"How To Develop Positive Thinking, Right and Wrong Thinking & Their Results..."

Not only does thinking precede all intended human actions, but it also precedes all those which were not intended.

A person does not often shed tears because he proposes to do so. Usually tears come unbidden; frequently after every possible effort has been made to suppress them; yet they flow because of thinking which preceded them.

The explanation is simple. It is the office of the tear gland to furnish a fluid to moisten the eye. The same delicate and intimate relation exists between the mental condition of grief and the action cf the tear gland that exists between other varieties of thinking and muscular action. When the mind is filled with thoughts of grief, increased activity in the tear gland follows, its fluid is produced in an unusual and excessive quantity, and the eyes overflow.

Thoughts of grief acting upon the tear gland stimulate it to excessive action in just the same way that those thoughts which constitute intention move the hand.

The important fact in this connection is that although the weeping is not intended, it is caused by a particular mental action which precedes it.

When the grief ceases, the excessive action of the tear gland subsides, the tears no longer flow, and the facial muscles return to their usual condition.

Entirely different actions follow if the thinking is of a humorous, witty, or ludicrous character.

A great many muscles all over the body, but particularly in the chest, throat, and face, are thrown into violent spasmodic activity which is uncontrollable if the thinking is intense.

This is clearly the unintended effect of thinking, because it often occurs when the desire not to laugh is very strong, showing that in such cases intention plays only a subordinate part.