Thought force

“ And so I would appeal to those who credit this power of thought to employ it responsibly, and to realise that they are all God’s atoms in the great scheme of things, and must use their personal force as a contribution to the vast thought-waves which can advance, or which, when ill directed, can sweep away a nation. ”

“ Everything, force and matter, testifies to an entire unity of plan or thought, and the mind which is powerful enough to rise above all the attractions and influences of the body, the mind which, by its continuous labour, alone renders life and man of any importance, the mind once detached from the animal nature which it drags behind it like a prisoner to the chariot of his conqueror, shall it be inferior to inert matter? ”

“ To those who think thus, it must now however be pointed out, that the universal truth above illustrated under its various aspects, is a necessary corollary from the persistence of force. Setting out with the proposition that force can neither come into existence, nor cease to exist, the several foregoing general conclusions inevitably follow. Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force: no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. ”

“ Physical force itself, in whatever form it appears, is only known to us as feeling or as thought; these alone we know to be real; all else is at least less real.18-1 Not only is this true of the external world, but also of that assumed something, the reason, the soul, the ego, or the intellect. ”

“ This leads us to undertake an account of the idea of Force in general. This is the great conception which, developed in the early part of the seventeenth century from the rude idea of a cause, and constantly improved upon since, has shown us how to explain all the changes of motion which bodies experience, and how to think about all physical phenomena; which has given birth to modern science, and changed the face of the globe; and which, aside from its more special uses, has played a principal part in directing the course of modern thought, and in furthering modern social development. ”

“ Now, since by the law of our science we never start from a presumptive world in itself, but always from life alone, how would it be if that resistance, the real inner power or force of the world, were originally posited and thought only as pure resistance and as nothing else, hence as that wherein the power of life and in opposition to which the power of life made itself visible? ”

“ The philosophic teacher of my dream would not only discover the central force, but would know how to prevent its being destructive of the other powers: his task, I thought, would be the welding of the whole man into a solar system with life and movement, and the discovery of its paraphysical laws. ”

“ There is in connection with the thought forces what we may term, the drawing power of mind, and the great law operating here is one with that great law of the universe, that like attracts like. We are continually attracting to us from both the seen and the unseen side of life, forces and conditions most akin to those of our own thoughts. ”

“ Now what do we find controlling the facts of our own natural life? An impulse which we may call the Will to live. We often use the word Will in a complex sense, as implying both thought and choice; but in its purest, simplest sense, as the word is used here, it means the impulse, or force, which is the cause of a phenomenon. ”

“ That achievement implies more than the mere force. Or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which the language of mechanism does not reckon. It assumes the idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of the force. ”

“ But the power is in your hands the moment you recognize it there. Begin at once to set the right forces into operation. Put forth your ideal, which will begin to clothe itself in material form, send out your thought-forces for its realization, continually hold and add to them, always strongly but always calmly, never allow the element of fear, which will keep the realization just so much farther away, to enter in; but, on the contrary, continually water with firm expectation all the forces thus set into operation. ”

“ Each mental wave we send out from the mind,
Or base, or kind,
Completes its circuit, then with added force
Seeks its own source. ”

“ FORCE, n.
"Force is but might," the teacher said— "That definition's just." The boy said naught but thought instead, Remembering his pounded head: "Force is not might but must!" ”

“ This conception of force or power is derived from the consciousness of our own power to move our limbs, and perhaps too of passions, temptations, sentiments to move or oppose our wills. This power is most distinctly felt when it is resisted. The effort which is necessary when we choose to do what we have barely strength to do, impresses on us more clearly the sense of a force residing in ourselves capable of overcoming resistance. ”

“ Of such a process we have no experience, no idea." "We experience as little concerning force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity of a movement." Force is said to be the constraining element! ”

“ We have here the two strongest general forces (apart from the mere impulse of the various senses) which influence men, and they seem to be set one against the other — the force of our religious intuitions, and the force of our impulse to accurate observation and logical deduction. ”

“ But when one tried to think it out, what in the world became of force considered as an objective entity? Force, even the most materialistic of philosophers will agree with the most idealistic, is nothing but a name for the cause of motion. ”

“ In the beginning was FORCE—force homogeneous but unstable, and necessarily tending to differentiation and heterogeneity; splitting into opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, light, heat, magnetism, and electricity; and mounting up through the stages of physical, vital, and neural to the mental life itself, with all its varied and endless phenomena, as revealed in the languages, laws, institutions, arts, sciences, and religions of the world. Force is "the ultimate of all ultimates," the "Absolute Reality," the "Unconditioned Cause." ”

“ But just as we draw from the stores of our own consciousness this idea of "Power," of force, of muscular or mental energy, precisely in the same way we are justified in drawing the idea of "purpose" in the direction of that energy. ”

