All these sects, parties, societies, creeds—call them what you will—have a common inspiration; we need no further proof than this that no one of the many developments from the common source is in itself complete and perfect. There is good evidence that each new development as soon as it becomes specialised is separated from its true source, becomes overelaborated, and so works its own downfall, the principle becoming absorbed and dominated by the bias of some individual mind. This is my analysis of the phenomena. It follows that what we seek is the noumenon, the reality, the true idea that underlies all these various manifestations. Before I attempt, however, to trace out this common principle, I wish to make three statements. (1) I do not profess to offer a finally perfected theory, for by so doing I should lay myself open to the same arguments I have advanced against other theories of the same nature. I say frankly that we are only at the beginnings of understanding, and my own wish is to keep my theory as simple as possible, to avoid any dogma. (2) I do not propose for many reasons to consider in this place my own methods in any other connexion but that of their application to physical defects, to the eradication of diseases, distortions, and lack of control, and, progressively, to the science of race culture and the improvement of the physique of the generations to come. (3) I wish it to be clearly understood that this treatise is not finally definitive. I hope in the future to have many opportunities of elaborating my general thesis, and of stating my experience of particular applications of my methods to peculiar cases, but I should not be true to my own principles if I were not willing to accept amendments, even perhaps to alter one or other of my premises, should new facts tend to show that I have made a false assumption in any particular. Now that I have thus cleared the ground, I will examine what I believe to be the first and greatest stumbling-block to conscious self-control, namely, “rigidity of mind.” This rigidity results in a fixed habit of thought and its concomitant evils, among which is the subjection of functional and muscular habits to subconscious control.