A little more patience, a little more charity for all, a little more love; with less bowing down to the past, and the silent ignoring of pretended authority; a brave looking forward to the future, with more self-confidence and more faith in our fellow men, and the race will be ripe for a great burst of life and light.

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Time and Chance

As the subject is somewhat complex, I will have to explain it to you.  The first point is that there is not so very much difference in the intelligence of people after all.  The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man is not quite so stupid as he seems.  The difference in our estimates of men lies in the fact that one individual is able to get his goods into the show-window, and the other is not aware that he has any show-window or any goods.

“The soul knows all things, and knowledge is only a remembering,” says Emerson.

This seems a very broad statement; and yet the fact remains that the vast majority of men know a thousand times as much as they are aware of.  Far down in the silent depths of subconsciousness lie myriads of truths, each awaiting a time when its owner shall call it forth.  To utilize these stored-up thoughts, you must express them to others; and to be able to express them well your soul has to soar into this subconscious realm where you have cached these net results of experience.  In other words, you must “come out”—­get out of self—­away from self-consciousness, into the region of partial oblivion—­away from the boundaries of time and the limitations of space.  The great painter forgets all in the presence of his canvas; the writer is oblivious to his surroundings; the singer floats away on the wings of melody (and carries the audience with her); the orator pours out his soul for an hour, and it seems to him as if barely five minutes had passed, so rapt is he in his exalted theme.  When you reach the heights of sublimity and are expressing your highest and best, you are in a partial trance condition.  And all men who enter this condition surprise themselves by the quantity of knowledge and the extent of insight they possess.  And some going a little deeper than others into this trance condition, and having no knowledge of the miraculous storing up of truth in the subconscious cells, jump to the conclusion that their intelligence is guided by a spirit not theirs.  When one reaches this conclusion he begins to wither at the top, for he relies on the dead, and ceases to feed the well-springs of his subconscious self.

The mind is a dual affair—­objective and subjective.  The objective mind sees all, hears all, reasons things out.  The subjective mind stores up and only gives out when the objective mind sleeps.  And as few men ever cultivate the absorbed, reflective or semi-trance state, where the objective mind rests, they never really call on their subconscious treasury for its stores.  They are always self-conscious.