tilling of the Mind, which is the secret of all power
and possession? The thing is difficult, no doubt; yet as I tried to show
at the outset of this discourse, we Moderns MUST reach it; we have got
to attain to it--for the penalty of failure is and must be widespread
Madness.

The power to still the mind--to be ABLE, mark you, when you want,
to enter into the region of Rest, and to dismiss or command your
Thoughts--is a condition of Health; it is a condition of all Power
and Energy. For all health, whether of mind or body, resides in one's
relation to the central Life within. If one cannot get into touch with
THAT, then the life-forces cannot flow down into the organism. Most,
perhaps all, disease arises from the disturbance of this connection. All
mere hurry, all mere running after external things (as of the man after
the water-streams on the mountain-top), inevitably breaks it. Let a pond
be allowed calmly under the influence of frost to crystallize, and most
beautiful flowers and spears of ice will be formed, but keep stirring
the water all the time with a stick or a pole and nothing will result
but an ugly brash of half-frozen stuff. The condition of the exercise of
power and energy is that it should proceed from a center of Rest within
one. So convinced am I of this, that whenever I find myself hurrying
over my work, I pause and say, "Now you are not producing anything
good!" and I generally find that that is true. It is curious, but I
think very noticeable, that the places where people hurry most--as
for instance the City of London or Wall Street, New York--are just the
places where the work being done is of LEAST importance (being
mostly money-gambling); whereas if you go and look at a ploughman
ploughing--doing perhaps the most important of human work--you find
all his movements most deliberate and leisurely, as if indeed he had
infinite time at command; the truth being that in dealing (like a
ploughman) with the earth and the horses and the weather and the things
of Nature generally you can no more hurry than Nature herself hurries.

Following this line of thought it might seem that one would arrive at a
hopeless paradox. If it be true that the less one hurries the better
the work resulting, then it might seem that by sitting still and merely
twirling one's thumbs one would arrive at the very greatest activity and
efficiency! And indeed (if understood aright) there is a truth even in
this, which--like the othe