; not an actual 
 moral solution. The real difficulty consists in the fact 
 that persons possessing delicate instincts of moral self- 
 protection cannot obey them, even in matters which 
 concern only themselves and in ways which impose 
 sacrifice only on themselves, without becoming the 
 subjects of prurient curiosity to coarser natures. Parents 
 and teachers too often discourage the sudden suspen- 
 sion of a friendship on the ground that such rupture is 
 " freaky " and " looks queer." The cessation of inter- 
 course is therefore postponed till real damage has been 
 done. The nerve-stamina gives way ; the moral nature 
 deteriorates. Or perhaps the outraged instinct asserts 
 itself in some violent and irrational manner, and there 
 ensues a " quarrel " which appears to be about something 
 
68 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 which is not the real cause of irritation, but only the 
 excuse for the instinct to assert itself. It is driven to 
 seek the excuse of a quarrel, because to avoid old 
 friends without any such objective reason is held to be 
 " a symptom of insanity." 
 
 In a lunatic asylum where I studied, I met a lady 
 who called herself Frances Obrenovitch. Her simple 
 courage and power of moral logic have lighted up for 
 me the whole inferno of insanity with a radiance like 
 the smile of the Sun-god. But for the present we are 
 talking of protective instincts, and what Frances showed 
 me on that subject, Frances took it into her head that 
 I could, and ought to, make a career for myself in 
 literature ; and sometimes lectured me on my lack of 
 ambition, which, she considered, was impeding my use- 
 fulness. She was, morally, far saner than I was ; I 
 always listened with respect to her gentle sermonising. 
 She was obviously unfit to take charge of her money 
 matters ; but I felt a great desire to rescue her from 
 incarceration, and proposed to try to get the Chancellor 
 (she was a ward in Chancery and had no near relatives) 
 to give the charge of her over to me. Frances took a 
 " freak " or " mood," as it was called in the asylum, and 
 abruptly cut my acquaintance. The patients began to 
 comment on her bad treatment of me, who had been, 
 as they said, so kind to her. The head attendant, 
 seeing me watching her as she passed me in the corridors 
 with a stony stare, kindly tried to apologise for Frances. 
 " You must excuse her ; it is her affliction, poor thing," 
 etc., etc. I could have shaken the good woman, amiable 
 as was her intention. On the last day of my visit, I 
 went to Frances's recess to try whether she would relent 
 
Protective Instincts 69 
 
 at parting and bid me good-bye. " I have something 
 to say to you," she began in a hard, high-pitched voice. 
 " You could make a career for yourself in literature if 
 you chose. Go and do it, and don't waste your time 
 over lunatics. That is my advice to you and my wish ; 
 but about that I can only advise. But what I have to 
 say for myself is this: — If you will do as I advise, you 
 may come and see me sometimes, and I will be proud 
 of your friendship. But if you are going to waste your 
 time over lunatics, I will be no party to it ; for in that 
 case I will never speak to you again." 
 
 Of course I promised to exert myself to do as she 
 wished ; and the smile with which she rewarded me was 
 enough to make one keep any promise. 
 
 Her freak — of cutting her one sane friend, her one 
 link with the outer world, her one possibility of emanci- 
 pation from a life-long incarceration — was due to an 
 impulse of moral self-protection ; she would not speak 
 to me till she had fought out the battle with herself, and 
 conquered the temptation to save herself at the cost of 
 my career. 
 
 Only once again did she take a "freak" of cutting 
 me. She had by that time learned to trust me, and 
 recovered herself sufficiently to come to an explanation 
 in a very few hours. 
 
 There is a peculiar smile, the token of victory over 
 Unseen Forces of Evil, which in modern Europe is seen 
 chiefly in mad-houses. I am very sure that in Palestine 
 of old it was often seen in " Schools of the Prophets," 
 and, in the time of religious persecution, in the dungeons 
 of the Inquisition. And this brings me to a critical 
 question. 
 
70 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 In Asia of old, children of a certain type, children 
 born under certain peculiar circumstances, were brought 
 up in a temple, or religious school. We read of what 
 such children said : — e.g., the infant Samuel. Hundreds 
 of children say similar things in England now, say 
 things quite as original-sounding and quite as beautiful. 
 Most highly neurotic children are subject to thought- 
 transference, and project into suggestive and often 
 beautiful concrete forms the deepest thoughts of those 
 under whose influence they live. The question we have 
 to face is not, " How came children of old to say wise 
 and beautiful things ? " but " How comes it that children 
 who said them grew up into wise statesmen or holy 
 Prophets ; while similar children now too often either 
 make fiasco of their own lives, or degenerate into 
 making a success of their own lives by wrecking other 
 people's ? " 
 
 In Schools of Prophets children were taught reverence 
 for their own instincts, and the art of using them as 
 moral self-protection. In modern European schools 
 one of the chief duties of the teachers is to ensure that 
 these instincts are trampled out of existence. 
 
 The general reader (should he, by mistake, glance at 
 these pages) will probably exclaim : " But one must 
 make one's children grow up like other people, in good 
 form, able to take their place in the world, and to pass 
 without comment in general society." But then, as I 
 said at starting, I am writing, not for the general reader 
 but for those who seriously desire to forge passion into 
 power ; to convert their own vague sense that things 
 are not quite as they should be, into effective power to 
 have them altered. In the same country where the 
 
 \ 
 
Protective Instincts 71 
 
 child Samuel grew up into a statesman, the Lord's 
 people were forbidden to be like other people. They 
 were not to be " conformed to the world," especially not 
 to any sort of religious world ; each Prophet was to be 
 guided not by the instincts of any other Prophet but by 
 his own ; by the Revelation given to him personally from 
 the Unseen. 
 
 Where prophetic instinct is generally ignored, it seems 
 almost like an affectation of superiority if one claims to 
 have any. Where the Lav/ is that each man should 
 follow the guidance of his own instinct, the fact of 
 following one's own implies nothing except a desire 
 to obey the Law. Hence the severe denunciations of 
 Prophets against those who follow fashions, even in 
 matters indifferent. They are helping to bind them- 
 selves and others in inextricable bondage to immoral 
 influences. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BALANCE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 
 
 If you can procure a sheet of foolscap paper, lay it 
 open before you. Write at the top of the left-hand page 
 a big C; at top of the right-hand page a big D. 
 
 Under C copy out the following table, with as wide 
 a space between the numbers as the length of the page 
 will allow for : — 
 
 C 
 
 1. Physical digestive power; power to get force from 
 
 eating visible things, 
 
 2. The Time-Sense. 
 
 3. Attention to the Concrete. 
 
 4. Desire to enjoy. 
 
 5. Delight in acquiring. 
 
 6. Desire to real-ise one's own Ideal. 
 
 7. Love of absorbing other organisms into oneself or 
 
 one's own Ideals. 
 
 8. Consciousness of one's relation to persons visibly 
 
 present (or whom one often sees, or constantly 
 corresponds with). 
 
 9. Power of external observation by sight, hearing, 
 
 etc. 
 
 10. Analysis. 
 
 72 
 
Balance of the Nervous System 73 
 
 11. Activity of outer senses. 
 
 12. Power to impress others with one's own thoughts, 
 
 feelings, etc. 
 
 Under D write out this other table. Set each 
 number on the same line as the corresponding number 
 in Table C : — 
 
 1. Power to draw Force direct from the Unseen. 
 
 2. Love of thinking of the Eternal. 
 
 3. Attention to the Abstract. 
 
 4. Pleasure in thinking of things enjoyed by others. 
 
 5. Impulse to give. 
 
 6. Joy in renunciation. 
 
 7. Pleasure in being absorbed in other organisms or 
 
 in serving the Ideals of others. 
 
 8. Consciousness of one's relation to the dead, or the 
 
 absent, or to future generations. 
 
 9. Power of visualising, imagining sounds, etc. 
 
 10. Synthesis. 
 
 11. Activity of unconscious mind. 
 
 12. Receptivity, sensitiveness to the thoughts and 
 
 feelings of others. 
 
 Pin the paper open on your wall, or set it up on your 
 bureau, so that it may often be under your eyes. 
 Learn the two columns by heart. 
 
 If you are not so situated as to be able to adopt this 
 course, learn the tables by heart from the book ; but 
 take care to visualise as you do so. That is to say, 
 have in your mind's eye, all the time, a picture of the 
 sheet of foolscap as above described. Get your imagina- 
 
74 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 tion into a condition in which you can, at any moment, 
 call up a clear picture of the two tables with the corre- 
 sponding items written opposite each other. Make sure 
 that this is accomplished before you read any further. 
 
 Now think of Table C (or rather, that which it 
 represents) as laid in one pan of a pair of scales, and 
 what Table D represents as laid in the other pan. Get 
 this picture also well visualised. 
 
 When I use the words " a balanced nervous system," 
 I mean one in which the two pans stand level. 
 
 This is no dogma imposed by authority. If you can 
 doubt that the true equipoise of a nervous system consists 
 in balance between the two sides of our table, pray do 
 so. Doubt as hard as you can, and as long as you can ; 
 any doubt that you may feel will be the starting-point of 
 fresh thought-lines, and enable you to find out some 
 truth unknown to me. 
 
 By the time you have read to the end of this chapter, 
 it may occur to you that you could draw up a better 
 table of nerve-equipoise than mine. If it does, get a 
 fresh sheet of foolscap, real or imaginary ; write out on 
 it your own table ; learn that by heart, visualising as 
 you go ; then read this chapter over again, substituting, 
 as you go, your own table for mine. Your own mind, 
 and therefore also the general world-mind, will be all 
 the richer for your having done so. 
 
 But because you disagree with an author, or doubt his 
 knowing the whole of his subject, that is no reason why 
 you should not try to understand his point of view, and 
 to follow his reasoning as far as it goes. The principle 
 of nerve-balance is the same, however much we may 
 differ as to the details of adjustment. When I think of 
 
Balance of the Nervous System JS 
 
 nerve-equipoise, I think of my own table; if you can 
 make out one which seems to you more satisfactory, then, 
 for the future, think of the subject in connection with 
 your own table. 
 
 The point on which we have to fix attention just now 
 is this : — In what is called, when weak, a mediocre person, 
 and, when strong, a good all-round sort of man, each 
 number of one table is fairly balanced against the 
 corresponding number in the other table ; whereas all 
 that is known as genius, and all that is distinctive, 
 picturesque, and striking in character, depend on the 
 preponderance of some one or more characteristics, the 
 unbalancement of the mind or nervous structure at one 
 or more of the lines. Now the readers whom I am 
 chiefly addressing have little belief in the possibility or 
 desirability of turning out everybody conformed to the 
 same well-regulated pattern. Still less do we ourselves 
 at heart desire to be conformed to any general pattern ; 
 however, in moods of despondency, we may lament some 
 consequences of our ex-centricity. We know that 
 genius, on the whole, rules the world, however many 
 persons of genius may be crushed under the foot of the 
 multitude. And some of us know, besides, that when 
 genius does consent to sell its birthright for a mess of 
 pottage, what it gets in return for the treasure it has 
 sacrificed is not the good, wholesome family pea-soup 
 which is so satisfying to the appetite of the mediocre, 
 but a vile devil's-broth flavoured with all the fumes 
 which emanate from the pit of hell. And this is 
 only Nature's punishment for violating her laws. For 
 in truth abnormality and ex-centricity are, as Charles 
 Babbage showed, the most normal things in the world ; 
 
7 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 they form part of that great scheme of differentiation by- 
 means of which division of labour and distinction of 
 function are carried out. 
 
 Therefore, friends, neither mediocrity nor all-roundness 
 is in our programme. We have the passions of our 
 kind ; and we desire not to sell them, but to forge 
 them into power. 
 
 How, then, can we prevent the ex-centricities of our 
 minds and hearts from weakening and injuring the 
 nervous structure which is, for the present, their enforced 
 dwelling-place and their necessary implement? 
 
 "All-roundness" of character and attainment depends 
 on balance between each number in Table C and the 
 corresponding number in Table D. The health of a 
 nervous system depends upon balance between Table C 
 as a whole and Table D as a whole. 
 
 Get that idea well fixed in your mind before we go 
 any further ; and remember that, for our present purpose, 
 it matters very little whether you are thinking of my 
 tables or of any similar ones which you may have con- 
 structed for yourself. 
 
 The health of the nervous system depends on a 
 balance between Table C as a whole and Table D as a 
 whole. 
 
 The forging of passion into power depends on com- 
 bining the greatest amount that is practically workable 
 of unbalancement between any particular pair of lines, 
 with equipoise of the tables as a whole ; that is to say, 
 balancing exaggeration on one line in one table by 
 an equal exaggeration of one or more other lines in the 
 other table. 
 
 I said : the maximum of unbalancement that is practi- 
 
Balance of the Nervous System ']'] 
 
 cally workable. There are certain qualities and attain- 
 ments the total absence of which is so inconvenient, so 
 hampers one in whatever one wants to do, and makes 
 one so burdensome to other people, that no one who can 
 possibly help it should grow up totally devoid of them. 
 No one who can help it should grow up quite unable to 
 read, or totally devoid of the sense of punctuality. How 
 far differentiation may be carried in the future none of 
 us can predict as yet. At the present stage of evolution 
 all human beings have to learn to do certain things their 
 aptitude for which is naturally very weak. 
 
 But learning to do that for which we have no natural 
 aptitude puts a great strain on the nervous energy. 
 The cost in effort is very large. Therefore the task of 
 exercising weak faculties, of learning uncongenial tasks, 
 should not be undertaken when the supply of force is 
 very low if this can be avoided; it cannot be considered 
 a remedy or re-creation or mode of recuperation. Before 
 it is , entered upon, it is advisable to see that the 
 mechanism by means of which nerves and brain are 
 charged with force is in good working order. 
 
