Some of these misconceptions are household words and are so all but
universally believed that the thought that they can be challenged is
enough to bewilder one. However, it is ideas like this that furnish
the material out of which many a nervous trouble is made. Based on a
half-knowledge of the human body, on logical conclusions from faulty
premises, on hastily swallowed notions passed on from one person to
another, they tend by the very power of an idea to work themselves out
to fulfilment.


THE POWER BEHIND IDEAS

=Ideas Count.= Ideas are not the lifeless things they may appear. They
are not merely intellectual property that can be locked up and ignored
at will, nor are they playthings that can be taken up or discarded
according to the caprice of the moment. Ideas work themselves into the
very fiber of our being. They are part of us and they _do_ things. If
they are true, in line with things as they are, they do things that
are for our good, but if they are false, we often discover that they
have an altogether unsuspected power for harm and are capable of
astonishing results, results which have no apparent relation to the
ideas responsible for them and which are, therefore, laid to physical
causes. Thinking straight, then, becomes a hygienic as well as a
moral duty.

=Ideas and Emotions.= Ideas do not depend upon themselves for their
driving-power. Life is not a cold intellectual process; it is a vivid
experience, vibrant with feeling and emotion. It therefore happens
that the experiences of life tend to bring ideas and emotions together
and when an idea and an emotion get linked up together, they tend to