The Magic of Believing, Chapter 9

Chapter 9
Belief Makes Things Happen

In 1944 a popular digest magazine had a story about a group of scientists in Chicago who were experimenting with moths. A female moth of rare species was placed in a room, and four miles away a male moth of the same species was released. In a few hours the male moth was found beating its wings against the window of the room in which the female was confined. The editor declared that he believed that ideas fly, with the sureness with which the female moth communicated her whereabouts to the male, across incredible barriers to the one mind for which they are originally intended.

Here is a simple experiment that will make you wonder whether the birds don’t possess telepathic or clairvoyant power. In the off-season, put some scraps of bread in the backyard. There isn’t a bird in sight. But hardly have you entered the house before birds begin to congregate. First come sparrows and wrens, then robins, and in two or three minutes the yard is filled with birds. Put out anything but food and not a bird appears. What brings them to your yard? How do they know the bread is food for them? Science can give no answers.

Edwin C. Hill in his broadcast of February 17, 1947, in talking about butterflies, made the statement that the more scientists investigate, the more they are becoming convinced that birds and insects have a wireless of their own or some other invisible manner of communication with one another. This has long been a theory expounded by nature students, and as a matter of fact, many books have been written on the subject, notably one by William J. Long, How Animals Talk.

It’s interesting to note that during the last war, our Army Signal Corps, in experimenting with carrier pigeons and shortwave radio, found that the pigeons were affected by the radio waves and often, when confused, flew in circles and were lost.

When we consider that the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, California, fly away each October 23 and return each March 19 with unfailing punctuality; that tagged salmon released from Columbia River points spends four years in the Pacific Ocean, then consistently return to the spots from which they departed; that cats and dogs taken many miles from their homes have returned; that wilds ducks and geese wing their way back to the original localities; that other inexplicable things are too numerous to mention here; are we not faced with the fact that there are wave radiation and telepathic forces also operating in the fish, bird, and animal kingdoms, in fact, in everything around us? Some writers claim that all living things have the means of communicating with each other, and in view of the Yale experiments, this may not be so farfetched after all.

Early in 1945 radio listeners heard the voices of blinded soldiers telling of their experiences in “facial sight,” through which they were able to detect objects in their paths through a sixth sense or kind of “mental radar.” Dr. Jacob Levine, a Boston psychologist, who had charge of the school at Old Farms, in the Avon district of Connecticut, where war-blinded veterans were taught the use of this sixth sense, declared that he could not explain its mechanics, but he knew that it worked. This “facial sight” is based on the hypothesis that the body radiates definite rays of an unknown variety which, coming into contact with an object in front, assemble or group themselves in such form as to make a picture of it, after which they return, still bearing the picture, to the blinded person, who “sees” it through the sensation of the returning rays as they radiate through his body.

I have long had the conviction that various forms of telepathy or thought-transmission are used every day of our lives, far more than most people suspect. I believe that many great leaders, preachers, orators, executives, and so-called super-salesmen, some unconsciously and others thoroughly conscious of its workings, exercise the power to varying degrees. We meet a person, and before a word is spoken we experience a like or a dislike. What is it that cause the feeling to register but some form of thought-transmission? I have already stated that the only possible explanation of healing and affecting others at a distance is through the medium of this phenomenon, of which we are only now beginning to get a scientific explanation.

As I write, I have a mental picture of a famous lawyer in whose office I have often sat as he dictated letters concerning business affairs in which I was interested. When he dictated he always paced the floor, and his concentration was intense. Once I asked him why he stood while dictating and how it happened that his letters always accomplished the end intended. His reply was:

“In the first place, I think better on my feet. Then before I start dictating and during the whole period that I talk, I actually visualize before me the person to whom I write the letter. If I do not know him, I try to picture him as I think he may look. In both cases, I direct all my thoughts and words to him in person as though he were actually before me in the flesh and tell him mentally that my premises are right and should be followed by him.”

A successful book saleswoman told me that if she was satisfied that a customer had the money and really wanted to purchase a book, but was hesitating between two choices, she would keep repeating to herself, but directing her thought to the customer, the title of the one best suited to that customer. She added that many of her sales were made by thought-directive power. An automobile executive told me that when he had a prospect who had the money to purchase, he always said to himself, “You’re going to buy this car, you’re going to buy this car” --and the prospect did.

I am aware that few people like to believe they are influenced by the silent thoughts of others when it comes to a matter of purchasing anything or doing something, but the fact remains that all of us are subject to this subtle influence, be it telepathy or anything else you want to call it. The fact remains, too, that this invisible power exists, and a little experimenting on your part will convince you that it is both formidable and active.

I am certain that mothers use it on their children and often children use it on their parents. Not infrequently husbands and wives use it on one another without the knowledge of either one. This is especially true where a man and wife are closely attuned to one another. You who are married and have never used this science, have a new field to explore.

One of the most striking examples of this subtle influence in action came to my attention several years ago. The president of a company that I had been helping was dissatisfied with his sales manager, but because of many years of service did not wish to discharge him. “I was at my wits’ end,” he told me “when I suddenly got the idea that I could suggest to him mentally that he ought to resign his job and become a salesman instead of remaining as manager.” I thought about it for hours one night, but I nearly fell off my chair when the first thing next morning he came into my office, saying that he would like to resign as manager as he felt that he could make more money by getting out on the street as a salesman. I don’t know whether I was guilty of using some sort of magic, but my conscience is clear, because the man today is making twice as money as he did when sales manager and he’s much happier, and we’re all going to town.”

In this connection, here is another story, that of a man and wife who came to see me. The man told me that until a few months before our meeting he had been one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the Middle West, but had sold out and was now travelling the country. His story, taken from a memorandum transcribed at the time, is briefly as follows:

“For more than thirty years I had been a member of one of the largest and oldest secret organizations in the world which embraces this theme of believing from A to Izzard, but I, like thousands of others, never had my mind opened to it and I never realized the ‘truths’ contained therein. However, several years ago I attended a series of lectures on the subject of mind control and my eyes were opened for the first time to what a wonderful power man could make available for himself if he saw fit to do so. I could see how it would work in our business to tremendous advantage and I used it. Needless to say, our business started to increase as soon as I put it to work and it has been increasing ever since. During the depression when firms like ours were having a terrific struggle we consistently made money, and when I sold out my interests I guess I can say, with all modesty, that I was at the top.”

At this point his wife entered the conversation, saying: “My husband wouldn’t openly scoff at me when I talked this subject and what I had learned at the lectures before he started, but he gave me to understand that he believed I was wasting my time. I just knew there was something to it and I was certain that if my husband could get hold of it --it would mean a great deal more business for him. I talked to him about attending the lectures until I was tired and then one day I realized I was doing the wrong thing. Instead of talking to him I should use the very science which I had been taught. I went at it with a vengeance. Both my daughter and I several times a day kept repeating to ourselves mentally, ‘Dad is going to go, Dad is going to go.’ It took us nearly three weeks, but Dad did go.”

Here the husband broke in, saying: “You speak about your tap-tap idea. Well, she certainly worked it on me. When she first talked about what she had heard at the lectures, I just couldn’t believe them to be true. I had been brought up in a very practical business world and I couldn’t get myself to believe in many of the so-called abstract things. However, one day ‘something’ impelled me to make up my mind to go with her. I didn’t know at the time that the ‘something’ was my wife’s mental suggestion and I had no idea that she and my daughter had been ‘working on me.’ However, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. After the first lecture I did some experimenting and our business began to improve and continued to improve until the day I sold out.

“Don’t get me wrong. I am not religious in an orthodox sense, and what I talk about is not goody-goody stuff, but an exact science. What we think or contemplate develops into reality. We radiate our thoughts, perhaps unconsciously, to others, and we affect them. We give forth vibrations of dislike or hatred which we engender in ourselves --and, bingo, they come right back and floor us. All one needs to do is to study and understand the law of cause and effect, and it all becomes plain. Thought has been referred to as a powerful unseen influence, and so it is. There are so few people you can talk with on this subject. Most people ignorant of the subject look at you askance when you mention something about it, and now I understand why the Master spoke in parables. However, I’ve reached the conclusion that it will not be many years before people generally are into the subject up to their ears, for there are thousands of enlightened people who are recognizing that we are on the threshold of great developments dealing with thought power, and the number is rapidly increasing. I wonder why more men in the business world don’t catch hold of it and apply it in their business, but I guess that most of them are like I used to be --they keep their minds closed and no one ever takes the trouble to work on them as my wife did on me. All a person has to do is to believe, earnestly and sincerely, that such a power of mind exists and then conscientiously apply the science. It’s all just as you say: when one starts tapping the subconscious mind, your own or others, the bricks fall into place as though by magic. Does it work? And how!”

Alfred F. Parker, a highly respected general insurance agent in the Pacific Northwest, has given me permission to quote a letter he wrote to me in 1937, in connection with the use of this science. I do not know whether Mr. Parker is even interested in the subject of telepathy, but I do know that he thoroughly believes in the efficacy of belief. His letter speaks for itself:


Recently I had opportunity to put further practice your tap-tap idea, and I thought that you might be interested in knowing the circumstances. I have a small son who is quite naturally the apple of my eye. On December 29, 1936, he picked up some obscure infection and for days he lay desperately ill in the hospital. There was grave doubt that he would live. I was in terrible anguish, but I resolved to meet the situation as best I could. Taking a tip from you, I put his picture on my desk and carried another in my pocket. Every hour of the day I kept looking at them and repeating to myself, “He will recover. He will recover.” At first I felt I was lying to myself, as he hardly seemed to have an even chance. However, I kept it up and gradually found myself believing what I was repeating. At just about that time, thanks to the best medical and nursing attention and some of a friend’s blood transfused into him, the boy actually did begin to recover. He is now at home and regaining his strength fast. It may have been a mere coincidence that the time when empty words began to turn into belief was the time when recovery began, but at least such coincidence is worthy of note.


Some people have had the experience of walking into a darkened room and feeling the presence of someone there, even before a word was uttered. Certainly, it couldn’t have been anything else but the vibrations of some unseen individual that indicated his presence to the other person. Evidence of telepathy? What do you think? It is maintained that if the first person in the room will, at the entry of the second person, think of something entirely foreign to himself and dismiss from his mind all thought of the possibility of his discovery, the second person will not sense his presence. There are thousands of people who have thought of someone, only to hear from them or see them shortly thereafter, and they have given no heed to the phenomena involved. These experiences are usually considered coincidences; but when we properly consider the power of thought, do we not have the real explanation? I cannot help but feel that anyone with an open mind and willing to read and experiment for himself, will sooner or later come to the conclusion that the phenomena of psychokinesis and telepathy are realities, and, as investigators have pointed out, that these powers are latent in everyone, though developed to varying degrees.

Hudson, in his Law of Psychic Phenomena, originally published in 1839, recounted numerous experiments to prove the existence of telepathy, among them being the use of playing cards. One member of a group of people was blind-folded, after which a card was selected by another member upon which the others present were told to concentrate. The blindfolded person was then asked to name it, according the first mental impression he received. The results were further proof of the validity of telepathy.

Here is a simple experiment that may be carried on by only three people. Cut five coloured slips of paper from a magazine, each about half an inch wide and three inches long. The more vivid the colours, such as bright red or electric blue, the better, but be sure to have them quite distinct from one another. One person should then place them fan-wise between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as you would hold a hand of cards. Let either of the other two people touch any one of the coloured slips without being seen by the third person. Immediately after this the first person who holds the slips concentrates his mind on the coloured slip selected, with a view of communicating the information to the mind of the third person who is then requested to indicate which slip was touched by the second person. It should be made clear to the third person that his decision must be immediate and spontaneous, and that his mind should either be blank or thinking of something entirely remote from the experiment. That is, he should not attempt to guess, deliberate, or try consciously to think of the colour of the slip selected, but should act immediately upon the first mental impulse he receives. The number of times the third person will name the coloured slip selected by the second person will astound you. With a little practice, people --who are more or less en rapport, such as husband and wife, the husband holding the slips and wife acting as the third person after some second person has previously indicated a choice --will make an even higher score of success. I have seen this done twenty to thirty times without a single miss. Here again belief must come into play. The holder of the slips must possess not alone the ability to maintain an unwavering concentration, but the strong belief that he can transmit the image of the colour to the mind of the third person.

Let me interpose a word of caution. This experiment, as well as others outlined in this book, should never be attempted in the presence of scoffers or those who profess a disbelief in psychic phenomena, for, with their negative thoughts, they may confuse and obstruct the free flow of your own, especially if their scepticism is aggressive. Always remember that belief is a power operating destructively or constructively, depending upon the end to which it is employed. Recall Dr. Rhine’s discovery of how disbelieving could depress the results in the psychokinesis tests. In addition, note this: Dr. G.R. Schmeidler of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, where extensive experiments in telepathy have been made, has pointed out that subjects who maintain that telepathy is a myth or that the hypothesis is false, invariably show scores far below those of chance. Once more we see in action the magic of believing. Believe it will work, and it will. On the contrary, believe that it will not work, and it will not!

The great French astronomer and scientist, Camille Flammarion, an early exponent of thought-transmission, held somewhat to the theory later advanced by Professors Eddington and Jeans. He claimed that there was mind not only in human and animal life, but in everything --in plants, minerals, even space-- and he declared that mind gleams through every atom.

Early in 1947, Dr. Phillips Thomas, previously referred to, publicly announced that upon retiring he intended to devote his time to research in the field of telepathy. Dr. Thomas said:


“You may think I’m crazy, but I intend to devote my time to research this field when I retire in two years. We can’t conceive scientifically how this [telepathy] could come about, but neither can we explain the apparent success of “mind readers.”

This announcement caused the Portland Oregonian to comment editorially:


The other day in this newspaper there appeared an interview with a successful professional man who spoke of his impending retirement, and added that he should thereafter devote his time to research in the strange field of telepathy and kindred phenomena, generally aggregated as extrasensory perception. Before you exclaim, “Ha, another crackpot!” pray reflect that Dr. Phillips Thomas is an eminent scientist who for many years has been research engineer with the Westinghouse Company. Now he elects to become an explorer of that last dark continent, the human mind, in which, beyond peradventure, more marvels and mysteries are hidden than ever were discovered in Africa.

