The ability to appropriate what we require for our growth continually increases as we reach higher planes and broader visions, and the greater our ability to know what we require, the more certain we shall be to discern its presence, to attract it and to absorb it. Nothing may reach us except what is necessary for our growth.

All conditions and experiences that come to us do so for our benefit. Difficulties and obstacles will continue to come until we absorb their wisdom and gather from them the essentials of further growth. That we reap what we sow, is mathematically exact. We gain permanent strength exactly to the extent of the effort required to overcome our difficulties.

The inexorable requirements of growth demand that we exert the greatest degree of attraction for what is perfectly in accord with us. Our highest happiness will be best attained through our understanding of and conscious co-operation with natural laws.

Our mind forces are often bound by the paralyzing suggestions that come to us from the crude thinking of the race, and which are accepted and acted upon without question. Impressions of fear, of worry, of disability and of inferiority are given us daily. These are sufficient reasons in themselves why men achieve so little--why the lives of multitudes are so barren of results, while all the time there are possibilities within them which need only the liberating touch of appreciation and wholesome ambition to expand into real greatness.

Women, perhaps even more than men, have been subject to these conditions. This is true because of their finer susceptibilities, making them more open to thought-vibrations from other minds, and because the flood of negative and repressive thoughts has been aimed for especially at them.

But it is being overcome. Florence Nightingale overcame it when she rose in the Crimea to heights of tender sympathy and executive ability previously unknown among women. Clara Barton, the head of the Red Cross, overcame it when she wrought a similar work in the armies of the Union. Jenny Lind overcame it when she shoed her ability to command enormous financial rewards while at the same time gratifying the passionate desire of her nature and reaching the front rank of her day in musical art. And there is a long list of women singers, philanthropists, writers and actresses who have proved themselves capable of reaching the greatest literary, dramatic, artistic and sociological achievement.

Women as well as men are beginning to do their own thinking. They have awakened to some conception of their possibilities. They demand that if life holds any secrets, these shall be disclosed. At no previous time has the influence and potency of thought received such careful and discriminating investigation. While a few seers have grasped the great fact that mind is the universal substance, the basis of all things, never before has this vital truth penetrated the more general consciousness. Many minds are now striving to give this wonderful truth definite utterance. Modern science has taught us that light and sound are simply different intensities of motion, and this has led to discoveries of forces within man that could not have been conceived of until this revelation was made.

A new century has dawned, and now, standing in its light man sees something of the vastness of the meaning of life--something of its grandeur. Within that life is the germ of infinite potencies. One feels convinced that man’s possibility of attainment cannot be measured, that boundary lines to his onward march are unthinkable. Standing on this height he finds that he can draw new power to himself from the Infinite energy of which he is a part.

Some men seem to attract success, power, wealth, attainment, with very little conscious effort; others conquer with great difficulty; still others fail altogether to reach their ambitions, desires and ideals. Why is this so? Why should some men realize their ambitions easily, others with difficulty, and still others not at all? The cause cannot by physical, else the most perfect men physically would be the most successful. The difference, therefore, must be mental--must be in the mind; hence mind must be the creative force, must constitute the sole difference between men. It is mind, therefore, which overcomes environment and every other obstacle in the path of man.

When the creative power of thought is fully understood, its effect will seem to be marvelous. But such results cannot be secured without proper application, diligence and concentration. The laws governing in the mental and spiritual world are as fixed and infallible as in the material world. To secure the desired results, then, it is necessary to know the law and to comply with it. A proper compliance with the law will be found to produce the desired result with invariable exactitude.

Scientists tell us that we live in the universal ether. This is formless, of itself, but it is pliable, and forms about us, in us and around us, according to our thought and word. We set it into activity by that which we think. Then that which manifests to us objectively is that which we have thought or said.

Thought is governed by law. The reason we have not manifested more faith is because of lack of understanding. We have not understood that everything works in exact accordance with definite law. The law of thought is as definite as the law of mathematics, or the law of electricity, or the law of gravitation. When we begin to understand that happiness, health, success, prosperity and every other condition or environment are results, and that these results are created by thinking, either consciously or unconsciously, we shall realize the importance of a working knowledge of the laws governing thought.

Those coming into a conscious realization of the power of thought find themselves in possession of the best that life can give; substantial things of a higher order become theirs, and these sublime realities are so constituted that they can be made tangible parts of daily personal life. They realize a world of higher power, and keep that power constantly working. This power is inexhaustible, limitless, and they are therefore carried forward from victory to victory. Obstacles that seem insurmountable are overcome. Enemies are changed to friends, conditions are overcome, elements transformed, fate is conquered.

The supply is inexhaustible, and the demand can be made along whatever lines we may desire. This is the mental law of demand and supply.

Our circumstances and environment are formed by our thoughts. We have, perhaps, been creating these conditions unconsciously. If they are unsatisfactory the remedy is to consciously alter our mental attitude and see our circumstances adjust themselves to the new mental condition. There is nothing strange or supernatural about this; it simply the Law of Being. the thoughts which take root in the mind will certainly produce fruit after their kind. The greatest schemer cannot “gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.” To improve our conditions we must first improve ourselves. Our thoughts and desires will be the first to show improvement.

To be in ignorance of the laws of Vibration is to be like a child playing with fire, or a man manipulating powerful chemicals without a knowledge of their nature and relations. This is universally true because Mind is the one great cause which produces all conditions in the lives of men and women.

