Yet, for every such man there are a multitude of others, equally gifted in some respect, but wanting that mysterious “Open Sesame” which would discover their hidden mental riches, arouse them from their accustomed inferiority to their best selves, and transform potentiality into accomplishment.  So it comes about that most of us are gems that shine but to illumine the “dark unfathomed caves of ocean,” flowers born to “blush unseen.”

[Sidenote:  Mental Effect of City Life]

Take an illustration of the way in which this reserve or potential energy is transformed into circulating or kinetic energy.  Suppose that you are a countryman and come to live in a large city.  The speed with which we do things, our habits of quick decision, the whirlwind of activities of the busy man in town, appal you.  You cannot see how we live through it.  A day in the business district fills you with terror.  The tumult and danger make it seem “like a permanent earthquake.”

But settle down to work here.  And in a year you will have “caught the pulse beat,” you will “vibrate to the city’s rhythm,” and if you only “make good” in your work, you will enjoy the strain and hurry, you will keep pace with the best of us, and you will get more out of yourself in a day in the city than you ever did in a week on the farm.

This change in degree of mental activity does not necessarily mean that you are making more of a success of life.

Your activities may be ill-directed.  Your new-found powers may be misspent and dissipated.

But you are mentally more alert Your mental forces have been stimulated by the stirring environment.

[Sidenote:  New-Found Energies Explained]

And, mark this particularly, a number of mental pictures will pass across the screen of your consciousness today in the same time that one mental image formerly required.

Now, you have learned that with every idea catalogued in memory, there is wrapped up and stowed away an associated “feeling tone” and an associated impulse to some particular muscular action.

Assuming this, you must at once see that here is an explanation of your new-found energy.

Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness of action, your more observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead of the former drawling utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened enthusiasm and enjoyment of life—­all of these are but manifestations of a quickened intelligence.

[Sidenote:  Quickened Mentality]

They are the working out through the motor paths of mental impulses to muscular action.

And these impulses to muscular action come thronging into consciousness because the livelier environment brings about a more rapid reproduction of memory pictures.

And here comes a particularly striking fact.  One would naturally suppose that the more energy a man consumed, and the faster he lived, the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted and the shorter his life would be.