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It is the duty of every true man and woman at this hour of their country's day to begin to THINK, to weigh for himself or herself the meanings of the signs of the times, to use their critical faculties, to face facts honestly, unhampered by prudery, convention, or the doctrines of the Church. And then they will see for themselves that the Great Unrest is a force, the direction of which, for good or ill, lies in their own hands. And according to the way they fulfil the responsibility entailed upon them in this matter, they or their children will reap the reward, or pay the price. The Great Unrest in its seething is still molten metal, which can be poured into what mould we will.

To call this Great Unrest a sign of decadence and a presage of destruction, would be as fallacious as to say that electricity is an entirely mischievous force. Both are mischievous when undirected, and both are glorious when used for good.

The test of the expansion of man's soul is the extent of its outlook. The puny spirit sees an hour or two ahead; the more advanced probably conceives plans to benefit himself and his loved ones day by day. The developed soul desires the good of his country. But the soul that is infinite and emancipated sees into eternity and demands of God the regeneration of humanity.

THE GOSPEL OF COMMON SENSE

Of all the attributes which we of the twentieth century should most strenuously encourage, that of common sense ranks first, in the face of the hysteria which threatens to weaken, if it does not swamp, all the wonderful new spirit of progress which is abroad.

Common sense applied to everything alone can restore our equilibrium as a nation, because as the years of this new century go on hysteria seems to increase. Nothing in the way of a public event can happen, from the just condemnation of a criminal for some atrocious crime, to the sinking of an ocean mammoth ship, but a large section of the public makes an outcry inspired by altruism or so-called humanitarianism, both developing into hysteria.

Let us look at the reason of this carefully, and we shall see that this state of things is the direct result of an irresponsible employment of the gigantic power of thought. Some few excitable brains start an idea, the circulation of which is made possible by the modern facilities for expression in the press. And because the majority of readers do not think for themselves, they are drawn into the current of unrest which has thus been suggested to their imagination, each individual augmenting its strength until it grows into a torrent of folly.

This proves the tremendous importance it is to a nation that each of its units should realise his own responsibility in regard to this matter. The moment that such a thing could be accomplished--that is, that the understanding of the power of thought could be brought home to people--there are millions of sound, honest folk who would deliberately try to use their possession of it for the good of themselves and the race, and who would bring up their children to do likewise.

The wave of complete materialism which passed over Europe during what we call the Victorian period discouraged any personal investigation of forces beyond what could actually be proved by the senses. Numberless examples of natural phenomena were laughed to scorn as the illusions of the ignorant. People read their Bibles, wherein there are countless instances shown of the power of thought, and never dreamed of applying the teaching to themselves. How such a materialistic age ever accepted Christ's miracles is a matter for wonderment, although now, looked at from the point of view of those who have investigated the currents of nature, the miracles are merely a proof of Jesus' divine understanding of these currents and forces in their greatest measure. We modern people are only as yet at the experimental stage, and hedged in by timidity and custom, but there is no reason why we should not advance if we desire to do so.

Think for a moment what would have happened if the passengers of all classes had been aware, from the first moment of the collision, that all were bound to go down who could not find places in the boats. The power of thought would then have created a mad panic of fear which no officers' pistols could have kept in check, and which might have produced a rush upon the lifeboats which would have swamped them all. But as it was, the power of thought in the few individuals who realised the general peril, was used by them in a godlike suppression of their own emotion, which produced an answering vibration of calm in the majority under their care.

I do not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a concrete illustration of what I wish to write about--the power of thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each individual for the benefit of the community--not from the desire to use this opportunity to circulate propaganda for any of the new ethical teachings, but simply from a common-sense point of view to see what good we can get out of a belief that is, I suppose, common to them all.

Now let us consider what most of us do actually know about this power of thought. We all are aware that no picture can be painted, no machinery invented, before a clear vision of it has been realised in the creator's brain. Not a single conscious action can be put into motion and force without its having first occurred to the imagination. The painter's hand and brush would be of no avail undirected by his brain or mind, which has first mentally visualised what it wishes to create in fact. Draw the analogy from this, and you will see that what you think about must have an enormous bearing upon your life. If thought, when inspired by desire, is strong enough to cause the hand to reproduce the vision of the imagination of the artist, this is an incontestable proof that thought is a very strong force indeed. You will agree with this if you--each individual who is reading these words--begin to examine yourself with truth.

