MENTICULTURE 
 
 or the 
 
 AB - C of true Living 
 by 
 
 Horace Fletcher 
 3 
 
 Menticutture Series I
 
 MENTICULTURE
 
 HORACE FLETCHER'S WORKS 
 
 MENTICULTURE 
 
 or, The A-B-C of True Living. Twenty- 
 fifth thousand, 2,80 pp., $1.00. 
 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 as found in FORETHOUGHT minus FEAR- 
 THOUGHT. Sixth thousand, 251 pp., $1.00. 
 
 THAT LAST WAIF, or 
 
 SOCIAL QUARANTINE 
 
 270 pp., 1.50. 
 
 WHAT SENSE? or 
 ECONOMIC NUTRITION 
 1 18 pp., ysc. 
 
 TEACHERS' MISSIONARY EDITION 
 of above, Paper, Special Price 
 
 Published by 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE & CO. 
 Chicago and New York
 
 MENTICULTURE 
 
 THE A-B-C OF TRUE 
 LIVING 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE FLETCHER 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE fcf CO. 
 
 CHICAGO fef NEW YORK 
 
 1899
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897 
 HORACE FLETCHER 
 
 THIRTIKTH THOUSAND
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THEORY 13 
 
 A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - - - 25 
 
 A DISCUSSION 47 
 
 PLYMOUTH CHURCH CLUB AND ARMOUR 
 
 INSTITUTE 59 
 
 DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDY - 65 
 
 A PRESCRIPTION 73 
 
 SCRAPS OF EVIDENCE - - - 77 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OVERLOOKED - - 113 
 
 SLAVES OR FREEMEN WHICH? - - 123 
 
 ORGANIZATION ----- 139 
 
 HOPE 145 
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY HOPE - - 149 
 
 CORROBORATIVE AND ASSISTIVE CRITICISM 193 
 
 Two SPLENDID EXAMPLES - - 203 
 
 PRESS APPRECIATION - - - - 211 
 
 UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION 213 
 
 PRESS COLLABORATION - - - - 235 
 
 MEDICAL COLLABORATION 267 
 
 202CC39
 
 PREFACE TO ENLARGED 
 EDITION 
 
 No preface to this edition is neces- 
 sary except to express gratitude for 
 the assistive collaboration of workers 
 in the learned professions, which is 
 appreciatively used, and to call atten- 
 tion to the chapter, Twentieth Century 
 Hope. This chapter is a prophecy of the 
 natural result of the present altruistic 
 awakening; and the increasing accelera- 
 tion of progress almost assures it as a 
 practical accomplishment and as a suit- 
 able accompaniment of the birth of the 
 New Christian Century.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Medical science had struggled for 
 centuries with the repression and 
 amelioration of physical disease before 
 it discovered the possibility of pre- 
 vention by killing the germ. 
 
 Mental science pursued the same 
 course of attempted repression in this 
 country until quite recently it was 
 found that mental afflictions have 
 germs also, and it naturally follows 
 that any who are interested in the 
 subject should try to discover, not 
 only the germs themselves, but methods 
 of getting rid of them. 
 
 The discovery that I have made is 
 not new, as Christ, Buddha, Aristotle, 
 Omar Khayyam and many others, 
 have all suggested that the elimi-
 
 10 PREFACE 
 
 nation of the evil passions is entirely 
 possible; but my special analysis of 
 them, and the easy method of de- 
 feat that I have found possible to 
 myself, have excited such interest, 
 that I have been induced to publish 
 them, without attempting to follow 
 the subject beyond the elementary 
 stage. 
 
 The theory that I have built up is 
 based on a proper estimation of the 
 limitations of mental weaknesses, a 
 discovery that they have roots, and 
 also that they can be " pulled out 
 by the roots " and disposed of just 
 like any other weeds ; only that the 
 task, being mental and not physical, 
 can be more easily performed. 
 
 Literary grace has been sacrificed 
 in the belief that redundant reference 
 to the germs will be effective in bring- 
 ing them into contempt.
 
 THEORY
 
 MENTICULTURE 
 
 THEORY 
 
 All of the evil passions are trace- 
 able to one of two roots. 
 
 ANGER is the root of all the aggres- 
 sive passions. 
 
 WORRY is the root of all the cow- 
 ardly passions. 
 
 Envy, spite, revenge, impatience, 
 annoyance, selfishness, prejudice, un- 
 rest, and the like are all phases of 
 anger. 
 
 Jealousy, fear, the belittling of self, 
 the blues, and all the introspective 
 forms of depression are the children of 
 worry. 
 
 Anger and worry are the most un- 
 profitable conditions known to man. 
 While they are in possession of the 
 mind, both mental and physical growth 
 are suspended. 
 
 '3
 
 14 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 Anger and worry are thieves that 
 steal precious time and energy from 
 life. 
 
 Anger is a highway robber and 
 worry is a sneak thief. 
 
 Anger and worry are the most 
 potent forms of self-abuse, for the 
 reason that in many cases anger is 
 the result of misunderstanding, and 
 in most cases worry's prophecies never 
 come true; or, if they do, the fulfil- 
 ment is generally caused by the worry 
 itself. 
 
 Anger and worry do not stimulate 
 to any good end. 
 
 Anger and worry not only dwarf 
 and depress, but sometimes kill. 
 
 Anger and worry are bad habits of 
 the mind and not necessary ingredients. 
 
 Anger and worry are no more 
 necessary than other passions civilized 
 man has learned to control, and it is 
 only needful to realize that they are 
 unnecessary in order to make it impos- 
 sible to feel, much less to show them.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 15 
 
 Anger and worry cannot be elim- 
 inated through process of repression 
 any more than a weed can be killed by 
 cutting down the stalk, or a cancer 
 can be cured from the surface, or the 
 drinking habit can be gotten rid of by 
 "tapering off." Germ eradication is 
 not only the easiest, but the only sure 
 cure for all physical diseases and men- 
 tal handicaps. 
 
 The dispossession of anger and 
 worry does not cause indifference or 
 encourage indolence. 
 
 The natural tendency of the eman- 
 cipated mind is towards growth, both 
 intellectual and spiritual, just as the 
 tendency of plant life is towards vig- 
 orous growth and perfect blossoming, 
 if it is kept free from the gnawings 
 of cankerous worms. 
 
 Anger and worry are as much para- 
 sites as are the cankerous worms that 
 attack plants. The intelligent horti- 
 culturist knows that the worms are 
 parasites, picks them off his plant,
 
 16 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 and throws them away too far to re- 
 turn. The intelligent menticulturist 
 of the future will treat anger and worry 
 in the same intelligent manner. 
 
 It is not necessary to engage in 
 battle the small army of lesser passions 
 if you concentrate your efforts against 
 anger and worry, for they are all chil- 
 dren of these parents. Oppose them 
 with a bold front ; make one heroic 
 stand against them and they and all of 
 their children will fly. Disown them 
 once and the ability to re-adopt them 
 will have disappeared with them. 
 
 Anger and worry, especially worry, 
 are the cause of most of the drunken- 
 ness and other dissipations which are 
 the curses of the age. Excuse for them 
 or temptation to them is found in the 
 desire to smother the depression which 
 they themselves cause. 
 
 Anger and worry are creations of 
 the mind, and can be dispelled by the 
 same power that gave them birth. 
 
 Anger and worry are caused by
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 17 
 
 phantoms that we create within our- 
 selves and whose only strength is 
 that with which we endow them. 
 
 Anger and worry are like echoes ; 
 they do not exist until we call for 
 them, and the louder we call, the 
 louder is their response. We can 
 never drown them ; yet, if let alone, 
 they drown themselves. 
 
 Fear is possibly the truer name for 
 the cowardly root-passion than worry ; 
 but as they are synonymous, and as 
 anger and worry are more frequently 
 used together, and worry has a less 
 formidable sound, I have chosen to 
 present it for attack under that title. 
 
 While the evil passions align them- 
 selves into two classes, as the offshoots 
 of Anger and Worry; they are, in fact, 
 all growths from one root. Worry (or 
 fear) is the male principle, as it were, 
 without which, all the others wither 
 and die. For instance; if we do not 
 worry, we do not fear ; and if we 
 do not fear aggression, or insult, or
 
 1 8 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 slight, we do not become angry. We 
 quarrel most frequently with what we 
 fear is thought or intended by our 
 adversary, and least frequently with 
 what he actually does or thinks. On 
 the other hand our adversary endows 
 us with intentions which he himself 
 creates, and each puts his own fuel 
 on the fire, to increase the heat of the 
 controversy. 
 
 In Emancipation there is no fear, 
 (or worry) and consequently no fuel 
 for discord. 
 
 Emancipation is a disarmament 
 which disarms others, but adds strength 
 to itself. 
 
 To the Emancipated every mo- 
 ment is a delight, or a moment of 
 calm, during which he is susceptible 
 only to good impressions, and the best 
 interpretation of everything, no matter 
 what the external conditions. Even in 
 cases of sickness, the tendency of the 
 emancipated mind is so inclined to 
 gratitude for the limitations of the
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING IQ 
 
 calamity, that it has little if any room 
 left for regret. Its thankful apprecia- 
 tion of a half loaf of blessings, leaves 
 no place for disappointment that it is 
 not a whole one, and it certainly has 
 no desire to question the wisdom of 
 the process of evolution to which it is 
 related. 
 
 To question or to regret the inevita- 
 ble seems to the emancipated mind the 
 greatest folly imaginable. It certainly 
 is as foolish as barking at the moon. 
 
 " Sweet sorrow " must not be classed 
 with the depressing passions. It is the 
 tenderest expression of love. If tears 
 of love or of sympathy spring to the 
 eyes, do not repress them ; do not be 
 ashamed of them ; they are like dew 
 from Heaven and promote the growth 
 of the soul. 
 
 Neither must friendly rivalry, nor 
 ambition to excel, be classed as ag- 
 gressions; as they are phases of growth. 
 
 The disposition of the Emancipated 
 is to switch the current of the Divine
 
 20 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 Spark (which is the energy of man) 
 on to wires that connect with motors 
 belted to good acts, and good thoughts, 
 and worthy appreciation, and to cut out 
 the circuits of worry and anger and their 
 branch lines entirely, leaving them to 
 rust and decay through disuse. It is a 
 matter of voluntary selection. The 
 same effort of thought can be made 
 to bless or to curse ; can stimulate to 
 good or stimulate to bad ; can propel 
 or retard ; can aid or obstruct ; can 
 nourish or kill. 
 
 Nature uses the same atoms to per- 
 form many services of widely differing 
 purpose. Where she is inanimate the 
 blind and dumb law of the "survival 
 of the fittest" rules supreme. In her 
 lowest forms of life this law begins to 
 be modified by selection, and protection 
 from without. In the higher forms of 
 animal life memory, and selection, and 
 division of labor, and provision, and 
 gratitude, show a degree of develop- 
 ment that is beautiful indeed ; but it
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 21 
 
 is left to man to perfect this develop- 
 ment within himself. To him is given 
 the power, through cultivation, to pro- 
 mote, without limit, growth towards 
 Perfection, which is the evidence of 
 Divinity in him. 
 
 Soft mist, down-falling, from its cloud domain, 
 Bathes all the thirsty land with gentle rain ; 
 Again, to Heaven ascends, by sunbeams wooed, 
 Then plunges back to earth in torrent mood. 
 
 As gentle rain it swells the softening seed ; 
 In torrent force, it wrecks with demon greed ; 
 Now, like the radiance of a loving heart ; 
 Now, like the scorching of a lightning dart. 
 
 The self-same atom, hidden in a tear. 
 May shine with love, or 'note a potent fear ; 
 When bound to others form the flintiest stone ; 
 Or, floating freely, bear the subtlest tone. 
 
 Thoughts are like atoms, fashioned by the will ; 
 Each has a mission, charged with good or ill ; 
 Sometimes to bless ; anon to desolate ; 
 Love's messenger; or harbinger of hate. 
 
 In Nature's hands, one atom plays two parts, 
 As may be needed in her several arts ; 
 In man alone, should love forever shine ; 
 Displacing hate ; proclaiming man Divine. 
 
 Love, and Appreciation, and Grati- 
 tude, the ever-present and ever-
 
 22 MENTICULTURE 
 
 faithful handmaids of Emancipation, 
 are the natural and only conditions 
 favorable to growth ; they are the less 
 assertive but stronger attributes which 
 are always waiting to occupy the places 
 left vacant by anger and worry, and 
 to fill the "void which Nature abhors." 
 Born of them is that other Divine at- 
 tribute called Help or Charity, and 
 together they stimulate to good action 
 and good thought, and lift into life 
 that plant of the soul, the Divine 
 Responsibility of each member of the 
 human family. 
 
 Anger and worry are the rankest 
 forms of Egotism. 
 
 Emancipation is the reverse of 
 Phariseeism. Phariseeism is self-suffi- 
 ciency ; while Emancipation shows its 
 desire for growth, through the prepara- 
 tion of its mental and spiritual entity 
 for unimpaired growth, by clearing it 
 of the weeds of egotism.
 
 A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
 
 A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 It was my privilege one evening to 
 be with Prof. Fenollosa in his Japan- 
 esque apartment in Boston. Almost 
 every article in view was the product of 
 some Japanese artist who had been the 
 friend of Prof. Fenollosa in Japan. 
 The odor of incense added perceptibly 
 to the calming influence of the envir- 
 onment. 
 
 Many years ago we had met in far- 
 off Japan amid similar surroundings, 
 and had discussed theories of true 
 living that had been a source of great 
 pleasure to me, and whose influence 
 had been with me to many countries 
 and climes, helping me to enjoy more 
 fully than I otherwise could, the beau- 
 ties of nature, and of art, and of life. 
 
 We were exchanging the experi- 
 ences of the intervening years, and I 
 became acutely interested in his ac- 
 25
 
 26 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 count of the wonderful degree of cult- 
 ure and self-control attained by some 
 of his Japanese friends through the 
 practice of the Buddhist discipline. 
 
 It was all so interesting and beauti- 
 ful, that under the spell of the recital 
 and the surroundings, I longed to taste 
 some of the sweets of the calm he pic- 
 tured, and begged him to tell me the 
 process of the discipline, so that per- 
 chance I might follow it and reap some 
 of the benefits. 
 
 The philosopher saw that I was 
 serious in my desire, and his face lit 
 up with approval as he said, " It is not 
 easy to communicate at a sitting what 
 took me years of study to learn, but I 
 can at least put you in the way of a 
 start. I can tell you where to begin to 
 grow. You must first get rid of anger 
 and worry" "But," said I, "is that 
 possible?" "Yes," replied he, "it is 
 possible to the Japanese, and ought to 
 be possible to us. 
 
 I was startled at the suggestion of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 27 
 
 the possibility of the entire repression 
 of anger and worry. I knew that their 
 repression was counselled by Chris- 
 tianity and Buddhism, and presumably 
 by all codes of religion and ethics; but 
 I had never considered getting rid of 
 them as a human possibility, except 
 under conditions of health and wealth 
 and ease, to which few, if any, ever 
 attain. 
 
 On my walk back to the Parker 
 House, a distance of fully two miles, I 
 could not think of anything else but 
 the words, "get rid, 11 "get rid; 1 ' and 
 the idea must have continued to pos- 
 sess me during my sleeping hours, for 
 the first consciousness in the morning 
 brought back the same thought, with 
 the revelation of a discovery, which 
 framed itself into the reasoning, 
 " If it is possible to get rid of anger 
 and worry, why is it necessary to have 
 them at all ?" I felt the strength of 
 the argument and at once accepted the 
 reasoning. The baby had discovered
 
 28 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 that it could walk. It would scorn to 
 creep any longer. 
 
 From the instant I realized that 
 these cancer spots of worry and anger 
 were removable, they left me. With 
 the discovery of their weakness they 
 were exorcised. From that time life 
 has had an entirely changed aspect. 
 
 Although from that moment the 
 possibility and desirability of freedom 
 from the depressing passions has been 
 a reality to me, it took me some months 
 to feel absolute security in my new 
 position; but, as the usual occasions for 
 worry and anger have presented them- 
 selves over and over again, and I 
 have been unable to feel them in the 
 slightest degree, I no longer dread or 
 guard against them, and I am amazed 
 at my increased energy and vigor of 
 mind; at my strength to meet situa- 
 tions of all kinds, and at my disposition 
 to love and appreciate everything. 
 
 I have had occasion to travel more
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 29 
 
 than ten thousand miles by rail since 
 that morning ; North, South, East and 
 West, with the varying comforts and 
 discomforts, as they used to be. The 
 same Pullman porter, conductor, hotel 
 waiter, peddler, book-agent, cabman, 
 and others, who were formerly a source 
 of annoyance and irritation have been 
 met, but I am not conscious of a single 
 incivility. All at once the whole 
 world has turned good to me. I am 
 sure the change is not so much in the 
 world as in me. I have become, as it 
 were, sensitive only to the rays of 
 good, as some photographic films of 
 recent invention are sensitive only to 
 certain single colored rays of light. 
 If we are wise we never leave 
 school. When the academy and the 
 college have put us through their cur- 
 riculum, we have still before us the 
 example of Nature, and the walks of 
 Science, and Art, and Brotherhood, in 
 which to search for suggestions to be
 
 30 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 applied in menticulture. May we not 
 learn a lesson from the newly discov- 
 ered film ? 
 
 Should not the chemical condition of 
 selection be more difficult than a similar 
 voluntary mental accomplishment? In 
 comparison with a similar process in 
 physics the more pliable material of 
 the mind ought to be fashioned with 
 greater ease. 
 
 I could recount many experiences 
 which prove a brand new condition of 
 mind, but one more will be sufficient. 
 Without the slightest feeling of annoy- 
 ance or impatience I have seen a train 
 that I had planned to take with a good 
 deal of interested and pleasurable an- 
 ticipation, move out of a station with- 
 out me, because my baggage did not 
 arrive. The porter from the hotel 
 came running and panting into the 
 station just as the train pulled out of 
 sight. When he saw me he looked as 
 if he feared a scolding, and began to tell 
 of being blocked in a crowded street
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 31 
 
 and unable to get out. When he had 
 finished, I said to him, " It doesn't 
 matter at all, you couldn't help it, so 
 we will try it again to-morrow. Here 
 is your fee, I am sorry you had all 
 this trouble in earning it." The 
 look of surprise that came over his 
 face was so filled with pleasure that I 
 was repaid on the spot for the delay in 
 my departure. Next day he would 
 not accept a cent for the service, and 
 he and I are friends for life. The 
 sequence of this incident has no bear- 
 ing on its value, but it has a signifi- 
 cance. Had I taken the train I 
 missed, I would have been caught in a 
 wreck in which two persons were 
 killed and several wounded, while my 
 stay over in Cleveland proved to be 
 both pleasant and profitable. 
 
 During the first weeks of my expe- 
 rience I was on guard only against 
 worry and anger ; but, in the mean- 
 time, having noticed the absence of 
 the other depressing and dwarfing
 
 32 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 passions, I began to trace a relation- 
 ship, until I was convinced that they 
 are all growths from the two roots I 
 have specified. 
 
 I have felt the freedom now for so 
 long a time that I am sure of my rela- 
 tions toward it; and I could no more 
 harbor any of the depressing and 
 thieving influences that once I nursed 
 as a heritage of humanity than a fop 
 would voluntarily wallow in a filthy 
 gutter: and the strength of the position 
 is reinforced by the experience of 
 others. 
 
 There is no doubt in my mind that 
 pure Christianity, and pure Buddhism, 
 and the Mental Sciences, and all Reli- 
 gions, fundamentally teach what has 
 been a discovery to me; but none of 
 them have presented it in the light of 
 a simple and easy process of absolute 
 elimination. All of the religions 
 seemed to me to hinge principally on 
 some other life, with the usual features 
 of punishment and reward, and with
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 33 
 
 incidental satisfaction or fear in this 
 life. But as life reveals itself to me in 
 my present condition of mind, this 
 world, these fellow men, the blush 
 of Spring, the blossom of Summer, 
 the flame of Autumn, the sparkle 
 of Winter, and the violet-softened 
 refulgence of every waking moment 
 yield a never failing succession of 
 delights. 
 
 At one time I wondered if elimina- 
 tion of the passions would not lead to 
 indifference and sloth. In my experi- 
 ence the contrary is the result. I feel 
 such an increased desire to do some- 
 thing useful that it seems as if I were 
 a boy again and the energy for play 
 had returned. I could fight as readily 
 as (and better than) ever, if there were 
 occasion for it. It does not make one 
 a coward. It can't, since fear is one of 
 the things eliminated. 
 
 That fear is got ridden of with 
 worry is proveji in many ways. I no- 
 tice the absence of timidity in the
 
 34 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 presence of any audience I am called 
 on to face, whereas I had never before 
 conquered a tendency to partial paraly- 
 sis on such occasions. Timidity re- 
 sulting from a shock has been cured 
 also. When I was a boy I was 
 standing under a tree which was 
 struck by lightning and received a 
 shock, from the effects of which I 
 never knew exemption until I had 
 dissolved partnership with worry. 
 Since then lightning, and thunder, and 
 storm clouds, with wind-swept torrents 
 of rain have been encountered under 
 conditions which formerly would have 
 caused great depression and discom- 
 fort, without experiencing a trace of 
 either. Surprise is also greatly modi- 
 fied, and one is less liable to become 
 startled by unexpected sights or noises. 
 Temperaments may differ, but Eman- 
 cipation strengthens all. 
 
 It has been suggested to me, in 
 argument, that in Nature there is sun- 
 shine and shadow, and that every
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 35 
 
 height must have a corresponding de- 
 pression, and that immunity from the 
 black or shadowy passions is an un- 
 natural condition. This is not true. 
 In the process of growth and evolution, 
 conditions that once were natural, are 
 changed to other conditions equally 
 natural. Weeds are pulled up by the 
 roots to clear the fields for the grow- 
 ing grain. Why should not mental 
 weeds be pulled up by the roots also, 
 and the mind cleared for growth ? 
 
 My experience teaches me that the 
 natural evolution of the emancipated 
 mind is dominant calm, varied by sea- 
 sons of exaltation, but never of depres- 
 sion. It is a healthful succession of 
 energy and rest, all blessed with loving 
 appreciation, which finds expression 
 in ever-present gratitude. 
 
 One morning recently I heard my- 
 self audibly thank the clock for strik- 
 ing the time for me, and each awaken- 
 ing is as if on a much desired holiday, 
 no matter what the conditions of the
 
 36 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 weather or the comforts of life at 
 hand. 
 
 Contentment and happiness and 
 gratitude and Heaven are generally ac- 
 cepted as synonymous terms; but Eman- 
 cipation embraces them all, and in it 
 only can they all be found. 
 
 As far as I am individually con- 
 cerned I am not bothering myself at pres- 
 ent as to what the result of this emanci- 
 pated condition may be. I have no doubt 
 that the perfect health aimed at by 
 Christian Science may be one of the 
 possibilities, for I note a marked im- 
 provement in the way my stomach 
 does its duty in assimilating the food 
 I give it to handle, and I am sure 
 it works better to the sound of a 
 song than under the friction of a 
 frown. Neither am I wasting any 
 of this precious time formulating an 
 idea of a future existence or a future 
 Heaven. The Heaven that I have 
 found within myself is as attractive as 
 any that has been promised or that I
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 37 
 
 can imagine; and I am willing to let 
 the growth lead where it will, as long 
 as anger and worry and their brood 
 have no part in misguiding it; but I 
 feel the value of Mental Emancipation 
 to be so great that I long to spread the 
 news of the discovery of an easy and 
 immediate means of attaining it. 
 
 The practical benefit of the eman- 
 cipated mind to the individual, and of 
 the emancipated individual to the com- 
 munity, can not be over-estimated. 
 In every walk in life Emancipation is 
 invaluable to the worker, and the 
 most potent aid to success. The 
 emancipated peanut vender will have 
 more customers than his worm- 
 eaten neighbor. The emancipated 
 merchant will find that trade will pass 
 the door of his calamity-howling rival 
 and come to him. The emancipated 
 writer will find writing an easy and 
 pleasant task as compared with that of 
 his moody confrere, and that if he has 
 occasion to dip his pen in vinegar he
 
 38 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 can wield it better under the influence 
 of judicial calm than he can between 
 the gulps of rebellious indigestion. To 
 woman Emancipation means every- 
 thing. Any other condition to her is 
 like an ill fitting garment, and every 
 lapse from it is like adding a blotch 
 to her complexion which succeeding 
 smiles can never entirely efface. 
 Each expression of a shadowy passion 
 leaves a scar. The Emancipation of 
 woman would mean the Emancipation 
 of the race. The adoption of the 
 germ cure will be woman's means 
 to that end, and Emancipation will be 
 her Heaven and man's Heaven at the 
 same time. 
 
 The influence of emancipated indi- 
 viduals in a community could be 
 made so great that if there were only 
 one in ten, and they should organize 
 in clubs for the purpose, they would 
 attract or rule the rest for good, 
 and something better than the social 
 Utopia pictured by Edward Bellamy in
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 39 
 
 "Looking Backward " would follow as 
 a natural sequence, and save us from the 
 threatened battle between capital and 
 labor, which otherwise seems inevita- 
 ble. The horrors of such a conflict 
 cannot be imagined; and, unless the 
 germ cure is sought to avert it, it is 
 sure to come. 
 
