Instantaneous Personal Magnetism

INTRODUCTION BY THE PUBLISHERS

A PRESENTATION of the causes and progress that have become history in the unfolding of any great movement that has lent itself to the betterment of mankind, is always a source of encouragement and inspiration to a newer generation. To this end we will briefly review the important facts that have been interwoven in the development of the Magnetism Club.

Edmund Shaftesbury to-day is known to about four million men and women who are studying his works; yet in the forty-five years or more that he has been a teacher, he has refused to advertise his productions; and it is only at the present time that the publishers who now control his writings have undertaken to invite a larger following by public advertisements. His four million students came from the friends and acquaintances of those who had become students in the same way and who had mentioned these works and spoken of their merits to others. As one instance out of many, a person who owned a copy of this book of Personal Magnetism and who was spending a few weeks at a fashionable summer hotel, left the book on a table for a few days while temporarily absent, and learned that nearly four hundred other guests had obtained the address of the publishers, and had ordered the book. In another case a doctor kept a copy on the table in his waiting-room, and in the course of time more than two hundred of his patients procured the address and ordered copies for themselves.

It is gratifying and also encouraging to prospective students and to those who are about to begin this study, to know that the BOOK ITSELF IS MAGNETIC!

A very capable, clever, successful but strictly honest business man who was told that this system was in itself full of magnetism, refused to believe the claim, and said, I will pay one hundred pounds to the author if he can induce me to buy the book.—The following questions were put to this business man: Will you decide the matter as an honest man without any quibble?—Yes.—Will you take time to read the book carefully?—Yes.—If, after reading it, you find that its value to you is fully a thousand times more than its cost, will you then buy it?—Yes.—In a short time a cheque for one hundred pounds was his answer.

It is not only encouraging but gratifying to prospective students to know that the book has a most positive and powerful magnetic influence over the lives of those who read or who study its pages.

And this influence is ennobling, uplifting and inspiring.

Edmund Shaftesbury when engaged in his first literary duties as reporter for a great daily newspaper, correspondent for others, writer for magazines, and author of scientific treatises, as well as teacher and lecturer along these lines all of which harmonised in the plan he had in mind, was brought in contact with many great personages, and had the opportunity of analysing the causes of their greatness. No man that ever lived possessed a keener insight into the problems of life; and we have never heard of any person who was gifted with so great an analytical power of the causes, natural and acquired, that produced the successful people of the world. He compiled for his own use in experimentation and study, private biographies of more than one hundred of the greatest men and women of two generations ago, all personally acquired by actual contact with these people. A few only of these names will be mentioned here, and among them will be included some who were either close friends or students, or endorsers of the training systems created by Shaftesbury.

These names are published for the sole purpose of giving encouragement to new pupils and of arousing in them the latent impulses of ambition to aim high in the purposes of life in the belief that noble examples are truer guides than the allurements of unfulfilled hopes.

To name a few, we find the following great personages among many others:

CHARLES BRADLAUGH, the famous orator of convincing personal magnetism.

JOHN BRIGHT, leading statesman and convincing orator.

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, for many years a masterful man, and successful leader in the Irish cause.

WILSON BARRETT, regarded in his day as the most magnetic of actors. By his personal magnetism he was able to hold his audiences thrilled until after midnight in his rendition of the unabridged play of Hamlet, which no other actor in our memory had essayed. Mr. Barrett purchased every book by Shaftesbury, and eagerly sought these systems of education on his annual visits to Shaftesbury’s native town.

REV. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, well remembered as the most magnetic preacher in the last century of English history. By his personal magnetism he built up a following that took him from his humble beginning at Waterbeach to the great Tabernacle where many thousands constantly crowded in order to hear him. Later in his career he organised classes of young men studying for the ministry, and proclaimed the two greatest facts in this profession: first, that the right kind of a prayer is always answered; and that every successful preacher must develop the power of personal magnetism.

HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, the great Prime Minister, whose personal magnetism won for him the highest honours in the gift of the nation. He not only possessed the Shaftesbury works, but, at the solicitation of Queen Victoria, presented her with one of them that she admired. These facts were published at the time.

Other names here listed are but a very few of the many that might be included, but are omitted for lack of space.

BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, of very magnetic personality, in whose office Shaftesbury when a young man spent two years.

JOHN A. LOGAN, an intensely magnetic orator and statesman, as well as successful warrior.

LAWRENCE BARRETT, associated with Edwin Booth at one time.

JOHN B. GOUGH, one of the most energetic of all lecturers and platform orators, a personal friend of Shaftesbury.

CARDINAL GIBBONS, one of the greatest dignitaries of his church, whose personal letter in approval of the Shaftesbury systems was published for many years in a university catalogue.

ARCHBISHOP JOHN J. KEANE, personal friend of Shaftesbury, who nearly forty years ago when at the head of a well-known university engaged him as instructor, and afterwards in an open letter recommended his books, which letter was published for many years.

ALEXANDER MELVILLE BELL, with whom Shaftesbury collaborated in certain writings. His son was the inventor of the telephone.

DWIGHT L. MOODY, the most magnetic of evangelists and yet a quiet and impressive speaker as compared with other orators. He organised great classes of Bible students and young preachers, and extolled the value of magnetism.

BISHOP JOHN PHILIP NEWMAN, the greatest and most magnetic of pulpit orators in his day next to Beecher. He was not only a friend of Shaftesbury, but did him the exceptional honour of seeking his personal instruction.

BISHOP PHILLIPS BROOKS, student of Shaftesbury’s works while yet a leader in the Episcopal Church. His approval of these works was published in the form of a letter nearly forty years ago, in which he called them the new education.

HENRY WARD BEECHER was in the front rank of pulpit and platform oratory in the period in which he lived, and for the successful use of a winning personal magnetism he had no equal. He was pre-eminent in swaying the minds of thousands, rising from one range of magnetism to another; his genius always rising with him; for magnetism and genius are inseparable. We have seen him while facing an adverse and hostile audience spend an hour or more in his efforts to get a fair hearing, and eventually end the discourse with the same audience rising and cheering him to the echo. These incidents are stated to make clear the fact that there is such a power as personal magnetism, and that it can overcome all obstacles and break down all barriers. When Beecher was instructing classes in theology in a university attended by Shaftesbury, a strong friendship sprang up between the two, one a world-famous orator, the greatest of his times, and the other a young man seeking the secrets of greatness. From the quiet little prayers at a rude table in a plain room up to the sublime heights of the loftiest oratory, in voice, manner, and presence this remarkable man lived in an atmosphere of personal magnetism that thrilled and inspired those who came under its influence; and, as far as the author of these books was permitted to analyse the sources of this power, it came from a natural possession of gifts that sprang from laws that are within the reach of most men and women.

As we have said, it is our purpose to create in every student of this system the ambition to succeed in life; and we know the value of high examples and past triumphs. Nothing stimulates the desire to win in the battle of existence so much as the history of past achievements. It is also of prime importance to make known the fact that Shaftesbury created his opportunities for discovering the underlying causes and secrets of success in the lives of great men. By association and study he became eminently fitted to develop just such a course of training as would employ the laws of magnetism in his unfolding of these gifts in his students.

Another fact that is of still greater importance is the reception given his methods by the greatest men and women of his time. It was said of his first edition of the book of Personal Magnetism that, if it were left as by accident in any public place, a single copy would in a few months attract the casual attention of readers, and so bring a demand for a large number of copies, each one of which would exert a similar influence, and this in time would account for the building up automatically of a following of four million readers without a single line of public advertising.

What was the reception given him from the beginning?