It must be evident to the veriest sceptic that Dr. Thomas, international authority on electronics, is convinced --by evidence not lightly to be dismissed-- that in our sedulous application to what may be called conventional science we have rather stupidly neglected those challenging phenomena which in times past bore the stigma of sorcery and witchcraft…

The proper and rational attitude toward the seeming phenomena of the mind --if that is what they are-- is one of scientific inquiry which, though rigorously exacting, will not resist conviction when incontestable proof has been obtained. Actually there can be no such thing as a supernatural phenomenon, but only the manifestation of natural law as yet unknown to us. Nor is it without precedent, this decision of a distinguished scientist to attempt penetration of the unknown continent of the mind… Dogmatic disbelief, not infrequently manifested by scientists toward telepathy and similar manifestations, is far from being a scientific attitude.

What profit to mankind is there in the quest to which Dr. Thomas presently shall address himself? This is a question most difficult of reply, for it may be that the inner secrets are, indeed, inviolable. But if of this research comes a better understanding of ourselves, and of the forces which are latent in the mind, it might be that the knowledge would liberate more happiness for the race.


In the last couple of years much has been written about Robert R. Young, the aggressive and energetic chairman of the board of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, and his plans for railroad improvement and development. While I have never seen anything in print stating that Mr. Young utilizes the subconscious, I think that anyone knowing anything about the subject would conclude from these articles about him that Mr. Young relies greatly upon it for his ideas. In an article appearing in Life magazine early in 1947, it was stated that Mr. Young believed in “extrasensory perception” and that he could “become almost mystical about getting off by himself and ‘feeling a truth.’”

Whether it be mind, as we understand the general usage of the word, or whether it be electrical vibrations of some kind, it is the phenomena themselves with which we deal, call them what you wish. The conclusion is that they embrace and pervade everything.

So when we consider the subconscious mind of a single individual as being only an infinitesimal part of the whole and the vibrations therefrom extending to and embracing everything, we get a better understanding of the workings of psychokinesis, telepathy, and kindred phenomena.

In explaining psychokinesis, Dr. Rhine points out that there must be a mental attitude of expectancy, concentration of thought, and enthusiasm for the desired results if a person is to be successful in the experiments. Again we have the magic of believing at work. The subject must have a prior belief that he can influence the fall of the dice.

That belief is the basic factor in the ability to demonstrate psychokinesis (control of mind over matter) and telepathy was more recently confirmed in experiments at Duke University as reported in the New York Herald Tribune by its science editor, John J. O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill declared that these experiments proved that it was possible to “kid” a person out of his power to demonstrate psychokinesis and telepathy.

He told of how a young woman, by distracting the attention of one of the young men attempting to control the fall of the dice, and by scoffing at his professed ability to demonstrate his power of mind to direct matter, succeeded in injecting such a strong negative factor that she weakened his belief in himself and ruined his score for the day. Mr. O’Neill made an interesting speculation about this when he went on to say: “The converse of this experiment, still to be made, in which a test would be made of the possibilities for improving the score by a confidence-inspiring ‘pep’ talk offers interesting possibilities.”

At this writing, the outcome of such an experiment is not known, but in view of the thousands of experiments previously made at Duke and other universities, it is apparent that scores improve when the experimenters believe and are confident of the results. Also, nothing is more logical than that “pep” talks should be helpful to those who lack confidence or belief, and thus they should improve their scores.

If golf shots can be influenced by mental attitudes or proper visualization, and the “galloping ivories” turn up at the mental command of the players, who is there now to gainsay that events are not influenced by thought and that before us is a field that is gradually yielding to modern man some of the secrets of the ancient mysteries? Do not the experiments at Duke University prove that the so-called luck factor is in reality an influence brought about by powerful thought vibrations, rather than coincidence or chance? Writers, long before the experiments at Duke, declared that the luck factor came about from a determined mind --a combination of visualizing, concentrated thought, willing, and believing. Think about this in connection with yourself and the goals you have set for yourself, for in it is the primary secret of this science.

Anyone who has associated with the garden variety of parlour gambler knows that the word “hot” is often applied to card players or “crap shooters” when they have a winning streak. When the “hot” period wears off, the gamblers either quit the games or begin to lose. What is this “hot” period? Nothing more than an all-knowing feeling, a deep-rooted belief that they can win. Even in gambling the magic of believing plays a major role.

Of course, this book is not written for professional gamblers but for sincere men and women who wish to succeed in life. The material referring to the games of chance is included only to provide further evidence that with concentrated thought, expectancy, and steadfast belief, we actually set in motion vibratory forces that bring about material manifestations.

As stated previously, charms, amulets, discs, talismans, etc., have no power in themselves, but those who firmly believe in them unquestionably tend to develop the kind of force or power now known as psychokinetic. I have tried to make plain how this power through belief can be developed and to take you up the ladder as far as you wish to go. It is necessary, though, to point out that it is easy to lose one’s belief or faith. Thousands have risen to great heights of success, only to stumble, roll, or fall to undreamed-of depths. Others, seeking health, have appeared to be more or less miraculously cured, only to find that in later years or even months there is a recurrence of their ailments. There are many weakening factors and influences --all suggestive in nature-- which we, in unguarded moments, allow to slip into our subconscious minds, and which, once there, begin their destructive work and undo all the good accomplished by our constructive forces. So step out in front, head toward the sun. Keep facing it and the dark shadows will not cross your path.

The writer knows that it is difficult for the average person who knows nothing of this subject to accept the idea that all is within; but surely the most materialistic person must realize that as far as he himself is concerned, nothing exists on the outside plane unless he has knowledge of it or unless it becomes fixed in his consciousness. It is the image created in his mind that gives reality to the world outside of him.

Happiness, sought by many and found by few, therefore is a matter entirely within ourselves; our environment and the everyday happenings of life have absolutely no effect on our happiness except as we permit mental images of the outside to enter our consciousness. Happiness is wholly independent of position, wealth, or material possessions. It is a state of mind which we ourselves have the power to control --and that control lies with our thinking.

“Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power,” said the great philosopher, Marcus Aurelius Antonius. “Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.”

A modern version of this is found in the statement of the seventy-eight-year-old man previously quoted, who said:

“Distress ensues only when developed by conscious mental attitudes. Disappointments, suppressions, melancholy, depressions, etc. --all are emotional excitations or suggestions from a mode of thinking those things. If these emotional tendencies are resisted and will-power is asserted to prevent such influences reaching our consciousness, the foundation of the thought disappears and consequently the distress vanishes. It will be noted that this weakness to resist repressing thoughts and imaginations arising from emotional reflex develops from failure of self-control and command of the situation as thought presents it. Stop thinking! Refuse to think that idea or way. Assert yourself to be the creator and boss of your own habits of thought --in fact, become unconquerable. No one ever defeated a resolute will. Even death stands still before such a will.”

Emerson said: “What is the hardest task in the world? To think.” Obviously this is so, when one considers that most of us are victims of mass thinking and feed upon suggestions from others. We all know that the law of cause and effect is inviolable, yet how many of us ever pause to consider its workings? The entire course of a man’s life has many times been changed by a single thought which, coming to him in a flash, became a mighty power that altered the whole current of human events. History is replete with the stories of strong-minded, resolutely willed individuals, who, steadfastly holding to their inner convictions, have been able to inspire their fellow-man, and in the face of tremendous and determined opposition have literally created out of nothing great businesses, huge empires, and new worlds. They had no monopoly of thought-power. You and every man and woman have it. All you have to do is to use it. You will then become the person you envisage in your imagination, for with the working of the law of cause and effect, you bring into your life the new elements which your most dominant thoughts create within and attract from without.

Positive creative thought leads to action and ultimate realization, but the real power, much more than action itself, is the thought. Remember always: “Whatever man can conceive mentally, he can bring into materialization.” Health, wealth, and happiness must follow if the proper mental pictures are created and constantly maintained, for the law of cause and effect is immutable.

“Know Thyself.” Know your power. Read and reread this book until it becomes a part of your daily life. Faithfully use the cards and the mirror technique and you will get results far beyond your fondest expectations. Just believe that there is genuine creative magic in believing --and magic there will be, for belief will supply the power which will enable you to succeed in everything you undertake. Back your belief with a resolute will and you become unconquerable --a master of men among men --yourself

The Magic of Believing, Chapter 8

Chapter 8
Women and the Science of Belief


As ideas for this book occurred to me, I frequently thought of the many famous women who had used the power of belief, and once in discussion with Ben Hur Lampman, nationally known author and naturalist, he suggested that I specifically cover its use by women, saying:

“Many women, perhaps, may not realize that they can use your science just as advantageously as men, and you should be specific in your message to them. Once they understand and apply what you give, they’ll find themselves in a position figuratively to turn the world upside down. If there were some way for women of all nationalities to unite and use this science, there would be no future wars.

“Women are supreme egotists --in the sense that when they get the idea they can do something, and that idea becomes thoroughly imbedded in their consciousness, they will stop at nothing to achieve their purpose. You know the old saying, “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” That is true, and once women understand their power --and you can gie them the clue-- nothing will stop them. If they wish, they may actually run this old world. ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,’ and once they are aroused and understand what they can accomplish there will be no stopping them. Women are more versatile, more adaptable. Even though Napoleon declared that he made circumstances, most men are its victims, while women by their very nature of thinking make circumstances serve them.”

Then when I read an article by a woman complaining that American women “don’t get a break,” it dawned on me that if women of today “don’t get a break,” it is the fault of no one but themselves. The only thing they have to do is to follow the examples of their sisters who have preceded them and have made their own “breaks.”

Therefore, I want to emphasize the importance of the adoption of this science by women for their own special needs, and in the following pages I shall give examples of women in the past and present who have used it with great effectiveness. Let us realize that when woman awakens, she is going to play a more vital part than ever in the affairs of the world.

As a matter of fact, even today American women, although they may not be aware of it, are potentially in a position to have things pretty much their own way, for they actually control the wealth of this country!

During the war, we had women welders, women riveters, the Wacs, Waves, and Spars, and they all had a taste of actually performing tasks heretofore handled only by men. To thousands of single girls and housewives who had never had an opportunity to do anything outside the home, those experiences should have pointed out their own potential opportunities for taking a more active part in the world of this world.

In our own country today there are thousands of outstanding women --from great educators to bankers and industrialists, to say nothing of the numerous writers, editors, and other professional women. Many of the greatest reforms in America have been the ideas of women; if the facts could be assembled, it could easily be proven that not only did the ideas for these great reforms originate with women, but the women were the driving force behind the ideas. Some male readers may resent these statements, but there is no escaping the facts.

As a former newspaper man, naturally I had to follow the feminist movement, and for nearly forty years I have seen and felt the power of outstanding women.

When it was first suggested that I emphasize the use of this science for women, I immediately thought of Mrs. R.E. Bondurant, who has been active in women’s work, charities, the inauguration of child labour laws, the building of homes and hospitals for delinquent girls, numerous legislative measures to further the interest of women and children, and public movements to aid the blind and other handicapped people. Her nationally known record of nearly forty years is an outstanding one, and today at seventy-one, even though perhaps a partial cripple for the rest of her life, she is just as enthusiastic as ever and seeking new worlds to conquer.

Of late years, Mrs. Bondurant has been an ardent worker in the cause of the Chin-Uppers, an organization consisting of blind, crippled, and otherwise partly disabled men and women. Now she is planning to open a store where articles made by these people may be sold. In this she has the co-operation of a number of business men. Mrs. Bondurant told me that if necessary she was going to pay the rent out of her own pocket, but that all the profit would go to the Chin-Uppers. I spent a Sunday afternoon with her in her sitting-room among her books and flowers. A pair of crutches stood in a corner near the door. (For months Mrs. Bondurant has had to use them, but even at her advanced age she gets around on trolley cars, buses, and in and out of automobiles without help.) Although today she uses a cane when she leaves her home, in my presence she moved around the room without limping. We discussed at length this matter of believing. Mrs. Bondurant said:


There is no question about it, and I can speak from a pretty full life of seventy-one years, during which time I not only raised a family but have taken part in the various movements and activities with which you have long been familiar. There is certainly something, call it a power, God, or anything you wish, which is always there to sustain us in time of need. I have never seen it fail. We’ve just got to believe and when I look back through the years and recall the fine women with whom I was associated when we were working for legislation to bring about better working conditions for women and children, I realized that it was the “indomitable spirit” of these women, who thoroughly believed in the righteousness of the cause, that made the legislation possible and effective.

I am astounded at the fact that the average woman doesn’t realize her tremendous power. I don’t call it stupidity because I would never admit that women are stupid, but rather they lack interest. I am amazed, in talking to women’s groups, to realize that many of them never knew that these great reform movements to help them and their children were initiated by women, and it is my opinion that once women become aware of their strength and power, they can do more to bring about lasting peace and make this world a better place in which to live than all the famous male warriors and would-be peacemakers. All the great forward movements, as a matter of fact, I might say, all the great things in this world, have been done by men and women who were dreamers and believers in their dreams coming true. They could not have accomplished things otherwise. It’s like the old story about climbing to the top of the mountain in search of that indefinable something. It makes no difference from which side the approach is made, those who steadfastly climb reach the top, and so it is with this matter of believing. It isn’t so much what the real or imaginary object of our belief may be, it’s the belief and following through that makes the thing possible.

I don’t want to appear critical, but it has been my observation that people don’t have sufficient action or driving force behind their beliefs. For example, some women’s organizations will pass resolutions in favour of or against this and that, and think that settles the matter. The resolutions are no good unless the sentiments expressed are actually brought to the attention of the powers that be.

I don’t know of any greater thing in life than the satisfaction that comes through serving. During the many years I spent in sponsoring the various causes and getting legislation adopted, I never received a penny in pay or to cover my expenses. While it may sound like Pollyanna business to many people, bread tossed upon the waters does come back. In illustration, I might tell you that during the depression my husband lost $80,000. He was sick in bed at home and I would go to the office daily to get the mail and check the routine. Sometimes it looked as if we would not have sufficient money to meet imperative needs, but just about when we had to meet the obligations, checks would appear in the mail from people to whom Mr. Bondurant had lent money or from long-overdue accounts. We had some pretty hard times those days, but help always came through just in time and I never lost my belief.


