RESERVES OF POWER
[Sidenote: _Man's Potential and Kinetic Energies_]
Stored-up energy not in use has been given a name by scientific men.
They call it _potential energy_. In this way it is distinguished from
_kinetic_ or circulating energy by which is meant energy that is at
work. For example, a ton of coal in the bin contains a certain amount
of potential energy, which is capable of being converted into kinetic
energy by combustion.
[Sidenote: _Holding the Top Pace_]
You have a vast amount of potential energy over and above what you
actually use. You have formed the habit of giving up trying a thing as
soon as you have spent the usual amount of effort on it, and this
without regard to whether or not you have accomplished anything.
While we all have the power of sustained mental activity, not one in
ten thousand of us holds to the top pace.
Worse still, even such mental energy as we do consume is dispersed and
scattered over a multitude of trivial interests instead of being
focused upon some one possessing aim.
_We intend to show you how you can lose yourself in your work with an
absorbing passion and how you can at any time make special requisition
upon your hidden stores of potential energy and draw new supplies of
power that will sweep you on to your goal._
[Sidenote: _Genius and the Master Man_]
More than anything else, it is the ability to do this that lifts the
great men of the race above the common run of mortals.
It is this that distinguishes genius from mediocrity. The master man
transforms his vast stores of reserve or potential energy into
circulating or kinetic energy. His work glows with living fire.
Yet, for every such man there are a multitude of others, equally
gifted in some respect, but wanting that mysterious "Open Sesame"
which would discover their hidden mental riches, arouse them from
their accustomed inferiority to their best selves, and transform
potentiality into accomplishment. So it comes about that most of us
are gems that shine but to illumine the "dark unfathomed caves of
ocean," flowers born to "blush unseen."
[Sidenote: _Mental Effect of City Life_]
Take an illustration of the way in which this reserve or potential
energy is transformed into circulating or kinetic energy. Suppose that
you are a countryman and come to live in a large city. The speed with
which we do things, our habits of quick decision, the whirlwind of
activities of the busy man in town, appal you. You cannot see how we
live through it. A day in the business district fills you with terror.
The tumult and danger make it seem "like a permanent earthquake."
But settle down to work here. And in a year you will have "caught the
pulse beat," you will "vibrate to the city's rhythm," and if you only
"make good" in your work, you will enjoy the strain and hurry, you
will keep pace with the best of us, and you will get more out of
yourself in a day in the city than you ever did in a week on the farm.
_This change in degree of mental activity does not necessarily mean
that you are making more of a success of life._
Your activities may be ill-directed. Your new-found powers may be
misspent and dissipated.
But you are mentally more alert Your mental forces have been
stimulated by the stirring environment.
[Sidenote: _New-Found Energies Explained_]
And, mark this particularly, _a number of mental pictures will pass
across the screen of your consciousness today in the same time that
one mental image formerly required._
_Now, you have learned that with every idea catalogued in memory,
there is wrapped up and stowed away an associated "feeling tone" and
an associated impulse to some particular muscular action._
Assuming this, you must at once see that here is an explanation of
your new-found energy.
Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness of action, your more
observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead of the former drawling
utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened enthusiasm and
enjoyment of life--all of these are but manifestations of a quickened
intelligence.
[Sidenote: _Quickened Mentality_]
_They are the working out through the motor paths of mental impulses
to muscular action._
And these impulses to muscular action come thronging into
consciousness _because the livelier environment brings about a more
rapid reproduction of memory pictures_.
And here comes a particularly striking fact. One would naturally
suppose that the more energy a man consumed, and the faster he lived,
the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted and the shorter his
life would be.
As a matter of fact, by the divine beneficence of Providence, _your
organism is so ordered as to adapt itself within certain wide limits
to the demands made upon it_.
[Sidenote: _Fast Living and Long Living_]
You may call into play all the stored-up resources of your being and
still not stake everything upon a single throw. For the supply of
mental energy is as inexhaustible as the reservoir of all past
experience, while the supply of physical energy involved in brain and
nerve activity is, like the immortal liver of Prometheus, renewed as
fast as depleted.
Two sets of facts that have been established by elaborate scientific
experiment will convince you of the truth of these propositions.