 The germ cure of the evil passions 
 in the individual, followed by the germ 
 cure of social clumsiness in the body 
 politic, form the only hope of Emanci- 
 pation from the evils which beset the 
 social structure. For these there is no 
 real necessity. There is already such a 
 surplus of mechanical energy, such a 
 surplus of creature comforts, and such a 
 surplus of luxuries on our planet, that 
 a moderately sensible distribution 
 of them, would render every inhab- 
 itant comfortable and happy. Among 
 the Emancipated the desire to make 
 a generous distribution of these sur- 
 plus stores would be as natural as 
 is the habit of recognizing "the rule of
 
 40 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 the road " among us all to-day. So 
 also, the vast amount of surplus energy 
 born of Emancipation would find a nat- 
 ural outlet in the arts. 
 
 In suggesting the possibility of a 
 Social Paradise or Community Heaven, 
 it is presupposed that education along 
 the lines of both intellectual and man- 
 ual training will have become universal, 
 and that every one shall render service 
 to his fellows according to his strength; 
 also that idleness, when one should 
 work, and deception in trade, will have 
 come to be classed as crimes, and not 
 as evidences of " shrewdness." 
 
 It has been my good fortune to 
 travel to and fro over the earth's sur- 
 face for thirty years, years of exper- 
 ience passed among the people of 
 many different nations. I have made 
 quick comparisons of the habits 
 and customs of them all; and I 
 have observed how easily some do 
 things that others perform clumsily. 
 The standard measure of my com-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 41 
 
 parison has always been Japan. I 
 could not help observing there less 
 crime, better appreciation of art and 
 nature, more physical dexterity and 
 skill, fewer notes out of harmony, and 
 more general happiness, gentleness, 
 and consideration for fellows and ani- 
 mals; less (almost no) religious or 
 sectional prejudice ; a universal patri- 
 otism and respect for authority (as 
 good children are respectful of the 
 authority of beloved parents); a love 
 of life, but no fear of death ; and many 
 other qualities that have commanded 
 the respect of the world under the 
 bright light of recent events. 
 
 Brave, gentle, artistic, lovable little 
 Japan, which, thirty odd years ago, 
 was nursing in quiet seclusion a beauti- 
 ful flower of artistic civilization, has been 
 rudely but providentially forced into 
 the community of nations to teach the 
 rest of the world a great lesson in 
 the art of true living. By the exer- 
 cise of judicious but resistless courage
 
 42 MENTI CULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 she has laid the Oriental Colossus 
 who attacked her at her feet; and 
 if the bulldog and buzzard nations of 
 the West, do not unite their forces to 
 obstruct her inclination, she will lift 
 her fallen foe from a condition of 
 slavery to barbarous aliens to a con- 
 dition of tranquillity and happiness. 
 She will do this through the introduc- 
 tion of reforms in government and 
 administration which she has gathered 
 from the best experience of all the 
 world. What a missionary Japan is ! 
 A missionary of the art of true living. 
 A missionary of harmony. The con- 
 tact of Japan with the other nations 
 made the World's Congress of Relig- 
 ions possible ; and what this means to 
 the advancement of man on the road to 
 harmony and happiness, was recently 
 stated by Prof. Max Muller, when he 
 prophesied that this event would come 
 to be appreciated as the greatest civil- 
 izing influence of the Nineteenth cen- 
 tury.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 43 
 
 May the example of Japan set the 
 boors of the world to thinking, cause 
 them to take their fore feet out of the 
 trough, look up to the sun and the 
 light of dawning civilization, accept 
 the simple teachings of Christ and 
 Buddha and common sense,, and start 
 a Heaven here on earth. Steam and 
 electricity have brought the extremes 
 of our earth together ; the telescope 
 has let us into the secrets of the neigh- 
 boring worlds, and logic and common 
 sense may find in the possibility of 
 Emancipation a means of bringing 
 Heaven to us in this life.
 
 A DISCUSSION
 
 A DISCUSSION 
 
 WHICH FOLLOWED THE READING OF THE 
 FOREGOING PAPER 
 
 "Can anger and worry be entirely 
 eliminated from the human mind?" 
 
 " Yes; they are simply bad habits 
 of the mind, parasites, unnatural, and 
 therefore uncivilized conditions, nursed 
 by false ideas of pride or necessity; and 
 their elimination is a purely mental 
 process within the control of every 
 intelligent person who has sufficient 
 self-respect to recognize within him- 
 self the reflection of the Divine 
 Image." 
 
 "In what does the germ cure of 
 mental ills differ from the Christian 
 method of repression through answer to 
 prayer?" 
 
 " Christ clearly advocated the germ 
 47
 
 48 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 cure. He did not say ' Try to do un- 
 to others as you would have others 
 do unto you/ but 'Do unto others/ 
 etc. ' Be ye perfect as your Father in 
 Heaven is perfect/ In all of his 
 teachings do and be were the com- 
 mands. Most of the creeds, however, 
 endow man with a weakness which 
 is self-condemning. The prayers are 
 offered perfunctorily, and sometimes 
 without belief in their efficacy, while 
 the passions are nursed privately in 
 full belief that they are essential attri- 
 butes of fallen man." 
 
 " May not the elimination of anger 
 and worry take away some of the stimu- 
 lation to effort that is necessary to human 
 progress?" 
 
 '' Assuredly not. The absence of 
 anger and worry is an evidence of 
 strength and not of weakness. So- 
 called righteous anger is a weakness in 
 the presence of judicial calm. Without 
 anger and worry one is stronger to 
 ward off a blow, administer a correc-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 49 
 
 tion, or protect a principle. The eman- 
 cipated mind is as eager for effort as a 
 child is for play. Freed from anger 
 and worry one can shovel more dirt, 
 plough more furrows, perform every 
 duty better, and with less fatigue, than 
 if under their influence." 
 
 "Are there examples in every -day life, 
 among every-day people, that prove the 
 possibility of superiority over anger and 
 worry?" 
 
 " Yes. Habitually profane men do 
 not swear in the presence of ladies. 
 Vicious men are gentle when among 
 those whom they respect. The pas- 
 sions are subservient to the will 
 under conditions that reverence or 
 fashion prescribe. If they are subser- 
 vient under any conditions they can be 
 controlled under all conditions. Nothing 
 for instance, could make you angry 
 while we are talking on this subject, 
 because you would feel ashamed to 
 show slavery to a condemned and 
 unmanly weakness."
 
 50 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 "If it is possible to get rid of the 
 depressing passions, and they are so un- 
 profitable, why has not mankind become 
 emancipated long before this?" 
 
 ''This question can best be an- 
 swered by asking others. Why were a 
 personal devil and witches and filmy 
 ghosts considered possibilities as late 
 as the beginning of this century? Why 
 was human slavery believed to be a 
 divine institution by the majority of 
 the world's inhabitants as late as fifty 
 years ago? Why are the divine right of 
 kings, and the assumption that the sov- 
 ereign can do no wrong, possibilities of 
 the present? Why is it possible that 
 a Supreme Court of the United States 
 can be divided on questions of political 
 significance, and the points of difference 
 of opinion be in harmony with the pre- 
 vious political affiliations of the jus- 
 tices? Politics represent the selfish in 
 human contact as at present managed, 
 while justice is supposed to be spot-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 51 
 
 lessly unselfish ; yet the former un- 
 blushingly invades the sanctuary of the 
 latter, because selfishness is held to 
 be a necessity." 
 
 " Is not the condition of Emancipation 
 selfish? Is it not selfish not to worry 
 for one s friend, even if self-worry is 
 eliminated? " 
 
 " Emphatically, no ! Emancipation 
 puts one in a condition to be unselfish. 
 Suppose his friend need aid or sympa- 
 thy ; will worry furnish either ? With 
 the extirpation of the depressing pas- 
 sions comes the strength, and the abil- 
 ity, and the desire, to give to others, 
 the aid and sympathy they may be in 
 need of. Actual, or even metaphori- 
 cal, wringing of hands, is not the sort 
 of sympathy that soothes. It is like 
 the "blind leading the blind," or rather, 
 the weak trying to assist the weak. 
 Better try to help with the strength 
 born of Emancipation than with the 
 weakness of the enervating passions." 
 
 " / can easily understand how anger
 
 52 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 can be classed as a sin, because it is 
 aggressive and affects something outside 
 of us; as a sin, I can see how it ought to 
 be cast out; but as worry deals only with 
 ones self, I do not believe it can be 
 called a sin ; then why is it necessary to 
 eliminate it, especially as it may be an 
 incentive to action, to prevent the causes 
 of the worry? " 
 
 " This whole question has been an- 
 swered before in the presentation of 
 the theory, but as it has not carried 
 the force of impression that I intended, 
 I will take it up piecemeal, and try to 
 be more clear. 
 
 " In the first place, one's first duty is 
 to one's self in the matter of cultiva- 
 tion and care ; this, not on account of 
 egotism or selfishness, but in order to 
 fit him to be strong and useful and a 
 good member of his circle. As a 
 parent, he should make himself the 
 most perfect progenitor and example 
 possible; as a member of Society he 
 should aim to be the most able and
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 53 
 
 useful; and as the custodian of the 
 Divine Essence within him, he should 
 not harbor or encourage weeds of the 
 soul, whether visible to others, or with- 
 in the secret corners of his own 
 heart. 
 
 " As to worry ever being an incentive 
 to wise or good action, I will repeat a 
 section of the theory. ' Worry's pro- 
 phesies are seldom realized, and if they 
 are, the realization is generally caused 
 by the worry itself.'" 
 
 "How can emancipation be secured 
 for the community?" 
 
 "Through the influence of the eman- 
 cipated individual; chiefly through the 
 influence of the emancipated woman. In 
 the crossing of sabers she cannot assist; 
 but in a war against the enemies of the 
 mind, when love is the weapon, she 
 can and will occupy a place in the 
 front rank. She can make anger and 
 worry unfashionable, as she already has 
 made profanity and obscenity unfash- 
 ionable.
 
 54 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 "To accomplish this, let clubs be 
 formed in each community and in each 
 church, and let each church become a 
 club-house as well. Introduce health- 
 ful amusements such as make other 
 clubs attractive, and place in large 
 letters over the portal and the altar 
 
 GROWTH 
 
 EMANCIPATION 
 
 HELP. 
 
 You will have then constantly before 
 you the only cure for mental cancers, 
 and the essence of all religions ex- 
 pressed in three words ; you will have 
 touched the button of the Divine cam- 
 era within you whose film is sensitive 
 only to the rays of good. Love and 
 growth will do the rest. The teachers 
 of morality and religion will do abler 
 work under the realization that not 
 only the 'old Adam,' but the Divine 
 Essence as well, have seats in each 
 human soul, and that, when the good
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 55 
 
 is appealed to in terms of confidence 
 and understanding, evil will be cast out 
 instantly, without a lifetime of contro- 
 versy, and without waiting for eternity, 
 or even for the death-bed to unloose 
 the fetters. 
 
 As a result of organization on 
 the basis of Emancipation, and when 
 it has become an accepted fact that 
 anger and worry are only bad habits 
 of the mind, no clergyman can show 
 them and retain the respect of his 
 congregation ; no King's Daughter 
 can entertain them and be worthy of 
 her badge ; no member of the Christ- 
 ian Endeavor Society can harbor 
 within himself the arch enemies of 
 Christianity which the Master com- 
 manded his disciples to cast out, and 
 be loyal to his cause ; and no individual 
 in the pursuit of duty, or even of sel- 
 fish pleasure, can afford to carry such 
 weighty handicaps and hope to win the 
 race."
 
 PLYMOUTH CHURCH CLUB 
 
 AND 
 
 ARMOUR INSTITUTE
 
 PLYMOUTH CHURCH CLUB AND 
 ARMOUR INSTITUTE 
 
 A good example of a church club 
 is that which forms a part of Plymouth 
 Church in Chicago. Plymouth Club 
 was founded by Dr. Scudder and is 
 warmly encouraged by Dr. Frank W. 
 Gunsaulus, the present pastor of the 
 church. Dr. Gunsaulus is also presi- 
 dent of Armour Institute, where man- 
 ual training is taught side by side with 
 letters and the sciences to men and 
 women alike. In these two eminently 
 practical organizations most of the 
 conditions favorable to growth are 
 already furnished. Add to these 
 Emancipation as the motto of the 
 club, and as the requisite mental ac- 
 complishment for admission to the 
 school, and the conditions will be per- 
 fected to the highest degree. 
 
 59
 
 60 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 The word Emancipation has a very 
 formidable sound because it is asso- 
 ciated with a great war; but its attain- 
 ment through germ eradication is a 
 simple and easy accomplishment. 
 
 The presidents of great mental and 
 manual training institutions know that 
 the depressing and dwarfing phantoms 
 of the mind are merely bad habits 
 weeds that can be rooted out and 
 that anger and worry are the roots. 
 
 They have provided commodious 
 buildings, learned professors, the most 
 perfect chemical and mechanical appli- 
 ances, and thousands of books, to aid 
 mental and manual culture; and yet, 
 they fail to apply the first principle of 
 all their sciences to the preparation of 
 the pupil. In horticulture they do not 
 tolerate worms or weeds; in chemistry 
 they first examine into the purity of 
 the ingredients; and in mechanics the 
 greatest care is taken to avoid friction. 
 Anger and worry are conditions of ex- 
 treme mental friction, which, during
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 6 1 
 
 their presence, stop the progressive 
 action of the mental machine. 
 
 It would impose no impossibility, 
 neither would it entail any hardship, 
 to require of students that they should 
 subscribe to the following: 
 
 Science teaches, and experience corrob- 
 orates the fact, that the depressing or 
 evil passions are bad habits of the mind, 
 and not necessary ingredients. 
 
 Anger and worry are the roots of the 
 evil passions and can be pulled out. 
 
 In order to promote the best possible 
 growth it is required that Emancipation 
 should be the rule of life of the student. 
 
 Under the suggestion of the possi- 
 bility of Emancipation from undesira- 
 ble mental enemies, emanating from 
 so respected a source as the faculty 
 of a chosen college, the student would 
 acquire the prerequisite condition of 
 "faith"; while the absorbing work of 
 college life, surrounded by fellows 
 working in sympathy with him, would 
 strengthen the faith into a belief; and
 
 62 MENTICULTURE 
 
 the immediate recompense of harmony 
 would be evidence of its value as a 
 rule of life. 
 
 From the school the student would 
 carry the rule back into the family, and 
 into all walks in life; and with the aid 
 of present means of communication 
 the influence would spread the world 
 over, disarm the prodigious prepara- 
 tions for struggle that are being made, 
 and distribute the palm branch to take 
 the place of the sword. 
 
 Will not the great educators whom 
 the world respects so highly, and in 
 whom it has so much faith, try the 
 experiment? The promised fruit is 
 worth the trial.
 
 DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDY
 
 DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDY 
 
 It is believed by many, that Society 
 and Politics, at the present time, are 
 badly diseased. Mr. Max Nordau's 
 diagnosis of them, which he entitled 
 Degeneration, has met with general 
 approval. Legislative (especially mu- 
 nicipal) corruption, and the degrada- 
 tion of some of the courts, are open 
 evidence of the fact. Statesmanship 
 and Politics have been divorced, and 
 are already strangers to each other. 
 The marriage of Might and Right, has 
 been sanctioned by popular consent. 
 Power is no longer used as a lever with 
 which to uplift the weak, but has been 
 transformed into a social crushing ma- 
 chine. Caste, ostentation, dissipation, 
 and insincerity, are the established 
 idols that lure the present generation 
 towards greedy ambition.
 
 66 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 It is also believed, and is perhaps 
 true, that the social ulcers have been 
 so irritated by ostentatious rivalry, and 
 the commercial ulcers are so distended 
 with the pus of ruinous competition 
 and corruption, that they must soon 
 come to a head, and that convalescence 
 and cure may be possibilities of the 
 future. 
 
 While these symptoms of disease 
 are visible to all, and are tolerated as 
 necessary evils, they fortunately do not 
 cover the whole body politic; but yet, 
 they seriously disfigure its face, and 
 grievously affect the healthy action of 
 its heart. 
 
 In the political world, many agents 
 are actively at work to effect cure of 
 the evils which flaunt unblushing in the 
 face of the public. The Committee of 
 Seventy in New York, The Civic Fed- 
 eration in Chicago, and the National 
 Municipal Reform League of the United 
 States, are all doing good temporary 
 work, but they do not reach the root
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 67 
 
 causes of the evils they aim to correct; 
 and it is doubtful if the reforms they 
 accomplish will be any more permanent 
 than were those of their equally zeal- 
 ous predecessors. 
 
 In the moral and religious world, 
 much the same futile methods of cure 
 through repression are in use that ob- 
 tained during the Dark Middle Ages. 
 
 In the individual, phantoms of the 
 imagination, whose presence impose 
 stagnation and disease, are created 
 and clothed with the authority of mas- 
 ters, under the belief that they are the 
 curses which bind fallen men to earth ; 
 and this in contradiction of every 
 assurance and promise of Christ ; . in 
 opposition to all intelligent methods 
 of culture used in connection with ani- 
 mals and plants ; and contrary to com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 These are strong statements, but 
 they are indisputable ; and if they are 
 true, what then, is the remedy? 
 
 As previously stated, the only cure is
 
 68 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 the germ cure; and, beginning with the 
 individual. 
 
 The task is not a difficult one. 
 Appreciation of the limitations of the 
 power of the depressing passions, and 
 one's strength to extirpate them, and 
 to be superior to them, are the only 
 necessary prerequisites to victory. 
 There is no tedious discipline, as in the 
 various methods of repression in 
 vogue; and dividends are immediately 
 and continuously collectable on the 
 fair face of the investment. No rule 
 of conduct is necessary; for, out of 
 Emancipation, only good conduct, to fit 
 environing circumstances, can be ex- 
 pected ; and yet, every Christian, every 
 Jew, every Buddhist, every Moham- 
 metan, every Free Mason, and every 
 Odd Fellow, can accept Emancipation 
 as a rule of life, without renouncing 
 his other faiths and affiliations, be- 
 cause it is the fundamental principle of 
 them all, expressed in terms of present 
 knowledge, and unclouded by the
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 69 
 
 shadows of ignorance and superstition, 
 which gave the name of Dark Ages to 
 a period of our history. 
 
 And outside of these devotees, 
 there is the great mass of men, the so- 
 called Skeptics, who claim to adhere 
 to logic, and scientific sense, for their 
 light on spiritual, as well as on material 
 subjects. . To these, Emancipation will 
 be a haven of repose for their spirit- 
 ual yearnings; and, unimpeded growth, 
 under Divinely natural conditions, 
 "will do the rest" for them all.
 
 PRESCRIPTION
 
 PRESCRIPTION 
 
 One grain of the assurance of Christ 
 that man is made in the image of God. 
 
 One grain of respect for the respon- 
 sibility of the care and culture of the 
 Divine Essence with which we have 
 been entrusted. 
 
 One grain of the command of Christ 
 (implying a possibility) " Be ye per- 
 fect, as your Father in Heaven is per- 
 fect." 
 
 One grain of the example of Buddha 
 that man can grow to perfection through 
 the elimination of anger and worry 
 and their brood of dependent pas- 
 sions. 
 
 One grain of the wisdom of Aris- 
 totle which declared that the passions 
 are habits of the mind, and can be got- 
 ten rid of as physical habits are gotten 
 rid of. 
 
 73
 
 74 MENTICULTURE 
 
 One grain of the assurance of Omar 
 Khayyam that Heaven and Hell are 
 within ourselves. 
 
 One grain of the assurance of Christ 
 that " the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
 hand." 
 
 One grain of common sense applied 
 to an analysis of mental handicaps and 
 the discovery of their limitations. 
 
 One grain of the to-day experience 
 of the author that anger and worry are 
 the roots of all the passions which de- 
 press, and can be eliminated. 
 
 DIRECTIONS. 
 
 Take: and then let 
 
 The ever-full, never-full bounty of love, 
 Sing a song, tell a tale, strike a chord, from above, 
 Soften strife out of life, find a pleasure in giving, 
 Sound the kev-note on earth, of the Art of True Living.
 
 SCRAPS OF EVIDENCE
 
 SCRAPS OF EVIDENCE 
 
 Early in life I was fortunate enough 
 to acquire the belief that, what seemed 
 to be the consensus of opinion of the 
 learned in any art or science, ought 
 to be true; and, accepting their dictum, 
 I have tried to grow up to an appre- 
 ciation of their intelligence or taste 
 in the subjects of their study, without 
 combatting it with my own callow im- 
 pressions. In this way I have enjoyed 
 an early appreciation of the classics 
 in music and in art, much in advance of 
 the ordinary experience derived from 
 personal contact. In this spirit of in- 
 vestigation I have collected some 
 scraps of evidence which all prove my 
 theory. No one has denied the possi- 
 bility of Emancipation, but every one 
 has found a pleasure at once in the ray 
 of hope it suggests. 
 
 Since my attention has been direct- 
 77
 
 78 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 ed to the possible total emancipation 
 from the depressing passions, I have 
 taken occasion to interview every man 
 who seemed to enjoy unclouded hap- 
 piness, as to the secret of his happi- 
 ness. In almost every instance I have 
 learned that the emancipated condi- 
 tion has dated, not from infancy and 
 inheritance, but from some incident in 
 later life that exposed the passions to 
 ridicule, or showed them to be a cause 
 of danger; such as death as the result 
 of worry, or crime as the result of 
 anger ; some object lesson which 
 proved the danger of permitting the 
 passions to absorb one. I enquired of 
 
 A PHYSICIAN 
 
 who has recently been selected by 
 vote of the members of his profes- 
 sion to a position of honor among 
 them, and who is conspicuous for 
 his enjoyment of such healthful recrea- 
 tion as only much younger men usu- 
 ally enjoy, whether he did not consider
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 79 
 
 anger and worry habits of the mind, 
 and not as necessary ingredients. "Cer- 
 tainly," said he, " and I know it to be 
 true by the best possible evidence, the 
 evidence of experience." After some 
 further questioning I was able to get 
 from him the following story: "When 
 I was a boy I had an ungovernable 
 temper which brought from my neigh- 
 bors the prediction that I would come 
 to some bad end. At school I was 
 known as one of the four or five 
 ' roosters.' There was scarcely a day 
 that a ring was not formed, and some 
 of us 'roosters' did not engage in a 
 fight. I followed my studies pretty 
 closely, however, in pursuance of a 
 natural inclination to be ' on top,' but 
 without any laudable ambition in con- 
 nection with them, and finally gradu- 
 ated in medicine and began practice. 
 I suffered great annoyance from horses 
 and servants, and quarreled with them 
 constantly, and got mad at my patients 
 if they showed any unreasonable ten-
 
 80 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 dencies; until one day it came to me 
 as a sudden revelation, that, what most 
 hindered them from getting well, was 
 the very thing that possessed me the 
 greater part of the time, and made me 
 disagreeable to myself and others; and 
 I resolved to master myself as I had 
 tried to master others. From that 
 time I date my success in life, and 
 certainly my happiness. I will not al- 
 low anything to worry me. If a driver 
 or other servant does not please me, 
 I do not quarrel with him, but pay 
 him off, and let him go with the best 
 of feeling. I have a collector who is 
 very faithful, and very candid at the 
 same time. When he fails to collect 
 an account that is due, I sometimes 
 ask him the reason, and he repeats to 
 me what my patient has said. One 
 day I questioned him about an account 
 that had been long overdue, against 
 a patient whom I met cordially every 
 day at the club, but who was evidently 
 'short' at the time and suffered annoy-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 81 
 
 ance from collectors. 'What did he 
 say?' said I. 'He said, sir, "Tell the 
 doctor to go to hell," replied the honest 
 collector. Most men would have taken 
 offense at the message, and prosecuted 
 his patient for the debt, or 'cut' him, 
 or expressed anger in some way; but I 
 simply didn't go where he had ordered, 
 and never referred to the matter with 
 him. We are the best of friends now, 
 and he is one of my warmest advo- 
 cates." 
 
 A MANUFACTURER 
 
 The president of one of the largest 
 manufacturing corporations in the 
 country, having properties in a dozen 
 states, related to me the following 
 story : 
 
 "Some years ago I journeyed south 
 with a railroad magnate who stood 
 very high at the time in the railway 
 world. We came to a river crossed 
 by his road. The bridge had been 
 washed away, and, while it was rebuild-
 
 82 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 ing, trains were ferried to the further 
 shores. Owing to some accident there 
 was no boat on hand to transport the 
 official's car across the stream. He 
 became so angry that he flew into a 
 wild passion, and cursed and dis- 
 charged the subordinates in charge of 
 the division without inquiry as to the 
 cause of the delay. He learned after- 
 ward that the accident to the boat 
 was unavoidable, and that none of the 
 employes whom he had insulted so 
 grossly and discharged so unfairly 
 were responsible for it ; but he was too 
 proud to apologize. 
 
 "The incident made such an impres- 
 sion on me, that I resolved never to 
 show anger again before my em- 
 ployes; and I have kept my resolve. 
 It has led to my renouncing the habit 
 altogether, and for many years anger 
 has ceased to be a component part 
 of my nature. I am sorry that I did not 
 discharge worry at the same time, as 
 results have proved that it has had
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 83 
 
 no real cause to exist; and it has, as 
 you say, stolen much precious time 
 and energy out of my life." 
 
 A MADMAN 
 
 Another example of the possible 
 control of the passions, and a most 
 important one, is told by another 
 friend. One of the chums of his 
 youth had fits of anger during which 
 he was possessed with an insatiable 
 desire to kill the object of his wrath, if 
 it happened to be a living being, or to 
 break it if it were inanimate. During 
 his seasons of calm he deplored his 
 weakness, and resolved not to permit 
 it to take possession of him. He 
 stopped being angry because he was 
 afraid of the consequences. He did 
 not dare to be angry. As a result he 
 has lived a life filled with charity and 
 consideration for others, which has 
 been a blessing to himself and those 
 about him.
 
