Right And Wrong Thinking And Their Results
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Not only does thinking precede all intended human actions, but it also precedes all those which were not intended.

A person does not often shed tears because he proposes to do so. Usually tears come unbidden; frequently after every possible effort has been made to suppress them; yet they flow because of thinking which preceded them. The explanation is simple. It is the office of the tear gland to furnish a fluid to moisten the eye. The same delicate and intimate relation exists between the mental condition of grief and the action cf the tear gland that exists between other varieties of thinking and muscular action. When the mind is filled with thoughts of grief, increased activity in the tear gland follows, its fluid is produced in an unusual and excessive quantity, and the eyes overflow.

Thoughts of grief acting upon the tear gland stimulate it to excessive action in just the same way that those thoughts which constitute intention move the hand. The important fact in this connection is that although the weeping is not intended, it is caused by a particular mental action which precedes it. When the grief ceases, the excessive action of the tear gland subsides, the tears no longer flow, and the facial muscles return to their usual condition.

Entirely different actions follow if the thinking is of a humorous, witty, or ludicrous character. A great many muscles all over the body, but particularly in the chest, throat, and face, are thrown into violent spasmodic activity which is uncontrollable if the thinking is intense. This is clearly the unintended effect of thinking, because it often occurs when the desire not to laugh is very strong, showing that in such cases intention plays only a subordinate part. The laughter does not cease until the thinking that produced it ceases, and it is renewed with the renewal of that thinking. It is clear that these muscles move in response to the action of the person's mind, though without his intention to move them.

Every one is aware of many physical changes which are caused by changes in the mental conditions. The mental state of anger will make the heart beat more rapidly, send the blood rushing through the body with increased velocity, and flush or pale the face. Any sudden emotion of grief or pleasure, unexpected news, either good or bad, suspense or anticipation, waiting for news of some- thing impending, -- these and many other disturbing thoughts make the heart beat faster or slower, or even stop it entirely, according to the character of the mental action. Thoughts of fear may cause a cold perspiration to break out over the whole body, send the blood away from its surface, or even cause such muscular tension or paralysis that severe illness follows, and sometimes death.

The unnoticed glandular changes are very numerous. Propose some particularly appetizing food to a hungry person, and instantly, without the slightest intention, the thinking sets the salivary glands into action. All the acts of digestion, assimilation, and general nutrition are of this kind. It has been shown conclusively that they are results of thinking, that they vary with the variations of the thinking, and that without it they do not occur; yet they are not intended, and we are not even aware of the existence of the larger part of them, nor of much of the thinking which produces them.

Recent physiological experiments show distinctly just what might have been expected from the common experiences of every one who has noticed the flow of saliva in response to his own thoughts. When food that he liked was offered to an animal, it caused not only an abundant flow of saliva, but of gastric juice as well, even though no food had entered the stomach. More than that, when the kind of food was recognized by the animal, the character of the secretion was adapted to it, so that each variety provoked the secretion of a special kind of digestive fluid. The better the anima liked the food, the more copious was the quantity of those fluids which are necessary to digestion. It was not necessary that the animal should even see or smell the food.

A purely mental condition caused by suggestion or the association of acts was enough, and it was shown that pleasure itself set the physical actions into motion. On the contrary, when food which was objectionable to the animal entered the stomach, secretion of digestive fluid did not follow. When communication between the brain and the stomach had been cut off, so that the mind could not send messages to the stomach and its glands, not a drop of gastric juice was produced even though the food which he liked had been shown to him or had been introduced into the stomach, thus showing that the presence of the food without any mental stimulus does not induce the actions attendant upon digestion and necessary to it. Something more than mere mechanical contact was essential.

These experiments show beyond question that digestion depends entirely, upon some mental process. Similarly, all bodily actions depend upon thinking, whether that thinking is intended or not; and without thinking, or when the thinking does not reach the organs which should act, as when the thought effect could not be communicated to the glands of the stomach, there is no bodily action.

It must be remembered, however, that there may be, and often is, a longer or shorter series of unnoticed bodily or mental actions between the inciting thought and the result which has attracted attention. The observed condition may be at the end of the series and far removed from the thought that caused it. This intervention of unnoticed intermediary incidents renders it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to discover the direct connection between the final event and the thinking that produced it. Inability to trace the connection between the observed consequence and its real cause does not destroy the truth of the original proposition that the cause existed in mental action.

Every sensitive person knows how the mental state induced by hearing bad news will sometimes interfere seriously with the act of digestion. Perhaps the victim wakes the next morning with a violent headache. His physician tells him that it is due to a disordered stomach. The mental condition of the day before has been forgotten by one and is seldom heard of by the other, therefore both insist honestly enough that the headache was not caused by mental conditions. Yet he would not have had the headache if he had not indulged in that discordant thinking which disturbed the action of certain nerves; this disturbance interfered with the normal action of the stomach, which in its turn affected the head. This is unintended bodily action caused by thinking, and shows how easily some of the incidents are overlooked which connect the cause with the observed consequence.