As I watched and listened to Mrs. Bondurant, I realized that I was in the presence of no ordinary woman, but rather of a human dynamo who had the spirit and determination to get tings done through her great belief. When I recalled that she had been credited with having had more laws in the interest of women and children passed than any other woman or organization in the state, I realized what it would mean to the world if all women with her vision and driving force undertook to use this science.

In the news not so long ago were found the stories a few weeks apart of the passing of two great women, one of whom was Grace Moore, she with the beautiful singing voice, and the other, that fiery British woman leader, Miss Ellen Wilkinson. Both women knew early in life what they wanted.

In common with a great many men and women who have reached great heights, Grace Moore won her success in the face of difficulties that would have stopped even some of the strongest men. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a great opera singer. The little girl went out to win the hearts of people everywhere. Even as a penniless runaway in New York, where often she had to sing for her supper in small Greenwich Village cafes, Grace Moore never lost her courage. She made her debut at seventeen and was close to the zenith of her career at forty-five. Again and again when it appeared that she was hopelessly defeated, she, with unquenchable courage, emerged victorious. When she lost her voice and was told by a throat specialist she would never sing again, she put up a tremendous battle, and emerged from a year of retirement and rest, singing more beautifully than ever before. Her glorious voice brought her great fame, and up to the time of her unfortunate death in the airplane crash at Copenhagen early in 1947, Grace Moore continued to believe in her dreams.

She was one of the few stars who believed in helping other talented people to achieve their objectives and her timely aid assisted many unknown aspiring singers. When one of her protegees, who had achieved success became temperamental about her part in a performance, it is said that Miss Moore told her that a famous singer had once advised her that to great artists there was no such thing as a small part and to small artists there were no big parts.

Ellen Wilkinson, who was the British Minister of Education, was a tiny, red-haired woman who drove her way upward through her persistence. Less than five feet tall, she was never cowed by the biggest of the British leaders. It is said that she made a career of annoyance, first as a school teacher, then as a suffragist, a novelist, newspaper writer, and finally cabinet minister. She was pleased when someone said of her that no women in the whole of Britain had been more active, more persistent, or more annoying. Probably her greatest contribution in the interest of the people was her campaign to raise the age of leaving of leaving school from fourteen to fifteen. She won this fight in the face of stiff opposition of fellow ministers and the great demand for youths in British industry.

From the time of Cleopatra to the present, there have been thousands of women who, relying on their inmost convictions, have had a direct hand in shaping the lives of millions. It has been said that behind every great ruler was a women. This may not be historically correct, but certain we have enough evidence to know that women have had very much of a guiding hand in history-making. The names of several women who achieved success through their beliefs come to mind.

One was Empress Eugenie who married Napoleon the Third. When a small child she had fallen against a bannister and bruised her body. Her gypsy nurse told her not to cry, that she would be a queen and live to be a hundred. She believed in gypsies and her fortune materialized nearly as prophesized. She became Empress Eugenie and lived until she was ninety-four, just six years less than the age fixed by her gypsy nurse.

Madame Marie Curie, the famous co-discoverer of radium, was told when a child in Warsaw by an old gypsy woman that she would be famous. The story is that Marja Slodowska, later to be known as Madame Curie, was running to join a group of playmates when the old gypsy woman stopped her, demanding that the girl show her hand. The other children did not want Marja to listen to the gypsy, but the gypsy woman held on to the little hand, excitedly commenting on the remarkable lines in her palm and telling the child she would be famous. As we all know, Madame Curie became one of the most famous women of modern times.

The desire to discover what lay behind that strange phenomenon all around us known as radioactivity, literally drove Professor Pierre Curie and Marie, his wife, to the epochal discovery of radium. Whether or not the words of the old gypsy fortune-teller inspired Madame Curie and influenced her career, perhaps history will never know. But as one reads about her life, that conclusion would appear to be an obvious one, for early in her girlhood Madame Curie made up her mind to become a scientist. When she was refused permission to study science at the University of Cracow (the secretary told her that women should not concern themselves with science, and suggested that she enter cookery classes), she went to Paris and entered the Sorbonne, supporting herself by teaching and working in the laboratories. It was there she met Pierre Curie and, once embarked with him on the task of tracking down at least one source of radioactivity, nothing stopped her. She had two daughters, a household to manage, s well as the problem of combating ill health, but she refused to give up her laboratory work even when her husband begged her to. Few women have been so greatly honoured as Madame Curie, the woman who was told by an old gypsy that some day she would be famous. Madame Curie certainly made those childhood prophecies come true.

An amazing story, perhaps one of the strangest on record and one proving further that there is great power in believing, is found in that of Opal Whitely. This astounding historical case clearly shows that, as pointed out by William James, belief creates its verification in fact; it affords unmistakable proof that often events are influenced by our very great desires.

This is the story of a girl who, according to those who knew her in her childhood, was the daughter of an American family named Whiteley, the head of which was an Oregon logger. She, however, believed herself to be the daughter of Henri d’Orleans, heir to the Bourbon claim to the Crown of France. She was credited with having written a diary supposed to have been compiled when she was six or seven years of age, which told about her “angel” father and “angel” mother of royal blood; this was printed in 1920 under the auspices of the Atlantic Monthly. It created a sensation and precipitated a big literary controversy. Drawn into the controversy were psychologists, scientists, astrologers, psychics, editors, clergymen, literary critics, and almost every person who had at any time known Opal.

In Alfred Powers’ History of Oregon Literature, there is a chapter by Elbert Bede, in which Mr. Bede says: “I haven’t the least doubt that a large part of Opal’s diary is a hoax and a large part plagiarism, and I have presented facts that show the foster parentage claim impossible.

The diary was printed when Opal was about twenty-two years of age, and even though Opal Whiteley may not have been born of Indian royalty, she was actually accepted as such in later years.

In 1933, some thirteen years after her diary had been printed, the newspapers carried a story about an American woman travelling in India. While she was in the state of Udaipur, she had a remarkable experience. She was sitting in her carriage, when she was astounded to see another carriage led by a half troop of cavalry coming toward her. In the other carriage was Opal Whiteley, the girl from the logging camp of Oregon, and later investigators disclosed that Opal Whiteley was actually residing in the household of the Maharaja of Udaipur, the ruling Indian prince. The same newspaper stories told how Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly when her diary was printed, verified the story that the girl was actually residing in the royal household. They further related that Mr. Sedgwick had received from the secretaries of two maharajas’ courts substantiation of this story, and in his book, The Happy Profession, Mr. Sedgwick has a chapter devoted to this strange tale.

I have had several talks with Mr. Bede, who for many years was a well-known Oregon newspaper man, and is now editor of the Oregon Mason, regarding the remarkable way in which Opal moulded her destiny, and Mr. Bede said to me: “It was uncanny, almost supernatural, the manner in which circumstances suited themselves to her plans.”

Mr. Bede, like most people who knew the girl in her childhood, is absolutely convinced that Opal was born of American parents, the Whiteleys. He told me that he had known her quite well and that she had frequently been in his home in Cottage Grove. “My first knowledge of Opal came when I was reporting a Junior Christian Endeavour convention in Cottage Grove, and I was informed that a seventeen-year-old girl from a near-by logging camp had been elected president. My first impression of Opal was that of a vibrant, fluttery, exotic, whimsical person, informed strangely beyond her years, eager, deeply earnest, and seriously religious. She later became to me an inexplicable enigma.

“She was always planning, always planning well in advance anything she would undertake. It was most amazing how, in preparation of a nature book, The Fairyland Around Us, which she was writing, she could solicit contributions from such persons as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and actually got money from some of them. A leaflet advertising the book carried expressions of wondering admiration from such persons as Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, Theodore Roosevelt, Nicholas Murray Butler, Gene Stratton Porter, and others of equal prominence.”

I was struck by this paragraph in Mr. Bede’s story: “With all these plans so well laid so long before the jaunt of Opal to Massachusetts’ center of culture, I have often wondered what plans she had made to give the diary to the publishers. And then how Ellergy Sedgwick should accidentally ask for the diary.

As I studied these words, I wondered if it was really an accident that Mr. Sedgwick should ask for the diary and if this strange girl had not “telepathically” given the thought to Mr. Sedgwick. I did not discuss this point with Mr. Bede, but if Opal Whitely knew how to mentally transmit her thoughts to others in advance, then it explains how Mr. Sedgwick happened to ask if she had kept a diary.

For years I have carried the conviction that people close to nature and those intimately associated with both wild and domesticated animals have an understanding or an insight that enables them to see far beyond the horizons of most ordinary folks who live in the cities and never get nearer to a cow than a milk bottle. I have always believed that to these people nature reveals many of her secrets which are withheld from those who live in penthouses in our modern cities. Whether or not telepathy, or the ability to transmit our thoughts silently so that others catch them, is one of the secrets which nature reveals to those close to her, is something I cannot answer, although it is common knowledge that jungle dwellers and savages in all quarters of the world know the secret of telepathy and have used it for centuries. There are numerous books on telepathy among primitives; as a famous editor once said to me, “To accept the idea that these natives don’t use it would put us in the class of the uninformed.”

Now let’s review what Mr. Bede had to say about Opal and her closeness to nature.

“A volume would hardly suffice to summarize the personality of the nature-tutored child, who had at the age of six, so her diary would have us believe, confided her most intimate secrets to Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael (a fir tree), and whose associates instead of people were Lars Porsena of Clusium (a crow), Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus (a most dear wood rat), Brave Horatius (a shepherd dog), Peter Paul Rubens (a pet pig), and other characters with equally classical appellations.

“In her adolescent years, Opal gathered geological specimens, and bugs and worms by the thousands, by the barrel. She garnered chrysalises by the bucketful and watched how God brought life to his fairies of the great outdoors. Somewhere, somehow, she gained a prodigious amount of knowledge about these things. Without having completed a high school course, this little maid of mystery presented herself at the University of Oregon, where entrance requirements were waived because of her knowledge of geology, astronomy, and biology.”

According to Mr. Bede and others who knew Opal as a girl, no one was ever heard to mention anything that would cause others to believe that she was an adopted daughter of the Whiteleys, and Mr. Bede says it was only with the publication of the diary by the Atlantic Monthly that relatives and friends received the first intimation that Opal claimed foster-parentage.

I asked Mr. Bede what Mr. Whitely (Opal’s real or foster father) thought about her claim to royal blood and he told me that the father thought “his daugher” had been caught in the meshes of some wily promoters.

Shortly after her diary was printed, Opal Whitely left the United States very secretly, travelling with a confidential document --not an ordinary passport-- signed by our Secretary of State and Sir Edward Grey of England of the British Foreign Office. Just how she was able to do this is amazing to Mr. Bede and others who knew the girl in her childhood; but obviously, if she was the bona fide daughter of American parents and not of Indian royal blood, we certainly have here evidence of the workings of the strange powers of the human mind, of which, I repeat, we know little.

At this writing, Opal Whiteley is reported to be living in England. But when Mr. Bede wrote his article a number of years ago he said: “When last definitely heard of, she had been accepted as a princess of India, through an alleged marriage of Henri d’Orleans, the “angel’ father o the diary.” I asked him to explain how Opal had been accepted as a princess of India, if she was not in fact born one, and he said he couldn’t. Then I asked him if he thought her constant thinking so, her very deep belief, had anything to do with it.

He replied: “Frankly, I do not know. It may be, for we haven’t probed to the depths of the mind and don’t know the extent of its powers.”

Reading Mr. Sedgwick’s own story of this strange girl, it would appear that he is also convinced that Opal’s real parents were the Whiteleys and that her belief that she had been born of royal blood was pure fantasy. It may have been fantasy, but she was accepted by royalty, because Opal obviously knew a lot of secrets unknown to the average person. Here in his own words is Mr. Sedgwick’s theory of how this nature child from Oregon made her vision come true.


I have a theory and hold to it. Among an infinitude of letters came one written by an American of French parentage, whose father, so he told me, was a sergeant in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Of this sergeant’s regiment, the colonel or perhaps the general of his division was Prince Henri of Bourbon, and toward the close of his life the prince, travelling across America, stopped in Oregon to have a chat with his old soldier. Whether or not this is fact, I cannot say, but my correspondent had no doubt of it since, chief among his childhood memories, was the arrival of the prince at the cottage door of his father. “I sat on his knee,” he told me, and I believed him.

Now, according to my theory, the visit of a prince of the blood to an Oregon hamlet was an event. The truth and the legend of it spread through the lumber camps and what is more likely than that such a tale captivated the mind of a lonely and imaginative child and that her daydreams centered about it. At the heart of every little girl, Cinderella sits enthroned, and with Opal, the legend grew to be true, and the truth magnified with the years, and finally permeated her entire mind, her fancy, and her life.

Such is my theory of Opal’s childhood, but in after years the story becomes an attested record of fact and yet, to my thinking, loses nothing of its wonder thereby. Opal, who had come to know many notable people in New York and Washington, and who had been petted and patronized by them, grew sick of it all. She went to England, always making friends, took up the faith of her “father,” and established herself in a Catholic community at Oxford. Then one day I had startling news of her. A friend of my youth, Mrs. Rosina Emmet Sherwood, mother of a playwright long since grown famous, wrote me asking whether it was possible to believe a correspondence of hers who stated that with her own eyes she had seen Opal sitting like the princess in the story in an open barouche driving in state down the streets of Allahabad, royal outriders clearing the way for H.R.H. Mlle. Francoise de Bourbon! The story was credible for it was true. I verified it beyond conjecture. First I wrote to Opal, who sent me a collection of photographs of her Indian tour. There she was perched in a howdah on an elephant’s back, ready for a tiger hunt. (Henri de Bourbon, be it noted, was famous for his bag of thirty-six tigers, and I laughed as I recalled Opal chanting French verses in honour of his victory), and there she stood the center many another turbaned group. Photographs, as I have remarked frequently in the narrative, can be liars and many of them stem from Hollywood which hardly contradicts the term. I was not satisfied, and since Opal’s narrative identified two of the greatest maharajas who had been her hosts, I wrote to both their courts. In due time two letters returned, emblazoned with regal crests, each informing me the writer’s royal master bade the secretary reply that it had been his high privilege to entertain H.R.H. Mlle. Francoise de Bourbon, and that a series of fetes had been given to do her honour. And the wonder of all this had not subsided when an unsolicited letter arrived from a lieutenant colonel of His Majesty’s forces occupied at the moment with maneuvers at Aldershot, informing the editor with some asperity that the colonel himself had been honoured by an order to attend Her Royal Highness at an official garden party given for her entertainment, and further he begged to ask who it was that had questioned the authenticity of the lady who had graced the occasion.

