The h2g2 Literary Corner: Thinking Makes It So?
Created | Updated Aug 7, 2016
This train of thought goes through some pretty uncharted territory. Annie Rix Militz laid the track.
Thinking Makes It So?
Annie Rix Militz was from California, which somehow doesn't surprise us. There's something about that sunny climate... Anyway, she met Swami Vivekananda at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and he seems to have influenced her thinking. Ms Militz founded the West Coast Metaphysical Bureau, and published a magazine called Master Mind, which definitely shows that she had an unusual train of thought. Her 1916 book, Child Unfoldment: Instruction in the way to train children through the silent influence of thought, is a really interesting book. And probably good news for worried parents: stop shouting at the kids, and think at them. Really hard. According to Ms Militz, this works.
See what you think. Also notice the pernicious influence of Jules Verne on young minds. Hide that sci-fi from the young 'uns.
The Errors in a Child's Mentality
If all these things are set in order and the case is not finished, then the healer may discover by a mental diagnosis1 that the child itself has some special fear or false practice or foolish imagination, that is producing the untrue condition.
The writer once was able to heal a little boy with a curious breaking out in the skin, which had for some time resisted all treatment, through seeing a mental picture, while treating him. The inner cause of the trouble was a kind of auto-intoxicated2 imagination, overwrought through reading Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island3."
He was an impressionable boy and often grew feverish after reading and restless at night from exciting dreams4.
The Truth brought forward the Wise One in him5, the fever passed and his skin was healed.
A child was once thrown into a fever in which its delirium disclosed the cause to be a conversation at the dinner-table between its elders, who did not notice the child's attention, upon the disasters which some one had prophesied would end the world6.
Ed. Note:Parents, does this advice sound good to you? Let us know your expert opinions.