 I have said working order. All recuperation of 
 energy is effected by the working of something. When 
 a patient is ordered to be idle as a means of recupera- 
 tion, it is in order to leave time for the working of lungs, 
 heart, and digestive organs to pump some force into his 
 flesh out of the air and food. When they cease to work, 
 the relaxation of his muscular tissues is not that of 
 recuperation but that of death. 
 
 There is a similar pumping action by which nervous 
 energy is brought out of unseen cosmic sources on to 
 the nerves and brain. We need to get it into effective 
 
78 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 working order and keep it working steadily if we are to 
 do the exhausting business of exercising faculties which 
 are weak, and performing tasks which are uncongenial. 
 
 Let us study the nerve-pump a little, in order that we 
 may understand its construction before we begin tinker- 
 ing at it at random. 
 
 Its efficacy appears to depend, like that of every sort 
 of pump in the world, whether natural or artificial, on 
 an alternation of contrary motions. The alternation 
 seems to be between Table C and Table D. The pump- 
 ing work itself should not be needlessly exhausting ; for 
 this purpose it is desirable that it should be carried on 
 by means of those faculties in each table which are not 
 so weak that their action causes of itself excessive strain. 
 
 Moreover, any kind of friction or jolting causes waste ; 
 and in order to avoid friction it is desirable that the 
 whole mechanism should be in a condition of free 
 mobility, and, as nearly as possible, in one of perfect 
 equipoise. We are using the words "balance" and 
 " equipoise " ; we must try to attach to them some definite 
 meaning. 
 
 When such words as balance and equipoise are used 
 in relation to physical matters, no one is misled by them ; 
 everyone understands them to refer to a state of mobile- 
 stable equilibrium.. But when they are used to describe 
 a mental condition, many persons suppose them to 
 connote the stolid variety of stable equilibrium. In 
 order, therefore, to clear away misapprehension we will 
 begin by defining the terms we are going to use. 
 
 If you try gently to raise one edge of a heavy table 
 so that it shall have only two legs on the floor, you fail. 
 If you try more energetically, and raise it a very little 
 
Balance of the Nervous System 79 
 
 way, it falls back, as soon as you take your hands away, 
 into its former position, and stays in it. The condition 
 of such a table is that of a stolid or fixed " stable 
 equilibrium." 
 
 The condition of unstable equilibrium is that of a 
 rickety little table, which a slight push will cause to fall 
 over. This condition reaches its climax in the case of a 
 stick, cut off straight at the end, which has been made 
 to stand upright on the floor ; the least touch sends it 
 over. It has no tendency to recover its lost balance. 
 A clever juggler can, however, poise it on his finger, and 
 by incessant attention restore its balance, before it falls, 
 every time it leans over. 
 
 There is a third possible condition, that of a mobile- 
 stable equilibrium. This is the condition to which we 
 refer when we speak of a pair of scales being balanced, 
 or in equipoise ; the pans are equally weighted, and a 
 touch will move them up or down ; but when left to 
 itself the whole apparatus tends to return to a " normal " 
 position of equipoise. Many toys illustrate this mode 
 of balance ; none better than the old-fashioned tumbler 
 doll, which stands on the flat surface of a hemisphere of 
 wood. A breath will set the toy rocking in any direc- 
 tion, but it recovers immediately, and then sways over 
 in the opposite direction ; and so backwards and 
 forwards till the momentum is worn out by the slight 
 friction and the rocking motion dies out, when the doll 
 is found to have settled back into her original position. 
 She owes her stability not to any stolidity but to being 
 judiciously loaded. 
 
 The old Cornish Logan stone was a famous instance 
 of this kind of equilibrium. 
 
8o The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 To our Celtic forefathers the Logan was sacred. 
 And when a set of young naval officers destroyed the 
 fine balance of the Cornish Logan and reduced it to a 
 state of stolid equilibrium, they were railed at as drunken 
 ruffians, and ordered, under pain of severe punishment, 
 to do the best they could to repair the mischief they 
 had caused. When a set of persons (in or out of holy 
 orders) make a career of inflicting the analogous out- 
 rage on the delicate equipoise of children's minds, they 
 are called " successful sc . . . " — well, never mind what 
 they are called'-, let those wear the cap who find it fits 
 them. You and I are not, we hope, upsetting other 
 people's Logans, except occasionally and by accident ; 
 we do not make it a career or do it on purpose. 
 
 Let us go back to the inquiry which concerns us. 
 The Logan is an idle, useless thing, a symbol merely 
 (but sacred because a symbol) of a great truth. The 
 brain of a child is neither idle nor useless ; it has a very 
 real function, viz. : — to pump force directly from unseen 
 cosmic stores on to the nervous system. I use the word 
 " pump " advisedly ; the brain brings force from the 
 unseen on to the nervous system when it carries on 
 steadily a movement of rocking or alternation. This 
 movement goes on to more effective purpose, and with 
 less friction, in proportion as the equipoise is more 
 complete and the balance more perfect. 
 
 Race-inheritance, local custom, claims of duties, family 
 ties, affections and tradition — these are the loadings 
 which make the equipoise "stable," i.e. determine a 
 position towards which the mind tends when coming to 
 rest. But there should be no fixity or friction to prevent 
 its swaying temporarily out of that position in any 
 
Balance of the Nervous System 8 1 
 
 direction, on the slightest stimulus from without. On 
 this condition, mobility being at its maximum and 
 friction at its minimum, the successive events of life set 
 up a maximum of force-induction with a minimum of 
 waste. 
 
 Now the balance, the rocking, is between Table C 
 and Table D. (As I said before, if you do not think 
 my distribution of the items in the two tables satis- 
 factory you had better write out one for yourself which 
 seems to you more so.) But as the very fact of exerting 
 a weak faculty uses up force, the rocking action should 
 be set up, the friction overcome, the equipoise restored, 
 and the nervous system saturated with force, by the 
 alternate action of faculties naturally strong or already 
 in good working-practice, before the attempt is made to 
 get into use those which are weak, either by nature or 
 from artificial disuse. 
 
 In this chapter we are trying to get a clear idea of 
 the general meaning of nervous balance. I will there- 
 fore give a familiar instance, just by way of clearing up 
 our conceptions of its mode of working. 
 
 If digestive power (No. i in C) is weak and the 
 character generous or dreamy, and health has suffered 
 from want of food, it is unwise to begin treatment, either 
 by loading the stomach with more food than it is able 
 to digest, or by having much recourse to condiments 
 which directly stimulate appetite and digestion. It is 
 found better to begin by exercising the time-sense, if 
 that be in fairly good working order ; laying stress on 
 punctuality, especially in the time of taking food ; and 
 by feeding to the sound of music, not of a very refined 
 or emotional or intellectual kind, but such as derives 
 
 6 
 
82 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 most of its charm from a steady marked rhythmic beat, 
 such as dance-music, marches, etc. When a little force 
 has been generated by this means, the digestion can, 
 with less risk of injury, be appealed to to exert itself. 
 If the time-sense is so weak that punctuality worries 
 and rhythmic music annoys, some other number in 
 Table C should be acted on ; No. 3, the sense of the 
 concrete, by rousing interest in some concrete process, 
 especially some process of growing, manufacturing, or 
 cooking food ; or No. 4 may be stimulated by the scent 
 or appearance of the food itself 
 
 The above is given, not as offering new advice but as 
 an instance to show the working of the balance in cases 
 with which everyone is already familiar. 
 
 The points on which it is desirable to fix attention 
 just now are: — 
 
 1. That a rocking alternation between Table C and 
 Table D supplies the force necessary for keeping conduct 
 in essentials steady. 
 
 2. That any friction in the rocking wastes force. 
 
 3. That obstruction to the rocking is likely to jolt 
 conduct off its proper guiding rails. It is found practi- 
 cally easier to get children to " behave well," i.e. to act 
 in an orderly manner suitable to the needs of their 
 environment, if no one tries to interfere with the free 
 swinging of their minds between ideas apparently 
 contrary to each other or feelings apparently antagon- 
 istic to each other. This is the result of experience. 
 The same condition of free swing of thought is found 
 also to make the acquisition of knowledge both easier 
 and less injurious to health of body and mind than it 
 otherwise would be. 
 
Balance of the Nervous System 83 
 
 The following summary of what is known on the 
 subject of nerve-balance has received endorsement from 
 eminent representatives both of theology and psycho- 
 logical science. 
 
 The Creed of Sanity 
 
 Unity is the property of the Infinite, the Absolute, 
 the Eternal. Dividedness is the property of the finite, 
 the phenomenal, the transitory. Every attempt, either 
 to eternalise phenomenal distinctions, or to phenomenalise 
 Eternal Unity, is contrary to the true nature of man; 
 and tends towards the destruction of mental health. 
 The great All is a jealous God, and will not suffer His 
 honour to be given to any partial manifestation of good. 
 Every finite or phenomenal good which man invests 
 with attributes belonging only to the Infinite, avenges 
 the majesty of the Unseen Unity by injuring the brain 
 of man. 
 
 What force or creative energy is in its own nature we 
 do not know ; but we know that every mode of it with 
 which we are acquainted works by a pulsation of contrary 
 motions. All forms are evolved by pulsating Force, yet 
 itself is necessarily formless. 
 
 Man is the child of this pulsating or alternating 
 Creator; not His mere handywork, made arbitrarily, 
 unlike Himself; but the outcome of His very thought- 
 processes; and sanity, for us, means thinking as He 
 thinks, so far as we think at all. And He thinks, or, at 
 least, works, in an incessant rhythmic pulsation of 
 alternate constructing and sweeping away. Man should 
 imitate this pulsating activity within his own mind. His 
 studies should alternate the formation of defined and 
 
84 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 contrasted conceptions with the unifying of those con- 
 ceptions ; and his religious exercises should suspend all 
 concrete conceptions in adoration of the inconceivable 
 Unity. If we thus embody the principle of pulsation in 
 our thought-life, it becomes a source of constant power, 
 like the movement of our lungs ; if we forget it, we waste 
 force at each effort. False religions tend to arrest the 
 natural fading away of things that have served their 
 purpose, whether those things be visible forms or mental 
 conceptions. But the token of the covenant made by 
 Infinite Knowledge with man, is the Rainbow, which no 
 man can capture, or embalm, or enshrine : which is made 
 by the breaking up of the one light into many colours, 
 to fade, before long, into the unity of white light again ; 
 and which, when it fades, leaves nowhere in the world a 
 trace of its ever having existed, except on man's heart 
 an impression of spiritual beauty, and in his mind a 
 knowledge of the laws of light. 
 
 It is vain that we haste to rise early and late take 
 rest, and devour many carefully compiled text-books ; to 
 those who love the Invisible, formless, alternate-beating 
 Unity, the knowledge which is power comes even during 
 sleep. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE INVERT CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 Five years ago the reading public was startled by the 
 production of a book ^ written in prison, which contained 
 two apparently conflicting revelations. One portion was 
 such a picture of anomalous selfishness as made the 
 crimes of which the author had been convicted seem 
 light by comparison. The other consisted of a masterly 
 attempt, and perhaps the first real attempt known in 
 literature, to analyse the intellectual characteristics of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. What is the mysterious underground 
 link of connection between the sinner and the Saviour 
 which gave to Oscar Wilde an insight into the mind of 
 Christ that St Agnes or St John might envy ? We are 
 accustomed to think that a repentant thief has his share 
 of Paradise, and that Magdalene was forgiven because 
 she loved much ; but what opened the door of Revelation 
 to an unrepentant man who, on his own showing, had no 
 idea of the meaning of love, except as connected with 
 the gratification of his own sensations and superficial 
 emotions? 
 
 There exists a condition of inverse consciousness which 
 appears to be the common basis of the highest genius 
 and the most incurable insanity ; of the most sublime 
 
 ' De Proftmdis, by Oscar Wilde. 
 
 «5 
 
86 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 renunciation and the most abject depravity; of the most 
 illuminating logic and the most unreasoning perverse- 
 ness. The origin, the cause, of this inverse conscious- 
 ness is hidden in mystery ; we may, perhaps, get some 
 light upon it when we have succeeded in solving the 
 similar but simpler question, why the scarlet pimpernel, 
 which usually produces red flowers with blue centres, 
 occasionally inverts, producing blue flowers with red 
 centres. A tendency to occasional inversion exists both 
 in nature and in human consciousness; and we must 
 accept the fact that it does so. We must also accept 
 this other fact — that individuals of invert consciousness, 
 whether it has manifested itself as genius or as insanity, 
 as logic or as perverseness, as sublime indifference to 
 one's own suffering or as abject indifference to right 
 and wrong, understand each other instinctively as no 
 ordinary mortals understand any of them. 
 
 The invert may be described as a spontaneous philo- 
 sopher, in this sense, viz., that, whereas the highest 
 religious philosophy leads us towards a belief that there 
 must be a goodness in all things, even those which seem 
 to us evil, the invert knows, without any proof or learn- 
 ing, that some things are good which seem to himself 
 evil. Most little children avoid or hate whatever causes 
 them the sensation of pain. Advancing experience (in 
 the cricket field and elsewhere) teaches them that it is 
 advisable to learn to bear pain with fortitude ; and that 
 those who will not do so are shut out from many joys 
 and pleasures ; but, to little children, pain, so far as it 
 influences them at all, is distasteful. But I knew one 
 infant, who, at a year and a half old, seemed to take 
 keen interest in pain. Like all inverts, he was incon- 
 
The Invert Consciousness 87 
 
 sistent ; the flesh was weak though the spirit was willing ; 
 if he hurt himself badly he would scream like any 
 normal child. But as soon as he recovered from the 
 shock, he would crawl (he still crawled more easily 
 than he walked) to the object which had hurt him 
 and knock himself up against it, more gently, but 
 repeatedly ; apparently trying to reproduce, on a small 
 and manageable scale, the sensation which, on the 
 larger scale, had overpowered him ; and looking the 
 while as much absorbed and interested as if he had 
 found a new toy.^ 
 
 We are all influenced in some way by the public 
 opinion of persons of our own age, rank, and society. 
 Most of us incline naturally to follow it. Inverts, how- 
 ever, are impelled against an action when public opinion 
 is in favour of it, and towards it when public opinion 
 condemns it. It is known to schoolmasters that a far 
 better protection against vice than any sermonising by 
 grown-ups is a strong public opinion, among the boys 
 themselves, that vice is "caddish" and "bad form." 
 There are boys, here and there, who would be far more 
 attracted towards any action by the fact of its being 
 considered " bad form " than by any personal pleasure 
 they could derive from it. These are the boys who 
 originate bad customs ; the majority follow where they 
 are led. Probably Oscar Wilde was, in boyhood, one of 
 the devotees of " bad form " for its own sake. 
 
