l are in an amazingly large measure the direct results
of his thinking. Thought and heart combine to produce _right_ thinking:
"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." As he does not think in his
heart so he can never become.

Since this is true, personality can be developed and its latent powers
brought out by careful cultivation. We have long since ceased to believe
that we are living in a realm of chance. So clear and exact are nature's
laws that we forecast, scores of years in advance, the appearance of a
certain comet and foretell to the minute an eclipse of the Sun. And we
understand this law of cause and effect in all our material realms. We
do not plant potatoes and expect to pluck hyacinths. The law is
universal: it applies to our mental powers, to morality, to personality,
quite as much as to the heavenly bodies and the grain of the fields.
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," and nothing else.

Character has always been regarded as one of the chief factors of the
speaker's power. Cato defined the orator as _vir bonus dicendi
peritus_--a good man skilled in speaking. Phillips Brooks says: "Nobody
can truly stand as a utterer before the world, unless he be profoundly
living and earnestly thinking." "Character," says Emerson, "is a
natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates with it.
The reason why we feel one man's presence, and do not feel another's is
as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being: justice is the
application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale,
according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure
runs down into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a
lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be withstood than any
other natural force.... Character is nature in the highest form."

It is absolutely impossible for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to
blossom into loving and altruistic habits. Thistle seeds bring forth
only the thistle. Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual
altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low
and vicious character. Either thoughts or feelings precede and determine
all our actions. Actions develop into habits, habits constitute
character, and character determines destiny. Therefore to guard our
thoughts and control our feelings is to shape our destinies. The
syllogism is complete, and old as it is it is still true.

Since "characte