That brain of yours will be hopping about all over the place, and every time it hops you must bring it back by force to its original position.  You must absolutely compel it to ignore every idea except the one which you have selected for its attention.  You cannot hope to triumph all at once.  But you can hope to triumph.  There is no royal road to the control of the brain.  There is no patent dodge about it, and no complicated function which a plain person may not comprehend.  It is simply a question of:  ’I will, I will, and I will.’ (Italics here are indispensable.)

Let me resume.  Efficient living, living up to one’s best standard, getting the last ounce of power out of the machine with the minimum of friction:  these things depend on the disciplined and vigorous condition of the brain.  The brain can be disciplined by learning the habit of obedience.  And it can learn the habit of obedience by the practice of concentration.  Disciplinary concentration, though nothing could have the air of being simpler, is the basis of the whole structure.  This fact must be grasped imaginatively; it must be seen and felt.  The more regularly concentration is practised, the more firmly will the imagination grasp the effects of it, both direct and indirect.  After but a few days of honest trying in the exercise which I have indicated, you will perceive its influence.  You will grow accustomed to the idea, at first strange in its novelty, of the brain being external to the supreme force which is you, and in subjection to that force.  You will, as a not very distant possibility, see yourself in possession of the power to switch your brain on and off in a particular subject as you switch electricity on and off in a particular room.  The brain will get used to the straight paths of obedience.  And—­a remarkable phenomenon—­it will, by the mere practice of obedience, become less forgetful and more effective.  It will not so frequently give way to an instinct that takes it by surprise.  In a word, it will have received a general tonic.  With a brain that is improving every day you can set about the perfecting of the machine in a scientific manner.

V

HABIT-FORMING BY CONCENTRATION

As soon as the will has got the upper hand of the brain—­as soon as it can say to the brain, with a fair certainty of being obeyed:  ’Do this.  Think along these lines, and continue to do so without wandering until I give you leave to stop’—­then is the time arrived when the perfecting of the human machine may be undertaken in a large and comprehensive spirit, as a city council undertakes the purification and reconstruction of a city.  The tremendous possibilities of an obedient brain will be perceived immediately we begin to reflect upon what we mean by our ‘character.’  Now, a person’s character is, and can be, nothing else but the total result of his habits of thought.