[299] Each individual
“I” is forever the center
of the universe. All things exist for
the “I”, even the Law;
and without the “I” the
Law would exist in vain.
Man and the Law are always
reciprocal in interchange. The Law
being sex, endures forever. It is the
one unquenchable flame of divine
passion. Man recognizes this passion,
and by reason of recognition becomes
its unquenchable reflection, or
light, forever growing in brightness,
in illuminating power, as he
recognizes it more and more.
Man is one with Law. Upon this
point all these lessons hang. These
lessons are the cudgel taken up in
defense of the long abused race. They
are the race’s champion against
its own accusation. Oh, I know what I
am saying. The truth I am imparting
to you with so much ease I have
wrenched from death in a hand-to-hand
struggle. Years and years I fought
the charges hurled against poor,
deluded humanity from pulpit to
press, until by slow degrees I
crawled from under the old beliefs
that had made this world so potent a
hell to me, and stood in a fair, open
space where, even though my conquests
were unacknowledged by a single soul,
I yet knew myself a conqueror. For my
fealty to humanity I was called a
traitor to “God,” and I
even believed that this was so, but
now comes my day of justification in
the knowledge that “God”
and man are one.
A knowledge of one’s own
central self-existence-- this is
strength. Now strength is the first
and most desirable attribute of the
man, because every noble quality is
strength’s overplus. No man can
be generous who is not first strong.
No man can love nobly and worthily
until he has acquired that measure of
mental strength where he can stand
alone in his individuality and give
freely from a sense of perfect
justice. All giving that is not from
an overplus of strength is begging.
The motives that prompt to this kind
of giving are various. One person
gives, hoping for a greater return--
it is a business investment. Another
gives for the love of approbation.
Another to satisfy the claims of his
conscience. All give with a hidden
motive except him whose giving is the
overplus of strength. The giver may
not realize this, but the very nature
of the case makes it true. Weakness
leans and begs perpetually. Its every
act holds in reserve the hope of
gaining something more than it gives.
But strength goes out. It overflows,
and it can only overflow in good;
pure, unadulterated good. Being
strength, it asks nothing in return
for what it gives. It simply seeks to
make others as strong as it is.
This is the point toward which
humanity is now tending by a better
recognition of itself individually.
For nothing gives a man strength but
the knowing [of] his own power.
In order to be in much greater
health and strength and beauty than
we have [300] ever realized, there is
nothing necessary but a better
knowledge of ourselves. You must have
learned from the foregoing lesson
that man is not a physical creature,
and subject to what are called
“the laws of causation,”
but that he is purely a mental
statement, or a mental estimate of a
certain amount of the one universal
force, the Law of Being. Moreover, he
has made this statement, or this
estimate himself, and has the power
to correct its errors as fast as he
finds them out. The errors in his
statement show forth in weakness,
disease, etc.
And now do you not see that man,
being a mental statement, has made a
fearful mistake in calling himself
“a mere worm of the
dust,” and other expressions
like these? For a man to admit a
belief in weakness is to be weak,
because our beliefs are our external
conditions. Therefore let every
student of these lessons begin right
here to deny the foolish old charges
against himself which he has all his
life been taught to believe would be
pleasing to “God.” Let
him discard all feelings of humility,
that attribute so lauded by the
creeds, and learn to believe that the
Law must be expressed in men, and not
in things.
Humility is an insult to the
source of man’s being; or it
would be if its true character were
understood by those who assume it.
But men know so little of the power
they call God, they imagine they
please it and magnify it by
belittling themselves. No man can
magnify this power, but he can debase
himself by crawling in the dust and
denying his own power.
Now this denial of power in man is
infidelity, and the only infidelity I
know of.
The reason that each individual
“I” seems to himself the
center of all things is because of
the omnipresence of the Law. There
being no circumference, each
“I” is the spoken word of
a boundless eternity, and its own
emphasis creates it the center from
its own point of view. The spiritual
interpretation of each individual
“I” is centralization.
Therefore the soul that proclaims the
“I” proclaims itself
centralized. The soul that denies the
“I” denies its
centralization, and thus indirectly
affirms its weak and scattered
condition. Let the student discard at
once and forever the soul-crushing
humility he has been taught to
cultivate as a priceless virtue, and
begin to extol himself. Let him not
extol himself in the spirit of
vanity, based on a groundless and
ignorant assumption of his own
superiority over other people; but
let him, after perceiving the great
truth of his being, and realizing his
oneness with the Law, begin at once
to declare his own manhood; not in
the spirit of boasting, but in the
understanding of the truth.
In this declaration, if made
understandingly, a grand sense of
justice will take possession of him.