“I close this account on a melancholy note. In the journal which Opal sent to accompany her photographs, no vestige remained of the contagious fascination of an earlier day. She described things as they are. The dew of the morning had vanished. The hard sunlight of middle age beat down upon a world that everybody sees only too clearly. The fairy kingdom was not the playground of other children. Its gates were closed, and Opal stood without. But while she was still the Opal of the Journal of an Understanding Heart, she had had her vision, and the vision was true. There is no truth more certain than that which makes bright the heart of childhood.” *

*From The Happy Profession by Ellergy Sedgwick. Copyright, 1946. Reprinted by courtesy of Little, Brown & Company and the Atlantic Monthly Press.


Some readers may question this weird story, but the facts are as related and obviously, as Mr. Sedgwick states, “The child who wrote Opal’s diary believed in it. She knew it for her own.”

No greater verification of the fact that there is genuine magic in believing can be offered that this strange story of Opal Whiteley, who believed she was born a princess of India and later was accepted as one.

From early Biblical times to the present, there have been prophets, oracles, soothsayers, astrologers, and fortune-tellers. As a newspaper man (and I had the reputation of being a hard-boiled one), I have investigated a number of these so-called seers and while some were obviously charlatans of the first water, there were others who mystified me. Certainly there are many of these fortune-tellers who believe in their ability to foretell the future. Materialists will say that that is impossible. For myself, having spent years in research work, I am not so positive, for actually some of the great prophecies of the past have certainly been fulfilled.

Even though there are many who deride the ability of astrologers, fortune-tellers, and the like, there are millions of people in this world, including at the present day some of our greatest financiers, statesmen, and even, according to reports in recent years, members of our own cabinet, actors and actresses, and people in all walks of life, who believe in prophecies. No matter what my views are about the ability of anyone to foretell the future, I have long held the thought that it wasn’t so much what the prophets foretold as it was the reliance of the subjects upon what the astrologer or soothsayer predicted for them that brought certain things to pass. In other words, a suggestion in the form of a prophecy was planted by the seer in the mind of the subconscious mind of the individual, which immediately went to work to make it come true. It was the power of suggestion working in the individual to make the prophecy a reality that finally produced the outcome. I believe that is what happened in the cases which I have cited.

I think of that great trouper, Marie Dressler, who probably evoked more laughter from a greater number of people than any other actress of modern times. Those who saw her in Tillie’s Nightmare, Tugboat Annie, and various stage and screen appearances, will never forget that great personality; those of my readers familiar with her story know that Marie Dressler had a very hard time, suffering many privations before she became the great screen star known to millions. Whether true or not, I have read and heard that it was the advice and prediction of astrologers that landed Marie Dressler at the top.

In this connection, I relate the story of a strange experience I had shortly before Miss Dressler’s death. In explanation let me say that I firmly believe that when people get on a certain plane of thinking or are attuned with their subconscious minds, they automatically become en rapport with on another.

Shortly after I had written my little book, T.N.T.--It Rocks the Earth, it hit me in a flash that all great men and women had been using what I had outlined, and I set out to verify this by writing numerous outstanding men and women for their views and comments.

Marie Dressler, probably because I was her ardent admirer, was one of the first women selected. I heard her on the radio one night and knew instantly that she had a grip on “that something” which many people seek and seldom find, and I “knew” that if I wrote Miss Dressler, I would get a reply. My secretary, when I dictated the letter, volunteered the statement that Marie Dressler would never acknowledge receipt of it or my book. We even made a small wager, as I did later with several others. (It is common knowledge that very few great screen stars personally acknowledge letters from unknowns and it was upon this premise that those who wagered against me based their judgment.)

While I felt that Miss Dressler would immediately respond, I was astounded at her answer and comment, and especially at the sight of her enclosure, a check for twenty copies of my brochure. In her letter she said:

“Thank you so much. Oh! What a book, if used rightly. As I read through it and look back, which I very seldom do, and check up on my own life --it looks as though I had been going down the right path.”

Naturally, now that this great woman has left us, her letter is among my cherished possessions, because I never had personal correspondence with a woman who had put so much of her great heart and soul into her work to cheer up humanity and yet who had had more personal trouble or who had put up a greater fight to reach the pinnacle of success.

Incidentally, there are two fine thoughts in her letter.

First, it is futile to dwell on or think about the past. It is apparent Miss Dressler discovered this a number of years before her death, realizing that she couldn’t give full play to thoughts of future accomplishments if she cluttered up her mind with thoughts of the past.

Second, as she indicated in ordering extra copies of my brochure, she was always trying to help people, which may be a forlorn gesture in many instances; but she must have realized that the extending of such help did bring its own reward, even though it might have meant only personal satisfaction in knowing that a helping hand had been extended.

The name of Helen Keller is known to millions. This famous woman was a marvel to me. As the world knows, she was deprived of her sight, hearing, and speech when she was twenty months old, and yet she became an inspiration, through her talks and her many articles and books, to thousands who were less handicapped than she. The story of her life is fascinating, because when Helen Keller, through stupendous effort, learned to speak, she gave to the world a new vision of what handicapped people could do when once they believed in their ability to achieve. It is interesting to know that Helen Keller was a confirmed Swedenborgian. As many readers may know, Swedenborg lived in the early days of the eighteenth century and was perhaps one of the world’s greatest mystics. He was a very unusual man, as he, too, could foresee the future, having anticipated the submarine, the machine gun, flying machines, and the horseless carriage that would go twenty miles an hour.

I don’t know whether Swedenborg could be called a spiritualist, as we know the meaning of the word today, but he certainly had something far beyond the ken of the average person. He believed greatly in the power of the mind and had trances, visions, and strange dreams, which must have come from his subconscious mind.

Another outstanding woman of our time, who has been the subject of much controversy and whose name is known to millions because a motion picture depicting her life has been shown throughout the world, is Sister Elizabeth Kenny, who brought from Australia in 1940 an idea for treating polio victims. As a nurse in Australia, she discovered what is known as the “hot pack system,” a method of applying hot-water packs to the afflicted portions of the polio victim’s body. Despite the fact that she was ridiculed by many people professional and unprofessional, Sister Kenny, with her vision, persistently through what may even be said to be forceful methods, brought herself and her principles of treatment to the attention of the American public, and through her efforts established the Sister Kenny Institute at Minneapolis.

One has only to study the photograph of Sister Kenny’s face to see in her rugged features the reflection of a powerful mind, which, once in action and aided by a ready tongue, would ultimately help her force her way to victory. In her native land she was fought at every turn, and it was only through the woman’s sheer persistence that the medical profession of America finally gave her recognition. Few women of our day have been the subject of more controversy.

From what one reads and hears about Sister Kenny, she is convinced to the nth degree that her methods are right and practicable, and even though the whole world might attempt to discredit her, she could go marching bravely on. Here is an example of a woman with an idea, a singleness of purpose, and the utmost belief in the efficacy of her methods of treatment who has brought new hope for many polio sufferers throughout the world.

Now we come to a story which shows how the dynamic power in some women continues into their late years. The story concerns Captain Mary Converse, whose exploits were given in newspaper articles early in 1947. Mrs. Converse at seventy-five, a veteran of nearly 34,000 seafaring miles, wants to go to sea again. Born in Boston, she learned seafaring from her late husband, Harry E. Converse, owner of a steam yacht. As a junior navigator, she sailed the seven seas, obtained her second pilot’s license in 1935, and her captain’s license in 1940. Approximately 2,600 navy officers learned navigation from Mrs. Converse. She taught them in the dining room of her Denver home. Captain Mary Converse sails again!

While today a Who’s Who of American women lists 10,222 biographical sketches selected from some 33,000 suggested names of outstanding women in business and the professions, including a number who are executives making more than $50,000 a year, our history recognizes no greater business woman than Lydia E. Pinkham. Her name may not be so well known to the women of today as to those of fifty years ago, but the business which she established and its product, Lydia Pinkham’s vegetable compound, still go merrily on. From a single idea, she built a huge business, which brought a return of millions and established a career the likes of which, for woman, the world has perhaps never known.

Being a man, I know nothing about the efficacy of Mrs. Pinkham’s vegetable compound, but I can remember as a boy often seeing a bottle of it in the family medicine chest. It was Mrs. Pinkham and her business associates who really modernized advertising, for she was one of the greatest of all advertisers. Ideas used in many advertisements today were originally voiced by Mrs. Pinkham. She tied in with much of her advertising a sort of homely philosophy embodying emotional appeals which seemed to have a way of penetrating to the hearts of her fellow-women and which resulted in not only millions of dollars in sales of her vegetable compound but also brought for more than half a century tons of enthusiastic testimonials to the laboratory at Lynn, Massachusetts.

Once more, in this extremely remarkable woman, is demonstrated what belief in personal achievement can and does accomplish. During Lydia Pinkham’s early life, many people were interested in the manufacture of home remedies, and she, too, became interested in the idea. She started making her compound in her kitchen and for some time gave the mixture away to ailing women neighbours, only to awaken later to the fact that it could be sold. She then began promoting it. Like most people who start with an idea, she had many discouragements --lack of finances, the opposition of others, and manufacturing and sales difficulties. But nothing daunted this New England woman, for her tremendous driving force and enthusiasm reached and engulfed every member of her family. Especially was this true after her business really got going.

No book documenting the great power of believing would be complete without mention of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, also a New England woman, who built up that huge religious organization known as Christian Science. As almost everyone knows, Mrs. Eddy was faced with discouragement, strife, and the bitterest ridicule. But after she had caught the flash which gave to the world her Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she began to develop powerful leadership, a tremendous and unshaken belief in her teachings, and a dynamic personality which has left its imprint upon millions of people throughout the world. It has been said that few writings have done so much to influence the sciences of medicine and theology as hers. Christian Science is another practical demonstration of the power of believing.

The world will always be indebted to Florence Nightingale, who was greatly instrumental in saving the lives of thousands, and brought the nursing profession to the high standard now recognized by the entire world. Here again is an example of a woman who knew early in life what she wanted and who set out to realize her ambition. She had been born with a passion to nurse the wounded and the sick; at the time she undertook her great work, nursing was not even recognized as a profession.

She came from one of the richest families in England, but that meant nothing to this great woman. She started in by scrubbing the corridor floor at the Fliedner Nursing School in Germany but she soon showed that she could not only scrub floors, but bind wounds, and with her encouraging talk, revive hopes. She, too, was fought at every turn, but being inspired with the vision of the destiny which she thought was hers, obstacles meant nothing to her. She hated bigots, believing that all should be cared for, irrespective of faith, colour, or creed, and she had a quick tongue when aroused.

During the Crimean War, the males of the British War Office scoffed, saying that Florence Nightingale’s work would only result in failure. Reluctantly they let the “madcap” have her own way. She organized, at her own expense, a private expedition of nurses and took them to Scutari, and even though the officers in charge of the hospital there wanted no woman to interfere with their work, interfere she did. Under the leadership of this originator of modern nursing, the women took over the handling of the hospital. Throughout her stay in the Crimea, her iron will constantly fought against a stone wall of opposition. Something had to give way, and this time it was the stone wall.

Some of the most powerful statesmen of Great Britain ridiculed this astonishing woman’s work and did everything possible to stop her in her reforms; but her letters, “filled with dynamite,” awakened her countrymen until she was adored everywhere. The story is told that when at the age of eighty-two, she became sick, her nurse tucked her into bed, only to have Florence Nightingale get out of her own bed and tuck in her nurse. At the age of ninety, just before she died, a friend asked her if she knew where she was and she replied, “I am watching at the altar of murdered men and I shall be fighting their cause.”

When we think of martyrs, most people have in mind men who have died or been crucified or jailed for espousing causes in which they believed. Let us always remember there are many outstanding women of history who have suffered martyrdom as much as men, from Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake to women of modern times who fought and were jailed because of their efforts in further women’s rights.

The name of Carrie Nation is probably becoming din to the younger generation and perhaps is fading in the memory of many of the older generation. But during the years around the turn of the century, Carrie Nation was one of the greatest of women martyrs. Like many people imbued with an idea, Carrie Nation was convinced that she was “divinely” appointed to destroy the saloons and she set out to end the illegal sale of liquor in her own state of Kansas. Aided by some of her followers, Mrs. Nation succeeded by public prayer and denunciation in closing many illicit barrooms. When she saw this method was slow in its effectiveness, she took to wielding a hatchet, smashing bottles and beer kegs, and demolishing bar fixtures. She was constantly ridiculed and frequently jailed, but so thoroughly was she convinced of the righteousness of her cause that she accepted martyrdom gladly.

Surely everyone knows the story of Sarah Bernhardt. She had the temper of a tigress and yet history records her as one of the greatest emotional actresses of all times. She suffered innumerable failures in her early days on the stage, but she had a passion to make good, and make good she did; by the time she was twenty-four she was famous. She, a woman who smoked cigars and drank strong drinks, was a creature of extraordinary moods. She would visit cemeteries and sit on tombstones as if in grief for the departed. Sarah Bernhardt never appeared to be concerned with what people thought about her, and, as a matter of fact, she revelled in their comment. She was an individualist in the highest sense. The memory of her dramatic acting will probably go on forever. Even though she had to have an artificial leg toward the end of her life, she continued her stage work, for nothing could change her lifelong belief that she was a supremely great actress --and she was to the end of her life in 1923.

Then there was that dynamic person, Madame Schumann-Heink, who was equally an exemplification of what belief can do, once the mind that carriers it gets into action. She was inspired early in life, giving to the world her beautiful voice at the age of fifteen when she became an opera singer. She, too, became famous in the Old World, but when she came to America, it was the fulfillment of a dream that had burned fiercely within her for many years. Her heart was torn many times but even in the face of overwhelming odds, Madame Schumann-Heink always came smiling through.

