Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1914 — Dr. Marden’s Uplift Talks [ARTICLE]

Dr. Marden’s Uplift Talks

By ORRISON SWETT MARDEN

Copyright by McClure Newspaper Syndicate DESTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION* SOME time ago the mayor of one of our western cities requested the editors of the daily papers to refrain from publishing the details of suicides, because their publication had caused an alarnfing epidemic of suicides in that community. The human mind may be attuned to any key, high or low, base or noble, by the power of suggestion. The suggestion may be in a word spoken by oneself or by another; it may come from a newspaper^a book, a play or a picture; it may emanate from the presence of a friend or of an enemy, from a grand, heroic character, or a mean, cowardly one. From hundreds of sources it may come, from within or without, but from wherever it comes. It leaves its mark on the life for good or ill. Our (characters are largely made up from various kinds of suggestion. Many 'people scatter suggestions of tear, doubt'and failure wherever they go, and these take root In minds that might otherwise be free from them and therefore happy, confident and successful. Who can picture the havoc which the suspicious suggestion has wrought tn innocent lives? Think of the influence of employers holding the thought of suspicion regarding theif servants or other employes. Servants have actually been made dishonest by other persons perpetually holding the suspicion that they were dishonest. This thought suggests dishonesty to the suspected perhaps for the first time, and being constantly held tabes root and grows, and bears the fruit of theft.

Is it not cruel to hold a suspicious thought of another until you have positive proof? That other person’s mind is sacred; have you any right to invade it with your miserable thoughts and pictures of suspicion? Many a being has been made wretched and miserable for years; has been depressed and borne down by the uncharitable, wicked thoughts of others. There is no doubt that many a man is serving & sentence which ought to be served by those who have influenced him to commit the crime for which he is punished. The time will come when we shall have more sympathy for those who go wrong, and even for criminals, because we shall know how» powerfully human minds are influenced by the vicious thoughts of others. We are the creatures of suggestion. We get them from newspapers, books, from everyone with whom we come in contact. The atmosphere is full of them. We are constantly giving them to ourselves.

Many a criminal’s acts could be traced to the graphic suggestions of criminal novels, the exciting stories of murder and plunder which he began to read when a child. It is a dangerous thing to hold in the mind a wrong suggestion, for it tends to become a part of us, and before we realize it we are like our thought. If young people only realized what a terrible thing it is to get even a suggestion of impurity into the mind they would never read an author whose lines drip with the very gall of death. They would not look at those dangerous books which lead their readers as near the edge of indecency as possible without stepping over. To describe Impurity in rosy, glowing, seductive, suggestive language is but the refinement of the house of death. The suggestion of impurity in trashy literature is responsible for a great deal of dissipation; for blasted hopes and blighted lives. The same is true of suggestiveness in art and the drama. We have all had the exalted experience, the marvelous tonic, the uplift, that has come from the suggestion in a play or a book depicting -a great hero. How heroic and noble and selfsacrificing we feel for a long time, and how resolved we are to become like the hero in the play or the story. This is a good illustration of the power suggestion is constantly playing in our experience all through life.