Another form of self-hypnotism: "Allow the thought, and it may lead to a choice; carry out the choice, and it will be the act; repeat the act, and it forms a habit; allow the habit, and it shapes the character; continue the character, and it fixes the destiny." The free thinker is he whose mind is divested of prejudice; whose soul is awakened to new forms of truth. Prejudice is ignorance educated. There can be no freedom of the spirit where prejudice exists. It matters little if you are ignorant, for you will meet people daily who know it all. Man cannot make law; he cannot make a law of nature; he cannot make a moral law. It would be as easy to make the one as the other. The moral sphere was no more left without law at creation than was the physical sphere. Man can but discover and apply physical laws, or laws of nature. He can but discover and apply the laws of morality. The law of gravitation is no older than the law against murder or any other act destructive of rights. There has been no discovery in mechanics, mathematics, chemistry or literature of our day that was not a dream in the spirit of some man or men long before the procession of events marshaled it into line with the requirements of progress.

Ignorance is the only bar to the emancipation of hypnotism from all the adverse conditions which confront it. We are glad to be able to record each step in advance which humanity takes in its search for freedom. Psychologists have yet to record many curious workings of the mind and of hypnotism and self-hypnotism. When the bigot refuses to investigate the claims of a new system of thought or experience, for fear of unsettling his precnceived opinions or belief, he puts himself upon an intellectual level with the animal who eats hay. Sensation is the foundation of thought; on this, thought is based. Every sensation resolves itself into a thought finally. Painful sensations give forth painful thoughts. That the mind can so influence the body as to influence organic changes is well illustrated by a case detailed by Turke, where a woman saw a heavy weight falling and crushing a child's hand. She fainted and when restored to consciousness was found to have an injury on her own hand similarly located to that sustained by the child. Not only was there a wound, but it went through the various stages of suppuration, and healed by granulation.

Other well attested proofs of this power of the mind over the body are afforded by the fact that a blister can be raised by mental suggestion; that stigmata, undoubtedly, occasionally appear on the hands and feet, and on the side, of certain women. Remember, they who possess the deepest knowledge of human nature are the least violent in blaming its frailties. The great trouble with some wise men is that they know too many things that are not true. In times of high feeling, debate only fuses opinions into convictions; only fans the flame and makes the fire a conflagration. One of the sublimest things in this world is plain truth. Faith is a great propelling power; without it we can do nothing; with it we can do everything within the range of human power. It is through faith that all the great achievements of the past have been wrought. The man who works without faith is a mere slave to some necessity or external force. The man with faith works from the promptings of his own inspiration and internal power, and in the direction of his faith.

The evidence of faith is effort corresponding thereto. "Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works." If men would have less to say about their faith and more to do about it, they would establish their right to their profession and do much to bring the world to a practical, working faith in the rule of rendering no man evil for evil.