The Mystic Will | Page 3

can by very easy processes of training, or by aid of
Auto-Suggestion, be strengthened to any extent, and states of mind
soon induced, which can be made by practice habitual. Thus, as a man
can by means of opium produce sleep, so can he by a very simple
experiment a few times repeated--an experiment which I clearly
describe and which has been tested and verified beyond all
denial--cause himself to remain during the following day in a perfectly
calm or cheerful state of mind; and this condition may, by means of
repetition and practice, be raised or varied to other states or conditions
of a far more active or intelligent description.
Thus, for illustration, I may say that within my own experience, I have
by this process succeeded since my seventieth year in working all day
far more assiduously, and without any sense of weariness or distaste for
labour, than I ever did at any previous period of my life. And the reader
need only try the extremely easy experiment, as I have described it, to
satisfy himself that he can do the same, that he can continue it with
growing strength ad infinitum, and that this power will unquestionably
at some future time be employed with marvellous results in Education.
For, beyond all question--since any human being can easily prove or
disprove it by a few experiments-- there is no method known by which
inattention, heedlessness, or negligence in the young can be so
promptly and thoroughly cured as by this; while on the other hand,
Attention and Interest by assiduity, are even more easily awakened. It
has indeed seemed to me, since I have devoted myself to the study of
Education from this point of view, as if it had been like the Iron Castle
in the Slavonian legend, unto which men had for centuries wended their
way by a long and wearisome road of many miles, while there was all
the time, unseen and unknown, a very short and easy subterranean
passage, by means of which the dwellers in the Schloss might have
found their way to the town below, and to the world, in a few minutes.
To this I have added a succinct account of what is, I believe, the easiest
and most comprehensive Art of Memory ever conceived. There are on

this subject more than five hundred works, all based, without exception,
on the Associative system, which may be described as a stream which
runs with great rapidity for a very short time but is soon choked up.
This, I believe, as a means applied to learning, was first published in
my work, entitled Practical Education. In it the pupil is taught the
direct method; that is, instead of remembering one thing by means of
another, to impress the image itself on the memory, and frequently
revive it. This process soon becomes habitual and very easy. In from
one year to eighteen months a pupil can by means of it accurately recall
a lecture or sermon. It has the immediate advantage, over all the
associate systems, of increasing and enlarging the scope and vigour of
the memory, or indeed of the mind, so that it may truly bear as a motto,
Vires acquirit eundo--"it gains in power as it runs long."
Finally, I set forth a system of developing the Constructive Faculty--
that which involves Ingenuity, Art, or manual making--as based on the
teaching of the so-called Minor Arts to the young. The principle from
which I proceed is that as the fruit is developed from the flower, all
Technical Education should be anticipated. Or begun in children by
practicing easy and congenial arts, such as light embroidery,
wood-carving or repoussé, by means of which they become familiar
with the elements of more serious and substantial work. Having found
out by practical experience, in teaching upwards of two thousand
children for several years, that the practice of such easy work, or the
development of the constructive faculty, invariably awakened the
intellectual power or intelligence, I began to study the subject of the
development of the mind in general. My first discovery after this was
that Memory, whether mental, visual, or of any other kind, could, in
connection with Art, be wonderfully improved, and to this in time came
the consideration that the human Will, with all its mighty power and
deep secrets, could be disciplined and directed, or controlled with as
great care as the memory or the mechanical faculty. In a certain sense
the three are one, and the reader who will take the pains, which are, I
trust, not very great, to master the details of this book, will readily
grasp it as a whole, and understand that its contents form a system of
education, yet one from which the old as well