Psychology and Achievement | Page 8

the meaning in
words. And nine persons out of ten while groping for appropriate words
will unconsciously describe a spiral in the air with the forefinger.
Swing a locket in front of you, holding the end of the chain with both

hands. You will soon see that it will swing in harmony with your
thoughts. If you think of a circle, it will swing around in a circle. If you
think of the movement of a pendulum, the locket will swing back and
forth.
These experiments not only illustrate the impelling energy of thought
and its power to induce bodily action, but they indicate also that the
bodily effects of mental action are not limited to bodily movements that
are conscious and voluntary.
[Sidenote: Scope of Mind Power]
The fact is, every mental state whether you consider it as involving an
act of the will or not, is followed some kind of bodily effect, and every
bodily action is preceded by some distinct kind of mental activity. From
the practical science point of view every thought causes its particular
bodily effects.
This is true of simple sensations. It is true of impulses, ideas and
emotions. It is true of pleasures and pains. It is true of conscious mental
activity. It is true of unconscious mental activity. It is true of the whole
range of mental life.
Since the mental conditions that produce bodily effects are not limited
to those mental conditions in which there is a conscious exercise of the
will, it follows that the bodily effects produced by mental action are not
limited to movements of what are known as the voluntary muscles.
On the contrary, they include changes and movements in all of the
so-called involuntary muscles, and in every kind of bodily structure.
They include changes and movements in every part of the physical
organism, from changes in the action of heart, lungs, stomach, liver and
other viscera, to changes in the secretions of glands and in the caliber
of the tiniest blood-vessels. A few instances such as are familiar to the
introspective experience of everyone will illustrate the scope of the
mind's control over the body.
[Sidenote: Bodily Effects of Emotion]

Emotion always causes numerous and intense bodily effects. Furious
anger may cause frowning brows, grinding teeth, contracted jaws,
clenched fists, panting breath, growling cries, bright redness of the face
or sudden paleness. None of these effects is voluntary; we may not
even be conscious of them.
Fright may produce a wild beating of the heart, a death-like pallor, a
gasping motion of the lips, an uncovering or protruding of the eye-balls,
a sudden rigidity of the body as if "rooted" to the spot.
Grief may cause profuse secretion of tears, swollen, reddened face, red
eyes and other familiar symptoms.
Shame may cause that sudden dilation of the capillary blood-vessels of
the face known as "blushing."
[Sidenote: Bodily Effects of Perception]
The sight of others laughing or yawning makes us laugh or yawn. The
sound of one man coughing will become epidemic in an audience. The
thought of a sizzling porter-house steak with mushrooms, baked
potatoes and rich gravy makes the mouth of a hungry man "water."
Suppose I show you a lemon cut in half and tell you with a wry face
and puckered mouth that I am going to suck the juice of this
exceedingly sour lemon. As you merely read these lines you may
observe that the glands in your mouth have begun to secrete saliva.
There is a story of a man who wagered with a friend that he could stop
a band that was playing in front of his office. He got three lemons and
gave half of a lemon to each of a number of street urchins. He then had
these boys walk round and round the band, sucking the lemons and
making puckered faces at the musicians. That soon ended the music.
[Sidenote: Experiments of Pavlov]
A distinguished German scientist, named Pavlov, has recently
demonstrated in a series of experiments with dogs that the sight of the
plate that ordinarily bears their food, or the sight of the chair upon

which the plate ordinarily stands, or even the sight of the person who
commonly brings the plate, may cause the saliva to flow from their
salivary glands just as effectively as the food itself would do if placed
in their mouths.
[Sidenote: Taste and digestion]
There was a time, and that not long ago, when the contact of food with
the lining of the stomach was supposed to be the immediate cause of
the secretion of the digestive fluids. Yet recent observation of the
interior of the stomach through an incision in the body, has shown that
just as soon as the food is tasted in the mouth, a purely mental process,