ince it cannot reason from particulars to a general
conclusion it takes any statement given it by consciousness, believes
it implicitly and acts accordingly.

The pilot wheel of the ship is, after all, the conscious mind,
insignificant in size when compared with the great mass of the vessel,
but all-powerful in its ability to direct the course of the voyage.

Nervous persons are people who are too much under the sway of the
subconscious; so, too, are some geniuses, who narrowly escape a
neurosis by finding a more useful outlet for their subconscious
energies. While the poet, the inventor, and the neurotic are likely to
be too largely controlled by the subconscious, the average man is to a
greater extent ruled by the conscious mind; and the highest type of
genius is the man whose conscious and subconscious minds work together
in perfect harmony, each up to its full power.

If, as many believe, the next great strides of science are to be in
this direction, it may pay some of us to be pioneers in learning how
to make use of these undeveloped riches of memory, organization, and
surplus energy. The subconscious, which can on occasion behave like a
very devil within us, is, when rightly used, our greatest asset, the
source of powers whose appearance in the occasional individual has
been considered almost superhuman, but which prove to be
characteristically human, the common inheritance of the race of man.

CHAPTER VI

_In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful_

BODY AND MIND

THE MISSING LINK

=Ancient Knowledge.= People have always known that mind in some
strange way carries its moods over into the body. The writer of the
Book of Proverbs tells us, from that far-off day, that "A merry heart
doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."
Jesus in His healing ministry always emphasized the place of faith in
the cure of the body. "Thy faith hath made thee whole," is a frequent
word on His lips, and ever since His day people have been
rediscovering the truth that faith, even in the absence of a worthy
object, does often make whole. Faith in the doctor, the medicine, the
charm, the mineral waters, the shrine, and in the good God, has
brought health to many thousands of sufferers. People have always
reckoned on this bodily result from a mental state. They have
intuitively known better than to tell a sick person that he is looking
worse, but they have not always known why. They have known t