Here was a woman whose oldest son had gone off in World War I to fight for the Kaiser while her other four boys were in the opposite trenches, but among those of us who heard her sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in her quaint foreign accent, there were many who took off their hats and wept. Over a national radio hookup, her voice became known to millions. She was beloved by everyone and she had that basic thing, born in most people but seldom aroused, the spirit of never quitting. It was at the age of seventy-two, when she was signed up as a successor to Marie Dressler, that the curtain rang down on this great performer.

No matter of what race, creed, or colour, who has heard the wonderful contralto voice of Marian Anderson without being deeply moved and charmed by it! Yet few realize the very humble background of this great artist. I recall the story that as a child of six she wanted a violin; it was at the time she was learning that she could earn five or ten cents by scrubbing doorsteps in Philadelphia. If there ever was a woman who believed in her dreams, and who made them come true, it was Marian Anderson; she climbed to world fame and yet had to overcome, especially in our country, many handicaps and prejudices. Her triumph is one of the most dramatic in musical history. It was in Washington, D.C., on Easter Sunday of 1939, that this Negro girl of humble origin, standing before the Lincoln Memorial, thrilled an audience of 75,000 people, studded with cabinet members, senators, congressmen, and famous people in business and society. As we read the story of Marian Anderson, we must become convinced that she, too, succeeded through her belief, and that the great source of her inspiration came from her subconscious mind.

In this book are to be found numerous examples of men using the subconscious mind to achieve, but it is rather unusual to run across any written records of its use by women. Let me introduce here the story of a young woman who tells how her subconscious mind was directly responsible for her success. She is Angela Lansbury, the well-known young movie actress, who was interviewed by Mildred Mesirow for Reach Magazine. The interviewer tells us:


Angela Lansbury, the brilliant young screen star, aside from having beauty and dramatic ability, was also a girl with an exceptionally good brain. Angela’s blond beauty has become familiar to millions of movie-goers through her masterly interpretation of the maid in Gaslight, her charming adolescent buoyancy in National Velvet, and her poignant interpretation of the tragic café singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

So varied a range of character-interpretation requires brain as well as beauty. Angela has both.

It was during a range of character-interpretation here [Hollywood] that she launched forth upon one of her favourite themes --her faith in her own destiny…

“Ah,” she amended quickly, “I think perhaps I’ve phrased that badly. I don’t mean anything magical or occult. Perhaps faith in the power of the subconscious mind would be a better way of saying it.”

“In the manner of Tennyson, perhaps, or Stevenson?” was suggested.

“Exactly! Not that I think my abilities in any way resemble their genius, you understand. But I think I’ve learned how to tap the resources of the subconscious. Everyone knows that the subconscious mind stores all sorts of abilities, memories, and aptitudes we don’t ordinarily utilize… What I’m trying to say is that, when you’ve learned how to draw on your subconscious powers, there’s really no limit to what you can accomplish.”

Angela has schooled herself in the technique of this self-suggestion. Since first she chose acting as a career, she has constantly held in her mind a picture of what she aspires to achieve. She has even, she confessed, written down from time to time the goals she wants to reach. Obviously, she has tapped the reservoirs of creative material which few of us know how to use. Within the subconscious lie the materials of genius itself; of powers which, when properly recognized, may burst into the mental field of activity in patterns which surpass our conscious abilities…

“And how do you go about tapping your subconscious mind?” I asked.

“Heavens! I don’t want to sound stuffy and highbrow, but it’s really awfully simple. If you tell yourself over and over again that there’s no limit to the creative power within you, that’s about all there is to it. Honestly, I believe that’s true. Whatever intelligence or creative force, or whatever it is, that resides in the world is like…” she waved a strong, beautiful hand expressively… “oh, like light or air, or something of that sort. It doesn’t belong to me, especially. It’s there, to be tapped and expressed by anyone who knows how to get at it.

“This isn’t a cut-and-dried formula for success by any means,” she continued. “It doesn’t let you off hard work. You’ve got to keep plugging like mad, perfecting whatever kind of expression you’ve got; adding constantly to your skill, whether it’s in acting or painting, or even making a dress. So that, when the chance for self-expression does come, when the time arrives for you to call on your subconscious power to express itself, you have a good set of tools for it to work with; a proper medium through which your creative urge can be portrayed…. Catch on?” she added with typical humour.

“About the suggestibility of the subconscious?” I prompted.

“Oh that! Well, when you’re about to drop off to sleep, just tell yourself that tomorrow’s the day you’ve got to surpass anything you did today. That, whatever demands are made upon you, all your abilities, all you’ve learned, perhaps things you’ve forgotten you ever knew --all these will be available to you….

“Bearing in mind an actual mental picture of the situation is even better. If you’re scheduled to do a screen test, for example, you see yourself acting-out that test better than anyone’s ever done it before. Act it like mad in your mind! Be Duse; be Bernhardt! In your mental picture, be the best there is! And when the actual test comes off you find, often to your surprise, that you’re acting better than you know how.

“The subconscious is a pretty dramatic factor in personality, I believe. It likes to act and sing and paint and express itself. It likes to surpass in anything it’s called on to do. Your responsibility is to equip it with tools for expression, to give it a chance, and then make it an ally behind the scenes…”


Another example, and one of the most outstanding, is the story of how Uncle Tom’s Cabin came into existence. It will be recalled that it was written by a wisp of a woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose name will be remembered as long as there is American history. In 1850, Mrs. Stowe swore a solemn oath that she would write something “that would make the whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” For two months she tried in vain to think of the story which was later to shake the world. In February, 1851, while she was attending communion service at the college church, there came to her mind the picture of Uncle Tom and of his death. According to the story, Mrs. Stowe went home in tears and when she had written out the scene of Uncle Tom’s death and read it to her family, they, too, were in tears.

She did a great deal of research work in trying to secure factual material, but when she actually sat down to write, she needed none of it. The story obsessed her and literally wrote itself. Out of her subconscious mind surged long-forgotten memories and photographic impressions, which arranged themselves almost automatically in proper sequence on paper. Mrs. Stowe didn’t think out these incidents and their background, she actually saw them; and while in her time little was known of the subconscious mind, it is obvious that it was the source of this story, which many claim brought on the War Between the States. Mrs. Stowe to her dying day insisted that it was God and not she who had written this book.

There are many famous women, including the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Browning, Susan B. Anthony, Evangeline Booth, Jane Addams, who attained niches in the hall of fame. And today, while it is too early to tell the complete story, there are three women whose names will go down in history as having influenced and shaped the destinies of millions of Chinese. These are the famous Soong sisters, perhaps the best known of whom is Madame Chiang Kai-shek; the others married respectively Dr. H.H. Kung and Dr. Sun Yat-sen, both Chinese leaders.

As we come down to the present day and read the stories of women who have big ideas, we run across such people as Mrs. Matthew Astor Wilks, one of the richest women in the world and the daughter of the late Hetty Green, who, herself, amassed a fortune of over $67,000,000. Mrs. Wilks is following in the footsteps of her famous mother.

Then we have the account of Vera Nyman, which is literally another story of rags to riches. An idea, fifteen dollars, and a bathtub put her into a business for which Mrs. Nyman recently refused a million dollars. When she married her husband, Bernard, in 1920, she had the belief that she and her husband were going to make a million dollars. It took her twenty-seven years to achieve her objective of the million, but she had it within her grasp when a drug concern offered her that sum for her plant. Mrs. Nyman rang doorbells selling a liquid cleaner and later, by cooking chemical stews night after night in her own home, hit upon a combination of ingredients that would clean 90 per cent of painted surfaces. Her product today is known to millions of housewives and last year her sales topped $25,000,000. Mrs. Nyman, who day after day of making personal calls encountered more than 50,000 housewives, know what it means to face discouragement, but her belief that she would ultimately make a million dollars never faltered.

Who’s Who in America gives the stories of dozens of women who, as top-flight executives, writers, and professional women, receive from $25,000 to $100,000 a year. For example, here’s the case of Mrs. George T. Gilmer of New Orleans, better known under the name of Dorothy Dix, the famous adviser to the lovelorn, who is reported to have received better than $75,000 a year. Then there is Mary A. Bair, president of the Oliver H. Bair Company of Philadelphia, with a salary of $50,000. And by no means is Helena Rubenstein, who owns the famous cosmetic manufacturing company and whose income must be tremendous, to be overlooked.

Success stories could embrace dozens of women, such as Mary Dillon, president of the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company, who started in as a six-dollar-a-week office helper in the $5,000,000 corporation which she now heads; and Mrs. Ora H. Snyder of Chicago, who, about thirty-five years ago and with a capital of only five cents, began building up a candy business which centers around several shops and which was, at one time, worth more than a million dollars.

Add the story of Alice Foote MacDougall, president of the Emceedee Corporation Cortile, Inc., and many others like her who have built up huge businesses which have been managed as well as those headed by male executives.


An entire book could be written about women who have achieved fame and fortune in the field of radio and motion pictures as artists, writers, and executives. The name of Mary Pickford is known to millions, not only as a screen favourite but also as a motion picture corporation executive.

For a number of years Bertha Brainard was a program director of the National Broadcasting System , with a salary that ran into five figures; she was said to be one of the highest paid women radio executives. It all came about through her getting an idea for feature radio programs. That was in 1922 and her first effort brought her a return of $50.

The whole world knows the story of Amelia Earhart, famous American aviatrix, who was lost with her plane in the South Pacific. While a teacher and a social worker, she became interested in aviation and became one of the world’s greatest flyers. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. In 1931 she made a solo flight across the Atlantic and four years later flew the Pacific alone from Honolulu to California.

One writer has said that the vast majority of American men do not believe that women are even their equals. But when we stop to examine the record, the list of women who have achieved success in every line of endeavour is an impressive one.

Here is the story of a great American woman who scored a double success --as a homemaker and a career woman. She is Mary Roberts Rinehart, who for more than forty years has thrilled the mystery-story fans of the world. Necessity forced her to make some money to retrieve the family fortunes which she and her doctor-husband had lost in a stock-market crash. With one hand, she wrote those great stories of fiction which gained her more than ten million readers, while with the other hand, she tended her babies and handled the details of housekeeping.

There are many women who have remained single simply because they feel deeply about marriage and are not willing to marry “just any man.” But surely if this science of creative thinking can work for men, it can work also for women --even to the point of woman’s actually creating an image of the man of her desires and literally bringing him into reality. In other words, if a single woman could visualize the kind of man she wanted and steadfastly held to the thought, in accordance with the principles of this science, she could bring the object of her mental picture into her presence. This may sound silly to some of my women readers, but it has been my good fortune to have given this science to many women who have used it most effectively. Therefore, if you are single and with your whole heart and soul you desire a certain type of man to walk into your life as a husband, merely picture him, not necessarily in physical form but in the abstract, setting forth in your thought projection the attributes that you would like to have in your man, and the day will surely come when you will meet him.

It seems to me that the women of today have the means of getting about everything they set their minds to. Certainly, opportunities are all around them. In fact, there never was a time in history when the world was so open to women as it is today. There are comparatively few fields among those which were formerly restricted to men in which women are not now represented. Today you’ll find women in science, the fine arts, journalism, publicity, government, and various other branches, all working intelligently and with full knowledge of their duties and aware of their new opportunities and responsibilities.

There can hardly be any doubt that all of this is largely because modern women are receiving the same education as men, with the result that they are not alone becoming acquainted with subjects hitherto regarded as essentially for men, but that their conscious or reasoning mind is being developed. In a way, it is perhaps superfluous for me to call women’s attention to the importance and advantage of using their subconscious mind, for they have always used it. As a matter of fact, they are experts in the use of it --only they have always thought of it as woman’s intuition. My point is that the subconscious is much more than intuition and that it possesses great forces which can be set in motion for the benefit not only of men but of women also, through the application of the power of dynamic believing. As I pointed out earlier, wonderful results are brought about by the conscious mind’s conveying the will-to-do through believing to the subconscious, and this immediately sets the subconscious in action to carry out the desires of the individual.

Now the women of modern times have a unique advantage, I might say, a twofold mental advantage: to develop their subconscious mind the skilled use of which is characteristic of their sex and which has been highly developed and been their unconscious, though intuitive, guide through the ages, there has been added their conscious mind which has been specially developed by the scientific method of modern education. In my opinion, it is this combination which accounts for the speed with which women have acquired such rapid proficiency in so many of the so-called masculine subjects; and it is largely responsible not only for women’s emerging from the traditional life within the home, but also for their entrance into the world where their view of people and practical affairs is broadened, made more objective and more understanding. Furthermore, it enables women in the home to have a better comprehension of the work of their men, as well as a deeper interest in the school studies and future life-work of their children.

My fundamental aim is to show how each person can develop his plus-powers, the seeds of which lie within his subconscious mind. It is these plus-powers which will enable you to obtain the things you want and the things you would like to be in addition to what you have and what you are already. By this new co-operation of the conscious and subconscious minds, you can gain those things which you feel deeply are necessary to your life and happiness, and also keep alive the feeling that no matter how long you live, you are undergoing personal development, are, in a word, progressing.

Always remember that the subconscious mind, in addition to being the seat of intuition, is a repository of great power and has inexhaustible resources. The more you call upon these resources, the more there are placed at your disposal. Remember also: the subconscious is ageless; it can never grow old or tired, and you can draw upon it all your life. The only thing you need is the power of believing --sincerely, strongly, and completely; once the subconscious has received your message and understands your desires and ambitions, it will be only a short time when your desire will be fulfilled and your ambition achieved. This book tells of the many men who have used this science and succeeded, but I would like to impress upon my women readers that they have the same two minds, conscious and subconscious, and that through them they can succeed just as men have. It is all a matter of believing and of co-operation of the two minds, according to the principles here set forth. The magic which comes from believing is real, for it had been demonstrated in the lives of some of the most successful. It can be demonstrated in your life --by your own personal believing.

The Magic of Believing, Chapter 7

Chapter 7
How to Project Your Thoughts

Success is a matter of never-ceasing application. You must forever work at it diligently. Otherwise it takes wings and flies away. At no time can you afford to rest on your laurels --a pause for self-admiration-- because there are others who may have eyes on your coveted place and who would like nothing better than to push you out of it, especially if they observe that you have a weak hold on it or are doing nothing to strengthen your position.