The necessity for the presence and action of mind is also seen in reflex actions and those which seem to be automatic. When the exterior or surface end of a nerve is excited, as by the prick of a pin, psychologists say that this creates an activity which extends along the fibers of the ingoing nerve either to some central ganglion or to the brain; that certain actions take place there, and then mother impulse is sent thence along the outgoing nerve to the appropriate muscle, producing in it the requisite action. These actions at the nerve centre must be more or less complicated and of peculiar character.

Something must decide what physical action should follow the recognized external conditions, and then it must select from all the other outgoing nerves the special one which shall carry the message to the particular muscle which should act, and must thus direct and control the specific action which that muscle shall perform. This may be merely to remove the hand from the position it occupied when the finger was pricked, or it may be to double the fist and inflict a blow, or it may be to cause certain complicated actions which shall re- move the offending object to another place. This is more than mere mechanics. It is the action of the master directing subordinates in accordance with the recognized requirements of the situation.

Whether the person is aware of it or not, there must be mental consciousness or recognition of the conditions at the end of the disturbed ingoing nerve, because something decides what is the appropriate action, selects from many others the proper agents to accomplish it, and inspires the action in those agents. In every such case there is selection or choice, and choice is itself a mental action based on consciousness, which is also mental. Discrimination must govern choice, and intelligence must direct the proceedings. It is only mind that examines conditions, decides whether or not to act, selects from a number of possibilities, chooses the kind of action to be undertaken by some one or many muscles, and sends forth its behest through the appropriate nerve to the right destination.

In every case the muscular action is a manifestation of more or less consciousness of surroundings, discrimination, choice, and judgment. What occurs corresponds exactly to the mental recognition of the conditions. Because of repetition conscious thinking emerges less and less into view until it becomes habitual, and finally it passes entirely out of sight, and the action is called automatic or mechanical. A vast multitude of tendencies toward these actions are inherited from birth, but their origin was in the thinking of generations of ancestors.

Thinking which originates solely in the mind and has no connection with anything outside of it, may act upon the nerve tissues and originate brain, nerve, and muscle action, just the same as when there is some outside incident to suggest it. Baldwin says: "Suggestion by idea, or through consciousness, must be recognized to be as fundamental a kind of motor stimulus as the direct excitation of a nerve organ." All the organs of the body are subject to stimulation by purely mental states; that is, a nerve stimulus may come from within in the form of a self-originating act of the mind. Not only this, but psychologists and physiologists say that these thought impulses may be made to change nerve tracks already formed and even to originate new ones and thus find outward expression in better forms of doing. Not only will the severed nerve reunite, but even when a piece of the nerve has been removed, each of the two ends will send out filaments toward the other until they are joined again, provided the distance is not too great.

It may be urged that the purely involuntary muscles, so-called, act without previous thinking; but as already shown, a vast majority if not all of the reflex actions are clearly the results of intended actions which have been very often repeated. The distance from reflex action to what is known as involuntary action may be very short, and the division between them is never clearly defined so that it is often difficult if not impossible to decide which is to be called reflex and which involuntary.

Some biologists, reasoning from the known to the un- known, hold the opinion that all such actions are consequences of conscious thinking. Their reasoning is all the more convincing when it is remembered that mind is always attendant upon life, never being found separate from it, and that life is the progenitor and creator of all life; for life has never been found without antecedent life. Then mind acting in conjunction with life must be the power which sets the involuntary muscles into activity.

The heart beats without our conscious attention, yet we know that its action is greatly influenced by mental conditions, such as anxiety, grief, fear, or joy. Though we may not be able to discover any special action of the mind upon the heart to keep it going, yet when the mind is removed, as by death, the heart ceases to act. This is true of all the so- called involuntary organs, and shows the mind action of some sort is necessary to keep them in motion. We do not think for the purpose of making the heart beat, just as we do not think for the purpose of making the tears flow; but our thinking makes them flow and our thinking causes the heart to beat. In one case we are aware of the thinking, in the other we are not, just as the piano player is at one time aware of the thinking that moves his fingers and at another time is not.

The physical body, separate from anything else, is an inert material mass, incapable of originating any action; therefore all its action must be produced by something other than itself. That which causes its action must be mind.

The conclusion is unavoidable that thinking precedes and causes all those actions which were not intended as well as those which were intended. Since these two classes include all human actions, it follows that thinking, or mind action, is always first in the order of occurrence and is related to the bodily actions as a cause is related to its consequence.