Experience shows that moral circumstances are potent for good: pleasing and delightful emotions and serene and joyous impressions will restore the drooping spirits, reanimating and invigorating the whole system; indeed the excitement of hope, with immunity from the wear and tear of habitual harras-sing thoughts, plays a part in recovery from disease and depressed conditions, to an extent little appreciated by most individuals. These things were well known to the ancients.

Esculapius, says Galen, supplies us with evident proof that many severe and morbid diseases may be cured simply by impressions made upon the mind; in fact he advised those whose bodies had been overheated by exciting passions to listen to the reading of poetry, to the singing of hymns, or to assist at the representation of a farce. These are the principles which should be employed in the healing of morbid conditions of the mind - illustrating music's power.

The emotions and other feelings give us all there is of enjoyment in life, and their scientific study and rational training constitute an important step in the art of using the mind more skilfully and efficiently. By proper training, the depressing emotions can be practically eliminated from life, and the good emotions rendered permanently dominant.

We must live in the happy memory of what was once enjoyed, rather than with useless regrets. Nursing grief month after month, or year after year, as so many do, is a crime against oneself, and against all others with whom one comes in contact. It does no good to anybody. The departed one can not appreciate or take any satisfaction in the perpetual mourning, and everybody who lives near the mourner is depressed and injured by the unnatural conditions. Such mourning is only self-pity, a form of selfishness.

The Imagination, wrongly used, is one of our worst foes, and imagining evil is one of its worst uses. Imaginary trouble destroys health and happiness. Many people live in perpetual unhappiness and discomfort, because they imagine they are being abused, slighted, neglected, and talked about. They think themselves the target for all kinds of evil, the object of envy, jealousy, and ill-will. The fact is, most such ideas are delusions and have no reality whatever. This is a most unfortunate state of mind to get into. It kills happiness, it demoralizes usefulness, it throws the mind out of harmony, and life itself becomes unbearable. Melancholia and suicide not infrequently result from such imaginative brooding over fancied wrongs.

"Sensitive people who think such thoughts make themselves perpetually wretched by surrounding themselves with an atmosphere reeking with pessimism. They always wear black glasses, which make everything around them seem dark and dismal. All the music of their lives is set in the minor key; there is nothing cheerful or bright in their world.

"These people have talked poverty, failure, hard luck, fate, and hard times so long that their entire being is imbued with pessimism. The cheerful qualities of the mind have atrophied from neglect and disuse, while their narrow-minded tendencies have been so overdeveloped that their minds can not regain a normal, healthy, cheerful balance."

"Such persons carry a gloomy, disagreeable, uncomfortable influence with them wherever they go. Nobody likes to converse with them, because they are always telling their stories of hard luck and misfortune. With them times are always hard, money scarce, and everything is "going to the bad." After a while they become cranks, with morbid minds, and people avoid them as far as they possibly can.

"Sometimes a whole household becomes infected by the presence of one morose, discontented member, and its peace is ruined. Such a contrary person is always out of harmony with his environment, has no pleasure himself, and, as far as he is able, prevents others from having any. Such states of mind not only induce disease, but they prevent benefit from ordinary curative processes."

"Many individuals spend much of their time in hunting themselves over for some new ailment, and when they have found it they are extremely happy. Immediately they hang it about their necks, where it becomes an additional millstone to drag them down. Paradoxical as it may seem, they are never so happy as when they are unhappy. Nothing does so much to obstruct the work of restoring normal conditions as for the individual to wage continual war with his situation and surroundings, to be out of tune with his environment. Giving medicine or treatment to a person whose mind is in the turmoil of discontent, is like pouring water into heated oil. Irritation and disturbance are the consequences. Healing is the work of divine power, and in the us? of divinely appointed means for the recovery of health, it is as necessary to be in harmony with the application of those means, as though the Divine Master were Himself applying the means. A good and wise Providence is seeking to work out for us a noble end; and contentment means being in harmony with what is being done focus, whether agreeable to our feelings or not."

Carping and Criticizing. Then there are those who are always carping and criticizing. If we could only see and think of ourselves as others do, the probabilities are we would forever remain silent. Then again there are those who are always lamenting past experiences and lost opportunities. For one unfortunate experience a "worrier" may have had, others have had ten times as many; and as for lost opportunities, there are hundreds of others ahead of us if we are only hopeful and keensighted enough to take advantage of them.

Cultivate optimism in general, and particularly loving thoughts toward all people you meet, and you will soon find it hard to be angry with any of them. Whatever the killing emotion that you are allowing to destroy, or mar, your happiness and to shorten your life, the remedy can be found within yourself, in your own thinking and acting.