NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

along narrow lines, and submissively accepting the teaching of others, it will not be because we do not see the law.

Out of the mass of impressions and opinions which for the majority of people constitute mental  life, we may eliminate those that bring harm, and develop those that are helpful. The economy  of cultivating right thoughts is thus at once apparent. Matter is obviously as much of a weight and a prison as we make it by our habitual thought.  Looking one way, we enter into matter, or density. Looking in the other, we invite that which is spiritual, quickening. Ideas have power over us in proportion as we dwell on them. It is matter of real economy, then, to view ourselves and our habitual ideas from as many directions as possible, precisely as one goes away from home  in order to break out of the ruts into which one inevitably falls by living constantly in one atmosphere.

Man leads a life of mind, then, because he is a conscious being, because the stream of consciousness is turned now into this channel, now into that, and can only take cognisance of a relatively large aspect of the world by the broadest, least prejudiced, and most open-minded turning from one phase of it to another. He has a distinct individuality, for which he is personally responsible, which it is his duty to preserve and to develop.