“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
We see Hamlet wrestling with his reluctant, indecisive soul. Macbeth is being pulled and driven by his ambition. Othello is torn and discomfited by his jealousy.
Always the characters were battling with their inner selves as though the dramatist were saying: “You are the master of your circumstance; call forth your power, initiative, and ingenuity, and be the master. Fate is in your hands, determine it.” If every man has the power and privilege to determine his fortune, what is that power? How can we recognize it?
If all conditions are the result of our actions, and all actions are the outcome or the fruit of our ideas, then our ideas must determine the conditions in our daily lives.
An idea is a thought or a group of thoughts. An idea is an image or a picture in the mind. There must have been an idea, a mental picture, back of every well known achievement and invention. From the beginning this is the creative plan. We read in the first book of the Bible that the Great Architect, God, saw a finished pattern or idea before it grew. There was a mental picture established within the mind of the Creator before it became a reality on the without in some form of a creature.
“The Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field
BEFORE it was in the earth, and every herb of the field BEFORE it grew.”
Every architect and builder follows the same plan whether he is building or planning a house, a bridge, an institution, or his own life. Every man is his own designer and builder; like the Creator, he makes his creations within before they materialize on the outside. All fears of sickness, poverty, and old age, are impressions, ideas, and mental pictures, long before they become painful realities. Every idea and mental picture must produce after its own kind whether the picture is good or bad; the Law determines it so. The Law does not question or challenge the kind of picture we give to it. It only knows that it must take what is offered or planted, and then proceed to materialize it into a visible form. Some men can visualize great engineering achievements, yet they do not know that by the same method they can overcome their diseases and despairs and enjoy the health and happiness they long for. Mechanical engineering is the same as mental engineering; they are both dependent wholly upon a creative intelligence. Mental photography, like mechanical photography, produces exactly what it sees. A picture of a homely, unsightly person never turns out to look like a Beauty Pageant winner; nor does the little, short person look tall and large on a photograph. A picture of black will not be white; neither can negative, destroying ideas produce constructive and positive results. If the ideas are negative, they will in turn create negative results.