He was overrun with applicants for his personal instruction. Now it is a fact that as much value can be obtained from the books as from personal teaching; for the latter consists solely of the statement in lecture form of the laws and processes by which personal magnetism can be acquired. He made this fact known; yet thousands within reach insisted on individual instruction. In his personal teaching he numbered, among others, Cabinet Ministers, Judges, Industrial Magnates, Famous Business Men, Financiers, Members of Society, Lawyers, High Dignitaries of the Church, and almost every class of professional people.

Now we come to the most encouraging fact in this introduction.

Omitting all those persons who came in person to him for lessons, and looking only to those men and women who secured their help solely from his books, we find the following results:

MINISTERS.—Records furnished by persons in a position to know the facts, tell us that up to a recent period, but including the years long gone by, no less than 2781 clergymen of small churches working at low salaries, by the development of personal magnetism rose to eminence, step by step, going from place to place, always up, up, up, improving themselves, doing more effective work, winning greater compensation, and accomplishing greater good in the world. The value of these records is in the fact that these clergymen acknowledge the power of this system of study as the cause of their success; practically all of them admitting that without it they would still be in the same old rut where so many of their fellow-clergymen have been for a third of a century. And there are thousands of other cases of which we have received no record.

LAWYERS.—We teach that lawyers must win the confidence of the public by strict honesty and fairness of dealing; must win confidence in themselves; and then must develop and employ the natural habits of personal magnetism that bring these two influences together; and on this triple alliance must build the highest efficiency. Reports from 7793 lawyers who began in the humblest station in their profession, and who spent years in the struggle for existence, show that every one of them rose to the very heights of success, hundreds of them becoming great leaders, winning fame and wealth.

DOCTORS.—Every highly successful physician and surgeon needs a large fund of well developed and finely controlled personal magnetism. This is not hypnotism, but is the exact opposite of hypnotism. The latter deadens, depresses, deals with abnormal nerves, and helps only in certain classes of pernicious or vicious maladies. Personal magnetism builds life, is open, uplifting, brightening and cheering. Reports from 12,624 doctors who have studied our works solely by themselves, and who have put them into practice, acknowledge that our system has been one of the causes of their rise out of mediocre conditions to the highest success in their profession. Countless others in the past forty-five years have undoubtedly accomplished great results from the same aid, but have failed to tell us so.

DENTISTS.—The really great dentists of the world have perfect nerve control—not in their charges merely, but in their manipulation of the delicate instruments required in doing fine work. Here is one letter which is very much like another that we published many years ago: The book of personal magnetism does much more than is claimed for it. In fact it would not be possible to state its full value, nor a tenth of it. That it insists that every student shall acquire perfect nerve control is one of its great merits in my profession. Your book has so much improved my skill that this alone is worth many hundreds of pounds to me in increased income. But this is only an incidental part of the training. Yet there have been fashionable schools for young ladies that have employed this phase and one other, namely, perfect poise of manner, as aids to an elegant training. Still these are incidentals only.

BUSINESS MEN AND WOMEN.—The law of supply and demand keeps many ugly-mannered business men alive; but in a competitive world, where customers may exercise a choice in their dealings, the most effective drawing power is that of personal magnetism, adapted, of course, to the channels of these activities. One must know what to use and how to use it in each division of life. It seems beyond belief that, in the past forty-five years, more than four hundred thousand persons engaged in business have reported newly acquired success which they have acknowledged to be due to this study as set forth in the present book and its similar predecessors. And there is a vast army of clerks and employees who have risen steadily in their positions, until a great majority of them have become employers. Here we have the real value of personal magnetism.

SOCIAL LIFE is a great field for the exercise of the powers of attraction. Men and women have learned that assumed sweetness, gentleness, and kindliness are misfits; they are a veneer that rubs off when least expected to do so. A young woman or young man who possesses the actual charm of personal magnetism, even if poor or less expensively attired than others, will not be ignored or treated with indifference. This is one of the reasons why certain phases of this study have been regularly taught in fashionable schools for the training of girls in social conduct. There is much herein that is sure to benefit any student who aspires to social qualities and charming manners, regardless of the usages of good form which belong to other lines of training, not included in this work.

