per during
the last fifty years. So lives Sappho, and thus did Charles Kingsley
secure the composite of the great woman who lives and throbs through his
book. Legend pictures her as rarely beautiful, with grace, poise and
power, plus.

She was sixty when she died. History kindly records it forty-five--and
all picture her as a beautiful and attractive woman to the last. The
psychic effects of a gracefully-gowned first reader, with sonorous
voice, using gesture with economy, and packing the pauses with feeling,
have never been fully formulated, analyzed and explained. Throngs came
to hear Hypatia lecture--came from long distances, and listened
hungrily, and probably all they took away was what they brought, except
a great feeling of exhilaration and enthusiasm. To send the hearer away
stepping light, and his heart beating fast--this is oratory--which isn't
so much to bestow facts, as it is to impart a feeling. This Hypatia
surely did. Her theme was Neo-Platonism. "Neo" means new, and all New
Thought harks back to Plato, who was the mouthpiece of Socrates. "Say
what you will, you'll find it all in Plato." Neo-Platonism is our New
Thought, and New Thought is Neo-Platonism.

There are two kinds of thought: New Thought and Secondhand Thought. New
Thought is made up of thoughts you, yourself, think. The other kind is
supplied to you by jobbers. The distinguishing feature of New Thought is
its antiquity. Of necessity it is older than Secondhand Thought. All
genuine New Thought is true for the person who thinks it. It only turns
sour and becomes error when not used, and when the owner forces another
to accept it. It then becomes a secondhand revelation. All New Thought
is revelation, and secondhand revelations are errors half-soled with
stupidity and heeled with greed.

Very often we are inspired to think by others, but in our hearts we have
the New Thought; and the person, the book, the incident, merely remind
us that it is already ours. New Thought is always simple; Secondhand
Thought is abstruse, complex, patched, peculiar, costly, and is passed
out to be accepted, not understood. That no one comprehends it is often
regarded as a recommendation.

For instance, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image," is
Secondhand Thought. The first man who said it may have known what it
meant, but surely it is nothing to us. However, that does not keep us
from piously repeating it, and having our children memorize it.

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