Therefore, every time you say "I am ill," or think "I am ill," are you not helping the illness to materialise? because the power of thought, which you cannot deny as the initial cause of every action, has then been turned to aid the condition of ill health.

Supposing for some cause you really are ill, why then help this evil state to augment by your thoughts? Rather impede its progress as far as you can by creating good-thought conditions.

You may reply, "But I am constantly doing this, and yet nothing good comes." Pause and use your common sense by remembering that for twenty--thirty--forty years perhaps, when you did not analyse matters, you were laying up for yourself numberless stumbling-blocks by wrong thinking, which according to the law we are discussing must be surmounted before you can start on a clear road. And the reason why you do not immediately receive the result of your good thoughts is that you are still under the action of your bad ones. But if you recognise this law of the power of thought, you need not incur for yourself any further debts to pay.

Alas! I am not a scientist who can dogmatically prove every fraction of my beliefs. I only want to awaken my readers to think for themselves upon this interesting subject, for the facts are there for us all to investigate, unaided by scientists, if we will.

So without any more argument, shall we take it for granted that you are with me thus far, and have seen my point? Yes. Then let us examine what our thoughts do for us.

For example, let us suppose a man has a disease which is believed to be incurable. His thoughts tell him so constantly, and the thoughts of his friends, often expressed in words, convince him still further of his misfortune. He is certain nothing he can do will make it better, and any remedy that is applied will only meet with failure. He has made his mental picture of an incurable disease; and so he is helping the material result to accomplish itself. But, as hope springs eternal in the human breast, he still goes from doctor to doctor for fresh advice, while unconsciously nullifying the benefit he might receive from doing so by his attitude of mind in holding the belief that nothing can cure him. We must all of us know of cases like this, and have seen the gradual increase in the person's illness.

Now supposing that the starting-point is the same; the disease certainly is there, but the man is determined not to aid and augment this state of things, so whenever the thought presents itself that he has an incurable disease he persistently banishes it and replaces it with one that he will grow well. He will be aiding that condition; he will be making himself the pole in tune to receive the answering vibrations of his mental picture. He will know that he must be drawing to himself every chance that science has up till this time of the world's day been able to invent or discover for the betterment of such a disease as his. He will know that he is giving nature a free hand, and as far as he is able, he is opening every door to the probability that he may grow well. Now, if we admit the power of thought, we must admit it has power to go both these ways. Is it not worth while trying to think good things for ourselves, then, instead of evil ones?

It does not seem possible, as I understand some assert, that by mere thinking and believing we can cure even a broken arm. Because, although the principle may be right in its eventuality, no one on earth can be quite advanced enough yet to draw these forces to himself sufficiently strongly to demonstrate it as Christ did. But we are at the stage when, by our thoughts, we can certainly aid physical means of betterment. Thus when we or our friends are ill, it lies in our own hands whether we will aid or retard our or their recovery.

Long years ago, before any of these psychic waves were discussed or given the least credence, I remember a very celebrated American doctor telling me, as a curious fact, that he often got his patients over the crisis of typhoid fever by telling them cheerfully beforehand that the dangerous moment was passed, and they were not to worry over the seemingly worse physical sensations they were perhaps about to experience--these were only the reaction. In that way, he said, he removed the amount of fear from the mind of the patient which otherwise might have been enough to cause the extra exertion to the heart which would have proved fatal at the critical moment. The power of thought, you see, and nothing else, then saved them.

To continue this line of reasoning in mental, not physical, things. Supposing you feel angry and resentful towards some one, and you send out thoughts of hate and ill-will. The pole in tune to such feelings in that person will answer and return them to you, and a condition of evil will be created. But supposing that, when perhaps the justly angry and resentful thoughts present themselves, you replace them instantly with kind and loving ones. You will have disconnected yourself with the evil thoughts of the other person, they can no longer reach you, and if he has any good in him you will have connected yourself with that good, and so peace can be established.

