22102367782

Med
K37896
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Wellcome Library

https://archive.org/details/b29815198
 THE POWER-BOOK LIBRARY
3u ismrnmmmmmmmmmmm—— —r _____

ITS AIM
Power Through Cultivation of Best Personality,

ITS PHILOSOPHY
The Goal of Life is Best Use of Self and Career

ITS EIGHT HIGHWAYS OF POWER

The Highway of Bodily and Mental Health.
The Highway of Dauntless Courage-Confidence.
The Highway of the Controlled Whirlwind.
The Highway of Symmetrically Great Will-Power.
The Highway of Variously Growing Mind-Power.
The Highway of Physical and Psychic Magnetism,
The Highway of Expanding Practical Ability.
The Highway of the Arthurian White Life..

ITS ASSURED OUTCOME

Supreme Personal Well-Being and Actual Financial Betterment.

ITS METHODS
Exactly What to Do and How to Do Exactly That.

THE VOLUMES
MThe Personal Atmosphere” (Travels Five Highways).
c“^cwer of Will ” (Travels Eight Highways).
“'Power for Success” (Suggests All Highways).
“Business Power” (Travels Seven Highways).
“ihe Culture of Courage” (Travels Four Highways).
“Practical Psychology” (in preparation).

Y on are Invited to enter one or more of the Eight Highways

and to share in the labor and rewards of many who are
sow pi^mg on to Personal Betterme«*-
The Personal Atmosphere
Ten Studies in
Poise and Power

By FRANK CHANNING HADDOCK, Ph.D.

Founder of the Power-Book Library
Author of “ Power for Success,” ** Power of Will/’
“ The Culture of Courage/* Etc.

JFmtMtmu
Vital Education as the Evolution of Consciousness

1919
The Pelton Publishing Co.s
Meriden, Connecticut.
 Copyright, 1908, by
FRANK C . HADDOCK,
AUBURNDALE, MASSACHUSETTS,

Copyright, 1908.
registered at stationers haei«*
lyONDON, England,
 DEDICATED
TO

Alkert L>nm2 Vzltan

Whose Personal Qualities
Illustrate All the Books I Have Written
For Development of
Best Individual Efficiency.

The Author\
 “ on the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in;
the last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van.” —
Carlyle.

“ The air is one vast library, on whose pages are forever

written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered.” —
Professor Babbage.

“ Does the cause of nervous phenomena reside in these molec¬

ular movements of the substance of the nerves, or is it owing to a
disturbance in the equilibrium of the ether, distributed in the
nerves ? Is this disturbance the consequence of a particular move¬
ment of the ether, which should constitute what we call the
nervous fluid ?” —“ Physical Phenomena of Living Beings,” Mat-
teucci, (1848), p. 263.
1* yye might say that man is built up about an intricate system,
representing, as it were, an entire electric plant. 1 he brain may
be compared to the condenser, cr storage station ; the special
nerves of sense, to the phase branches ; and the nerve terminals
to the generating part of the apparatus.” — Dr. F. S. Kollb, in
“ The Electric Age,” Jan., 1902.
 PREFACE.

This little book is a reprint of a chapter bearing

the same title which appeared in the first edition of
“Power of Will.” The chapter seemed a trifle
out of place and was omitted from the second edition
of that work. It is now given separate existence.
Revision of its pages brought out from all directions
a mass of suggestions and new material which might
have swollen the volume to a much larger form.
The original purpose of a small book, however,
prevailed, and the ten studies were restricted to
the present limit. The older writing has become
almost “a new creature/’ The love of creation
determined thus much. Particularly has the sub¬
ject enlarged in the ninth and tenth studies. These
are especially commended to seekers after the rich¬
est conscious life. It is believed that the new form
of the page-matter and the division into studies
will prove helpful.
I have the faith to believe that I am doing a work
which is really worth while. IVTany declarations
of practical values derived by patrons from the use
of the Power-Book Library deepen that conviction.
Let us all hold steadfastly to the assurance that in
good time, in one way or in another way, each way¬
farer through these fields of splendor and uplift,
these paths of Earth and spaces of the Stars, shall
arrive, largely and richly arrive. For, since we
crown the psychic stress of the ages, all things be¬
long to us in the plan of Life and the law of Har¬
mony-
— THE AUTHOR.
 INITIATIVE.

I will not imitate;

I do not stoop to mimic either living or dead.
To ape the dead were robbery —
Let the man carry the fame that9s his;
To imitate the living is treachery
To my own soul — and I value my soul immeasurably.
For this is all I have: better for me than other souls,
And, for my life, the whole thing,
My point i the Universe,
My centre of Infinite Existence.

T herefore, I imitate not.

I merely assert myself,
As the primitive Aryans had it, I bind myself to¬
gether,
Freely, with never a thought of any one else.
This do the birds, beasts, stars. They are like, yet
unlike:
Like as it pleases Nature (0, the Motherhood of
Nature!),
Unlike, as she pours, with the flow of her povjer,
The sea of her plenitude into them.
I, now I tell you, will sing as I choose.
Since I choose as the purple hills and the solemn
stars;
I will be mine own self undaunted

VI
 vn
Initiative

If I travel a path trod by others,

Must /, forsooth, wear their clothes I
Must I think their thoughts?
But the road has changed,
5 he day and the night and the objects all
Have been touched by life and duty,
If'hich things are forever new,
And /, myself, <3 power evolving,

inner flame that flames within me

Is mine by the grace of Creation, —
-For Creation itself is eternally new and now,
the indwelling fire makes all things mine
By a fiat Divine
Not granted any living beings m all worlds
{But precisely the same is true of you, shadow of
self-reality /).
Oh, that Fire fuses the Universe anew
Into one globular Value at my disposal.
I see it / I feel it l
Aye, the Me of my individual existence
Sees, feels, zx transfigured, and leaps to sing
IVith perfect abandon and trust,
Exactly as it will and must,
My song of destiny.

Whoever sings, thinks, acts for himself and freely,

Is original, clean-cut, a complete soul.
He confronts the worlds and conquers them,
ind his the sceptre of a king,
-—THE AUTHOR*
 SJarfieloas Jab.

&he lUrdbrrse is Honrs!

*o *“*

§nt eati^ of its immense trainee:

§*al% frosgxrity,
mnfdbment anb Spiritual f ofoer,
gon mast first claim foitfein gonr ohm soul
fefort'ont iota tfctuof taa appear gonr objtttibt lift
 THE PERSONAL ATMOSPHERE,

I.
First Study: Preliminary.

mn of Occult Causes’) that there are phe-

J v ----7 i. J

ignorance to deny. This general proposition no

one, I presume, will be found to gainsay; for, in fact,
the causes of all phenomena are, at last, occult.
There has, however, obtained a not unnatural pre¬
sumption against such causes; and this presump¬
tion, though often salutary, has sometimes operated
most disadvantageous^ to science, from a blind and
indiscriminate application; in two ways. In the
first place, it has induced men lightly to admit
asserted phenomena, false in themselves, if only
confidently assigned to acknowledged causes. In
the second place, it has induced them obstinately
to disbelieve phenomena, in themselves certain
and even manifest, if these could not at once
be referred to already recognized causes, and
did not easily fall in with the systems prevalent
at the time. An example of the former is seen
in the facile credence popularly accorded, in
2
The Personal Atmosphere

this country, to the asserted facts of Craniotogy.

. . . An example of the latter is seen in the diffi¬
cult credence accorded in this country to the phe¬
nomena of Animal Magnetism; phenomena in
themselves the most unambiguous, which, for near¬
ly half a century, have been recognized generally in
Germany; while, for nearly a quarter of a century,
they have been verified and formally confirmed by
the Academy of Medicine in France. So true is
the saying of Cullen: — 4There are more false tacts
current in the world than false theories. So true
is the saying of Hamlet: — ‘There are more things
in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy.’ ” —- Sir William Hamilton.

§ I. The Personal Atmosphere is a reality of the

greatest importance in our life. Theoretically it
should be understood, at least in general terms;
practically it should be utilized both for betterment
and for right influence. The ends thus indicated
constitute the object of this book.

§ 2. Man is person exhibiting in body. Ihe

exhibit is in part body itself, in part ‘‘conscious
mind ” — by which is to be understood the entire
sum-total of personal activities within the body which
are not involved in automatic physiological processes.
All the activities are of the self, but the self is a
deeper reality than either the body or the mind.
The mind is not the self; the self is active in various
 The Personal Atmosphere 3

ways within the body, and those ways, when not

concerned in building and functioning the body,
constitute a system of activities which we call the
“ conscious mind.'5

§ 3. In the scientific world it is held to be un¬

thinkable that a force of gravity should act through
space without an instrumental medium (the ether;
see later sections), and light and heat are explained
as certain movements of the ether within itself
which affect us in ways to produce the sensations
of vision and temperature. These movements are
described as undulations, vibrations, and so on,
and, as Professor R. K. Duncan observes: ‘"Once
convinced that light consists of waves, the mind (the
self) insists that these waves shall inhere in some¬
thing. The ocean waves are made of water, —
sound waves of air, — light waves of, we must say,
— something. This something cannot be air or
water or any form of matter as we know it, for
throughout that great reach of 93,000,000 of miles
between the sun and us there exists but empty
space. Filled this empty space is, however, and to
the brim. There is no such thing as emptiness.
From corner to comer of the universe, wherever
a star shines or light darts, there broods this
vast circumambient medium — the ether. Not
only through interstellar spaces, but through the
world also, in all its manifold complexity, through
our own bodies; all lie not only encompassed by it
 The Personal Atmosphere
4
but soaking in it as a sponge lies soaked in water.
How much we ourselves are matter and how much
ether is, in these days, a very moot question.

§ 4. So we may say that, as activities go on

within the body, some of which are concerned with
(a) the physiological functionings, demanding no
conscious willing on our part, and some of which we
describe as Will, memory, and the like, theie must
be something that acts in all these various ways.
That something is the self. When the self acts in
the ways indicated by (a), it exhibits physiological
activities. When it acts in ways indicated oy (b),
we call the sum of such activities mind.

§ 5. Now, mental activities seem to be divisible

into conscious and subconscious. 1 he self, com¬
monly speaking, is possessed of what is called
“ consciousness ”— the sum-total of now-activities
which are mental in character. But4 conscious-
ness” is not to be taken as mere awareness in the
ordinary sense of the word; the sum-total of mental
activities embrace those of which we aie not aware
no less than those of which we surely are aware.
That is to say, mind may be both aware-conscious
and subconscious. There is the mental sell with
which you are very familiar; and there is the mental
self of which you know exceedingly little. The lat-

*"The New Knowledgep. 4.

 J

The Personal Atmosphere 5

ter is the subconscious self — the deeper reality of

your personality.

§ 6. “It is to the existence and vital function of

this large area of our personality,” says Professor
Barret, of Dublin, “which is submerged below the
level of consciousness, that I wish to draw atten¬
tion, for psychologists are agreed that its range must
be extended to include something more than is
covered by our normal self-consciousness. What
we call ‘ourself’ is a something- which lies in the
background of our consciousness, enabling us to
combine the series of impressions made upon us, or
the states of feeling within us, into a continuous
personal identity.” * (See Sec. 29).

§ 7. The organ of mind, at least the central or¬

gan, by means of which conscious mental activities
(and unconscious) are conducted, so far as we know,
but which only partially may be required for some
phases of the unconscious mental activities, is the
brain. The brain, as material, lies immersed in —
and fundamentally is composed of—the universal
ether, that common medium of all the great physical
forces of which we have knowledge.

§ 8. Human life is grounded in physiology.

Physiology is the basement of psychology — that
is, material facts that we know underlie psychic facts
as manifested.
* “Humanitarian” (1895).
6
The Personal Atmosphere

§ o. The nature of matter, force and spirit (the

non-material self) is not certainly known. The
“new science” leans to the theory that matter is
electricity, which is a form of “material force, an
which manifests in the universal ether. By the
words, “material force” no one can intelligently
mean other than a non-material somewhat which is
capable of producing effects in the material world
The only conceivable reality so capable is wt.
But Will is not material; it cannot be thought of in
any terms that are appropriate to matter, and must
be regarded as spiritual, as non-molecular, non-
atomic, non-etheric.
Matter is manifestation of spiritual energy, or
Will. r . . _ . .
Material force is a gross effect of spiritual activity,
that is, of Will in action.
Nevertheless, it is to be observed that matter and
spirit (or Will) ur* equally real I he reality of mat¬
ter is temporal and phenomenal in Nature. 1 he
reality of Will is eternal and phenomenal in the Un¬
seen Universe.
Spiritual force is thus the fundamentally and ulti¬
mately real # . . ,
Material force is an exploitation of the spiritual.

§ 10. It is important to remember, however, that

psychic facts as manifested imply and call for a
bsychic existence below them and thus below all ma¬
terial facts exhibited in the bodily life. (See Sec. 4-)
 The Personal Atmosphere

II.

Second Study: 2 he Personal Atmosphere

Suggested.

§n. In (<Power For Success,” may be found

these words (“ Preliminary ”): “The deeper self
(the unconscious mind) may be regarded as the
centre of several outlying spheres. It centres (a)
the body, (b) the personal atmosphere (explained
below), (c) the objective arena (the sphere of one’s
general influence), (d) the universal ether, (e) the
All. Beginning with the last and returning to the
first, we see that each sphere includes all other
spheres preceding it in the order above given.