He will perceive immediately that
what he declares for himself he
cannot help declaring for his
neighbors, and even for his worst
enemy. This declaration of a
man’s own individual, high,
pure ideal of manhood is the one
unerring peacemaker. It is the
beginning of that harmony which means
heaven on earth. And it is so because
in the fact of a man’s own
worth lies the assurance of his power
to recognize the worth of other
men--of all men--and this is the
first step toward the reign of
justice upon the earth, and the
beginning of that harmony that means
heaven.
Just in proportion as we become
self-centered by a recognition of the
great importance of the
“I,” we come under the
Law of Attraction where our own comes
to us. What is our own? Everything
that we desire. But not this: We
often think we desire things that we
do not truly desire. What we do truly
desire is happiness. Happiness is our
ultimate desire, and it is the
craving of the spirit. It is the
seeking of the spirit for a better
recognition of itself. Suppose we
desire that someone who stands
between [301] us and an inheritance
may die. This intermediate desire has
nothing to do with the spirit. The
spirit simply desires happiness; it
does not suggest methods for
attaining happiness; the suggestion
comes from the personality and not
from the real individuality. The real
individuality is so much force, or
Love, pushing always in the direction
of greater expression, and always
aggregating to itself greater
power.
Understanding at last that desire
is the spirit, it is plain to see
that it is of greater importance than
we ever imagined. Therefore, instead
of attempting to crush it out of our
organizations, where it is really the
breath of our lives, we must learn to
direct it properly.
Now this individual center in the
lower animals, and indeed all through
man’s period of unconscious
growth, manifests itself in pure
selfishness; a selfishness so
ingrained and deep that it utterly
ignores all the rights except its
own. But in the growth from animal to
human, selfishness becomes selfhood.
Selfhood is still selfishness, but
with such bonds imposed upon it by
the growing intelligence as will
guard the rights of others against
encroachments. An infusion of the
sense of justice in the growing race
has so modified the individual
centerhood of selfishness that it has
become a glorious thing--namely, a
strong power to hold for self, based
on ideas of universal justice.
Now I wish to emphasize this point
of holding for self. I wish to do so
because the race has been filled full
of nonsense on the subject of
self-abnegation.
Self-abnegation, or self-denial,
is the most paralyzing and deadly
mistake that was ever made. It is
letting go your hold on life,
abandoning all you have gained in
your previous growth through the
ages, and drifting backward, as
nearly as one can do so, into
nothingness. And every bit of undue
or unconscious concession to the
opinions of others partakes of the
nature of self-abnegation, and should
be promptly stopped. Ask yourself if
you have not so much right to your
selfhood as another man has, and when
you answer this question
affirmatively, as you cannot help
doing, then stand for yourself boldly
and manfully.
It may seem at first thought that
men do, even now, hold for themselves
with great firmness. But this is not
so. Indeed the very opposite is so
marked among the people that Emerson
speaks of society as a “mush of
concession.”
There is so little of true
self-holding in the world that where
one does meet a truly individualized
man or woman it is an event never to
be forgotten.
Under these circumstances the
opinion of the world is worthless.
The majority of the people have no
opinions of their own, but accept
those that are thrust upon them. In
this way we are saddled with the
beliefs of men ages dead, whose
opportunity of knowing truth was a
thousand times inferior to our own.
Is it any wonder that such utterly
negative creatures should die? Why,
they ought to die. Life and its
tremendous mission, involving such
thought and such effort as they never
imagined, is not for them. The
grappling hook of infinite purpose
passes through them as if they were
made of jelly; they yield not the
smallest shred in response to it. It
is all self-abnegation with them,
though of an unconscious
character.
Unconscious self-abnegation, or
the lack of intelligent
self-assertion, is the bane of
humanity at this time.
The belief in self-abnegation
comes from the awakening intelligence
that in looking back sees only the
horrors of animal selfishness, and
does not look forward to where this
same selfishness is modified by
justice, and through this
modification can become the very
essence of true manhood and
womanhood.
The child is not polite. It grabs
its toys and holds them firmly away
[302] from the little friend who has
come to visit it. Later on it will
value the pleasure of its little
friend more than it values the toys,
and then it will yield them up
gladly. Nor will this giving be in
the spirit of self-abnegation; it
will be because the giving yields
more happiness to self than the
withholding. Self is forever at the
bottom of all things, as it should
be, for self is always the individual
center; and the change from
selfishness to selfhood--which is
still selfishness lifted to a higher
plane--will come through a growing
infusion of the Love Principle in the
race; an infusion that makes the
happiness of others our own dearest
happiness.