 The line of cleavage between what seems good and 
 what seems evil varies according to age, time, circum- 
 stances, and individual taste ; the mark of the invert is 
 
 ^ The child who deliberately hurt himself was grandson to the 
 man who wrote The Mystery of Pain. 
 
88 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 that he is attracted towards a thing by the very fact 
 that he is at the moment fearing it, or feeling it to be 
 " evil," 
 
 James Hinton was a man abstemious by taste, and 
 preserved from personal vice by his reverence for 
 womanhood and his passionate tenderness towards the 
 suffering. But he took as much pains to acquire a 
 reputation for being bad, as most men do to preserve a 
 reputation for being good. He once gave, in my hearing, 
 as an explanation of some of his anomalous vagaries : — 
 " My God was a vagabond chap, with a taste for low 
 company, who died on the gallows." I quote this, not 
 as my opinion about the Christ, but to explain why 
 I call J. Hinton an invert, and what it was which both 
 he and Oscar Wilde perceived in the " Mind of Christ " 
 which escapes the perception of more normal persons. 
 It is needless to point out how unfortunate is the 
 influence of such utterances, made at random in presence 
 of persons younger or less earnest than the speaker. I 
 only point out that J. Hinton, a man of pure and 
 abstemious life, saw the Saviour in that aspect. It was 
 his way of recognising the truth of the Divine paradox : 
 " That the lowest place was that which the Highest 
 chose." 
 
 Most Christians think of the earth life of Christ as a 
 short sorrow, and of the adoration of Christendom as 
 what He desires, J. Hinton used to say : " One would 
 accept being crucified, it does not last long. But to be 
 set up as a standard and have truths revealed to other 
 men trampled down in honour of one, that is a fate to 
 make the stoutest heart quail." 
 
 It is cheap and easy to dismiss such utterances as 
 
The Invert Consciousness 89 
 
 " fantastic " and " crazy." But the invert consciousness 
 exists, and exerts influence ; and those who are guiding 
 the education of the nation should surely study how to 
 direct it towards useful ends. 
 
 In the " Preparation of the Child for Science," I 
 pointed out a fact which has always struck me as terribly 
 significant. If we take a two-dimensional section of a 
 gentian, we may get a bud-tip appearing, in section, as 
 an isolated anomaly, in no visible connection with any 
 portion of the open flower. But if, instead of cutting 
 the thing to suit our flat views, we had looked at it in 
 three dimensions, we should have seen, not only that 
 the odd point was connected with the flower through its 
 stalk, but also that it marks the precise place where 
 another flower would have opened in course of time had 
 we not interfered to reduce the whole to the two- 
 dimensional condition. 
 
 Various mathematical studies have thrown a vivid 
 light on the phenomenon of inversion ; among them is 
 one by Babbage, published in 1837, under the title 
 Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Lines and shapes in three 
 dimensions which, in themselves, are continuous and 
 normal, produce, if their shadows are cast on flat paper, 
 all manner of anomalies, inversions, and irregularities. 
 It is inferred that normal facts in higher dimen- 
 sions might, when reflected on the human three- 
 dimensional consciousness, account for anomalies and 
 apparently miraculous conditions. The experiment was 
 therefore tried of inverting certain relations in the 
 equations of regular curves and families of curves. A 
 most interesting result followed. The inverted equation 
 to a curve sometimes gives what is called a "singular 
 
90 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 point," related to the original curve almost as a "rogue 
 elephant" is to his tribe ; standing aloof, in no relation 
 visible to the eye with any other point on the curve. On 
 the other hand, the invert equation to a family of curves 
 may produce what is called an " envelope," i.e. a curve 
 in contact with every other member of the family. 
 These anomalous points or curves, worked out in invert 
 equations, are called in mathematical terminology, 
 singular solutions- Numa Hartog, the young Jew whose 
 brilliant achievement in mathematics was the occasion 
 of opening university honours to his co-religionists, said 
 to me, in a puzzled kind of way, that the chapter on 
 singular solutions in my husband's Treatise on Differen- 
 tial Equations, "does not read like a chapter of an 
 ordinary text-book." It would be strange if it did, 
 seeing that it resulted from a devout study of the mystic 
 literature of all ages, from Isaiah's prophecies to Tenny- 
 son's " St Agnes' Eve," My husband, in the last years 
 of his life, devoted much time to the study of Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, the theological reformer, and, not 
 long before his death, wrote : — " I have made out what 
 puts the whole subject of Singular Solutions into a state 
 of Unity." Following up clues given by him at that 
 period, some extra-academic mathematicians have worked 
 on the problem so near his heart throughout his life, viz. : 
 — Given a child of any anomalous type, how should his 
 education be directed towards forming in him personal 
 habits tending towards constructive genius rather than 
 perverse destructiveness ; towards illuminating synthesis 
 rather than brilliant paradox ; towards useful originality 
 rather than vicious curiosity ; towards a reverent and 
 sparing use of pleasures, towards renunciation of that 
 
The Invert Consciousness 9 1 
 
 for which other men seek, rather than towards audacious 
 snatching at what they feel to be evil ? 
 
 When I have tried to call the attention of heads of 
 schools to the dangers to which children of exceptional 
 type are exposed under existing schemes of moral and 
 religious education, I have been met by replies to the 
 effect that a school must be organised to suit the 
 majority, and that exceptional children must take their 
 chance in the general melee — a dangerous doctrine in 
 itself, it seems to me, because genius has great influence, 
 for good or ill, over the masses of average men and 
 women. But besides this, it is thought by several 
 experienced persons that the scheme of mental habit 
 suggested for the protection of genius from its special 
 mental and moral dangers would in reality be good, 
 not bad, for the development and stamina of average 
 children. 
 
 We are often told by publishers and editors that the 
 public is not interested in speculation of this kind. But 
 if England takes no interest in the question whether its 
 young men of abnormal genius shall lay themselves on 
 the altar of National Reform or rot away in mere phos- 
 phorescent decadence, why was Oscar Wilde condemned 
 to prison, and why do we perform religious services in 
 honour of Jesus of Nazareth ? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FIXING OF GOOD HABITS 
 
 The question of Ethical Stability should be of interest 
 to parents, and indeed to every one. We are all trying 
 to form in ourselves and our children such habits as we 
 consider good ; but we leave it too much to mere chance 
 to decide whether these good habits are being formed 
 in a manner calculated to make them stable under stress 
 and strain, or in such a way that they will readily col- 
 lapse during illness or over-fatigue. Some change of 
 habit must be made when nervous energy collapses ; 
 that change should take the form of cessation from use- 
 ful activities. Such suspension of activity facilitates 
 re-storation of latent force ; too often, however, the 
 change takes, instead, the form of active violation of 
 good habits of self-restraint previously acquired. The 
 question which of the two directions a temporary loss 
 of force shall take depends very little on the desire of 
 the individual at the time (very few persons desire, at 
 the outset of a fit of nervous exhaustion, to become 
 drunkards, morphia-maniacs, or murderers), but very 
 much upon the manner in which the habit of self-restraint 
 was originally formed, the basis upon which it was first 
 established. 
 
 There are several errors which may be made in forming 
 
The Fbdng of Good Habits 93 
 
 habits of sobriety, etc. One error consists in indulgence 
 of physical appetites, in themselves innocent and 
 healthy, at wrong portions of the mental life. 
 
 The mental life may be divided into two portions: 
 one in which the faculty of discrimination between 
 external objects is fully awake, and which we call 
 phase A ; the other in which the faculty of discrimination 
 is dormant, or partially so : we call this portion phase B. 
 
 Phase B includes sleep, drowsiness, day-dreaming, and 
 "brown studies," all of which are normal and healthy 
 states if not indulged in to excess or at inconvenient 
 seasons. There are unhealthy modes of phase B, which 
 do not concern us at present. Phase B also includes 
 the condition of active mental abstraction, in which 
 general conceptions are formed ; in which attention is so 
 concentrated on the task of seizing the point of similarity 
 between two or more things or ideas, that it is not actively 
 awake to the points of difference between them. The 
 mood in which a child notices that a cherry is soft and 
 a marble hard, that the cherry is good to eat and the 
 marble is not, that the sun is bigger than the moon, 
 belongs to phase A ; the mood in which it dawns on 
 him that all these things are round, the mood in which 
 there is being formed within him the conception of 
 roundness, belongs to phase B. The mood in which a 
 musician com-poses belongs to phase B ; that in which 
 he afterwards corrects his composition, to phase A. The 
 pouring out of one's soul in music, verse, or impassioned 
 prose, belongs to B ; the decision which parts of the 
 outpour are suitable to give to the public, belongs to A. 
 
 The organisation of education can never be anything 
 but empirical and chaotic till teachers recognise the 
 
94 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 differences between these two phases, and the relations 
 between the two. 
 
 One of the points which should be attended to by 
 those who would forge passion into power is that of 
 handwriting. If the neurotic individual has taken pains 
 to cultivate, for his use during phase A, a handwriting 
 which is both legible and characteristic, this tends to 
 keep clear the distinction between phase A and phase 
 B, for he will find that any change in his usual hand- 
 writing indicates the oncoming either of phase B or of 
 some such disturbance of the nerve-centres as accom- 
 panies the irregular intermixing of A and B, 
 
 Nothing is more important for the future ethical 
 stability of the individual than that his constitution 
 should be trained to receive and expect physical enjoy- 
 ments only during phase A. Neutrality as to physical 
 sensations, as far as this can be secured, should be the 
 concomitant of phase B. 
 
 The reason for this is obvious. Physical enjoyments 
 should be taken with discrimination, both as to kind and 
 as to quantity ; the body has a right, so to speak, to 
 claim a normal amount of pleasures ; but it should be 
 trained to time its requirements in that direction so as 
 to make its claim during the times when the discrimin- 
 ating faculty is awake, rather than when something 
 else is going on in the mind which is incompatible with 
 the full alertness of the discriminating faculty. 
 
 Many pious followers of ancient religions fell into the 
 strange error of supposing that because the seeking of 
 physical pleasure is unsuited to states of internal revela- 
 tion, therefore the voluntary incurring of pain is a 
 suitable adjunct to those states. There could hardly 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 95 
 
 be a greater mistake. Whatever may be the educative 
 value of suffering — a wide question, not to be touched 
 on here, — the body should be trained to seek, in dream- 
 moods, not strong sensation of any kind but neutrality. 
 The mind should be so trained that it tends, when its 
 discriminating faculties are in less than full activity, not 
 to mortify the body but to forget it. 
 
 We will now suggest precautions to be taken with a 
 view to training certain kinds of desire for physical 
 pleasure and physical self-assertion into the healthy 
 habit of going to sleep whenever the faculty of dis- 
 crimination is lethargic or dormant. 
 
 Some persons have carried the theory of synchronism 
 so far as to insist that infants should not be allowed 
 to suck themselves to sleep. The present writer doubts 
 the necessity for any such interference, as long as the 
 food is uniform, monotonous, and absolutely natural. 
 But there can be no question as to the wisdom of begin- 
 ning the rhythmic discipline as soon as the child is old 
 enough to have sweets. No sweets or biscuits to suck 
 oneself to sleep with should be allowed. 
 
 No day-dreaming should be allowed at meal times. 
 Food should be taken slowly ; and eating may be inter- 
 rupted by short intervals of chatter and laughter ; but 
 no silent dawdling should be allowed during the meal. 
 A period of silence after a meal is not bad in its way. 
 
 Unusually nice things, choice fruits, etc., should always 
 be the concomitant of social festivities, not the con- 
 solation of loneliness. If you have to leave a child 
 alone, and wish to give it some compensation for solitude, 
 let this take the form of a mental interest (a fresh toy, 
 picture, book, etc.), not of a physical sensation. 
 
96 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 Table-courtesies, attention to other people's wants, 
 etc., have another function besides those of training in 
 " good manners," and of promoting unselfishness ; they 
 help to keep up the habit of synchronism between the 
 act of feeding the body and the mental condition of 
 alertness as to outer facts. Get the child, by every 
 possible means, into the habit of noticing who wants 
 salt or bread, whenever he is eating ; and of not noticing 
 what is going on round him when he is engaged in 
 study. 
 
