It has often seemed to me that the reason for failure, or the ultimate
failing to attain success, in a vast number of "Faith cures," is
simply because the people who seek them, being generally of a gushing,
imaginative nature, are lacking in deep reflection, application, or
earnest attention. They are quick to take hold, and as quick to let
go. Therefore, they are of all others the least likely to seriously
reflect _beforehand_ on the necessity of preparing the mind to
patience and application. Now it seems a simple thing to say, and it
is therefore all the harder to understand, that before going to work
at anything which will require perseverance and repeated effort we can
facilitate the result amazingly by thinking over and anticipating it,
so that when the weariness comes it will not be as a discouraging
novelty, but as something of course, even as a fisherman accepts his
wet feet, or the mosquitoes. But how this disposition to grow weary of
work or to become inattentive may be literally and very completely
conjured away will be more fully explained in another chapter. For
this let it suffice to say that earnest _forethought_, and the more of
it the better, bestowed on aught which we intend to undertake, is a
thing rarely attempted in the real sense in which I mean it, but
which, when given, eases every burden and lightens every toil.

Mere _forethought_ repeated is the easiest of mental efforts. Yet even
a little of it asserted before undertaking a task will wonderfully
facilitate the work.

"Hypnotism," says Dr. JAMES R. COCKE, "can be used to train the
attention of persons habitually inattentive." But, in fact,
forethinking in any way is the minor or initiatory stage of
Suggestion. Both are gradual persuasion of the nervous system into
habit.