, and not a
natural occurrence. Whatever it is, it may be a highwater mark of
energy, in which "noes," once impossible, are easy, and in which a new
range of "yeses" gains the right of way.

We are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies by
ideas in the persons of those converts to "New Thought," "Christian
Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or other forms of spiritual
philosophy, who are so numerous among us to-day. The ideas here are
healthy-minded and optimistic; and it is quite obvious that a wave of
religious activity, analogous in some respects to the spread of early
Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing over our American
world. The common feature of these optimistic faiths is that they all
tend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls
"fearthought." Fearthought he defines as the "self-suggestion of
inferiority"; so that one may say that these systems all operate by the
suggestion of power. And the power, small or great, comes in various
shapes to the individual,--power, as he will tell you, not to "mind"
things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer,
good temper--in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral
tone.

The most genuinely saintly person I have ever known is a friend of mine
now suffering from cancer of the breast--I hope that she may pardon my
citing her here as an example of what ideas can do. Her ideas have
kept her a practically well woman for months after she should have
given up and gone to bed. They have annulled all pain and weakness and
given her a cheerful active life, unusually beneficent to others to
whom she has afforded help. Her doctors, acquiescing in results they
could not understand, have had the good sense to let her go her own way.

How far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence, or
what intellectual modifications it may yet undergo, no one can
foretell. It is essentially a religious movement, and to academically
nurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough.
It also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians, and of the
whole trades-union wing of that profession. But no unprejudiced
observer can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenomenon
to-day, and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it
fairly, and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends.

Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Riding Asylum