Of course, mind creates negative conditions just as readily as favorable conditions, and when we consciously or unconsciously visualize every kind of lack, limitation and discord, we create these conditions; this what many are unconsciously doing all the time.

This law as well as every other law is no respecter of persons, but is in constant operation and is relentlessly bringing to each individual exactly what he has created; in other words, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Arthur Brisbane says, “Thought and its work include all the achievements of man.”

Compare spirit and thought to the genius of the musician and the sound which issues from the musical instrument.

What the instrument is to the musician the brain of the man is to the spirit that inspires thought.

However great the musician, the genius must depend for its expression upon the instrument which gives it reality in the physical world, through sound waves produced in the material atmosphere, striking nerves that carry music to the brain.

Give Paderewski a piano out of tune and he can give you only discord and lack of harmony. Or give to Paganini, the greatest violinist that ever lived, a violin out of tune, and in spite of the genius of the musician you will hear only hideous, disagreeable sounds. The spirit of music must have the right instruments for its expression.

The spirit that inspires thought, the spirit of man, must have the right brain for its expression.

The more complicated and highly developed the instrument, the more displeasing to the ear is the result when the instrument is out of tune.

Among human beings a highly developed brain out of tune--for instance, the insane ravings of a powerful genius like Nietzche, with his mind broken down--is infinitely more painful and shocking than in the case of a human being with a mind in comparison feeble and simple.

Our minds are so little accustomed to deal with the abstract, we live so much in the material world, inanimate objects have so much meaning for us that many human beings live and die without ever thinking at all of the spirit, yet the spirit is the only real thing in the universe.

And thought is the expression of spirit, working through a more or less imperfect human brain.

Bring yourself to think for some time earnestly of the nature and mysterious power of spirit. There is no thought more inspiring, fascinating, bewildering.

Consider the Falls of Niagara, with their tremendous power, the vast moving machinery, the cities that are lighted, the blazing streets, the moving cars, all due apparently to the power in Niagara. Yet not due to that power in reality so much as to the spirit expressed in the thought of man. It was spirit that harnessed Niagara. It was spirit transferred the power of the Falls to distant cities.

Yet that spirit has neither shape nor weight, size nor color, taste nor smell. You ask a man “What is the Spirit?” and he must answer that it is nothing, since it occupies no space, and cannot be seen or felt. And yet he must answer also that the spirit is everything. The world only exists as it is because we see it in the eyes of the spirit. The optic nerve takes a picture, sends it to the brain and the spirit sees the picture.

It was the spirit acting on the brain of Columbus, and through him upon others, that brought the first ship to America.

It is the spirit working and expressing itself through the thought of brains more and more highly developed that has gradually brought man from hi former condition of savagery to his present comparative degree of civilization. And that same spirit, working in future ages through brains infinitely superior to any that we can now conceive, will establish real harmony on this planet.

Yet you know that spirit exists, and that it is you, and that except for that spirit which animates you, picks you up when you fall, inspires you in success and comforts you in failure and misfortune, there would be nothing at all in this life, and you would not be different from one of the stones in the field, or some of the dummies that the tailor sets in front of his store.

Compare the spirit and the material world as you see it with the genius that dwells in the brain of the great painter and the works which the painter has to do.

every statue, painting and church that Michael Angelo created already existed in his spirit. But the spirit could not be content with that existence. It had to visualize itself; it had to see itself created.

The spirit really lives completely only when it sees itself reflected in the material world. All the mother love is in the spirit of woman. But it has complete existence only when the mother holds the child in her arms and sees in reality, in flesh and blood, the being that she loves and has created.

The achievements of the greatest men are all locked up within them from the first, but the spirit of such men can reach full realization only when the spirit, acting through the brain and expressing itself through thought, creates the work.

We know that all useful work is the result of sound thought. If we realize that thought itself is the expression of the spirit, we are moved by a sense of duty to give to that spirit the best possible expression of which we are capable, the best chance that it can have, dwelling in imperfect bodies and speaking through imperfect minds such as those we possess.

It is an inspiration to realize that men here on earth, gradually improving, become less animal and more spiritual as the centuries pass, are destined to develop in their own physical bodies, instruments capable of interpreting properly the spirit that animates us.

Human beings improve from generation to generation--that we know. The improvement is due to the affection of fathers and mothers for each other and for their children.

This race of ours one hundred thousand years ago was made up of animal-like creatures, with huge, projecting jaws, enormous teeth, small foreheads and hideously shaped bodies. Gradually through the centuries we have changed, the brute has gradually disappeared, the prognathous face of man as become fatter. The jaw has gone in, the forehead has come out, and behind the forehead, gradually, thanks to the devotion and patient labor of women, we are developing a brain that will ultimately give decent and adequate expression to spirit.

Spirit and thought are identical in the sense that the genius of the musician and the sound that you hear when his music is played are identical. In music the sound represents and interprets the musician’s spirit. And the interpretation and the accuracy of that interpretation depend upon the orchestra, the violin or the piano. When the instruments are out of tune it is not the genius of the musician, but a misinterpretation that you hear.

And with our human brains, most of them out of tune, most of them incapable of expressing anything but the merest, faintest reflection of true spiritual life, there is as yet very little harmony.