 A hostess who invites friends, especially young friends, 
 to partake of luxurious food and choice fruits, or to 
 make jokes in a scented and flower-bedecked room, is 
 morally bound to keep the conversation strictly on the 
 discriminative plane. It need not be frivolous, or un- 
 improving ; it may be about botany, astronomy, 
 politics, or history ; but it should deal with the super- 
 ficial aspect of those things ; with obvious differences, 
 not with underlying unity between them. This caution 
 should be especially observed if pleasant wines are 
 offered. On the other hand, a hostess who intends that 
 her house should be a centre of philosophy, a place of 
 exercise for the faculty of discovering general principles 
 underlying phenomena apparently diverse or discordant, 
 is bound to keep a severe check on her housekeeper in 
 the matter of showing what the establishment can do 
 in the way of a luxurious feed. The drinkables, on such 
 occasions, should be, as far as possible, teetotal in kind. 
 If any of the guests are invalids and cannot digest 
 without a modicum of alcohol, it should be sound in 
 quality but not specially tempting in flavour, and should 
 not be pressed on anyone, especially on the young. 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 97 
 
 Wherever the underlying principle of monism, of 
 unity among apparent opposites, is being thought of, 
 brilliant witticisms should be severely at a discount. 
 So should dramatic gesticulation, and, in fact, all 
 spontaneous self-assertion of the body, and all that 
 ministers to mental shovv-i-ness. During discussions 
 of underlying principles, men and women should be 
 encouraged to treat each other as comrades in investiga- 
 tion, rather than as persons of opposite sex. Polite 
 attentions from men as such to women as such should 
 be accompanied by conversation which encourages the 
 sense of contrast and the exercise of faculties of 
 discrimination. 
 
 Careless readers might suggest that all this savours of 
 Puritanism. A moment's reflection suffices to remind 
 us that Puritanism discouraged fun, feasting, frolic and 
 flirting, at all times. Modern medical science ac- 
 knowledges the usefulness of them as integral portions 
 of normal life ; it discourages indulgence in them only 
 at wrong periods of the mental cycle. From the point of 
 view of modern medical science. Pan, the horrible satyr, 
 the parent of all the most hideous vices, was really The 
 One, The All, the same conception of the Unity of 
 Creation as the I Am of Moses ; but — mark the difference 
 — approached without the special precautions with which 
 Moses surrounded the approach to the Holy Mountain 
 whereon he had seen the Unity of the Creator. 
 
 The rules above suggested are important for all 
 children. There are certain extra precautions which 
 are advisable in the case of highly neurotic young 
 persons and of those who possess (or who are possessed 
 by ?) that mysterious faculty called Genius. 
 
 7 
 
9 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 Genius, of whatever kind, and whatever other elements 
 may go to make up its composition, always has for one 
 of its main ingredients an unusual development of the 
 faculty of monism. Genius does, at certain times, dis- 
 criminate very clearly ; but some form or other of what 
 we have called " phase B " is, in the man of genius, 
 more profound and definite than is the case with 
 ordinary mortals. The process of seeing a unity under- 
 lying phenomena which to the external discrimination 
 seemed diverse, is, for genius, not a mere restful dream, 
 but a positive working-implement (intellectual, artistic, 
 or spiritual). 
 
 The space at our disposal does not permit us to go 
 into the proofs of this assertion ; we need only, here, 
 remind our readers that, while ordinary painters can 
 produce striking likenesses of individuals, the painter of 
 great genius can produce an ideal type-face — say a 
 philosopher which is like every portrait of a philosopher 
 that one ever saw ; or a maiden who reminds every 
 lover of his lady-love ; or a Christ in which every serious- 
 minded person sees a resemblance to the teacher who 
 has most inspired him ; or a woodland scene which 
 makes each admirer suspect that the painter has visited 
 his or her own favourite nook in the woods. Similarly, 
 while all ordinary astronomers were making observations 
 on the motions of the moon, and ordinary physicists on 
 the fall of various bodies towards the earth, Newton 
 declared that the two sets of movements were subject 
 to a common law ; while ordinary naturalists were busy 
 discussing which plants or animals were related to each 
 other, and where science was compelled to infer that 
 special kind of creation which constitutes a separate 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 99 
 
 species, Darwin showed that species are probably old 
 and fixed varieties. 
 
 Genius is not a disease ; it is rather, like parturition, 
 a condition of normal and healthy fertility, but it is a 
 condition in which, under our present artificial social 
 conditions, extra precautions are desirable in order to 
 prevent its becoming the starting-point of disease. 
 
 The precautions specially desirable during the com- 
 position phase of genius are such as the following : — 
 Food rather less in bulk than the individual's usual 
 quantity (to be made up for when the fit has passed 
 over), lighter and more digestible in kind, and less 
 highly flavoured. Alcohol (if any) less in quantity than 
 usual, and never taken in a room alone, or between 
 meals. Extra reserve in intercourse with the opposite 
 sex. Strict chastenedness of conversation ; abstaining 
 not only from the least approach to anything unseemly 
 in itself, but also from all levity, from jests at the expense 
 of others ; from even the appearance of irreverence or 
 unkind speech ; and great moderation in the matter of 
 brilliant and showy wit. 
 
 Young people of genius, to do them justice, nearly all 
 evolve an instinct of self-protection and would naturally 
 seek the shelter of such precautions as I have indicated. 
 But officious friends are much too prone to interfere, 
 wondering why the youth or girl cannot be " like other 
 people"; and especially why he cannot behave, now, 
 like his usual self If he is ill, let him go to a doctor. 
 If he is not ill enough to need medical care, they "have 
 no patience with whims " in the matter of food. And 
 why need he give himself airs of being glum and self- 
 absorbed ? He is not working so hard as all that comes 
 
I oo The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 to. Besides, he found time to go for a walk with a 
 serious friend ; why couldn't he, instead, find time to 
 join in the fun in the drawing-room and to dance attend- 
 ance on his girl-cousins ? And so on. 
 
 " Why cannot he be like other people ? " Because 
 Nature has decreed that, at certain crises of his life, he 
 shall not ; that he must be more reserved, more reticent, 
 more chastened than others need to be, or else he will 
 become worse than others are. Because, while the fit of 
 com-position is on him, the man is a consecrated 
 priest and prophet of Unity ; he is not, for the time, a 
 member of ordinary human society ; he is bound to 
 dwell alone in the desert; and, if not faithful to The 
 Holy One, terribly likely to fall into the clutches of the 
 wicked, leering Pan. 
 
 Some writer has said that " A woman should be an 
 angel to marry a genius " ; and sometimes indeed it 
 does seem so. But the wives of men of genius would 
 have much less need of angelic forbearance in later life, 
 if they had, before marriage, enough common-sense and 
 moral arithmetic to count the cost of what they are 
 about to do; if they would decide at once, either to 
 forego the special joys which genius sheds around it, or 
 to endure the extra precautions necessary to preserve 
 its delicate balance. 
 
 We have said that the body should be trained to time 
 its cravings for physical enjoyment so as to synchronise 
 with mental moods of dis-crimination. This rule might 
 legitimately be carried out absolutely and without re- 
 servation, and should be carried out as far as circum- 
 stances make it possible. In all moods to which the 
 words com-pose and com-position can be applied, the 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits i o i 
 
 body should seek ease, neutrality of sensation, the mere 
 supplying of its needs ; all sensation which is either 
 acutely pleasurable or novel, as well as all freaks of 
 physical curiosity and all vigorous and exciting modes 
 of muscular exertion, should co-incide with moods of 
 active mental dis-crimination. 
 
 There is another canon of ethical safety, quite as 
 important to observe as the above, but it cannot be so 
 absolutely or clearly stated. It will therefore need a 
 little more explanation. It is that of training the body 
 to abstain, when the discriminating faculties are wholly 
 or partially dormant, from spontaneous ex-pression. 
 There are regions of exception to this rule ; if it were 
 enforced throughout the whole range of possibilities of 
 physical expression, it would cut at the root of all out- 
 ward expression of the mental process of com-position. 
 The hand must write (whether words or notes), the 
 voice must utter, the brush must paint, while the mind 
 is too busy listening to the Inspirations of the Unseen 
 Source of Harmony to exercise its critical discriminating 
 faculties to the full ; hence that need of after-correction 
 so much insisted on by all really great writers and 
 artists. There must be ex-pression of some sort during 
 creative, com-posing moods, else there can be no art ; 
 the hand must be trained to register impulses as they 
 pass through the half-conscious mind, in order that the 
 discriminating faculty may afterwards possess what has 
 been so registered, as material to work upon. All true 
 art consists of selection made by the discriminating 
 faculty, when fully awake, out of material inspired 
 through the com-posing faculty while the discrimination 
 was wholly or partially dormant. All originality in art 
 
I02 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 depends on the sacred right-to-go-wrong among art 
 material, compensated by a corresponding after-exercise 
 of the correcting-power of discrimination. 
 
 But, as impulses towards physical activity of a harm- 
 less kind must be freely indulged during phase B, in 
 the interests of the artistic development, there is all the 
 more need that the body should be sternly trained in 
 the habit of using, in dreamy moods, only such modes 
 of ex-pression as can be harmlessly mis-used. It ought 
 to be more generally noticed than it hitherto has been, 
 that all kinds of freaks of curiosity pass through the sub- 
 conscious mind of imaginative persons ; and of all those 
 of neurotic, ascetic, or specially religious temperament. 
 Through the sub-conscious mind of such persons there 
 pass very often (alternating with other and more useful 
 thoughts) such ideas as : — " I am tired of life " ; " John 
 Smith is a nuisance; the world would be better off if he 
 were out of it " ; "I wonder what it feels like to be 
 drunk"; "I should like to get into an opium-dream," 
 etc., etc., etc. A medical man of long experience assures 
 me that, under such circumstances, a fatal act may be 
 committed by the hand, in response to the freakish 
 impulse of the sub-conscious mind, before the discriminat- 
 ing judgment has had time to take cognisance of what 
 is going on. Juries in such cases debate as to whether 
 the act was wilful or involuntary, whether their verdict 
 shall be " accident," or " temporary insanity," or " guilty." 
 The verdict should properly be : — " Guilty of neglect of 
 precautions for the preservation of moral sanity." 
 
 No person of dreamy, religious, philosophic, artistic, 
 or mystical temperament should trust himself alone in a 
 room with loaded firearms, until he has acquired, by 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 103 
 
 practice in handling arms while unloaded, the habits 
 which go to make the handling of them, when loaded, 
 safe. Among the most important of those habits is that 
 of never handling them at all except while the discrimin- 
 ating faculty is fully awake. For similar reasons, the 
 hands of all such persons should be early trained never 
 to gravitate, in any form of phase B, towards anything 
 in which a drug might be contained. Preservation from 
 crime and vice depends, for any neurotic, far less on the 
 absence of potentially criminal moods than on the habit 
 of not expressing the impulses of dream-moods, even 
 when these are good, in any manner or material by which 
 harm could be done if the impulse itself were an evil one. 
 Pens and paper, pencils, spare canvases, oddments of 
 paint, waste crewels and silks, are the safest kinds of 
 implements with which to express inspiration as it passes. 
 And the original register should never be shown to any 
 public, till it has been well weeded or corrected in a fully 
 discriminating mood. 
 
 One of the most perilous habits which an original 
 thinker can acquire is that of running about among his 
 friends ex-pressing his inspirations at their crude stage. 
 Every original thinker gets into states in which wonder- 
 ful suggestions occur to him, of analogies or likenesses 
 between facts previously seen as diverse. To many, the 
 joy at times is so overwhelming — and at other times the 
 sense of mere fun is so exhilarating — that one feels one 
 cannot bear it alone ; one must share the delight and 
 wonder with someone. Yet the fact must be faced : — 
 the habit of ex-plaining one's vision to one's fellow 
 mortals, while the vision-mood is still on one's soul, is 
 dangerous to moral sanity. The great safeguard for 
 
1 04 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 the thinker is that which kept Moses safe among all the 
 flashing spiritual electricity of Mount Sinai : — the deep 
 consciousness of being, not the originator of the pleasant 
 thought but its recipient ; of being, for the time, not a 
 teacher of other men but a pupil of Eternal Unity ; of 
 being in the actual presence of an Unseen Father, Who 
 not only gives the Revelation, but Who also — if one can, 
 without irreverence, venture to say so — fully appreciates 
 the fun. 
 
 The rest of this chapter will be slightly more abstract 
 and scientific than the preceding part ; but any reader 
 who has the least acquaintance with the conception 
 alluded to in modern educational works as " the doctrine 
 of association " will find no difficulty in following the 
 reasoning. 
 
 If we are accustomed to do a certain act, voluntarily, 
 whenever a certain idea or emotion is stirred, the act 
 becomes associated in our nervous system with that idea 
 or emotion, and tends, so to speak, to do itself at the 
 stimulus of the idea or emotion ; the presence of the 
 idea causes us to perform the act involuntarily, by sheer 
 force of habit. For this reason it is important, not only 
 to form good habits, but to associate them, during the 
 process of formation, with motives, ideas, and emotions 
 likely to last throughout life. 
 
 For the first twelve years or so of a child's life it is 
 impossible to guess what class of emotions or ideas will 
 appeal most strongly to him later on. Therefore it is 
 wiser not to try to link the good habits which are being 
 formed with any motive which seems to sway him 
 specially ; but rather to appeal to quite general ones : — 
 all the persons about him, especially those with whom 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 1 05 
 
 he lives, wish him to be clean, punctual, polite, etc., and 
 things will be made pleasant to himself if he does as they 
 wish. This vague combination of altruism and egoism 
 is a sufficient basis for the formation of character in 
 childhood. During the period of adolescence the 
 motives which will ultimately dominate begin to stir in 
 the consciousness. Parents and teachers too often make 
 the mistake of imagining that it comes within their 
 function to determine by what motives a pupil shall be 
 swayed. That question does not depend on any de- 
 cision of theirs. As well might a hatching hen decide 
 that the eggs on which she is sitting shall develop into 
 partridges and not into ducks ! What does depend, to 
 some extent, on the hen's action, is, whether the develop- 
 ment which is going on shall be full and harmonious or 
 arrested and impotent ; whether the ducks or partridges 
 (as the case may be) shall have their limbs in good 
 working order, or shall be lop-sided and helpless to 
 carry out their own purposes. " If you train up a child 
 in the way he should go," said an eminent psychologist 
 of the last generation, " when he is old he will not 
 depart from it. If he departs from the way in which 
 you have tried to train him, it is because you have tried 
 to train him in a way which he should not have gone, 
 one in which Nature never intended him to go." 
 
