Chapter 14 - What Has He Done

[The Practical Side of New Thought]

We were talking about new thought and the increased efficiency it gives to people.

Evidently he did not think very highly of the practical side of new thought. It is all very well to help people to bear their troubles, he said, but it does not get rid of the troubles. And I said I thought if it never did anything more than help people to endure things, it at least helps more than anything else ever did.

But I assured him that new thought rightly applied does change conditions, and I cited my own experience in proof. Then I called his attention to other people, prominent in the new thought, whose conditions and health have been changed for good. One of the names mentioned was that of a successful lawyer well known to us both. “Well,” queried he, “what has he done that is so wonderful? Others have done as great or greater things, who never heard of new thought.”

Of course. The principles of new thought are the principles of life itself, and in all climes and times there have been people who, consciously or unconsciously, lived according to principle and thereby manifested health (which means wholeness) of mind, body and environment.

Wisdom’s ways are always ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.

And wisdom is as omnipresent as the ethers, to be used by him who inspires it -- by him who desires it above all else.

Every pleasant thing and thought in this world comes by mental breathing of wisdom. And every soul that ever lived has lived by breathing wisdom.

In proportion to his inbreathing of wisdom has been the pleasantness of his ways and the peace of his path.

And his ups and downs have come from the fact that he inspires wisdom in spots only. He keeps on mentally breathing, of course; but he doesn’t always breathe wisdom. He is like a man who breathes pure outdoor air awhile, and then goes into a close room, or down in a mine, and breathes poison gases.

As physical health depends upon the quantity of pure air inspired, so physical and mental and environmental health depends upon the amount of pure wisdom inspired. And nobody will deny that most of us inspire a large proportion of poison gas of the mental kind, instead of pure wisdom. We breathe over other people's thoughts after them, just as we breathe over the air after them. This breathed-over thought destroys our physical, mental and environmental health. We need to get out in God’s open air and breathe new thought, or we shall asphyxiate.

Old thought is division, dissension, separateness, competition.

New thought is the great opening of principles, oneness, harmony, God, good, freedom, peace, love.

New thought is from ages to ages everlasting. Those who inspire it, inbreathe it, are the whole and strong ones, whether they breathe it consciously or unconsciously.

By teachings of new thought the world is learning to do consciously, intelligently, what a few have done here and there through all the ages. And need we be reminded of the advantages of knowing how and why we do things?

"What has he done that is so wonderful?” The lawyer we spoke of is not what the world calls “great” in any line. He has not built up a Standard Oil “system,” nor torn one down. He is not a Roosevelt or a Togo, or a Napoleon, nor even an Elbert Hubbard. His desires and ambitions have run in other lines. He is not “built that way.” He “hasn’t it in him” to be a Rockefeller, and he is glad of it.

Why then should he be compared with Napoleon or Rockefeller? Do we measure roses and violets and daffodils and chrysanthemums by the same standards? Is the violet inconsequential because it sheds its sweetness in a shady comer instead of flinging it in midday from the top of a sunflower stalk? No. We measure violets by other violets, not by sunflowers or hollyhocks or peonies.

And men are more diverse than flowers. Every man has his own individuality, his own soul specifications to develop by. Every man comes as the flower of a peculiar ancestry, like no other man's ancestry. To judge one man by another is as foolish as to judge a violet by a sunflower.

This lawyer we spoke of stands in a class by himself. He has not achieved what Rockefeller has, but he has achieved something which satisfies himself better than the doings of a dozen Standard Oil magnates could.

And what is success but self-satisfaction?

To succeed is to accomplish what one sets out to do.

A growing success is a matter of growing ideals and a succession of successes.

Our lawyer is satisfied with new thought and its efficacy in his case. By its use he has accomplished a succession of things he wanted to do. He has literally made himself over, and his environment, too. And he has evolved new ideals and developed new energies which show him a joy-full eternity ahead.

He is satisfied with the new thought as a working principle.

He goes on working by it, growing daily in wisdom and knowledge, daily growing greater graces of character, mind, body and environment.

It is the man who does not live new thought teachings who misjudges them by the outward appearances of other men's lives.