At the same time, simple though it be, it has Law and Reason at the back of it, like everything else.  The ancient Egyptians seem to have had clearer ideas on this subject than we have.  “The name was to the Egyptians the idea of the thing, without which it could not exist, and the knowledge of which therefore gave power over that which answered to it.”  “The idea of the thing represented its soul."[2] This is the same conception as the “archetypal ideas” of Plato, only carried further, so as to apply, not only to classes, but to each individual of the class, and, as we shall see later, there is a good deal of truth in it.  Put broadly, the conception is this—­every external fact must have a spiritual origin, an internal energizing principle, which causes it to exist in the particular form in which it does.  The outward fact is called the Phenomenon, and the corresponding inward principle is called the Noumenon.  The dictionary definition of these two words is as follows:  “Phenomenon—­the appearance which anything makes to our consciousness as distinguished from what it is in itself.”  “Noumenon—­an unknown and unknowable substance or thing as it is in itself—­the opposite to the Phenomenon or form through which it becomes known to the senses or the understanding” (Chambers’ Twentieth Century Dictionary).  Whether the dictionary be right in saying that the “noumena” of things are entirely unknowable, the reader must decide for himself; but the present book is an attempt to learn something about the “noumena” of things in general, and of ourselves in particular, and what I want to convey is, that the “noumenon” of anything is its essence, in terms of the Universal Energy and the Universal Substance, in their relation to the particular Form in question.  Probably the Latin word “Nomen,” a Name, is derived from this Greek word, and in this sense everything has its “hidden name”; and the region in which Thought-Power works, is this region of spiritual beginnings.  It deals with “hidden names”—­that inward essence which determines the outward form of things, persons, and circumstances alike; and it is in order to make this clearer, that I have commenced by sketching briefly the general principles of Substance and Energy as now recognized by modern science.

If I have made my meaning clear, you will see that what is wanted is not the knowledge of particular words, but an understanding of general principles.  At the same time I would not assert that the reciting of certain forms of words, such as the Indian “mantras” or the word AUM, to which Oriental teachers attach a mystic significance, is entirely without power.  But the power is not in the words but in our belief in their power.  I will give an amusing instance of this.  On several occasions I have been consulted by persons who supposed themselves to be under the influence of “malicious magnetism,” emanating in some cases from known, and in others from unknown,