The present system has for many years been recognised as the standard work of its kind. This prominence comes from its genuine merit as a training method; its adherence to the practical usefulness of the system; and to its unfailing helpfulness to every student of its pages. In dealing with hundreds of thousands of students we have never yet met with any totally dissatisfied person.

Having thus set forth the history of this system from its inception and having presented the great names that inspired the author to undertake the formation of a method that was sure to help humanity beyond that of any other influence in life, we will now let him speak for himself in the forthcoming lessons.

One prediction is to be made at this stage:

Since it is true that this book itself is charged with the power of magnetism, we venture to assert that a single reading of its pages will not only draw the reader to it in an inseparable partnership, but will also in itself and of itself have aroused in such reader a very marked degree of acquired personal magnetism. This is saying much; but wait and note the result.

One reading of this work will effect a complete and revolutionary change in the reader.

The reader hereof will see life differently, will understand life better, will grasp the meaning of countless influences that work for and against success in the activities of existence, and will acquire a keen perception into human nature, and interpret human motives more accurately. If a single reading of this book will accomplish so much, what is to be said of the adoption of the simpler principles; what of the adoption of the deeper teachings; what of the absorption of the grand truths that crown the work?

In these inquiries we are anticipating the lessons that follow; but it is our purpose to present in intensive form the great powers of the system.

Three great merits have uniformly won success:

1. The lessons meet the mental equipment of the most highly cultured men and women, and yield to them unlimited pleasure and profit.

2. The same lessons are so written and prepared that they can be just as easily mastered by the average man or woman as by the most highly educated.

3. Owners of this system of training very quickly found that they could acquire personal magnetism, and could make practical daily use of it as if it were born naturally in them; and by its use could achieve the most pleasing and gratifying success in ail departments of life.

THE DRIFT OF LIFE

BY EDMUND SHAFTESBURY

1. SOURCE OF MAGNETISM.

Sweetly the morning sunlight,

Climbing the mountain high,

Poured down its gold-beams slanting

Like a pathway from the sky;

And along this highway gleaming,

Came the spirit of one we love;

Our home to bless

In this wilderness,

It came from heaven above.

2. PASSING OPPORTUNITY.

Swiftly the day advancing

Sped like the sunshine by;

While the glowing orb of heaven

Flooded the noon-tide sky.

The rose grew wild on the mountain,

The bee sipped the honeyed flower,

And down the vale

The lily pale,

Nodded the fleeting hour.

3. LOST.

Gently the evening sunlight

Touched the horizon’s bar,

Reaching the sea eternal,

Lighting the land afar.

And down the gold-beams slanting

Like a pathway to the sky,

On pearls of light,

Through the gateway bright,

It passed to the realm on high.

DEPARTMENT OF

MAGNETIC SOURCES

LESSON ONE

THE DRIFT OF LIFE

HUMANITY is hemmed in by so many influences that, from time immemorial, no real effort has been made to gain control of the impulses that run loose in the world. It has been, and stiff is, easier to let things go as they will rather than exert the will to direct them. But the dividing line between success and failure is found at that stage where aimless drifting ceases.

We are all creatures of emotions, passions, circumstances and accident. What the mind will be, what the heart will be, what the body will be, are problems that are shaped to the drift of life, even when special attention is given to any of them.

If you will sit down and think for a while you will be surprised to know how much of your life has been mere drift.

Look at any created life, and see its effort to express itself. The tree sends its branches toward the sunlight; struggles through its leaves to inhale the air; and, even underground, sends forth its roots in search of water. This you call inanimate life; but it represents a force that comes from some source and goes to some equilibrium.

