ll or great importance shut
off all thoughts and ideas except such as have any immediate and direct
bearing upon the thing in hand. Pay attention. Bend all the energies
of your mind and will upon it till it is completed to your satisfaction.
Divert your attention from one thing to another only when you sanction
by a resolve and understand why you do so. Your daily work which you
must choose according to the special bent of your mind, will present you
opportunities.

(_b_) Control impulse. Suppose an idea enters your mind. Compose
yourself quietly before carrying out its purport. Consider it. Turn
it over in your mind. Contemplate it. Weave your mental energies
around it, as it were, till at last the idea with your final decision
stands out clear-cut and well-defined. Then proceed to act it out
physically with your mental concentration cutting a way for you straight
on to the execution of your designing. This is _forethought_.

(_c_) In perfect concentration time vanishes. In working out a
design on which you have set your heart dispense altogether with the
element of time and work at it concentratedly for days, months and
years with confident expectation of success.

(_d_) Take a picture, representing a landscape, the interior of a
building, an assembly of persons, a square, a triangle or a more
complicated geometrical figure. Look at it well. Then lay it aside. Close
your eyes. Reproduce the picture mentally in detail. Then repose your
mind on the same image to the exclusion of all other thoughts. This is
a more fixed and meditative method and will sharpen the mind wonderfully.
It will also develop the power of conscious Mental Imagery. The
key to Objective Concentration is _Conscious Attention_, remember.

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE MENTATION.

These terms imply two different distinct functions of the human
mind. The active function performs the volitional, voluntary thinking.
It is the conscious focusing of the mind on some mental problem.
Banishing from the mind all thoughts and ideas not in harmony with your
special subject of study implies Active Mentation. This function is used
by the active, wide-awake man in his busy and energetic moments. It
is the key to the development of Will-Power and a vigorous intellect.
You are conscious of effort when you are exercising this function. The
mind becomes exhausted after a great deal of such effort and cries out
for rest, because conscious attention implies close concentrat