Control of the thinking is one of the primary actions of the mind and, like all such actions, can no more be described than one can tell another how to see or how to move. It is possible to say, "Look there," or, "Hand me the book," but it is impossible to instruct another how to see with the eye or how to move the hand. The three mental actions which are essential to this mental training are how to think, how to stop thinking any particular thought which may be in the mind, and how to change the thinking from one thought to another. Although there cannot be any direct explanation of these primary actions, yet, through experience, every one knows somewhat of how to accomplish them and does not need any instruction beyond the suggestion to begin.

The method is most clearly and definitely set forth by Strong when he says: "Suppose that, while thinking, I come within sight of some painful memory or inconvenient thought, and turn deliberately away, saying, ' No, I must not think of that;' surely, by so doing I cause the cessation of the corresponding brain-event as effectually as if I went at the cortex with a knife. It is as easy to turn the attention away from an idea as to turn the eyes away from an object. Nay more, it is as easy to turn the attention away from a sensation. To make a visual sensation lapse from consciousness, it is not necessary to look away, but only to think away."

Apropos of this subject, Edward Carpenter says: "If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to be no mistake, no two opinions. The thing is obvious, clear, and unmistakable. It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious thought from your mind as it is to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a man can do that, it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave and a prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through the corridors of his own brain."

President McCosh says: "Though a man may not be able to command his sensibilities directly, he has complete power over them indirectly. He can guide and control, if not the feeling itself, at least the idea, which is the channel in which it flows.... He may be able to banish the unholy idea by calling in a more elevating one; he may remove the object out of the way or remove out of the way of the object, and the flame left without its feeder will die out. A man can thus control his feelings; he is responsible for them, for their perversion, for their excess, and defect."

He who is really in earnest and perseveres in the practice, doing his best to stop his discordant thinking in ways which his own intelligence and experience will suggest, will learn the whole lesson. There is no secret about it, nor any copyright, nor patent. By inheritance it is the right of every human being, and every one who is in earnest will find the way to claim his inheritance and control his thinking. In practical mechanics, however much the boy may have heard or read, he does not know much about his work until he uses the tools, and by using them learns certain things that cannot be verbally communicated; so here, in the practice of these things, one may learn for himself vastly more than can be told in words. The earnest practitioner in mental as well as in physical training will gain an under- standing and a power which will enable him to do what seemed impossible at the outset.