Of course all of this comes under
the head of evolution, and there is
no logical interpretation of humanity
except by the evolutionary theory.
But even the most timid sticklers for
biblical authority need not be afraid
of it. Darwin never taught the
evolutionary theory half so strong as
the Bible teaches it.
I have now shown how the
selfishness of the animal has changed
to selfhood in the man by the
constantly increasing influx of love
into the race; love for self that
overflows for others. Now this love
has come from a better recognition of
the power of the Law, and will keep
on increasing as this recognition
keeps on growing. All this growth by
the recognition of the power of the
Law is tending in the direction of
universal brotherhood, which means a
state of the sweetest harmony among
the people; a condition of high and
mighty and loving restfulness, in
which the seeds of new faculties, now
lying dormant in the human brain,
will take root and grow up into
undreamed-of potencies.
As all our past unconscious
growing has been from the basis of
self, so will our future growing be
from the same basis, for there is no
other true basis of growth.
The recognition of self which
shows forth in such fearful
selfishness in the animal, is, in
point of fact, the recognition of the
Law. This may seem to be a strange
statement, but I shall prove its
truth. The Law and Being mean the
same thing. The animal’s
recognition of the Law, or Being, is
in proportion to its intelligence. As
much as it recognizes is its own, its
very self; and it guards this self
and ministers to this self by the
best knowledge it has. But this
knowledge constantly grows and
expands, and gradually the things
that once ministered most of self, or
selfishness, cease; a wider range of
vision introduces the sense of
justice, which is the beginning of
that true harmony that is the goal of
every human aspiration, and which
alone means freedom.
And--observe this point
closely--harmony, universal justice,
is not achieved by individual
concession or self-abnegation, but by
the assertion of self under the
influence of the evergrowing idea
that he who asserts self asserts the
Law--which is absolute harmony--in
humanity. To deny self is to deny the
harmonious action of the Law in
humanity, and thus to undo, so far as
such a thing is possible, the work of
organization; that which men call
“the creation.”
Therefore I say, stand by self,
for in so doing you are standing for
the Law. You are standing for just as
much of the harmony of the Law as you
can recognize, and by holding firm in
this position you will soon recognize
more and still more until the harmony
of the Law in you will overflow in
one great, broad, strong stream of
love that will embrace every living
soul. And this will be your true
self, flowing forth; the same self
that flowed forth in the animal in
getting the most good, will, by
reason of your increased
intelligence, now flow forth in you
in doing the most good.
And thus the competitive systems
of business, which are all animal in
their origin, and which all aim at
getting the most good, are even now
in the process of becoming emulative
systems, wherein each will try to
excel the other in doing the most
good.
[303] Competition is right on its
own plane. It is the unchecked
development of individuality; and
individuality is the one jewel above
all price. When competition has
ripened into emulation heaven will be
here, and that too without one
particle of concession from any
soul.
Concession, self-denial,
self-abnegation, is ruinous. It is
the denial of our own individuality.
It is the most direct road to
nothingness. It is the resignation of
that which alone makes a man, or
gives him, as a factor of any worth,
to the world. An ignorant man
standing firmly on his selfhood,
uneducated as yet in a true sense of
justice, may be an exceedingly
disagreeable member of a community.
But his very position denotes
strength, and there is hope of his
learning. But the man who has
entirely slipped down from the claims
of self, who has resigned his
individuality, what is he? A mere
vagabond; listless, hopeless; a
drifting scum, waiting removal from
human sight.
I have made the foregoing points
with a purpose, and a strong purpose,
too. The student who is afraid to
stand for himself and to declare
himself will never be healthy or
strong in any respect. The patients
whom I literally cannot cure are
those who will not hold for self.
When a patient says to me, “I
want to get well if it is God’s
will,” I see his position
instantly. He is off his
perpendicular, and lopping clear over
to one side, or
“wobbling” around in
every direction like a wilted
flower-stalk. He has not the
centralizing force of the straight
and stiff and uncompromising
“I” to hold him in
position. No wonder he is sick!
It may be thought that it is not
safe to trust a man with a will of
his own; but I must say to the
student that the most dangerous men I
have ever known are those who believe
they are filled with
“God’s will” and
begin to execute it upon their
neighbors. Mr. Freeman thought he was
filled with God’s will and was
executing God’s will when he
murdered his child. If ever a man
acted from a conscientious belief he
did. Guiteau believed he was the
agent of God’s will when he
murdered Garfield. The witches were
burned because the people were filled
with God’s will. The very
bloodiest events of history in all
the world have been prompted by what
was called God’s will.
