hearty meal, or drinking freely, to
exercise Forethought or Self-Suggestion. Peaceful mental action during
sleep requires that there shall be very light labor of digestion, and
disturbed or troublesome dreams are utterly incompatible with really
successful results. Nor will a single day's temperance suffice. It
requires many days to bring the whole frame and constitution into good
fit order. Here there can be no evasion, for more than ordinary
temperance in food and drink is _absolutely indispensable_.

It is a principle, recognized by all physiologists, that digestion and
fixed thought cannot go on together; it is even unadvisable to read
while eating. Thus in all the old magical operations, which were, in
fact, self-hypnotism, a perfect fast is insisted on with reason. This
is all so self-evident that I need not dwell on it. It will be
needless for anyone to take up this subject as a trifling pastime, or
attempt self-suggestion and development of will with as little
earnestness as one would give to a game of cards; for in such a
half-way effort time will be lost and nothing come of it. Unless
entered on with the most serious resolve to persevere, and make
greater effort and more earnestly at every step, it had better be let
alone.

All who will persevere with calm determination cannot fail ere long to
gain a certain success, and this achieved, the second step is much
easier. However, there are many people who after doing all in their
power to get to the gold or diamond mines, hasten away even when in
the full tide of success, because they are fickle--and it is precisely
such people who easily tire who are most easily attracted, be it to
mesmerism, hypnotism, or any other wonder. And they are more wearisome
and greater foes to true Science than the utterly indifferent or the
ignorant.

This work will not have been written in vain should it induce the
reader to reflect on what is implied by patient repetition or
perseverance, and what an incredible and varied _power_ that man
acquires who masters it. He who can lead himself, or others, into a
_habit_ can do anything. Even Religion is, in fact, nothing else.
"Religion," said the reviewer of "The Evolution of the Idea of God,"
by GRANT ALLEN, "he defines as Custom or Practice--not theory, not
theology, not ethics, not spiritual aspirations, but a certain set of
more or less similar observances: propitiation, prayer, praise,
offerings, the request for Divine favors, t