 84 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 MR. DANA 
 
 Mr. Charles A. Dana once sent a 
 member of the staff of the New York 
 Sun to learn, if possible, what was 
 the probable cause of the death of 
 some men of high standing in the 
 financial world who were reported to 
 have hastened their death by over- 
 work. Mr. Dana did not believe that 
 hard work could kill. The result of 
 the inquiry in each instance was to 
 the effect that these men were the 
 victims of worry, which was as unne- 
 cessary, as it was unprofitable and fatal. 
 
 AN AUTHOR 
 
 One of the most prolific, observing, 
 and interesting writers of stories and 
 descriptive articles for the magazines, 
 a war correspondent and one time jour- 
 nalist, has endorsed and practiced the 
 theory presented in this paper, and has 
 done me the honor to write approv- 
 ingly as follows : 
 
 "I have succeeded in entirely rid-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 85 
 
 ding myself of the cancers, and am 
 amazed at the ease with which it was 
 done. You are certainly an apostle of 
 sweetness and light, and I shall never 
 be able to thank you enough for letting 
 me into your noble secret." 
 
 He notes especially an improved 
 digestion, and feels younger each day 
 as he progresses in the new life. 
 
 A GENERAL MANAGER 
 
 The Southern General Manager of 
 one of the largest British Insurance 
 Companies is a tried convert, and finds 
 health and happiness which had never 
 been attained while under the thraldom 
 of worry, which was his only former 
 affliction. 
 
 AN AUTHORESS 
 
 The author of a novel which has just 
 come before the public, and which 
 is one of the purest and most ingenious 
 stories ever published, is an ardent con- 
 vert to the belief that she is superior 
 to the depressing passions, and her
 
 86 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 naturally religious temperament finds 
 great solace in it. 
 
 A LAWYER 
 
 A leading lawyer of New Orleans, 
 of very old family, religious by nature, 
 but not sectarian, found comfort in the 
 idea of the possible elimination of the 
 passions, and the unrestricted growth 
 of the God-given faculties, in substance 
 as follows : 
 
 "The germ theory of cure must ap- 
 peal to all persons in a greater or less 
 degree, especially to such as find it dif- 
 ficult to believe in a personal Deity who 
 receives directly and directly answers 
 prayer as a special dispensation. They 
 can find logic in the cultivation of the 
 Divine Spark which has been breathed 
 in to them, and feel that in its growth 
 toward perfection the Laws of Nature 
 are being assisted and not violated ; 
 while to such as find faith in a personal 
 God and comfort and help in prayer, 
 the ability to be superior to sinful
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 87 
 
 thoughts will give stimulation to their 
 faith, and be a fulfilment of the Ex- 
 ample, which taught : 'Get thee behind 
 me, Satan f" 
 
 A SOUTHRON 
 
 I was traveling with a friend from 
 the South who is one of the best fel- 
 lows that I know. He is kind, consid- 
 erate, chivalrous, and all that char- 
 acterizes a Southern gentleman; but he 
 has a false idea of dignity in some re- 
 spects, and precipitates controversy 
 sometimes without cause, and when he 
 himself is to blame in the matter. We 
 were discussing the theory of Emanci- 
 pation, and he agreed with me on almost 
 all of the points at issue, in fact to such 
 an extent that I felt that he absorbed 
 the idea fully, when he said: "Yes, 
 it is true, and I believe in it, and I 
 think I have practiced it somewhat ; 
 but I can't stand impertinence from 
 niggers ; they rub up against me all 
 the time, and annoy me terribly, espe-
 
 88 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 cially these Pullman porters." "Yes," 
 said I in reply, "you have attained 
 pretty good self-control and have rea- 
 son to be proud of it ; you are pretty 
 nearly a perfect man ; the only thing 
 you are not superior to is a nigger." 
 The rebuke impressed him as a truism 
 that had never occurred to him in that 
 light before. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, and I 
 have had both experiences to prove it 
 to my own satisfaction, antagonism in- 
 vites antagonism. A fostered dislike 
 or an anticipated friction sends out a 
 shaft in advance which rebounds and 
 rebounds with quickening vibrations. 
 If one is looking for impertinence from 
 any source he will be pretty sure to 
 find it; but if he carries a mind and 
 heart free from prejudice, which is the 
 condition of Emancipation, the shaft 
 will not be unloosed, and the disturb- 
 ing vibrations will not occur. I do not 
 believe that Pullman porters were ever 
 discourteous to Phillips Brooks, or Ed-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 89 
 
 ward Everett Hale, or Professor Swing 
 or men of their caliber of mind; or if 
 they were, I do not believe that the 
 impertinence made any impression on 
 them except to excite pity. 
 
 FEAR DISPELLED 
 
 The most remarkable evidence in 
 support of my theory that fear is dis- 
 pelled with worry, and which corrob- 
 orates my own experience, comes from 
 an old friend who once had a shock 
 from a stroke of lightning, and who, 
 on account of it, has for years suffered 
 wretchedly from a depression akin to 
 involuntary fear whenever the weather 
 has indicated an approaching storm. 
 He has accepted the possibility of 
 Emancipation and enjoyed deliver- 
 ance from the passions, but strangely 
 enough has also now immunity from 
 any uncomfortable feeling during elec- 
 tric storms.
 
 90 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 TIMIDITY DISAPPEARS 
 
 Another convert states that he has 
 lost all timidity, in the presence of an 
 audience, which formerly he could not 
 overcome. 
 
 THOMSON J. HUDSON 
 
 Mr. Thomson J. Hudson, in his Law 
 of Psychic Phenomena, has marshalled a 
 great array of authentic evidence, 
 gathered from the researches of many 
 Psychological Societies, which all 
 prove the power of the mind over 
 itself and over the body, and its 
 amenability to suggestion, under the 
 receptive condition of faith. One can 
 not read this able work without becom- 
 ing convinced that Emancipation is 
 entirely possible. Any one who wishes 
 to learn something of the power stored 
 within him, will do well to read the 
 Law of Psychic Phenomena. 
 
 The success of the Keeley Cure in 
 conquering the habits of drinking,
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING QI 
 
 opium, and tobacco, is proof of the 
 efficacy of germ treatment where the 
 germs are sensual, or mental. If bi- 
 chloride of gold can cure such dread 
 passions of the appetite, may not bi- 
 chloride of common sense cure the bad 
 habits of the mind that cause them? 
 
 A MASTER WORKMAN 
 
 And now, comes a scrap of evi- 
 dence that is valuable because it is 
 furnished by a man whose experience 
 is wide among the people who make 
 the wealth which we all enjoy; to 
 whom we are directly indebted for 
 the comforts and luxuries of life ; 
 and whose endorsement of an idea 
 or reform is necessary to make it be- 
 come a feature of our system or 
 government. He went west many 
 years ago from New York, a mechanic 
 by trade, and found employment in 
 the shops of one of the great rail- 
 roads. In time he was advanced 
 to the position of foreman. In private
 
 92 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 life he is now a Baron Bountiful 
 in the service of everybody within 
 his reach. As Masterworkman of La- 
 bor Organizations, he has urged the 
 just cause of his confreres with the 
 success that follows earnest conviction. 
 In the intimate confidence of his em- 
 ployers, he has presented their side of 
 a controversy to the men without any of 
 the misrepresentation of a demagogue. 
 He is the President of a sound 
 Building and Loan Association, with- 
 out salary, not to make money for him- 
 self, but for the purpose of helping his 
 men to build and own homes; and 
 those who have felt his assistance in 
 that direction, and owe him debts of 
 gratitude for various benefactions, are 
 numbered by the hundreds. When- 
 ever there is sickness, he brings solid 
 help and the sunniest of comfort; and 
 when there is death, he knows just how 
 best to serve the afflicted family with 
 those delicate attentions which relieve 
 them from repulsively material de-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 93 
 
 tails, his presence always bringing com- 
 fort even under circumstances in which 
 people want most to be alone. His 
 sympathy is universal, and reflects itself 
 into the hearts of all with whom he 
 comes in contact. 
 
 To such a man, one would naturally 
 think the depressing passions were 
 strangers, and that he must have been 
 born without them; but he assures me 
 that he was a slave to them for many 
 years, and that he was frightened out of 
 harboring them by a physician, and that 
 whatever good he has accomplished in 
 his humble sphere (as he calls it) he 
 attributes to the partial Emancipation 
 which his doctor's warning led him to 
 enforce upon himself. The story that 
 follows was elicited on hearing an out- 
 line of the theory of possible Emanci- 
 pation as presented in these pages. 
 
 "Stop right there: don't go any 
 farther till I have talked with you about 
 that part of it. It is as true as gospel, 
 but I never knew what it was. I have
 
 94 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 had an experience which makes me 
 know that it is true, but I didn't know 
 the reason for it. When the doctors 
 told me that I must quit worrying and 
 take it easy, or medicine would do me 
 no good, and I would die, why didn't 
 they tell me that anger and worry were 
 not necessary, and that it was they that 
 I was suffering from? I would have 
 understood it better, and I wouldn't 
 have had so much trouble about fearing 
 I would have them back some time in 
 spite of myself. Why didn't the preach- 
 ers tell me this when I was a boy, and 
 let me begin to live then, instead of 
 waiting till I got to be an old man or 
 pretty near to it? You can bet that 
 my boys will know this thing right 
 away, and live it too, and I want my 
 men to know it. It is the only thing 
 they need to complete their happiness. 
 The old gentleman needs it, and Mr. , 
 
 and Mr . (mentioning a number of 
 
 well known men who are their own 
 worst enemies, who harm no one but
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 95 
 
 themselves, but whose abuse of self, 
 through worry, is as merciless as the 
 tortures of the Inquisition); and what a 
 blessing it would be for the women! 
 See here, I want a hundred of those 
 books as soon as they are published, 
 and I know where they will do a heap 
 of good. They will be better than the 
 medicine of all the doctors, and do a 
 lot of good besides. I'm going to com- 
 mit what you have told me to memory, 
 so as to tell people about it if I haven't 
 got a book by me. You see that I 
 know all about this, for I have had an 
 experience. When I was a youngster, 
 I was naturally ambitious, and pretty 
 smart with the tools, and 'took' with 
 my employers, and finally got to be 
 superintendent. Then I got to be more 
 ambitious, especially after I was married 
 and the children came. I wanted them 
 to have a good education and be fitted 
 to be gentlemen, which I knew their 
 mother's, and I might remark incident- 
 ally, my own blood entitled them to be.
 
 96 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 I was pretty sensitive, and was always 
 standing up for my rights. I was too 
 apt to worry. I had not heard what 
 you have told me and thought worry 
 necessary. If I had not worried I 
 would not have got angry. 
 
 " When I got to be superintendent I 
 thought that one of the things that I 
 had to do was to be sure and maintain 
 my dignity, and show it by occasion- 
 ally making believe mad at something. 
 At first I did not feel it half as much 
 as I showed it; but I thought it 
 was part of the business of a boss 
 to get mad, until finally it got to be 
 a habit, and grew on me till I was in a 
 state of anger most of the time. I 
 also thought that I had to worry about 
 things, or I would not show the proper 
 respect for my responsibilities. It was 
 the way I had of letting myself feel that 
 I was carrying a terrible burden and 
 earning my salary. The trouble was 
 that, while it was partly play-acting at 
 first, it came to be habit, and worked on
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 97 
 
 my health in the end. The doctors 
 dosed me with all sorts of medicine. I 
 was a regular pigeon, and gave up many 
 a hard-earned dollar to them for no 
 
 good at all. One day Dr. L , to 
 
 whom I went as a last resort, for I was 
 beginning to have dizzy spells and 
 twitching in the face that was serious, 
 asked me a lot of questions about 
 myself and my habits and duties. I 
 told him frankly, and when I had done 
 so he said : ' There is no use giving 
 you any medicine, you have got to quit 
 worrying and take it easy ; that is the 
 only trouble with you. If you keep on 
 with you,r worry I will have to give 
 your family a certificate of death; so, if 
 you don't want me to do that, you just 
 quit your worrying and take life easy. 
 Whatever you do, don't get into fits of 
 anger, for that is more wearing to a 
 man in your condition than anything 
 else.' Well, to 'fess up and tell you 
 the truth, I got frightened out of my 
 wits. I hadn't got near enough to
 
 98 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 eighty (my limit) to think about dying, 
 and I didn't want to do it right then, 
 especially as I hadn't got Mary and 
 the boys well enough fixed to leave. 
 The other doctors had made a monkey 
 of me, and took my money, and told 
 me that I would be all right in a few 
 days ; but this honest German told me 
 the truth and set me to thinking. I 
 didn't say a word to anyone, but made 
 up my mind I would take his advice. 
 At first I thought that I was shirking 
 some of the duties of a superintendent, 
 when I quit getting mad and worrying; 
 but I squared it with myself by saying 
 to myself, ' Better be a tame donkey 
 for the company than a dead one.' 
 Well, I didn't know it at the time ; 
 that is, I didn't know the cause of it, 
 but from that time I have just had 
 luck under my wing all the time. I 
 have pleased my employers, and I have 
 pleased the men, and things have been 
 coming my way in great shape, and 
 they are still a-coming. Why, I see it
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 99 
 
 all as plain as the nose on your face. 
 Those little devils that keep a man 
 back, and keep him from being happy, 
 have no business there by rights; and all 
 you have got to know is that they are 
 poachers, and all you have got to do is 
 to tell them to ' git.' And just see how 
 it would work if everybody knew this 
 as I see it. If you knew that your 
 neighbor knew that Emancipation was 
 possible, you would know at the same 
 time that he was no fool, and that, 
 knowing it, he had become Emanci- 
 pated, of course, and there would be a 
 trustful sympathy established at once, 
 and you would pull together and never 
 apart after that. If his fence accidentally 
 encroached an inch on your land, you 
 would be glad of it; or, if your fence 
 had been set on his side of the legal 
 line, he would not object; and so it 
 would go on between you, and you 
 would be happy and good neighbors to 
 each other. Why, I would rather my 
 men would have that secret and day's
 
 100 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 wages, than a million of dollars without 
 it ; and my boys, if I don't leave them a 
 cent, I will leave them full of this secret, 
 and won't worry about their future hap- 
 piness. I was much interested in that 
 book you gave me several years ago 
 called ' Looking Backward.' What the 
 author said about co-operation, and all 
 that, was all right and very beautiful; 
 but I didn't take much stock in it be- 
 cause I had such a poor opinion of 
 human nature, that I didn't think peo- 
 ple could quit grabbing and get down 
 to brass tacks in a co-operative way. 
 But if you can spread the idea of Men- 
 tal Emancipation as you have told it to 
 me (and I don't see what can help its 
 spreading like wildfire as soon as it 
 gets out), the social paradise pictured 
 in ' Looking Backward ' will come as 
 a matter of course ; and I see it a-com- 
 ing If you take off a brake I can see 
 how a car can run down a hill, but 
 with the brake on I couldn't see how 
 you could push it down.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING IOI 
 
 "The more I think of this thing the 
 bigger it gets, and it is a sure winner. 
 Now suppose my family, and the B. 
 family on the corner, and the N. family 
 next door had found out the secret, 
 anybody that couldn't grasp it couldn't 
 live in the street, he would feel so un- 
 comfortable. In fact, if there were such 
 an one, we could put him down for a 
 crazy man or an idiot, and treat him 
 with the same consideration we treat 
 such weak people. 
 
 " Or suppose the men over in the 
 shops were the joint possessors of the 
 secret; why, the first thing you would 
 know they would all be at work on 
 some co-operative plan for themselves. 
 Not that any of us have anything 
 against the employers we work for, for 
 there are no better in the land; but it 
 is the blamed stupidity of the system 
 that makes men work hard for small 
 wages to feed the flames of ruinous 
 rivalry. Look at the brains locked up 
 in the pates of lawyers which have
 
 102 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 nothing better to do than to mix things 
 up so that they will get the job of un- 
 mixing them. Think what would hap- 
 pen if all that education and all that in- 
 genuity were turned towards invention! 
 Most of the tangles they are employed 
 to unravel should never have existed, 
 and would not have existed in a com- 
 munity where the secret of Emancipa- 
 tion had been told. In all of the clum- 
 siness of competition, and the expense 
 of pullback methods, labor, the source 
 of all we have, pays the whole freight 
 in one way or another; and the reason 
 it does so is because of the little par- 
 asite devils that are sawing wood and 
 hatching eggs in the minds of each 
 individual worker and producer. With 
 these little devils at work in him he is 
 suspicious, selfish, jealous, and what 
 not else, because he thinks his neighbor 
 and fellow workman are similarly pos- 
 sessed, and he must be so too to get 
 along. Under this condition cohesion 
 is impossible, and schemers prey upon
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 103 
 
 the separateness of the producing com- 
 munity to rob it of as much of the 
 product of its labor as possible. Suppose 
 that the secret of possible Emancipa- 
 tion should become general (and for 
 the life of me I cannot see how it can 
 fail to do so), there would be confidence, 
 trustfulness, cohesion, ambition to be 
 useful, and the energy of the healthy 
 child for play-work would return to the 
 rejuvenated man, and he would play 
 work under those conditions and not 
 feel that it was a mark of servitude 
 and necessity, and the land would sing 
 with the sound of willing industry." 
 
 My friend had become eloquent under 
 the inspiration of the possible estab- 
 lishment of a Heaven on earth to which 
 he could invite his friends. Do not 
 think that this is not a true report of 
 a conversation in real life. My friend 
 is a real character; is well read and 
 educated by observation and exper- 
 ience, and could succeed in almost 
 any position in life except in such as
 
 104 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 did not give "value received" for the 
 service rendered. He is one of those 
 "Noblemen by Nature" to whom the 
 world owes so much, but pays so little; 
 but he is happy in doing good, and the 
 field he works in is one of the richest 
 for that harvest, and the compensation 
 he prizes most highly, is the happiness 
 he is able to give others. He had 
 the secret of True Living forced on 
 him, in spite of the example of the 
 world, without knowing the true cause 
 or value of his good fortune; but his 
 happiness was increased many fold 
 when he learned that it was his birth- 
 right; was a possession of which no 
 one could rob him; and would re- 
 main his as long as he lived. And as 
 he has faith in the Eternal Evolution of 
 everything, he feels that, freed from the 
 depressing passions, there will be no 
 end to his growth; that, at the so-called 
 middle age of human tenure, he is but in 
 the beginning of life; or, if not that, 
 that each day is a wealth of joy unto
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 105 
 
 itself in spite of any external conditions; 
 for he has found that "the kingdom of 
 Heaven is at hand" and that a branch 
 of it has been established in his own 
 heart. 
 
 All men are not constituted alike. 
 In the economy of Nature it is her pur- 
 pose that no two things are made alike. 
 In a million years a million men could 
 not count the spears of grass in the 
 fields, or the hairs of the heads of men; 
 yet no patient investigator has been 
 able to find any two of them that did not 
 differ from every other one when put 
 under the lens of the microscope One 
 thousand millions of humans inhabit 
 this earth. Each has essentially the 
 same form, the same two eyes, the 
 same mouth, the same ears and hands 
 and arms; and yet even in the case of 
 twins, where the nearest approach to 
 similarity comes, the mother never can 
 mistake the one for the other. If 
 you are unlike others, it is because na- 
 ture chose to cast you in a different
 
 106 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 mould to serve some wise purpose; and 
 with that form, comes the God-given 
 essence of the Divine, whose presence 
 and growth are evidenced by an innate 
 yearning for spirituality. Much spir- 
 ituality lifts a man above his less 
 spiritual fellows and makes of him a 
 cornerstone, or a keystone, or some 
 other important segment of the so- 
 cial structure; and lack of it con- 
 demns him to be a bit of rubble, 
 or an atom of filling. The corner- 
 stones and the keystones help and 
 support each other in the stately arch, 
 while the rubble and the atoms fall 
 apart and become dirt, when allowed 
 to find their level. Which shall we 
 choose to become: the keystone of the 
 arch, or some of the dirt of the earth 
 beneath it? Which shall we choose: 
 happiness, health, growth, usefulness, 
 rest, and a fitting relationship to the 
 Divine, or the reverse? Each is what 
 God made him plus what he can attain 
 by growth. Through eradication of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 107 
 
 the cankerous passions; through the 
 extirpation of the mental weeds; the 
 dwarf may grow to be greater than the 
 king; and all can freely and fully enjoy 
 life and growth, when they have learned 
 the A-B-C of True Living. The 
 grammar, and the rhetoric, and the 
 poetry, and perhaps a higher intelli- 
 gence than we know of now may fol- 
 low, and are sure to follow; but they 
 will be but brighter phases of hap- 
 piness already attained. 
 
 A CHURCHWOMAN 
 
 In searching for corroborative evi- 
 dence of the possibility of Emancipa- 
 tion, I was fortunate in meeting a lady 
 whose acquaintance with the several re- 
 ligions and metaphysics is exceptional ; 
 and whose clear intelligence regarding 
 the value of menticulture, makes her a 
 rare critic in questions of this kind. 
 From her I received the most valued en- 
 couragement. She is a devout church- 
 woman, but has studied along the sev-
 
 108 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 eral lines of psychology in search of 
 additional light and strength. She 
 had read my simple presentation of 
 the theory of germ cure, and found in 
 it a ray of hope, the effect of which 
 she described as follows: ''The sensa- 
 tion that was produced in me by the 
 suggestion, I cannot describe. It was 
 as if a great flood of light had burst 
 upon me, and I saw the possibility of 
 an immediate realization of my spiritual 
 ideal; and I have prayed to God con- 
 stantly, that it may not leave me. 
 There have been unusual occasions for 
 worry and annoyance since then. I 
 have just moved to a new city ; into a 
 new house; and my husband and I are 
 beginning life anew in an untried field. 
 All of my past associations are broken 
 up, and new sympathies among stran- 
 gers are to be formed. My husband's 
 health has been poor, and mine has 
 been wretched, so that we have been 
 compelled to seek climates more favor- 
 able, at the expense of financial con-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 109 
 
 siderations; yet, the cloud that hung 
 over our prospects has been miracu- 
 lously dispelled, and my days and 
 nights are soothed with a calm con- 
 tentment and happiness which I have 
 never known before. My religion 
 seems more precious to me than ever. 
 It seems as if one simple little ingre- 
 dient that it lacked has been found ; 
 and that now it is perfect. I have 
 always been possessed of a desire to 
 accomplish one act in life which should 
 be conspicuous for its usefulness to 
 some one ; and if I can ever succeed 
 in giving to one person the light and 
 comfort that this revelation has given 
 to me, I shall feel that my ambition 
 has been attained." 
 
 Her discovery of a simple little in- 
 gredient, in the theory of germ cure, 
 led to a new appreciation of the idea 
 of simplicity in connection with it, 
 which has been amplified in the suc- 
 ceeding chapter.
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OVER. 
 LOOKED
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OVERLOOKED 
 
 Simplicity and harmony are the 
 ultimate conditions to be attained in 
 all things. In literature, and in music, 
 and in oratory, and in painting, and in 
 mechanics, and in life, simplicity is at 
 once the greatest charm, and the best 
 evidence of merit. In mechanics, a 
 simple little device usually perfects the 
 great labor-saving machine. In chem- 
 istry, a simple little ingredient may give 
 culminating power to a world-building 
 or a world-destroying compound. In 
 oratory, a simple and impassioned appeal 
 is most potent to move the multitude 
 to action ; and in menticulture, the 
 simple and direct application of the germ 
 cure, may be able to effect a millennium 
 in social evolution within a generation. 
 Stranger things have happened ! Be- 
 cause it has not happened, is no reason 
 "3
 
 114 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 why it should not happen. In fact, 
 there are logical reasons why the habit 
 of repression should have smothered 
 any idea of germ cure, till Science 
 placed an analogy in physics before 
 our eyes ; especially because the false 
 hypothesis of original (or natural) sin, 
 has been persistently advanced as a 
 law of our being. 
 
 Christ taught the germ cure, and 
 hinted at no other as an alternative. 
 In the sermon on the mount; in his 
 talks by the Sea of Galilee; and in 
 his rebuke of the devil in the desert, 
 there was no note of indecision sug- 
 gested. Do and be and get were unmis- 
 takable commands. But these com- 
 mands were given in a gentle manner, 
 to half-doubting disciples, and faintly 
 echoed by them to an incredulous 
 world, that had not learned the power 
 of mind over matter, or over itself; 
 and hence the world waited for Science 
 to prove even greater possibilities, 
 before giving heed to the simple com
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 115 
 
 mands of the Great Teacher in the 
 manner he commanded. 
 
 One of the great weaknesses of the 
 age in which we live is the ignoring of 
 first principles, and a reaching out for 
 the remote or unattainable. In the 
 matter of home responsibilities, and 
 in menticulture, this is most apparent. 
 The order of responsibility is the 
 mind, the body the mind of the 
 child the body or health of the child 
 and so on in the sequence of relation- 
 ship in the family, in the community, 
 in the nation, and in the world ; not 
 with selfish discrimination against the 
 more remote, but with zealous care of 
 the nearer relationships. This order, 
 however, is rarely observed. We weed 
 the garden, but do not weed the mind. 
 We pass laws to punish any who strike, 
 or rob, or corrupt a citizen, but there 
 is no law to protect the abused or neg- 
 lected children of drunken or incom- 
 petent parents, except in extreme 
 cases. Breeders of fine animals take
 
 Il6 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 the greatest pains to guard all the con- 
 ditions surrounding their stock, and at 
 the same time encourage family alli- 
 ance with consumptive plutocrats. 
 
