After all, it is the life that tells; and mind‐cure has developed a living system of mental hygiene which may well claim to have thrown all previous literature of the _Diätetik der Seele_ into the shade. This system is wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism: “Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.” “Thoughts are things,” as one of the most vigorous mind‐cure writers prints in bold type at the bottom of each of his pages; and if your thoughts are of health, youth, vigor, and success, before you know it these things will also be your outward portion. No one can fail of the regenerative influence of optimistic thinking, pertinaciously pursued. Every man owns indefeasibly this inlet to the divine. Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic modes of thought, are inlets to destruction. Most mind‐curers here bring in a doctrine that thoughts are “forces,” and that, by virtue of a law that like attracts like, one man’s thoughts draw to themselves as allies all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. Thus one gets, by one’s thinking, reinforcements from elsewhere for the realization of one’s desires; and the great point in the conduct of life is to get the heavenly forces on one’s side by opening one’s own mind to their influx. On the whole, one is struck by a psychological similarity between the mind‐cure movement and the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements. To the believer in moralism and works, with his anxious query, “What shall I do to be saved?” Luther and Wesley replied: “You are saved now, if you would but believe it.” And the mind‐curers come with precisely similar words of emancipation. They speak, it is true, to persons for whom the conception of salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning, but who labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty. _Things are wrong with them_; and “What shall I do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?” is the form of their question. And the answer is: “You _are_ well, sound, and clear already, if you did but know it.” “The whole matter may be summed up in one sentence,” says one of the authors whom I have already quoted, “_God is well, and so are you_. You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being.” The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large fraction of mankind is what gave force to those earlier gospels. Exactly the same adequacy holds in the case of the mind‐cure message, foolish as it may sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth in influence, and its therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whether it may not be destined (probably by very reason of the crudity and extravagance of many of its manifestations(53)) to play a part almost as great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future as did those earlier movements in their day. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