God’s will has served as the
excuse for far more injustice and
crime than all other causes put
together. Does the student imagine
that the man’s will is going to
be half so murderous a thing as this
imaginary God’s will? The truth
is, “God’s will”
has simply been a safety-valve for
the expression of race cruelty during
its period of evolution from animal
to human. Humanhood means manhood;
and the race is reaching it by the
development of man’s individual
will. The more man trusts his own
will, the more will his acts rest
upon his own individuality, and the
more will he gauge them by this own
unfolding sense of justice. In short,
the more a man trusts himself the
more manly and noble and pure and
just and self-poised will he
become.
Looking within, you may perceive
the self there, and you may conclude
that it is a very selfish thing--a
thing to be thrown overboard--while
on your bended knees you beg for a
nobler self. Now this nobler self you
are begging for is the very self you
are misjudging; and there is nothing
the matter with you except that your
dull intelligence fails to recognize
this beautiful breath of Life which
is individualized within you.
These lessons on Mental Science
have to do with the growth of the
man, and not with the conditions he
shall inaugurate afterward. The man
once builded in a knowledge of
himself and of the God within him,
conditions then build themselves
about him. They become the expression
of his individual will, or desire.
After we have builded ourselves into
great power by the recognition of our
own wills, we shall seem to have
almost nothing to [304] do with
building our surrounding conditions,
because it will be so easy. They will
seem almost to drift to us, or to
group themselves about us in
obedience to the Law of Attraction in
proportion as the strength of the Law
becomes organized in us. Every added
belief in the reality of the good and
in the unreality of evil brings us
more fully in the line of the
Law’s operation, and makes it
easier for us to get what we want and
be able to do what we please.
Everything related to our peculiar
faculty, whether near or far, will
come to us. It will offer itself to
our faculties of creativeness, to be
worked into things of use and beauty
to serve our needs. It will then be
as Emerson says:
“Whate’er in nature is
thine own,
Floating in air or pent in
stone,
Will rive the hills and swim the
sea,
And like thy shadow follow
thee.”
In man’s operations from the
central point or basis of self, he is
entitled to what he wants. He need
not beg for what he wants. It is his
own by divine right, and unless he
takes it as his own he will never
build his life up in the strength of
true manhood. All through the period
of his unconscious growth he took; he
did not beg. He did this regardless
of his fellows. What he took
represented to him his highest ideal
of happiness. Now his ideal is
enlarged. It is so greatly enlarged
that it lifts him quite out of the
(so-called) physical realm into the
intellectual one, and what he now
demands as essential to his happiness
is health, strength, beauty, and
opulence. And of these he may demand
what he will and no one be robbed,
for he is now in the high place where
the supply is equal to the demand,
and where he is coming more and more
under the Law of Attraction where his
own comes to him because it is
related to his desires.
Therefore you need not beg. A true
analysis of things past and present
will show us that there never was a
beggar on earth until man came, and
that beggars were never needed, or
meant to have a place in
existence.
To get the things a man needs in
the present transitional age from
animal to human, he is forced to
become as aggressive as any warrior.
For everything he attempts to take
out of the mental world--the world of
unorganized good--is denied him and
its every existence disputed by a
thousand race beliefs that rise up
before him and threaten him with
destruction.
This fight for mastery being at
this time entirely in the realm of
the intellect, we must begin it, not
by begging our own, but by claiming
it. Discard every thought of
humility. Make a statement of what
you want and claim it as your due.
And, take this one fact into
consideration, that man, as to his
personality, or visible existence,
has no “God-given” place,
and no natural sphere, save that
which he has wrested from the
universe by his own intelligent
demand.
Individuality is of such
tremendous importance that we are not
trying to lose it in the subjective
side of Being; we are trying to bring
it forth and establish it in these
personalities. And here is the
difference between Christian
[Science] and Mental Science. Mental
Science believes in the present, and
the personal, and the visible, and
the audible. It believes in the
evolution of Law into the personal
and the present, through the
intelligent recognition of men and
women. And it is in this way we will
banish disease and death and
establish heaven on earth. For the
more good, or Law, a man recognizes
in himself the stronger and more
positive he is. And thus will disease
and death be overcome, since they are
merely the negations, or denials, of
a man’s power to conquer. They
are nothing in themselves, and have
no power except the power men confer
upon them by believing in them. And
as men believe in self more, and
recognize the godhead of self, they
will disbelieve the fancied power of
disease and death, and these phantoms
will disappear from human
perception.
[305] Then stand by your desires,
and claim their fulfillment. They are
the inalienable promise of universal
Being in you, whose unfulfilment must
prove the Law a liar.