§12. The All vibrates into existence the universal

ether, which pervades all material realms and reali¬
ties, continually vibrating them into form and ac¬
tion. It is, therefore, immanent in — that is, pres¬
ent and active in — and embraces, the objective
arena (the sphere of one’s general personal influ¬
ence). At this point in our analysis, the self as a
vibrating power emerges. As the All vibrates the
universal ether into action — revealed in heat, elec¬
tricity, magnetism, matter, so the human self vi¬
brates the ether within the body, and around the
person, and out into the objective arena. A cer¬
tain region within the objective arena, and centering
in the deepest unconscious self-field, is distinctively
8 The Personal Atmosphere

individualized; given a character peculiar to each

person, so that such portion of the objective arena
may well be called the personal atmosphere. The
personal atmosphere extends beyond, yet also pei-
vades, the body, but is not altogether coextensive
with the entire objective arena. The personal at¬
mosphere, then, is a certain surrounding region of
the universal ether which your personal activities,
conscious and unconscious, maintain in a state of
continuous and more or less unified activity.
Let us now examine the considerations which
lead to the above conclusion. These consider¬
ations may be enumerated as

III.

Third Study: Certain Basic Facts.

§ 13. In our present existence matter is the usual

organ of mind. But means of communication be¬
tween minds are of two orders, the material and
the spiritual. Here observe:

§ 14. First Basic Fact. — Ordinary communica¬

tions between human minds obtain by means oj the
senses through material media.
The author holds that “material force” is the
active Nature-manifestation ot the All-Self. The
 The Personal Atmosphere 9

Infinite All-mind is eternally creative in the organi¬

zation of spiritual force into material or other ex¬
istences. One of the Upamshads of India says:
“There is one ruler, the soul, within all things, who
makes the one form manifold.” The ancient
Hindu literature also incessantly declares: “In
the beginning there was that only which is, one only,
without a second.”
“The Klamaths,” says Max Muller, “one of the
Red Indian tribes, believe in a Supreme God whom
they call 6The Most Ancient One,’ 4 Our Old
Father/or ‘The Old One on High.' He is believed
to have created the world that is, to have made
plants, animals, and men. But when asked how
the Old Father created the world, the Klamath
philosopher replied: 'By thinking and willing.’ ”*
We may, then, say that matter manifests through
spirit. Spirit manifests and communicates, in part,
through matter. Ultimate matter (matter in its
finest form — a complex of electricity, or a vast
combination of the ether, or an exhibit of etheric
activities—) may, at present in our history, serve as
the partial medium of communication between the
All-Mind or All-Self and the human mind or self.
The All-Self or Infinite reveals in part through or¬
ganized matter, as seen, for example, in Nature.
But the Infinite must also be held to reveal to the
human by direct spiritual (mental) impact upon

* "Psychological Religion” (1903), p, 383:

10 The Personal Atmosphere

consciousness in the region of the deeper human

self. The human reveals to the human by vibra¬
tions in matter which induce the sensations of hear¬
ing, smell, taste, touch and sight.
Second Basic Fact.—Matter exists, so jar as
phenomena indicate, in the following formsy aside
from those of ordinary observation.

§ 15. 1. Star Dust. “ I here is nothing around

which the dust of time, said Professor Alexander
Mitchell, “ does not gather. It accumulates among
the shelters of mountain cliffs. It falls upon ivy*
mantled towers and ruined walls, and creates a
rooting place for many a hardy herb and a nidus for
countless living germs. It clogs the water-passages
from our roofs, and fills our cisterns with soils
yielded by the atmosphere. It gathers about de¬
serted structures; it buries the foundations of col¬
umns and temples. Whence the dust which has
buried walls and towers and cities ? Much of the
soil which gathers upon roofs and in the crevices of
old walls has been lifted by the winds from bare
fields and dusty streets. Even the snowy summits
Df the Alps become stained by terrestrial particles
borne by upward currents into the mountain air.
And yet I will venture the opinion that some dust
comes to the earth daily which had never belonged
to the earth before. Out from the depths of space
— beyond the clouds, beyond the atmosphere
from a granary of material germs which stock the
 The Personal Atmosphere II

empire of the sky, comes a perpetual but invisible

rain of material atoms — like the evening dew
emerging from the transparency of space into a
state of growing visibility/’
Similarly as to Cryonite — “cold-dust” — the
name given by Nordenskjold to a gray powder
noticed by him in various places in Greenland on
the surface of the inland ice, at a great distance
from earth or rock, and which he considered to be
of cosmic origin.

§ 16. 2. Coloring Matter of the Sky. The blue

of the heavens is owing to the diffusion throughout
the atmosphere of fine particles of matter. Thus
Professor Tyndall has said:
“Everybody knows that as the sky bends toward
the horizon, the purer blue is impaired.
This diminution is a natural consequence of the
predominance of coarser particles in the lower re¬
gions of the atmosphere. Were the particles which
produce the purer celestial vault all swept away, we
should, unless helped by what has been called ‘cos¬
mic dust/ look into the blackness of celestial space.
And were the whole atmosphere abolished along
with its suspended matter, we should have the
‘blackness’ spangled with steady stars; for the
twinkling of the stars is caused by our atmos¬
phere.” *

* “T/ie Sky” in “Fragments of Science ”

12 The Personal Atmos bhere 1

§ 17. 3. Emanations. The theory of emana¬

tions as furnishing explanation of light, heat, etc.,
is not now received. Nevertheless, bodies seem
constantly to be giving off fine particles of their
substance. Sir David Brewster said:
“All bodies throw off emanations in greater or
less size and with greater or less velocities; these
particles even enter more or less into the pores of
solid and fluid bodies, sometimes resting upon their
surface, and sometimes permeating them altogether.”
Certain phenomena seem to indicate either ray-
movements in the ether in which bodies are im¬
mersed, as a sponge may be immersed in water, or
moving particles of actual matter. “If on a cold
polished metal,” said Prof. John William Draper,
“as a new razor, any object, such as a wafer, be
laid, and the metal be then breathed upon, and,
when the moisture has had time to disappear, the
wafer be thrown off, though now the most critical
inspection of the polished surface can discover no
trace of any form, if we breathe once more upon it,
a spectral image of the wafer comes plainly into
view; and this may be done again and again. Nay,
more, if the polished metal be carefully put aside
where nothing can deteriorate its surface, and be
so kept for many months, on breathing again upon
it the shadowy form appears.” *
These facts were discovered by Professor Draper

* “Conflict Between Religion and Science,” 1876, p. 133.

 The Personal Atmosphere 13

and M. Moser at about the same time. Professor

William Denton quoted the above, with slightly
changed wording, from Mr. G. H. Lewis, and then
went on to say, as from that writer:
“If a sheet of paper on which a key has been laid,
be exposed for some minutes to the sunshine, and
then instantaneously viewed in the dark, the key
being removed, a fading spectre of the key will be
visible. Let this paper be put aside for many
months where nothing can disturb it, and then in
darkness be laid upon a plate of hot metal, the
spectre of the key will appear/’ *
“In the case of bodies more highly phosphores¬
cent than paper, the spectres of many different
objects which may have been laid on in succession
will, on warming, emerge in their proper order.”
The explanation given of these phenomena is the
action of exceedingly minute particles of matter
upon the surfaces referred to.

§ 18. The mystery of radio-activity also intro¬

duces us to hitherto unheard-of divisions of material
substances. The older teachings of science held
that matter consists of combinations of molecules,
the latter being in turn complex aggregations of
atoms. An atom was defined as the smallest divisi¬
ble particle of matter, that is, a particle which can¬
not be further reduced, either mechanically or chem-

* “The Soul of Things1871, p. 27.

 14 (The Personal Atmosphere

cally. It is now known that the atom is itself an

assemblage of inconceivably minute particles called
corpuscles.
"Common objects for the microscope are blood
corpuscles (corpuscles here are not to be confused
with the corpuscles of the atom) and milk-globules.
The thickness of the former, or the diameter of the
latter, is such that 10,000 could be ranged side by
side within the length of an inch. The fifth part of
the ten-thousandth of an inch covers a very small
space indeed in the field of a microscope, and a
sphere whose diameter was equal to the fifth part of
the thickness of a blood-corpuscle might be taken
as an approximation to the smallest object of which
a microscope can give us anything like clear vision.
A molecule has five thousand times as small a diam¬
eter as such a sphere, and 125,000 million molecules
would be required to fill it. The very heaviest
molecule has less than five thousand times the
weight of the lightest, and if size is proportionate to
weight, their diameter will be sixteen times that of
the smaller ones. But even they will show a diam¬
eter more than three hundred times, and a surface
nearly a hundred thousand times as small as the
minimum visible. Such, then, are the individual
particles out of which every mass in the world, and,
so far as we can judge, every mass in all other astro¬
nomical bodies, is made up.” *
And all molecules are in a state of incessant activ-

* “Radium Explained,” 1908.—W. Hampson, p. 44:

 The Personal Atmosphere 15

ity, are constantly moving, in one way or another.

“The movement may be of elastic change of shape,
as with a rubber ball; of vibration, as in the endsof
a tuning fork; of rotation, like that of a top; or,
when there is larger free space, of translation from
place to place, as with a bullet. Or two or more of
these kinds of movement may be combined. But
what is certain is that all the molecules are con¬
stantly in movement, which we call for convenience
vibration. The molecular vibrations are exceed¬
ingly energetic. . . . Imagine a room to be
pumped empty of air, so that it contained nothing
to resist the movement of flying missiles. Imagine
a few thousand balls of such perfect elasticity as to
have none of their energy lost in bouncing, to be set
flying in all directions in such a room, so that they
would go on forever bouncing against one another
and against the walls of the room. They would
represent, on an enormously magnified scale, the
structure of a gas, and the action of its molecules,
which have had their vibrations, in the liquid or
solid state, developed into long flights through space
in the state of a gas. When we speak, however, of
long flights through space, it must be remembered
that the expression is comparative, having reference
to the extreme minuteness of the molecules, and the
spaces which separate them in liquids and solids.
As a matter of fact, the average distances between
two molecules, even when they are flying freely
through space, in a gas, is so small that if a cubic
 16 The Personal Atmosphere

inch of air were magnified to the size of a cube of

sixteen miles each way, the molecules would even
then be no more than one-eighth of an inch apart;
and the number of collisions that each molecule has
with others in one second is nearly five thousand
millions.”
But the molecules are composed of still finer
particles, the atoms, which are also in a state of in¬
cessant activity, moving within the molecule in
complex ways and with inconceivable rapidity.
1 hey are so small that each molecular system may
be comparable to a stellar system.

§ 19. Now, matter is everywhere disintegrating,

going to pieces, and, since this is true of the atoms,
no less than of the molecules, they are thus seen to be
other systems of smaller size than anything the
human mind can conceive. That the atom disin¬
tegrates is observable in experiments made with
radium, together with uranium, thorium, polonium
and actinium, forms of matter whose activity is
scientifically marvelous. In all these substances
the atoms are found to be constantly going to pieces.
Radium, for example, gives off, without any appar¬
ent diminution of itself, what are called alpha rays,
which are made by the emanation of rather large
particles, beta rays, which are caused by emana¬
tions of smaller particles, gamma rays, which are
etheric vibrations, and other emanation particles dis¬
tinguished from the rays, acting somewhat like a gas.
 The Personal Atmosphere

In consequence of discoveries made with tnese

forms of matter, and other experimentation, it is now
held that the atoms consist of aggregations of enor¬
mously attenuated particles which are called coi~
puscles. “ These are so small that the smallest and
lightest atom we know, that of hydrogen, contains
from 800 to 1000 of these corpuscles. Radium,
however, is a heavy substance, one of the heaviest
known, and its atom contains about 200,000 cor¬
puscles. The corpuscles, however, are much smaller
than is indicated by saying that their size is the
two hundred thousandth part of that 01 an atom.
For they do not nearly fill the space occupied by the
atom. They fill as little of the atom space, and are
as far apart from one another as would be the case
with the same number of the smallest grains of crust
floating in the hollow sphere of a gigantic football.
The corpuscles are also in a state of incessant activi¬
ty, and, while their movements are not certainly
known, it is thought that they are arranged in some¬
thing like concentric rings within the atom. If the
atom of radium contains two hundred thousand
corpuscles, all moving, there must occur collisions,
and some of the corpuscles, under certain condi¬
tions, will finally be jostled out of the system. T his
would be a case of disintegration. Radium gives
off rays and emanations because its atoms go to

*■ “Radium Explained.”
 The Personal Atmosphere

§ 20. Finally, radio-activity is now believed to be

almost universally present in all material substances.
The truth probably is that, just as radium is an
extreme case among the radio-active substances,
disintegrating more rapidly than thorium, uranium,
polonium, or actinium, so these altogether are mere¬
ly an extreme case of ordinary matter. There is
good reason to think that every element, or almost
every element, has a few of the atoms constantly dis¬
integrating; but as the process is much slower than
in the case of radium, it escaped notice till the most
refined methods of observation were brought to
bear. . . All the elements in the universe, it ap¬
pears, are undergoing slow destruction. We can¬
not point to the hardest or most solid and say, here
is a substance whose particles suffer no loss by deg¬
radation/’ * Such disintegration of matter, such
continuous process of emanation, may explain the
fact that a grain of musk retains its scent-giving
powers for many years without apparent loss of
substance, or the scent of animals which is often so
remarkable, and may also account for personal
aversions and antipathies, the sense-organs being
affected by the assault of particles or corpuscles of
matter flying incessantly through air and other ob¬
jects.