 This is now perfectly acknowledged by all psychologists 
 worth mentioning. They know quite well that the 
 business of the teacher is to found, on a basis of 
 motives which exist, habits which will be useful. The 
 only correction of this formula which the present writer 
 would venture to suggest is an addition. Found habits 
 which will be useful on a basis of such among existing 
 
io6 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 motives as are likely to prove permanent ; or, in other 
 words : — Build up good habits on a basis within which 
 falls the centre of gravity of the individual with whom 
 you are dealing. 
 
 Now what do we mean by the centre of gravity of a 
 character? 
 
 In any given individual, it will be found that some 
 motives potent in phase A lose their hold in B ; and 
 some which are potent in B lose hold in A. Some 
 desires and ambitions, which appeal strongly to him in 
 A, seem to him in B unworthy and trivial ; and some 
 aspirations which stir profound emotion in B are judged 
 
 by the waking discrimination of A to be too refined, too 
 subtle, too altruistic for the present stage of existence. 
 But there is probably always a range of motives which 
 appeal to the heart of the individual in both phases. 
 Let us picture the whole range of motives which influence 
 him in the A phase as represented by the left-hand 
 circle in the diagram, and the whole range which 
 influence him in the B phase as represented by the right- 
 hand one ; we shall think of motives operative only in 
 A as Y-motives, those operative only in B as Z-motives, 
 while X, the qiicBsitum, will stand for the (usually small) 
 range of motives which stir his deeper emotions during 
 his dream-moods, and yet are judged by his waking dis- 
 crimination to be practical ; and which are therefore 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 1 07 
 
 able to stimulate him both to strenuous effort and to 
 steady self-restraint. Within X lies the true centre of 
 gravity of the individual's heart and conscience ; " the 
 soul that makes him one from first to last." 
 
 Habits formed while motives X are present to the 
 mind are unHkely to collapse under any stress and 
 strain of life, or even in the conditions respectively 
 known as " absence of mind " and as " temporary in- 
 sanity." 
 
 It must be observed that the permanent motive is not 
 always one predominantly present to consciousness. It 
 is revealed rather by the quality of the individual's 
 interest in other things than by his conscious interest in 
 that thing. A girl may seem at one time devoted to 
 music or some art, at another to philosophy or litera- 
 ture ; but always under the dominant influence of some 
 teacher, and stimulated by his approval. The desire for 
 human approval is in this case likely to be a more per- 
 manent motive than either art or philosophy. Or a girl 
 may be absorbed at one time in the study of music ; at 
 another time of history or literature ; and what her soul 
 is seeking through its various phases may be the Law of 
 rhythmic beats of the Unseen. In such a case, the 
 motive which may be relied on as a basis for ethical 
 habit is the belief in the retaliations brought about by 
 the recoil-power of destiny. A young person may seem 
 at one time intensely pious, at another painfully worldly ; 
 the motive all through may be an artistic sentiment, 
 which causes the imagination to be fascinated, at one 
 time by the " beauty of holiness," at another by some 
 artistic quality perceived in social life ; the power to trust 
 to, in such a case, is neither the influence of the Church 
 
io8 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 nor that of the world, but the desire for the outward 
 expression of harmonious Law. 
 
 It must be remembered that we are treating here of 
 the choice not of a professional career for the future man 
 or woman, but of a basis for the formation of habits. 
 The bread-winning profession of an individual should be 
 of such a kind that he can be interested in it, but can 
 also escape entirely from the thought of it when off duty. 
 The basis of ethical habit, on the contrary, should be 
 some sentiment from which the individual never escapes ; 
 which is about his path and about his bed ; something 
 for the sake of which he is willing to work and the 
 thought of which makes it easy to rest ; which gives 
 life a meaning, and robs death of its sting. 
 
 In no cases, perhaps, can the subject of educational 
 disappointment be studied more easily or with more 
 profit than in those of little girls who show an early 
 taste for what are called domestic pursuits : needlework, 
 dusting, and the arrangement of the table or the room. 
 Such precocious little housewives often become, in later 
 life, the most hopelessly and helplessly undomesticated 
 women. The reason of the failure would seem to be 
 this : — The mother assumes that her intelligent little 
 helper has "domesticated tastes"; whereas the child's 
 orderly activity is probably due to its being, at a very early 
 age, the only outlet for some nascent passion, either the 
 love of approval, or the general instinct of kindness, or the 
 desire to help whoever is greater and cleverer than her- 
 self. A little girl may be phenomenally clever at 
 darning father's socks as long as father is the dominant 
 influence of her life, and darning socks the only thing she 
 can do for him. If she finds out too early that she can 
 
The Fixing of Good Habits 1 09 
 
 help him, or some indulgent uncle, by copying MSS., it 
 is much to be feared that the needle will prove to be not 
 her true vocation after all, unless special pains are taken 
 to cultivate the taste for some years. As soon as the 
 child goes to school, domestic work finds itself perhaps 
 in violent conflict with the ruling passion ; and the taste 
 for it crumbles like a snapped " Rupert's drop," never to 
 be restored. Domesticated tastes, in a woman, are the 
 normal result of household work having been an outlet 
 for the expression of the X-motive between the ages of 
 twelve and eighteen. 
 
 The question naturally occurs : — how can parents and 
 teachers find the centre of gravity of a young life, how 
 discover the ultimately dominant motive ? Very often 
 they cannot do so ; perhaps it is not best to probe in 
 the matter too curiously. The important thing is that 
 they should realise that there is a centre of gravity to 
 each young life ; and that it lies in the region where 
 apparently conflicting passions mutually overlap. They 
 will then try to link the habits most important to form, 
 not with the passion which seems strongest at any 
 given time but with the greatest possible variety of 
 motives, in the hope that the good habit will link itself 
 with the quality of feeling, whatever that may be, which 
 underlies all the various apparent motives. 
 
 In this matter, as in many others, the fact which it 
 is most important for us to know is that of our own 
 ignorance. We cannot know what is the centre of 
 gravity of a young nature; let us then not act as if 
 we knew. We know only that it lies at the meeting- 
 point of the character's extremes. 
 
 The power in which we must put our trust is not 
 
1 1 o The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 our own strength, but the Force which is given off 
 where conflicting elements meet. Our Deliverer is not 
 any eidolon which we have fashioned with the hands 
 of our imagination, but the Unity who reveals Himself 
 in the union of apparent opposites. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND 
 
 No one as yet knows exactly how conscious and un- 
 conscious mental action are related to each other. But 
 it will assist us in arranging the facts we do know if 
 we picture consciousness as a workshop, built over a 
 cavity, a sort of dark cavern or cellar. The senses 
 (eyes, ears, touch, etc.) are passages which lead out 
 into the open air. Raw material is brought through 
 these passages into the workshop (consciousness), and 
 sent through it into the cellar, whence it can be fetched 
 up when wanted. This fetching up from the cellar of 
 an idea lodged there beforehand is what we call the 
 act of memory or remembering. 
 
 Besides the stairway which leads from the above- 
 ground workshop to the cellar, there are other slopes 
 or stairways which go direct from the sense-avenues 
 to the cellar without passing through the workshop.^ 
 
 Individuals differ greatly in the use which they make 
 of the two sets of paths between the cellar and the 
 outside world. In some, nearly all material passes 
 into memory through consciousness ; others " remember " 
 many things which seem never to have passed through 
 consciousness at all on the way down to the store-house. 
 
 • See No. 9 of the Balance-table in Chapter IX. 
 Ill 
 
1 1 2 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 The same difference is observable in the relative use 
 of the two sets of passages for passing material back. 
 
 Almost everyone can with more or less accuracy and 
 vividness " call up a picture," or sound, or scent, or taste, 
 of which he is, at the moment, consciously thinking. 
 In that case, the impression has come up from the 
 unconscious mind into the conscious mind, and has 
 then passed out into the sense-perceptions or door- 
 ways. But in some persons stored-up impressions 
 come directly up the other stairs, into the sense- 
 passage, and thence into consciousness. The majority 
 first think of an object or sound or scent or flavour, 
 and then picture or " imagine " it ; but some see or 
 hear or smell or taste it in imagination, and only 
 afterwards consciously think of it. To this latter 
 mode of perception is commonly given such names as 
 clair-voyance, clair-audience, etc. It is as normal and 
 natural and healthy as the other, though as yet less 
 usual. 
 
 Most people think of an idea and then write it down. 
 To some it comes natural to write first, and then receive 
 the idea into consciousness by reading it in their own 
 handwriting. The one is as " normal " as the other, and, 
 in itself, quite as healthy. 
 
 To information brought from the unconscious mind 
 to the conscious through the channel of one's own 
 handwriting, is usually given the somewhat misleading 
 title "automatic writing." (Misleading, because all 
 writing which is done without conscious effort is 
 automatic in itself; whether dictated by the conscious 
 or the unconscious mind.) 
 
 As I said, one mode of conveyance between the 
 
Conscious and Unconscious Mind 1 1 3 
 
 outer sense and the cavern of unconscious mind is as 
 normal and healthy as the other ; each has its function 
 and utility. Only it is found important to distinguish 
 sounds or sights projected up from the cavern below 
 from those which are at the moment entering in from 
 the outside. And this is very easy to do when the 
 cellar-produced impressions come first up into con- 
 sciousness as thoughts and thence are projected on to 
 the concrete imagination. A little more training is 
 necessary to effect the distinction in the case of 
 imaginary impressions which come first as sense im- 
 pressions and only afterwards as thoughts. 
 
 But the fact that a faculty is not in working order at 
 birth, that it needs training before it can be relied on 
 to work efficiently, does not prove either that the faculty 
 is useless, or that the possession of it is a symptom of 
 disease. 
 
 Confusion has been introduced into this subject by 
 three causes. 
 
 First, for many years the medical profession treated 
 as " symptoms of insanity " the seeing of visions and 
 hearing of voices, and locked up in lunatic asylums our 
 best specimens. 
 
 Second, because clairvoyance and clairaudience have 
 been considered as symptoms of insanity, those to 
 whom they occur become frightened. Instead of taking 
 the thing naturally and quietly as a faculty to be used, 
 the relatives of the person affected treat it quite wrongly ; 
 making the same kind of mistakes as would be made if 
 one treated the opening of a kitten's eyes, or any other 
 normal product of evolution, as a symptom of disease 
 which must be got rid of In some cases, indeed, the 
 
 8 
 
1 14 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 patient really goes mad of sheer terror because he thinks 
 he must be going mad. 
 
 Third, clairvoyants and clairaudients are often well 
 aware that their peculiar sense-impressions are con- 
 comitants of inspiration. This is, so far, perfectly 
 correct. All people are more or less inspired at times, 
 and if a person is so constituted as to be subject to 
 these so-called hallucinations, it is during the inspired 
 moments that they occur. But it does not in the least 
 follow that those to whom they occur are more inspired, 
 or more truly inspired, than anybody else. The same 
 kind of organisation which makes a person clairvoyant 
 or clairaudient makes him also conscious when inspira- 
 tion is going on. The two things — clairvoyant impres- 
 sion and the sensuous consciousness of the fact of being 
 inspired — come to the same kind of person and in the 
 same physical condition. But inspiration itself comes 
 just as strongly and as truly to the same person in 
 other states, and to people who are never clairvoyant 
 at all. The visions or voices are no test or measure 
 either of the intensity, the accuracy, or the value of the 
 inspiration. They prove that inspiration is going on. 
 The absence of them does not prove it is not going on. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HYPERESTHESIA ; ADUMBRATIONS ; HALLUCINA- 
 TIONS; HYSTERIA 
 
 There is a condition known as hyperaesthesia, in which 
 some of the senses or faculties become abnormally 
 acute ; one sees objects clearly in very faint light, or 
 hears slight sounds at incredibly long distances ; while 
 quite ordinary amounts of light or noise may be dis- 
 tressing. Or the mind may become especially acute in 
 grasping certain kinds of ideas, which strike one with 
 painful force. In this condition mistaken impressions 
 and false ideas are peculiarly liable to register them- 
 selves and become part of the permanent furniture of 
 the brain. It is well, therefore, to hold oneself with 
 special care as near as may be to the Spirit of Truth 
 whenever the senses or intellect seem phenomenally 
 acute. 
 
 Either hyperaesthesia or the opposite condition, the 
 benumbing of certain faculties, may result from excessive 
 magnetisation by some other person, who may (or may 
 not) be wholly unconscious of the influence which he is 
 exerting. The remedy is easy and almost certainly 
 efficacious if administered under suitable conditions. 
 The person in whom the anomalous symptoms have 
 been observed should make himself, or be made, the 
 "5 
 
1 1 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 reconciling point of hostile forces. He should be 
 subjected to the influence of someone whom the source 
 of the mischief either despises and is despised by, or 
 hates and is hated by, or has wronged and feels wronged 
 by. This should be done, if possible, by mutual consent 
 of the conflicting parties, as a remedial measure indicated 
 by the course of events. The patient's suffering should 
 be treated as a token from The Unseen Powers, not 
 that the mutual hostility of the parties was wrong or 
 was needless from the first, but that the time has come 
 for it to cease. 
 
 Children who are subject to hyperaesthesia in any 
 form, or susceptible of over-magnetisation, should never 
 be stimulated to continuous intellectual exertion in any 
 one direction. They are the born reconcilers and 
 harmonisers of the world : their function is to reveal 
 to each other opposing modes of consciousness. At 
 school they should have easier intellectual work than is 
 found suitable for average children of their age and 
 apparent capability; they should be made responsible 
 for the lessons being understood by the stupidest and 
 most backward in the class ; and be allowed also to 
 point out to the teacher where the stupid ones have 
 failed to grasp his meaning. Such of them as take up 
 literature as a profession should begin their career as 
 translators and critics, and not offer their own ideas to 
 the world till they have considerable experience in 
 making some section of the public understand work 
 primarily written for, and more immediately intelligible 
 to, some other section. They should never be expected 
 or encouraged to join any party in religion or politics. 
 That fidelity to party, that esprit de corps, which for 
 
Hyperaesthesia 1 1 7 
 
 average men is a virtue, inasmuch as it counteracts 
 selfish vagaries and impulses, and keeps alive the ideal 
 of fidelity, is, for such sensitives as I am describing, a 
 vice, in that it breeds disease of the brain and nerve- 
 tissues, and prepares the way for all kinds of hypocrisies, 
 distortions, and vicious desires. 
 