 The antiquated and primitive doc- 
 trine of laissez faire, has been replaced 
 by those of Division of Labor, and of 
 Protection, in the cases of the strong 
 who have demanded them, or who 
 have purchased them through leg- 
 islative cupidity ; but still obtains in 
 the cases of the weak and non-as- 
 sertive. 
 
 The truant subjects of great nations, 
 scattered in foreign lands, are hedged 
 about with protection equal to an im- 
 perial guard ; and thousands of men 
 and millions of money are sacrificed to 
 revenge an insult to, or protect the 
 property of a claimant citizen at the 
 Antipodes ; while hundreds and thou- 
 sands of the producers at home are 
 starving and dying, because of the 
 maladministration of the first princi- 
 ples of economies, and the laissez faire
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 117 
 
 license given to selfish and unscrupu- 
 lous competition. 
 
 Arrogant commerce, and the al- 
 ready-powerful, have no end of pro- 
 tection; but the mind, the health, the 
 child, and the producer, are left to 
 the tender mercy of chance, or are 
 hampered by crushing conditions of 
 abuse and neglect contrary to every 
 law of growth ; and thus it must be ; 
 until we adopt the germ cure, as a 
 principle of menticulture, and Eman- 
 cipation, as the first evidence of intelli- 
 gence and respectability. 
 
 In self-administration, the far-away 
 habit is quite as prevalent as in the 
 administration of Society. Men and 
 women slave and save, to furnish 
 means for sending missionaries to 
 India, to release the Indian mind of 
 imagined evils, while they crawl about 
 servile to anger or worry, or both 
 anger and worry. They set their 
 ideal of happiness at an indefinite 
 height, always out of reach. They
 
 Il8 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 hide their Heaven behind the curtain 
 of death, and refuse to look for it 
 within the precincts of their own heart. 
 They waste precious time in speculat- 
 ing as to the form and attributes of 
 the Cause of all things, its residence 
 and disposition, while they smother 
 under the pall of inappreciation, the 
 best evidence of its existence, and the 
 most potent workings of its power, 
 within themselves. And all this be- 
 cause they work from the wrong end, 
 and are dull to the efficacy of growth 
 from the basis of Emancipation. 
 
 Their method of life is like the un- 
 raveling of a snarled skein from the 
 middle. They fumble futilely at the 
 snarl, and accomplish little, if any- 
 thing, when they ought first to release 
 the end within themselves, and follow 
 the cord from that beginning, along 
 the line of growth and organization, 
 to the condition of unrestricted free- 
 dom, and usefulness, the condition 
 of Emancipated Brotherhood.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING IIQ 
 
 Religions are founded, fraternal 
 societies are formed, armies are mar- 
 shalled, and nations are grown about 
 a sympathetic idea, to which the ma- 
 jority subscribe. The aim is always 
 the same : growth, protection, har- 
 mony, happiness, Heaven. But the 
 growth is slow, the protection is only 
 partial, the harmony is incomplete, 
 perfect happiness is impossible, and 
 Heaven is indefinite and remote; 
 because their organization tolerates 
 selfishness as a necessary "mark of 
 Cain," instead of being built on the 
 foundation of Emancipation. 
 
 All true calculation must recognize 
 a unit of value ; in menticulture the 
 only true unit is Emancipation. 
 
 In harmony, instruments cannot be 
 tuned from several standards; there 
 must be one key-note; and harmony in 
 menticulture can only come from the 
 key-note Emancipation.
 
 SLAVES OR FREEMEN-WHICH?
 
 SLAVES OR FREEMEN 
 
 Within the memory of many now 
 living, Society was dominated by the 
 belief that human body-slavery was a 
 Divine institution. 
 
 Thirty-five years ago a great war 
 was waged against the institution in 
 this country, at the expense of hun- 
 dreds of thousands of lives, and thou- 
 sands of millions of dollars worth of 
 property. 
 
 That war resulted not only in kill- 
 ing the institution itself, but also in the 
 extirpation of the idea of its Divine 
 origin. 
 
 It is no longer a question of debate 
 in any part of the civilized word, but 
 an established international under- 
 standing, that slavery is not only 
 unjust to the enslaved, but an evil, the 
 effects of which are shared by the 
 master. 
 
 123
 
 124 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 Negro slavery in America was, how- 
 ever, a mild and beneficent institution, 
 as compared to the voluntary servitude 
 to Mercenary Fashion, which enthrals 
 so many at the present time. Merce- 
 nary Fashion places burdens on rich 
 and poor alike, and costs Society more 
 lives and property yearly, than all that 
 was wasted during the war of the Re- 
 bellion. 
 
 Most of the masters of the negro 
 were kindly and considerate, and not 
 a few of the negro uncles and aunties 
 now living, regret the "good old times 
 when marster and missus did all the 
 plannin' and pervidin', and all we uns 
 had to do was work, and sing and 
 dance." 
 
 On the other hand, Mercenary 
 Fashion has headquarters in Paris, 
 in London, in Vienna, and in Berlin; 
 and sets its traps all over the world, 
 baited with styles of such absurd 
 taste and uselessness that interest in 
 them can only be brief. It is part of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 125 
 
 its deliberate policy, not to suggest 
 any form or style that has merit suffi- 
 cient to make it desirable a second 
 season. It avoids any approach to the 
 simple and beautiful and comfortable 
 drapery used by the ancient Greeks, 
 because of fear that its trade will be 
 ruined by the stability of the wares. 
 Ostentation is the ever-ready victim 
 to take the poisonous bait; and then, 
 there is a mad rush of the mimicking 
 slaves, to assume the fetters which 
 bind them to constant toil. Dishonor, 
 infamy, and shame, are braved by men 
 and women alike, in following the 
 allurements of Mercenary Fashion. 
 
 Fear (of criticism) and Envy are 
 the two phases of the root passions, 
 that are the most powerful and active 
 agents in securing victims for Merce- 
 nary Fashion; but, if Emancipation 
 were the established rule of life, 
 these agents would not exist; Osten- 
 tation would not be followed; and 
 Taste, and Usefulness, and Perma-
 
 126 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 nence, would be the leaders instead 
 and a state of cooperation which might 
 properly be named Good Fashion, or 
 God Fashion, would succeed the 
 tyrant of the present ; and Fashion, 
 under such conditions, would be a bles- 
 sing instead of a curse as at present. 
 Mercenary Fashion has met with a 
 formidable adversary in the bicycle. 
 The absurd costumes inflicted by it on 
 a servile world, seem as ridiculous 
 when mounted on a bicycle, as if 
 they were placed on the David of 
 Michael Angelo, or on the Venus de 
 Milo. Bicycle costumes for women 
 may not displace all others; but, with 
 the freedom of movement enjoyed on 
 the wheel, in a costume suitable to 
 the unhampered action of a biped; 
 with the constant restraint of position 
 rendered necessary by the wearing of 
 skirts removed, woman may soon be- 
 come free to move and act as Nature 
 designed that she should move and act, 
 and enjoyment of this new freedom
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 127 
 
 will greatly modify her slavery to Mer- 
 cenary Fashion. 
 
 Fashion (or mimicry) is good, if 
 properly led. 
 
 If it were fashionable to believe 
 that anger and worry were unnecessary 
 weeds of the mind, were blemishes 
 that could be removed from the dispo- 
 sition, were habits that were unbecom- 
 ing to civilized man, and were handi- 
 caps to energy and happiness that 
 could be put aside at will, the world 
 could follow that fashion to a state of 
 Emancipation, with all the enthusiasm 
 it could muster, and benefit itself by 
 being fashionable. 
 
 And, should a just appreciation of 
 the power within us become fashion- 
 able, the tendency to mimicry; which is 
 now the connecting link of resemblance 
 between us and the monkey from 
 which we have evolved, would become 
 an element of strength, instead of an 
 element of weakness. 
 
 We, as individuals, support the
 
 128 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 fashions, but we do not suggest them. 
 We support waste and discomfort, for 
 the benefit of mercenary and designing 
 fashion-makers, with the product of 
 never-ending toil, because we ape 
 Ostentation, cringe before Fear, and 
 encourage Envy as an attribute of 
 Pride. 
 
 We are slaves indeed! not only in 
 the matter of clothes, but in the matter 
 of the distribution of the necessities 
 and luxuries of life and comfort. We 
 do some things more cleverly than the 
 rest of the world, but in others we 
 excel in clumsiness and inconsistency. 
 In Mexico (our nearest neighbor), a 
 sharpened stick is still used for plow- 
 ing; but, that is not nearly as crude, of 
 its kind, as some of the business 
 methods that we support in this coun- 
 try are of their kind; and in matters 
 of utmost importance, too. For in- 
 stance: in the city of Montgomery, Ala- 
 bama, there is a square, or rather a 
 diamond, around which, and within a
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING I2Q 
 
 block of which, there are eight or nine 
 drug stores. This may not be an 
 unusual bunching of druggists, but, as 
 Montgomery is a meeting point of 
 several terminal railroads, and trains 
 from all directions are usually detained 
 there one or two hours, I have had 
 abundant opportunity to study this 
 constellation of red and green lights, 
 that blink and stare at all who visit 
 the park they look on. They all seem 
 to be full fledged, and fully equipped 
 drug stores, and not devoted to special- 
 ties, as one would suppose as a reason 
 for there being so many of them. 
 
 As it is, there are eight stores, eight 
 stocks of goods, eight sets of clerks, 
 eight insurance policies, eight compu- 
 tations of interest, eight gas or electric 
 light bills, and probably eight many- 
 other items of expense chargeable to 
 the profits on the sales, and supported 
 by the public, when one establishment 
 would serve all the people of Mont- 
 gomery better than the eight do now.
 
 130 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 If these stores were scattered about 
 the city, the matter of convenience 
 could be urged for their existence. To 
 support such prodigality, profits rang- 
 ing from one hundred to one thousand 
 per cent, have to be charged, and the 
 public evidently pays them, for their 
 existence from year to year is evidence 
 of support from some one. Suppose 
 the Corporation of the City of Mont- 
 gomery were to vote an appropriation 
 of fifty thousand (or perhaps only 
 twenty thousand) dollars, for the pur- 
 pose of establishing a first-class dispen- 
 sary of medicines, etc., and should put 
 it in charge of a competent chemist, 
 who would know what medicines were 
 good, and what compounds were not 
 good? The patronage of the citizens 
 would support such an establishment 
 on a ten per cent, basis of profit, and 
 pay ten per cent, interest on the invest- 
 ment without doubt, and the citizens 
 would not be at the mercy of chance 
 or imposition, in a matter of prime
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 131 
 
 importance to health, as they are liable 
 to be, under any but the most perfect 
 system of selecting and dispensing 
 drugs and patent medicines. 
 
 This is a single instance among thou- 
 sands, of the unintelligent application 
 of the doctrine of laissez faire to 
 matters of vital social interest; and is 
 given here to illustrate a form of slav- 
 ery to inconvenience and waste, that 
 would be cleared away like mist before 
 the sun, as the result of evolution, 
 from the standpoint of Emancipation. 
 
 It required a million guns, and the 
 assistance of several million men, 
 with all the waste and blood which 
 war carries with it, to free the negro; 
 and the advance of humanity the 
 world over, was a fruit, worth the cost 
 of the war; but slavery of the individ- 
 ual to the parasite passions, will not 
 enlist the rescue of arms, although 
 it entails greater hardship than was 
 ever suffered by the average negro 
 slave. Each individual must gain for
 
 132 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 himself this freedom ; no one else can 
 aid him except through suggestion 
 and moral help. It is his birthright 
 however, and awaits his call. 
 
 The face of the martyr glowed 
 with radiant happiness, when he ex- 
 claimed to his jailers from the con- 
 fines of his chains, "You have bound 
 my body, but you cannot bind my soul! 
 Kill my body if you like ! it will only 
 give greater freedom to my soul." But 
 the so-called free citizen of to-day; 
 who smothers himself under the blan- 
 ket of worry; or, who spits angry in- 
 justice at a self-created-phantom-cause 
 for resentment, is a weak and pitiable 
 wretch, as compared with the bonden 
 martyr or negro of long ago. 
 
 Emancipation, or, a perfectly de-an- 
 gered and de-worryized mind, can only 
 be secured through conviction of its 
 possibility, and not simply through an 
 intellectual admission of its possibility. 
 Faith is the pre-requisite of every suc- 
 cessful accomplishment in life. An
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 133 
 
 axiom of the circus ring warns an 
 acrobat, or a gymnast, never to 
 attempt a feat, unless he has perfect 
 confidence in his ability to perform it 
 successfully. Knowledge and the ap- 
 preciation of the power of the mind 
 over phantoms of its own creation, 
 and confidence to expel them, is as 
 necessary in menticulture as is the con- 
 fidence of the gymnast in performing 
 wonderful feats of menti-physical skill. 
 The condition required for growth to 
 Emancipation, is that of perfect faith 
 and confidence, born of knowledge 
 of the power God has given us to 
 "cast out evil," and in that condition, 
 Emancipation, when attained, can be 
 anchored safely, protected from any 
 of the battling and surging elements 
 of discord from without. 
 
 The researches of many scientific 
 societies along the lines of Psychic 
 Phenomena, endorsed by every utter- 
 ance of Christ, reveal the fact that 
 faith is a pre-requisite to subjection, or
 
 134 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 control, of the mind. The best sub- 
 jects in scientific hypnotism are the 
 strongest minded (who believe through 
 knowledge), and the weakest minded 
 (who believe through credulity); while 
 the creatures of vacillating impulses, 
 are hopeless dolts in the hands of the 
 hypnotist, and will be those who will 
 have to acquire Mental Emancipation 
 because it is fashionable, and not be- 
 cause it is sensible. 
 
 The condition of Emancipation is 
 one of faith in the beginning ; but, as 
 soon as it is attained, there is no desire 
 to replant mental weeds, and no strug- 
 gle to repress them, for there are no 
 roots or seeds from which to grow them. 
 
 Faith must precede, but examples 
 of Emancipation are sure to develop 
 in every community, and soon the at- 
 mosphere will be pregnant with the 
 possibility of it. Then it will be easy 
 to follow the fashion and dismiss anger 
 and worry; and, after a little, shame 
 will attach to the possession of them.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 135 
 
 Growth and happiness will result from 
 the elimination of the germs of strife; 
 natural cooperation will follow natural 
 growth; and we will catch up with Mr. 
 Bellamy's prophecy, long before the 
 time specified in "Looking Backward," 
 by the simple unraveling of a silken 
 skein of endless possibilities from the 
 free end within ourselves. 
 
 Fear that individuality will be lost 
 in cooperation, is one of the hot-shot 
 missiles of mendacity, that is being 
 fired at Cooperation from the citadel 
 of the condemned passions, by the 
 slaves of the tottering house of Can't, 
 but will fall, harmless, before the 
 armor of Emancipation. 
 
 Does it lessen the individuality of 
 the gardener to weed his soil? Does it 
 weaken the individuality of a patient to 
 cut out the root of his cancer? Does 
 it militate against the power of a cause, 
 to rid it of its faults? Will the runner 
 run less swiftly, or the jumper jump 
 less far, if they remove the handicap?
 
 ORGANIZATION
 
 ORGANIZATION 
 
 While Emancipation in the individ- 
 ual is worth more than all the wealth 
 of the world to him without it, organ- 
 ization about the idea is desirable for 
 the purpose of aiding others ; and, 
 (through cooperation and the most 
 perfect economics) lightening the bur- 
 den of compulsory labor, in order that 
 there shall be more time to devote to 
 recreation and recreative labor. 
 
 Organization on the basis of Eman- 
 cipation is sure to be the next great 
 movement of reform and growth, in 
 the light of whose strength, the puny 
 efforts of the past will seem like the 
 light of a tallow dip beside an electric 
 cluster. 
 
 This will come ; not because I have 
 discovered it for myself and am pub- 
 lishing an account of the discovery to 
 139
 
 140 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 my friends, but because the world has 
 learned something of the powers at its 
 command ; has learned the possibility 
 of germ cure in physics ; has learned 
 the efficacy of mental therapeutics in 
 matters of both mind and body ; and 
 is ripe for it. When I tell my friends 
 my experience and deductions, they 
 are prepared at once to accept them 
 with credence. And so it will be with 
 them and their friends, for logic and 
 self interest are merits to commend 
 it to all intelligent persons ; and, 
 in the immediate future, it is not 
 unreasonable to hope that Emanci- 
 pation, as a basic condition favorable 
 to growth and Brotherhood, may not 
 be an uncommon accomplishment and 
 requirement. I believe that it is one 
 of the first steps urged in Christian 
 Science and rendered possible by the 
 belief, as it is in the Buddhist Disci- 
 pline and Christian formula, and in 
 the circle bf my acquaintance there 
 are already many believers in the
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 14! 
 
 possibility of Emancipation, who are 
 enjoying its benefits; who find that it 
 is the one little ingredient necessary to 
 perfect their established beliefs, and 
 strengthen their present affiliations; 
 and to whom it adds everything and 
 from whom takes nothing. 
 
 All the members of religious sects; 
 all the members of fraternal socie- 
 ties, as well as many of the disconnected 
 seekers after intellectual and spiritual 
 growth, should be eager to enroll 
 themselves under the banner of Eman- 
 cipation; and if this should happen, 
 the wished for Utopia of the most fer- 
 tile imagination, would not be as re- 
 mote as it has seemed to be in the past.
 
 HOPE
 
 HOPE 
 
 When one has attained the condi- 
 tion of Emancipation, let him be sure 
 that it is only the elementary stage of 
 growth, the happy childhood of true 
 life (no matter what the physical age 
 of the body), and that there is a possi- 
 bility of development to a point of un- 
 selfishness, whence one can view one's 
 own individuality from without, and 
 direct its action from an impersonal 
 standpoint. Then each of us can will 
 himself to act as he would like to have 
 a beloved friend or relative act in any 
 given situation. 
 
 I believe that this is true, and en- 
 tirely possible to the emancipated 
 mind; but, as I have aimed to present 
 only a personal discovery and experi- 
 ence, I will leave a deeper consideration 
 of the subject to the test of a longer 
 acquaintance with the new-found life, 
 us
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY HOPE
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY HOPE 
 
 In furnishing for a new edition of 
 Menticulture an addition to the fore- 
 going chapters, I cannot do better than 
 take my cue from the caption of the 
 preceding chapter, which was the last 
 chapter of the previous editions. 
 
 Hope is an ever pregnant theme, but 
 never more so than at the present mo- 
 ment. 
 
 The emancipation of the individual 
 unit of Society from the thraldom of 
 the invading passions that are grouped 
 under the class names of anger and 
 worry, as surely leads to the release of 
 altruistic impulses that will free Society 
 from the diseases of indifference, license 
 and poverty, as did the emancipation of 
 a few bondmen finally lead to a uni- 
 versal recognition of the principle of 
 human freedom. 
 
 M9
 
 150 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 The acceleration of progress is geo- 
 metric in ratio and has never yet been 
 disappointing. It has taught us to 
 hope for anything we desire and to 
 know that if it is good it shall not be 
 denied us. 
 
 The Optimism that was so clearly 
 taught by the Master of our Civiliza- 
 tion two thousand years ago has grown 
 in possibilities to a point where optimists 
 can confidently adopt the motto "All can 
 be and therefore shall be well,"* and the 
 abundant accomplishments of progress 
 are evidence of the possibilities of the 
 realization of the motto being attained. 
 
 In formulating a Hope for the Twen- 
 tieth Century we must first take an 
 inventory of what we are and what 
 we have; note the defects in ourselves 
 and in our possessions; outline in our 
 
 *This motto was suggested by a definition of 
 "Optimism," rendered by the Rev. Dr. Newell 
 Dwight Hillis in an address on Optimism, delivered 
 at Central Music Hall, Chicago, Sunday, June i6th, 
 1897, and fully reported in the Inter Ocean of the fol- 
 lowing date.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 151 
 
 minds what we would like to be and 
 what we would like to have; and then 
 proceed to plan and build accordingly, 
 with the assurance of receiving what 
 we desire. 
 
 With a great surplus of means, the 
 matter of attainment of any reasonable 
 hope is not difficult and need not long 
 be delayed. Things or means do 
 not have to be acquired, as we already 
 have them in abundance. It only re- 
 quires a change in the national point- 
 of-view and a change of the direction 
 of existing energy from wasteful and 
 unprofitable selfishness to profitable 
 co-operative altruism. The individual 
 point-of-view of the majority (pessi- 
 mistic assertion to the contrary not- 
 withstanding) is now altruistic, but being 
 nationally unorganized does not show 
 its strength as opposed to the small 
 minority of the perversely selfish. All 
 of the prevailing conditions seem to be 
 favorable to a change from enforced 
 selfishness to co-operative or voluntary
 
 152 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 altruism, and the nineteen hundredth 
 anniversary of the birth of Christ is a 
 fitting occasion for a Christian nation to 
 re-adjust its manners and its economies 
 on the plan of the Master, as intended 
 by the Declaration of Independence 
 and the Constitution. 
 
 Society, in experimenting with gov- 
 ernment, has tried and suffered many 
 different forms. In the beginning there 
 were only families in which all men and 
 women were brothers and sisters in 
 sympathy. Tribal government was but 
 an extension of family government to 
 cover many families. Under tribal 
 organization, however, wars began and 
 slavery was instituted as one of the re- 
 sults of conquest. Slavery, in turn, in- 
 fluenced forms of government by creat- 
 ing the baronial, the military, the 
 ecclesiastic, and finally the " heavenly- 
 ordained " autocratic forms, until, hav- 
 ing over-reached endurance, these ex- 
 treme selfish forms began to be ^formed 
 in the constitutional monarchy and
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 153 
 
 finally in the democratic government as 
 represented by the several republics of 
 the present time. 
 
 In framing the government of the 
 United States the effort to attain the 
 simplicity and purity of family broth- 
 erly rule and the unrestrained strength 
 of individual freedom and energy at the 
 same time, license was allowed the 
 title of Liberty, and, protected by that 
 sacred title, has fostered iniquity, has 
 encroached with brazen effrontery be- 
 yond the point of patient endurance, 
 and must soon meet the stern reproof 
 of an outraged altruistic sentiment. 
 License, in control of democratic gov- 
 ernment has proved itself to be more 
 autocratic and tyrannical than any of the 
 preceding usurpations of rule, and, go- 
 ing the way of all tyrants, must soon be 
 crushed out. It is the brightest Hope 
 of the Approaching Century that its 
 dawn will witness the inauguration of a 
 crusade against this chief and most far- 
 reaching evil of our otherwise wise and
 
 154 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 almost perfect form of national co- 
 operation. 
 
 License, masquerading as Liberty, 
 has permitted selfishness to usurp the 
 place of altruism in the national habit- 
 of-thought, but the national point-of- 
 view can be changed to the normal civi- 
 lized point-of-view by organized effort, 
 and the dawn of the Twentieth Century 
 of the Christian Era is a good time to 
 agree to a general truce of greed and to 
 a change to normal civilized habits of 
 social relations. 
 
 WHAT WE ARE 
 
 Our first duty in preparing to build 
 a Twentieth Century Hope is to frank- 
 ly note what we are, and how we be- 
 have as individuals and as a nation. 
 
 In the first place, our vaunted Democ- 
 racy has become an Oligarchy of Greed, 
 administered by License whose god is 
 money Mammon. This is not cant, 
 although it sounds bad enough to be 
 cant.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 155 
 
 The administration of our national, 
 state, and municipal governments is a 
 constant reproach because of the dom- 
 inating influence of money and cor- 
 rupting lobbies, and much of our rep- 
 resentation abroad in the capitals and 
 marts of foreign nations is, greatly to 
 our shame, ridiculous, being made so 
 through the spoils system of appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 There is unceasing strife between 
 capital and labor between the pro- 
 ducer, or parent, of capital, and its un- 
 grateful offspring. There are squalor 
 and crime and unrest where there 
 should be only harmony and happiness. 
 
 There is, to be sure, not much of 
 these evils in comparison to the good 
 that prevails, but there should be less 
 and even none of them. 
 
 As a nation, we have seasons and, 
 latterly, long terms when there is much 
 of idleness, poverty and want; public 
 improvements that we greatly need are 
 lacking; and general or universal edu-
 
 156 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 cation is sadly neglected in many lo- 
 calities. 
 
 Here are the three chief requisites 
 of a high grade Christian Civilization 
 unfulfilled. May we not hope for a 
 Twentieth Century cure for these Nine- 
 teenth Century evils? 
 
 Whenever there is any surplus of 
 labor the unemployed are at the mercy 
 of the meanest of alien employers. By 
 forcing wages nearly down to the star- 
 vation point, through the dire necessi- 
 ties of the unemployed, these heart- 
 less employers and soulless corpora- 
 tions secure an advantage in cost of 
 production that compels normally sym- 
 pathetic and generous employers to do 
 the same or fail in business, until, 
 through the unholy greed of a single 
 "meanest of the mean," the prevailing 
 scale of wages is made and kept as 
 low as it is possible to offer work- 
 men, work -women and work-children, 
 and yet prevent the hungry from, kill- 
 ing the opulent in order to get food.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 157 
 
 The point has already been reached 
 where there is, and must continue to 
 be, an increasing surplus of labor in the 
 United States, even without further 
 immigration, and hence, unless there is 
 organized effort to prevent it, all labor 
 is doomed to become the serf of soul- 
 less capital and at the mercy of the 
 meanest of employers, instead of being 
 privileged to cheerfully work under the 
 protection of the most generous, as 
 should be the case. 
 
