pulsating an intelligent force of some kind, and when this force,
your thoughts and motions, are kept in cheek by a conservative,
systematic and concentrated mind, the result will be magnetism,
vitality and health. The muscles, bones, ligaments, feet, hands
and nerves, etc., are agents for carrying out the mandates of the
mind. The sole purpose of the volitional faculties is to move the
physical mechanism as the energy travels along the wires of
nerves and muscles. Just for that reason, if you throw a
voluntary control over these messages, impulses, thoughts,
emotions, physical movements and over these physical instruments
you develop your faculties of self-mastery and to the extent you
succeed here in proportion will you develop the power of
concentration.

Any exercise or work that excites the mind, stimulates the
senses, calls the emotions and appetites into action, confuses,
terrifies or emotionalizes, weakens the power of concentration.
This is why all kind of excitement is bad. This is the reason why
persons who drink strong drinks, who allow themselves to get into
fits of temper, who fight, who eat stimulating food, who sing and
dance and thus develop their emotions, who are sudden, vehement
and emotional, lack the power to concentrate. But those whose
actions are slower and directed by their intelligence develop
concentration. Sometimes dogmatic, wilful, excitable persons can
concentrate, but it is spasmodic, erratic concentration instead
of controlled and uniform concentration. Their energy works by
spells; sometimes they have plenty, other times very little; it
is easily excited; easily wasted. The best way to understand it
is to compare it with the discharge of a gun. If the gun goes off
when you want it to, it accomplishes the purpose, but if it goes