| 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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