All this is common sense, which is the only attitude of mind with which to approach any new suggestion that we may get benefit from it, and not through our arrogant ignorance dismiss it as nonsense, until we have proved it to be such. A hundred years ago the telephone would have been considered either as magic or the vapourings of a madman if an individual had tried to explain it. We say that "France is developing a new spirit," we say "A wave of discontent seems to be passing over such and such a community," we are thus unconsciously admitting the power of forces beyond the perceptible. Why cannot we instantly grasp, then, what the power of our everyday thought is doing for us, and how careful we should be in its direction to avoid augmenting the current of foolish and harmful ones--because unity is strength. There are many grains of good to be got out of all new ethical teachings, if only they can be sifted by common sense. The unfortunate part is, that very often it is only the faddists who expound them, and they go off at a tangent. One reads several pages of illuminating matter, and then, perhaps, one comes upon a chapter devoted to proving that mankind must train itself to live upon nuts or uncooked vegetables! Or that the only way to learn concentration is for the pupil to school himself mentally to stare for so many minutes at an imaginary spot in the solar plexus!

Common sense revolts, although many may not be sufficiently trained to make the deduction that if God, the omnipotent, original, all-dominating dynamo, gave the flesh of bird, beast and fish, and the fruits and vegetables of the earth for mankind to feed upon, it is a little ridiculous for one sect to eliminate as food all but the special part of these aliments of which it approves. Thus, common sense being affronted, all the rest of the teaching is likely to fall upon stony ground and only be received by the faddists in tune to this particular argument. No theory for the betterment of mankind will succeed now with the mass of people or make any lasting mark upon time unless its basic principle can stand practical dissection.

So that upon this subject of the power of thought, all that any one at the present stage can do, no matter what his own personal beliefs may be, is to try and awaken people to think about it themselves and make their own investigations; to open a window for any soul to look through and see what he can get from it for himself. Because, as yet, the scientists and psychologists have not been sufficiently interested in the idea to endeavour to prove and demonstrate it as an exact science beyond all controversy. When this has been done, the intelligent will credit it because they are convinced, and the ignorant because they follow the others without reason.

All I hope to do by writing this article is to point out that the power of thought is a vital factor in our lives, and can really affect every hour of them for good or ill.

Thousands of people who read the new ethical or religious books which are abroad, and even exploit their propaganda--thousands who attend the various meetings and services and lectures of the different societies, be they "New Thought" or any of the others on more or less the same lines--never dream of applying the teachings to a single ordinary thing, and still go on with their tempers and melancholy and flurry and fuss, just as they did before they ever heard of the idea that they can control and eliminate these things. An enormous majority of the public are frightened at the very name of a new religion or ethical teaching, and think it wrong even to investigate what it teaches. But the broad-minded are unafraid of any knowledge, and can gain good by knowing about all developments of human thought, provided they approach each point with common sense and without hysteria, dismissing the idea of what we are accustomed to call the supernatural, and realising that everything has a perfectly natural explanation when it can be understood, and it is only our ignorance which makes us shy at it.

And so I would appeal to those who credit this power of thought to employ it responsibly, and to realise that they are all God's atoms in the great scheme of things, and must use their personal force as a contribution to the vast thought-waves which can advance, or which, when ill directed, can sweep away a nation.

MARRIAGE

It is an interesting subject--and one which has touched, or will probably touch, most of our lives, therefore it may not be unprofitable to study it a little, and what it means and what it should mean; because, in the present upheaval of all our old beliefs, marriage, as a sensible institution, is being attacked upon many sides.

It is extremely easy to pull down a house, but it requires skill and special training to rebuild it again; and before dragging the roof off and demolishing the walls, it would be wiser to have made a distinct plan and provided the materials ready for the reconstruction of a new habitation, that the rain and the wind may not overcome us when we have no shelter for our heads. But this is what the attackers of marriage have failed to do as yet. Here are three facts which we can begin by looking at.

