constitutes all his stock-in-trade, process or aid. He preconceives
and wills energetically at once, and by practice and repetition
_Forethought_ becomes a marvelous help on all occasions and
emergencies.

To make it of avail the one who frequently practices self-suggestion,
at first with, and then without sleep, will inevitably find ere long
that to facilitate his work, or to succeed he _must_ first write, as
it were, or plan a preface, synopsis, or epitome of his proposed work,
to start it and combine with it a resolve or decree that it must be
done, the latter being the tap on the bell-knob. Now the habit of
composing the plan as perfectly, yet as succinctly as possible, daily
or nightly, combined with the energetic impulse to send it off, will
ere long give the operator a conception of what I mean by Foresight
which by description I cannot. And when grown familiar and really
mastered its possessor will find that his power to think and act
promptly in all the emergencies of life has greatly increased.

Therefore Forethought means a great deal more, as here employed, than
seeing in advance, or deliberate prudence--it rather implies, like
divination or foreknowledge, sagacity and mental _action_ as well as
mere perception. It will inevitably or assuredly grow with the
practice of self-suggestion if the latter be devoted to mental
improvement, but as it grows it will qualify the operator to lay aside
the sleep and suggest to himself directly.

All men of great natural strength of mind, gifted with the will to do
and dare, the beings of action and genius, act directly, and are like
athletes who lift a tree by the simple exertion of the muscles. He who
achieves his aim by self-culture, training, or suggestion, is like one