That mental influence can be exerted hypnotically most directly and certainly by one person upon another is undeniable, but this requires, firstly, a susceptible subject, or only one person in three or four, and to a degree a specially gifted operator, and very often “heaven-sent moments.”

    “However greatly mortals may require it,
    All cannot go to Corinth who desire it.”

But forethought, self-suggestion, and the bringing the mind to dwell continuously on a subject are absolutely within the reach of all who have any strength of mind whatever, without any aid.  Those of feebler ability yield, however, all the more readily (as in the case of children) to the influence of others or of hypnotism by a master.  Therefore, either subjectively or with assistance, most human beings can be morally benefited to a limitless degree, “morally” including intellectually.

We often hear it said of a person that he or she would do well or succeed if that individual had “application.”  Now, as Application, or “sticking to it,” or perseverance in earnest faith, is the main condition for success in all that I have discussed, I trust that it will be borne in mind that the process indicated provides from the first lesson or experiment for this chief requisite.  For the fore-thinking and hypnotizing our minds to be in a certain state or condition all the next day, by what some writers, such as HARTMANN, treat as magical process—­but which is just so much magical as the use of an electrical machine—­is simply a beginning in Attention and Perseverance.

    “So, like a snowball rolled in falling snow,
    It gathers size as it doth onward go.”

When we make a wish or will, or determine that in future after awaking we shall be in a given state of mind, we also include Perseverance for the given time, and as success supposes repetition in all minds, it follows that Perseverance will be induced gradually and easily.

And here I may remark that while all writers on ethics, duty or morals, cry continually “Be persevering, be honest, be enterprising, exert your will!” and so on, and waste thousands of books in illustrating the advantages of all these fine things, there is not one who tells us how to practically execute or do them.  To follow the hint of a quaint Sunday School picture, they show us a swarm of Bees, with hive and honey, but do not tell us how to catch one.  And yet a man may be anything he pleases if he will by easy and simple practice as I have shown, make the conception habitual.  I do not tell you as these good folk do, how to go about it nobly, or heroically, or piously; in fact, I prescribe a method as humble as making a fire, or a pair of shoes, and yet in very truth and honor I have profited far more by it than I ever did from all the exhortations which I ever have read.