We speak of strengthening the Will, when what we really mean is training the mind to obey, and accustoming the Will to command.  Our Will is strong enough, but we do not realize it.  The Will takes root in the very center of our being—­in the “I,” but our imperfectly developed mind does not recognize this tact.  We are like young elephants that do not recognize their own strength, but allow themselves to be mastered by puny drivers, whom they could brush aside with a movement.  The Will is back of all action—­all doing—­mental and physical.

We shall have much to say touching the Will, in these lessons and the student should give the matter his careful attention.  Let him look around him, and he will see that the great difference between the men who have stepped forward from the ranks, and those who remain huddled up in the crowd, consists in Determination and Will.  As Buxton has well said:  “The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful; the great and the insignificant; is Energy and Invincible Determination.”  And he might have added that the thing behind that “energy and invincible determination” was Will.

The writers and thinkers of all ages have recognized the wonderful and transcendent importance of the Will.  Tennyson sings:  “O living Will thou shalt endure when all that seems shall suffer shock.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes says:  “The seat of the Will seems to vary with the organ through which it is manifested; to transport itself to different parts of the brain, as we may wish to recall a picture, a phrase, a melody; to throw its force on the muscles or the intellectual processes.  Like the general-in-chief, its place is everywhere in the field of action.  It is the least like an instrument of any of our faculties; the farthest removed from our conceptions of mechanism and matter, as we commonly define them.”  Holmes was correct in his idea, but faulty in his details.  The Will does not change its seat, which is always in the center of the Ego, but the Will forces the mind to all parts, and in all directions, and it directs the Prana or vital force likewise.  The Will is indeed the general-in-chief, but it does not rush to the various points of action, but sends its messengers and couriers there to carry out its orders.  Buxton has said:  “The Will will do anything that can be done in this world.  And no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a Man without it.”  Ik Marvel truly says:  “Resolve is what makes a man manifest; not puny resolve, not crude determinations, not errant purpose—­but that strong and indefatigable Will which treads down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter; which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable.  Will makes men giants.”