In
this unique book Norman Vincent Peale has renewed the inspirational
message of THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING to provide practical,
creative solutions to the problems of today.
THE
NEW ART OF LIVING will show you:
• HOW TO APPRECIATE YOURSELF
• HOW TO CURE YOUR WEAKNESSES
• HOW TO TAKE TIME TO LIVE
• HOW TO HAVE PEACE OF MIND
• HOW TO ESCAPE FEAR
• HOW TO BE TRULY HAPPY
"The purpose of this book is
to give
practical help to men and women everywhere in the greatest of all
arts, the art of living." —Norman Vincent Peale
CONTENTS
A WORD TO THE READER
...........................
|
PREFACE......................................... |
Chapter 1 - MEET YOURSELF....................... |
Chapter 2 - HOW TO GET RID
OF
WORRY............. |
Chapter 3 - TAKING TIME TO LIVE................. |
Chapter 4 - HOW TO HAVE PEACE OF MIND........... |
Chapter 5 - THE DISCOVERY OF HAPPINESS.......... |
Chapter 6 - THE ESCAPE FROM FEAR................ |
Chapter 7 - THE TECHNIQUE
OF
SPIRITUAL POWER.... |
Chapter 8 - HOW TO LIVE IN
A
TIME LIKE THIS..... |
Chapter 9 - CHRIST'S
HEALING
POWER.............. |
Chapter 10 - "WHY NOT TRY
GOD?"................. |
PREFACE
Everyone who scans these pages is alive. The fact that he
is able to
sit up and run his eyes over these words is proof of that. It does not
follow, however, that being alive he knows the art of living. We are,
many of us, in the strange anomaly of living and yet not living. The
body functions; its surpassing mechanism does its part well. We live
and move and have our being in the flesh, and yet, sadly enough, many
miss the joy of life. Hamlet, as all may testify, was not the last man
to find his days—"stale, flat, and unprofitable." It is, when you think
of it, a peculiar thing for a man to live and yet not live. There is
manifestly something decidedly wrong with it. The thing does not make
sense.
In a way we are all philosophers. We would rather
apathetically like to
know the origin and destiny of human life, but at best these are to us
academic questions which, while satisfying to the inquiring spirit,
more or less developed in us all, are not our chief concern. What we
eagerly want to know is how to extract the most in contentment and
satisfaction from these hurrying years we call our time.
Nor will we be content with theories, however finely
spun. Excellent
treatises on life and its infinite ramifications, however exhaustive
and commendable their scholarship, do not meet the requirements of the
practical question raised here. The hard-pressed man of today,
surrounded as he is by the most elaborate array of problems ever to
distract human intelligence, earnestly wants one question answered and
in terms he can understand and appreciate. That question boldly and
baldly stated is, "Tell me how to live here and now in a way that will
bring me satisfaction and peace and give me sense of meaning." From the
scholar to the ignoramus, from the millionaire to the pauper, from the
capitalist to the communist, in varying form and style, that is the
great question and desire of men everywhere. All other questions,
however significant, take second place to that problem.
The author believes that the principles of Jesus Christ
contain the
secret of the satisfactory life. But ever-increasing masses of the
people fail to attend church and so do not come under the influence of
its teaching. Moreover, these people feel that the Church does not
generally talk in the language and thought forms of the common man,
with the result that they neither understand nor are greatly interested
in giving spiritually oriented living a trial. The gospel and its power
to help everyday people in their everyday lives needs to be restated in
simple, current phrase. The workable technique of spiritual power needs
to be retaught. The purpose of this book is to give practical help to
men and women everywhere in the greatest of all arts, the art of living.
—THE
AUTHOR
Chapter
1
MEET
YOURSELF
Life
begins
today for the person who meets himself. At whatever age
this great event occurs, life, deep and full, wells up and from that
time on it can truly be said one lives. Strangely enough, multitudes of
men and women are born, spend their days and die, never having really
known themselves. They come and go on the human scene, the possessors
of unrealized powers which never quite find expression. Of such Holmes
pathetically declared, "They died with all their music in them." Human
waste of such magnitude is little short of tragic and constitutes an
offense against creation.
Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves,
letting our
personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their
full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own
way lift the level of humanity.
