946 THE PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL INTEGRITY
this lesson which is based on a law that both equals and transcends in
importance every other law outlined in the preceding lessons.
That power can endure only by faithful observance of this law,
wherein lies the "safety valve" that protects the careless student from
the dangers of their own follies. It also protects those whom they
might endanger by trying to circumvent the injunction laid down in
this lesson.
To frivolously use the power that may be attained through the
knowledge from the preceding lessons, without a full understanding
and strict observance of the law presented in this lesson, is the equiv-
alent of being reckless with a power that may destroy as well as create.
I am speaking now not of what I suspect to be true, but of what
I know to be true. I have observed the unvarying application of this
truth in everyday life over all these years and I have appropriated as
much of it as, in the light of my own human frailties and weaknesses,
I could make use o£
If you want positive proof of the soundness of the laws upon
which this course in general-and this lesson in particular--is founded,
I can offer it only through one witness, and that is you. You may have
positive proof only by testing and applying these laws for yourself
For more substantial and authoritative evidence than my own, I
refer you to the teachings and philosophies of Christ, Plato, Soc-
rates, Epictetus, Confucius, Emerson, and two of the more modern
philosophers, James and Miinsterberg, from whose works I have
appropriated the more important fundamentals of this lesson, with the
exception of what I have gathered from my own limited experience.
COMMENTARY
William James, psychologist and philosopher as well as physician, Harvard
professor, artist, religious thinker, psychic researcher, drug experimenter,
writer, and lecturer, was born in New York City in 1842 and is considered to
be the father of modern American psychology. His first book, The Principles