But there are other conditions of consciousness besides the commonplace ones:—genius, asceticism, insanity, idiocy, criminal tendency, melancholy, suicidal mania, all that is eccentric, abnormal, or out of line with the commonplace average proceedings of the age in which the individual lives. All of these can be represented by a more serious tilting of the stick; or by its being bent, or half broken, so that both ends dip at once into the Past, or one half may dip into the Past and the other still be in the Present.
What does all this prove? Nothing whatever. What is it leading up to? I do not know. What is the use of it all? That all depends on the use which you may choose to make of it. I have provided the entrance-hall of your house of thought with a rack, such as my experience has shown me is of convenient form for arranging things on. At present, our business is to see that the rack is in proper order and well fixed up. Exercise your imagination at your leisure, in picturing—or, as it is sometimes called, visualising—the floating stick. Shut your eyes and see it—first in one condition, then another. See it stiff and straight, then bent; then half broken. Picture it always with its labels on: at one end “Emotion and Sensation,” at the other “Action and Influence.” Picture it, first with one end dipping down, then the other; then bent so that both ends dip; with the emotion end floating, then the other end. Go on with this exercise till the slightest exertion of your will suffices to put clearly before your mental vision a picture of the stick in any condition or position that you think of.
Now, the problem of forging Passion into Power is