 These sensitives are, properly speaking, " mediums " in 
 the fullest sense of that word, interpreters and mediators 
 by nature. But they need long and severe training 
 before they are fit to translate into human speech the 
 notations used by the Unseen Powers. And the training 
 should consist, not in premature boasting of their 
 personal intercourse with those Mighty Ones who have 
 " gone before," and who now " rule us from their graves," 
 but in humble and reverent expositions of the meaning 
 of masters who are visibly present to correct them if 
 they speak rashly, and of documents which can be 
 consulted at first hand by whoever doubts the accuracy 
 of the medium's interpretation. 
 
 That seems to have been the meaning of what were 
 called in Bible times " Schools of the Prophets." The 
 younger prophet was trained by carrying messages from 
 the older prophet to the people ; and not until he could 
 give a message accura.te\y from his human master to a 
 stupid king, or a noisy rabble, without distorting it, was 
 he allowed to speak as an authorised messenger from 
 God. 
 
 An analogous principle to that indicated above, the 
 necessity for training hyperaesthetic sensitives, from the 
 first, as interpreters, is the following. It is dangerous 
 to educate boys and girls apart from each other ; but 
 doubtfully wise to educate them together without the 
 
1 1 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 normal safeguard of purity and honour, which consists, 
 not in incessant spying by adults, but in making each 
 sex responsible, to some extent, for the other ; the boys 
 for the physical safety and intellectual thoroughness of 
 the girls; the girls for the physical comfort and moral 
 and artistic refinement of the boys. 
 
 In all this question of personal influence, we should 
 never lose sight of the great principle so lucidly ex- 
 plained by E. Ray Lankester in the Quarterly Review of 
 July 1904, viz.: — that two races or individuals may, by 
 merely coming into contact without the appropriate 
 precautions, generate some contagious disease of which 
 neither showed any symptom while they kept apart. 
 One may have been long generating the virus or other 
 potential cause of disease, but have been at the same 
 time growing, pari passu, immune to its action ; the 
 other may be free from the virus and lack the immunity. 
 When they come into contact, the virus may pass from 
 the one which is immune to the one which is not so, 
 and generate some horrible and unmanageable disease, 
 either physical or mental. Never, therefore, allow your- 
 self to think of a race-hatred, a race-shudder, a sense of 
 unaccountable unreasoning aversion, as a pre-judice ; it 
 is far more likely to be a pre-monition, a warning from 
 the Unseen to avoid some grave danger. But the pre- 
 monition comes from the Unseen, the As-Yet-Unknown ; 
 and the shadow which it casts before may be very 
 unlike the reality. Do not allow it to fix itself in your 
 mind in its present shape, and become a pre-judice (a 
 judgment without knowledge). Say to yourself, not : — 
 " I hate this man because he is a Jew " ; or " I despise 
 this man because he is a Kaffir " : or " All Orientals are 
 
Adumbrations 1 1 9 
 
 sly " ; or " All the yellow races are untrustworthy " ; 
 but " The Unseen is warning me that this man holds, 
 for the present, some danger for me." Act like the 
 wary animal who hears in the forest some unfamiliar 
 sound. Keep your eyes and mind open and your 
 tongue silent, and wait to see what the Unknown is 
 sending. 
 
 Coming revelation casts its shadow before. When 
 there is any stir in the region whence man receives 
 inspirations, or when the minds of powerful thinkers are 
 pondering over some problem as yet unsolved, sensitive 
 brains are prone to see visions and dream dreams. 
 Lack of understanding on this point gives rise to many 
 of the manias recognised as such by the medical and 
 legal authorities, as well as to many tragedies which 
 pass outside of lunatic asylums and which tend rather 
 to enrich the literature of romance than to foster man's 
 control over himself and the world around him. 
 
 When the shadow of on-coming revelation falls on 
 the intellectual plane, it commonly produces delusions of 
 many kinds ; when it falls on the emotional plane it 
 produces various kinds of sentimental aberrations, of 
 which we will speak presently. We will touch first on 
 the intellectual delusions. 
 
 On-coming revelation uses all kinds of faculties as 
 screens on which to project its varied shadows ; and 
 these are usually either inverted or distorted, or both. 
 If the condition of underground passages described in 
 Chapter XII. exists, the invert shadow projects itself as 
 clairvoyance or clairaudience. To take the vision or 
 voices as in themselves true representations of truth is 
 superstitious and foolish ; but to dismiss them as worth- 
 
1 20 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 less and incapable of assisting revelation is worse. 
 Each is a shadow; by comparing the various shadows 
 we arrive at last at grasping the meaning of the 
 revelation. 
 
 A fertile source of error in interpreting revelation is 
 to treat words written automatically, or spoken in trance, 
 as if they belonged to the domain of language ; whereas 
 in reality such utterances are more commonly mere 
 indications of a Notation, and should be interpreted as 
 such. If a naturalist wrote of a certain bird that it 
 whistled c, a, b, those would be much misled who insisted 
 that he had described the bird as whistling for a cab ; 
 but not more so than many who report on the utterances 
 of trance-mediums or who publish automatic writings. 
 An instance will perhaps make clearer what is here 
 meant than any theoretical explanation. 
 
 A " medium " sometimes declares that some person is 
 " illegitimate," or a " bastard," or that his parents were 
 " not truly married." When this is treated as language 
 it may give rise to scandals. The great Powers of 
 Revelation do not gossip with men, in earth-phraseology, 
 taking seriously our parchment documents and registry- 
 office ceremonials ! They use the ceremonials to bring 
 to our minds facts in the great Notation of Sex which 
 they have used in all ages as the type of the psychologic 
 life. In that notation, two persons are treated as " not 
 truly married " who have come together in a wrong frame 
 of mind for fulfilling the best purposes of marriage. A 
 " bastard " child is one whose parents did not so conduct 
 their union as to secure to him a full share of such 
 physical, intellectual, and spiritual vitality as they may 
 have possessed. 
 
/ 
 
 Adumbrations 1 2 1 
 
 In general terms it may be said that any words or 
 visible images which occur in a supposed communication 
 from The Unseen should be treated not as conveying 
 any message but as giving an indication of the notation 
 in which the message is to be conveyed. 
 
 Adumbrations come in dreams. " The brain of man 
 functions normally towards Monism " ; whenever its 
 discriminating faculties are not fully active, it puts 
 together in new combinations impressions received 
 separately. These combinations are stored in the 
 unconscious mind and become part of its available 
 material. In sleep, this whole process should go on 
 outside of consciousness, or at least leave no trace on 
 the memory. But if the sleep is not complete we 
 remember some part of the process and call it a " dream." 
 
 If the brain is in training, and functioning perfectly, 
 it puts elements together in their true relations ; and the 
 dream, if dream occurs, constitutes a direct revelation. 
 But if the functioning is not perfect, various elements of 
 thought are flung together without organisation, without 
 regard to their true relation to each other. The dream 
 is then only indirectly a revelation ; it reveals, not truth, 
 but the precise manner in which the brain is, at the 
 moment, inclined to err. If one dreams of finding gold 
 or jewels, the dream m2.y possibly be the reflection, on a 
 normally working brain, of knowledge, residing in some 
 other personality, of the real whereabouts of the treasure. 
 But it is more probably something far more valuable, 
 i.e. a revelation to oneself, for one's own self-guidance, of 
 the precise manner in which one's brain is, at the time, 
 inclined to work abnormally. If one dreams of finding 
 jewels in some place where they are not to be found, 
 
122 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 one should recognise that one's brain is, for the present, 
 functioning abnormally towards easy optimism, and, for 
 some days to come at least, discount all optimistic 
 opinions one may be led to form, about money, business, 
 or anything else. On the other hand, if one dreams of 
 misfortune which is of impossible kind or which fails to 
 occur, one should discount pessimistic apprehensions. 
 This is the meaning of the old saying that dreams " go 
 by contraries," i.e. should be interpreted as warnings of 
 the direction in which one should not go except with 
 great caution. 
 
 When the time has nearly come for some new method 
 in abstract science, mathematics, or logic, an adumbra- 
 tion of it may fall on the brain of some sensitive, in the 
 shape of a mechanical device. He may see in the air 
 before him, as it were, as Macbeth saw the dagger, a new 
 piece of mechanism, or a modification of some existing 
 machine. If he had been trained in accordance with 
 the suggestions of Chapter XI. it would not occur to him 
 that he had any duty or function in regard to the vision, 
 except to study it, till his discriminating faculties were 
 once more in full activity. And when he found himself 
 once more in phase A, he would look about the world 
 around him, to see whether it needed, required, or wished 
 for, the materialisation of his vision. It may be that 
 some external need really does exist for the materialised 
 embodiment of the thought-process which, as such, the 
 world is not yet ready to understand. If so, the mortal 
 who has seen a revelation in vision, and carried it out in 
 objective fact, becomes a real inventor and possibly a 
 prosperous individual as well as a benefactor to the 
 human race. But in many cases there happens to exist 
 
Adumbrations 1 2 3 
 
 no external use for the materialising of the vision. If 
 the possessor of the sensitive brain in which it took 
 shape is ignorant and untrained enough to suppose that, 
 because he saw a thing in the air, he has a divine com- 
 mission to project it in iron or stone, he may waste his 
 life and his money — and perhaps other people's lives and 
 money as well — on a gigantic invention, or on a suc- 
 cession of small inventions, of no practical use to any 
 one. Much waste of life and energy will be spared when 
 it is understood that, in such cases, divine commission 
 is to be inferred with certainty only at the point where 
 inspiration from within meets some call or need from 
 without. If no such need is perceptible, the seer of the 
 vision may legitimately materialise it in " play," i.e. on a 
 small scale, expending on it only his leisure time and 
 spare cash. To do this will probably assist him in 
 interpreting the utterance of the divine voice within, 
 which as yet he only imperfectly apprehends. But he 
 should take no step, in consequence of the vision, which 
 seriously commits or hampers the lives of others, or even 
 his own. If this be clearly recognised we shall be in a 
 better position for understanding how to deal with the 
 other class of shadows, i.e. those which fall on the 
 emotional faculties and create sentimental disturbance. 
 Two persons may have something in common as to 
 which they can supplement each other, so that by com- 
 bining for a time their two sets of faculty, or two stores 
 of knowledge, they will be able to carry into effect some 
 work which would not be done if they remained apart. 
 Sensitives often feel an adumbration of this, in the shape 
 of a strong personal attraction, which, if restrained, may 
 take on the form of a real nostalgia ; a feeling as if 
 
1 24 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 water would not quench thirst unless taken from that 
 person's hand ; as if rest were unattainable except by 
 that person's side. 
 
 The trained seer knows that all this is adumbration 
 of some future mutual fertilisation between the two ; 
 and, true to the habit of not taking action on any 
 emotion or sensation of phase B till it has been passed 
 in review in phase A, postpones the indulgence of the 
 new desire till the anomalous intensity of it has com- 
 pletely passed off and the mind has proved itself 
 thoroughly awake once more by a renewed capability of 
 taking an interest in ordinary life. But an untrained 
 sensitive too often takes action on the adumbration while 
 it is still overshadowing the judgment ; while he is in- 
 capable of discerning what manner of substance is casting 
 the strange shadow. Two men may set up in business 
 together who would be more useful as correspondents 
 than as partners. Or two women may break off their 
 respective home ties in order to set up house together, 
 and presently " get on each other's nerves " ; because the 
 relation of daily intercourse over trivial household detail 
 is unfavourable to the doing of the real task which was 
 being set to them. Probably the most disastrous mis- 
 take that is made in connection with the attraction of 
 adumbration is when it occurs between persons of 
 different sexes, at an age when sex-passion is strong. 
 They imagine themselves " in love " with each other. 
 They may be unsuited, either to live in common, to 
 beget healthy children by each other, or to generate a 
 harmonious atmosphere in which to bring up children ; 
 and marriage between them may be in every way 
 disastrous. On the other hand, it sometimes happens 
 
Hallucinations 1 2 5 
 
 that the young people themselves, or their friends for 
 them, have wisdom to " wait and see whether the fancy 
 passes off" before committing themselves irretrievably. 
 In this case they too often allow themselves to drift 
 permanently apart ; lose the benefit of the adumbration 
 as prophecy, and fail to accomplish what they might 
 have done by a sober union of their diverse mental 
 powers. 
 
 Many of us spend our lives in alternately lamenting 
 our poverty and grumbling at the quantity of rough 
 gravel under our feet ; while we omit to notice that the 
 gravel is rich auriferous quartz. If, instead of trampling 
 it under foot, we picked it up, we might soon be rolling 
 in well-hung carriages and able to go along a gravelled 
 road in luxurious ease. 
 
 When I have shown my class a diagram, and think 
 they have looked at it long enough, I wipe the board 
 black in readiness for the next thing I wish to write. 
 I expect the class to accept the passing away of that 
 which has served its purpose ; to face the blackness 
 and blankness quietly ; and to sit still and listen to 
 what I may be telling them, till I have occasion to 
 write something fresh. As I am only a limited, fallible 
 human teacher, the class always does show me that 
 much respect. When God wipes something off His 
 blackboard, some of His class drown His voice by 
 howling and screaming hysterically, about the loss of 
 that which was so precious ; and the rest jump up and 
 scribble something out of their own heads, in order not 
 to see the blankness. If my class behaved as God's class 
 does, what should I do ? Not, I hope, lose my temper 
 and my self-respect ; not curse them or burn them or 
 
126 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 inflict vengeful penalties. I think I should put my 
 chalk down on the table and say: — "I can teach you 
 nothing in this turmoil ; when you have done making a 
 noise and are ready to listen, I will try to tell you some- 
 thing." 
 