Man is a higher animal, and animal life is a higher vegetation. There are more millions of flesh cells in your body than your mind could conceive or your pencil could write in figures, yet not one of these cells originated otherwise than in a vegetable, nor could it have originated but for some force that existed in and of the cell itself.

We propose to call this force mere energy, and you may give it any scientific name you please. It has been named by various investigators, but the terms used do not help the student to understand it any the better. In fact, whenever a new book is written, the author, believing that his invention of a few hundred scientific words will establish a new science and draw all students to his feet, loads the volume with long and unbearable terms until its interest sinks with its weight. Once in a while a short, simple word is necessary to the explanation of a new idea; but the disposition of scientific writers to invent hundreds and thousands of long technical terms has loaded their special literature with an incubus that for the most part throttles it.

There is no place on this globe where energy is not found. The air is so loaded with it that in the cold north the sky shines in boreal rays; and wherever the frigid temperature yields to the warmth, the electric conditions may alarm man. Water is but a liquid union of gases, and is charged with electrical, mechanical and chemical energies, any one of which is capable of doing great service and great damage to man. Even ice, in its coldest phase, has energy, for it is not subdued, nor even still; its force has broken mountain rocks into fragments.

This energy about us we are drinking in water, eating in food and breathing in air. Not a chemical molecule is free from it; not an atom can exist without it. We are a combination of individual energies.

REASON OF UNMAGNETIC CONDITIONS

The plant is a collection of individual energies, without the power to unite the forces they represent, except in its general life. Man is a similar collection with the power and sometimes the habit of so uniting the individual energies within him; but he has the possibility of educating and training this power.

If we can be understood at this step it will help along the work of the present volume both in your understanding of it and your practice of its exercises. In the first place your body, whether living or dead, is a collection of millions and millions of little energies that can never die. In the second place these energies are separate and individual; although at times they act in some degree of harmony. In the third place the human body is a drifting mechanism of life, capable but not accustomed to control the forces within it, except as habit, will, cultivation or special excitement may marshal these forces to the accomplishment of some important end. We are satisfied from many experiments and from the reports of a host of pupils that this power of marshalling and using these energies can be, in every person, cultivated to a high degree. To do so much as this, the pupil must study and practise.

You drift day after day.

The air, sunlight, food and water you take, are agents of a force that comes from the sky and earth. You idly float upon the tide of circumstances to make up your day’s life, and the opportunities of being something better than you are drift beyond your reach and pass away.

There are three classes of persons who will undertake the study of this work:

First. Those who, through curiosity, or as incredulous investigators, pursue the study with hesitation and indifference.

Second. Those who commence with enormous zeal and determination to succeed, and devote every spare moment to it for a few days, or weeks, and then suddenly cool off. This is a large class, and they have had their ardour as suddenly cool off in a hundred other undertakings before.

Third. Those who commence deliberately and work and wait patiently, plodding along in the dark for some time; but persisting until the light dawns upon them. When the light does come it seems to break all at once. They possess that rare faculty called application.

The last-named class will achieve success. The other two will accomplish something of value in every minute they devote to it. Out of the very many exercises of the book there is not one which is not of great value. And this value is always practical and useful.

When the subject was first being systematized for study, there was no intention to connect it in any way with benefits to the health; but it was found that every new habit produced good results in that line. Therefore, while not claiming or laying stress upon the fact, we find the following to be always true of this special training:

1. It promotes a healthy blood circulation.

2. It invigorates the whole body.

3. It builds a good brain-power.

4. It makes perfect nerves, overcoming nervous prostration.

HOW MUCH TIME WILL IT TAKE?

This is the question that everybody asks. Let it be answered by asking how much time does it take for one who is naturally gifted with personal magnetism to acquire or to hold the power? It takes no time at all. When the singer whose voice is getting worse is told that there is an artistic position in which the vocal organs may be maintained in order to improve the tones by the mere act of using, he needs no more time to sing with those organs in their proper place than to sing with them out of place. This is the whole secret of magnetism-growth. How long will it take a young lady to write a letter, spelling her words correctly, as compared with the time required to write the same letter, spelling the words incorrectly?