 In the matter of roads national 
 highways also, we are at the mercy 
 of mean or alien property holders; and 
 in that of education, many of our fel- 
 low-citizens our brothers by the com- 
 mand of Christianity and of humanity 
 are at the mercy of parents of de- 
 praved intelligence through toleration 
 of license as a phase of Liberty. 
 
 It is an old saying, but always re- 
 mains a fundamental truism, that "A 
 chain is no stronger than its weakest 
 link." It is equally true that a system
 
 158 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 of social or industrial economics is no 
 safer from the incursions of selfishness 
 than the possible invasion of its most 
 pregnable loop-holes; that a highway 
 is no better than its roughest section; 
 and that systems of government and 
 education are no more invulnerable 
 than their weakest administration. 
 
 If license be tolerated in any de- 
 gree it will invade the smallest loop- 
 hole, ruin the smoothest highway, and 
 weaken the best intentions of educa- 
 tion and government. 
 
 In a government administered on the 
 basis of altruism, neither fear nor 
 license would have an abiding-place. 
 Let us hope that the divinely ordained 
 Forethought and Liberty of the Twen- 
 tieth Century may be freed from these 
 Nineteenth Century parasites. 
 
 CIVILIZED NEEDS 
 
 Our next step in evolving a Twen- 
 tieth Century Hope should be to con- 
 fine our present desires within our im-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 159 
 
 mediate possibilities, and then proceed 
 to hope and act them into existence. 
 
 Absence of poverty is the first neces- 
 sity of the highest civilization, and uni- 
 versal education and public improve- 
 ments of the greatest efficiency and 
 of the greatest beauty are the next 
 requisites of civilized national equip- 
 ment. These three include within 
 themselves all that could be wished for 
 a nation, for their attainment implies 
 pure government and naturally leads to 
 all else that can be desired. 
 
 Let us now build a Hope as to how 
 these civilized needs may be secured. 
 
 A public improvement of first im- 
 portance is that of Good Free Roads. 
 Good railroads are not sufficient be- 
 cause they are not now free, and Good 
 Free Roads are a prime requisite of 
 freedom. 
 
 The public roads of the United 
 States are almost the worst to be found 
 in any civilized country, because there 
 is no uniformity of plan in building
 
 160 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 them, and no widely organized effort 
 to secure them, obstruction in that 
 direction being at the mercy of the 
 stingiest and least progressive of the 
 owners of abutting property, as before 
 stated. 
 
 In road construction we follow the 
 lead of the least liberal, least intelligent 
 and least progressive, instead of the 
 lead of the most liberal, wisest and 
 most patriotic. How can we change 
 our leaders and secure roads worthy of 
 a civilized nation? That is the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Within the most consistent interpre- 
 tation of the intention of the Constitu- 
 tion relative to the federation of the 
 States that comprise our United States, 
 an intention so self-evident to the 
 framers of the Constitution that it did 
 not call for explicit reference, Inter- 
 state Communication of the freest and 
 easiest sort, under the control of the 
 Federal Government, holds first place
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 161 
 
 in importance, and Good Free Roads 
 are the natural means. 
 
 It would clearly be within the scope, 
 and should be the first duty, of the Fed- 
 eral Government to build the best pos- 
 sible highways by the shortest routes 
 between the different State capitals. 
 These Interstate Roads should be the 
 care of the Federal Government, and 
 should be protected by Federal Gov- 
 ernment regulations of the most intel- 
 ligent kind. 
 
 In building these roads the Govern- 
 ment could establish a standard of 
 wages consistent with the necessities of 
 living in each locality, and aim to em- 
 ploy labor in such a way as to absorb 
 all of the surplus not required in pri- 
 vate enterprises; and, construction of 
 the national highways beginning at all 
 of the State capitals, work would be 
 within reach of all unemployed, and 
 could be pushed or suspended accord- 
 ing to the labor emergency.
 
 162 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 This plan would make it necessary 
 for private enterprises to pay the estab- 
 lished standard of living wages at least, 
 and, in addition, whatever premium 
 scarcity might impose. Government in 
 that case would stand as a moderator 
 between capital and labor, to the extent 
 of freeing labor from the coercion of 
 dire necessity that is now taken advan- 
 tage of by the greed of soulless em- 
 ployers, and at the same time it would 
 leave the whole outside realm of com- 
 petition open to choice, in which to 
 assert and foster individualism within 
 the private industries. 
 
 The army of the necessarily unem- 
 ployed is at no time a very large army, 
 and if the hours of labor prevailing 
 throughout all the occupations were 
 reasonably limited, that army would be 
 still smaller; but the possibility of being 
 compelled to join it is the one ever- 
 present dread and uncertainty of the 
 wage-earner and the constant menace 
 to his happiness. It is the source of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 163 
 
 more fear and worry, and anger and 
 strife, and friction, and drunkenness 
 than any other cause. 
 
 The evil of any surplus of labor over 
 the demand for labor is very far-reach- 
 ing. Not alone is all labor affected 
 thereby, through the machinations of 
 alien employers, but it becomes the op- 
 portunity of the lazy the drones in 
 the national hive to shirk, and to 
 lean on charity rather than seek employ- 
 ment. This shirking can easily be done 
 under present conditions, because there 
 is no way for the charitable indi- 
 vidual to discriminate, and hence the 
 possibility of the genus tramp that is 
 a disgrace to our fair land and a re- 
 proach to a civilization where wealth is 
 superabundant, as it is now in the 
 United States. 
 
 Charity-Organization societies in 
 many of the large cities have helped 
 charitably inclined individuals to dis- 
 criminate, and have prevented much 
 of the indiscriminate and injudicious
 
 164 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 giving that once was a means of han , 
 instead of a means of good as intended, 
 but they have effected mitigation only 
 and not the desired cure of the under- 
 lying evil that civilization demands; 
 for, under the best intention and work- 
 ing of the charity societies, there may 
 yet be both compulsory poverty and 
 perverse poverty; and, while no civilized 
 nation or national sentiment should tol- 
 erate the necessity of compulsory pov- 
 erty, it should put its mark of sternest 
 disapproval on poverty that is perverse. 
 Civilization means growth, growth 
 means work; and the opportunity to 
 work at living wages is the imperative 
 care of civilized government. 
 
 If the Federal Government were to 
 organize plans to connect the State 
 capitals with the best possible highways 
 as a means of Free Interstate Com- 
 munication, the next step necessarily 
 following, as the result of the national 
 example, would be for the State gov- 
 ernments to connect the county-seats
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 165 
 
 in the same manner; and, following 
 that, the county governments would 
 necessarily have to similarly connect 
 the cities and the towns, until the sys- 
 tem of good roads throughout the 
 country would be complete, and all 
 profitably accomplished within the es- 
 tablished functions of the several 
 national, state, county and municipal 
 governments. 
 
 PREVENTION BETTER AND CHEAPER 
 THAN CURE 
 
 As a matter of necessity as well as 
 expediency, states and counties now take 
 care of their paupers and their insane, 
 who are made so by limitations and in- 
 harmonic social conditions that have 
 grown up in this Nineteenth Century, 
 and which were undreamed of in the 
 Eighteenth Century when the Consti- 
 tution was framed. May they not 
 begin to anticipate the acceleration of 
 progress and create conditions at the 
 opening of the Twentieth Century that
 
 166 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 will make pauperism unnecessary, and 
 therefore not tolerable, and, as such, 
 impossible? 
 
 All this can be accomplished under 
 the Constitution, and for the next 
 twenty years the building of much- 
 needed public improvements might be 
 used to absorb the surplus of labor and 
 establish a standard of living wages, and 
 may be confined to road making in the 
 manner suggested, until there shall be 
 only good roads and perfect roads to 
 every inhabitable part of the country; 
 and, after that, other civilized improve- 
 ments will suggest themselves until the 
 end of time, for the limit of improve- 
 ment can never be reached if its lead be 
 once taken and followed. 
 
 If these modifying, and at the same 
 time profitable, improvements were to 
 involve the use of the public credit to 
 any extent whatever within the neces- 
 sities of the case, would it not seem to 
 be a wise Twentieth Century innovation 
 to make a ten percent public invest-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 167 
 
 ment at a three percent cost, rather than 
 breed an anarchy that may lead to the 
 ruin of a great war. 
 
 Had the nation peacefully freed the 
 black slaves of 1861 at a cost of a thou- 
 sand dollars each, it would not have 
 sacrificed a million white lives, ruined 
 billions of dollars' worth of property, 
 and burdened the resources of five de- 
 cades with a pension roll that now 
 stands at nearly two hundred millions of 
 dollars. Instead; it would have saved it 
 all for the uses of harmony, peace and 
 progress, and would not have prosti- 
 tuted it for the uses of war, ruin and 
 an inheritance of partisan bribery that 
 offers temptation to idleness and false- 
 hood by the perpetuation of contingent 
 pensions that were not earned. 
 
 DEPARTMENTS OF ECONOMIC EDUCA- 
 TION 
 
 It has also been established by suc- 
 cessful experiment that it is the proper 
 function of the General Government
 
 168 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 to create departments of experiment- 
 ation and statistics, in order to freely fur- 
 nish the best information on any subject 
 to any citizen who may seek it. Thesub- 
 jects of hygiene and economy are of 
 the most vital importance to all per- 
 sons. In connection with the building 
 of Interstate highways, our present 
 unintelligent fellow-citizens employed 
 on the public works might easily be in- 
 structed in simple rules of economy and 
 hygiene. They might be given, in the 
 form of rations, the benefit of the best 
 food with which to feed muscle, and also 
 might be taught particulars of the best 
 methods of production, preparation, 
 cost, etc., of economic and nutritious 
 food that would better equip those who 
 had once served in government em- 
 ployment, for the practice of hygiene 
 and economy in living when they 
 returned to private employment. In 
 this manner the system that would be 
 known to the heads of the Departments 
 of Hygiene and Economy as the best
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 169 
 
 and most economic system of furnish- 
 ing fuel to the body of the laborer, 
 would, through the wide and all-in- 
 clusive extent of the Interstate High- 
 way service, become the education of 
 all the citizens of the country and at 
 the cost only of the initial expense of 
 one experimental station under the ad- 
 vice of the highest obtainable intelli- 
 gence on the subject. 
 
 ECONOMY THE BASIS 
 
 And what would all of this con- 
 templated outlay of public funds lead 
 to in the way of profitable returns? 
 
 President Potter, of the League of 
 American Wheelmen, is able to show 
 by accurate statistics that the bad 
 roads of the United States cost, in 
 waste of power and in waste of horses 
 and vehicles, each two years, as much 
 as would be required to make perfect 
 and permanent roads to take the place 
 of the bad roads. 
 
 We have, therefore, a crying need
 
 170 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 of Good Free Roads, whose neglect is 
 a national reproach, and the correction 
 of which, together with stringent immi- 
 gration laws, and a sliding scale of 
 hours of labor, would effectively, hu- 
 manely and profitably cure the shame- 
 ful and far-reaching evil of compulsory 
 poverty for several years to come; and, 
 surely lead eventually to the inaugura- 
 tion of an era of compulsory manual as 
 well as intellectual education of youth 
 during the developing period, and 
 thereby still further relieve the ranks 
 of the unemployed by keeping un- 
 taught and undeveloped children out 
 of the productive occupations. 
 
 One generation of this sort of Chris- 
 tian and humane fraternalism would 
 solve the problem of labor for the 
 present and for all time, because, as 
 machinery encroached on hand labor, 
 hours of labor could be shortened by 
 law, and the Lords of Production 
 would become, more and more, the 
 freemen they deserve to be.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 171 
 
 Our Twentieth Century Hope has 
 suggested a way whereby, in using our 
 best intelligence instead of our lack of 
 intelligence, we may open up free 
 channels of communication between 
 the states, between the counties, and 
 between the cities and hamlets, and 
 in the doing of it in an intrinsically 
 patriotic and profitable manner create 
 a really free people to use them 
 possess ourselves of perfect arteries 
 and veins within our body-politic and 
 start the red and white corpuscles of 
 national blood to circulating freely in 
 them, so that there shall be neither 
 congestion nor paralysis in any of its 
 parts. 
 
 That " General " Coxey advocated 
 some such plan of organized effort 
 to mitigate want by the promotion of 
 much needed improvements, from a 
 point-of-view that created antagonism 
 in political circles, because it advocated 
 an irredeemable and non-interest bear- 
 ing currency with which to pay the
 
 172 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 labor employed, is no reason why 
 the opening of the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury should not see the benefit of a 
 similar or modified plan from other 
 points-of-view, and thereby put in 
 operation a practical system of sorely 
 needed reform. As a matter of experi- 
 ence, the fact of a proposition having 
 been suggested and laughed at as an 
 innovation against established habit-of- 
 thought and stupidly venerated custom 
 is the best evidence that it will event- 
 ually be adopted in a form not greatly 
 different from that of the initial propo- 
 sition. Vide the Penny- Post. 
 
 BY WHAT MEANS ? 
 
 And what means, we may reason- 
 ably ask, does our Twentieth Century 
 Hope offer to accomplish the modera- 
 tion of compulsory poverty and the 
 attainment of public improvements, 
 whose doing would serve a doubly 
 profitable purpose, and which our sur- 
 plus wealth entitles us to have?
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 173 
 
 Many forms of political organization 
 have failed to give us what we desire, 
 and yet what we want is really at our 
 command, and is all our own. 
 
 Manipulators of unequal taxation, 
 unjust discrimination and corporate 
 greed have been entrusted with the 
 management of our government. We 
 must consider it a trust because we have 
 either endorsed it with our votes or 
 permitted it by neglecting to vote. The 
 trust has not been a voluntary one on 
 our part, but with our present lack of 
 organized self-protection and co-opera- 
 tive altruism the natural yearning 
 for which has been drugged nearly to 
 death by lazy apathy the administra- 
 tion of our most vital interests has 
 slipped out of our own hands and fallen 
 into the hands of the utterly selfish, 
 through the manipulation of ward poli- 
 tics in the control of the saloon-made 
 and other depraved influences. Drink- 
 ing saloons, where present politics are 
 chiefly manipulated and controlled,
 
 174 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 thrive on the life-blood of spasmodic 
 idleness and thrift the thrift furnish- 
 ing the means and idleness the oppor- 
 tunity to patronize saloons and the 
 uncertainty of it all has created a 
 habit-of-worry that tries to drown it- 
 self in drink, thereby adding misery 
 to misery. 
 
 In the direction of the present ad- 
 ministration of politics, it is, therefore, 
 hopeless to look for what we most de- 
 sire. It has had its opportunity to 
 administer wisely, but has neglected it. 
 
 But the Twentieth Century Hope has 
 been made brighter by the gradual 
 formation of other kinds of organization 
 that are more powerful in their "might 
 of right," and to these we dedicate our 
 New Century Hope. 
 
 Within a few years there have been 
 formed almost no end of fraternal 
 organizations, whose basic principle is 
 the blessed Golden Rule. These in- 
 clude all of the churches, and, together 
 with the older fraternal organizations,
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 175 
 
 comprise within their circles nearly all 
 of the community. 
 
 These already professedly altruistic 
 organizations, however (in spite of the 
 aspersion that in some of them the 
 Golden Rule has been but an orna- 
 ment and not a working hypothesis), 
 are free and ready to form a general 
 altruistic organization for mutual bene- 
 fit and for the promotion of their joint 
 basic principle, as is evidenced by the 
 wonderful success of the Christian En- 
 deavorer movement; and, ignoring all 
 of the special objects of the fraternizing 
 organizations, and, sticking to the main 
 tenet of the Golden Rule, which is the 
 key-note of all of the separate organiza- 
 tions, they should be eager to celebrate 
 the beginning of the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury after the birth of its Author by 
 putting His precepts into practical use 
 in every-day life, in humanity, and in 
 social and political economy, as He 
 prescribed; and, thereby, incidentally 
 return with loyalty to the pure in-
 
 176 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 tentions of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and of the Constitution of 
 our United States. No better guides for 
 all time than the Golden Rule and the 
 Constitution of the United States can 
 be framed, because they were uttered 
 by altruists and freemen for freemen 
 and altruists, and attain within their 
 intent the fostering of the heart's best 
 impulses, the soul's best inspiration and 
 the power of our own best co-operative 
 strength. 
 
 SIGNIFICANT LULL AND EXPECTANCY 
 
 It is generally conceded that the 
 spirit of co-operative altruism is domi- 
 nant and but needs crystallization about 
 a central idea or a central anniversary 
 date. 
 
 It is a notable and significant fact that 
 there is no important party political 
 issue before the country at present. 
 Labor has tried and proved the futility 
 of aggressive methods. The growth 
 of almost automatic machine power, to-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 177 
 
 gether with the great increase in the 
 manufacturing activity of Germany and 
 of Japan, and a threatened invasion by 
 China of the field of manufacture, warn 
 us that we must act quickly in self- 
 protection or suffer the result of neglect. 
 There is a lull in the storm of competi- 
 tion, and in that lull the breath of hope 
 is held in eager expectation. Even the 
 patient interest of the Orient is expec- 
 tant of some important change in De- 
 cember, 1899. At that .time the eight 
 great planets will be in conjunction in 
 Sagittarius, the first time in five thou- 
 sand years, and in the lore of Oriental 
 symbolism it portends the beginning of 
 a world-reforming epoch. 
 
 START RIGHT AND END RIGHT 
 
 The United States is the kindergarten 
 of nations. It is the object-lesson 
 the experiment-ground for the world. 
 The whole world is looking for reform. 
 Some expect to see the beginning sig- 
 naled by the red fire of anarchy; but
 
 1 78 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 that must not be. Instead, let us 
 read our future in the pure white light 
 of altruism. The possibility of it is 
 all centered in the point-of-view that 
 directs our efforts. Let us take the 
 right point-of-view. 
 
 TIME, DISPOSITION AND MEANS 
 
 There is ample time to prepare for 
 a festival to take place in the opening 
 year of the Twentieth Century, that 
 will appropriately celebrate our re- 
 turn to the freedom that was proclaimed 
 by Christ and vouchsafed by our Consti- 
 tution. There are already thousands 
 of pools of reflected Christ-light that 
 reflect also the glow of patriotic fire 
 within our altruistic organizations. 
 There are ch-urches and lodges, and 
 clubs and circles, and labor and trade 
 guilds in almost every hamlet in the 
 land as well as in the larger communi- 
 ties. If professed brotherhood have 
 any substance in fact, the members of 
 all of these organizations are brothers;
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 179 
 
 believe in every-day Christianity and 
 every-day altruism; and would gladly 
 send delegates to a convention to study 
 the problems of inharmony and clumsy 
 administration that now exist, and also 
 to devise ways and means of correction. 
 There are already hundreds, and prob- 
 ably thousands, of students of the 
 social and political problems of the 
 times who have specialized their labors, 
 and out of the observations and ex- 
 periences of these can be found and 
 selected a compendium of all the 
 causes and effects of inharmony and 
 the possible cures that can be applied 
 to separate phases of evil. 
 
 POWERFUL AIDS 
 
 In the matter of Good Roads, 
 as one of the elements of our Twen- 
 tieth Century Hope, President Potter, 
 ex-President Elliott of the League of 
 American Wheelmen (and wheel- 
 women) and a complete organiza- 
 tion of earnest co-operators stand
 
 l8o MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 ready to show the legal, economical 
 and moral aspects of the Good Roads 
 Question, and to offer the unanimous 
 vote of the entire army of wheelmen in 
 support of a practical plan of establish- 
 ing good roads.* 
 
 The plan suggested has already met 
 with the approval of the farmers, who 
 are the real producers of all of our pos- 
 sessions; and, if submitted to the decis- 
 ion of the majority in a general election, 
 instead of, as is now the case, to the 
 objection of the meanest and nar- 
 rowest of their class, who are blind to 
 their own best interests in local elec- 
 tions, would find almost universal ap- 
 proval. 
 
 CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION 
 
 A convention, thus gathered in 1898, 
 would have time to seek the world over 
 for examples of the best that has been 
 achieved in government and in general 
 
 * Could wheelwomen and horses vote, bad roads 
 would be tolerated no longer than was necessary to 
 build good ones.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 181 
 
 progress, and start a campaign of sug- 
 gestion and education that would rivet 
 the attention of the whole country on 
 the questions involved a general inter- 
 est in change of the point-of-view that 
 would mean much for humanity. Dele- 
 gates to the primary convention would 
 return to their delegating organizations 
 with material for discussion of the issues 
 in hand, and great interest in economic 
 questions would be aroused, until even 
 the saloon and other professional politi- 
 cal manipulators would see in the new 
 movement brighter chances for them- 
 selves in honest effort than had former- 
 ly prevailed, and, at all events, would 
 see no hope of opposition against or- 
 ganized good, and would quickly turn 
 to aid in the new acceleration of prog- 
 ress. 
 
 After ample discussion of the issues 
 there would yet be time to send the 
 wisest and the best of the members of 
 these altruistic organizations as author- 
 ized delegates to a final convention,
 
 1 82 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 where a pure and strong platform, 
 without barter or exchange, could be 
 framed, and candidates of sternest 
 integrity and wisest equipment could 
 be nominated to submit to the choice 
 of the people as opposed to the saloon- 
 made and greed-fostered "platforms" 
 and "tickets" of Nineteenth Century 
 pattern. 
 
 MEN BETTER THAN CONDITIONS 
 
 Human nature is good nature if freed 
 from fear and restraint, and if it seem 
 profitable to be good there is a double 
 incentive. Human nature as expressed 
 in these United States is warped by 
 conditions that are the results of slov- 
 enly carelessness and unbridled license, 
 but which are in no way created by real 
 only apparent necessity. There are 
 many more good men, and overwhelm- 
 ingly more good women, in these 
 United States than there are of the 
 selfish and depraved sort, and there 
 will be many more still if the pres-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 183 
 
 ently-smothered spirit of altruism is 
 only once given a chance to assert 
 and establish itself. To prove this it 
 is only necessary to sound the keynote 
 of altruistic sentiment, by any name 
 whatever, in any group of citizens gath- 
 ered in car, in hotel rotunda, or in as- 
 sembly hall, to receive almost universal 
 approval. Even among professional 
 politicians and the presently-depraved, 
 the average of the good and generous 
 is high. They measure by comparison 
 and can see no harm in occupations 
 that are licensed by the government 
 and patronized by the rich and the 
 self-constituted elite. Conditions have 
 beset them and warped their choice; 
 and politics as a business, and not be- 
 cause they are patriotically inspired, as 
 they should be, is their natural oppor- 
 tunity for occupation, and a recognized 
 spoils system, inspired by the devil of 
 greed, is their teacher therein. 
 
 Even the plutocratic manipulators 
 of politics for personal selfish ends
 
 1 84 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 are not pleased with the roles they 
 have to assume in relation to "boodle" 
 politics, and they cringe before the 
 assumed necessity of swearing to lying 
 tax lists and of winking at special ex- 
 pense accounts ; but they must do what 
 "boodle" politics demands or suspend 
 business altogether, /<?? it is the custom. 
 Successful accumulators of great 
 estates, while amassing wealth, com- 
 monly see their sons made useless, and 
 even reprobate, by means of the very 
 wealth they have worked so hard to ac- 
 cumulate. It is the conditions, and 
 not the people, that are at fault, and 
 our Twentieth Century Hope, accom- 
 plished, would cause sighs of relief to 
 ascend from palace, as well as from 
 hovel, the land over. 
 
 HERE, NOW, NEEDED AND POSSIBLE 
 
 In expressing a Twentieth Century 
 Hope it is natural for an optimist to 
 foresee a realization of many harmoni- 
 ous concords of social and industrial
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 185 
 
 life that may seem in their possibility 
 quite remote to the unthinking. 
 
 On the plane of the Here and the 
 Now, and the Needed and the Possible, 
 however, there are three things that 
 are vital to the progress and harmony 
 of society, especially to Society as or- 
 ganized under the confederation of the 
 United States of America. 
 
 Forced poverty, bad roads, and in- 
 different education are the three things 
 that are now the burning shame and the 
 reproach of our otherwise fair land, 
 and are the result of license. Cor- 
 rupt politics and indecently inefficient 
 foreign representation in many parts 
 of the world, as the result of the 
 spoils system, are but shadows of these 
 three vital deficiencies of our political 
 or communal administration; and yet 
 they are the easiest possible things to 
 correct by united effort. The cost 
 of it all would come back to the coun- 
 try within a decade, and in the mean- 
 time serve as a moderator between
 
 186 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 capital and labor that would be a god- 
 send to both of these supplemental in- 
 terests. Systematic and compulsory 
 education by the best means known to 
 the science of pedagogy, including the 
 so-called manual branches, removed 
 from any political contamination, would 
 take growing children and under-done 
 youth from the lists of competitive 
 labor, and much more effectively make 
 use of the growing energies of such 
 in manual training schools, where 
 useful articles could be made in the 
 course of teaching, than by present 
 methods of neglect; and within one 
 generation, or, at most, two, would 
 completely and favorably solve the 
 problems of ignorance and incapacity 
 that are at the bottom of most of our 
 evils. 
 
 BETTER SUGGESTIONS EXPECTED 
 
 Twentieth Century Hope may 
 surely will lead to better suggestions 
 than I can offer; and the right sug-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 187 
 
 gestion is sure to come from an un- 
 expected source; therefore let every 
 altruist every advocate of the Golden 
 Rule, whether woman or man, girl or 
 boy, turn his point-of-view and his 
 point-of-interest on our Twentieth 
 Century Hope; for on the interest or 
 suggestion of any one, she or he, may 
 the possibility of the greatest reforms 
 the world has seen hinge and depend. 
 
