rselves and allows us not only to escape and to aid others to
escape, from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative
happiness, whatever the conditions in which we may find ourselves.

Lastly, and above all, it should be applied to the moral regeneration
of those who have wandered from the right path.

THOUGHTS AND PRECEPTS OF EMILE COUE

_taken down literally by Mme. Emile Leon, his disciple._

Do not spend your time in thinking of illness you might have, for if
you have no real ones you will create artificial ones.

***

When you make conscious autosuggestions, do it naturally, simply,
with conviction, and above all _without any effort._ If unconscious
and bad autosuggestions are so often realized, it is because they are
made without effort.

***

Be sure that you will obtain what you want, and you will obtain it,
so long as it is within reason.

***

To become master of oneself it is enough to think that one is
becoming so. . . . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself
that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear.
It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it
is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can cure you. My part
simply consists in teaching you to make use of that force.

***

Never discuss things you know nothing about, or you will only
make yourself ridiculous.

Things which seem miraculous to you have a perfectly natural cause;
if they seem extraordinary it is only because the cause escapes you.
When you know that, you realize that nothing could be more natural.

***

When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the
imagination which wins. Such a case is only too frequent, and then
not only do we not do what we want, but just the contrary of what
we want. For example: the more we try to go to sleep, the more we
try to remember the name of some one, the more we try to stop
laughing, the more we try to avoid an obstacle, while _thinking that
we cannot do so,_ the more excited we become, the less we can
remember the name, the more uncontrollable our laughter becomes,
and the more surely we rush upon the obstacle.

It is then the imagination and not the will which is the most
important faculty of man; and thus it is a serious mistake to advise
people to train their wills, it is the training of their imaginations
which they ought to set about.

***

Things are not for us what t