Woman, on the other hand, although unconsciously inspired by this same fundamental instinct of species-preservation, is not naturally polygamous, or rather polyandrous, because such a state would militate against this end by eventually destroying pure offspring. She only becomes so under certain conditions. Fidelity, then, is, so to speak, a natural state for woman, and she has not to fight against any fundamental instinct of her sex in order to preserve it--she has only to resist perverted desire, which is an exotic growth, the outcome of civilisation. Thus fidelity is much harder for man, who, to succeed in being faithful, is obliged to dominate a natural instinct, which is a far more difficult thing to do than to fight against an exotic desire; because all natural things are governed by inexorable and eternal laws, and are not at the mercy of circumstance. Thus the natural instinct of man is at work all the time in continuous activity--and the exotic desire of woman is intermittent, and the result of circumstance.

Of course, all this has been said before by every serious thinker, and I am only reiterating these facts because the general readers may have forgotten them, and I must bring them to their recollection to make the rest of our discussion upon marriage clear.

These nature instincts being admitted, we can get on to a survey of legal marriage. At first, it must have been an affair of expediency. The woman was probably expected to be faithful, and brute force took care that she was so, or that she immediately paid the price of possible contamination of offspring by being killed. She was expected to be faithful for a natural reason, not for a spiritual or sentimental one; the reason being, as already inferred, to ensure the purity of the offspring. Man had no need to be faithful to one woman to secure this end, and never, in consequence, dreamed of being so.

All through Pagan times infidelity in man was rampant and recognised, and not looked upon as sin. And when woman became civilised enough to have exotic desires, she lost her natural instinct, that of preservation of pure offspring, and became liable to vagrant fancies and often a vicious creature.

Woman has developed so far that generally she thinks she is a reasonable and balanced creature, with strong individuality--and personal tastes and likes and dislikes. She is now ill-fitted to keep them all in subservience to man, unless he is her intellectual master. She may have wedded only because the emotion of sex forced her at one of its powerful moments to take a physical mate--totally unsuited to her moral calibre. But she has knelt at the altar and sworn vows before God--and perhaps has fulfilled woman's original mission in the world, and become the mother of children--so what is to be done to rectify her mistake and its unhappy consequences?

She must look the whole circumstances of it in the face and ask herself whether she herself threw dust in her own eyes as regards the character of her husband, whether he deceived her in this, or whether they just drifted together, each to blame as much as the other, through the attraction of sex and the cruelty of ignorance. She may regret it a thousandfold--but she has done the thing of her own free will, no one forced her to wed the man; she may have done so unwillingly in some cases--and for ulterior motives, but at all events she was consenting and not dragged to church resisting, and so if she is sensible she will use the whole of her intelligence to make the best of it. She will look to the end of her every action and her every thought. Will brooding over her "rights," and the wrongs he has inflicted, mend them? Will it do anything but give her vanity--the satisfaction of self-pity? Certainly not.

If she has really evolved enough to wish to impose her opinions and individuality upon her household or the community, she will have realised that the welfare of the home for which she is responsible, and the community to which she belongs, are, or ought to be, of far more consequence to her than her own personal emotions. Therefore she must ask herself whether she has any right to upset the happiness of the one, and the conception of good of the other, by indulging in personal quarrels and bickerings, or open scandal with her mate. A really noble and unselfish woman would never consider her personal emotion before her duty to God and to her neighbour. It is because the outlook of woman is as a rule so pitifully narrow and self-centred that she often makes a useless and unhappy wife, and shipwrecks her own and others' futures.

Man has gone on with his brute force, and his physical and mental attraction, and his tastes and beliefs and aspirations very much the same for thousands of years. Numbers of them were brutes then, and numbers are brutes still and will remain so. It is only woman who has so incredibly changed, and after staying immeasurably behind in importance and in intellectuality for countless centuries, now seeks to equal if not outstep man in all things. It would be well for man to wake up to the fact that he is now wedding a woman with every sense and nerve and conception of life far in advance of what his mother believed herself to be capable of--and so his methods towards her in return must not be as his father's were. If man wishes to have the good, domestic, obedient wife his father--perhaps one should go farther back and say grandfather!--expected--and got--he must either choose a timid weakling who becomes just his echo, or he must learn to treat the modern woman as a comrade, a being who mentally can understand and follow his aspirations and even assist him in his desires, a creature to respect and consult, and whom he cannot rule just because he is a man and she is a woman--but can only do so, and bring her to obedience, when he has shown her his intellectual superiority and his wisdom.