“ Are we taunted with believing? Those who taunt us must supply for their part something more than inference ere we trust all to their wisdom. The "Force" that is so much invoked, what is it so far as the definitions of science go? Effects we see; Force never. All statements as to the nature of force are pure dogma. It is declared that there are necessary and eternal laws of matter. ”

“ He calls this power the “psychic force,” and supposes that some persons are able to manifest it much more powerfully than others, and thus explains the performances of those “mediums” who are not mere impostors. ”

“ The phrases, 'No matter without force, no force without matter,' which are all but abortive attempts to remove a self incurred contradiction, become superfluous on our recognizing only constancies of connection. ”

“ But do we seek to render cause objective as well as substance? If so, we must understand it in a different sense. Cause is no longer merely a phenomenon anterior to another, the antecedent of a consequent. It is something quite different, it is force, the active power, that initiates the movement, and of which we find the type in our own consciousness. ”

“ The consciousness of putting forth power is the most uniform, the least variable, of all our sensibilities; the same amount of actual force expended is estimated as nearly the same under all circumstances. ”

“ I possess an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control, overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. ”

“ Instinctively we think that this feeling of strength is the cause of the action, that it is the "motive force." Our belief in causation is the belief in force and its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in which we identify force and the feeling of force.—Force, however, never moves things; the strength which is conscious "does not set the muscles moving." ”

“ Force, I say, is a spiritual virtue, an invisible power, which by accidental external violence is caused by motion, and communicated and infused into bodies which are inert by nature, giving them an active life of marvellous power. ”

“ If we may not read the meaning of the great central force in the light of that force which we carry in the will, how can we warrantably interpret the laws of nature, in the light of that which we carry in the intellect? ”

“ Nothing but forces. In God himself we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. (Theoph.) ”

“ Is not this conception of man's activities infinitely more wonderful, and infinitely more comprehensible than is the conception that his activities may be accounted for by the existence of an unknown, unimaginable, and intangible force called "mind" or "soul"? ”

“ It has been asserted over and over again of late years, by a class of men who claim to be the only true interpreters of Nature, that we know nothing but matter and the laws of matter, and that force is a mere fiction of the imagination. May it not be affirmed, on the other hand, that, while our notion of matter is a conception of the intellect, force is that of which we have the most direct—perhaps even the only direct—cognizance? ”

“ Other elements of that force are the physical needs; the push and play of passions ingrained in human nature; the inherited bias; the strength of habits formed before childhood had begun to reflect,—the thousand forces which blend with reason and choice to make up our destiny. ”

“ I could start a new philosophy of my own. Don't you think something could be done with a philosophy called the dynamitic-psychic philosophy, which would teach there are only two things in the world, namely, force and soul? ”

“ But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. ”

“ Although the inclination prevails, yet the struggle itself is an event of the most important kind, and is sure to leave traces on the character, and to be followed by consequences. In this case we are distinctly conscious of a power to add force to that one of the contending opposites which is most identified with our very selves, and we know whether we have added that force or not. ”

“ These are the first to comprehend that it is necessary to look facts straight in the face, and to realize that when it comes to the last stand, no matter what laws are made, man will still be the master, through physical force. ”

“ So seest thou not, how, though external force Drive men before, and often make them move, Onward against desire, and headlong snatched, Yet is there something in these breasts of ours Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?— Wherefore no less within the primal seeds Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight, Some other cause of motion, whence derives This power in us inborn, of some free act.— Since naught from nothing can become, we see. ”

“ A personal will and intelligence thus arise; and they direct action from within with a force and freedom which are exactly proportionate to the material forces, within and without the body, which the soul has come to represent. ”

“ If we call it all spirit, then we believe that spirit has force, that it offers a resistance; in other words, that it is, in one of its aspects, what we call matter. I cannot believe that everything can be accounted for by motion or by what we call force, because there is something that recognizes force. ”

“ An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in action, which is necessarily causal, or causative." This feeling of energy or force, inherent in an act of will, is knowledge a priori; assurance, prior to experience, that we have the power of causing effects. ”

“ Now, the existence of a self-manifesting power in an object implies that the object is itself a power or force, or an aggregate of such. This is enough for the purposes of philosophy and science, and we only deceive ourselves when we suppose that we can think of anything that exists and which is not at the same time a force or power .... ”

“ The reason why we take pains to show this at the present point of our discussion is that only through replacing the fallacious conception by the correct one, do we open the way for forming a concrete concept of Force and thereby for establishing a truly dynamic conception of nature. ”

“ It is a strong argument, but it does not reach the point which the human heart desires to have demonstrated. Nor does it add force to, but rather weakens, the argument which is found by all reflecting minds in every tree, leaf, bud, or flower. It simply proves the existence of a force, which all admit. ”

“ All Force is the same force. Science just now has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and the central me which dominates my mind: the same force in different stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. ”