You will now begin to catch the secret of our course of instruction. Yet some routine work must be done. This will be found to be agreeable and full of pleasant experiences. Our earlier instruction kept the student down to severe labour without much relief, and while the progress was rapid, it has been found that even more speedy results are obtainable by the use of the natural vitality that daily loses itself in the drift of life. Where the waters of Niagara rush to seek their quietude in the volume of the lake below, the building of steam engines where Nature’s forces are mightier than man’s inventions, would be the adoption of the lesser for the greater. For endless time there has run to waste in that one region more power than was needed to run all the machinery of the country.

In like manner each individual carries in his own body and loses daily through drifting habits more energy than the most magnetic man or woman that ever lived needs to give absolute supremacy to active life. It is true that we can acquire power by building the steam engine on the banks of Niagara, and that the steam so employed is a natural force, as gravity is; but economy prefers to use the power that is at hand awaiting man’s bidding, rather than go to the trouble of generating it in less quantity and energy. The work before us is to acquire the most satisfactory results in the briefest time and with the least effort.

Very recently the author put into practice with novices and others a certain régime which at once gave the most gratifying results in each and every case. It was the first instance in which the energy known as personal magnetism had been brought into active existence at the start.

This present work includes a new method of presenting the same facts and laws that have always existed; but with this advance in the plan of teaching is found all the instruction from past works. Nothing has been eliminated, while many new aids to this study have been added.

What were mere exercises are now established as daily habits. This renders the study much more interesting and really more effective. An exercise, once it is over, is laid aside. A habit is grafted on the mind and nervous system until it becomes a part of the general conduct of a person.

In the whole scope of the training there is not even the merest influence that does not enter into all other departments of life apart from the development of personal magnetism, as well as involved in it. It so happens that this characteristic is not found in any other line of study; and the fact that it is so proves conclusively that magnetism is life itself, and its uses are merely forms of existence made still more useful. The reader of these pages should bear this fact in mind, as the most encouraging and inspiring stimulus to achieving the mastery of the subject as herein presented.

An instantaneous subtle influence springs from the first reading of these lessons; for it bears the message of the greatest law of life, that human existence is a part of the general fund of magnetism that holds sway throughout the universe. This influence is felt in the very unfolding of the facts that constitute these lessons. It is an old saying that declares that knowledge is power, but it is a true one; and never was so true as in the present study.

No person can read these pages carefully without immediately gaining the power that comes from knowledge. If adoption and absorption are added to knowledge, the progress is very rapid.

LESSON TWO

FIRES OF MAGNETISM

WE SPEAK of people as magnetic in a general way. For the purposes of the present volume, we shall class them as having four general tendencies: the light or beautiful; the mental or thoughtful; the deep or dangerous; the rich or luxurious.

Each class is as important as any other. We cannot judge the degree or quality of magnetism by the colour of the eyes, or the general complexion; but the character of the magnetic fire is more or less influenced by eye-colour.

As a general rule, but by no means a universal one, the dark-eyed person is the opposite of the grey-eyed; and the blue-eyed of the brown. Brown is the rich verdure of the field over which the blue sky is spread. Grey is the cold zone of the north or the morning sky of the east, set against the tropics of the south or the night-laden sky of the west. Thus the four general classes are the completed horizon, the earth and the empyrean.

Despite the fact that these influences are crossed and counter-crossed even in the same individual, and must be separated and studied apart, likewise in the same individual, there is an undercurrent of fixed influence belonging to each class. As such we will consider them for the present.

The blue-eyed person, when magnetic, is light, happy, cheerful, brilliant, active, quick and even effervescent. The muscles and the blood express the magnetic force within. When unmagnetic, the blue eye becomes cold, the nature revengeful, the plans furtive, and the mind unreasonable in its demands.