§21. 4. The Ether. It is by some suggested

that the corpuscles are composed of “granules” of

* ‘1 Radium Explained. ’'

 The Personal Atmosphere *9

the ether. Thus, the granules make up the cor¬

puscles, and the latter constitute the atoms, which
combine to form the molecules, which, in turn, are
aggregated into visible matter. Matter is ether.
Others hold that the corpuscle is a mode of mo¬
tion of the ether within itself, which mode of motion ,
is electric — that is to say, matter is electricity and
nothing but electricity. The corpuscles are by
these scientists, therefore, called electrons. 1 hey
" conceive of an atom as an aggregation of negative
corpuscles arranged in a certain number in a certain
way, and surrounded by a sphere of positive elec¬
tricity which balances the negative electricity of the
corpuscle within it.” * Negative electricity repre¬
sents motion of the corpuscle. What positive elec¬
tricity is we do not know — unless it be “a state of
the ether.” Now, electricity is a mode of motion
of the ether within itself. Matter is ether.

§ 22. Of the exact nature of this substance we

know nothing, just as we know nothing of the exact
constitution of the self within the body. Certain
established facts in science indicate its existence,
however, and it is the only accepted explanation of
light, heat, electricity, magnetism and some of the
activities of such elements as radium.
The ether is defined as a "medium of extreme
tenuity and elasticity supposed to be diffused
throughout all space (as well as among the mole-

* “The New Knowledge.”

 20 T he Personal Atmosphere

cules and atoms of which materia! objects are com¬

posed) and to be the medium of the transmission of
light and heat.” It is declared that it can convey
energy (“the power to change the state of motion of
a body”); that it can present it at any moment,
partly in the form of kinetic, partly in that of poten¬
tial energy; that it is therefore capable of displace¬
ment and of tension; that it must have rigidity and
elasticity; that its density is equal to that of our at¬
mosphere at a height of about 210 miles, and that
its rigidity is about one-billionth of that of steel;
that it is easily displaced by a moving mass; that it
is not discontinuous or granular, and hence that as
a whole it may be compared to an impalpable and
all-pervading jelly through which light and heat
waves are constantly throbbing, which is constantly
being set in local strains and released from them,
and being whirled in local vortices, thus producing
the various phenomena of light, electricity and mag¬
netism, and through which the particles of ordinary
matter move freely, encountering but little retarda¬
tion, if any, for its elasticity, as it closes up behind
each moving particle, is approximately perfect.*
“But what are we required to believe regarding
this ether which is conceived to fill all space, and
mterpenetiate all material bodies occupying the
interstices among atoms ? The hypothesis is of a
perfect, incompressible, frictionless fluid, which,
to meet all the conditions of the problem, must be

* Sse Matter, Ether and Motion— DoIiBeab.

 The Personal Atmosphere 21

supposed to possess the most strangely contradictory

properties. This fluid, Professor Jevons observes,
might be regarded as an infinitely solid adamant.
Sir John Herschel calculates the amount of force
exerted at any point in space in the propulsion of
waves of light, and finds it to be more than one tril-
lion times the elastic force of ordinary air at the
earth’s surface, so that on this supposition the pres¬
sure of ether upon one square inch of surface must
be about seventeen trillion pounds. Notwith¬
standing this, we are to believe that the resistance
offered to the motions of the planets and other heav¬
enly bodies is inappreciable. Professor Jevons
adds: ‘All our ordinary notions must be laid aside
in contemplating such an hypothesis; yet it is no
more than the observed phenomena of light and
heat force us to accept.’ ” *
“The ether, we now see, is very unlike ordinary
matter as known to us. It may be regarded in
some respects as a liquid, in others it manifests the
properties oi a solid. It is both hard as adamant
and at the same time perfectly elastic. It is sen¬
sitive to every slightest impulse, and a disturbance
anywhere causes a tremor felt on the surface oi
countless worlds. Why do we accept the existence
of this mode of material existence, the characteris¬
tics of which are so contradictory to those of ordi¬
nary matter as our experience reveals them to us ?
Because the undulatory theory ot light and heat

* “Cosmos, The Soul and God-” Arnold; (1907)- pp. 76-77;

22 The Personal Atmosphere

compels us to admit the existence of such a sub¬

stance.
“Certainly the discovery of the ether has en¬
larged our experience and demands a new definition
of matter. The ether is a kind of matter and not
something other than matter. As well might we
say that a quantity of gas is not matter because its
properties are not identical with those of a solid
body. ‘The supposition that the ether may be
something entirely essentially different from matter
is contradicted by all the terms that are used in de¬
scribing it.’ The ether, then, may be regarded as
the primitive state of matter.” *

§ 23. If, now, matter is a complex of ether in mo¬

tion, or if ether is attenuated matter, and if matter
is electricity, or, since that is disputed, a form of
motion of the ether within itself, and if energy is
“power to change the state of motion of a body,”
the only reality left is energy. A single further con¬
clusion remains, to-wit, that energy is Will. What
Will is, “the thing in itself,” we do not know, except
this one thing — it is an agent, a something capable
of causing reaction in other existences than itself
and of reacting to the influence of such other ex¬
istences.
“We have, thus, reduced the universe to three
terms: matter — ether — energy, and we ought
now to consider whether the triune conception may

* “ Cosmos, The Soul and God.’ — Arnold. (1907.) pp. 76-7/?

 The Personal Atmosphere 23

not be capable of a deeper synthesis. We have all,

I imagine, a deep-seated conviction of the essential
‘oneness’ of the universe, and to justify it, we must
assume, either that these three things are after all
but ‘forms’ or phases of an underlying and un¬
knowable reality, or that, separate and distinct as
they appear, they are themselves One, in some mys¬
terious way altogether beyond the power of Human
reason to grasp.” *

§ 24. 5. “Spirit-Matter.” This combination of

words is a contradiction. It is employed merely to
suggest a finer phase of matter than even the ether
itself. “That complexity which we have already
been compelled to attribute to matter involves, of
course, the possibility of still further complexity.
There may be phases of matter as much more tenu¬
ous than ether as that is more tenuous than oxygen
or carbon.’’(Let the reader here observe!) “From
a physiological standpoint, the condition of the per¬
sistence of memory and self-consciousness must be
found in the continuous record of all our states of
consciousness, which is made by the molecular
changes going on in the brain.” (The idea seems
to be that the molecular and etheric structure ol
the brain may not present a medium sufficiently fine
for the purposes indicated, and thus that a still finer
phase of matter exists in the brain than atoms or
ether.) “Though it is impossible to say what these

* “The New Knowledge."—Duncan, p. 7.

24 The Personal Atmosphere

changes are, no physiologists doubt that some cer¬

ebral change is correlated with every state of con¬
sciousness, and that thus the minute structure of
the brain at any moment is a record of all previous
experiences in life.” * But if the brain is immersed
in the ether, or in some finer state of matter, it is
impossible to suppose activities in that medium
sufficient to insure a permanent record without also
concluding that the medium itself would be set into
motion of some kind. This points to communica¬
tions between minds caused by vibrations or other
motions taking place in the medium between brains.

§ 25. “Spirit-Matter” may be tentatively held,

then, as such an exceedingly attenuated state of
ordinary matter. Certain accredited phenomena
recorded by sane people are in evidence and yield
further suggestions for the present study. Thus,
a Dr. Clark, of Boston, related of the death of a
patient:
“The patient . . . dropping her head upon
her pillow as unexpectedly as she had looked up,
her spirit departed. The conviction forced upon
my mind that something departed from her body
at that instant of time, rupturing the bonds of flesh,
was stronger than language can express.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “Dr. Clark men¬
tioned a circumstance to me not alluded to in the
essay. At the very instant of dissolution, it seemed

* “Christian Faith in an Age of Science.”— Rice. (1903.)

 The Personal Atmosphere 25

to him, that there arose something — an undefined

yet perfectly apprehended something — to which
he could give no name, but which was like a depart¬
ing presence. . . I should have listened to the
story less respectfully but for the fact that I had
heard the same experience almost in the exact
words from the lips of one whose evidence is to be
relied upon; with the last breath of the patient she
was watching, she had the consciousness that some¬
thing arose, as if the spirit had made itself cogniz¬
able at the moment of quitting its mortal tenement. ”

§ 26. Thus the human body exists in and consists

of—matter, which is composed of molecules —
which are composed of atoms — which consist
of still finer particles called corpuscles — which
may be made up of yet more attenuated “granules”
of the ether, or may be phases of negative electricity
surrounded by positive, and are thus modes of mo¬
tion of the ether or the finer material within itself
But in all its forms matter certainly exists in a state
of enormous molecular, atomic and corpuscular
activity. Everywhere there is inconceivable in¬
visible movement. Man’s body, then, is the theatre
of a vast complex of such activities, and it exists in
the midst of an untellable storm of vibrations,
waves, undulations, vortices, and flying particles
which are so minute that oftentimes they can
only be described in the hieroglyphics of mathe¬
matics.
26 The Personal Atmosphere

§ 27. Third Basic Fact. — The h uman brain seems

to be essentially a battery. Professor William Draper
has said: “I find that the cerebrum is absolutely
analogous in construction to any other nervous arc.
It is composed of centripetal and centrifugal fibres
(having also registering ganglia). If in other ner¬
vous arcs the structure is merely automatic, can dis¬
play no phenomena of itself, but requires the in¬
fluence of an external agent — the optical apparatus
inert save under the influence of light, the auditory
save under the impression of sound — the cere¬
brum, being precisely analogous in its elementary
structure, pre-supposes the existence of some agent
to act through it.”
Professor Bain wrote: “The structure of the
nervous substances, and the experiments made upon
the nerves and nerve centres, establish beyond doubt
certain peculiarities as belonging to the force that is
exercised by the brain. This force is of a current
nature; that is to say, a power generated at one part
of the structure is conveyed along an intervening
substance and discharged at some other part. The
different forms of electricity and magnetism have
made us familiar with this kind of action.”
So, Dr. M. P. Hatfield has said: ‘‘The arrange¬
ment of the nerve-envelopes is so like that of the
best constructed electrical cables that we cannot
help thinking that both were constructed to conduct
something very much alike. I know there are those
who stoutly maintain that nerve-force is not electric-
 The Personal Atmosphere 27

ity; and it is not, in the sense that an electrical bat¬

tery is the same thing as a live man; but neverthe¬
less nerve-force is closely allied to that wonderful
thing that for the want of some better and clearer
understanding we agree to call electricity.”
Certain it is that the animal system generates
electricity — or some kindred force — however
small the quantity. The electrical torpedo is well
known. Aldini’s experiments with frogs’ legs
proved the existence of animal electricity. Mat-
teucci demonstrated that “currents of electricity are
always circulating in the frames of all animals.”
Dr. Prevost, of Geneva, “succeeded in magnetizing
delicate soft iron needles by placing them near the
nerves and perpendicular to the direction which he
supposed the electric current took. The magnet¬
izing took place at the moment when, on irritating
the spinal marrow, a muscular contraction was
effected in the animal.” In producing the effects
muscular action and chemical change are present.
All states of body and mind involve constant molec¬
ular and chemical change. The suggestion arises
that the brain, with its millions of cells and its in¬
conceivable changes in substance, may be regarded
as a transmitting and receiving battery.

§ 28. The brain being a kind of battery, and the

nerves conductors of released stored-energy to dif¬
ferent parts of the body, by a kind of action similar
to the actions of electricity and magnetism, it is
28 The Personal Atmosphere

§uggested that, either by means of the ether, or of

some still finer form of matter, discharges of brain-
energy may be conducted beyond the limits of the
body. If the nerve-tracks correspond to wires,
this refined medium may correspond to the ether-
field supposed to be employed in wireless telegraphy.
As electrical movements are conducted without
wires, or other visible media, so may brain-dis¬
charges be conveyed beyond the mechanism of the
battery, without the intervention of nerves — except
as they may constitute a part of the battery. Gen¬
erally speaking, such discharges would originate in
two ways: by direct mental action, or by mental or
physical states — perhaps by a combination.
JTelepathy and hypnotism illustrate these sugges¬
tions.

§ 29. Fourth Basic Fact. — The brain-battery

manifests, firsts in ordinary conscious mental action;
secondly, in the action of the subconscious mind.
Both the conscious and the subconscious minds are
capable of originating vibratory movements in the
ether-medium.
Professor James declares for “the existence of
two different strata of consciousness, ignorant of
each other, in the same person.”
He also says: “The evidence for telepathy,
weak and strong, taken just as it comes, forms a
fagot and not a chain. No one item cites the con¬
tents of another item as part of its own proof. But
 The Personal Atmosphere 29

taken together the items have a certain general con¬

sistency; there is a method in their madness, so to
speak. So each of them adds presumptive value
to the lot; and cumulatively, as no candid mind can
fail to see, they subtract presumptive force from
the orthodox belief that there can be nothing in any
one intellect that has not come in through the ortho¬
dox experiences of sense. . . For me the ortho¬
dox belief has not merely had its presumption weak¬
ened, but the truth itself of the belief is decisively
overthrown.” (See Sec. 5.)

IV ■s

§ 30. Fourth Study: Explanations.

