will be admitted that this is a matter of prime importance, yet neither children nor the general public are instructed in these vital matters. Because of this almost universal ignorance we most of us go on indulging in negative thinking, much to our detriment. How many of us, for instance, realise that it is thought that kills and not lack of food in most cases of death through alleged starvation? If a person cannot get food to eat he dies in a very few days, as a rule; yet a person who fasts voluntarily in order to cure himself of some organic disease can do so, if the fast is wisely undertaken, for forty or even more days, not only without injury, but with greatly beneficial results. Why is it that in the former case a few days’ compulsory fast ends in death, while a voluntary fast of six weeks or so results only in good? The answer is of course that it is the state of the mind and the character of the thoughts that kill, and not the lack of food.
Again, after a few days’ “starvation” a person is generally in a state of great weakness and prostration. Yet one who submits himself to a voluntary fast generally continues his work, and it is only at the later stages that he works less hard than usual.