 It is already an assured hope that 
 the altruists of the land will get to- 
 gether in convention, to consider the 
 possibility of inaugurating the new mil- 
 lennial period in a manner worthy of a 
 country that stands for the highest 
 Christian and civilized ideals. This is 
 assured, because those whose motto is 
 " All can be and therefore shall be well" 
 have decreed that it shall be so. 
 
 "BUGBEARS" AVAUNT ! 
 
 A "bugbear" of United States 
 politics has always been " paternalism," 
 as opposed to " individualism," and it
 
 1 88 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 will probably be raised as a cry against 
 any organized effort to modify the 
 social inharmonies that prevail and, 
 from sheer habit-of-thought, without 
 logical consideration of the purport of 
 plans that aim only to return to original 
 intentions as embodied in the Declara- 
 tion and in the Constitution. When 
 those splendid documents were written 
 and approved, social and industrial 
 conditions were very different from 
 what they are now. There was a great 
 surplus of virgin acres, teeming with 
 possibilities of wealth; there was but a 
 limited supply of hand labor, and prac- 
 tically no machines. Steam and elec- 
 tricity had not been harnessed for use 
 in the industries, and the most far-see- 
 ing statesmen could not contemplate 
 the possibility of a surplus of labor 
 with no avenue of relief through the 
 opportunity of pioneering beyond the 
 limits of settled life. In those days 
 there could be no congestion, because 
 the occupations were not full to over-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 189 
 
 flowing, through the usurpation of auto- 
 matic machinery. 
 
 If government have any holy office 
 at all, the most holy is that of protec- 
 tion. It is for this purpose that sol- 
 diers and police are used, and not for 
 the punishment of offenders against 
 the peace and the liberties of the peo- 
 ple (except as punishment is intended 
 to serve protection); and it certainly is 
 better for government to create har- 
 monic conditions than it is to allow in- 
 harmony wherein crime is almost a 
 necessity. Civilized government was 
 never intended to use its means and en- 
 ergies in whipping instead of correct- 
 ing. Paternalism is a thing of the 
 past. It has no place in any possible 
 issue of the present, but Fraternalism 
 has come to take its place. And why 
 should not government be as fraternal 
 as its intelligence can make it when 
 administering a Constitution whose 
 key-note is brotherhood and equal op- 
 portunity?
 
 IQO MENTICULTURE 
 
 That it is the spirit of the national 
 habit-of-thought that Fraternalism is 
 the key-note of civilization is forcibly 
 expressed in many different ways, and 
 without systematic collusion, by evi- 
 dence of the constitutions and by-laws 
 of all organized circles of citizens. 
 
 Let us hope that the dawn of the 
 Twentieth Century will look upon a 
 country as free from "bugbears" as it 
 is free from real causes of inharmony; 
 as free from fears as it is free from 
 real causes of fear; as free from poverty 
 as it is rich in means; as free from bad 
 roads as it is now wanting in good 
 roads; as pure in politics as the intent 
 of the Constitution; and as altruistic in 
 its social relations as the teaching of the 
 Master whose anniversary it is.
 
 CORROBORATIVE AND ASSIS- 
 TIVE CRITICISM
 
 CORROBORATIVE AND ASSISTIVE 
 CRITICISM 
 
 It frequently happens that the criti- 
 cisms brought out by a book are more 
 valuable to the object of the book than 
 is the book itself; and with this appre- 
 ciation of the criticisms of the chapters 
 of the early editions of Menticulture, 
 I have gathered fragments from the 
 press and beg leave to add them under 
 the above caption. 
 
 I have used the word "assistive" 
 because the word "assistant " is com- 
 monly understood to mean .w<fordinate, 
 while the criticisms referred to are co- 
 ordinate at least, and in my apprecia- 
 tion sufierordmate', and it is to accen- 
 tuate this that I am impelled to use an 
 unusual term. 
 
 Since Menticulture was first pub- 
 lished, the author has received up- 
 193
 
 194 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 wards of a thousand letters, many of 
 which could properly be quoted under 
 the caption of " Scraps of Evidence," 
 as the greater number of them attest 
 to benefits derived from the sugges- 
 tions of the book. In considering the 
 advisability of adding criticisms to the 
 original brochure, many of these letters 
 were selected for printing, but the 
 great number of the desirable ones, 
 and the difficulty of choosing between 
 them, led to the determination to print 
 none of them rather than to unjustly 
 discriminate. 
 
 Revision was also under consid- 
 eration. It was recognized that the 
 presentation was inadequate to the 
 importance of the subject, and could be 
 re-written to advantage, but at the same 
 time the evidence of the commenda- 
 tion received suggested that, as it had 
 seemed to be effective in its present 
 form in finding sympathy and ap- 
 proval, it were better to let it stand as 
 originally printed.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 195 
 
 Within the past few years there has 
 been a great deal of attention given to 
 the consideration of menticulture, in 
 one form or another and under differ- 
 ent names, so that scarcely a magazine 
 is issued that does not contain an arti- 
 cle on the evil effects of fear and the 
 desirability of repressing the passions 
 that are grouped under the class names 
 of anger and worry. The philosophy of 
 Frcebel, which is being developed and 
 taught in the kindergartens, is doing 
 greatest good in this direction. Child- 
 thought is studied, and the effect of 
 suggestions is carefully noted to de- 
 termine how they are impressed into, 
 or upon, the character of children. 
 
 The first care in the kindergarten is 
 to avoid teaching or permitting fear of 
 the teacher, so that the confidence of 
 the child can be secured for the pur- 
 pose of better administering instruc- 
 tion. Children are taught to mentally 
 construct ideas and not alone to 
 memorize the appearance of the ideas
 
 196 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 to know the why and the how of 
 everything including their own mental 
 process. 
 
 If this kindergarten method were 
 carried on through the entire course of 
 study, even to the university, the bene- 
 fit of instruction would be much greater 
 than it is now. 
 
 The effect of teaching in the schools 
 is thought by some to be more lasting 
 than the effect of parental teaching and 
 example, for parents largely are taken 
 as a matter of course almost as parts 
 of the child itself while teachers, in 
 the eyes of the average child, stand for 
 chosen models of wisdom and propri- 
 ety, and are supposed to be in reality 
 what they seem to be when they show 
 only their best side to their pupils. 
 For this reason, with children so im- 
 pressed, the example or the instruction 
 of the teacher is more impressive than 
 that of the parent. 
 
 For a term of years I happened to 
 have a half-dozen large cities under
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 197 
 
 observation by reason of frequent visits 
 to them, and differences of character- 
 istics of these cities, as distinct as dif- 
 fering characteristics in men, were 
 notable by comparison. In the cities 
 where the control of the public schools 
 was in the hands of ward politicians, 
 the effect upon the morals of these 
 cities, as influenced by the morals of 
 teachers politically chosen, was marked 
 and essentially bad. Favorites of mem- 
 bers of the Boards of Education were 
 appointed as teachers; the salaries of 
 the teachers, in order to satisfy these 
 favorites, were inordinately high, as 
 compared with the salaries in other 
 cities where the quality of the service 
 was much better; scandals were rife 
 and disgustingly frequent; and, as a 
 result, a decade of this subtile influence 
 developed crops of loose morals and 
 consequent scandals in the whole com- 
 munity that were a reproach to the 
 cities thus afflicted. 
 
 In the one large city of the country
 
 198 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 where the school fund was very limited, 
 the inducements held out to the teachers 
 were so small that they were insufficient 
 to tempt the cupidity of those who were 
 immorally inclined, and hence the 
 politicians did not bother with the pa- 
 tronage of the schools, leaving good 
 citizens to administer the school de- 
 partment; and the effect of pure exam- 
 ple on the growing generation was 
 markedly good as compared with other 
 cities, and developed a crop of good 
 morals that show their merit in immu- 
 nity from scandal. 
 
 In political schools that is, in the 
 schools where the patronage is sought 
 by the politicians teaching is second- 
 ary, and salary-drawing is the primary 
 consideration; lessons are given out 
 by rule and heard by rule, without be- 
 ing wisely interpreted by the teacher; 
 and reward or punishment is applied 
 by rule also, without reference to the 
 effort of the honest or the deceit of the 
 cunning pupil.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 199 
 
 Reference to various methods of 
 managing education is a digression, 
 and is used only to call attention to the 
 value of the kindergarten method by 
 the difference. Menticulture must 
 soon become the course of first impor- 
 tance in all teaching, in order that edu- 
 cation in schools may keep pace with 
 the acceleration of progress in other 
 things, and it has begun in the so-called 
 kindergartens, only to end with the last 
 teaching in life, for it soon will be 
 recognized as the branch of cultivation 
 that is the source of all power and the 
 germ of all strength. 
 
 The salaries of teachers cannot be 
 too high in comparison with the remu- 
 neration awarded to other occupations, 
 if the choice of teachers be rightly 
 made and not left to the selection of 
 depraved professional politics. 
 
 The matter of teaching menticul- 
 ture, as being the branch of education 
 that is of first importance and as being 
 the basis of all learning and of all skill,
 
 200 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 can only receive mention here, but con- 
 sideration of it will be an important 
 part of one of the " Menticulture 
 Series," of which this is the first, and 
 Happiness, as found in Forethought 
 minus Fearthought, just published, is 
 the second. The development of the 
 idea of germ-eradication of the deter- 
 rents to harmony and growth in the 
 individual is necessarily but the begin- 
 ning of a sequence. It must continue 
 its good influence from individual 
 experience out into the community 
 comprised within the visual horizon of 
 the emancipated individual, and from 
 the smaller community still outwards 
 to a horizon bounded only by the limits 
 of the nation, and finally to the whole 
 world.
 
 TWO SPLENDID EXAMPLES
 
 TWO SPLENDID EXAMPLES 
 
 HON. WILLIAM J. VAN PATTEN, 
 BURLINGTON, VERMONT 
 
 One of the most valued endorsements of 
 the theory advocated in the foregoing pages 
 came from the Hon. W. J. Van Patten, of 
 Burlington, Vermont, who purchased two 
 thousand copies of the book for distribution 
 in his city, one copy to each household, and 
 with the object expressed in a personal note 
 that was printed and inserted as an inset 
 page in the special Burlington edition. The 
 note reads as follows: 
 
 PERSONAL NOTE 
 
 Some time in the early part of the year 1896 a 
 friend sent me a copy of " Menticulture." I read it 
 with interest, and became convinced that I could ap- 
 ply its truths to my own life with profit. Experience 
 confirmed my faith in the power of its principles to 
 overcome many of the most annoying and damaging 
 ills that are common to humanity. 
 
 I procured a number of copies from time to time, 
 and gave to friends who I felt would appreciate it. 
 203
 
 204 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 The universal testimony to the good which the little 
 book did, and the new strength of purpose and will 
 it gave to some who were sore beset with the cares 
 and worries of life increased my interest and my 
 confidence in the truths set forth. 
 
 I formed the idea of making an experiment by 
 giving the book a general distribution in our city, to 
 see if it would not promote the general good and 
 happiness of people. 
 
 I wrote to the author, Mr. Fletcher, and he entered 
 into the plan very cordially, and had this special edi- 
 tion prepared for me. The object which we hope to 
 gain is to turn the thoughts and purposes of those 
 whom we reach to the old truths taught by Christ, 
 and a determination to live above those evils which 
 do so much to make our lives unhappy for ourselves 
 and annoying to those about us. 
 
 I would ask, therefore, that you would kindly give 
 the book careful and thoughtful, reading, and when 
 you have opportunity recommend it to your friends. 
 W.J. VAN PATTEN. 
 
 Mr. Van Patten is a prominent manufac- 
 turer of Vermont, with manufacturing inter- 
 ests that extend far into the Great West, and 
 was recently Mayor of Burlington for two 
 years. He is also prominent in the Chris- 
 tian Endeavorer movement, having been the 
 first president of the United Society, and 
 being at present one of the trustees. He is 
 also the president of the Congregational 
 Club of Western Vermont.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 205 
 
 Mr. Van Patten's altruism takes the form 
 that is most useful to society, by directing 
 its efforts to the Now- Field and to the Here- 
 Field. In a conversation with the author, 
 which can be quoted as a specimen good 
 example without any serious breach of con- 
 fidence, he expressed the wish that he, in 
 conjunction with other citizens who were 
 equally anxious to serve the interests of 
 their city, might be instrumental in making 
 Burlington the model city of America, and 
 the effect of this loyalty on their home sur- 
 roundings is evident to even a casual ob- 
 server, so that " Beautiful Burlington " is an 
 appellation that has already been given the 
 city by visitors. Once, when I rode through 
 a neat and tidy cottage neighborhood in the 
 outskirts of the town, I asked: "Where are 
 your slums situated? " and was answered: 
 "This is as near an approach to what you 
 mean by the word ' slum,' as we have to 
 show you." This neighborhood overlooks 
 a part of Lake Champlain that is studded 
 by numerous wooded islands, beyond which 
 rise the terraced peaks of the beautiful Adi- 
 rondacks, a view unequaled except by that of 
 the famous Inland Sea of Japan, while at the
 
 206 MENTICULTURE 
 
 back the horizon is serrated by the rocky 
 summits of the Green Mountains. 
 
 This mention of " Beautiful Burlington " 
 is germane to the subject of Menticulture , 
 because the efforts that have made the city 
 a part of the harmonious beauty of the 
 surroundings, and not a reproach by com- 
 parison, as frequently happens, have been 
 made effective by the germ-eradication of the 
 elements of squalor, which process is but a 
 sequence of, and stimulant to, harmonious 
 habit-of-thought in the individuals who make 
 up the community. 
 
 Menticulture is a kindergarten presentation 
 of the subject of menticulture, and, as such, 
 gives object-lessons of practical usefulness.
 
 THE BROTHERS PATTERSON 
 DAYTON, OHIO 
 
 Another splendid example of neighbor- 
 hood loyalty of practical and profitable 
 Here and Now altruism is illustrated by the 
 Patterson brothers, of Dayton, Ohio, in mak- 
 ing a park of the surroundings of their factory 
 premises, the whole extent and beauty 
 of which scheme it is impossible even 
 to outline here. In brief, they invaded a 
 slum with their factory, but instead of con- 
 taminating it with a smoke nuisance and 
 with untidy surroundings, they secured the 
 services of Frederick Law Olmsted, the 
 landscape gardener of the World's Colum- 
 bian Exposition Grounds, of Central Park, 
 New York, and of many other famous parks 
 of the United States, to lay out the factory 
 premises and surroundings as a model for 
 the neighborhood; sent abroad to Japan, 
 to Europe, and to different parts of America 
 for photographs of streets and parks and 
 207
 
 208 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 
 
 other features of urban decoration; and had 
 the pictures thrown on a canvas screen in 
 the lecture hall of the quarter. These were 
 made useful by means of particulars and 
 estimates of cost of home material and 
 home labor, made by experts of construc- 
 tion. They then offered to the youth of the 
 quarter tempting prizes for the best front 
 yards, the best back yards, and the best 
 vegetable patches. 
 
 In this manner, the slum they invaded 
 became pervaded by their altruism until the 
 " Slattertown " of old Dayton has become 
 the South Park of new Dayton, and is the 
 pride of the community. Here, too, was 
 applied a practical method of the germ- 
 eradication of the elements of squalor.
 
 PRESS APPRECIATION 
 
 AND 
 
 UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION
 
 [The following brief syllabus of the con- 
 tention of " Menticulture " was sent by the 
 San Francisco Examiner to several California 
 educators and other students of religion, 
 philosophy and ethics in different walks in 
 life, and elicited replies that powerfully assist 
 the argument. The brevity of the syllabus 
 sent out necessarily impaired the value of the 
 criticisms as related to the whole book, 
 but they are more valuable in consequence, 
 inasmuch as free corroborative opinion, vari- 
 ously expressed, is brought out by the key- 
 note of the theme, independent of the 
 development of the theme as rendered by 
 the author in the book. Some of the criti- 
 cism is made more assistive by reason of the 
 negative expression in which it is couched.]
 
 PRESS APPRECIATION 
 
 THE EXAMINER, SAN FRANCISCO: SUNDAY MORI* 
 ING, NOVEMBER 24, 1895 
 
 AN END OF ANGER AND OF WORRY 
 
 THE NEW SCIENCE OF " MENTICULTURE," AND 
 WHAT CALIFORNIAN THINKERS SAY OF IT 
 
 A remarkable book, called " Menticulture; 
 or the A-B-C of True Living," has recently 
 been written by Horace Fletcher, formerly a 
 Bohemian Club man of this city, and now 
 living in New Orleans. 
 
 All who have seen this book declare that 
 it will make a deep impression on the read- 
 ing and thinking public. It is a study of 
 human passion and the banishment of evil. 
 Mr. Fletcher's theory, as declared by him in 
 this work, is as follows: 
 
 All of the evil passions are traceable to 
 one of two roots. 
 
 Anger is the root of all the aggressive 
 passions.
 
 212 MENTICULTURE 
 
 Worry is the root of all the cowardly 
 passions. 
 
 Envy, spite, revenge, impatience, annoy- 
 ance, selfishness, prejudice, unrest, and the 
 like, are all phases of anger. 
 
 Jealousy, fear, the belittling of self, the 
 blues, and all the introspective forms of de- 
 pression, are the children of worry. 
 
 Anger and worry are the most unprofi- 
 table conditions known to man. While they 
 are in possession of the mind, both mental 
 and physical growth are suspended. 
 
 Anger and worry are thieves that steal 
 precious time and energy from life. 
 
 Anger is a highway robber, and worry is a 
 sneak-thief. 
 
 Anger and worry do not stimulate to any 
 good end. 
 
 Anger and worry not only dwarf and de- 
 press, but sometimes kill. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher's central thought is that the 
 banishment of anger and worry is the only 
 way that happiness may be secured. He 
 calls this the " A-B-C of True Living."
 
 UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION 
 
 WORRY AND ANGER A MISUSE OF 
 POWER 
 
 THE PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD, JR., 
 UNIVERSITY, DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 I have read Mr. Horace Fletcher's charm- 
 ing little book with much interest. In his 
 treatment of anger and worry he uses some- 
 what the language of parable rather than 
 that of science. The parallelism between 
 these evil influences and the bacteria of dis- 
 ease is, of course, one of resemblance in 
 effect rather than a likeness in nature. 
 Worry is simply a misuse of the power " to 
 look before and after," which is one of the 
 sources of man's strength and happiness. 
 Anger is a misuse of that power which man 
 has of reacting from difficulties and obsta- 
 cles. It is a degenerate form of his impulse 
 to overcome opposition. Happiness, I take 
 it, is the accompaniment of some form of 
 213
 
 214 MENTICULTURE 
 
 activity, doing, struggling, accomplishing, 
 living. It is never a passive element, and 
 its roots lie in us. It cannot be given by 
 outside agencies. " Worry and anger dwarf 
 and depress." They interfere with action, 
 and therefore with happiness. They are 
 states of feeling normally useful but in 
 a condition of degeneration. They are re- 
 lated to their sources, much as dyspepsia is 
 to appetite. 
 
 The effective men are still, as in the time 
 of Homer, those "who ever with a frolic 
 welcome take the sunshine or the storm." 
 The scientific man who knows when a storm 
 is brewing, and prepares himself to meet it, 
 is not the one who frets over bad weather. 
 The trained warrior is not the one who goes 
 to pieces in wrath at opposition. 
 
 Anger and worry are conditions of dete- 
 rioration. The happy man must be whole 
 and wholesome. To be that, one must re- 
 press anger and worry as he would fight the 
 impulses to lie and steal. He grows stronger 
 with every victory, for, as the Norse mythol- 
 ogy teaches, the strength of the conquered 
 goes ever into his veins.
 
 SEE LIFE AS IT IS, IF YOU WOULD BE 
 SERENE AND SANE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ETHICS, LELAND STANFORD, JR., 
 UNIVERSITY, EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 
 
 Anger and worry are wasteful and de- 
 structive of life. Dante represents the souls 
 of the angry as immersed in a river of black 
 mud; and just so is the inner life beclouded 
 and befouled by anger. One who sees life 
 steadily will not worry; for he knows if he 
 be true, even the evil that comes to him may 
 be his teacher, and he realizes that in all the 
 wide universe there is nothing which can 
 cause him fear. 
 
 Anger and worry always result from a 
 failure to see life in true perspective. In our 
 hurried lives great things and small force 
 themselves upon us and seem of equal im- 
 portance. Thus, if we would avoid anger 
 and worry, we need, above all things, to attain 
 that serenity and sanity of mind which 
 will enable us to see life as it is. We need 
 215
 
 216 MENTICULTURE 
 
 some little time each day to be alone and 
 think quietly time when the world can 
 drop away from our vision and we can un- 
 derstand ourselves. As Wordsworth ex- 
 presses it 
 
 " Every day should have some part 
 Free for a Sabbath of the heart." 
 
 All contemplation of the beautiful, whether 
 in art or in the infinitely varied face of na- 
 ture, helps us to this sanity of spirit. The 
 chief value of noble poetry lies in its power 
 to lift us out of the narrow and monotonous 
 round of daily work and worry into the 
 presence of that which partakes of eternity, 
 One might say, half paradoxically, that the 
 only way to live well in time is to live in the 
 presence of eternity. 
 
 If to this serenity of spirit we can add a 
 constant devotion, at least of the margin of 
 our lives, to some large objective aim, to 
 culture, to the service of humanity, and par- 
 ticularly to the service of those whose lives 
 touch ours most closely, we shall be in little 
 danger of falling victims to anger and worry 
 and the discordant hosts they lead.
 
 WORRY IS A COWARD AND ANGER IS 
 A TYRANT 
 
 RAY FRANK 
 
 The idea embodied in Mr. Fletcher's 
 " Menticulture," or " True Living," was used 
 by the ancients as a basis for various systems 
 of philosophy in defining true happiness, or 
 that which was farthest removed from the 
 passions, and to which they gave the name of 
 " repose." Modern life, infinitely more com- 
 plicated, forever multiplying causes, is in- 
 finitely farther removed from repose than 
 was life among the ancients; but yet has for 
 its primary disturbing element the same old 
 human passions of anger and worry, though 
 it appears to me that there is but one origi- 
 nal root worry, the coward, which gives 
 birth to anger, the tyrant. 
 
 It is therefore safe to conclude, with Mr. 
 Fletcher, that the present causes of unhappi- 
 ness are the ancient roots grown infinite in 
 variety, and only by restraining them is there 
 an approach to happiness. 
 217
 
 2l8 MENTICULTURE 
 
 To overcome these evils one must first of 
 all be free from externals, must act from 
 will alone, and, as Epictetus put it. " One 
 should be taught to will only that which con- 
 forms to law," and he who conforms to law 
 will, from knowledge, " learn to wish that 
 everything may happen as it does." Posses- 
 sion brings discontent, another name for 
 worry. He who has nothing which his 
 neighbor covets, and who covets nothing 
 which his neighbor has, helps to free him- 
 self from external influences opposed to law. 
 
 The truly free man adapts himself to law, 
 realizing the nothingness of most things and 
 his insignificance of self. The secret of 
 adaptation is in the Socratic " Know thy- 
 self." To-day, externals govern, not the 
 will. Desire, and not knowledge, is the god 
 worshiped. They count happiness as some- 
 thing which may be purchased with ill-got- 
 ten gains. To-day we trust entirely to our 
 bodies, and a man, to again quote Epictetus, 
 " ought not to be invincible in the way that 
 an ass is," "know thyself," and thou wilt 
 free thyself; free thyself, and happiness is 
 thine.
 
 
 MR. FLETCHER IS SUPERFICIAL, 
 THINKS ONE LADY 
 
 BERTHA MONROE RICKOFF 
 
 It is difficult to judge of an author with- 
 out making a review of his whole work, but 
 the quotations you send me pronounce Mr. 
 Fletcher as essentially superficial. Anger 
 and worry cannot be conquered from the 
 surface. Truth is within ourselves, and from 
 that inward illumination must arise the out- 
 ward action. Unjust anger does not arise 
 from without, but from a lack of the percep- 
 tion of truth within. There is an anger 
 which is just. St. James tells us to be angry, 
 and sin not. Herbert Spencer assures us that 
 there are moments when we owe it to our 
 fellow-men [to disapprove of, but not] to be 
 angry with them. There are causes which 
 demand [disapproval] anger, as there are 
 states of the atmosphere which demand thun- 
 der and lightning anger at the non-fulfill- 
 ment of an eternal law. 
 219
 
 220 MENTICULTURE 
 
 But selfish anger arises from a lack of 
 sympathy and charity, which is love a lack 
 of the capacity for understanding the mental 
 attitude of those about us. Worry also 
 arises from a lack of harmony with eternal 
 law. We think we can conquer worry by 
 force of will, but it can only be subdued by 
 our ascending into a higher atmosphere, 
 where we are able to look down and compre- 
 hend the just proportions of life. 
 
 Again, worry is often caused by the dread 
 of a defeat, whereas experience shows that 
 a defeat is often but the stepping-stone to a 
 higher success than we have dared to hope. 
 Worry is the attribute of the gambler in fate, 
 who looks to chance for his results. The 
 calm of the laboring man is lacking. 
 
 Carlyle says: " It is enough for me that I 
 do my work; the result is the care of a 
 greater than I."
 
 THE BAR ALWAYS CONSISTENT 
 
 THE QUESTION ANSWERED BY ASK- 
 ING QUESTIONS 
 
 HORACE G. PL ATT 
 
 How can you banish " anger " until you 
 banish wrong, injustice, and human nature? 
 How can you banish " worry " until you 
 banish hope, disappointment, failure, incom- 
 petency, bad luck, hate, love, uncertainty? 
 How can an angry man be happy, or allow 
 any one with whom he comes in contact to 
 be happy? How can "worry" and "con- 
 tent" be coincident? and how can happiness 
 exist without contentment? 
 