The above considerations suggest the following :

(1) . The theory of “Spiritualism ;”
(2) . Mental energy conveyed by means of an in¬
visible material medium—impressing, not only minds,
but inanimate objects as well, as suggested above ,
(3) . Direct contact of man’s spiritual self, by
some mysterious “astral” extension or projection
of itself, with other selves or with inanimate objects ;
(4) . The existence of an universal, immaterial,
spiritual medium, in which all persons and things
are immersed, and by means of which the commu¬
nications and impressions are conveyed.
All the phenomena attending the supposed return
of spirits can be accounted for, in the author s opin¬
ion, by the second explanation. This does not
 3° The Personal Atmosphere

disprove “spiritualism;’5 it simply makes the demon¬

stration of the latter impossible to science, however
true it may nevertheless be.
Extension of the self and direct contact of finite
minds can never be scientifically verified by facts
sufficiently connected or cumulative to form a basis
for inevitable opinion, because all the facts can be
referred to the second explanation.
Sir Isaac Newton said: “It is inconceivable
that inanimate brute matter should, without the
mediation of something else which is not material,
operate upon, and affect other matter, without mu¬
tual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the
sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it.
. . . That gravity should be innate, inherent,
and essential to matter, so that one body may act
upon another, through a vacuum, without the medi¬
ation of anything else, by and through which their
action and force may be conveyed from one to an¬
other, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe
no man who has, in philosophical matters, a com¬
petent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into.”
And Dugald Stewart, commenting upon these
words, remarked: “The same train of thinking,
which had led these philosophers to suppose that
external objects are perceived by means of species
proceeding from the object to the mind, or by means
of some impression made on the mind by the brain,
has suggested to a late writer a very different theory:
that the mind, when it perceives an external object.
 The Personal Atmosphere 31

quits the body, and is present to the object of per¬

ception. The mind is not where the body is, when
it perceives what is distant from the body, either in
time or place; because nothing can act, but when,
and where, it is. Now the mind acts when it per¬
ceives. The mind, therefore, of every animal who
has memory or imagination, acts, and by conse¬
quence exists, when and where the body is not; lor
it perceives objects distant from the body both in
time and place.” That is, quits the body and
comes in contact with the object perceived.
The existence of an universal spiritual medium
is a possibility too remote, in view of the equally
possible and more easily handled second theory, to
require discussion. It would only demand attention
after disproof ot the latter. And it is immaterial,
so far as methods and results of the manifestation of
mind-power are concerned, whether the second or
the fourth theory be adopted.
The thought of science rejects the “extension”
theory.

§31. It remains, then, to affirm that the convey¬

ance of these extraordinary communications and
impressions have no explanation, or that they all
may be referred to the second statement of theory —
always excepting the action upon the finite mind of
the Infinite, who, in the nature of the case, does not
necessarily require an intervening medium.
The author holds that the theory of an universal
32 The Personal Atmosphere

material medium, at least in our present existence,

is reasonable and accords with the facts brought to
light by psychic investigation.
In “Mental Suggestion” Professor J. Ochorowicz
indicates some detail consideration:
“Every living being is a dynamic focus.
“A dynamic focus tends ever to propagate the
motion that is proper to it.
“Propagated motion becomes transformed ac¬
cording to the medium it traverses.
“Motion tends always to propagate itself.
“Therefore, when we see work of any kind —
mechanical, electrical, nervic or psychic — disap¬
pear without visible effect, then, of two things one,
either
“A transmission; or
“A transformation.
“Where does the first end and where does the
second begin ?
“In an identical medium there is only transmis¬
sion.
“In a different medium there is transformation.
“You send an electric current through a thick
wire. You have the current, but you do not per¬
ceive any other force. But cut that thick wire and
connect the ends by means of a fine wire; the fine
wire will grow hot; there will be a transformation
of a part of the current into heat. Take a pretty
strong current and interpose a wire still more re¬
sistant, or a very thin carbon rod. The carbon will
 The Personal Atmosphere 33

emit light. A part of the current then is trans¬

formed into heat and light. This light acts in every
direction round about, first visibly as light, then in¬
visibly as heat and as electric current. Hold a mag¬
net near it. If the magnet is weak and movable, in
the form of a magnetic needle, the beam of light will
cause it to deviate; if it is strong and immovable, it
will in turn cause the beam of light to deviate. And
all this from a distance, without contact, without
special conductors.
“A process that is at once chemical, physical and
psychical goes on in a brain. A complex action of
this kind is propagated through the gray matter, as
waves are propagated in water. . . . Regarded
on its physiological side, an idea is only a vibration,
a vibration that is propagated, yet which does not
pass out of the medium in which it can exist as such.
It is propagated as far as other like vibrations allow.
It is propagated more widely if it assumes the char¬
acter which subjectively we call emotive. But it
cannot go beyond without being transformed.
Nevertheless, like force in general, it cannot remain
in isolation, it escapes in disguise.
“Thought stays at home, as the chemical action
of a battery remains in the battery; it is represented
abroad by its dynamic correlate, called in the case
of the battery, a current, and in the case of the brain
— I know not what; but whatever its name may be,
it is the dynamic correlate of thought.
“I have chosen to use the term dynamic correlate.
34 The Personal Atmosphere

There is something more than that; the universe is

neither void nor dead. A force that is transmitted
meets other forces, and if it is transformed only little
by little, it usually limits itself to modifying another
force at its own cost, though without suffering per¬
ceptibly thereby. This is the case particularly with
forces that are persistent, concentrated, well sec¬
onded by their medium; it is the case with the physi¬
ological equilibrium, nervic force, psychic force,
ideas, emotions, tendencies. These modify en¬
vironing forces without themselves disappearing;
they are but imperceptibly transformed, and if the
next man is of a nature exceptionally well adapted
to them, they gain in inductive action.”

V.
Fifth Study: The Present Theory.
§ 32. Here, then, is a possible explanation of com¬
munications and influences conveyed from niind to
mind without the intervention of the common, visi¬
ble means, of the physical senses as ordinarily
understood.
The conclusion will be the same on the supposi¬
tion of a special refinement of sense-perception be¬
yond that recognized in the text-books, so that such
impressions are still conveyed to their appropriate
nerves, the latter being, however, capable of receiv¬
ing inconceivably minute vibrations of the surround¬
ing medium. Whether the communications are
concerned with the brain centre only, or with the
 The Personal Atmosphere 35

entire nervous system, would seem to be an indiffer-

ent question.

§ 33. And if brain-energy can thus pass the limits

of the body, and if the medium of such action is an
ether-like existence in which all things are im¬
mersed, may we not have here an explanation ol
the popularly-believed “influence of things” ?
In “ A Mortal Antipathy,” Oliver Wendell Holmes
makes Dr. Butts say: “The circumstances con¬
nected with the very common antipathy to cats
were as remarkable in many points of view as the
similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirk¬
wood. The subjects of that antipathy could not tell
what it was which disturbed their nervous system.
All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, rest¬
lessness, oppression, came over them in the presence
of one of these animals. . . . It may be through
some emanation. It may be through the medium
of some electrical disturbance. What if the nerve-
thrills passing through the whole system of the ani¬
mal propagate themselves to a certain distance with¬
out any more regard to intervening solids than is
shown by magnetism?”
Doctor Holmes gives, in “Over the Teacups/ an
interesting account of a breakfast conversation with
the members of his own household concerning a case
of “trial by battel,” and of his finding immediately
in the morning mail, a letter from an English friend
referring to the specific trial — that of Abraham
 36 The P ersonal Atmosphere

Thornton —which had been under discussion, and

to nothing- else.
Then “Number Seven” remarks: “The impulse
which led you to tell that story passed directly from
the letter, which came charged from the cells of the
cerebral battery of your correspondent.
“What! you cannot conceive of a charge of cere¬
bri city fastening itself on a letter-sheet and clinging
to it for weeks, while it was shuffling about in mail-
bags, rolling over the ocean, and shaken up in rail¬
road cars ? And yet the odor of a grain of musk
will hang round a note or a dress for a lifetime. Do
you not remember what Professor Silliman says, in
that pleasant journal of his, about the little ebony
cabinet which Mary, Queen of Scots, brought with
her from France — how ‘its drawers still exhale the
sweetest perfumes’ ? If they could hold their sweet¬
ness for more than two hundred years, why should
not a written page retain for a week or month the
equally mysterious effluence poured over it from the
thinking marrow, and diffuse its vibrations to an¬
other excitable nervous centre ?”
In these illustrations there is at least a suggestive
value. Doctor Holmes remarked elsewhere: “We
know that every human being, as well as every other
living organism, carries its own distinguishing at¬
mosphere. If a man’s friend does not know it, his
dog does, and can track him anywhere by it. This
personal peculiarity varies with the age and con¬
ditions of the individual. It may be agreeable or
 The Personal Atmosphere 37

otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but its

influence is not less real, though far less obvious and
dominant, than in the lower animals.”
The immediate vicinity of the individual or thing,
then, existing in various states and conditions, may
be called the Psychic, or the Personal Atmosphere.

§ 34. Let it be noted, however, that the theory of

the following pages is not scientifically demonstrated
as such. It is set forth and analyzed as a basis for
practical suggestions that will surely prove useful in
contact with other people. It involves many ele¬
ments of truth, and the author accepts it until a bet¬
ter be offered. The fact that it is not new in its
basic idea—thought communicated through ether-
vibrations — but is rather common in current liter¬
ature, may lend weight to its analysis as given in
these pages. The ether is accepted by science as a
reality, and as a medium for light, heat, electricity,
magnetism, etc. The nervous system is certainly
comparable to an electric battery with connecting
wires. Communications of thought and feeling
without the mediation of sense-perception as com¬
monly understood, is now established. Inanimate
objects exert, now and then, “strange influences.”
People certainly carry with them a Personal Atmos¬
phere. The representation of the condition of these
facts by a Psychic Field compared to the magnetic
or electric field becomes, therefore, if not plausible,
at least convenient. As such a “field exists
3« The Personal Atmosphere

surrounding the sun, so may a “field” be assumed

as surrounding each human individual. “We have
already strong grounds for believing that we live in
a medium which conveys to-and-fro movements to
us from the sun, and that these movements are
electro-magnetic, and that all the transformation
of light and heat, and indeed the phenomena of life,
are due to the electrical energy which comes to us
across the vacuum which exists between us and the
sun — a vacuum which is pervaded by the ether,
which is a fit medium for the transmission of the
electro-magnetic waves.” By means, then, of a
similar theory applied to mind and brain and body
we may find reasonable explanation of many other¬
wise insoluble mysteries in our life, and, which is of
more importance, deduce certain suggestions for
the practical regulation of life in the greatest indi¬
vidual interest.
The analysis to follow stands for facts of common
experience, and the rules that come after call for a
rational and beneficial exercise of the great soul-
power herein treated — the practical Will. By
means of the theory the facts and various practical
suggestions may now be readily indicated.

VI.
Sixth Study : The Personal Atmosphere Analyzed.

There are many kinds of Personal Atmospheres,

depending, first, upon the character of the individ-
 The Personal Atmosphere 39

ual Will, whether permanent or variable; secondly,

upon individual gifts or endowments; thirdly, upon
certain personal characteristics.

§ 35. First Order of Personal Atmosphere. In the

first order are those suggested by the Moods of JVill.
These may be named as:—
The Atmosphere of Feeling. The Lethargic.
The Atmosphere of Energy. The Indolent.
The Atmosphere of Concession. The Insistent.
The Atmosphere of Decision. The Indecisive.
The Atmosphere of Continuance. The Fickle.
The Atmosphere of Understanding. The Non-perceptive.
The Atmosphere of Reasonableness. The Irrational.
The Atmosphere of Righteousness. The Unrighteous.

§ 36. Second Order of Personal Atmosphere. In

the second order are those suggested by natural
gifts: —
The Poetic Atmosphere. The Prosaic.
The Artistic Atmosphere. The Non-aesthetic.
The Musical Atmosphere. The Non-musical.
The Inventive Atmosphere. The Non-inventive.
The Logical Atmosphere. The Illogical.
The Scientific Atmosphere, The Non-scientific.
The Commercial Atmosphere. The Non-commercial.
The Oratorical Atmosphere. The Non-magnetic.
The Atmosphere of Leadership. The Subservient.
The Executive Atmosphere. The Non-executiv*.
The Judicial Atmosphere. The Non-judicial.
The Constructive Atmosphere. The Destructive,
40 The Personal Atmosphere

§ 37* Third Order of Personal Atmosphere. In

the third order are those suggested by certain per¬
sonal characteristics: —
The Altruistic Atmosphere. The Selfish.
The Trustful Atmosphere. The Sceptical.
The Intellectual Atmosphere. The Emotional.
The Reasonable Atmosphere. The Unreasonable.
The Practical Atmosphere. The Visionary.
The Sane Atmosphere. The Insane.
The Law-abiding Atmosphere. The Criminal.
The Ambitious Atmosphere. The Lethargic.
The Cheerful Atmosphere. The Gloomy.
The Hopeful Atmosphere. The Discouraged.
The Inspiring Atmosphere. .The Depressing.
The Quiet Atmosphere. The Restless.
The Peaceful Atmosphere. The Stormy.
The Strong Atmosphere. The Weak.
The Brilliant Atmosphere. The Dull.
The Social Atmosphere. The Solitary.
The Attractive Atmosphere. The Repelling.
The Soothing Atmosphere. The Irritating.
The Polite Atmosphere. The Boorish.
The Gentle Atmosphere. The Harsh.
The Pure Atmosphere. The Impure.

