The Will governs the amount of mental force that shall be produced, and also the direction and distance it shall travel. Like the rudder of a ship it guides and directs the course of our thoughts. The Will being the controlling mental faculty, it is able to make a decision and to send out to the world, or to an individual, the ideas and opinions which were collected by the brain, or those thoughts which came to the brain from other people. It determines the extent of our influence over other people, and it also counteracts the effect of the thoughts and ideas conveyed to our brain by others or by circumstances. It can through concentration attract thoughts to the brain, but it cannot prevent their coming when the mental faculties are in harmony with those thoughts, for it is the harmony that attracts like to like. It can, however, change the mental tone of the person and thus throw him out of harmony with certain people or a certain line of thought. In this way evil may be turned to good, or good to evil.

A great many people Strong Wills, but possess the majority do not. The person who is so fortunate can send his thoughts a greater distance than the person having a weak Will. This fact accounts for some people being successful and famous, while others are not known outside of their immediate neighborhood. The famous man is he, who by his strong Will, started thought waves in motion that have traveled around the earth. People are made successful and famous by sending out to the public a series of thoughts which are taken up by thousands of people, who in turn send them on to thousands of others. If this person is an actor or a musician, there is then a grand rush to see him, and if he is a writer, thousands buy and read his book. The thoughts of all these people are centered on the one man and they make him successful. The thoughts that he sent out were at first similar to a faint breeze, but in passing through the brains of others the force was multiplied until it became as powerful as a hurricane. Success of this character is not won through personal magnetism, as some people claim, because the public is not within the circle of his magnetism. He reaches the minds of the people by the use of Mentalism. They feel his thoughts and unconsciously obeyed his wishes.

It often happens that the successful man in his assurance of continued success, becomes indifferent or egotistical, and discontinues sending out the strong thought vibrations to the public, and immediately his success begins to decrease and someone else, who is sending out stronger vibrations, reaches and controls for a time the public's mind. Thus one rises while another falls and the people continue to be the servants that worship at the shrine of him who makes use of the Mentalism under his control. We read of and see such experiences every day.

Wireless telegraphy is an acknowledged fact. Messages have been sent and received over a distance of thousands of miles with only the ether of the atmosphere acting as a conductor. Thoughts are sent from the brain exactly as a wireless message is sent from a transmitter. The waves produced in the atmosphere are identical, and the process corresponds exactly with the principles of wireless telegraphy. Whenever an action occurs in the brain, a chemical change of its substances also takes place, and the result is an electrical manifestation that produces force and motion. It therefore necessarily follows that no brain action can take place without creating a wave or undulation in the atmosphere, for the movement of any solid particle submerged (as we are in atmosphere) in any medium must create a wave. Each acting, thinking brain is the center of the undulations which are transmitted in all directions through space. These undulations or waves vary in character and intensity in accordance with the nature of the person and the strength of the Will that dispatches them. The thoughts of love or hate, of life or death, of murder or rescue, of consent or refusal, each have their corresponding tone or intensity, as each emotion or passion has its corresponding tone of voice.

Thought is Nature's method of communication. Speech is a cultivated talent. If speech had been the only possible means of communicating one with another, we would have been born with that faculty developed and ready for use as the other five senses are. An infant cannot speak, but nevertheless it can read the thought language. Every mother is confident that her baby knows just what she is thinking and doing. She will assure you that when she is thinking of leaving the room that it will protest and refuse to sleep, while at other times it would go to sleep quickly. Only mothers fully realize to what extent thought language is understood by children. As we grow from infancy to childhood we are taught to use speech as a means of expressing ourselves, and thus the natural faculty is held in check and its development dwarfed. The deaf and dumb converse by a system of their own without the use of speech, and it is a well known fact that the greater part of their understanding is due to thought reading and very little of it to sign reading. That animals also possess the faculty of receiving thought communications, is proven in many ways, but as this work is intended to deal only with that power in man, I shall only mention a few of the facts that have come under our observation. Without the power to think, intelligence could not exist, for thought is intelligence in action. Every one will admit that animals have a marked degree of intelligence. Then animals must be capable of thinking. This faculty, or power, is developed to a greater degree in domestic animals, and especially in the dog and horse. There is a sympathy existing between these animals and man that can only be the result of a mutual mental understanding. Any person who has ever been the owner of a horse or a dog will need no further proof of the ability of animals to understand their master's thoughts and desires. Where is there to be found greater faithfulness than that displayed by a dog toward his master? One cannot help but observe with what quickness a dog will know if you fear him or not, and a horse if you have the confidence to drive him.

That animals possess a marked amount of intelligence is clearly shown by their leaving a forest some days previous to a forest fire, and by rats in leaving a condemned ship, and by birds in migrating from North to South and from South to North with the changes of the seasons. A little investigation along this line will well repay anyone for the time and efforts used.

I repeat, that speech is only an expression of thought. It is one method of conveying thought from one person to another, but its use is limited, because sound can be propelled only a short distance by the human voice. Wires are not necessary to telegraphy nor is speech necessary to thought. We can send a telegraph message without wires, and we can send a thought message without speech. A thought message may be sent to one person only, or it may be sent so that it can be taken up by thousands. A proof of this is to be found in the various suicide and murder epidemics, and in the fads and crazes that spread over the country from time to time. Another strong evidence is the series of so-called coincidences on record in the Patent Office at Washington. It is a matter of record that there is seldom an important invention entered for a patent without almost the same thing being entered by several other people at about the same time, thus demonstrating that each one had either been working from one man's thoughts, or upon the combined thoughts of all, although none of them knew that the others had such an idea.

Is it necessary to use words to express ourselves in prayer to God? No. A prayer is recognized as being more sincere when offered up in thought, without unnecessary display. There are reasons why a silent prayer should be the most effective. In quietude the entire mental force and energy are concentrated upon the desire, and the Will is given every opportunity for dispatching the message. Where one expresses a prayer aloud, the sound of his own voice and the attention he attracts by so doing, must necessarily cause his thoughts to wander from the desire and thus reduce the force and efficacy of the prayer.

Christ did not need to be informed of a man's wishes, for He read the mind of man as an open book, and the man's story was already told. Lips had nothing to do with it. The Master knew, felt and shared the joys and sorrows of humanity. This subtle force was thoroughly understood by Him as verified by the record of His life in the New Testament.

"Great men are they who see that mental force is stronger than material force; that thought rules the world." - Emerson.