If you will a bodily movement and that movement immediately follows, you
are certainly justified in concluding that your mind has caused the
bodily movement. Every conscious, voluntary movement that you make, and
you are making thousands of them every hour, is a distinct example of
mind activity causing bodily action. In fact, the very will to make any
bodily movement is itself nothing more nor less than a mental state.

_The will to do a thing is simply the belief, the conviction, that the
appropriate bodily movement is about to occur._ The whole scientific
world is agreed on this.

For example, in order to bend your forefinger do you first think it
over, then deliberately put forth some special form of energy? Not at
all: The very thought of bending the finger, if unhindered by
conflicting ideas, is enough to bend it.

[Sidenote: Impellent Energy of Thought]

Note this general law: _The idea of any bodily action tends to produce
the action._

This conception of thought as impellent--that is to say, as impelling
bodily activity--is of absolutely fundamental importance. The following
simple experiments will illustrate its working.

Ask a number of persons to think successively of the letters "B," "O,"
and "Q." They are not to pronounce the letters, but simply to think hard
about the sound of each letter.

[Sidenote: Bodily effects of Mental States]