e of the
scientific law will enable us to predict with certainty just what events
will follow the occurrence of that fact.

First, then, let us marshal our facts tending to prove that bodily
activities are caused by the mind.

INTROSPECTIVE EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY

CHAPTER IV

INTROSPECTIVE EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY

[Sidenote: Doing the Thing You Want to Do]

The first and most conspicuous evidential fact is voluntary bodily
action; that is to say, bodily action resulting from the exercise of the
conscious will.

[Sidenote: Source of Power of Will]

If you will a bodily movement and that movement immediately follows, you
are certainly justified in concluding that your mind has caused the
bodily movement. Every conscious, voluntary movement that you make, and
you are making thousands of them every hour, is a distinct example of
mind activity causing bodily action. In fact, the very will to make any
bodily movement is itself nothing more nor less than a mental state.

_The will to do a thing is simply the belief, the conviction, that the
appropriate bodily movement is about to occur._ The whole scientific
world is agreed on this.

For example, in order to bend your forefinger do you first think it
over, then deliberately put forth some special form of energy? Not at
all: The very thought of bending the finger, if unhindered by
conflicting ideas, is enough to bend it.

[Sidenote: Impellent Energy of Thought]

Note this general law: _The idea of any bodily action tends to produce
the action._

This conception of thought as impellent--that is to say, as impelling
bodily activity--is of absolutely fundamental importance. The following
simple experiments will illustrate its working.

Ask a number of persons to think successively of the letters "B," "O,"
and "Q." They are not to pronounce the letters, but simply to think hard
about the sound of each letter.

[Sidenote: Bodily effects of Mental States]

Now, as they think of these letters, one after the other, watch closely
and you will see their lips move in readiness to pronounce them. There
may be some whose lip-movements you will be unable to detect. If so, it
will be because your eye is not quick enough or keen enough to follow
them in every case.

Have a friend blindfold you and then stand behind you with his hands on
your shoulders. While in this position ask him to concentrate his mind
upon some object in another part of the hous