VII.
Seventh Study: Advance Suggestions.
On the basis of these analyses, we may now per¬
ceive the value of certain advance suggestions :

§38. 0 n the Will-atmospheres. These are all sub¬

ject to intelligent control and development. If the
 The Personal Atmosphere 41

directions of “Power of Will ” have been followed,

these elements of your Personal Atmosphere have
been already highly cultivated. Your Psychic Field
is full of feeling, of energy, of a rational concession,
of decision, of perseverance, of intelligence, of rea¬
sonableness and of righteousness.

§ 39. On the Gift-atmospheres. These are en¬

dowments of nature. Examine the illustrative lists
to discover corresponding qualities in your own
Personal Atmosphere. If you possess any indi¬
cated by the left-hand column, cultivate them to the
highest possible degree, without neglecting other
elements of your character. If any are absent, or
if your Personal Atmosphere is indicated by any
word in the right-hand column, observe whether
attention to that matter is feasible or will avail any¬
thing. You may be hopelessly prosaic, or inartistic,
or unmusical, or subject to the Will of others, etc.
It will then be a waste of energy to attempt the de¬
velopment of what nature has not intended you to
possess. But, on the other hand, you may be now
illogical, yet capable of acquiring the power of cor¬
rect thinking; or a poor speaker, yet capable of im¬
provement in that respect; or not constructive, yet
capable of growing an ability to put things or ideas
in order and together. And so on. In any such
case, a demand upon your Will appears. Will to
improve in these particulars. This means self-cul¬
ture and a stronger power of Will by exactly so much.
42 The Personal Atmosphere

§ 40. On the Atmospheres of Personal Characteris¬

tics. These are all subject to the determined Will.
Compare your self-knowledge with the two columns.
Wherever you perceive your Personal Atmosphere
to be indicated by any of the left-hand words, study
it in that respect, note possibilities of improvement,
and use the Psychic Field to the utmost and for the
best. Wherever you see that any word on the right-
hand suggests your Personal Atmosphere, become
thoroughly familiar with the facts, and determine to
eliminate from your Psychic Field all characteris¬
tics so indicated.
It would be well to make these studies and efforts
subjects of special thought and Will-power for cer¬
tain stated periods. Examples:

§ 41. On the First Order.— Atmosphere of Feeling.

Recognize the opposite. Then ignore. Throw
the greatest conscious and sustained interest into
everything taken hold of for a day or a week.
Atmosphere of Energy . Throw the utmost sense
of Will into everything undertaken for a day or a
week.
And so on to the end of the list.

§ 42. On the Second Order. —The Poetic and Ar¬

tistic Atmospheres. Recognize the opposite. Then
ignore. Elevate the mind to the level of poetry and
art, with feeling and energy, in all things, carried on
for a day or a week. Or2 determine to cast out of
 The Personal Atmosphere 43

your life everything that is prosaic, or deformed, or

non-artistic. Invest all things with a sensible feeling
of beauty, order, nobility. Some people do this nat¬
urally and habitually. The masterful Will can ac¬
complish wonders in this direction. Make each
study-effort an exercise for several weeks, to the end
of both lists, adapting yourself of course, to the re¬
quirements indicated by the words.
Similarly with the third order. The exercises
here suggested are entirely practical. You can ac¬
quire any Personal Atmosphere, aside from some
determined by natural endowment, you desire. It
will be eminently worth your while to make an exer¬
cise as suggested of each line in the three orders of
Personal Atmosphere, and proceed methodically
to the end of all the lists. Having done this, return,
and make the left-hand words permanent symbols of
the Psychic Fields of your life.

§ 43. As you proceed, call upon the deeper sek to

feel, to make real in your inner moods, the ideal of
the Atmospheres indicated on the left hand of the
lists. Affirm confidently that such (named) is your
Atmosphere — your mood — for a day or a week.
Thus with all the Atmospheres in the lists.
We are creatures of habit, and habit has always
to do with the sub-conscious or deeper self, as
shown in the automatic action of the physical or¬
gans, as shown also in acquired and established ways
of doing things which originally demanded Will.
44 The Personal Atmosphere

The deeper self, in the latter instances, comes at

last to direct the necessary movements without our
being aware of the fact. But we have habits of
feeling and thought as well. These also have come
under the sway of the sub-conscious self. If our
physical movements and mental states and actions
are habitually right it is because the deeper self has
been instructed thus to take charge of these matters.
That self will do as we ourselves command. When
we resolutely assume right, agreeable, ideal feelings
resolutely assume right, true, ideal thoughts, we in¬
struct the deeper self to form corresponding habits
and in time we actually feel and think as thus as¬
sumed. Then we become what we have assumed,
felt, thought. And so, finally we develop the Per¬
sonal Atmospheres indicated by such feelings and
thoughts. The inner attitude, at first assumed, and
continually asserted, then become real, or at last actu¬
ally realized, has transformed us. This is the law.
It is infallible.
Before proceeding, however, read the remaining
pages of this book.
We now go on to a further analysis of the Personal
Atmosphere. Such analysis yields the following.

VIII.
§ 44. Eighth Study: Significant Propositions.

Proposition I. Every centre of electricity and

magnetism has its field in which the force is
 The Personal Atmosphere 45

greatest, and from which that force radiates in

every direction, if permitted to do so.
“ The electrical field is the portion of space in the
neighborhood of electrified bodies, considered with
reference to electrical phenomena.”

Proposition 2. The human brain has also its

Psychic Field, the Personal Atmosphere.

Proposition 3. The body is gross matter pro¬

vided with a nervous system extending to various
parts of the surface.
Brain-energy is transmitted through the nervous
system. In transmission beyond the body, it may
proceed directly from the brain, or it may employ
the nerves; or both operations may take place.

Proposition 4. The brain and nervous system is

surrounded by, let us call it the ether. But it is also
pervaded by such medium. It is immersed, as it
were, in an ether-bath, the material of which pene¬
trates it throughout.

Proposition 5. All bodily states, all nervous ac¬

tion, all mental activity, and mental conditions, set
the pervading and including ether-medium in mo¬
tion, of a vibratory character, and in established
ways and according to established laws. And these
may be governed largely by Will.
Let us suppose a mass of jelly to be suspended in
46 The Personal Atmosphere

water. The slightest movement taking place within

the mass will be communicated to the pervading and
surrounding water. Any movement in the water
will also be conveyed to the mass. Movement from
the mass will flow outward until absorbed, or di¬
verted, or increased, or diminished by other move¬
ments originating elsewhere. The movements oc¬
curring in the immediate vicinity of the mass will of
course be most numerous and pronounced or appre¬
ciable. Some movements will continue undisturbed
for considerable distances. If there are similar agi¬
tated masses in the water, the various movements
may be communicated to one another, and they may
be augmented, or diverted, or decreased, or neutral¬
ized, or transformed, each by the other.
Similarly (for the illustration is suggestive only)
with the brain immersed in the ether-medium.
Brain and nerve-energy create the Field, the
Personal or Psychic Atmosphere.
In the Field the vibrations are most numerous
and intense.
Vibrations, or movements, extend outward from
the Field, and by the Field vibrations or movements
are received.
In the intervening space, vibrations from Fields
— from brains — meet, or cross, and are variously
affected, as in the case of the supposed water-im¬
pulses.
In any Field incoming vibrations may be neutral¬
ized in many ways, thus making no impression upon
the otherwise receiving brain.
 The Personal Atmosphere 47

Or they may reach that centre, either with origi¬

nal force, or as augmented.
In the latter cases, the receiving mind may fail of
recognition because of distracting conditions sub¬
merging consciousness of their reception.
Or, again, being recognized as impressions, they
may. for various reasons, fail of correct interpreta¬
tion.
They may also be transformed, so to speak, be¬
fore reaching the receiving brain, and, being then
correctly recognized and interpreted, carry a differ¬
ent signification from that originally obtaining.
If not thus modified, and if the two brains are in
accord, as to Fields and as to conditions, and if vari¬
ous possible distractions are not present, the move¬
ments will be received, recognized and interpreted
in their original character.
If such harmonious conditions obtain as between
one Field and the Fields of several people, the vibra¬
tions will of course be greatly intensified.
Let us illustrate in a general way, without specific
repetitions, by coarser suggestions. If two sets of
water-waves, that are exactly alike in height and in
length from wave-crest to wave-crest, meet in the
same line of direction, so that the crests of one set
come exactly over the troughs of the other set, the
result will be a smooth or level surface. The waves
are neutralized. If crests chance to coincide di¬
rectly with crests, there will occur increase of wave-
height. Such hypothetical cases merely illustrate
 The Personal Atmosphere

in a crude way the idea of coalescence of movement

and increase or neutralization of vibrations. The
illustration might go on with suppositions of
waves meeting “head-on” instead of coinciding in
a forward movement, of waves making a “cross¬
sea,” of waves coming together with unequal ve¬
locities, and so on, and so on. We may have, not
only up and down undulations in a medium, but
transverse, “right-and-left to-and-fro” movements
of the medium. (“All fluids that we know trans¬
mit any blow that they have received by waves
which undulate backward and forward in the path
of their own advance. The ether undulates
athwart the path of the wave’s advance.”) And we
may think of rings like those thrown off by a
smoker, meeting in all sorts of ways, rebounding,
merging, neutralizing one another — in part, or
sufficiently to secure a smaller resultant ring,—
and so on. \ ou are invited to concentrate here
and to work out in your own imagination the vari¬
ous consequences of such meetings “ head-on ”and
meetings-up-with, all sorts of up-and-down waves,
right-and-left waves, smoke rings — rotating from
circumference to inner hole-surface, revolving as
wholes along the line of outer circumference, wob¬
bling, going ahead edge-on, or sidewise, or at an
angle with the plane of whole circumference, and
so on. If the effort becomes confusing, how com¬
plex, then, the ether-movements of your Personal
Atmosphere.
 The Personal Atmosphere 49

You see, thus, that if you are in a state of agita¬

tion, your field is full of confused movements; that
if your energy is controlled and directed in one gen¬
eral line of intention, your field is orderly and con¬
veys its own movements without confusion.
You see, too, that your unspoken influence over
others depends upon the energy and harmony of
etheric movements in your own Personal Atmos-
ph ere for one thing, and for another thing upon the
energy or lack of energy and the harmony or con¬
fusion of their Personal Atmosphere. If theirs is
chaotic, your “waves” can get into such chaos only
accidentally. So also of the reverse — with their
influence upon yourself. If their etheric move¬
ments are weak and confused, your ether-waves
may pass into their fields, excite the brain, and be
read as signs by the mind and obeyed. If there is
general harmony between your field and that of
another person, the desirable influence will be
mutual. So also of the reverse. If other Personal
Atmospheres are orderly and energetic, such con¬
ditions may oppose your “wireless” movements,
nullifying them, perhaps following back along the
path of your defeat, and thus influencing you. (See
for a fuller discussion of the matter, “Power for
Success.”)
All this, kindly observe, signifies deductions from
the very latest science given us to-day. The sug¬
gestions may seem rather foolish to you, but you
are invited to remember that “there are more things
5° The Personal Atmosphere

in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your phi¬

losophy.” The author has known many a mind to
begin with scouting considerations of the character
of those found in this book, yet to end not only in
profound faith therein, but in a larger, hopefuller
and richer and more successful life as well.

Proposition 6.As nerve-energy may be stored

up, so may thought-energy be accumulated. The
brain may through the Will store up the force of
such ether-vibrations. The Field may in turn be
deliberately “charged.”

Proposition 7.Such impressions, similarly, may

be conveyed to and stored up by inanimate objects.
The people are familiar with facts attesting the
“influence” of things not to be explained by the
operation of the senses or the imagination, or of
communications between minds as suggested in this
chapter. Things seem to acquire a character of a
personal nature. Beyond the philosophy of light
the words of Professor John William Draper are
true. “Upon the walls of our most private apart¬
ments, where we think the eye of intrusion is al¬
together shut out and our retirement can never be
profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our acts,
silhouettes of whatever we have done.
“A shadow never falls upon a wall without leav¬
ing thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which
might be made visible by resorting to proper pro-
 The Personal Atmosphere 51

cesses. Photographic operations are cases in

point. The portraits of our friends, or landscape
views, may be hidden on the sensitive surface from
the eye, but they are ready to make their appear¬
ance as soon as proper developers are resorted to.
A spectre is concealed on a silver or glassy surface
until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth
into the visible world.
“Radiant forces are passing from all objects to
all objects in their vicinity, and during every mo¬
ment of the day and night are daguerreotyping the
appearances of each upon the other; the images
thus made, not merely resting upon the surface, but
sinking into the interior of them; there held with
astonishing tenacity, and only waiting for a suitable
application to reveal themselves to the inquiring
gaze. You cannot, then, enter a room by night or
day, but you leave on going out your portrait be¬
hind you. You cannot lift your hand, or wink your
eye, or the wind stir a hair of your head, but each
movement is infallibly registered for coming, ages.
The pane of glass in the window, the brick in the
wall, and the paving-stone in the street, catch the
pictures of all passers-by, and faithfully preserve
them. Not a leaf waves, not an insect crawls, not
a ripple moves, but each motion is recorded by a
thousand faithful scribes in infallible and indelible
scripture.”*
And if this is true of inanimate objects, why

* "The Soul of Things."— Wm. Denton, p. 278.