The grey-eyed person, when magnetic, is cool, calculating, steady in nerve and unflinching in muscle. He talks but little when a purpose is at stake, and looks you coolly in the eye when you address him. You feel compelled to do all the talking, and he does not assist you by a word or a nod. His face never relaxes into an assent, and so you keep on thinking of new ideas and expressing them, in the hope that you will be rewarded by some show of acquiescence. Meanwhile he is looking you steadily in the eye. A stupid person may seem to do all this, but he does not. Stupidity relaxes the muscles of the jaw and draws down the face into a look of perplexity.

The black-eyed person is both dangerous and deep. The eyes are rarely, if ever, a jet black, unless the pupils are large. The colour, as a colour, is in the iris, or ring that surrounds the pupil. In proportion as the nerves are excited this iris opens, and the cavity behind the pupil shows black on account of its darkness. Nervous excitability and magnetism have been regarded as one and the same thing; but a black-eyed person in ill-health would have less magnetism than the blue, brown or grey-eyed person. Excitability is generally the sign of magnetic weakness. Self-containment and steadiness of nerve are surer signs of the power. When a black-eyed person is magnetic, the nature, the eyes, the expression, the grasp, the very presence suggest warmth; when unmagnetic there is a nervous irritability that jars upon the nerves of all who are near.

The brown-eyed person, when magnetic, is affectionate and rich in the expression of energy, but finds it very difficult to hold to a steady purpose, unless fixed habits of life have been educated by circumstances or trained by practice. Brown eyes are akin to black in their deepest hue; but, embracing a score of shades even to a light hazel, they extend toward their opposite pole, the blue.

The general philosophy of personal magnetism may be summed up in a few outlines that present the theoretical rather than the substantial side of the study.

1. All human beings belong to one of the following inherited magnetic temperaments, or to a blend of two or more of them:

(a) THE BEAUTIFUL   .   .   .   Blue.

(b) THE COLD   .   .   .   .   .   Grey.

(c) THE DEEP   .   .   .   .   .    Black.

(d) THE AFFECTIONATE   .   . Brown.

The Blue and Grey may blend; the Grey and Light Brown may blend; and the Brown and Black may blend.

The Blue and Black are opposites; the Blue and Brown are opposites; the Grey and Dark Browns are opposites; and the Grey and Black are opposites.

2. All spontaneous exhibitions of energy must come from the inherited temperament; and the degree of that energy and its success in dealing with others depends upon the stage of its development. Circumstances are educators of men and women to a far greater extent than exact training. The so-called gift of magnetism is always the result of some kind of education. It is true that the inherited temperament may be cultivated by exact training such as this volume affords; but, where we find it in mature life already established, we may suppose that the years past have been fraught with circumstances calculated to bring out the forces within, and to concentrate the individual energies that make up those forces.

3. All deliberate exhibitions of energy must come from acquired temperaments; or else the deliberation would be unnecessary. It is most curious indeed to follow out a line of investigation demonstrating this remarkable law. The acquired temperaments may be highly cultivated, and are most easily assumed in opposites.

4. The following table gives a list of the simple uses of this energy; and, if you wish, you may accept the belief that these uses are all unconsciously employed, whether spontaneous or deliberate; that is, the persons who succeed in managing or controlling others in life’s details are unconscious of any magnetic force at work. The cases stated in this table are realities taken from the experience of a number of people, and they represent what is actually occurring everywhere, every day of the year.

(a) The Beautiful are Muscular.

(b) The Cold are Mental.

(c) The Deep are Nervous.

(d) The Affectionate are Moral.

This table requires explaining or it will be misleading. The beautiful are magnetic in a muscular way; and only so when they are in their inherited temperament. Now muscular does not mean big of muscle but active of what muscle they possess. All beauty is controlled by muscular development. The flesh is but a mass of very small muscles, as dissection will easily prove. The contour of the body, and all the lines and shapes of beauty are determined by the muscular arrangements of the flesh. The millions and millions of muscular fibres in the fleshy masses of the body are at work concentrating their energies in this temperament when its magnetism is aroused.