 But neither I nor anyone could put the pupils back 
 into the condition which they would have been in had 
 they been quiet from the beginning. They may gain 
 other wisdom from repentance and correction of their 
 folly ; but they can no longer learn exactly what they 
 would have learned had they not been guilty of it. 
 
 Face illusions, hallucinations, and nervous terrors 
 boldly ; and dare to let yourself know how they arose. 
 You may not be able to conquer them ; but there always 
 was a time in the history of each when you would have 
 been able to conquer it. Be wise now ; do not let it 
 conquer you; but sit still now and learn what you 
 can from treating it as the consequence of some former 
 mistake of yours. 
 
 Nearly half a century ago, I woke one night screaming 
 in terror. I had dreamed of a grey fiend, who had my 
 dear dead father's features, but with a horrible expression 
 on the face, and horns above it. His hands, ending in 
 claws, were clutching at my hair ; and he was trying to 
 drag me by it into hell. I saw his face and felt his 
 clutch after I woke, and was, for some time, powerless 
 to banish them. At times I see and feel them still. But I 
 could, and did, and do, recognise the origin of the demon, 
 and know him for what he is : — the child of my own 
 folly and cruelty. 
 
 My father lived in an atmosphere of medical reform 
 and had a strong feeling against certain kinds of medical 
 
Hysteria 1 27 
 
 practice in vogue in his day. I had once heard a doctor 
 recommending for me a certain mode of treatment, 
 insisting that it was harmless and answered well. To 
 cut short the discussion father said, speaking metaphori- 
 cally : — " It may answer for other people ; it could not 
 for my child ; Hahnemann would rise from his grave to 
 prevent it." Years afterwards, when my husband wished 
 to send for an ordinary doctor to perform some little 
 operation, I involuntarily cried out : — " Father would rise 
 from his grave to prevent it," meaning at first only to speak 
 in metaphor. But then, the spirit of dishonest self-will 
 entered into me. and I repeated the sentence pretending 
 to believe what I was saying. My husband, deceived by 
 my air of conviction, feared to oppose me lest he should 
 bring on delirium, and so desisted from his intention. 
 In my sleep, the marvellous mechanism of the un- 
 conscious mind transmuted the falsehood by which I had 
 deceived my husband into a fiend which for a moment 
 deceived myself, and which retained power to haunt me 
 after I had detected his non-reality. While I keep this 
 material brain, I cannot quite dislodge the fiend or be 
 quite the same as I should have been had I never 
 generated him. But I can be, and I hope am, a wiser 
 woman for each of his visits. Every time he comes, he 
 pays toll. The supreme folly would be to let him come 
 and go, and leave no blessing behind him. 
 
 We now come to the subject of hysteria. 
 
 No fixed monomania, etc., is hysteria proper. All that 
 is here said must be taken to refer to cases of polar- 
 opposite phases. The lines of cleavage may run in any 
 direction. There may be cleavage between very 
 reasonable and very unreasonable moods ; alternation 
 
128 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 between melancholy and great cheerfulness ; between 
 temper or impertinence and a desire to express contri- 
 tion for the ill-tempered or impertinent speeches or acts; 
 between conceited impertinence to a teacher, and abject 
 humility to, or slavish hero-worship of, that teacher. 
 
 In all cases of polarity, one phase should be selected 
 as the handle for curing the disease by the method of 
 using the selected phase to put pressure on the other. 
 The uninstructed nurse or caretaker very commonly 
 selects the wrong phase, the one which she ought to 
 leave alone, and neglects the phase which she ought to 
 get hold of and educate. 
 
 Do not argue against the dicta of the unreasonable 
 phase ; but educate the patient, Jane, in her reasonable 
 phase, to turn her attention on to the doings of Jane in 
 the unreasonable phase ; to issue her orders for the 
 conduct of unreasonable Jane. Be a mere mechanical 
 outside implement of reasonable Jane to coerce un- 
 reasonable Jane into obeying her true master, i.e. 
 reasonable Jane. 
 
 In case of melancholy and cheerful phases, do not try 
 to cheer melancholy Polly ; still less reprove her for 
 being melancholy. Let alone melancholy Polly. But 
 when cheerful Polly wants to chatter and sing, etc., get 
 her to be quiet and occupy her time in meditation on 
 the pleasantness and beauty and goodness of things and 
 people ; in storing up, in her unconscious brain, mind- 
 pictures which may crop up and divert and cheer 
 melancholy Polly. (You will not use words to Polly about 
 unconscious cerebration, etc. ; but see that she does the 
 thing : — check the great pouring off of the cheerfulness.) 
 
 In alternations of conceit and over-humility, do not 
 
Hysteria 129 
 
 snub the conceited Ethel. But say to the humble Ethel: — 
 " If you really think I know so much better than you do, 
 then take my advice noiv. Don't waste words praising 
 me. Say nothing about me. Go and sit still and think 
 steadily about what a wrong thing it is not to take my 
 advice v^\\q.x\ you don't happen to feel, for the moment, so 
 respectful towards me." 
 
 In case of alternate ill-temper and contrition, allow the 
 ill-temper full swing (so far as may be consistent with 
 the safety and comfort of others). Do not moral-lecture 
 about the temper itself. But say to the contrite Maggie: 
 — " What you really did wrong was: to disturb others by 
 expressing your mood ; to indulge your temporary 
 mood by forcing notice of it on other people. It is just 
 as wrong to do that about your contrite mood as about 
 your angry one. If you are really sorry for what you 
 did wrong, don't do the same wrong now this minute. 
 I am busy ; my work and my repose were interfered 
 with by your self-expression. Show you are sorry by 
 consenting not to talk of your present feelings Go 
 away and think, now, how wrong it is to insist on show- 
 ing people just what you feel at the moment." In case 
 there is any person to whom apology ought to be made, 
 you can add : — " I will find an opportunity for you to 
 make the apology, this evening " (or to-morrow or next 
 week, as the case may be). Take care that the apology 
 is not made under the strong impulse to do so, not while 
 making it is a relief, not till making it is a slight 
 effort. 
 
 The polar-phases of hysteria are in some cases periodic ; 
 in others, are determined by accidents of food, air, etc., 
 etc. In others, again, by the mental influences from the 
 
 9 
 
130 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 outside. But however the time is determined, the 
 Eternal Fact is that the reasonable, or cheerful, or contrite, 
 or humble phase is one of receptivity of the " Cosmic 
 Force," " Holy Ghost,"" Divine Magnetism" (people use 
 one or other of these expressions, according to their 
 modes of belief, but I am speaking now only of the force 
 as a force). The other phase, in each disease, is the 
 slack-time, the ebb-tide, of receptivity. 
 
 The whole hygiene of the matter depends on seeing 
 that the patient does not expend the force outwardly dur- 
 ing the time of reception ; but stores it up in her tissues, 
 to be used later. 
 
 The specific treatment for hysteria consists in teaching 
 the organisation, not only to store up force in a general 
 neutral way, but to pitch it on to the cure of the specific 
 disease under treatment. The main difficulty of teach- 
 ing all this consists in the fact that people object to 
 thinking of the Holy Ghost as a calculable, manageable 
 Force. The Holy Ghost, before it touches a human 
 nerve-system, is " God " (at least you and I think so). 
 But so much Holy Ghost as has been discharged on to 
 human brain-tissue, is, henceforth. Force ; to be disposed 
 of as medical experience and wisdom direct. We have 
 an algebra of its mode of action, as precise as that of 
 electricity (though, fortunately, far simpler). It is all 
 very well when we have done a week's work and need 
 re-laxation, to sing hymns in church about Divine 
 Persons and our own emotions — if we find it refreshes 
 us. But in working hours our business with God 
 Almighty is to use Him for healing the sick, cleansing 
 the lepers, and (especially) casting out the devil. Surely 
 no reasonable Deity cares for that form of homage 
 
Hysteria 1 3 1 
 
 which consists in flinging back in His face that divine 
 gift, the algebra of the healing force, under the pretext 
 that He is too sentimental to care for the Laws by which 
 He acts (and which He forces us to act by or else suffer 
 under). 
 
 " Oh ! how love I Thy Law ; all the day long is my 
 study in it ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MOBILITY AND DECISION 
 
 What is the ultimate desideratum in education ? That 
 the consciousness of the educated person should vibrate 
 spontaneously in response to Nature's rhythmic motions. 
 
 But are we all to be, as to our thought-life, mere free- 
 thinkers ; all alike, able to sway in any direction? 
 Surely that would be as monotonous, as far out of line 
 with Nature's plan of organised, correlated differentiation, 
 as anything well could be. One equipoised Logan is 
 interesting, as a type and as a symbol ; but it is only a 
 type-symbol, not a general fact. 
 
 Hardly any individual could, even if he would, become 
 
 an unprejudiced thinker in all directions. Or I would 
 
 rather say, it is not given to most of us to be, in any 
 
 true sense, thinkers, on all topics. The existence of 
 
 what we call prejudice is due, not to this limitation, 
 
 which is in itself normal, but to the fact that we ignore 
 
 our limitations ; we try to do that which we are unfitted 
 
 to do, and we therefore do it badly. Each of us has 
 
 some one or more points at which his elasticity has been 
 
 destroyed by something that happened either before or 
 
 after his birth ; some point at which his mind is 
 
 " biassed," i.e. feels the force of arguments on one side 
 
 and not on the other ; some point at which he feels he 
 132 
 
Mobility and Decision 1 3 3 
 
 must take something for granted, at which he therefore 
 fails to respond to the touch of logic, of truth. If you 
 doubt this, find some Englishman who has been arguing 
 about the rights of Europeans to colonise in Asia or 
 Africa, and apply his arguments to the new-colonist 
 microbes who have lately set up diphtheria in his child. 
 Or find someone who has been trying to persuade the 
 Irish to " forgive " the English settlers and come to 
 friendly terms with them. Apply his arguments to a 
 colony of rats which have settled in his cellar. In either 
 case see what response is given to this reversal of 
 direction ! ^ 
 
 Each of us has some line along which his mind fails 
 to respond to the touch of logic, of reason. Each can, 
 if he will be honest with himself, detect and locate these 
 points. Each one should be able to say to himself: — 
 " If I try to judge about so and so, I shall judge falsely, 
 therefore I will not try to judge of it at all." This is quite 
 different from saying : — " As I think differently from the 
 majority, I must be thinking falsely ; therefore I will 
 try to believe what others believe." Learn first to know 
 for yourself in what lines your mind is incapable of 
 moving freely both ways alike ; (and do not suffer your- 
 
 1 Willingness to test one's thought by reversal does not imply 
 any weakness in deciding either on the course of action which is 
 one's own immediate duty, or on that which is right as tending 
 towards the higher evolution of man. On the contrary, the honesty 
 of one's decision is best proved by willingness to see what the 
 argument really looks like when turned upside down. No painter 
 doubts which is the right side up of his picture, or consents to its 
 being hung permanently wrong side up ; but he turns it upside 
 down for a few minutes, and judges of its true balance by looking 
 at it in an inverted position. 
 
134 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 self to try to think in those lines at all) ; secondly, as to 
 any line in which you can think freely, learn to know 
 when your mind has settled back to its true condition 
 of equipoise after the exercise of rocking between 
 opposite extremes. 
 
 Free mobility in thought does not imply laxity of 
 moral decision. Force for moral decision should be 
 pumped in by the rocking movement of thought and 
 emotion ; but moral decision should be taken when the 
 rocking is over and the mind has come back to that 
 position of rest in which one is no longer a mere free- 
 thinker but a human being ; in which personal duties and 
 claims reassert themselves ; in which one is the child of 
 one's own parents, the servant of one's own nation, the 
 outcome of one's own past, in which sweet reasonable- 
 ness has re-asserted itself, and one is willing to accept, 
 as indications of one's real nature, as aids to one's true 
 evolution, as materials for future thought, those duties 
 which the past has fastened upon one, duties which are 
 really due to those other individuals whom the facts of 
 one's past have linked to oneself Force for decision 
 should be pumped in by the freest rocking between 
 alternate moods, opposite exaggerations ; decisions 
 should be formed at the time of equipoise. The habit 
 should be acquired, early in life, of acting, constantly 
 and resolutely, on decisions arrived at during the times 
 of equipoise. Each such decision, after being acted 
 on, affords fresh experience and materials for fresh 
 thought ; each can be the occasion for a fresh pumping 
 up of force by a fresh process of rocking. The habit 
 should be formed young of acting in all moods on 
 decisions taken in moods of equipoise. 
 
Mobility and Decision 1 3 5 
 
 Some of us find this out "too late," as we call it ; too 
 late to form the habit within our own immediate per- 
 sonality. But it is never too late to help to form a 
 world habit. If you are to be hanged to-morrow, 
 society (of which you are a member, however pompously 
 it may play-act at eliminating you) will be helped to 
 come to sound convictions by your formulating them 
 clearly to yourself to-day, will form good habits the 
 sooner for your seeing to-day that they would be good 
 to form. 
 
 " Between the saddle and the ground 
 I mercy sought and mercy found " 
 
 said the old epitaph in the days when men believed that 
 it was God's function to forgive individual man. Now 
 we know that society is the sinner and individuals are 
 its victims. Between the condemned cell and the 
 halter, the victim may confer a boon upon the world. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE STEADYING OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 It is a very common notion that faith and morals are 
 decaying owing to the decay of certain beliefs and 
 opinions (about what happened or did not happen in 
 Palestine nineteen hundred years ago, and about what 
 is or what is not wholesome and advisable in regard to 
 sex arrangements). And many people wish to keep the 
 old beliefs in order to preserve faith and morals. 
 