 52 The Personal Atmosphere

should it not be equally true of living bodies, since

here also etheric activities are incessantly going on ?
“All bodies, organic bodies more especially,” re-
maiked Professor William Denton, “are transmit-
tmg influences continually to surrounding objects,
the tendency of which is to bring these objects into
a similar condition to their own. . . . Not
more certainly does a rose diffuse its fragrance than
human beings dispense their influence wherever
they go. We are each surrounded by an atmos¬
phere, which can convey to sensitives the impression
Oi our character and condition. Wherever the foot
touches the ground, the impression of the man is
left upon it, so that even the dog, by means of it, can
track his master hours after he has passed over the
ground. . . . Houses become so imbued with
the influence of the people that live in them that
sensitive persons can feel that influence as soon as
they enter; and if it is unpleasant, they haye a feel¬
ing of uneasiness, of positive unhappiness, as long
as they are subject to it.”
In pei feet harmony with the above quotations are
the following words from Dr. Hampson, speaking
with regard to radio-activity: “When we have
realized that these phenomena are shared, though
in small degree (relatively — author), by common
substances, we may discover therein the explana¬
tion of many baffling puzzles. It has been an in-
soxuble problem how an almost endless amount of
scent-sensation could be produced by an almost
 The Personal Atmosphere 53

infinitesimally small quantity of material. A grain

of musk can, without apparent diminution, distrib¬
ute scenting material through the frequently
changed air of a room for years. ... It may
be that the olfactory nerves are sensitive to impres¬
sions not only, perhaps not at all, from molecules
and atoms, but from the corpuscles into which they
disintegrate. . . . The simultaneous presence
of different corpuscles in various combinations may
produce as many and complex smell-sensations as
there are compounds of the elements. So exceed¬
ingly small quantities of material in the radio-active
state may be able to produce as definite and ap¬
preciable effects upon the consciousness through
the olfactory nerves as upon the electroscope by
ionization of the air (its decomposition into oxygen
and hydrogen gases)/’*
Thus is it suggested that both by etheric vibra¬
tions and by emanations of particles, objects may
produce permanent impressions upon objects and
persons, and persons upon persons and objects.
Intensely suggestive, therefore, is the following
passage from President Edward Hitchcock, of Am¬
herst College, written so long ago as 1851: “It is
just as if the universe were a tremulous mass of
jelly, which every movement of his (man) made to
vibrate from the centre to the circumference. It
is as if the universe were one vast picture gallery,
in some part of which the entire history of this

* “Radium Explainedp, 117.

54 The Personal Atmosphere

world, and of each individual, is shown on canvas,

sketched by countless artists with unerring skill.
It is as if each man had his foot upon the point
where ten thousand telegraphic wires from every
part of the universe meet, and he were able, with
each volition, to send abroad an influence along
those wires, so as to reach every created being in
heaven and in earth. It is as if we had the more
than Gorgon power of transmuting every object
around us into forms beautiful or hideous, and of
sending the transmuting process forward through
time and through eternity. It is as if we were
linked to every created being by a golden chain, and
every pulsation of our heart or movement of our
mind modified the pulsation of every other heart
and the movements of every other mind. Wonder¬
ful, wonderful is the position man occupies, and the
part he acts! And yet it is not the dream, but the
deliberate conclusion of true science.”*
Thus we come to a further proposition, one of the
most practical importance.

Proposition 8. But matter is never at rest, and

as personal ether-movements are constantly passing
from brains and constantly being received by brains,
the accumulated impressions received from person¬
ality are, in weaker form, given off or reflected from
immaterial objects.
Observe the following:

* “Religion and Geologyp. 439,

 The Personal Atmosphere 55

The clothing receives them* Do not wear the

same outer garments for long without airing and
change. Do not wear those of other people. Never
put on second-hand clothing.
They are impressed upon books. In using sec¬
ond-hand books shut the Will against any influence
of former owners.
Similarly with furniture. If second-hand it
should be thoroughly renewed. Constantly used
furniture should also frequently be renewed and re¬
arranged.
Like influences obtain with tools and various im¬
plements. Long used, they acquire some personal
character, and should be neither borrowed, nor pur¬
chased, nor loaned. If they have passed through
a morose, or evil, or unfortunate history, the owner
may well afford a new set.
Frequented rooms and places store up this mass
of human influences. The kitchen borrows the
cook’s character. The dining-room registers the
public family life. Sleeping-chambers, especially,
record the nameless history of undiscovered hearts.
The writer is convinced that he has dimly ‘'sensed”
something of the personality of former occupants in
various houses where he has lived. It is a common
thought that rooms may be pervaded by the “pres¬
ence” of absent people sometime unfamiliar there.
The atmosphere of a vacated saloon must differ
vastly from that of a reputable theatre, an art mu¬
seum, a college or a church.
56 The Personal Atmosphere

Proposition 9. The Personal Atmosphere exerts

a marked influence upon others in certain familiar
cases. It appears in the sick-room, in “magnetic”
persons or speakers, in successful detectives and
gamesters, in famous, diplomats, in some so-called
“revivals,” in epidemics of a mental character, in
vast popular movements. Here, especially, the in¬
fluence of a strong Will is apparent.

Proposition 10. To the Personal Atmosphere

may be attributed the origin of many de: p and last¬
ing friendships and loves, otherwise inexplicable, as
well as of apparently causeless and groundless aver-
sions and hates. In its occasional overmastering
power we have an explanation of curious cases of
personal subjection to others. It is often by brain-
or heart-movements not accompanied by really of¬
fensive word or gesture that insult is perceived, the
mind interpreting the invisible sign unerringly.
Personal Atmosphere often assimilates other peo¬
ple’s thoughts, a spontaneous unanimity of expres¬
sion thus frequently springs up all over a country,
and discoveries and inventions leap forth in surpris¬
ing similarity.

Proposition 11. The Personal or Psychic At¬

mosphere is, therefore, a subject of influences and
communications, making for depression, exhilara¬
tion, hope, fear, courage, loves, hates, health, illness,
moral forces, and the like. So, also, unaccount-
 The Personal Atmosphere 57

able impulses, determinations and “freak” actions

may thus originate.

Proposition 12. Psychic Atmospheres, as has

been suggested, may mutually neutralize their in¬
fluence upon their owners.
Or they may raise or lower one another’s tone.
Or they may more or less modify to effects differ¬
ent from those of either originally.
Or they may co-ordinate, and thus cause mutual
benefit or injury.

Proposition 13. The Psychic Atmosphere is in

character both positive and negative.
One Field may be, now positive, now negative, to
another.
One may also be negative to that of a second per¬
son, while positive to that of a third.

Proposition 14. Personal Atmosphere has further

character:
It may be “good.” In a moral sense ; because of
endowments; because of a healthy body or mind;
because of helpfulness; because of its tone. And
so on. An artist may possess a good moral Field,
or a Field that is artistic whether moral or no; or a
Field determined by a healthy body, or a healthy
mind; or a Field that is easily and beneficially ex¬
cited toward others; or a Field characterized by
cheerfulness, or courage, or vigor, or dignity, or
high purpose.
58 The Personal Atmosphere

It may be “evil.” In a moral sense; bcause of

unenviable endowments; because of ill-health, bod¬
ily or mental; because of indifference toward others;
because of a low tone. The artist may not be moral;
if moral, he may be endowed for inferior kinds of
work; his body may be consumptive, or his mind
may be more or less unsound or ill-balanced; his
tone or temper may be low.

Proposition 15. The Personal Atmosphere is

usually partly good, partly evil. The items enu¬
merated in the two above paragraphs suggest a
large number of possible combinations. Good
health, bad morals, high and correct artistic influ¬
ences, a melancholy tone, may combine to deter¬
mine the Field of one person.

Proposition 16. The Psychic Atmosphere of one

mind may be good in its action upon that of an¬
other, but evil in its action upon that of a third.
The brain-vibrations of Fields do not always har¬
monize, do not always synchronize. “He is not
to my mind.” Apart from morals, the influence
of a Personal Field is relative; whether it is good or
evil depends greatly upon the relation of one per¬
son to another, either permanently or occasionally.
Some Fields complement others, supplying what
they lack: “She is just his mate.” Some Fields
excite others to intenser activity: “That person
inspires me.” Some Fields lower the intensity or
 The Personal Atmosphere 59

tones of others: “What a depressing person!”

The vibrations of some Fields entering others over¬
whelm the latter: “In his presence he seems to
lose his personality.”

Proposition 17. The Personal Atmosphere va¬

ries from time to time in the same person. Now
the good or evil character prevails; now the ether-
movements of the Field are numerous, active, in¬
tense, forceful, clear of confusion; now they are
fewer, languid, weak and confused.

Proposition 18. The laws of action in Personal

Atmosphere are simple:
1. Every good or evil condition of the Field is
attractive toward a like condition in another Field,
and repellent toward an opposite condition.
2. If a person’s Psychic Atmosphere is good,
either now and then, or prevailingly, he will, by so
much, infallibly send out beneficial ether-move¬
ments to all similar persons around him, and will
receive from them like beneficial influences.
3. Conversely, a false or evil Field makes it¬
self felt upon people of its kind, and as well receives
readily their ether-vibrations.
4. A perfect and healthy Psychic Atmosphere,
morally, intellectually and emotionally, possessed
of a strong Will intelligently employed, would never
yield to influences of an evil nature.
But in all human beings the Personal Atmos-
6o The Personal Atmosphere

phere is of a mixed character. Hence, every per¬

son, even though possessing a Psychic Field in the
main good or healthy, throws out vibrations of an
evil and injurious kind, and the Atmosphere of
each is, therefore, subject to mal-influences swarm¬
ing around it in inconceivable numbers and com¬
plexity.
So, also, few, if any, people are absolutely bad,
but are causes of various good influences, and sub¬
ject to the vast sea of benevolent ether-movements
surrounding them.

Proposition 19. The great and predominant

characteristics of Psychic Atmosphere in its best
estate may be expressed in the following words:

Ibealtb* $elf=control* Intelligence. talent

BDucatlon. TOIL Bnerg£* Xoue. prlbe* Ibope*
Cheerfulness* JSellet 3frlenDsbip* JBeneuolence*
justice. Cirutb* ^boral purpose* XOorsbip.

Proposition 20. The evil Personal Atmosphere

may be symbolized by opposite words: Ill-health
— weakness — dullness — ignorance — flabby Will
— indolence — lovelessness — vanity — prideless-
ness — discouragement — irritability — melancholy
— scepticism — unfriendliness — low purpose —
selfishness — injustice — untruthfulness — indiffer¬
ence and irreverence.

Proposition 21. Personal Atmospheres differ

in nature as well as in character. The nature of
 The Personal Atmosphere 6l

the Psychic Field is determined by the individual’s

original constitution; its character by the quality
of personality behind it.
Character is the sum total of traits and qualities
acquired by the use or modification of original en¬
dowments. Nature is the force with or against
which every individual must work in determina¬
tion of his character. Both the nature and the
character of the Psychic Field are, therefore, su¬
premely matters of Will.

Proposition 22. The laws and operations of

Psychic vibrations constitute the natural causes of
social groupings. All other influence drawing
individuals into combinations are accidental and
artificial. Psychic segregation is of the nature of
things, and tends to permanency. Here is the
othodoxy of reason in “Heaven” and “Hell.”

Proposition 23. Inevitably, now, it must appear

that the Will is the secret spring and power in ah
Psychic Atmospheres.
Every human being has the privilege to make
his Personal Atmosphere largely what he will as to
modifications of original endowments, and alto¬
gether what he will as to character.
The Psychic Field is the Throne-room of the Will.
A weak Will means a feebly vibrant Personal
Field, whatever the man’s character.
A feeble Will cannot control its'own Atmos-
62 The Personal Atmosphere

phere, nor send out strong influences, nor repel the

ether-movements proceeding from others. It can
only yield its Field to psychic control.
A strong Will vibrates its Field, Alls it with pow¬
erful ether-movements, and repels or receives ap¬
proaching influences as it chooses, equally irre¬
spective of its owner’s character.
A strong and good Will attunes with the nature
of things, which is God. The region of noble
character is here.

Proposition 24. It is for the Will, then —

1. To originate and maintain and control the

best possible Personal Atmosphere.
2. To draw into its own Field the ether-vibra¬
tions of others at its sovereign election.
3. To permit the incoming of ether-movements
as it may determine.
4. To repel all evil and injurious influences.

Remember! The attracting and repelling power

of Will acts through the Psychic Atmosphere of the
individual. The weak cannot attract or repel the
strong, except by the affinity or repulsion of moral
conditions. The good Atmosphere will attract,
not the evil, but its own kind alone, and will repel
the evil. The evil can attract, not the good, but its
own kind alone, and will repel the good.
Similar laws obtain as to the nature of Personal
Atmosphere.
 The Personal Atmosphere 63

Hence, the vast importance of intelligent Will-

culture.

§ 45. The development and control of a good Per¬

sonal Atmosphere, with endowments improved and
character built up, must, therefore, /or highest success
in life, ^ powerfully and constantly willed.

