g to the world of "noumena," so that it is not illogical to
say that it is the intention and faith that counts, and not the external
sound. In this is the secret of the Power of Thought. It is the
reproduction, on the miniature scale of the individual, of the same mode
of Power that makes the worlds. It is that Power of Personality, which,
combined with the action of the Law, brings out results which the Law
alone could never do--as the old maxim has it, "Nature unaided fails."

This brings us to another important question--is not the creative power
of the Word limited by the immutability of the Law? If the Law cannot be
altered in the least particular, how can the Word be free to do what it
likes? The answer to this is contained in another maxim: "Every creation
carries its own mathematics along with it." You cannot create anything
without at the same time creating its relation to everything else, just
as in painting a landscape, the contour you give to the trees will
determine that of the sky. Therefore, whenever you create anything, you
thereby start a train of causation, which will work out in strict
accordance with the sort of thought that started it. The stream always
has the quality of its source. Thought which is in line with the Unity
of the Great Whole, will produce correspondingly harmonious results, and
Thought which is disruptive of the great Principle of Unity, will
produce correspondingly disputive results--hence all the trouble and
confusion in the world. Our Thought is perfectly free, and we can use it
either constructively or destructively as we choose; but the immutable
Law of Sequence will not permit us to plant a thought of one kind, and
make it bear fruit of another.

Then the question very naturally suggests itself: Why did not God create
us so that we could not think negative or destructive thoughts? And the
answer is: Because He could not. There are some things which even God
cannot do. He cannot do anything that involves a contradiction in terms.
Even God could not make twice two either more or less than four. Now I
want the student to see clearly why making us incapable of
wrong-thinking would involve a contradiction in terms, and would
therefore be an impossibility. To see this we must realize what is our
place in the Order of the Universe. The name "Man" itself indicates
this. It comes from the Sanscrit root MN, which, in all its derivatives,
conveys the idea of Measurement, as in the word M