Who does not respect a woman who fulfils all her obligations with grace and charm, whose house is well ordered, whose friends are well entertained by her fine mind, and whose children are well brought up and full of understanding? She is indeed more precious than rubies and far more full of influence for the good of her community than she who shouts of rights and wrongs and votes and such-like. The first woman could control a hundred votes, and help a government, but the second can only clog the wheels of the sex's advancement.

Now we get back to marriage!

And the first and foremost thing to be understood is that it is a frightful responsibility to undertake, and that all those who enter into this bond lightly and for frivolous motives, or from just drifting, will be made by fate to pay the price.

Before undertaking to play that most difficult part of wife, every girl ought to ask herself, Does she really care for the man enough to make her use her intelligence to understand him, and to try to keep him loving her? Or if she does not personally care enough for him to trouble about this--will the situation of her husband in the world satisfy her, and make the bondage, unleavened by love, of the care of house, servants, and possible children, worth while?

Before undertaking the situation she ought to look at every aspect of the case, and question herself searchingly upon her own aims and ends, and if the actual facts will or will not fit in with them. Having made up her mind that for one reason or another it is for her happiness to take a certain man for her mate, she ought then sedulously to cultivate all the aspects of the condition which can conduce to peace and to the attainment and enjoyment of that end. She must not forget that the man has paid her the highest honour a man can pay a woman. He has selected her to be his life's companion. He proposes in nine cases out of ten, to provide her with a home and a position in life, and to take upon himself the responsibility of her maintenance . But in all cases the man in asking her to marry him has shown that something in her--or in her possessions--makes her appear worth the giving up of his liberty. So she owes him just as much as the thing he took her for. If for her money, and she knows it is for that, and she has been sufficiently humble to accept him on those terms--she owes him money. If for love--she owes him at least the outside observances of love. If he has pretended love and it is for some other motive, his Nemesis will fall upon himself in the disillusion and contempt he will inspire. But in all cases the woman, through want of intelligence or pure misfortune, has crossed the Rubicon with him; she has allowed him to teach her the meaning of dual life--she has put it into his power with her to create future lives. She cannot, for any price or any prayers, recross that fatal stream. So for all reasons of common sense--and above all, sense of responsibility to the community--she had better make the best of her bargain.

Likewise, man should pause and think, Is it merely because I cannot obtain this woman upon any other terms that I am offering her marriage? Have I respect for her? Do I think she will bring happiness into my house as well as pleasure to my body? Is she suited to my brain capacity when I am not exalted by physical emotion? Am I going to curb my selfishness and behave decently towards her?

In each and every case it is a man's duty to be kind and courteous to a woman who is his wife. He has made her so by his free vows before God , or he has made her so by vows and business agreement, according to the laws of his country, before the Registrar. In either case he has made her his legal wife and the possible mother of his children--units unborn who can affect the welfare of his country. He has, then, his great duties towards her. If she was a girl, he has taken from her that which nothing on earth can restore; he has made her into another being. He has been instrumental in making her--this other human soul--accept responsibilities, and he is bound as an honourable man to school himself so as to be able to help the mutual happiness and peace of their dual existence. And if he wishes to be obeyed, loved, and respected, he has to look to himself that he inspires obedience, love, and respect in his mate. She will not experience these feelings to order; and fear alone, or some other and lower motive, would make her simulate them. Man must not forget that nothing simulated can last. Truth alone remains at the end of the year.

No marriage can be certain of continuing happy which has been entered into in the spirit of taking a lottery ticket. But most marriages could be fairly happy if both man and woman looked the thing squarely in the face and made up their minds that they would run together in harness as two well-trained carriage horses, both knowing of the pole, both pulling at the collar and not over-straining the traces, both taking pride in their high stepping and their unity of movement. How much more dignified than to make a pitiful exhibition of incompatibility like two wild creatures kicking and plunging, and finally upsetting the vehicle they had agreed to draw?

I would like to discuss now the problem of whether or not marriage could be made happy no matter how it starts, by using common sense, but the deep interest of the whole subject has made my pen already cover too much space and I must refrain in this chapter.

AFTER MARRIAGE

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