Notwithstanding the immense amount of attention which has been directed in a broad general way to mind and
its action, and although the constructive and creative ability of mind through thinking has been so long and so
universally acknowledged, yet we are just now beginning to recognize the close and direct personal relation
which thinking bears to man. The limits of the power of mind have never been clearly perceived, but recognition
of their extent continually enlarges as knowledge and understanding increase.
The differences between ignorant and enlightened, between savage and civilized, between brute and man, are all
due to mind and its action. All the multifarious customs and habits of mankind, whether simple or complex,
though often attributed to other causes, are, from first to last, the direct results of thinking. The unwritten history
of the evolution of clothing, from its rude beginnings in the far-distant and forgotten past through all the ages
since man first inhabited the earth, though at first glance seemingly simple, yet, as a whole, is wonderfully
complex and astonishing in its particulars. Its story is only the story of the application of mind to the solution of
a single one of the vast multitude of problems connected with human requirements.
2
It is true that our factories and palaces, our temples and our homes, are built of earthly material, but mind
directed their fashioning into the vast multitude of forms, more or less beautiful, so lavishly displayed by
architecture in city and country. The multitudinous products of constructive art which are scattered in lavish
profusion over the whole earth are marvelous exhibitions of what mind has done; and these are being multiplied
daily,
All the mechanical triumphs of every age are products of mental effort. Without these men would be in the
condition of the animals. It has been said that he owes his supremacy over the lower creatures to his ability to
construct and use tools, but this also depends entirely on his superior ability to think. The steam engine is one of
these tools; and the story of its creation and of the vast amount of mental effort which has contributed to its
evolution can be written only in its larger parts because of the amount of time that has been expended upon it,
the magnitude of the work, and the minuteness and complexity of its details.
In the domain of the fine arts more than elsewhere the creations are intimately connected with mental action and
are distinctly marked as products of mind. Music, vocal and instrumental, the single singer or the multitude in
the chorus, the one instrument or the great orchestra, the country boy whistling among the woods and hills or the
grand opera in magnificent halls -- music everywhere, in all its varieties and types, is a product of mental activity
and is a most subtle as well as most powerful expression of the mind of the composer. The dreams of the
sculptor which have been revealed in marble, those of the painter in the figures on his canvas, the beautiful in all
artistic creations or expressions, are the direct result of the finest thinking of the finest minds. What a world of
them there is in existence! Yet the crumbling ruins of the past point to greater worlds of them which have been
destroyed by man and time.
Even a yet more important product of mind is the literature of the world; in quantity, overwhelming; in variety,
bewildering; in quality, whether ancient or modern, such as to excite the interest wonder and admiration. There
is no greater monument to the mind of man than the things which that mind has produced in science, philosophy,
religion, and letters. This has grown like those ancient monuments to which every passer-by added a stone, and it
will continue to grow so long as the human race exists.
Civilization with all that the word implies in every one of its unnumbered phases, its origin, continuance,
progress, and present condition, is directly and exclusively a product of mind; and man owes to mind and its
action all there is in the external world except the earth and its natural products. All religious, political, and
social organisms have their root in mind, and they have assumed their present forms in consequence of the
profoundest thinking of untold generations of men. To the same source man owes his own position, which is
superior to all else on the earth and “only a little lower than the angels."
Notwithstanding the recognition of all these facts, it has remained for the scientific men of the present day,
through their own intellectual attainments and discoveries, to enlarge immensely upon this recognition and to
show the complete supremacy and universality of mind in another domain. The horizon is rapidly widening in
the direction of the mind's relation to man himself; and, as a result of the more recent discovery of facts, man is
beholding undreamed of possibilities which he may achieve through his own mental control. From the vantage
ground already gained, mental and moral possibilities are rising to view in the near distance beside which the
attainments of this and all past ages shrink into insignificance.
Only in these more recent years has it been clearly perceived that mind action is first in the order of occurrence,
and that it is the absolute ruler of man himself as well as of all these wonderful works which mind has created.
Mind is the motor power and governs everything, everywhere; but man can control mind, and therefore, by that
control, he may be the imperious dictator of his mind's entire course, and, rising thence to the highest pinnacle of
possibility, he may become the arbiter of destiny itself.
- by Aaron Martin Crane
No comments:
Post a Comment