Despite the great strides that America has made, it is still a country with great resources, many of which have not yet been tapped. Even though the war, with its atomic bombs, radar, rocket guns and ships, amphibious boats, and daring uses of plastics and metals opened up a mighty unexplored field where still greater things will be accomplished by men with imaginations and the spirit-to-do, the writer believes that “we haven’t seen anything yet”; those of us who are alive fifty years hence will be looking upon a world which in comparison make the early postwar years look like the Stone Age.

Already in our laboratories scientists are at work on what many may consider fantastic ideas. These include light and wearable fabrics from wood or other products that will be fire- and water-resistant, materials that will make ships unsinkable, machines that will capture energy from the sun, and even apparatus that will actually record our unspoken thoughts. These are only a few of the things appearing on the horizon, and they are all coming from the imaginations of men, or from their subconscious minds. Perhaps in less than fifty years thought-transference or telepathy will be as commonplace as the radio of today. Who knows?

It has been said that man can bring into materialization anything that he can conceive mentally, and the millions of things we use and enjoy today prove it. When man fully comprehends the great power of his mind and earnestly puts it to work, not only will he have dominion over this earth and everything on it, but he may be reaching out to control the near-by planets. You yourself have this inner spark, but it must be fanned until the fire is of white-heat intensity and it must be constantly stoked, which you do by adding fuel --ideas, ideas, more ideas, and action.

One man I know who has many achievements to his credit and who has passed the seventy mark, declared that most people fall by the wayside because they are never starting anything. “I make it a plan, and have for years, to start something new --that is, new for me-- at least once a week. It may be only the making of some simple gadget for use in the kitchen or it may be an entirely new sales plan or reading an unfamiliar book. I find in following this plan not only that I keep my body and mind active, but also that I put to use a lot of imaginative qualities that otherwise might fall asleep and atrophy. This idea of a man’s retiring when he’s sixty is to me a great mistake. As soon as a man retires and quits being active mentally and physically, he’s on the way to his grave in short order. You have seen what has happened to fire horses when they are retired. You know what happens to your automobile when you leave it outside unused and neglected; it starts to rust and is soon headed for the junkshop. Humans are the same; they rust out or wither and die when they go on the shelf.”

The plan of starting something new at least once a week brings us to the matter of initiative and how valuable an asset individual initiative is for any person who seeks success. Without it a man is stopped almost as soon as he starts. Men and women remain in minor clerical positions all of their lives because they never display initiative in their work, never attempt to find new ways of doing their work, and never suggest improvements. During the war a number of organizations placed suggestion boxes in their plants and offered prizes for those that were considered most practical. Frequently these suggestions led to greatly improved methods in plant operations, as well as rewards in advancement for the employees offering the suggestions. In a number of instances employee suggestions led to patentable devices that brought fame and fortune to those supplying the initial ideas. Bear in mind that no matter how long a piece of work has been done in a certain way, there’s always a better way. The war demonstrated that, so give heed to initiative. Even if you are just a clerk behind the counter in some store, you certainly must have some ideas of how goods may be better displayed or how customers may be better served. Good ideas for lighting, colour schemes, arrangement of the counters, display shelves are always acceptable to management, and are rewarded.

Closely linked with this matter of initiative are interest and attention. The more interest you take in your work, naturally the more attention you give it and the greater are the results. We all know that we do best the things in which we are interested, so if you do not find the task before you of interest, look for one that will interest you. The more absorbing the interest, the better --the interest factor alone will give you momentum that will carry you a long way forward.

One woman I know who was employed in a large department store as assistant to the manager of one of its largest departments, although her salary was fixed under the wartime ceiling, for several years received the store’s highest Christmas bonus because of her interest and initiative, and her advice, rather than that of the manager of the department, was often sought by the head of the store.

The personnel manager of a huge defence plant employing many thousands of both men and women told me that the greatest fault he had to find with people was that they could not be depended upon. Some fail to keep their word, others are always late for their engagements, still others are forever changing their minds. So if you tell another person that you are going to do a certain thing, even though its fulfillment may cause you some inconvenience, do it no matter what the consequences or the cost in time or energy. You will be amply repaid, for you are building a reputation for reliability, which will be of great value as you proceed up the ladder.

Many employees hold to the idea that their work is given to them merely that they may further the interests of their employers. They never entertain the thought that they are actually working for themselves, the employer merely furnishing the tools and the place for the employee to work. There is an old saying that unless a man has learned to take orders he can never learn to give them. How true this is; but how few, working day after day, ever realize that it is within their own power to sit some day in the executive’s place and give orders.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one,” said Emerson; but few people ever give thought to this fundamental requirement. You can’t cast your bread upon the waters without having it returned, and you can’t do a good deed without having a good deed done to you in return; this is true, no matter how Pollyanna-ish it may sound to some people.

Rare indeed is the man who doesn’t make an enemy now and then. You get out of tune with a man or perhaps he gets out of tune with you. Naturally, you don’t like him; as a result of your thinking he doesn’t like you. Fortunate is he who is able to make a friend of that enemy --and it’s so easily done.

Several men who had taken a violent dislike to me, perhaps because of something I may have said in an unguarded moment, and would have liked figuratively to cut my throat, have become my staunchest friends merely by my thinking and believing that they were really friendly people.

I don’t know where I got the idea of converting enemies into friends, whether it came to me out of the blue, whether I read it, or whether someone told me, but for years it has been part of my creed, and I’ve always found it to work. In illustration, let me tell the story of an executive who had taken a dislike to me for something I said critically about the operations of his company. For months, he was profanely “knocking me” at every opportunity. Naturally, my first impulse was to fight back and “knock” him in return. But the day came when I realized that his enmity had resulted from something I had said about him rather than the company, and I said to myself: “He’s not a bad guy. I’m wrong. I started the feud, and I’m sorry. The next time I get near him I am going to tell him that mentally.” One night I met him in a club of which we were both members. He would have avoided me, but we met nearly face to face, and I spoke first, saying, “How are you, Charlie?” He immediately responded and in the friendliest of manners. He caught “something” from my voice which meant a gesture of friendliness on my part, and today we’re the closest of friends.

So remember this: some of our enemies may be of our own making. Those friends or enemies are merely a reflection of our own thoughts --the other fellow will consider us an enemy or friend according entirely to the picture which we ourselves conjure up.

Only today, as this is written, I had an example of this thought projection. The waste pipe of the laundry sink in my home had been clogged, and I had to call a plumber. A few blocks from our home was a plumbing shop, the proprietor of which was an unfriendly person and offensive in his treatment of customers. Several times I had tried to get him to do work for us, but he was always too busy.

The last time I had called him he had told me that I would have to wait my turn. Probably he could get around to fix up the water heater in a couple of weeks. I had asked him if he could give me the names of other plumbers who might help me, but he had been entirely unco-operative. Naturally, his unfriendly treatment had given me a bad impression of plumbers in general and I found myself damning all of them.

However, I had to get the heater repaired and I quickly realized that the angry attitude toward plumbers which had been engendered by this experience would cause me to have difficulty in obtaining the services of any one of them. I simply changed my thought, saying something like this to myself: “All plumbers are good fellows --the old guy you called is just an old grouch-- forget it.”

I had a friend, the manager of a wholesale plumbing house, and I called him to learn if he couldn’t suggest a plumber who would help me. He did, and I telephoned him at once. He said he was busy, but if an imperative job had to be done, he would be out immediately. His promise pleased me and my gratitude for service was immediately felt by the plumber when he entered our home fifteen minutes after my call. In less than two hours --he worked swiftly, thus differing from some plumbers I had employed-- the heater had been replaced. I was genuinely delighted by his service and told him so. That naturally pleased him.

Today it was a little before 8 A.M. when I called for help. I told the plumber who I was and reminded him that he had been the one who had fixed my water heater. He remembered me immediately and said that he’d be out just as soon as possible --probably around noon. Within five minutes after I had hung up the telephone receiver, a man appeared at the front door asking if I had called a plumber.

I asked him how it happened that he was on the job so soon when I had been told by his boss that he couldn’t send a man before noon, and he replied, “Mr. ---- had just received your call as I came into the shop and he told me to come up to your home and do what was necessary before I went out on my all-day job.”

I was elated with this treatment and told the plumber, which, of course, pleased him. With my help the necessary repairs on the waste pipe were made in less than half an hour. I told him of my previous experience with the old plumber and his own boss, and he replied:

“My boss is a fine fellow. He’s always putting himself out to help people and he’s building a huge business as a result. Never have I found a better boss.”

You wager, think and believe that the other fellow is a fine chap, and that’s what he’ll turn out to be --for never forget that the thing we get back is a reflection of what we project mentally.

Do not reject this great truth. Just apply it and you’ll be amazed at the startling results. Watch the bus driver respond, the elevator operator beam, and the clerk behind the counter hurry to oblige you when you send out friendly thoughts. It can be used in every encounter in life, and if you’re wholly sincere about it, you will never have to worry about making enemies.

“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,” says the Bible. As a matter of fact, many successful men and women, irrespective of any motive that may actuate them, work on the assumption that when they do something for the other person, something will be done for them. That may sound rather calculating, but the basic law of reciprocity remains, regardless of the situation or circumstances. It is simply that there must be a logical effect from every cause.

It isn’t a matter of bootlicking when you try to please the boss. It’s just common sense to make him a friend, for in any organization the people who get ahead are those who do their work well and try to please the boss. The boss is the man who does the promoting, and the more he is pleased with you and your work, the faster is your own progress. No matter how great your self-esteem, if you expect progress in any large organization, you must not only do your work well, but you must have the good will of the boss. Look around you a bit and you’ll see this principle at work everywhere. You saw it work in the schoolroom when you were young, you saw it at work in the army, you see it in American politics, and if you have studied animal life you have recognized it working among the highest and the lowest types.

Take the initiative. Always try to do something for the other fellow and you will be agreeably surprised how things come your way --how many pleasant things are done for you. Doing something for others always pays dividends in one form or another.

You can experiment for yourself with your dog. Pet him and be kind to him, and his tail will wag in grateful appreciation and he will try to lick your hand or your face if you’ll give him a chance. Scold him or strike him and he may cringe, snarl, or even attempt to bite you. The reactions of people are similar, and no matter what the motive may be that actuates you to do something for the other person, whether it be merely a friendly impulse or your own knowledge of the law of cause and effect, the results will be the same. Sincere compliments will always gain you friends, for most people are extremely susceptible to complements. Complements gratify their ego, and up you go in their friendly estimation. Successful politicians learn early in their careers the art of making friends by doing things for other people, and by speaking in praise of them. The corner newsboy you befriend today may some day be the judge before whom you stand when you have violated some traffic rule, and then you will discover what it means to have “a friend at court.” The same principle applies in all walks of life, yet many people overlook the fact.

I sat in the office of the merchandise manager of one of the largest department stores in the country not long ago when a woman employee came in to thank him for some advice given her regarding the accepting of a better position with a firm in another city. When she left, he said:

“You know, one thing I like about this job is the number of people who come to me for advice. While you are ware that the job here keeps me on the jump, I always take time off for employees who come to me for advice. It flatters me and makes me feel as though I’m quite a fellow, and naturally I feel like doing everything I can for the people who so compliment me.”

This brings me to another point --a person who desires riches must go where riches are. Alone on a desert island, a man would probably have a tough time eking out an existence, to say nothing of trying to amass a fortune. So it is in everyday pursuits. Therefore if you want money, you’ve got to associate yourself with people who have it or who know how to make it. This may sound rather gross. But the truth is that if is money you are after, you must go where it is and where it is being spent, and also you must become personally acquainted with those who have the authority to spend it. If you are a salesman selling advertising and you know the head of the firm is the man with the final say, it’s a waste of time trying to convince minor clerks and junior executives. The same holds true if you are trying to sell other commodities, or, what is more important, trying to sell yourself.

“If you work for a man, for goodness’ sake work for him,” said Elbert Hubbard, which brings me to a failing of many people with whom I have worked over a period of years --lack of interest in their jobs. They make no effort to learn anything outside the small sphere in which their jobs place them. Once I made a wager with the executive of a large concern whose name was frequently in the newspapers that I could find at least twenty people on his own local organization who had never heard of him, to say nothing of the position he occupied. He was nettled when he got the proof. Not only did he lose the bet, but his pride was hurt. Curiosity prompted me to check with other organizations that were nation-wide in their operations, and not a single employee could tell me the name of the head of the company or the street address of its main office.

This may sound unbelievable and even ridiculous to many readers. But if you have friends working in a minor capacity with some large institution, ask them the name of the treasurer or the senior vice-president of the concern. Unless the employee is an exception, the ignorance will surprise you. If you are a salesman for a major oil company or even a telephone operator, surely you should make some endeavour within a short time after your employment to learn the names of the men who head the company and something of their history. Yet it is surprising how many people accept positions and make no attempt to ascertain what the adjacent department manufactures or to learn anything about the company’s general operations. Perhaps the heads of big organizations err in not carrying on educational campaigns for the benefit of employees. Of course, there are large corporations that have house organs containing the names of the executives, main office locations, and the like, and giving details about their method of operation. I talked with a woman employed by a large manufacturing plant who had been with the concern for many months, and outside of the name of the personnel manager who had employed her, she did not know the name of a single executive of the company in spite of the fact that the company’s publication with articles written by various department heads went into her hands monthly.

The job you now hold is the steppingstone to the job above. How much do you know about it before you start moving toward it --just how much do you know about your company and its policies both inside and out? Many firms carry group insurance for their employees, with the employees paying a small part of the premiums. How many employees have ever read their policies? Few do, and, further, few know anything about their social security rights or what the various amounts taken from their payroll checks actually represent.

“Man is heir to the wisdom of the ages found within the covers of great books,” remarked one of our great wise men, and yet it is surprising how many people never read a book, although the war did cause more people to seek the companionship of books. Strange as it may sound, few business men read anything besides the newspapers and a few trade journals, and when a check is made among professional men you find that they more or less limit themselves to books and literature dealing with their respective fields. I mention books, for no matter what the book may be --biography, fiction, history, or a scientific text-- it is a rare book that doesn’t contain an idea or two useful in your own work.

No one has a monopoly of knowledge, and yet we all know that knowledge is power when put to use. The greater the reader, the more his thinking is stimulated, and if he is a man of action, the more his efforts are accelerated.

