Thought-Culture; Or, Practical Mental TrainingAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Thought-Culture; Or, Practical Mental Training
Atkinson, William Walker
Thought and thinking
Upon the importance of a scientific use of the Imagination in every-day
life, the best authorities agree. Maudsley says: "We cannot do an act
voluntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and we cannot know
exactly what we are going to do until we have taught ourselves to do
it." Bain says: "By aiming at a new construction, we must clearly
conceive what is aimed at. Where we have a very distinct and
intelligible model before us, we are in a fair way to succeed; in
proportion as the ideal is dim and wavering we stagger and miscarry."
Kay says: "A clear and accurate idea of what we wish to do, and how it
is to be effected, is of the utmost value and importance in all the
affairs of life. A man's conduct naturally shapes itself according to
the ideas in his mind, and nothing contributes more to his success in
life than having a high ideal and keeping it constantly in view. Where
such is the case one can hardly fail in attaining it. Numerous
unexpected circumstances will be found to conspire to bring it about,
and even what seemed at first hostile may be converted into means for
its furtherance; while by having it constantly before the mind he will
be ever ready to take advantage of any favoring circumstances that may
present themselves."
Simpson says: "A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform
impossibilities, or what seem to be such, to the cold and feeble."
Lytton says: "Dream, O youth, dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams
shall be prophets." Foster says: "It is wonderful how even the
casualities of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them,
and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent
tendency, threaten to frustrate. When a firm decisive spirit is
recognized it is curious to see how space clears around a man and leaves
him room and freedom." Tanner says: "To believe firmly is almost
tantamount in the end to accomplishment." Maudsley says: "Aspirations
are often prophecies, the harbingers of what a man shall be in a
condition to perform." Macaulay says: "It is related of Warren Hastings
that when only seven years old there arose in his mind a scheme which
through all the turns of his eventful life was never abandoned." Kay
says: "When one is engaged in seeking for a thing, if he keep the image
of it clearly before the mind, he will be very likely to find it, and
that too, probably, where it would otherwise have escaped his notice."
Burroughs says: "No one ever found the walking fern who did not have the
walking fern in his mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics
picks them up in every field he walks through. They are quickly
recognized because the eye has been commissioned to find them."
Constructive Imagination differs from the phases of the faculty of
Imagination which are akin to "Fancy," in a number of ways, the chief
points of difference being as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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