ibe its activities than it is to state in
exact terms what it is. It is similar in this respect to the physical
force--if it be a physical force--electricity. It is only of late years
that we know anything of electricity at all. Today we know a great deal
of its nature and the laws of its action. No man living can tell exactly
what electricity is. We are nevertheless making wonderful _practical
applications_ of it. We are learning more _about it_ continually. Some
day we may know what it _actually is_.

The fact that the subconscious mind seems to function in a realm apart
from anything that has to do with our conscious mental processes, and
also that it has some definite functions as both directing and building
functions to perform in connection with the body, and that it is at the
same time subject to suggestion and direction from the active thinking
mind, would indicate that it may be the true connecting link, the medium
of exchange, between the soul and the body, the connector of the
spiritual and the material so far as man is concerned.

III

THE WAY MIND THROUGH THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND BUILDS BODY

When one says that he numbers among his acquaintances some who are as
old at sixty as some others are at eighty, he but gives expression to a
fact that has become the common possession of many. I have known those
who at fifty-five and sixty were to all intents and purposes really
older, more decrepit, and rapidly growing still more decrepit both in
mind and body, than many another at seventy and seventy-five and even at
eighty.

History, then, is replete with instances, memorable instances, of
people, both men and women, who have accomplished things at an age--who
have even begun and carried through to successful completion things at
an age that would seem to thousands of others, in the captivity of age,
with their backs to the future, ridiculous even to think of
accomplishing, much less of beginning. On account of a certain law that
has always seemed to me to exist and that I am now firmly convinced is
very _exact_ in its workings, I have been interested in talking with
various ones and in getting together various facts relative to this
great discrepancy in the ages of these two classes of "old" people.

Within the year I called upon a friend whom, on account of living in a
different portion of the country, I hadn't seen for nearly ten years.
Conversation revealed to me the fact that he was then in his
eig