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Book Excerpts:
Now the first thing in any
investigation is to have some idea
of what you are looking for--to have
at least some notion of the general
direction in which to go--just as
you would not go up a tree to find
fish though you would for birds'
eggs.
Well, the
general direction in which we all
want to go is that of getting more
out of Life than we have ever got
out of it--we want to be more alive
in ourselves and to get all sorts of
improved conditions in our
environment. However happily any of
us may be circumstanced we can all
conceive something still better, or
at any rate we should like to make
our present good permanent; and
since we shall find as our studies
advance that the prospect of
increasing possibilities keeps
opening out more and more widely
before us, we may say that what
we are in search of is the secret of
getting more out of Life in a
continually progressive degree.
This means
that what we are looking for is
something personal, and that it is
to be obtained by producing
conditions which do not yet exist;
in other words it is nothing less
than the exercise of a certain
creative power in the sphere of our
own particular world.
...I have
established a certain numerical
relation which can only produce
eight
as its result. Again, I have
power to change the factors and
write 4 X 3, in which case 12 is the
only possible result, and so on.
Working in
this way calculation becomes
possible. But if every time I wrote
4 that figure possessed an
independent power of setting down a
different number by which to
multiply itself, what would be the
result? The first 4 I wrote might
set down 3 as its multiplier, and
the next might set down 7, and so
on.
Or if I
want to make a box of a certain size
and cut lengths of plank
accordingly, if each length could
capriciously change its width at a
moment's notice, how could I ever
make the box?
I myself
may change the shape and size of my
box by establishing new relations
between the bits of wood, but for
the pieces of wood themselves the
proportions determined by my mind
must remain fixed quantities,
otherwise no construction could take
place.
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