But first, search your desires and
prove their noble nature. The desire
which is the voice of the Law in you,
does not include any method your
personality may suggest as being the
right way to attain the desire. The
desire is the spirit, and it asks for
happiness and nothing else. It will
be your personal mistake if you seek
happiness by methods that wrong
others, and not the mistake of the
spirit. Therefore, as we are still so
ignorant the proper thing is to ask
for happiness simply, or rather to
claim happiness as our own right. Of
course every idea of happiness
includes those other ideas of health,
strength, beauty, and opulence; and
it is these four things that make up
the real man. After the man is made
by the establishment of such glorious
health, strength, and beauty as make
every moment of his life a joy to
him, he will turn his thoughts
outward toward the building of new
and better conditions for his
fellows. For man is the builder, and
when he has builded himself, he will
build externally in a wonderful way.
Yes, in a thousand wonderful ways.
For man’s sphere is here on
earth and he will build outward from
the earth until the interstellar
space shall show forth the wonders of
his inventions and discoveries.
In conclusion, then, I say once
more, stand by self. Self is not a
sinful or a dreadful thing. It is the
glorious basis of everything that is
visible in the universe. In each
individual thing, whether crystal,
tree, animal, or man, it is the
wresting from negation the more
positive expression that confers the
mastery. Therefore let no student be
horrified because I have rescued self
from the mistakes that have overlain
it so long. I said in a former lesson
that the truth-seeker is the
image-breaker, and that no one need
be grieved to see his pet hobbies
fall before him. It is time they all
fell. It is time for us to turn our
backs on the past and accept the
instruction given to Lot’s
wife--never look behind us. For I
tell you now the dreadful old
charnel-houses where we have been
entombed alive for such a long time
are falling, and we must escape from
them forthwith.
And now I wish the student to
investigate “self,” and
when by repeated reading of this
lesson he sees that it is the Law of
Life individualized in him, I want
him to stand up for it and hold it
most sacredly above the old-time
beliefs that have made a devil out of
it and prepared a hell for its future
reception. Stand by self; magnify it;
but indeed no one can magnify it, for
no one’s conception of it can
do it justice. But you can magnify
your ideas of it, and thus conquer
race beliefs concerning it.
And this is the battle you will
have to fight. The battle is between
the new truth that Mental Science
brings and the old crucifying
beliefs, born of an age of rankest
ignorance, that have so long held the
people in darkness concerning their
own strength and worth. And you
cannot stand too strongly for the
right. Make your own statement of
your goodness and power, and
reiterate it in the face of every
old-world belief as rapidly as they
shall confront you. Say, “I am
here for myself, to build myself up
in health, strength, and beauty by
claiming my own. Nothing is too good
for me. I claim the best, and I
expect to get it, too.”
As I said once before, there never
was a beggar on earth until the
advent of man; and looking over the
past history of man it really does
seem as if “God” (by
which I mean the universal Spirit of
Life) were absolutely resolved to put
us on our own independence by
refusing our requests. And indeed
this universal Spirit of Life is
indifferent to us, and it speaks to
us through its indifference, saying,
“Oh, men, I exist for your
taking; take me or let me alone.
Learn by my [306] silence that you
are my spokesmen, and I the infinite
reservoir from which you draw as you
need; and behold, the supply is
always equal to your
demand.”
Man is thus thrown entirely upon
himself. During the period of his
unconscious growth he does draw upon
the limitless reservoir as he needs,
and does his own growing. His
uniformed brain has yielded no
thought of his own unworthiness, and
he takes what he desires and
expresses it in use.
Now this limitless reservoir is as
free to us today as at any past
period of our growth; and when we
fully know this we shall re-establish
our growth at the point where
unconscious growth dropped us. But in
coming to this position we must
gradually learn that we are perfectly
independent beings; that no God holds
us accountable for past sins; that
what the world calls sins are merely
mistakes our ever-growing
intelligence has made in coming up to
our present standing place. Being
thus exculpated from the accusations
of conscience, we begin to see
ourselves as we are.
And what are we? Why, we are
wonderful creatures! Only think how
we have forged our way up from such
small beginnings, and where we stand
now! Think what conquerors we are!
How we have burst first one bond of
ignorance and then another; and how
lobe after lobe have put forth in our
ever-unfolding brains like buds on
flower-stalks; and how, as each one
put forth, it held in latency the
germ of another yet to appear; and
how it is evident there will never be
any cessation to the unfoldment of
these fresh buds to unimagined power
within our own heads. Why, do you not
see that man is a scroll unfolding
outwardly continually? And it is
because he only unfolds outwardly
that his habit of looking backward
stultifies him so awfully.