[Sidenote: _Professor Patrick's Experiments_]
Professor Patrick, of the State University of Iowa, conducted some of
these experiments. He caused three young men to remain awake for four
successive days and nights. They were then allowed to go to sleep, the
purpose of the experiment being to determine just how much time Nature
required to recuperate from the long vigil. They were allowed to sleep
themselves out, and all woke up thoroughly rested. _Yet the one who
slept the longest slept only one-third longer than his customary
night's sleep._
You have doubtless had the same experience yourself many times. It all
goes to show that if we are awake four times as long as usual, we do
not make up for it by sleeping four times as _long_, but four times as
_soundly_, as customary. The hard-working mechanic requires no more
hours of sleep than the corner loafer, the active man of affairs no
more than the dawdler.
[Sidenote: _Ratio Between Repair and Demand_]
_The time of tissue repair is about the same with all men under all
conditions. It is the rate of repair that varies with the demand that
has been put upon the body._
Again, look at the same subject from the standpoint of food supply. On
what you now eat and drink you have a certain average weight. Eat,
digest and assimilate a larger quantity of food and your weight will
increase. This increase will be greatest at the start and will
gradually slow up until you shall have reached the point beyond which
you can gain no more. Given the same hygienic conditions that you have
been accustomed to, you will maintain yourself at the increased weight
on the increased supply of food.
[Sidenote: _Pygmies and Giants_]
Now, all this involves clearly enough a greatly increased rate of
activity on the part of the bodily organs of assimilation and repair.
It is a situation on all fours with that of the countryman whose rate
of brain activity has been stimulated by an increased mental demand.
No man will maintain that better, more nourishing and more liberal
food rations, transformed into increased bodily tissue, with a
consequent greater weight and greater muscular strength, would result
in a loss of vitality or the shortening of a man's life.
[Sidenote: _Transforming Inertness into Alertness_]
Pygmies cannot become giants physically or intellectually. But as the
puny youth can by systematic exercise broaden his frame and develop
his muscles into at least a semblance of the athlete, and can then
through his healthier appetite _and his faster rate of repair_
maintain himself without effort at the new standard; _so can the
mentally inert call forth their reserves of energy and maintain a
higher standard of activity and fruitfulness_.
Few men live on the plane of their highest efficiency. Few search the
recesses of the well-springs of power. The lives of most of us are
passed among the shallows of the mind without thought of the
possibilities that lurk within the deeper pools.
[Sidenote: _How the Mind Accumulates Energy_]
This accumulation of potential subconscious reserve energy is a result
of the evolution of man and the growing complexity of his life.
No man could, if he would, respond to all the impulses to muscular
action aroused in him by sense-impressions. It would be still less
possible for him to respond to every impulse to muscular action
awakened from the past with the remembered thought with which it is
associated.
Desire, interest, attention and the selective will must pick and
choose among these multitudinous tendencies to action.
Here, then, is another fact that has immediate bearing upon your
ability to carry out any ambition you may have. Your every action is
the net result of selection among a number of impulses and inhibitory
forces or tendencies.
[Sidenote: _The Threshold of Inhibition_]
As a general thing, consciousness is made up of a number of
conflicting ideas, each with its associated feeling and its impulse to
action. Just what you do in any particular case depends upon what
mental picture is strongest, is most vivid in consciousness, and thus
able to overcome all contrary tendencies.
As life becomes more and more complex, the number and variety of our
sensory experiences increase correspondingly. And so it comes about,
that _we have untold millions of sensory experiences, carrying with
them the impulses to muscular response, none of which, on account of
the multiplicity of conflicting ideas, is ever allowed to find release
and actually take form in muscular activity_.
[Sidenote: _Hidden Strength_]
The consequence is that only an exceedingly small proportion of the
mental energy that is developed within us is ever actually displayed.
_The rest is somehow and somewhere locked up behind the inhibitory
threshold._ It is stored away in _subconsciousness_ with the sensory
experiences of the past with which it is associated.
[Sidenote: _Giving a Man Scope_]
Quoting Mr. Waldo P. Warren: "Much of the strength within men is
hidden, awaiting an occasion to reveal it. The head of a department in
a great manufacturing concern severed his connection with the firm,
his work falling upon a young man of twenty-five years. The young man
rose to the occasion, and in a very short time was conceded to be the
stronger executive of the two. He had been with the concern for
several years, and was regarded as a bright fellow, but his marked
success was a surprise to all who knew him--even to himself.
"The fact is, the young man had that ability all the time and didn't
know it; and his employers didn't know it. He might have been doing
greater things all along if there had been the occasion to reveal his
strength.
"Do you employers and superior officers in business realize how much
of this hidden strength there is in your men? Perhaps a word from you,
giving certain men more scope, would liberate that ability for the
development of both your business and your men.
"Do you workers know your own strength? Are you working up to your
capacity? Or are you accepting the limits which the circumstances
place about you?"