Now is the right time to mention the highly interesting phenomenon of association of ideas and how one idea quickly links itself with another. This is of great value and should be cultivated by everyone, especially by a person engaged in creative work such as advertising, writing, selling or kindred lines.

For example, you see an automobile on a country road. Consider for a moment how many ideas can be derived from the mental picture of the automobile. It’s made of steel, alloys and plastics --each furnishing major ideas that can be broken up into many others. Then we consider the wheels and tires --casings, the inner rubes, the valves-- all bringing further association of ideas. We think of the roads over which they have travelled, and this suggests roads and their construction. Then we think of oil and gasoline, which brings further ideas through association, and before we know it we have started with an association of ideas that is seemingly endless.

Let’s take a single idea in business. Suppose you are interested in the growth and sale of a new kind of nut. The first question naturally is: Can it be grown and sold at a profit? Naturally, by association of ideas you will be led to determine all matters dealing with the growth of the nut, the soil, location, climatic conditions, costs, labour problems; these will lead on to marketing programs, packaging, dealers who would be interested, brokers, shippers, and finally, the ultimate consumer. The field of ideas becomes enormous although association started with the thought of a single little nut.

A word should be said about packaging and eye-appeal, because here again we deal with the power of suggestion. Dealers in groceries, fruits, and garden vegetables know that even if there is no improvement in the products themselves, artistic, attractive-looking packages will bring a better price for the goods. You have only to stroll through a grocery store and note the articles which attract your attention to discover this fact for yourself. Excellence in packaging distinguishes the skilled chef from the ordinary restaurant cook. The expert chef knows the value of eye-appeal and accordingly arranges the food on the platters or plates to give it a more appetizing appeal, while the average cook, probably neither knowing nor caring, piles it on in any old fashion.

For several years I was interested in a celery farm Prior to the interning of many Japanese during the war, my renter, an Italian, was always complaining that he could not compete with the Japanese and gave this as an excuse for his inability to fulfill his rent contracts. Intuitively, the Japanese knew the value of proper packaging. Their celery would be thoroughly washed, placed in new crates, and frequently, if sold in the form of hearts, would be attractively wrapped in paper carrying a boastful little message about the quality of the celery. My renter, a slovenly fellow, never, in my memory, washed a single bunch of celery. He placed it in second-hand crates and then he complained that his Japanese competitors were getting all the business.

Anyone who has travelled through the great farming belts of our country and Canada can tell by a glance at the house or barn whether the farmer is alive or whether he is dying on his feet. I think of some of the great orchardists of the Pacific Northwest who twenty or thirty years ago couldn’t sell a whole wagonload of pears or apples for twenty dollars; and yet men who had the idea of attractive packaging and marketing in recent years have made large fortunes. It’s nothing to get people to pay two dollars or more for a dozen apples or pears carefully wrapped in tissue, waxed paper, or tinfoil; some of these alert orchardists sell their products by mail to thousands of buyers throughout the world. I happen to know personally a number of these operators and their success in each instance has been predicated upon an idea that came to them in a flash and which developed as a result of their believing.

Now consider this matter of packaging in connection with yourself. Do you have eye-appeal? Do you wear clothes to give yourself the best appearance? Do you know the effect of colours and study those which best suit your form and temperament? Does your whole appearance set you apart from many who pass unnoticed in the crowd? If not, give thoughtful attention to personal packaging, for the world accepts you as you appear to be. Take a tip from the automobile manufacturers, the Hollywood make-up artists, or any of the great show producers, who know the value of eye-appeal and package their goods accordingly. When you have a combination of proper packaging and highest quality goods within the package, you have an unbeatable combination. The you within can do the same thing for the you outside --and you, too, have the unbeatable combination.

To satisfy yourself on what the right appearance will do for you, just pass by where there is construction under way. If you are well-dressed and have an air of prosperity and importance, workmen who may be in your path will step aside as you pass. Or you might try stepping into an outer office where others may be waiting to see a certain executive. Notice that the important-looking individual with the air and voice of authority gets first attention not only from the office attendants but from the executive.

No better example of the impressiveness of a good appearance can be given than the distinction made between individuals by attendants at a police station or jail. The stylishly dressed, well-poised business man is seldom ill-treated, while the man who has the appearance of a bum lands almost immediately in a cell. As a police reporter on the metropolitan newspapers for a number of years, I saw this happen times without number. The fellow who looked as though he might be “somebody” and who had been arrested for a minor law infraction, often got a chair in the captain’s office until he could telephone the judge or some friend to obtain his release, while the bum was carted off to jail, to get his release when and if he could.

The head of a huge automobile distributing agency told me that he was frequently called upon to close a sale with wealthy men who always bought the most expensive cars. “Not only do I take a shower,” he said, “and change all my clothes, but I go to a barbershop and get everything from a shave to a shampoo and manicure. Obviously, it has something to do with my appearance, but further than that it does something to me inside. It makes me feel like a new man who could lick his weight in wildcats.”

If you are properly attired when you are starting out on some important undertaking, you will feel within yourself that sense of power, which will cause people to give way before you and will even stir others to help you on your way. The right mental attitude, keeping your eyes straight ahead and fixed on your goal, throwing around you the proper aura, which is done by an act of your imagination or an extension of your personal magnetism, will work wonders, as Theos Bernard, in his Penthouse of the Gods, learned when he was cornered and stoned by a crowd of natives in Tibet. In his book he says that his first reaction was to fight, but the thought was immediately dismissed when he recalled that he had been taught to assume and maintain his own aura. Thus he straightened his shoulders, lifted high his head, directed his eyes straight ahead, and moved forward with a firm and rapid stride. Not only did the crowd give way, but others came forward and made a path for him.

A number of years ago I was on intimate terms with the chief of a large metropolitan fire department, a middle-aged man who seemed to fear nothing. His associates declared that the chief bore a charmed life. Once, in getting material for a personal story, I asked him if he thought he had a charmed life, and he laughed: “I don’t know as you’d call it that. Maybe I’m somewhat of a fatalist, but I have never believed that I would be killed as long as I am chief. When I go into a place of danger, I always throw a white circle about myself, and nothing can come through that circle. It was a trick I learned from the Indians who lived near us when I was a kid. Maybe it’s the worst kind of superstition, but that white aura has saved my life more times than I like to think about.” He lived to be retired and died in his seventies from natural causes.

We all know the story of Babe Ruth, the great baseball player, and how “he called his shots.” If he wanted to make a home run by batting the ball into the right or left field, that’s where he batted the ball. How he did this is perhaps known only to that great hero of all American boys, but surely it was uncanny. Against the mightiest pitchers he was able to bat the ball where he wanted, and his home-run record is something that will stand for a long time to come.

The name Ernie Pyle immediately brings to mind the premonition of death this famous war correspondent experienced before shipping out to the Pacific war. It will be poignantly recalled that the beloved Ernie had the feeling that when he left for the Pacific Theatre of War, he would not return. On the contrary, there are many of the stories told by ex-servicemen who had the “feeling or belief” that even though frequently under intense fire, they were going to come through without being wounded --and come through they did.

You will find that many people subjected to great danger believe in the efficacy of this white-circle aura. Perhaps here again it is the result of the magic of believing. There are millions of automobile owners in this world who have a small disc in their automobiles which they believe will save them from accidents. But why stop with discs in automobiles?

The vibrations set up by others affect us much more than we realize, for we take on the characteristics of those with whom we are more or less constantly associated. It is well known that a man and wife frequently after long years of association grow to resemble one another and acquire many of the habits of one another. A baby will take on the emotional characteristics of the mother or the person who habitually cares for it, becoming susceptible to the fears, the likes and dislikes of the mother or the nurse, and frequently these emotional qualities remain for life. And the lovers of pets, especially of dogs, declare that the animals will take on some of the emotional characteristics of their owners --they will be ugly, friendly, happy, or quarrelsome, depending upon the emotional pattern of the person with whom they are most closely associated.

It is always important to remember that a negative person can raise havoc in an organization or a home. The same amount of damage can be done by a strong negative personality as good can be done by a positive personality, and when the two are pitted against one another, the negative frequently becomes the more powerful. We all know what occasionally happens to a man living among uncivilized people --he goes native. Englishmen employed as plantation or mine operators in jungle outposts guard against this by shaving and meticulously dressing each evening for dinner.

An extremely nervous person in a position of authority can put nearly every person associated with him into a nervous state. You can see this happen in almost any office or shop where the executive is of a nervous type. Sometimes this emotional pattern will extend throughout an entire organization. After all, as has been said, an organization is only the extended shadow of the man who heads it. Thus, to have a smoothly running organization, all its members must be attuned to the thinking of the principal executive. A strong negative personality in such an organization, who is out of tune with the ideas of the management, can extend his negative vibrations to others and do great damage, just as one rotten apple in a box will soon cause all the others to rot. Likewise, one woman weeping can cause others in the same room to weep, one person laughing can cause others to laugh, and the yawn of a single person can cause an epidemic of yawns. We seldom realize how much our emotional vibrations affect others and how much we are affected by theirs.

If you would remain a positive type, avoid associating too much with anyone who has a negative or pessimistic personality. Many clergymen and personnel counsellors often become victims of prolonged association with people who come to them with their troubles. The impact of the steady stream of woe and sorrow vibrations eventually reverses their positive polarity and reduces them to a negative state.

To get a better understanding of the effect of these suggestive vibrations, you need only to remember your varying feelings upon entering different offices or homes. The atmosphere, which is the creation of the people habitually frequenting the office or home, can be instantly detected as being upsetting, disturbing, tranquil, or harmonious.

You can tell almost instantly whether the atmosphere is cold or warm --the arrangement of the furniture, the colour scheme, the very walls themselves, all vibrate to the thinking of the persons occupying the place, and bespeak the type to which their thoughts belong. Whether the home be a mansion or a shack, the vibrations are always a key to the personality of those who occupy it.

Are you afraid to take on responsibilities, afraid to make decisions, afraid to step out alone? Most people are --that’s why there are so few leaders and so many followers. If you are confronted with a problem, the longer you put it off, the greater it becomes and the more fearful you become of your ability to solve it. Therefore, learn to make decisions, because in not deciding you fail to act, and in failing to act you invite failure. Experience will soon teach you that once a decision is made, the problems and troubles begin to disappear. Even though the decision you make may not be the best one, the mere deciding gives you strength and raises your morale. It’s the fear of doing the wrong thing that attracts the wrong thing. Decide and act, and the chances are that your troubles will fade into thin air --whether you make a mistake or not. All great men are men of quick decision which flows from their intuition, their accumulated knowledge, and previous experience. So learn to be quick in making decisions and audacious in your actions.

The writer makes no claim to being a faith-healer, but anyone who knows anything about the power of mind knows of the effects that emotionalized thinking has upon the condition of the body and knows also what suggestion can do toward bringing disease, as well as curing it. In some faith-healing movements, cures are affected by denying that the disease exists, and there are thousands who attest to the validity of this method of healing. Followers of other schools of healing make no attempt to deny the existence of disease, but instead ignore it, affirming that they are well and happy and getting better every day. Members of the various schools of thought are the best judges of the methods that work best for them; but it must be remembered that in all cases it is the individual’s belief that determines the success of the individual method of cure. However, it is interesting to note that the movement which advocates denial has a tremendous following, and its membership continues to increase by leaps and bounds.

Just how far suggestion can be used to cure disease or physical ailments is still a matter of great controversy among the various schools of mental healing and members of the medical profession, but the fact remains that there are many thousands in our country alone --and the number increases daily-- who are of the firm belief that a cure of their ailments came as a result of mental-healing.

It has long been known that the emotions developed by fear, hate, and worry can lead to many bodily ills, even to fatal illnesses, although there are still some members of the medical profession who refuse to acknowledge this fact. However, Life magazine (February 19, 1945), in an article entitled “Psychosomatic Medicine,” declared that during the war period it was found that 40 per cent of all army disability cases originated from psychosomatic causes. (“Psychosomatic” refers to a combination of mind and body ailments brought on by the emotions, and the prescribed treatment is a combination of psychotherapy and medical treatment.) The article pointed out that many cases of hay fever, bronchial asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure, rheumatic disease, arthritis, diabetes mellitus, the common cold, and various skin conditions such as warts, hives, and allergic reactions, were caused either by emotional upsets directly or by physical disturbances in which the emotions were an aggravating factor. The treatment consists of locating the source of the emotional disturbances and endeavouring to eradicate it.

Because of the experiments of the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts during the war, the whole subject of both medical and mental treatment is probably due for a complete revision, with resulting mind-cures which may prove astounding.

However, those who understand the science of psycho-therapeutics are fairly well agreed that a cure does not come through treatment on the part of the healer nearly so much as it does from the patient himself. In other words, the suggestion, no matter in what form it is given by the healer (whether in accordance with the principles of psychotherapeutics or in conjunction with some specific religious belief), is in turn transmitted by autosuggestion to the patient’s own subconscious mind where it becomes effective. The writer realizes that the following statement may invite criticism, but the fact remains that if a patient refuses to believe in the suggestive appeals of the healer, the purpose is never accomplished. The two, the healer and the patient, have to be en rapport to get results, and it is the writer’s theory that any person who possesses an understanding of the use of the power of suggestion could get the same results without the aid of a healer, provided he were sufficiently strong and constant in his own convictions and suggestions. The same technique, the cards and the mirror, with suitable affirmations, can be used to great advantage.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in telepathy or thought-transference, arising out of the experiments and investigations carried on in many colleges and universities, particularly those conducted under the direction of Dr. J.B. Rhine of Duke University. Of course, Joseph Dunninger, radio’s self-styled mentalist, with his so-called feats of thought-projection as well as mind-reading, has done much to widen popular discussion of the subject.

The records of both the American and British Societies for Psychical Research are filled with case reports of telepathy, clairvoyance, and similar phenomena, but many people, despite the published reports of scientific findings, are prone to scoff at the idea that telepathy exists.

It has always struck the writer as odd that many people who profess to believe in the Bible, in which there are countless stories of visions, clairvoyance, and telepathy, declare that today telepathy and kindred phenomena are not possible.

