ced
inversely to one another. We are apt to fall into the mistake of
supposing that results of opposite character require powers of opposite
character to produce them, and our conceptions of things in general
become much simplified when we recognise that this is not the case, but
that the same power will produce opposite results as it starts from
opposite poles.

Accordingly the inverted application of the same principle which gives
rise to liberty and power constitutes the entanglement from which we
need to be delivered before power and liberty can be attained, and this
principle is expressed in the law that "as a man thinks so he is." This
is the basic law of the human mind. It is Descarte's "_cogito, ergo
sum_." If we trace consciousness to its seat we find that it is purely
subjective. Our external senses would cease to exist were it not for the
subjective consciousness which perceives what they communicate to it.

The idea conveyed to the subjective consciousness may be false, but
until some truer idea is more forcibly impressed in its stead it
remains a substantial reality to the mind which gives it objective
existence. I have seen a man speak to the stump of a tree which in the
moonlight looked like a person standing in a garden, and repeatedly ask
its name and what it wanted; and so far as the speaker's conception was
concerned the garden contained a living man who refused to answer. Thus
every mind lives in a world to which its own perceptions give objective
reality. Its perceptions may be erroneous, but they nevertheless
constitute the very reality of life for the mind that gives form to
them. No other life than the life we lead in our own mind is possible;
and hence the advance of the whole race depends on substituting the
ideas of good, of liberty, and of order for their opposites. And this
can be done only by giving some sufficient reason for accepting the new
idea in place of the old. For each one of us our beliefs constitute our
facts, and these beliefs can be changed only by discovering some ground
for a different belief.

This is briefly the rationale of the maxim that "as a man thinks so he
is"; and from the working of this principle all the issues of life
proceed. Now man's first perception of the law of cause and effect in
relation to his own conduct is that the result always partakes of the
quality of the cause; and since his argument is drawn from external
observation only, he regards external a