 There is no such thing as happiness two 
 hours in duration. 
 
 But I am tired and overworked. Your 
 letter comes at the wrong time. I am look- 
 ing through a glass darkly, and therefore 
 prove that your question has to be answered 
 only relatively and as present conditions dic- 
 tate.
 
 ANGER IS A KIND OF INSANITY, AND 
 WORRY KILLS 
 
 WESTWOOD WRIGHT CASE, D.D. 
 
 It is extremely unfair to review a book 
 without having first read it, or at least with- 
 out having scanned it; yet this is sometimes 
 done. As to the two roots of all the evil 
 passions indicated by the author of " Menti- 
 culture," I am free to say that I think his 
 classifications defective and inadequate. 
 
 That anger and worry are two prolific 
 sources of disease and evil cannot be denied. 
 Anger is a species of insanity, and worry 
 kills more people than work; but, as I am 
 accustomed to look at the matter, sin is in 
 the will, error lies in the judgment, moral 
 purpose in the conscience, and feeling in 
 the blood or temperament. Conscience is 
 not an infallible guide, for the reason Miat 
 conscience is not given to us to be a guide. 
 Conscience says, " Do right." It is that 
 voice back of all other voices in the human
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 223 
 
 soul that demands righteousness; but con- 
 science does not determine what is righteous. 
 For all light we must go to the judgment or 
 perceptive faculties. No person needs to 
 be told that he ought to do right, for con- 
 science in every human being makes one 
 uniform command, and that demand may be 
 expressed in the words, " Do right." 
 
 When conscience and judgment and will 
 are in harmony, then there is peace and 
 happiness in the life. When conscience 
 says " Do right," and judgment says "This 
 thing is right," but the will refuses to do 
 that righteous thing which conscience urges 
 him to do, then there is civil war in the 
 breast of man, and every sort of evil passion 
 may grow and thrive amid the conflicting 
 forces. For convenience we may classify 
 the faculties of the human soul into intel- 
 lectual powers, moral sentiments, and the 
 domestic or animal propensities. Without 
 a fair development of each of these three 
 departments of human nature, the man is a 
 monstrosity. Wanting in intellect and 
 moral sentiment, he may be the basest of 
 animals. 
 
 Without a fair intellect and a good de-
 
 224 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 velopment of the domestic faculties, he may 
 easily be the wildest fanatic. Without the 
 development of the moral sentiments and 
 the domestic propensities, he may be intel- 
 lectual, but heartless and cold a very devil; 
 for what is Satan but intellect without con- 
 science and love? 
 
 There are no propensities in the constitu- 
 tion of man which need be destroyed. Every 
 faculty in human nature has its high office 
 to perform in the purpose of our Maker. It 
 is not the possession of faculties or pro- 
 pensities that causes mischief and misery, 
 but it is the perversion of these faculties. 
 If only the harmonious balance of the facul- 
 ties be maintained, every propensity and 
 every faculty in the constitution of man will 
 do its part faithfully, producing the most 
 happy and beautiful results, just as every 
 part of the most intricate machinery, when 
 in order, performs its own part, and helps 
 bring out the perfect pattern or result 
 designated. 
 
 The great apostle St. Paul was a psychol- 
 ogist of the highest rank, perhaps not 
 naturally, but certainly so under divine in- 
 spiration. He gave us the highest and
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 225 
 
 clearest utterances concerning the constitu- 
 tion of the human soul. He says: " I keep 
 my body under; " that is to say, in modern 
 nomenclature, " I keep my animal propensi- 
 ties subordinated to my moral sentiments." 
 When the animal propensities control the 
 human life, not only do we see anger and 
 worry, but we see selfishness, the source of 
 all evil, sitting upon the throne and reigning 
 without a rival; then every propensity, un- 
 balanced and unrestrained, may run riot, 
 and if the temperament be choleric or san- 
 guine, the fiery steed, with loose rein, leaps 
 and plunges into vice and crime of all de- 
 scriptions. 
 
 If I were compelled to express in a single 
 word the source of all evil in the human 
 constitution, that word would be " selfish- 
 ness," which is equivalent to " depravity," 
 which in its manifestation often appears to 
 be pure " cussedness." As to the remedy 
 for human ills, I know of but one, and that 
 is the transforming power of the grace of 
 God, through the gospel of His Son, by 
 which a spiritual resurrection is produced, 
 which enthrones God in the soul, subjecting 
 everything else in man to His divine and
 
 226 MENTICULTURE 
 
 blessed sway. This is the wisdom from 
 above, concerning which the wise man has 
 said: " Her ways are ways of pleasantness, 
 and all her paths are peace."
 
 ANGER IS DESTRUCTIVE TO ALL THAT 
 IS ATTRACTIVE IN MAN 
 
 LAURA DE FORCE GORDON 
 
 It needs no argument to establish the 
 fact that anger is absolutely destructive of 
 all that is most attractive and lovable in 
 human kind. Who does not know that a 
 violent temper, frequently indulged in, 
 seams and wrinkles the face, gives to the 
 eye the furtive glance of the serpent, and 
 all too often leads to insanity? Some years 
 ago, while visiting a state institution for the 
 insane in a New England city, I asked the 
 physician in charge what was the most pro- 
 lific cause of insanity, and was greatly sur- 
 prised at his ready reply, " An ungovernable 
 temper." My recollection is" that he esti- 
 mated that seventy percent of insanity could 
 be traced to that cause. The student of 
 pathological sciences is familiar with the 
 statement of learned physicians that such 
 has been the direct effect of a violent fit of 
 227
 
 228 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 anger upon the physical condition of a 
 mother that her nursing babe has been 
 thrown into convulsions from imbibing the 
 milk from her breast. Nothing can turn a 
 home of peace into a sheol of discord so 
 quickly as a furious temper. Of course, 
 this demon should be banished; and so far as 
 Mr. Fletcher has indicated how this may be 
 accomplished, he confers a favor upon the 
 world. The first step is always in the 
 proper care and training of children. They 
 should never be permitted to hear a cross or 
 angry word. No frown even should ever 
 obscure the sunlight of love that ought to 
 beam unceasingly upon each tender life in 
 its perilous march towards manhood and 
 womanhood. Heredity has much to do 
 with character, and therefore happiness; 
 but environment and opportunity do more. 
 Children reflect the words, manners, and 
 largely the dispositions of their teachers in 
 early life. A violent temper can be subdued 
 for a time by fear of punishment. But to 
 eradicate it, untiring patience and loving 
 tenderness must be the treatment. An 
 " u gly temper " was never yet cured by 
 blows, and a child subjected to such treat-
 
 4.-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 229 
 
 ment " nurses wrath ;" and if we " sow the 
 wind, we reap the whirlwind." The mature 
 man and woman can often, by self-discipline, 
 undo the evils of youthful training, and tone 
 down heredity by curbing angry passions. 
 Refuse to act, speak, or think " cross." One 
 instant's reflection will often stifle a bitter, 
 wrathful word. If the passion of anger is 
 thus overcome, it soon grows weak, and in 
 time dies for want of exercise. We need 
 not trouble to discuss the evils and remedies 
 of "worrying." They are Siamese twins. 
 We have only to stifle "anger," and "worry " 
 will give up the ghost. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher and others who write along 
 similar lines but voice the ideas entertained 
 by nearly all advanced thinkers upon this 
 great truth: That life can be made beautiful, 
 and almost indefinitely prolonged, by proper 
 regard to dietetics, exercise, dress, and, 
 above all, by constant discipline of the will, 
 disposition, temper, and every other func- 
 tion and attribute which constitute the real 
 being.
 
 YOU MAY SMILE AWAY YOUR 
 ANGER, IF YOU WILL 
 
 W. H. V. RAYMOND, EDITOR CALIFORNIA 
 STATE TEXT-BOOKS. 
 
 Concerning the subject of Mr. Fletcher's 
 book on "The A-B-C of True Living," or, 
 rather, concerning the sentences from it 
 which you quote, I must speak only in a 
 hasty way. These sentences are pregnant 
 with suggestions that should not go un- 
 heeded. Any observant and reflecting per- 
 son of mature years must have noted that 
 the extravasation of passion upon motive is 
 as fatal to achievement as the extravasation 
 of blood upon the brain is fatal to life. 
 Bacon's plea for the " white light," which 
 he says " is ever the best," must be put far 
 to the front and high up among wise and 
 healthy doctrines. Motives, in his happy 
 phrase, " blooded by the affections," are 
 ever liable to produce collisions, injury, and 
 wreck. 
 
 230
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 231 
 
 How banish anger and worry from the 
 horizon of the soul? It were better to ban- 
 ish them from the horizon. Better to keep 
 them too far away to tempt us. How? 
 Cultivate a quick knowledge of their deso- 
 lating nature a knowledge refined and 
 sensitized into an instructive recoil, as from 
 the open shaft of an elevator, the projecting 
 cliff above a mountain gorge, a runaway 
 team, a rushing engine. 
 
 How cultivate such knowledge? Make 
 frequent inventories of the losses, misfor- 
 tunes, regrets, that have attended and fol- 
 lowed the possession of us by these passions; 
 note (and these we can more correctly esti- 
 mate) the losses borne by others through 
 robberies by these outlaws, and as children 
 grow to have a horror of drunkenness by a 
 picture of its woes, so we may come, by de- 
 grees, to live in an atmosphere unfriendly 
 to these disturbing agencies. A clean body, 
 clean thought, and spotless integrity will be 
 found also an amazing help in clearing the 
 air. 
 
 But consider these foes already in posses- 
 sion. How dislodge them? "Turn in 
 upon them the self-acting and regnant will,"
 
 232 MENTICULTURE 
 
 is perhaps the prescription of some stalwart 
 Kantian. " Hurl them out, neck and crop, 
 by the royal power of high self-assertion." 
 
 Good. But some wills are not regnant. 
 Some wills need the aid of strategy need 
 to find " the line of least resistance." The 
 resisting power of a raging or persistent 
 passion against a force applied directly upon 
 it is terrific. Is there possible an indirect 
 application of the will easier to make 
 within the power of the weaker will to make 
 and which, at the same time, will prove 
 effective? I venture to suggest such an 
 application. Are you angry? Are you 
 worried? Draw all the face muscles in- 
 volved in smiling into the direction that 
 expresses a smile. Are you angry now? 
 Are you worried now? Impossible. Smiles 
 may shelter deception, wicked purpose, and 
 a great variety of villany, but the whole 
 brood of passions that owe their parentage 
 to anger and worry will skip from beneath 
 the roof-tree of a smile like brownies from 
 a daybreak, whether the smile springs from 
 the light of a happy spirit or is the structure 
 built by an intelligent will. Empiricism? 
 Well, try it.
 
 PRESS COLLABORATION
 
 [ In selecting assistive matter from the 
 press notices of MENTICULTURE for repro- 
 duction, only such as have enlarged on the 
 theme have been used. Nearly all of the 
 " great dailies " of the country honored the 
 theory of the book by favorable comments, 
 but many of them were confined to endorse- 
 ment without addition, and are hence 
 omitted. THE AUTHOR.]
 
 PRESS COLLABORATION 
 
 CHICAGO EVENING POST, Oct. 5, 1895 
 
 ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD 
 
 "Happiness," says Pope, "is our being's 
 end and aim." A century later the pro- 
 moters of American independence assented 
 to the Declaration, as, many centuries before, 
 Marcus Aurelius had given it voice. But 
 how to secure that happiness was quite 
 another proposition. The philosopher, the 
 moralist, the religious teacher and the dog- 
 matist each had his recipe, pronounced to 
 be more or less infallible, and while it was 
 the general consent that the pursuit of hap- 
 piness was freely vouchsafed to mankind, 
 the methods of arriving at that stage of 
 beatitude were either faulty in construction 
 or frequently not adapted to the tempera- 
 ment of the subject. Plainly the world was 
 waiting for suggestions. 
 235
 
 236 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 Down in New Orleans lives a modest 
 gentleman, who combines a taste for phi- 
 losophy with the general desire for happi- 
 ness. According to his own confession he 
 was a man built on the ordinary plan of 
 human weakness, whose existence for the 
 greater part of his days, up to a twelve- 
 month ago, was as checkered as is assured 
 by the not infrequent assertion of the human 
 passions. In a happy moment he spent an 
 evening with a gentleman who had lived 
 many years in Japan, and who had absorbed 
 the tranquil philosophy of that wonderful 
 people. It was during the conversation of 
 that evening that the New Orleans philoso- 
 pher he is fairly entitled to the name 
 gained the first hint of the possibility of 
 emancipating the mind from the domination 
 of the annoying passions and of procuring 
 the peace which attends true and practical 
 philosophy. The secret, for he is too mod- 
 est to claim it as his own discovery, he has 
 set forth in a vastly interesting little book 
 called Menticulture ; or, The A-B-C of True 
 Living, and it is important enough to merit 
 careful examination and discussion. Truly, 
 Horace Fletcher impresses the reader not
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 237 
 
 less by his own earnestness and simplicity 
 than by the ample testimony he offers in 
 
 evidence. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 It [the book] is fascinating to the close, 
 and the earnestness of the author and the 
 growing belief in the supreme power of 
 menticulture must be taken into account 
 before this subject is dismissed as a " fad" or 
 a temporary school of philosophy. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 It would seem that Mr. Fletcher makes a 
 modest but useless apology for not following 
 the subject " beyond the elementary stage." 
 For is it not the elementary stage that is so 
 charming and convincing? Let a long- 
 winded metaphysician, with his technical 
 phraseology and his never-ending ramifica- 
 tions, get hold of the subject, and he will 
 speedily plunge the reader into hopeless con- 
 fusion. The mere statement of the cure, 
 " Get rid of the germs," with the experiences 
 in illustration, tells the story far more intel- 
 ligently and convincingly, perhaps, than even 
 Mr. Fletcher imagines, and whether he 
 gains converts to his theory or is unsuc- 
 cessful save in occasional instances, he has
 
 238 MENTICULTURE 
 
 performed his task well and put his case in- 
 telligibly before any class of readers who are 
 to be benefited. This is the charm of the 
 little book: an interesting theory interest- 
 ingly set forth. It has commanded the re- 
 spect of men of wisdom, and goes forth to 
 the great public as the best of counsel from 
 a thoughtful and sincere man.
 
 NEW YORK HERALD, OCT. 13, 1895 
 
 Portions of a short sermon by the Rev. George H. 
 Hepworth, D.D., on the text, "Thou Shalt Not 
 Worry." "Sufficient Unto the Day Is the Evil 
 Thereof." Matthew vii., 34. 
 
 No man ever suffered more than Christ 
 did, and none has been pricked by so many 
 thorns. And yet He calmly tells us to 
 possess our souls in peace, not to anticipate 
 the future; neither to worry about what may 
 happen to-morrow, but to bear as best we 
 may whatever burden is on our shoulders 
 and let the morrow take care of itself. He 
 does not speak of this as the best policy to 
 pursue, but as an imperative duty imposed 
 by the universe and by God, who decreed 
 them. What does He mean by this strange 
 utterance? Perhaps by searching we may 
 find out. 
 
 Worry, to begin with, is useless. It pro- 
 duces no good result. On the contrary, it 
 is utterly destructive in its nature. So far 
 from preparing you to overcome disaster, it 
 239
 
 240 MENTICULTURE 
 
 renders you unfit to meet it. It debilitates 
 the soul and robs you of the very strength 
 which you pray for, because you see it will 
 be needed. To worry is to endure an agony 
 before its time, and so prolong your misery. 
 * # # * 
 
 It is profitable for you to so far anticipate 
 the effect of a given cause that you prepare 
 to meet it, but when you have done all that 
 can be done it is exceedingly unprofitable to 
 so weaken yourself by worry that the coming 
 sorrow is doubled in weight. As much as 
 lies in your power and it is a quality of 
 character which admits of great develop- 
 ment live in to-day. Cultivate a quiet and 
 peaceful frame of mind. He did it, and was 
 undisturbed by threatening circumstance, 
 and you may follow. What you are doing 
 now calls for all your strength, and if 
 there is more to follow, then the additional 
 strength will be given. God's providence is 
 both wide and tender, and the more you 
 trust in it the sweeter will be your life, the 
 brighter will be your hope, the fairer will be 
 your general outlook, and the nearer will 
 heaven seem to you. " Sufficient unto the 
 day is the evil thereof."
 
 NEW YORK HERALD, OCT. 19, 1895 
 GEORGE H. HEPWORTH, D.D. 
 
 It is a pleasure to come upon a book 
 which is entirely out of the beaten track. I 
 happen to have one at hand, a small volume 
 of less than one hundred and fifty pages, 
 and I have read it with mingled emotions, 
 consisting partly of entire agreement with 
 the writer and partly of dissent. 
 
 # # # * 
 
 Now, what is the conclusion reached? 
 Why, that you can get wholly rid of worry 
 and anger, and thereby double the happiness 
 of life. * * It is worth trying for, and this 
 little book has a quantity of good advice in 
 it. You nervous people who want to carry 
 the whole world on your shoulders, you rest- 
 less folk who are constantly quarreling with 
 fate and fortune, you misanthropes who see 
 the cloud but never the silver lining, read 
 Menticulture and ponder its many truths. 
 You will not be wholly pleased with it, but 
 241
 
 242 . MENTICULTURE 
 
 assuredly you will be greatly interested, and 
 the chances are that you will look yourself 
 over more carefully, and reach the convic- 
 tion that you have wasted a good deal of 
 time and energy in useless worry.
 
 BOSTON BUDGET, OCT. 6, 1895 
 
 LILIAN WHITING. 
 * * * * 
 
 It is eradication and not repression that 
 Mr. Fletcher enjoins. In this he is right. 
 No one can read thoughtfully the history 
 of the past without realizing how far an ad- 
 vance in spiritual evolution the present cen- 
 tury and the present generation have made 
 over that of past ages. Humanity grows 
 constantly finer, truer, nobler. The next 
 step is to clearly perceive that faults, errors, 
 defects of conduct are not necessary; that 
 it is no more necessary to be angry or irri- 
 table than it is to steal or to tell falsehoods. 
 All people above the grade of the criminal 
 classes would indignantly resent the thought 
 that they could be dishonest, or directly 
 and maliciously false in statements, while 
 they accept, as a matter of course, ill-tem- 
 per, impatience, irritation, vexation, what- 
 ever its forms, and they are anxious, sus- 
 243
 
 244 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 picious, worried, perplexed, variously and 
 perhaps almost constantly to a greater or less 
 degree. All this is really just as unneces- 
 sary as theft or falsehood would be. There 
 is a better way. 
 
 Now the very moment that one clearly 
 and earnestly realizes that anger and worry 
 and all their attendant train of variations 
 and shades are unnecessary utterly and 
 absolutely unnecessary he has taken the 
 initial step toward his emancipation. If 
 each and every one could do this, nine- 
 tenths of the tangles of the world would be 
 straightened out at once. * * * 
 
 For one thing, here is a great conserva- 
 tion of energy. The amount of strength 
 wasted in worry, in vexation, in worrying 
 not only over things that have happened, 
 but over things that possibly might but 
 probably never will is something appall- 
 ing. 
 
 " Some of our griefs we can cure, 
 
 And the sharpest we still may survive, 
 But what pangs of distress we endure 
 From the evils that never arrive." 
 
 Many that do arrive are called into ex- 
 istence by worry, by fret, by utterly un-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 245 
 
 necessary anxiety, while, had the same 
 expenditure of energy been made in send- 
 ing out thoughts of radiant and noble and 
 exalted anticipation, the results would have 
 been of that order. 
 
 One makes the magnetic connection 
 with whatever great sphere of thought he 
 allies himself. Order, calmness, serenity 
 and sweetness connect one who habitually 
 holds his feelings with that realm of life; 
 while fret and irritation connect him just 
 as surely with all the realm of torment and 
 torture. By this magnetic law one becomes 
 possessed of not only his own harmony, or 
 discord, as may be, but a vast and indeed 
 unlimited reservoir of the one or the other 
 is laid open to his life. 
 
 People talk much of needing rest. As 
 a rule, they do not need rest at all, in the 
 sense of cessation from work, but they need 
 serenity and poise. A man does not gain 
 time, but loses it, by beginning his work in 
 a nervous hurry. Let him sit down quietly 
 and alone and collect his forces, assert his 
 spiritual supremacy, and then shall he go 
 to his task with a concentration of power 
 that is effective. Circumstances are pliant
 
 246 MENTICULTURE 
 
 to spiritual power; they are controlled en- 
 tirely by spiritual force. Realizing this 
 truth is to gain a working hypothesis, by 
 means of which life is rendered clear, direct 
 and effective. 
 
 Truly, it is an era, a spiritual crisis in life, 
 when we can simply and clearly realize that 
 anger and worry are no more necessary, no 
 more inevitable, than theft and falsehood. 
 Believe and love. Recognize only the 
 good. It is the secret of all success, of all 
 happiness, of all Divine life.
 
 TOLEDO SATURDAY BLADE 
 NOV. 16, 1895 
 
 EMILY S. BOUTON 
 
 It was Aristotle, I think, who declared 
 that the passions are habits of the mind, and 
 can be gotten rid of as physical habits are 
 gotten rid of. 
 
 The same thought has been expressed in 
 many ways by the thinkers upon the true 
 philosophy of life, but while the idea is 
 accepted there are comparatively few who 
 go systematically at work to carry it out. 
 People do not recognize the fact that when 
 angry, for instance, they are using real 
 material forces, unseen because upon the 
 mental plane, until their efforts become 
 visible upon the physical plane. If we could 
 hold that thought, remembering that every 
 time we put these forces in motion we are 
 adding to their powers, life would seem 
 something very different from what it does 
 now, even in its physical expression. 
 247
 
 248 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 The growth of a faith in the possibility 
 of governing, to a large extent, the circum- 
 stances upon the outward plane through 
 right thought scientifically directed, is evi- 
 dent in the literature of the day. We find it 
 everywhere, and where a few years ago it 
 was passed over carelessly or with a smile of 
 incredulity, it is read now with attention and 
 more or less belief, according to the reader's 
 understanding of the mental and spiritual law 
 upon which it is founded. 
 
 I picked up a little book to-day which has 
 just been issued, entitled " Menticulture; 
 or, The A-B-C of True Living," by Horace 
 Fletcher, which is in evidence of what I have 
 been saying. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 I think there is no doubt that this [the 
 contention of Menticulture J is true. When 
 anger has control, the voice of the Higher 
 Self cannot be heard; consequently there is 
 no upward aspiration, and hence no spiritual 
 progress. Mental balance, too, is always 
 lost, as we know; therefore no intellectual 
 growth is possible. Every part of the phys- 
 ical body is by anger put under a strain, its 
 processes violently interrupted and changed,
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 249 
 
 so that the renewal of its parts, which makes 
 for health, is impossible. All this is the 
 absolute result of every fit of anger upon the 
 individual who is angry, to say nothing of 
 the destructive forces started upon the 
 unseen thought plane that will affect others; 
 for it is absolutely true that we cannot stand 
 alone, we cannot limit the evil done to our- 
 selves, for every thought as well as every 
 action has a propulsive force towards others 
 that we cannot measure. * * * 
 
 Viewed both from a scientific and philo- 
 sophic standpoint, emancipation from these 
 passions is possible and necessary. 
 * * * * 
 
 The little volume is one to attract and 
 hold the attention of many who have not 
 hitherto studied the real philosophy of life 
 and its purpose the constant evolution 
 toward the Divine. Not that the author has 
 discovered anything new, but he simply 
 puts in another way the fact that mental and 
 spiritual growth are the product of our own 
 efforts, and that the difficulties in our path 
 are mostly the result of what, rightly under- 
 stood, may be wholly swept away.
 
 CHICAGO INTERIOR, OCT. 3, 1895 
 
 EDITORIAL TOPICS 
 
 ANGER AND WORRY 
 
 It is not to the discredit of new things 
 that they are old. They are more attractive 
 when novelty is combined with antiquity. 
 Men have ever been studying the great prob- 
 lem of life the best way to live and the best 
 way to dull the tooth of pain, and the way 
 to make the most good and the least evil of 
 everything. The old Greeks made a philos- 
 ophy of their thinking along this line, and 
 called it stoicism. They gave up the idea 
 of making little of evil and much of good, 
 because making much of good would, in 
 spite of them, make much also of evil. 
 Therefore, they said: " Let there be neither 
 evil nor good." We can attain this by sup- 
 pressing the passions. At the same time 
 Gautama was teaching the same thing in 
 India. The Christian church followed the 
 same idea and instituted Monasticism, so 
 250
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 251 
 
 that the stoical philosophy became and re- 
 mains world-wide. To one who has not no- 
 ticed particularly, it will cause surprise to 
 observe how prevalent this idea is among 
 people who never heard of Greek philoso- 
 phy. It is the disposition to make the best 
 of everything, and to be as indifferent as 
 possible to misfortunes and troubles of any 
 kind. No people are more successful in this 
 than the American Indian. 
 