Notwithstanding the general scepticism, some of the world’s greatest scientific thinkers have declared that telepathy is not only possible but that it is a faculty that can be used by most people when they understand it. In addition to the findings of both the American and British Societies for Psychical Research and the results made public by Dr. Rhine, there are numerous old and new books on the subject. A few of the better known ones are Mental Radio by Upton Sinclair; Beyond the Senses, by Dr. Charles Francis Potter, well-known New York preacher; Thoughts Through Space by Harold Sherman and Sir Hubert Wilkins, famous explorer; Telepathy by Eileen Garrett, editor and publisher; and Experimental Telepathy, by Rene Warcollier, Director of The Institute Metaphysique International in Paris.

When the results of Dr. Rhine’s experiments at Duke University were first made public, there were many men who rushed into print to declare that the results could be laid to chance, and considerable time and money were spent in an endeavour to prove that telepathy was non-existent. Yet the experiments continue at Duke and at other leading universities. The writer has often wondered why many opposing so-called scientific investigators do not try to prove that the phenomena exist instead of trying to prove the contrary; but here again the writer has a theory that belief is the miracle worker, and this is partly substantiated by what Dr. Rhine himself says in his book on extrasensory perception. He declares that satisfactory results were secured when the experimenters caught the “spirit of the thing,” and that the ability to transmit and receive became weakened when the original novelty wore off. In other words, while there was enthusiasm there was spontaneous interest and the belief that it could be done. But when students were called back at later dates to continue their experiments in the course of their studies, enthusiasm was lacking, and the results were not satisfactory.

Perhaps many of my reader will recall an article which appeared in the American Weekly magazine, August 25, 1946, captioned “Scientific Evidence Man Has a Soul,” written by Dr. J.B. Rhine. In view of the fact that his explanations deal directly with the subject matter of this book, I quote the article almost in full.*

*Reprinted by courtesy of the author, Dr. J.B. Rhine, and with the permission of The American Weekly.


What has science to say about the soul? For the answer to this question we would naturally turn to psychology because it is literally “the science of the soul.” But here we have a surprise coming to us, for we find that the soul theory of man has been practically dropped from psychology books and lectures.

Most psychologists will even smile tolerantly if one speaks of the mind itself as if there were such a thing apart from the brain. Everything has to be physical to be real, according to the prevailing view; anything non-physical or spiritual, as the soul is supposed to be, therefore simply cannot be. Such an idea has to be dismissed as pure superstition.

The principles of physics are expected to explain everything that we call “mental,” if they continue to expand as they have been doing.

However, some things occur now and then that just do not fit in at all with this physical view of man. For example, a person may awaken from a horrible dream in which a friend or relative is dying. The shocking picture turns out to be essentially true and the timing about right, although the friend may be a thousand miles away.

The oddest feature of all this is that in some cases the event perceived may not occur until hours or days after the dream; yet it may have been accurately pictured and even experienced in considerable detail.

The first thought it, of course, that such experiences are mere coincidences. Not many people get beyond this first easy explanation, but fortunately a few have done so; and when one studies great numbers of these experiences, they lose all appearance of being accidental. The scientific thing to do, of course, was to set to work to discover what might lie behind these happenings.

Obviously if any of these “psychic” experiences showed that the mind has the power to reach out beyond space and time, they would plainly be transcending physical law. The mind would then be demonstrated to be a spiritual rather than a physical system. Here was a clue to the soul. Just a clue --nothing more; but it provided the necessary lead to reliable evidence.

It was from these “psychic” experiences that the ESP tests were derived. ESP is the abbreviation of extrasensory perception, which includes telepathy and clairvoyance. In other words, telepathy and clairvoyance are two different modes of acquiring knowledge without the use of the recognized sense organs such as the eyes and ears. In a typical telepathy test the person being tested tries to identify which card or number or other symbol is being held in mind by another person --who is, let us say, located in an adjoining room. In a clairvoyance test, on the other hand, it is the object itself, commonly a card, instead of the thought of it, which the percipient tries to perceive. In a word, telepathy is the ESP of the state of mind of another person; clairvoyance, the ESP of an object.

At Duke University in 1930 a small group of psychologists began a series of ESP experiments of both types, telepathy and clairvoyance. This work was sponsored by the great British psychologist, William McDougall, Fellow of the Royal Society, who was at the time the head of the Department of Psychology at Duke. This work which was carried out in what came to be called the Parapsychology Laboratory (“para” meaning the unusual, the exceptional, the unorthodox) was by no means the first of its kind. Experiments had been done here and there, some of them even in universities, for as much as fifty years before, but there had been no systematic, consecutive experimentation following up the problems through the years, such as took place at Duke. That university was the first to offer a permanent haven to active research on “psychic” problems.

The experimenters in the Parapsychology Laboratory found fresh confirmatory evidence of both types of ESP, telepathic and clairvoyant. They developed and standardized new test, making it easier to repeat the experiments. This had the effect of starting a movement of ESP experimentation which spread to many other institutions here and abroad. Elaborate precautions were taken to insure that no sensory cues were possible and that no other type of error could affect the test results. The tests were of such a nature that the scores could be evaluated by standard and long-approved statistical methods. It could be shown clearly that the scores made in the tests could not reasonably be accounted for, either by chance or by experimental weakness of any kind.

Once the experimenters were satisfied that the occurrence of ESP was soundly established, they set to work on the vitally important question as to what relation that capacity had to the physical world. Do telepathy and clairvoyance operate strictly under physical law? Or do they reach beyond the limits of physics as the spontaneous “psychic” experiences seem to do?

Fortunately it was a simple matter to test ESP in relation to space. For example, we needed only to conduct tests with long distance between the cards and the person trying to identify them by ESP, and compare the results with short-distance tests. Both telepathy and clairvoyance tests gave as good results at great distances as they did with small. Distance measured in yards, miles, or hundreds of miles simply did not matter in the operation of ESP, as far as the experiments went. For that matter, angles, barriers, and other physical conditions seemed likewise to have no effect on success in the ESP tests.

What, then, about time? We argued that if space does not influence ESP, time should not be expected to affect it either. The tests for ESP of the future, or precognition (prophecy is a more familiar word), were easily derived from the regular ESP tests. People who could successfully identify cards extrasensory at a distance were then asked to try to predict what the order of cards was going to be after the deck was shuffled. We found that they scored as well on decks of cards that were mechanically shuffled before checking as they did trying to identify the cards as they were in the deck at the time. Moreover, they did as well at predicting the order of the deck of cards ten days ahead as for a two-day period. Length of time beyond the prediction and the check-up following the shuffling made no more difference than had the length of distance in the earlier experiments.

There was only one interpretation of these experiments possible --namely, that the mind of man somehow transcends the space-time limitations of the physical world in these capacities we are calling “extrasensory perception.” As the experiments were confirmed by other research men and women in other laboratories, the conclusion became firmly established that the mind does indeed possess properties not belonging to physics as we know it. Since space and time are the surest indications of what is physical, the mind must, therefore, be extra physical or spiritual in nature. And all we mean by the “soul” in man is that the mind is non-physical --or spiritual-- in character. The ESP experiments, then, have yielded evidence of the soul in man.

To some people this will seem a very small beginning on the problem of the soul. Certainly we must not exaggerate the extent of the findings. Actually we have done little more than produce evidence for an elemental sort of soul theory. There is, of course, a great deal more to the religious concept of the soul than has been found in these researches. There are many great problems remaining. Is the soul capable of separation fro the body. Can it survive bodily death? If it can and does, can discarnate souls have any contact with the living, or in any way influence them? What about the idea of a world-soul, or God? What about communication between souls, especially the soul of man and God? These and many other fundamental questions of religious doctrine remain untouched by anything thus far discussed in this article.

All we have a right to conclude is that the physical concept of man which has increasingly prevailed in intellectual circles since the rise of materialism is now thoroughly disproved.

There is something --how much, we do not know-- definitely extra physical about humans.

There is an order of reality in human life not subject to the laws of time and space.

But it just as important, I think, to recognize, too, the tremendous possibilities we can now see. The soul-theory of man gives us much to build on in our further thinking on religious problems. We have now verified the essential foundation upon which the spiritual philosophy of man was originally erected. It remains for scientific inquiry to go on further to find out by the same methods all we can about human personality, its nature and destiny --in short, to take up the other great questions of religion.

There was a time when experimental inquiry into the problems of religion would have met with vigorous opposition from orthodox religious orders. There are still many conservatives that would resent the intrusion of science into the domain of what they think should be pure faith. But a great many of the most deeply religious men and women of today are eagerly reaching out for a more tangible sort of knowledge regarding the human mind and all of its potentialities that life far beyond our present knowledge.

Surprisingly enough, it has been from orthodox science that we have met with the main opposition. The scientific conservatism especially fears any division in nature, any such dualism as that of soul and body --so much so that he is likely to refuse to look at any evidence which suggests such a duality. Such anxiety is quite groundless, for if, as we may now claim to know, man does have a soul as well as a body, both fundamentally different, the two are still in some sense unified.

They do interact; therefore they have something in common. Two things cannot affect each other if they differ in every single point. We see, therefore, that there must be a world of hidden realities, probably neither physical nor mental as we know them, from which the manifestations of mind and body, the psychical and physical, originally stem. This realm beyond mind and matter lies there almost as unknown as the American continents were to Columbus, silently awaiting some fortunate explorer of the future. But he will have to be someone who, like the great Genoese sailor, was daring enough to question existing charts of knowledge and belief --and put them to experimental test.


The writer has frequently attended séances at which the medium has refused to perform, declaring that someone in the audience was a scoffer, a no believer, whose vibrations were creating a hostile atmosphere. The materialistic sceptic may laugh at this, but the writer has been present at large meetings where one lone heckler in the audience with his persistent hostility has not only disrupted the meeting, but completely defeated the efforts of the speaker.

I think that anyone who understands the vibratory theory of thought power can also understand why unsympathetic vibrations can be “monkey wrenches thrown into the machinery. Verification of this is found in the experiments by Dr. Rhine, who discovered in his psychokinesis tests that when a subject operated in the presence of an observer who tried to distract him and depress his scoring, the results were always below expectancy. And, contrariwise, when the same subject performed alone of in the presence of neutral or sympathetic observers, his score of successes was correspondingly high.

You have only to read the story of witchcraft, the story of voodoo medicine men and “hexers,” and even the achievements of present-day mental-healers to realize that there is undoubtedly some force at work which influences others even at a distance. True, the suggestion first planted in the mind of the patient or victim, as the case may be, has for its purpose either good or evil; but that doesn’t account for the results, especially in the absent-treatment method where the patient may have no knowledge that the healer is “working” on him. Whether telepathy is involved here is something that has not yet been established.

It is to be noted that practically all of the great electrical scientists, including Edison, Steinmetz, Tesla, and Marconi, were greatly interested in telepathy. Dr. Alexis Carrel not only believed in telepathy but declared that a study of it should be made by scientific men, just as physiological phenomena are studied.

Despite the fact that the secretary of the London Society for Psychical Research after twenty years of investigation by its members stated that telepathy is an actuality, and the further fact that experiments at the various colleges continue to pile up amazing evidence of its existence, there are many scientific men who refuse to accept the findings. Moreover, the number of people who are carrying on investigation of their own is constantly growing, even though they are regarded in certain quarters as being eccentric and somewhat gullible. I have often wondered if those who belittle this research work are really being fair, both to themselves and those interested in the phenomena, especially when the research work may lead to greater discoveries than hitherto dreamed possible.

Many horse and dog fanciers, especially those who have kept horses and dogs as pets over a long period of years, stoutly maintain the existence of telepathy between the animals and themselves, and there have been countless stories told regarding telepathic phenomena among primitive people in all parts of the world.

Long years ago a business executive told me that he got rid of people who were taking up his time by simply repeating mentally to his visitor: “It’s time for you to go, leave now, leave now.” The visitor would shortly get fidgety, look at his watch or get up from his chair, reach for his hat, and soon be on his way out.

You can get the same results when visitors overstay their time in your home. When you feel it is time for them to go, simply say to yourself, “Go home now, go home now, go home now,” and you will find that they glance around the room looking for the clock and say, “Guess it’s about time we were leaving.”

I recognize that some sceptics say that telepathy has nothing to do with this, that your facial expressions, your bodily movements, signs of nervousness or weariness are what warn the visitor that it is time for him to leave. However, experiment for yourself; but take care that you give the visitor no outward sign, either by word or facial expression, that it is time for his departure. You will find that there are times, especially if the visitor is intent upon putting over a point or winning an argument, that this procedure will not work. But the moment there is a lull in the conversation, try it and the results will astonish you.

A number of years ago I had in my office on the second floor of a large office building. In later years the firm with which I had been associated moved to the tenth floor. Often upon entering the elevator I would say, “Ten, please,” to the operator, and then immediately begin thinking about the second floor and of its various associations in connection with my work. Time after time I found the elevator operator, who didn’t know me or my earlier association, stopping at the second floor and then turning around to look at me.

A well-known Pacific Coast clergyman who was a deep student of Mind Stuff told me that every time he wanted flowers in his church, he simply sent his thoughts out to members of his congregation and someone would send flowers. He also told me that every memorial window in his church came as a result of the mental suggestions which he gave whenever he felt the time was propitious for another window.

Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, in a radio program in April, 1945, told of one of the most unusual “coincidences” on record. He related the story of an American song writer who just after the publication of one of his songs discovered that the same piece of music, note for note, had been composed in Germany only a short time previously. The fact that the compositions to the last note were identical makes the story more unusual than the many cases that have been reported of widely separated people who have had the same idea at the same time. The writer, living on the West Coast, submitted a short time before this book was written an article to an eastern publication only to receive a note from the editor saying an article embracing the same material had just been accepted from another writer living in the East. Elisha Gray claimed that he had the idea of the telephone at the same time as Alexander Graham Bell. Independent simultaneous discovery of ideas often happens among writers, inventors, chemists, engineers, and composers.

Even during the preparation of this book, when suggestions were being made for changes and additions, both my agent-adviser and myself were often surprised to learn that we both received ideas at almost identical times. Not only did we get similar ideas, but he suggestive use of identical names of people came to us almost simultaneously. Early when my publishers suggested additional matter, I had been engaged in research work for a week when I received a letter from my adviser stating that he had suggested to the publisher the identical subject matter on which I had been working. Checking disclosed that the same thoughts had come to us at approximately the same time. Naturally, there is no way of knowing whether my adviser in New York caught my thoughts or whether I caught his. I merely report the facts.