detent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent
effects, and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men.

The memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to
abstinences and efforts otherwise impossible; witness the "pledge" in
the history of the temperance movement. A mere promise to his
sweetheart will clean up a youth's life all over--at any rate for time.
For such effects an educated susceptibility is required. The idea of
one's "honor," for example, unlocks energy only in those of us who have
had the education of a "gentleman," so called.

That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Muskau, writes to his wife from
England that he has invented "a sort of artificial resolution
respecting things that are difficult of performance. My device," he
continues, "is this: _I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself_
to do or to leave undone this or that. I am of course extremely
cautious in the use of this expedient, but when once the word is given,
even though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I
hold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee
likely to result. If I were capable of breaking my word after such
mature consideration, I should lose all respect for myself,--and what
man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? . . . When
the mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view,
nothing short of physical impossibilities, must, for the welfare of my
soul, alter my will. . . . I find something very satisfactory in the
thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of
the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force
of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [3]

_Conversions_, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or
religious, form another way in which bound energies are let loose.
They unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interferences. The
result is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power. A belief
that thus settles upon an individual always acts as a challenge to his
will. But, for the particular challenge to operate, he must be the
right challeng_ee_. In religious conversions we have so fine an
adjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challengee for years
before it exerts effects; and why it should do so then is often so far
from obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace