entieth
does Sandow exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is the
least dispensable of the day's doings. What do I force my mind to
meditate upon? Upon various things, but chiefly upon one.

Namely, that Force, Energy, Life--the Incomprehensible has many
names--is indestructible, and that, in the last analysis, there is
only one single, unique Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually
reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it
increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from spirit.
Everything lives. Even my razor gets "tired." And the fatigue of my
razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue after a passage
of arms with my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been
transformed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science just now
has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such
baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and
the central _me_ which dominates my mind: the same force in different
stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. In such paths
do I compel my mind to walk daily. Daily it has to recognize that the
mysterious Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which
exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate
atoms, nothing can harm. By such a course of training, even the mind,
the coarse, practical mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents
don't count.

"But," you will exclaim, "this is nothing but the immortality of the
soul over again!" Well, in a slightly more abstract form, it is. (I
never said I had discovered anything new.) I do not permit myself to
be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, or even of
individuality after death. But, in basing my physical and mental life
on the assumption that there is something in me which is
indestructible and essentially changeless, I go no further than
science points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the
immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces
himself, or I lose that earthly manifestation of Force that happens to
be dearest to me, I say to my mind: "Mind, concentrate your powers
upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, am immortal
and beyond the reach of accidents." And my mind, knowing by this time
that I am a hard master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the
Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will
exist billions of years hence, going to al