PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker Atkinson

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СКАЧАТЬ from the values of others. But the action you now wish you had taken, like the one which you now wish you had not taken, always is based upon the same rule of the strongest like or dislike present at the moment of the decision.

      Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) presented his philosophy based upon this principle of voluntary action in a somewhat blunt and startling form. Helvetius, the French philosopher, had announced the same conclusions in the Eighteenth Century—but few have heard of Helvetius, while many have heard of Mark Twain.

      Helvetius, in his main work, advanced the principle that, “The grand lever of all human conduct is self­satisfaction!” He admitted, however, that self­satisfaction may assume many and widely contrasted forms. For instance, said he, the self­satisfaction of a good man consists in his subordination of private to more general interests—first to the circle of persons in which he moves, then to the general community, and finally to the world at large. Self­satisfaction, he held, may be base or noble, egotistic or altruistic, immoral or moral, irreligious or religious, low or high, selfish or unselfish (in the ordinary usage of these terms), and so on—but it remains self­satisfaction all the time, in all cases, and is never self­dissatisfaction or the refusal to satisfy the self, at the last.

      Helvetius taught, in short, that man acts in the direction of satisfying and contenting his own strongest feelings, emotions, and desires. This seems to be a harsh doctrine, until it is thoroughly understood and appreciated; but all of our moral and ethical training is based upon its fundamental truth. We endeavor to have the individual “feel right,” in order to have him “act right.” If we can not get him to love the right, we then proceed to get him to fear the consequences of wrong­doing. We work upon his Desire­nature in either case. This is all that Helvetius meant, i. e., that men act according to inner motives—the strongest motives of self­satisfaction deciding the nature of the action.

      Clemens uses the term “contenting the spirit” in place of Helvetius’ term “self­satisfaction”—but both mean the same, at the last. Clemens says: “There is only one impulse which moves a person to do things. That sole impulse is the impulse to content his own spirit—the necessity of contenting his own spirit and winning its approval. The act must do him good, first; otherwise he will not do it. He may think he is doing it for the other person’s sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit first—the other person’s benefit has to always take second place. There is but one law, one source, of men’s acts. Both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one source. This is the law, keep it in your mind: From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one—to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself. He will always do the thing which will bring him the most mental comfort—for that is the sole law of his life. * * * Always spirit­contenting reasons. There are no others.”

      There is another general rule concerning Desire which it is important that you should note and remember. The rule is as follows: “The degree of force, energy, will, determination, persistence and continuous application manifested by an individual in his aspirations, ambitions, aims, performances, actions and work is determined primarily by the degree of ‘want’ and ‘want to’ concerning that object.”

      So true is this principle that some who have studied its effects have announced the aphorism: “You can have or be anything that you want—if you only want it hard enough.” To

      “want a thing hard enough” is equivalent to “paying the price” for it—the price of the sacrifice of lesser desires and “wants”; the casting off of the non­essentials, and the concentration of Desire upon the one essential idea or thing, and the application of the will to its attainment or accomplishment.

      Much that we have been in the habit of ascribing to the possession and the manifestation of a “strong will” has really been due to the element of Will which is called Conation, i. e., Desire tending toward expression in Will­action. The man filled with an ardent, fierce, burning, craving and urge for and toward a certain object, will call to his aid the latent powers of his Will, and of his Intellect—these under the motive power and stimulus of Desire will manifest unusual activity and energy toward the accomplishment of the desired end. Desire has well been called the Flame which produces the heat which generates the Steam of Will.

      Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity and insistence. They content themselves with mere “wishing” and mild “wanting.” They fail to experience that Insistent Desire, which is one of the important elements of the Master Formula of Attainment. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which (to use a favorite and oft­repeated expression of ours) is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert­lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat; of the fierce, wild creature for its mate; of the mother for the welfare of her children. Yet, if the truth were known, the desire for success of the men who have accomplished great things has often been as great as these.

      We are not necessarily slaves to our Desires; we may master the lower or disadvantageous desires by Will, under the Power of the “I AM I,” or Master Self. We may transmute lower desires into higher, negatives into positives, hurtful into helpful, in this way. We may become Masters of Desire, instead of being mastered by it. But before we may do so, we must first desire to do so, to accomplish and to attain this end. We may even rise to the heights of Will—the place where the “I AM I” may say, truthfully, “I Will to Will” and “I Will to Desire”; but even there we must first desire to so “Will to Will” and “Will to Desire.”

      Even at these sublime heights of Egohood, we find Desire to be the fundamental and elemental Motive Power: this because it abides at the very heart of things—the heart of ourself—the Heart of Life. Even there, we essay and accomplish the highest deeds and acts of Will solely and simply because they serve to “content our spirit,” to give us the highest degree of “self satisfaction”—to gratify, satisfy and give expression and manifestation to our greatest, most insistent, most persistent and strongest “want” and “want to.”

      III

       THE EVOLUTION OF DESIRE

       Table of Content

      DESIRE IS the one mental element, attribute or quality which is discovered to be present universally in all living things. Differ as do the various forms and varieties of living things in respect to the qualities, attributes or faculties of observation, perception and thinking, nevertheless in each and every living creature is to be found present and active the fundamental element, quality or attribute of Desire. Though the thinking powers decrease as the scale of life is descended, the element of Desire is found to lose nothing in power in the tower forms of life, though the degree of complexity of manifestation of course is lessened.

      As the evolutionists have pointed out, and as the philosophers of certain schools have been quick to note and to assert, the element of Desire appears earlier in the scale of life than does Intellect, and therefore is perceived to be far more fundamental and basic than is the latter. Even in vegetable life there is manifest the presence and activity of unconscious Desire, though there is no sign of Intellect. The new­born human babe can scarcely be held to manifest Intellect, but there can be no mistake concerning the presence of Desire as a fundamental element of its mental being. When Intellect first appears in living creatures, it seems to have been evolved for the purpose of serving Desire.

      In view of the discovered facts concerning the elemental and fundamental character of Desire, certain philosophers have asserted that in Desire is to be found the primal stuff from which the entire psychic being of СКАЧАТЬ