Ill bodily conditions attract evil physical influ¬

ences— unless Will steadfastly opposes them, cre¬
ates counter vibrations, and invites healthful incom¬
ing ether-movements.
“Flabby’’ intellectuality creates a bad Personal
Atmosphere, which must be transformed into a
higher, the latter to be mantained by resolute
determination to cultivate a vigorous and reason¬
able mind.
The Personal Atmospheres of health, self-con¬
trol, intelligence, education, Will, energy, love,
pride, hope, cheerfulness, belief, friendship, benev¬
olence, justice, truth, moral purpose, worship, are all
products of strong, persistent and right Will-power.
And of nothing else, for “the Power not our¬
selves that makes for righteousness” co-operates
with Will, and never transcends it.

Th ese Atmospheres may be created and mightily

urged to attract their kind and to repel their op¬
posites. If you will take these words just above,
one at a time, and make each for a day, or longer,
64 The Personal Atmosphere

the centre of thought and feeling, wherever you are,

whatever you may be doing, seeking to know all its
meaning, trying to make it a part of yourself, en¬
deavoring to be and to live that word, you will un¬
failingly develop its corresponding, that is, a strong
and good, Personal Atmosphere. Sink them into
the latent mind.
So, also, the Atmospheres suggested by the op¬
posite set of words may be gradually eliminated
from your life by resolute and persistent exertion
of the Will. But this is to be accomplished, not by
thinking of the words or their conditions and try¬
ing to repel them, but by dwelling upon their op¬
posites, and by determined shutting of the Personal
Field against evil vibrations, whenever made known
in consciousness, and as a permanent attitude in
life.
Interlude.

§ 46. And now we come to a very sovereign con¬

ception, one which at a certain stage in the individ¬
ual’s career places the whole responsibility for his
body, his mental life and his moral character upon
the intelligent use of his Will. When you perceive
the force of the following paragraphs you will see
that your Personal Atmosphere is a matter of your
own choosing.
All the activities which take place throughout the
body have been induced by processes which have
appropriated activity from nature, decomposed
 The Personal Atmosphere 65

and reconstructed such activity, and finally utilized

its various phases in building structure and carry¬
ing on function. These processes have for cause,
it is reasonable to say — what other can be said ?
the psychic factor, that is, the self.
Thus Lotze said: “So long as the soul was re-*
garded as indivisible substance, it could only be sup¬
posed to enter the body at a single instant and in its
entirety; whereas, if we renounce these ideas of an
external conjunction (or introduction of soul into
body at some period of body’s history), we need no
longer wish to fix the moment at which the soul
enters into a development which at first is supposed
to produce only physical actions. There is nothing
to prevent us from looking at the formation of the
soul as an extended process in time, a process in
which the Absolute gradually gives a further form
to its creation.”* So, Professor Stumpf ODserves.
“I would even find no serious difficulty in the as¬
sumption that psychical life (soul) was produced
by organic processes (organic material) in partic¬
ular stages of their development, and is even now
produced in the development of every individual. *
When we reduce matter from a hard, abiding
stuff to a complex of etheric or finer movements,
and conceive of the medium of such movements as
the thought-stuff of an Infinite Reality within and
behind all Nature, such a theory of the origin of
our psychic personality seems entirely admissible.

Quoted by Rice in “Religion in an Age of Science ” (1903), p. 269,

 66 The Personal Atmosphere

But it should be observed that the command of

the soul over its material environment must begin
somewhere in its career, even though it have its
origin in a material basis. The self is certainly to
be regarded as a product of material activities pre¬
ceding its birth, but it is evident that birth begins
responsibility in sell and the power in self to draw
to its use those activities called matter which it re¬
quires as a temple-system in which to exist and un¬
fold by reaction its wonderful possibilities, to unify
a complex of activities thus appropriated and re¬
arranged, and to hold together such a system as
the human body.
If, then, we conceive of the self as the final builder
of the body, we must remember that it can do this
successfully only as it works in conjunction with
law. The law of laws of the whole process above
indicated is the Law of Harmony. By this is meant
a demand for action in accord with the require¬
ments of the highest self and the nature of the body
and the universe in which it exists. The power by
which the whole process is conducted and by which
it may be brought under the law of harmony is —
the Will. (See “5 he Culture of Courage” on the
body considered as a system.)

§ 47. Let us think a moment of a magnetic field.

“The process of magnetization,” says Sir Olive
Lodge on the older theories, “as conducted with a
steel magnet on other pieces of previously inert
 The Personal Atmosphere 67
steel, in no case really generates new lines of mag¬
netic force, though it appears to generate them.
We now know that the lines which thus spring into
corporeal existence, as it were, are essentially closed
curves or loops, which cannot be generated; they
can be expanded or enlarged to cover a wide field,
and they can be contracted or shrunk up into in¬
significance, but they cannot be created, they must
be pre-existent; they were in the non-magnetized
steel all the time, though they were so small and
ill-arranged that they had no perceptible effect
whatever; they constituted a potentiality for mag¬
netism; they existed as molecular closed curves or
loops, which, by the operation called magnetiza¬
tion, could, some of them, be opened out into loops
of infinite area and spread out into space, where
they are called ‘lines of force*. They then con¬
stitute a region called a magnetic field, which re¬
mains a seat of so-called ‘permanent* magnetic
activity, until, by lapse of time, excessive heat, or
other circumstance, they close up again/* *
This much might have been said in the older
works. Even now, in the age of the “generation**
of magnetism by electricity, the same conclusion
must hold good, so far as it means that magnetism
is not newly created. Whether or no, the older
conclusion serves the present purpose. All that
man rightly is he transforms from an infinite source.

* ‘‘Life and Matter'’ (1905), p. 124.

68 1 he Personal Atmosphere

He creates nothing save his own feeling and thought;

but he may use every existing thing in the universe.
And the meaning of life is this: that by as much as
we come into harmony with Nature’s laws, by so
much do we constitute each personality a field of
power. We cannot create that power; we can only
use it. By right use we may “ constitute a region
called a Personal Atmosphere.” Thus, whoever
will think himselr — assume himself in harmony
with the whole Universe, assert by his inmost men¬
tal attitude that such is surely the case, and ascend
in conduct to the level of the assumption and asser¬
tion (see “Business Power”), shall infallibly de¬
velop a Personal Atmosphere that shall draw all
essential values to his life, adjust harmoniously
with all right persons, and build within and about
him a structure of human character more stately
and fair than the Taj Mahal of India, comparable,
indeed, to the majesty and order of the very Uni¬
verse in which, as one of its goals and triumphs,
he finds himself placed.

For a perpetual regime, now, the student should

observe the following

IX
§ 48 Ninth Study: Practical Rules.

I. First, in a General IVay — Concerning Persons

and Things.
 The Personal Atmosphere 69

Rule i.—44Infected ” Articles.

1
Shun as much as
possible all articles, furniture, books, tools, rooms,
etc., which have been certainly or probably im¬
pressed by evil or non-helpful Atmospheres.

Rule 2. — Mental Attitude. In the necessary

use of such, maintain the two attitudes of Will:
that of positive repulsion as to injurious influences;
that of assertive invitation to beneficial influences
from other sources.

Rule 3.—Renovation. When an unpleasant

or injurious Atmosphere is perceived in connection
with an article, dispose of the article immediately
if possible. If this is not possible, have the article
thoroughly cleansed and renewed.

Rule 4. — Persons to be Avoided. Shun all per¬

sons, so far as may be, who manifest, or seem likely
to manifest, the evil or non-helpful Atmosphere.

Rule 5.—Person-Attitude. If it is necessary

to associate with them, maintain the negative and
repelling attitude of Will toward such Atmospheres,
but send out toward their owners all possible bene¬
ficial influences for their welfare.

Rule 6. — Receptive Attitude. Maintain the

receptive attitude of Will toward all good Atmos¬
pheres.
 7o The Personal Atmosphere

Rule 7* Associations. Associate as much as

possible with people of sound health, of cheerful
disposition, of intelligence and education, of benevo¬
lence and moral purpose, done up your Personal
Atmosphere by contact with such.

Rule 8.-— Wtiled Idealism. Resolutely, persist¬

ently and intelligently maintain a true and strong
Psychic Field by constant exercise of strong Will¬
power toward all high realities: beautiful objects,
right ideas, health, peace, truth, success, altru¬
ism, -right-minded persons, the best literature,
art, science, the noblest movements and institu¬
tions of the times, and a true religion.

Rule 9. Environment. Surround yourself, as

much as possible, with objects, forms, colors, cir¬
cumstances, etc., that are agreeable, and exercise
a cheerrul and uplifting tone upon your Personal
Atmosphere. Begin by thinking beauty and good
cheer.

§ 49. II.Secondly, as to Contact with Other

People for Legitimate Personal Ends.

Rule i. — Magnetism. Preserve a right and

full Personal Atmosphere, in which all your ether-
movements are open, frank, honest, sympathetic,
etc.
 The Personal Atmosphere Jl

Rule 2. — Closed Door. When desiring to

maintain your own counsels, close the Personal
Field to the interrogations and receptivity of other
Psychic Atmospheres with reference to such mat-
ters. You do this by mentally saying: “The
door is closed to you.”

Rule 3. — Discovery. Within the limits of

good-will, open the Field to all communications
proceeding unconsciously from persons with whom
you are dealing. You do this by mentally saying:
“I am discovering your intention and character.”
But these things must be said intensely within your
deepest soul.

Rule 4. — Diplomacy. Whenever the unfriend¬

ly Atmosphere is perceived in others, keep your
Field open to recognition of hostile influences, but
closed to disturbance within. You should recog¬
nize these influences, but oppose to them the reso¬
lute Will.

Rule 5. — Good Will. Meanwhile, throw out

toward such antagonistic Atmospheres intense vi¬
brations of the utmost good-will. You may not be
inclined to this, but it is a perfect policy for self-
interest, to say nothing of dignified moral character.
Intensely wish them good will.

Rule 6. — Triumph. On discovery of “in¬

stinctive antipathies,” felt on your own part, follow
 72 The Personal Atmosphere

Rules 4 and 5. The Will may overcome these an¬

tipathies up to the point of discovery of their cause,
in yourself or in others, and it is then for Will, if
right aims in life require any attention thereto, to
set about the task of removing such cause. But if
the case becomes hopeless, revert again to Rules 4
and 5.

Rule 7.—Resolute Friendliness. In seeking

the legitimate control of others, bring to them the
friendly, but assertive, movements of Personal At-
mosphere-

Rule 8. — Friendly Authority. If you desire

them not to do or be certain things, send to their
Psychic Fields resolute but kindly commands: “ Be
not! Do not!”

Rule 9. — Friendly Demands. If you desire

them to be or to do certain things, vibrate, by reso¬
lute Will-action, appropriate requests into their
Psychic Fields.

Rule 10.—Right Attitude. Always must your

attitude be resolute, but not harsh; kindly, but
persistent.

Rule ii.—Poise. In contact with other peo¬

ple, maintain in your Personal Atmosphere a per¬
fect and constant calm. Bring your Will to the
 The Personal Atmosphere 73

centre of your Field, and maintain absolute self-

control. Let this be so complete that it may not
betray the effort to secure it, either in disturbed
ether-waves, or in movements which the other per¬
son’s sub-consciousness will recognize as coolness
or suppressed hostility.
Remember! Your Will-action in your own
Field must be so strong that there may be created
a surplus of commanding ether-movements above
those produced in control of self, and sufficient to
exert a controlling influence upon the Psychic At¬
mosphere of the person with whom you are dealing.
Avoid all excitement.
Send out no antagonisms.
Reveal to the inner consciousness of other people
nothing in your mind calculated to in juretheir feelings-
Banish from your Field all feelings of contempt or
ridicule.
Permit no vibrations of anger or irritation to es¬
cape into your Field.
Banish absolutely all thought-waves of fear for
persons with whom you are dealing. Persevere!
Banish all thought-waves of distrust as to success
with such persons.
Maintain a Personal Atmosphere that is sur¬
charged with the dynamic force of confident ex¬
pectancy of good desired.

Rule 12. — Crowds. In dealing with people in

masses, you have to contend with a constant play of
74 The Personal Atmosphere

force going on around different Psychic Atmos¬

pheres. You must, therefore —
Maintain your own at its best in the midst of in¬
numerable and complex ether-movements.
With utmost alertness, keep your consciousness
open to recognition of ether-movements proceeding
toward you, both favorable and unfavorable. In
the one case, send out vibrations with redoubled
energy to return those favorable to their originators
so as wholly to secure such persons for your ends.
In the other case, follow the above rules so far as
appropriate.

Rule 13. — Rest. The law of rest requires that

you should occasionally “let up” in your ether-
assaults upon certain kinds of people.
Some Personal Atmospheres may be caused to
vibrate so strongly and rapidly as to confuse tneir
owners, or to weary them. Leave these undis¬
turbed for a time.
Others cannot be made to vibrate your way ex¬
cept by reaction caused within themselves after a
period of rest. Be patient.

Rule ,14. — Adjustment. In still other persons

the Psychic Atmosphere is unresponsive, not easily
vibrated. The problem here is to adjust yourself
in such a way as to induce unconscious favorable
vibrations. This may require the direct, but con¬
cealed assault, or the roundabout attack, or a gentle
 The Personal Atmosphere 75
initiation of ether-movements within their Fields
which their minds will come to accelerate, if they
do not discover your influence, into harmony with
your own ether-movements. If they discover your
influence, they will inevitably close their Fields
thereto.