The mentality of cold people has nothing to do with the warmth of the body. It is the steady, far-off, cold ray of an unflickering light. It is not excitable or impatient. The brain, and not the muscular system, exerts the temperamental magnetism; and often with quick, unanswerable blows.

In the nervous temperament, the motor and sensor nerves are all affected. In the affectionate class the moral element predominates; not as a force of superior morality, but as the seat of magnetic activity. There are good morals and bad morals, and there are moralising natures, and natures easily influenced by motives, good or bad, or by inducements to do right or wrong. All these considerations attach to that class of people who are affectionate in their magnetic temperaments, and their activity is in their moral blends of life. Unless this explanation is early understood, the impression will become fixed in your mind that the moral magnetic temperament represents a high degree of rectitude. It is not true that colour affects the ethical tendencies of the heart.

TABLE OF INHERITED MAGNETIC TEMPERAMENTS

As the truest, fullest type of life represents culture, we would rarely expect to find an accomplished person exclusively in his native temperament.

The distinctions made in this lesson are intended only as interesting reading of the underlying influences that are at work in every life. If they are not understood at first, they will be found helpful after the study has advanced far enough for you to have met all classes of people, and to have learned that no two persons are exactly alike. One of the most pleasing things in this world is the opportunity for studying character and temperament in others. By so doing, you will be acquiring new knowledge, and finding new variations of human experience that, after all, is the best teacher one could have.

Therefore if you wish to plunge ahead with great rapidity, you may defer the re-reading of this lesson until you are drawn back to it by your own magnetism.

Great advantage arises from the practice of making yourself familiar with people; seeking to determine their powers of resistance to the influence of magnetism as related to the eye-colour. You can easily form the habit of observing the men and women whom you meet from time to time; learning from yourself the answers to the following questions:

1. Is it true that persons of opposite colour of eyes are more readily influenced by each other?

2. Is it true that grey eyes are generally studious, calculating and cold by nature?

3. Assuming that man and wife are more contented if they are interested in the same things in life, does it work out in experience that the best marriages are founded on the union of like with like?

By securing the answers by your observation of people, you will soon learn to measure them in all other respects.

LESSON THREE

LATENT MAGNETIC ENERGIES

OF ALL the facts that operate to make our lives doubtful in their success or failure, is the appalling ease with which, on some unforeseen occasion, and in some unexpected and unexplainable manner, we yield advantages that our better judgment should have clung to and held in its keeping. In other words we are not always able to take care of ourselves.

The loss of control is not due so much to our breaking down after a certain amount of resistance, as to our willingness to yield. Often our minds are led to think that it is the right thing to do. Startling propositions contain elements of conviction that rush us to a change of view, almost before we know it. Let us see what these are.

At the present stage of our study we may regard magnetism as a central trunk of influence, having four branches; each individual being capable of using, as well as controlled by, any one or all of the four, although his or her temperament may prevail in one only. The arrangement is not a scientific one; but, being correct in fact and illustrating the true relationship of life more accurately than science may do in this part of our study, we are compelled to adopt it.

In every created being there is an aggregation of individual energies left to drift. They furnish the general basis of power. When properly excited they become concentrated and, for a time, are irresistible. So it occurs that many unmagnetic persons are sometimes aroused, as they choose to call it, and show a force that had never been credited to them.

The energies of the body that arouse magnetism, show themselves very distinctly in one way or another.

The pupil of the eye is not supposed to have colour. It is a dark hole, and all dark holes show absence of colour, for absence of light can have no other result; and absence of colour always means the appearance of black. An orator whose eyes were a brilliant blue, addressed an audience with eloquent passion. To the surprise of those who knew him in private life only, his blue eyes had disappeared; they were displaced by great orbs of black. These friends