 Our attention is called to this subject by 
 a little book of practical stoicism, by Mr. 
 Horace Fletcher, called Menticulture. 
 * * * * 
 
 We are not disposed to criticize the 
 author for going to the antipodes for the 
 philosophy of Zeus, Socrates and Marcus 
 Aurelius, more especially as the observa- 
 tions of more familiar philosophers seem to 
 have been overlooked by him. There is a 
 pretty large literature of it in the Bible, be- 
 ginning, we will say, with David's " Fret 
 not thyself, to do evil," including Job's re- 
 marks to an angry man that he was only 
 teasing himself that the earth would not 
 be forsaken nor the rocks flee away because 
 thereof; Solomon's remark that a man slow
 
 252 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 to anger is better than the mighty, and that 
 anger resteth in the bosom of fools; and our 
 Lord on the eradication of anger, which 
 must not be suffered to live to the going 
 down of the sun. Rather, we would thank 
 him for the cogency and freshness of his 
 little treatise. He makes many good and 
 true points. Anger is weakness, not strength ; 
 it is a paralysis. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 All of which is true. There is no root of 
 bitterness so bitter as malice. It gives the 
 heart that cherishes it incessant pain. As 
 for worry, it is subject to the will. One can 
 by a single effort resolve to banish it, and 
 to take hold of the cause of his or her trou- 
 ble with a calm and placid mind, to make 
 the best of it. There are, however, excep- 
 tional conditions. Anger and worry are 
 symptoms of weakness, and this weakness 
 may come of nerve exhaustion. This may 
 be produced by overwork. A day of men- 
 tal overwork is pretty certain to be followed 
 by a night of irritability and worry. So also, 
 protracted pain, neuralgic or other, produces 
 fretfulness and gloom. Everyone has 
 noticed the difference of the condition of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 253 
 
 his or her mind before or after a night of 
 refreshing sleep. Narcotics and stimulants 
 produce the condition of anger and worry. 
 And yet it must be said that they are habits. 
 The weakened mind and nerves fall into 
 them as well-worn and familiar channels. 
 Weakness does not necessarily, by any 
 means, find expression in them. On the 
 contrary, there are many instances in which 
 pain, over-exhaustion, and even the physical 
 decline of old age, develop the most beauti- 
 ful sweetness, placidity, and love. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is 
 this: Let us all try it, and try it our best. 
 Let us be on our guard against anger and 
 worry. Let us seek to help ourselves 
 against them by occupying the mind with 
 better things. And the best and most help- 
 ful of all better things is a habit of confi- 
 dence, and repose, under the loving shelter 
 of God.
 
 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE 
 AUGUST 7, 1892 
 
 THE WORST OF ALL 
 
 Everything in this world is necessarily 
 measured by comparison, and yet there are 
 some things of which it can be predicated 
 that they are absolutely bad, having no sin- 
 gle redeeming quality, and of this category 
 the very worst of all is worry. 
 
 , It should be said that worry, as used in 
 this sense, does not mean those petty and 
 temporary annoyances to which we all are 
 subject, and which are to be classed among 
 the light afflictions of the apostle. By 
 worry we mean the habit of allowing one's 
 self to be really and seriously troubled over 
 all sorts of matters, grave or light, serious 
 or insignificant, until the person into whom 
 the demon of worry has entered becomes 
 completely subject to the fiend and loses 
 moral-fiber, self-control, will-power, and per- 
 sonal independence. 
 
 254
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 255 
 
 Worry is very much the creature of habit, 
 like a great many of our other vices, great 
 and small, and the habit of worry is cumu- 
 lative. It grows apace by what it feeds 
 upon, until, to adopt the expressive Hiber- 
 nicism, a person is never happy unless he is 
 thoroughly miserable. To the chronic 
 worrier, if the word be permissible, no joy 
 is complete unless he can discover the drop 
 of bitterness in the bottom of the cup; no 
 rose is lovely unless the canker-worm lies 
 hidden in its petals; no scene is beautiful 
 unless he can imagine destruction or ruin 
 brooding over it. To his jaundiced eye 
 everything which most people admire or es- 
 teem is but a whited sepulcher, full of dead 
 men's bones and all uncleanness, and every 
 object in life, however harmless or innocent, 
 appears to him to conceal some hidden dan- 
 ger, some man-trap or spring gun set to 
 catch or wound the unwary. 
 
 The strange thing about worry is that it is 
 so utterly illogical. The laughing philoso- 
 pher who pronounced his dictum on worry 
 so many years ago that his name and era 
 have been forgotten was exactly right. He 
 said that there are two classes of things that
 
 256 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 one should not worry over, the things that 
 can be helped and the things that cannot 
 for, he said, if they can be helped, go and 
 help them; if they cannot, worrying over 
 them only makes them worse. 
 
 We read sometimes of men dying from 
 overwork, especially those whose work is 
 that of the brain. It is ninety-nine times 
 out of a hundred a mistaken diagnosis. 
 Men die of over-eating, of over-drinking, of 
 over-indulgence in various ways, and, more 
 frequently than all, of worry, but not of too 
 much work. The brain is a tough and elas- 
 tic organ, capable of almost any amount of 
 work if it be treated properly; but when to 
 work is superadded worry, the brain refuses 
 to bear the double burden, and then ensues 
 that surcease from labor which we call death. 
 Work can be finished and put away: worry, 
 never. Work produces fatigue: worry, ex- 
 haustion. Work, no matter how arduous or se- 
 vere, does not detract from one's self-respect; 
 worry makes him think as meanly of him- 
 self as of all the rest of the world. We can 
 bear disease, pain, ill-fortune, all the ills that 
 flesh is heir to, if we do not worry; if we 
 do, every molehill becomes a mountain, and
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 257 
 
 every squeaking mouse a roaring lion in our 
 path. Is not worry, then, the worst of all bad 
 things the one incurable disease, the mal- 
 ady which physic cannot heal nor science 
 alleviate?
 
 NEW ORLEANS TIMES-DEMOCRAT 
 OCTOBER 6, 1895 
 
 The discovery that that conquest of self, 
 which has been so constantly urged upon the 
 race by its sages and philosophers since the 
 dawn of civilization, is neither an idle dream 
 nor a sublime achievement possible to only 
 a few specially endowed natures, is a great 
 event in the life of any individual, and one 
 well worthy of being published abroad; and 
 in yielding so generously to the impulse to 
 induct others into the knowledge of the more 
 excellent way Mr. Fletcher has found he has 
 given a conclusive proof of the sincerity of 
 his conviction which adds might to his testi- 
 mony. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 There is not, however, the slightest ques- 
 tion as to the evil effects wrought of anger 
 and worry, and the importance of casting 
 them out and cultivating in their place the 
 graces of faith, hope, and charity. The un- 
 profitableness of anger was recognized by 
 258
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 259 
 
 sages who lived and taught in Israel long 
 before Buddha was born, and many of their 
 admonitions concerning them have been 
 garnered up in the Old Scriptures. 
 " Cease from anger and forsake wrath." 
 " Fret not thyself; it only tendeth to evil 
 
 doing." 
 
 says the psalmist. In that collection of 
 maxims for the practical conduct of life, 
 which was formerly so highly esteemed as to 
 be styled comprehensively " Wisdom," as if 
 in it all desirable knowledge were summed 
 up, the folly of indulging in anger is fre- 
 quently pointed out: 
 
 "He that is soon angry will deal fool- 
 ishly." 
 
 " He that is slow to anger is of great un- 
 derstanding." 
 
 " A soft answer turneth away wrath, 
 
 But a grievous word stirreth up strife." 
 
 " He that is slow to anger is better than 
 the mighty, 
 
 And he that ruleth his spirit than he that 
 taketh a city." 
 
 " A wrathful man stirreth up contention, 
 but he that is slow to anger appeaseth 
 strife."
 
 260 MENTICULTURE 
 
 " The discretion of a man maketh him 
 slow to anger, 
 
 And it is his glory to pass over a trans- 
 gression." 
 
 " It is an honor to a man to keep away 
 from strife; 
 
 But every fool will be quarreling." 
 
 " Make no friendship with a man that is 
 given to anger, and with a wrathful man thou 
 shalt not go." 
 
 So counsel the "Proverbs;" and the 
 " Preacher " adds his voice: " Be not hasty 
 in thy spirit to be angry; for anger resteth 
 in the bosom of fools."
 
 SAN FRANCISCO ARGONAUT 
 
 An eminent medical authority discredits 
 the theory that men (or women either) 
 break down from overwork. He says the 
 brain does its work with the minimum 
 of effect; that with due nutriment and rest 
 in sleep it can work continuously during 
 working hours, and that, instead of being 
 injured by severe labor, it is improved by 
 it if the labor is done under normal condi- 
 tions. " When a man says he is suffering 
 from the effects of mental overwork," adds 
 this authority, " the wise physician wants to 
 know what his vices are. Worry may be 
 one. The worries of life do infinitely more 
 harm than the work of life, however onerous 
 it may be."
 
 PITTSBURG (PA.) LEADER, OCT. 12, 1895 
 
 If you have ever exercised the intro- 
 spective faculty so as to compare your sen- 
 sations and their effects under the influence 
 of various emotions, you have no doubt 
 found that anger and worry were very de- 
 pressing. Anger would act as an intoxicant 
 to you. After its excitement passed away 
 you felt that you had been left the worse 
 for it. Sometimes under the influence of 
 this psychic "next morning" you may even 
 have wondered if anger could not be dis- 
 pensed with. You have acknowledged that 
 it did not pay. Worry is not exciting in 
 the same way as anger. Anger is a psychic 
 brandy: worry is a mental morphine.
 
 NEW ORLEANS TIMES-DEMOCRAT 
 JANUARY 26, 1896 
 
 HELEN PITKIN 
 
 Our Mr. Horace Fletcher has written a 
 book which we all have read, emphasizing 
 the value of calmness and its importance to 
 health. " Don't worry and don't get angry," 
 is the substance of his message to us. It 
 means to all who will seriously undertake to 
 practice this cheerful philosophy a divided 
 increase in the world's jollity. Whatever 
 else we forget we must remember to be gay. 
 
 Don't forget to laugh. Laugh when you 
 are happy, laugh when you are amused, 
 laugh at yourself for being miserable, and 
 laugh at yourself for being bored. There is 
 always something to laugh at; and even 
 when one is reduced to laughing at one's 
 self, that is very much better than to be 
 " glum." 
 
 This is what laughter does for a woman: 
 It keeps her heart young. It makes her like 
 263
 
 264 MENTICULTURE 
 
 people for the sake of the pleasure they give 
 her, and they, in turn, like her. It makes 
 her step buoyant. It keeps her eyes bright. 
 It keeps her face from wrinkling. It is a 
 beatific second to no other one. It does for 
 the muscles of the face what exercise does 
 for those of the body keeps them supple 
 and prevents them from falling into those 
 stiff and settled lines which mean old age. 
 
 There is no situation in life, except, of 
 course, the inevitable tragic moments, that 
 may not be bettered by laughter. It is hard 
 to burlesque one's griefs and annoyances, but 
 it can be done, and it is worth doing. To 
 travesty one's emotions and to make a 
 mockery of one's annoyances may not seem 
 to be the highest form of philosophy, but it 
 is not so low a one as to fret over trials and 
 grow pessimistic over personal woes.
 
 MEDICAL COLLABORATION
 
 MEDICAL COLLABORATION 
 
 OFFICE OF THE 
 
 MIDDLETOWN STATE HOMCEOPATHIC 
 HOSPITAL 
 
 MIDDLETOWN, ORANGE Co., N. Y. 
 
 January 20, 1896 
 MR. HORACE FLETCHER. 
 
 My Dear Sir: Please accept my thanks 
 for your kind letter under date of the I3th 
 inst., together with a copy of Menticulfure , 
 which I shall greatly prize because you sent 
 it to me. 
 
 A good many of the causes given for an 
 attack of insanity, by friends or relatives of 
 the patient, such as business trouble, death 
 of various members of the family and friends, 
 and any source of mental anxiety, have in 
 them a large element of worry, and can be 
 considered as belonging under that head. 
 One hundred and twenty of such cases can 
 be added to the two hundred and eighty- 
 five< making four hundred and five, or about 
 267
 
 268 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 twenty-five per cent, of the total. The " un- 
 ascertained" represents those from whom no 
 satisfactory history can be obtained, either 
 from their friends, when they have any, or 
 themselves. Worry may enter even more 
 into their insanity than the others being a 
 worm in the bud of their mental rose. 
 
 The department of mental hygiene has 
 been enriched by the publication of Menti- 
 culture the value of which lies in the sim- 
 plicity of the method advocated and the 
 principle and nature of its teachings. 
 Throughout, the author is appreciative of 
 the importance of his subject, earnest in the 
 advocacy of its merits, and clear in its pre- 
 sentation. There is no class of society that 
 cannot be helped by this book, whether you 
 view its influence from a religious, moral, or 
 intellectual standpoint, and those who wish 
 to develop self-control can be aided by read- 
 ing Menticulture. 
 
 I enclose a clipping from the New York 
 Herald, which shows that the Rev. Dr. Hep- 
 worth appreciates the subject. 
 
 With regards, believe me, 
 
 Very cordially yours, 
 
 C. SPENCER KINNEY.
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 269 
 
 [The following article on " Worry," by 
 Dr. Kinney, was published in the annual re- 
 port of the hospital in the year 1893.] 
 
 WORRY 
 
 BY DR. C. SPENCER KINNEY 
 
 Long after the visitor has left the Bank 
 of England he will recall a small machine, 
 insignificant in its size and general appear- 
 ance, and yet to which is intrusted the 
 responsibility of protecting the bank from 
 reissuing light-weight sovereigns. As these 
 coins slide down an inclined trough they 
 drop on a weighing pan for an instant, and, if 
 of proper weight, fall to the right, and once 
 more pass into trade; but if they have lost 
 too much of their substance by the wear and 
 tear of the world's usage, they slide to the 
 left, where with a half split and a twist the 
 commercial life of the piece terminates. 
 While this mechanical contrivance is de- 
 pendent upon the proper adjustment of its 
 parts, and the avoidance of any interfering 
 agency, it is aided in separating the true 
 weight from the light weight coins by a
 
 270 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 qualified human intellect presiding over it. 
 He sees to it that oil of the right quality 
 and amount is supplied, at proper intervals 
 of time, to needed parts. All that ripened 
 experience has found necessary for the ma- 
 chine it receives; and thus is capable of per- 
 forming the object for which it was designed, 
 until symmetrically worn out. A little dust, 
 or neglect on the part of the one in charge, 
 is enough to impair its usefulness. Conse- 
 quently, great care is taken to see that every 
 part works in harmony with every dependent 
 part. Unless all this is done, the machine 
 is a failure. 
 
 Human beings are like this machine to a 
 certain degree. They must choose through 
 life between right and wrong, and on their 
 proper decision depends the extent of their 
 usefulness. As in the machine, a number of 
 dissimilar parts work harmoniously to ac- 
 complish a given object, so do the diversified 
 qualities composing the human mind unite 
 for a common purpose. As dust and friction 
 are to the machine, so is worry to the mind. 
 While the machine must have human help 
 to look after its needs, a human being is 
 supposed to be endowed with those quali-
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 271 
 
 ties of mind that enable him to direct all 
 the powers which he may possess, with a due 
 amount of judgment. 
 
 Now the physical, mental, and moral capa- 
 cities of different individuals vary in every 
 possible degree as do the nature and quali- 
 ties of machines, and the use to which they 
 can best be applied. All this we expect. 
 With one whose mental faculties work in 
 harmony, and who, in addition to this, is pos- 
 sessed of excellent physical health, and is 
 engaged in a congenial pursuit, worry does 
 not find a ready lodgment. If we consider, 
 on the other hand, the thousands who are 
 handicapped by too much of this mental 
 faculty or too little of that to constitute a 
 really healthy mind, we shall come to the 
 consideration of that class of unfortunates 
 with whom worry has most to do. 
 
 A machine is only able to sustain a strain 
 that is equal to the strength of its weakest 
 part; so it is with the strength of a human 
 being. As worry is a strain that is always 
 plus the legitimate effort necessary to ac- 
 complish any given purpose, it follows that 
 whenever indulged in the nervous energy 
 of the patient is more quickly exhausted.
 
 272 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 With many, there is a nervous disposi- 
 tion to degeneration of some organ or set of 
 organs that, with care, might never become 
 diseased, and, consequently, worry is to be 
 avoided as wholly as if it represented the 
 worst of all dissipation. As worry creates 
 certain symptoms, they should be heeded, 
 not ignored, as they are danger signals that 
 nature throws out to intelligence. Nowa- 
 days, we recognize that an eye strain induces 
 an irritability of disposition, causes head- 
 ache, changes the facial expression, and pro- 
 duces a lack of muscular co-ordination that 
 'nferferes with one's occupation. As soon 
 as these symptoms are discovered, properly 
 adjusted glasses remedy the difficulty. This 
 condition of affairs or similar hindrances to 
 good work, we must recollect, lead to worry 
 and produce an effect throughout the entire 
 nervous system. This must be kept in mind 
 constantly in reference to worry that bad 
 results follow long-continued worry as surely 
 as destruction to the machine follows the 
 use of sand in its bearings instead of oil. 
 
 While heredity lays a heavy hand on her 
 victims, restraining them from assuming cer- 
 tain risks in life to which would be attached
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 273 
 
 serious penalties, predisposition, insidious 
 and far-reaching, is even more dangerous. 
 Caused, as it is, by subtle methods of vio- 
 lating nature's laws, by ancestors remote as 
 well as near, by injuries and by circumstances 
 with which the powerless victim is buffeted, 
 it broadly lays the foundation for worry's 
 work. 
 
 The injunction to " Know thyself" is an 
 ancient one, and, thanks to the wide teach- 
 ings of the press, objectionable as it some- 
 times is, preventive medicine is becom- 
 ing better understood, and good results 
 may be expected. But we must go further 
 and look upon the mental faculties of the 
 growing child as something that has an ex- 
 istence, something that can be trained with 
 benefit to the child, not alone for the present 
 time, but to the advantage of his entire 
 lifetime. 
 
 Mental philosophy has for years been 
 taught by those who do not appreciate it, 
 from text-books written by those who did 
 not comprehend the subject. Words have 
 effectively concealed the paucity of thought, 
 and practical applications have been forgot- 
 ten by the pupil in acquiring befogging defi-
 
 274 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 nitions. The delusion that all men are born 
 equal has been a costly delusion of many 
 teachers and parents, the results showing in 
 the children, who exemplify in their lives the 
 mistakes resulting from wrong training. As 
 well might we expect all machines to per- 
 form the same kind of work, simply because 
 they happen to be machines, as to expect all 
 human beings to develop as they should, and 
 as nature may have endowed them, by meth- 
 ods of so-called teaching, in which routine 
 and dull uniformity are the leading objects 
 of the course. Education, to be worth any- 
 thing, should be an individualized one. What 
 is easily taught one child is with difficulty 
 acquired by another. Threats will not de- 
 velop the dull, and yet tact and knowledge 
 on the part of the teacher may bring out 
 faculties of comprehension in certain lines 
 of thought which the bright pupil may never 
 attain. Continued efforts to bring them both 
 up to a certain preconceived standard, with- 
 out reference to the developing of personal 
 resources, may do life-long harm to both, by 
 teaching them early in life how to worry. 
 Taught as mental philosophy should be, it 
 would inculcate a practical knowledge of
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 275 
 
 one's mental armamentarium, the limit of 
 power, and the extent of his mental resources. 
 Without such a knowledge, one's existence 
 assumes a happy-go-lucky gait that no power 
 outside that of the Divine Ruler can save 
 from coming to grief. Sporadic attempts 
 are made on a small scale to teach children 
 self-control by some parents and teachers, 
 but seldom does this go beyond cautioning 
 them regarding outbursts of temper and 
 the exhibition of some unpleasant quality. 
 Now, mental tendencies show in early life as 
 quickly as do unfortunate manners and cor- 
 rupt speech. An overstrain on the mental 
 faculties of the child shows itself a so-called 
 nervousness, and should this not be checked 
 it will result in laying the foundation of 
 disease. 
 
 It is a sad commentary on the vaunted 
 wisdom of our kind that the appreciation 
 and care of the most exalted faculties we 
 possess, from which our chief enjoyments 
 spring, should be so little understood. Much 
 of this comes from ignorance directly due to 
 wrong teaching and indifference. What is 
 not comprehended by their grosser sense 
 is of no interest, and the idea that worry
 
 276 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 could be productive of injury in any degree 
 would not be accepted. It is not understood 
 that mental defects, like physical ones, limit 
 one in the performance of any task. 
 
 There is no faculty of the human mind 
 that worry does not affect. There is no organ 
 of the human body that it may not destroy. 
 It dwarfs the intellect of the child, substi- 
 tutes doubt for hope, and turns the days of 
 childhood into periods that are recalled in 
 after years with sorrow and condemnation. 
 In youth and middle age it foils, or puts 
 in jeopardy, every effort of the ambitious, 
 makes failure expected, and success a sur- 
 prise. It is found smiling over the open 
 grave of the suicide. 
 
 Old age is anticipated by worry's victim, 
 and with a mass of broken efforts, blighted 
 hopes, and here and there a splinter of am- 
 bition, he awaits the development of his last 
 predisposition. 
 
 Men of mediocre ability are more easily 
 irritated, more easily made suspicious and 
 exacting, than are those possessing a greater 
 mental grasp or equipoise. The first re- 
 lapse into worry is a natural result of nerv- 
 ous overstrain. The latter throw it off by
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 277 
 
 pursuing a new train of thought. The 
 ignorance of all that worry is able to 
 accomplish in blocking human efforts is 
 daily seen among the patients entering 
 our state hospitals. One is said to have 
 lost interest in his business and become 
 insensible to his family or friends, com- 
 plaining that what was once a source of 
 pleasure to him now produces indifference 
 or disgust. Pain is experienced about the 
 head, irritability is marked, memory fails, 
 the stomach seems to have given up work 
 especially on certain articles of food, nutri- 
 tion is impaired; depression in spirits as well 
 as loss of physical strength becomes pro- 
 nounced, the bowels grow inactive, and 
 there is a drying up of all mucous surfaces, 
 and sleeplessness sets in. With these symp- 
 toms alone, the patient is well advanced 
 toward acute melancholia. 
 
 Now, with one temperament worry may 
 induce melancholia; yet in another it may 
 culminate in a sharp attack of mania or 
 resolve itself into a case of paranoia. With 
 those who are ambitious, hard-working, 
 genial men, inclined to carry forty pounds 
 of strain when their limit is thirty-five
 
 278 MENTICULTURE ; OR, THE 
 
 pounds working force, worry gets in her 
 fine work, and general paresis claims her 
 own. This point must be kept in mind: As 
 sand is in the bearings of fine machinery, so 
 is worry when it begins to impede human 
 toil. A few years ago, we are told by those 
 having wide experience with the negro, that 
 he did not have that form of mental disease 
 we recognize as general paresis. The state- 
 ment was probably true then, but it is not 
 now; for since he has become endowed with 
 the uncertain privileges of the franchise, and 
 discovered that he is a wage-earner, with all 
 the anxieties incident to efforts of self-sup- 
 port confronting him, it has drawn his atten- 
 tion from a life of carelessness to one having 
 that disintegrating, disease-breeding element 
 of worry with which white people have had 
 so long to deal. The fact of his having from 
 all time subjected himself, through racial 
 inclination, to every form of dissipation that 
 has the reputation of producing the disease, 
 was not recognized by those who were the 
 exponents of the excess theories. Excesses 
 are less liable to lead to disease than worry, 
 as the recuperation is likely to follow the for- 
 mer, while the tendency of the latter is to
 
 A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING 279 
 
 produce pronounced enfeeblement. Their 
 effect upon the affections is different. In 
 the victim of excesses, the ties of kindred 
 are held dear, and the relationship to the 
 family is appreciated, but the ability to cor- 
 rect the habit is tripped by a demented will. 
 Worry, however, goes deeper, and paralyzes 
 the affections to the extent of apathy. The 
 victim of worry sees with unconcern the 
 pained faces of his family as they part from 
 the husband and father for the advantages 
 of hospital care. Their tears are remem- 
 bered with no pang, and he readily accus- 
 toms himself to the selfish contemplation of 
 his own case. He now appreciates his situ- 
 ation only in a vague way, and he does not 
 keenly suffer on account of the change in 
 his affairs. 
 
 Worry is first and last a depressant. It 
 may excite for a time, but only as an irritant, 
 followed by depression of the organ excited. 
 It cannot coexist with perfect health. It acts 
 as a ball and chain on the activities of every 
 human impulse. In connection with its influ- 
 ence upon the mental powers, functional de- 
 rangement of the heart, stomach, and the 
 effect on these organs, may extend to every
 
 280 MENTICULTURE; OR, THE 
 
 other. We may speculate as to the method 
 worry pursues in order to accomplish its 
 object, by blaming the liver as one cause, 
 the sympathetic nervous system as another; 
 but the truth remains that worry creates a 
 slow, sluggish fever in which the moisture of 
 the entire body is generously drawn upon. 
 In those diseases in which worry acts as an 
 exciting cause, the long-continued exalted 
 temperature tells the story of the life-con- 
 suming fire. One sees it in the early history 
 of the melancholiac, and he becomes con- 
 vinced of it as he views the burned-out tissue 
 of the paretic. 
 
 There is but one advice to give on this 
 subject. Don't worry. It has never given 
 bread to the hungry, money to the needy; 
 yet it has taken bread from the mouths of 
 thousands and rendered penniless those who 
 once possessed wealth. To undo, but not to 
 build up; to allow to sink, with no effort to 
 sustain; to kill, rather than save is its one 
 desire. It never has helped a man, and it will 
 not help you. It is easy to begin but hard 
 to stop. You may imagine that you possess 
 strength to begin, to continue, and to stop 
 when you will ; but don't begin.
 
 PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS 
 
 FOR HERBERT S. STONE & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO, U.S. A.
 
 University of California 
 
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 MENTICULTURE 
 
 or the 
 
 A~B - C of true Living 
 by 
 
 Horace Fletcher 
 
 Univen 
 
 Soul 
 
 Lit 
 
 Menticulture Series I