Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/71

Rh, and otherwise to astonish both their friends and themselves with unexpectedly rapid, at least temporary, improvement.

But it must always be remembered that even the most intelligent use of even this most scientific initiatory method does not often serve other than as a very serviceable prerequisite to imperatively needed subsequent measures, whose main object should be, not only as thoroughly to fill the vacancy thus made by evulsion of the destructive evil as possible, but also to put something more constructive and permanent in its place. Closely investigated, the human mental activities seem largely to be built upon a system of self-mimicries ("auto-mimesis"), which fact may often be very wisely taken advantage of in dealing with its abnormalities, especially of the curable order. If through some untoward experience or constitutional "predisposition," a painful and dangerous "copy" has some time been deeply set in the mind, and subsequently this has got into the vicious habit of being reproduced in endless repetition, and so beyond self-correction, not only has this important fact a most imperative need to be duly noted, and considered, and acted upon, from first to last, but also has the equally important fact, that almost every remediable instance of a mind diseased actually has this peculiarity, and attention to this may often reveal the right clue as to what will eventually do the most good and do it most promptly and permanently.

Remembering these facts, then, it is soon found that in very many cases indeed the most practical thing to do, after the preliminary mental cleansing has been effected, is at once almost obtrusively to proceed to introduce into the sufferer's mind a greater or less number of most definite, clear, interest-laden, moving, and if possible unusual ideas, which, being by the sufferer supposed to emanate from the mind of some one whom he looks upon as more of an authority than he is capable of being by and for himself, will be allowed to make their way unhindered, so deeply as to become an efficient counter-effecting force, and thus bring about the thoroughly neutralizing and substitutive effect required. In this way, a new copy, which is at once characterized, both by fresh interest and constructive imagery, may be so powerfully and timely, and likewise so aptly, repeated, that duly the mind will almost unconsciously begin to imitate this instead of the old copy, and thus in time will become both successfully refurnished and reinvigorated, and consequently relieved, as well. Undoubtedly such a course, especially if unremittingly enlarged upon and enriched by all such determined, luxurious effort on the part of the sufferers themselves, as will perpetuate the original effect, even until such time as their dried-up mental soil shall be made once more to teem as it should with spring-like rejuvenescence of every old activity, as well as with the germination and growth of as many new interests as possible—undoubtedly such a course