Rule 15.—Disguise. In another class of per¬

sons the Psychic Atmosphere is always vibrant in
repulsion of all influences recognized as peisonal.
It is not you alone whom they antagonize; it is any¬
thing human. You must now transform your ether-
movements (as muscular action may be transformed
into heat or light) in disguise. Any method which
will translate your thought-force into a suggestion
appearing to proceed from things, circumstances,
conditions, exigencies, a law of society or nature, etc.,
so that it seems to originate within themselves, and
spontaneously, will secure their interest in the move¬
ments of your Field and induce their co-operation.

Rule 16. — Public Speaking. In public speak¬

ing, the Psychic Atmosphere must be full, free,
open, frank, honest, receptive, out-going, active,
intense, intellectual, emotional, clear of confusion,
full of genuine heat and the light of the informed
soul, purposeful, courageous, expectant of success,
sympathetic, with Will-pulsing vibrant force toward
the audience like a strong, steady, inexhaustible
dynamo.
 ;6 The Personal Atmosphere

If you are a public speaker, carry into every ef¬

fort the thought of the above words. Commit the
paragraph to memory. Repeat it while facing the
audience prior to speaking. “Charge up” with
its details and become saturated with its feeling.
1 hen summon the interesting and masterful Will.
(See chapter in “Power of Will”)

Rule 17.—Mood of Success. In all things

maintain the confident and expectant mood of suc¬
cess.

Rule 18. — Constant Practice. The substance

of the above principles and especially the rules
should be committed to memory and constantly
employed by the Will.

Rule 19. — Practical Sanity. But the theory

should not be permitted to carry you over into any
feeling or state of mysticism. It is for the right
mind always to hold itself firmly to the solid ground
of common sense.

X.

Tenth Study: Higher Methods.

You have now read the rules for developing and

handling the Personal Atmospheres. Pardon the
author for saying that a single reading cannot re-
 The Personal Atmosphere 77

veal to you their deep practical meaning and util¬

ity, much less master them. You are, therefore,
invited to go over the directions given, again and
again, and many times. Observe, in this connec¬
tion, two great truths:

§ 50. First, that thought grows. You read, you

understand the words, but you do not perceive the
entire thought represented in the words because it
is not as vet in you to command. It is there — in
the upper conscious self— in part only. It is there
— in the deeper self wholly — but not so far as you
know and can use it. The fullness of thought must
have time and attention for unfolding so that the
deeper self can see, know, feel, the entire significance
of the words and thought employed in the rules,
and then go on to cause the thought to grow up,
like a branching tree, into your every-day con¬
sciousness.
§ 51. One who had studied “ Power For Success ”
for several years wrote: “‘Power For Success*
came to me immediately off the press. I went to
work on it. It seemed meaningless to me at first;
in fact I read a good deal of it before I found any¬
thing that I understood very well. The subject
was new to me. But when I did strike something
that I understood, I saw it was what I needed and
wanted. I failed to follow your directions specifi¬
cally, but I read over about six or eight lessons.
Then I went back, and found I was able to comp
7* The Personal Atmosphere

prehend your meaning Within a year I

better.
worked through the book, practised the exercises,
and am still practising them.
‘'After working in this book one year, I put it
away six months ago. About two months ago I
went to work again. It seems like a new book. I
am getting much more now than I did the other time.
Hence I say I do not know what proportion I took
in in the first trip. It is a mistake about the first
reading destroying the novelty. The novelty or
sense of novelty is experienced at the instant you
comprehend the thought, take in the meaning. You
may read a dozen times and miss this. I have ex¬
perienced the keenest delight and interest in pas¬
sages in this book after I had read the same pas¬
sages many times with a half-comprehension.
Either the truth you intended to convey or some
suggested truth would open up on me.”

§ 52. Here we have a perfect illustration of the

gradual growth of thought as the result of re-reading
and brooding, thus giving the sub-conscious self full
opportunity. Newton was asked how he discov¬
ered the law of gravitation, and replied, “ By always
thinking about it.” This is the secret of all suc¬
cess.
One year after the date of the above quotations,
the author of them again wrote 1 i( (Power For
Success continues to be my favorite in a library
of 2500 volumes, gathered at an expense of $6,000.
 The Personal Atmosphere 79

As an evidence that I have worked, permit me to

say that I can repeat scores of pages word for word,
and most of the verses. Not as evidence that I
have got the vitals of the book do I say it. I sim¬
ply mention it to show you I have not been idle.
This book has been and continues to be a wonder¬
ful source of strength for me. If I could have had
it some years ago! I sometimes wonder why the
book is not sold by the thousands. I am looking
forward with the keenest anticipation of delight to
your forthcoming books.”
If, thus, you will return again and again to the
present book, especially the above rules, and seek
to gather in their whole significance, you will es¬
tablish the conditions for the full unfoldment of
the idea of the work. And the sub-conscious self
will do the rest.

§ 53. Secondly, the right Personal Atmosphere

grows -— or clears up and expands and comes under
control of its owner — (if evil, it comes to master
the owner). But in order to the ideal end, there
must be long practice of the thoughts and exercises
and attitudes or moods of the rules. It is impossi¬
ble to achieve the best results by superficial or spas¬
modic attention and effort. The Personal Atmos¬
phere, you see, is precisely what you make it, that
is, what your body of thought or general thought-
habits determine it to be. The requirement of
time for thought-change and new thought-growth
8o !The Personal Atmosphere

is, therefore, the requirement for transformation

of your old Personal Atmosphere into, and the de¬
velopment of, the new Personal Atmosphere which
you may desire. The necessary time-element must
also be accompanied by attention, deep and con¬
stant, to the matter in hand, the elimination of any
undesirable Atmosphere and the development of a
new, ideal Atmosphere.

§ 54. The methods by which these results are

brought about consist in —
(1) . Ignoring any old undesirable thought, mood,
tendency, habit, Atmosphere, which is practically
seen to be injurious, ceasing to think about or regret
any and all such. No one can become learned by
dwelling on his ignorance, not hopeful by nursing
his misery. Thus you should banish all attention
to any Atmosphere which is not prophetic of good
to your life.
(2) . Thinking, thinking, thinking, every day,
for long,the ideal Atmosphere (any named one); con¬
sidering how desirable it is, why it is desirable, and
as surely attainable; meaning by this, holding be¬
fore the mind a picture of some definite Atmosphere
analyzed into its attractive elements, and believing
in it as altogether possible to you and in your life.
(3) . Assuming, meanwhile, as much as possible,
that the Atmosphere craved is really yours; meaning
by such direction, getting into the mental attitude
of the Atmosphere itself. When children play.
 The Personal Atmosphere 8l

they always assume mentally the attitude required

by the parts acted. Suppose that the goal is the At¬
mosphere of financial success: just play that you are
successful; with might and main feel that you are
success and that all good things are surely coming
your way. That is the idea. At first, in this mat¬
ter, you will be conscious of feelings which are op¬
posite to any one or another of the Atmospheres
listed on a previous page, but if you persevere in
mentally playing the part, you will at last actually
possess the feeling assumed. Then the feeling will
beget corresponding thought-action, and these fac¬
tors will develop the Atmosphere craved and sought
in this way.
(4) . Asserting the Atmosphere desired; which
means that you make your whole personality, ex¬
ternal as well as inner, declare to the world that
this is indeed your bona fide Personal Atmosphere.
You need not say the thing in words: you simply
“pose” for the part as a fact.
(5) . Ascending to the level of the assumption
and assertion; by this meaning that you force your
daily conduct to correspond. Assumption and
assertion incessantly instruct the deeper self to be¬
lieve in the Atmosphere desired as its own, and then
to set all sorts of mental and etheric activities tend¬
ing to develop your Personal Atmosphere (the
same, as named, any variety suggested to the sub¬
conscious region of yourself). But if you act ex¬
ternally to the contrary, you suggest to the deeper
82 C1 he Personal Atmosphere

self that you do not really mean the assumption

and assertion. When your external conduct agrees
with assumption and assertion, all your suggestion
runs one way, and the desirable result is as certain
as anything human can be on this earth.

§ 55. Now, we all have our existence in the In¬

finite. In ancient Egypt the river Nile every year
overflowed its banks and deposited a vast sheet of
rich soil on otherwise desert sand. On the bosom
of the Nile unfolded and blossomed the lotus-plant.
Thus the blue lotus of the Nile came to be poetized
by the Egyptians into the Spirit of Life. So we
may say that each individual soul is a lotus-plant
growing in and flowering out on the bosom of the
Infinite All-Good. And this flowering of feeling,
will and thought in harmonious forms is just a way
of permitting that Infinite rightly to express itself
in our individual life, or is just a way of aiding the
process, which is the one normal thing in all this
Universe. I do not mean by this the loss of indi¬
viduality; I mean the finding of it.

§ 56. By so much as we come to a sense of one¬

ness (harmony, not identity) with the Infinite, by
so much does our personal consciousness deepen,
expand, enrich. There arrives a time in this pro¬
cess when our Personal Atmosphere is relatively
perfected,and such a “field” of beingand activity is
developed as to insure the expelling and repelling
 The Personal Atmosphere

of all injurious feelings and thoughts, charged,

so to speak, with hope, courage, confidence and a
sense of well-being and power that fills the entire
personality. We are now in the full tide of success,
we have “arrived;” whatever we need for growth
of real life we now know shall surely come to us.
We are friend-masters of men and events.

§ These higher lessons seek to introduce you

to the later degrees of the Personal Atmosphere.
Some of you may not understand at the first. That
is a common experience. Persevere, however; be
patient, think always of yourself as expressing the
All-Life, continue trying to reach out after the
broader and higher states of being and doing:
sooner or later you will grow into, or discover, that
consciousness of the Infinite, that sense of at-nome-
ness in the Universe as a part of its greater existence,
that assurance of personal wealth and power which
are of more value than riches and thrones. You
will have indeed what you need.

§ 58. I walked the streets of Boston. Suddenly

it seemed that the top of my head had been lifted,
and I became aware of an immense increase of per¬
sonal consciousness. I became conscious, i say
— I know what I am writing — of the vast sky
above, and the mighty deeps below, and the wide
sweep of present human life, and the long forward
and backward stretch of human history. It seemed
 84 'The Personal Atmosphere

that I could “sense'’ the All. Since that day all is

well. Life is deeper, richer, stronger — assured,
fearless, and saturated with perennial vital interest.

§ 59. All this will read strangely to some of you.

Very good. There is no coercion in these pages.
But if you will digest and assimilate the suggestions
of this book, you also will feel the Eternal Nile of
Life flowing onward through body and mind, and
will know yourself as emerging at last into that In¬
finite Personal Atmosphere in which exist and re¬
volve worlds and systems.

§ 60. “Long and persevering must the practice

and exercise be, by which power to direct thought
and feeling may be attained, and by which the
sense of identity (harmony) with the universal self
may be established —- for without this latter all
our work must inevitably turn out vain and ephem¬
eral — but when the conditions are fulfilled, then
strangely obvious is the result and simple the act
of creation” (of the higher and larger personality).
For then “the brain is stilled. It does not cease
from its natural and joyous activities. But it
ceases from that terrified and joyless quest which
was inevitable to it as long as its own existence, its
own foundation, its own affiliation to the everlast¬
ing Being was in question and doubt. The Man
at last lets Thought go; he glides below it into the
quiet feeling, the quiet sense of his own identity
 The Personal Atmosphere 85

(harmony, not identity) with the seif of other things

— of the universe. He leans hack in silence on
that inner being, and bars off for a time every
thought, every movement of the mind, every im¬
pulse to action, or whatever in the faintest degree
may stand between him and That; and so there
comes to him a sense of absolute repose, a conscious¬
ness of immense and universal power, such as com¬
pletely transforms the world for him. All life is
changed; he becomes master of his fate; he perceives
that all things are hurrying to perform his will; and
whatever in that region of inner Life he may con¬
descend to desire, that already is shaping itself to
utterance and expression in the outer world around
him. ‘The winds are his messengers over all the
world, and flames of fire are his servants; . . .
and the clouds float over the half-concealed,
dappled, and shaded Earth — to fulfil his will, to
fulfil his eternal joy/
“For the ceaseless endeavor to realize this iden¬
tity (this harmony) with the great Self, there is no
substitute. No teaching, no theorizing, no philos¬
ophizing, no rules of conduct or life will take the
place of actual experience. This is the Divine
yoga or union, from which all life, all creation, pro¬
ceeds.”*
It has been the purpose of this book to lead the
student through those suggestions and rules which
may start the personal and ‘‘atmospheric” growth

* The Art of Creation ”—Edward Carpenter, p. 217.

86 The Personal Atmosphere

to the deeper search that is an endeavor to ally self

with the Universal Forces,” to use the language of
“Power For Success,” with the Universal Life-Con¬
sciousness, to express the same thing here, which
means well, in body, purse and mind to every
human being and will surely swing into the cur¬
rents of your life the great values of the Four-Fold
Existence — Health, Prosperity, Unfoldment and
Psychic Power.
ihe Psychic Atmosphere is, above all, the light
or shadow of what the person actually is. His in¬
fluence upon others, in the last analysis, is simply
a matter of intelligent adjustment — that and the
masterful Will.

And so the first reading closes — may it be fol¬

lowed by many witn words the significance of
which seems well nigh inexhaustible.

The Beginning. Nescta vlrtus stare loco.

■ *