hough it may seem far distant and almost
impossible, to believe in it, and to believe in one's ability to
actualise it--this is the first essential. Not, then, to sit and idly
fold the hands, expecting it to actualise itself, but to take hold of
the first thing that offers itself to do,--that lies sufficiently along
the way,--to do this faithfully, believing, knowing, that it is but the
step that will lead to the next best thing, and this to the next; this
is the second and the completing stage of all accomplishment.

We speak of fate many times as if it were something foreign to or
outside of ourselves, forgetting that fate awaits always our own
conditions. A man decides his own fate through the types of thoughts he
entertains and gives a dominating influence in his life. He sits at the
helm of his thought world and, guiding, decides his own fate, or,
through negative, vacillating, and therefore weakening thought, he
drifts, and fate decides him. Fate is not something that takes form and
dominates us irrespective of any say on our own part. Through a
knowledge and an intelligent and determined use of the silent but
ever-working power of thought we either condition circumstances, or,
lacking this knowledge or failing to apply it, we accept the role of a
conditioned circumstance. It is a help sometimes to realise and to voice
with Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

The thoughts that we entertain not only determine the conditions of our
own immediate lives, but they influence, perhaps in a much more subtle
manner than most of us realise, our relations with and our influence
upon those with whom we associate or even come into contact. All are
influenced, even though unconsciously, by them.

Thoughts of good will, sympathy, magnanimity, good cheer--in brief, all
thoughts emanating from a _spirit of love_--are felt in their positive,
warming, and stimulating influences by others; they inspire in turn the
same types of thoughts and feelings in them, and they come back to us
laden with their ennobling, stimulating, pleasure-bringing influences.

Thoughts of envy, or malice, or hatred, or ill will are likewise felt by
others. They are influenced adversely by them. They inspire either the
same types of thoughts and emotions in them; or they produce in them a
certain type of antagonistic feeling that has t