 This whole view of things seems to involve a large 
 number of assumptions, and is a great hindrance to the 
 process of forging passion into power. 
 
 Why should not beliefs and opinions decay ? The 
 process has been going on ever since the beginning of 
 history ; it appears to be quite normal and a necessary 
 condition of progress. 
 
 If the decay of something which ought to decay does 
 harm to something which ought not to decay, this 
 happens not because the former has decayed, but 
 because the decayed matter has not been got rid of 
 quickly enough. The remedy, for diseases born of the 
 putrefaction of that which has served its purpose and is 
 no longer useful, is not to preserve the putrefying matter 
 but to get rid of it out of the way of the living organism. 
 Why should we suppose that faith and morals will be 
 136 
 
The Steadying of the Imagination 1 37 
 
 any the healthier for our chaining them up to dead 
 beliefs and opinions ? 
 
 Then, again, I exceedingly doubt whether faith and 
 the moral sense are decaying in England now to any 
 very large extent, as yet. They are unmistakably going 
 to pieces, but at present they seem to me to show 
 symptoms rather of being battered to pieces alive than 
 of decay. 
 
 There are certain important things in human life 
 which ought to be so arranged that they can be easily 
 opened to let anything in or out, but which when shut 
 should be securely fastened, so as to prevent useless, 
 violent, and irregular banging to and fro. 
 
 The same is true of the doors and windows of a house. 
 About the doors and windows we all understand. They 
 should open easily, shut easily, and be easily capable of 
 secure fastening. But in moral and spiritual matters a 
 mistake seems to prevail similar to that which was pointed 
 out before about the mobile equilibrium. In these matters, 
 if people find a door securely shut they suppose that it 
 would be necessarily difficult to open, and when they 
 find that it opens easily they suppose that it must 
 necessarily go on banging till it has done serious damage 
 to the house. This superstitious a priori assumption 
 prevents them from setting quietly to work to adjust 
 the fastenings so as to secure the maximum of utility 
 in both directions. 
 
 Chapter XVII. will suggest a system of door-handles 
 suitable for our house of thought. But first we must say 
 a few words about why some of the doors are at present 
 stuck fast, and the others banging " fit to knock the 
 house down," to use the homely housekeeper's expression. 
 
138 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 In the old pre-scientific days, the thought-life of 
 serious people, the family life of most decent people, 
 and the parochial life of everybody, centred round 
 certain things as to which comparatively few people 
 had any doubts — things to which it was possible to 
 attach some idea of permanence. There were certain 
 ideas about marriage and the meaning of the word 
 " purity," and certain opinions about things which were 
 supposed to have happened in Palestine nineteen 
 hundred years ago, which could be assumed as pre- 
 misses in family conversation, because everybody knew 
 that the other people in the house or the parish believed 
 in them, more or less. And it was possible to associate 
 with them some idea of permanence. When one 
 member of a family passed over into the Unseen World 
 it was possible for the mourners to conceive of him or 
 her adoring Jesus in heaven as he had done on earth, 
 if somewhat more ecstatically. It was possible to 
 imagine the daughter who had passed away, kneeling 
 before the Throne, wearing a white robe of virginity 
 which was a glorified version of the confirmation frock 
 which had been a common object of pious pride to her 
 mother and her young sisters. 
 
 Imagination had thus points of attachment in the 
 realm of the permanent. 
 
 On the other hand, among the elite of the intellectual 
 world of now, where all beliefs and opinions have been 
 burned away in the glow of a common delight in the 
 search of truth, the same blessed possibility exists in a 
 higher form. The individual thought-life and the family 
 conversation centre round the search for truth, and when 
 the father or child passes away there is nothing to 
 
The Steadying of the Imagination 1 3 9 
 
 prevent one's imagining him or her still absorbed in 
 the search for truth, still dropping germs of thought 
 into the minds of those left behind. All this is pure 
 imagination, we know. It proves nothing ; but also it 
 disturbs nothing. The phenomenon which we call 
 death has no power to disturb faith, which is thus left 
 to develop a la grace de Dieu, without hindrance. Now 
 it is the nature of faith to grow if circumstances make 
 it possible that it should. But in a very large number 
 of families now it is impossible for life and conversation 
 to centre round anything that can be conceived of as 
 having permanence. Each member of a family is afraid 
 to speak at home of anything serious for fear of up- 
 rooting somebody else's prejudices. Family life tends 
 to centre round "thing-y things." Family affection, 
 therefore, has no mode of expression or of exercise 
 except on the side of attending to each other's transitory 
 sensations, and of providing for each other little comforts 
 or little luxuries, or, if there is money enough, great 
 luxuries. The communal mind of the family is occupied 
 about things that cost money, waste time, and fritter 
 away earnestness — things which perish in the using. 
 
 Now though it was possible to imagine a girl who 
 has passed away adoring Jesus in a glorified confirma- 
 tion frock, it is quite impossible to imagine her making 
 eyes at a not too respectable potentate in any version, 
 however glorified, of a Parisian costume. It is possible 
 to imagine the departed wife receiving holy communion 
 from the hands of Jesus or one of the Saints, while the 
 husband by whose side she used to kneel still receives 
 it at the hands of the parson. It is much more difficult 
 to imagine the departed lady ordering in ice-cream from 
 
140 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 a fashionable confectioner, or haggling over the price of 
 turtle soup. 
 
 Or again, at the higher thought-levels, it is very easy 
 to imagine the departed friend going on dropping germs 
 of philosophy into one's mind as he had been doing for 
 half a century before he passed over. It would be much 
 more difficult to imagine him inspiring one with thoughts 
 about which looks the more chic of two drawing-room 
 wallpapers. The worldliness, the thing-y-ness of a life 
 which has separated itself from idolatrous beliefs and 
 has not yet attained to religious philosophy, is loosening 
 imagination from its old attachments, without, in most 
 cases, providing it as yet with any fresh ones. 
 
 In some families, therefore, the imagination is left loose 
 and batters faith to pieces. In others it is clumsily 
 nailed up so that faith is etiolated for want of air and 
 exercise. 
 
 Again, when the church life provided rhythm, joy, 
 interest, and perpetual change, there was less need for 
 people to seek pleasures for themselves or each other. 
 But life without some joy is very dull. If there is no 
 joy in life except what comes from immediate sensation 
 connected with the mechanical apparatus of enjoyment, 
 one cannot be very scrupulous as to one's way of acquir- 
 ing the possibility of providing enjoyment for the dear 
 ones. And if we cannot get it out of that which is 
 permanent, one must snatch incessantly at the transitory 
 forms of it. Whereas, where life is one perpetual revel 
 in the joys of either mystic belief or still more mystic 
 truth-seeking, it becomes too valuable to be wasted on 
 vices, and so full that over-much sensuous pleasure is not 
 a temptation but an intrusion, a nuisance and a bore. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 TEACHER-LUST 
 
 The whole discussion about education is thrown into 
 
 confusion by a foregone conclusion that some classes 
 
 of desire are more specially evil lusts of the flesh than 
 
 other classes of desire. All desires are lusts of the flesh 
 
 in so far as they are prompted by impulses stored up in 
 
 any part of the nervous tissue. The lust is good or bad 
 
 according not to the precise part of the body in which 
 
 it resides but to its being or not being correlated with, 
 
 and subordinated to, the conditions of the environment, 
 
 to some external need. The three great nerve-centres, 
 
 stomach, sex-organ, and brain, have a parallel history 
 
 and run parallel courses. And those of which we know 
 
 the dangers form the best map for the one which we 
 
 have to study. 
 
 The stomach has for its function to absorb creatures 
 
 of other species and build up one's own flesh by their 
 
 destruction. To do this sufficiently for health and 
 
 vigour is normal, and may be said to be the duty, the 
 
 religion, of a stomach. Its first aberration is to perform 
 
 this, its true function, in excess of any practical need or 
 
 utility ; to build up a really healthy body, but to do the 
 
 building in such a manner as diverts attention from the 
 
 very things for which a healthy body is useful, to make 
 141 
 
142 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 the having a healthy body an object instead of a means 
 to an end. The second lust of the stomach is to eat 
 actual food, but in excess of what can be digested ; the 
 part which is in excess diverts digestive force from that 
 normal quantity which, if properly digested, would have 
 built up healthy tissue, and so induces disease. The 
 third lust of the stomach is to get put into itself things 
 which have no tendency to build up tissue, which only 
 momentarily amuse it with a false sensation of being 
 satisfied. 
 
 The sex-organ has a similar gamut ot degradation. 
 Its function being to perpetuate the race, and especially 
 the best types, its first aberration is to make the having 
 of a large and prosperous family the be-all and end-all 
 of existence, and to sacrifice all other considerations to 
 making one's own posterity a large and important 
 figure in the future of the human race. This was the 
 ideal of some old Jewish patriarchs. The second step 
 downhill is to put children into the world in excess of 
 the present possibility of bringing them up healthy. 
 The third is to amuse the sex-organ with sensations in 
 ways which have no tendency to produce posterity. 
 
 Now I do not wish to assert or imply either that the 
 stomach has no function except that of digestion, or the 
 sex-organs none but that of procreation. It may well 
 be that each of these organs is on the road to develop a 
 connection with some other function. I do not profess 
 to judge for other people exactly when the indulgence 
 of a desire is right and when wrong ; I am only pointing 
 out a parallelism between three series of facts, as to 
 which most people judge themselves and guide them- 
 selves by different standards, and as to which they would. 
 
Teacher-Lust H3 
 
 it seems to me, guide themselves more wisely if they 
 judged them all three by the same standard. 
 
 The third series is that which relates to teacher-lusts. 
 The teacher (whether school-teacher, minister of religion, 
 political leader, or head of a family) has a desire to make 
 those under him conform themselves to his ideals. 
 Nations could not be built up, nor children preserved 
 from ruin, if some such desire did not exist and exert 
 itself in some degree. But it has its gamut of lusts, very 
 similar to those run down by the other faculties. First, 
 the teacher wants to regulate the actions, conduct, and 
 thoughts of other people in a way that does no obvious 
 harm but is quite in excess both of normal rights and 
 of practical necessity. Next, he wants to proselytise, 
 convince, control, to arrest the spontaneous action of 
 other minds, to an extent which ultimately defeats its 
 own ends by making the pupils too feeble and automatic 
 to carry on his teaching into the future with any vigour. 
 Lastly, he acquires a sheer automatic lust for telling 
 other people " to don't," for arresting spontaneous action 
 in others in a way that destroys their power even to 
 learn at the time what he is trying to teach them. 
 What is wanted is that we should pull these three series 
 tight so as to see their parallelism, and not go on fogging 
 ourselves with any such foolish notion as that sex-passion 
 is a lust of the flesh and teacher-lust a thing in itself 
 pure and good, which may legitimately be indulged in 
 to the uttermost. 
 
 Few teachers now are so conceited as not to know 
 that they have a great deal to learn, and that their 
 methods need revising and improving, but the majority 
 are seeking for improved methods of doing more of what 
 
1 44 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 they are already doing a great deal too much of. The 
 improvement which they most need is to be brought 
 under conviction, to be made see their conduct, their aims, 
 their whole attitude towards their pupils and their work, 
 in the light reflected on them from those of the drunkard 
 and the debauchee. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE NEW IDEA OF ORDER 
 
 Three main symbols of authority have shared between 
 them the attention of the world : the slave-driver's whip, 
 the shepherd's crook, and the conductor's b^ton. A 
 reasonable man should make up his mind which of the 
 three he prefers : which he will submit to when it is his 
 turn to submit and wield when the time comes for him 
 to rule. 
 
 The slave-driver's whip has various modifications, con- 
 ventionalised disguises : the sceptre, the mace, the 
 truncheon, the cane. The appeal of them all alike is to 
 immediate impressions on the senses. Their message is 
 brutal but honest: — " If you will obey my will, your 
 sensations shall be more agreeable than they will be if 
 you thwart my will." 
 
 The shepherd's crook is modified into a bishop's 
 crozier. The functions of the two are similar : to keep the 
 sheep from strenuous exercise in high altitudes, where 
 their limbs grow fleet and their tissues tough ; to keep 
 off wolves who might dispute possession of any portion 
 of the flock with the man who considers himself its 
 rightful owner ; to lead them into plentiful pasture, so as 
 to make them fat and their flesh tender, and guide them 
 cunningly at last into the yard of the slaughter-house 
 145 10 
 
1 46 The Forging of Passion into Power 
 
 The whole system is simply one long deception — often 
 of sentimental self-deception. 
 
 The conductor's baton exerts no control except during 
 certain hours of practice and of performance. Once the 
 appointed time has expired, every man is free to go 
 where he likes and do as he chooses. He is freer 
 (because more able) than he would have been without 
 his occasional episodes of servitude, to play by himself 
 whatever tune he chooses, or to enter into effective com- 
 binations with musicians not known in that conductor's 
 orchestra. 
 
 Friends, under which symbol will you serve? And 
 by which will you prefer to rule ? 
 
 But let us remember that even for the shepherds there 
 is room in hell. 
 
 We can all say to the Great Purifying Pulsator : — " If 
 we make our bed in hell, Thou art there : forge and 
 transform our Passion into Power." 
 
 PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 LIBRARV 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 / DAY USE WH\m 
 
 SUMMER 
 
 SbSSlONS 
 
 nil n ^ zoni 
 
 
 JUL u 3 *■" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 21-50m-6 -60 ^, .G«"?'^fit";^ . 
 (B1321810 )476 U'»^^«^'y,2^,l^'^*'"'' 
 

 \--T^^»^.'^ 
 
 1