You must never be negative and drift. You can be drawn in any
adverse way if you do."

"I think I understand," said Stella, greatly interested.

"Then you must use your critical faculties and make selections of
what is best--and you must encourage common sense and distrust
altruism. Sanity is the thing to aim at."

"Yes."

"The view of the world has become so distorted upon almost every
point which started in good, that nothing but a cultivation of our
individual critical faculties can enable us to see the truth--and
nine-tenths of civilized humanity have no real opinion of their
own at all--they simply echo those of others."

"I feel that is true," said Stella, thinking of her own case.

"It is not because a thing is bad or good that it succeeds--merely
how much strength we put into the desire for it," he went on.

"But surely we must believe that good will win over evil," and the
brown eyes looked almost troubled, and his softened as he looked
at her.

"The very fact of believing that would make it come to pass by all
these psychic laws. Whatever we really believe we draw," he said
almost tenderly.