SELF-CONTROL 551Study yourself and find out to which of the two great major urges
to action your mind responds most naturally-the urge of necessity or
the desire to create. If you have children, study them and determine to
which of these two motives they respond most naturally. Millions of
children have had their imaginations dwarfed and retarded by parents
who removed as much as possible of the urge of necessity. By "making
it easy" for your child you may be depriving the world of a genius. Bear
in mind that most of the progress humans have made came as the
result of bitter, biting necessity!
The law of evolution is always and everywhere at work-changing,
tearing down, and rebuilding every material element on this earth and
throughout the universe. Towns, cities, and communities are undergoing
constant change. Go back to the place where you lived twenty years ago
and you will recognize neither the place nor the people. New faces
will have made their appearance. The old faces will have changed. New
buildings will have taken the place of the old. Everything will appear
different because everything will be different.
The human mind is also undergoing constant change. If this were
not true we would never grow beyond the child-mind age. Every seven
years the mind of a normal person becomes noticeably developed and
expanded. It is during these periodical changes of the mind that bad
habits may be left off and better habits cultivated.
The mind that is driven by the urge of necessity, or out of the
love to create, develops more rapidly than does the mind that is never
stimulated to greater action than what is necessary for existence.
The imaginative faculty of the human mind is the greatest piece of
machinery ever created. Out of it has come every man-made machine
and every man-made object.
Behind every one of the great industries and commercial enterprises
is the all-powerful force of Imagination!