Long ago Socrates wrote over the old Greek Temple—"Know
Thyself—for he
realized that achievement in any field and in the art of living itself
is dependent upon an accurate knowledge of oneself. The average man
needs this injunction of the Father of Philosophy, for most of us have
no adequate conception of our powers and abilities. At heart we
underestimate ourselves. We do not really believe in ourselves and
remain for that reason weak, ineffectual, even impotent, when we could
be strong, dominant, victorious.
An old cobbler in Edinburgh, with that mature wisdom not
infrequently
found in the simple, honorable trades, was in the habit of beginning
each day with the prayer, "O Lord, give me a high opinion of myself."
To be sure, there are some people who seem to possess this lofty
personal respect without necessity for recourse to the expedient of
prayer, but it yet remains that the mass of men do not have a high
opinion of themselves, and the reason is they do not know themselves.
Dynamic of
Self-Realization
The greatest day in any individual's life is when he
begins for the
first time to realize himself. For some this fortunately happens early
in life and it bestows upon them a decided advantage. For others it
happens late, but when it does the monotony of the unresponsive years
is made to shine in the reflected glory of the late afternoon sunburst.
Whether it be early or late, any of us may well seek unremittingly the
exciting experience of personal realization.
It happened to a college student friend of mine once with
dramatic
suddenness. Genial, easygoing, he was as unsuccessful in his studies as
he was efficient upon the athletic field. His popularity with the
cheering section was not fully shared by the faculty, and the curtain
was slowly but surely falling upon his academic career. Its final drop,
for some not too obscure reason, awaited only the conclusion of the
football season.
Destiny, however, has its own strange ways. One day in a
class in
psychology our student friend suddenly became enthralled as the
professor described how the average man fails because he does not learn
to control and consolidate his powers. He used the familiar
illustration of the burning glass. The rays of the sun, falling upon a
piece of paper, have little effect. Let them, however, be drawn by the
burning glass to a focus and they create an intense heat which will
quickly burn a hole in the paper.
The professor pointed out that the man who succeeds is
the one who can
draw his dissipated and therefore futile powers to a focus. Our student
said that in a flashing illumination he saw the cause of his own
failure and oblivious of all in the room and under the spell of a
veritable new birth leaped to his feet, crying, "I see it; I see it."
Whereupon, amidst litters of amusement, he sank back embarrassed but
wonderingly happy into his seat. What had happened? He had met himself,
a new self, his real self, which never before had received its day in
the sun, and the revelation changed him from a failure to a potential
success, the possibilities of which were later abundantly realized.
Learn to Appreciate
Yourself
A similar experience may be gained by any person who
desires it
strongly enough to put himself and keep himself in the way of finding
it. The first step is to plant in your mind the seed of a wholesome
self-appreciation. You must cultivate a genuine understanding of the
worth and significance of yourself and of all men. This is made
necessary by the fact that we live in a time in which we have been
surfeited by a multitude of cheap ideas as to what we are.
The growing knowledge of the universe, which in the past
half century
revealed the vastness of the cosmos, gave rise to the notion that man
is correspondingly insignificant. The new scientific control over
nature caused the development of the theory that the spiritual force
called God is either nonexistent or, at least, not quite so necessary
to humanity as had been believed, for had not man discovered that he
could use science as an Aladdin's Lamp to give him all he desired and
God no longer was needed except for a few remaining superstitious,
religious souls?
As the idea of God dwindled, man's spiritual significance
also declined
and now, instead of, as Wordsworth said,
". . .
Trailing
clouds of
glory do we come From God, who is our home."
it was said that man is merely a fortuitous aggregation
of matter
struck off by a mechanical universe. He had no divine heritage and his
immortal future was all a gigantic delusion. We were informed that man
is an animal even if of a higher grade, an animal which had learned to
talk and do wonderful things with his hands and brain, or perhaps he
was only a miniature machine of similar nature as the newly discovered
universe. To be sure, it was pointed out that it was quite remarkable
for animals or machines to write plays like Shakespeare or music like
Beethoven, but the teachers of the new humanities blithely smiled such
objections away.
It was also urged that man did not readily yield to the
attempt to make
a machine of him, for he still possessed the two functions of a living
organism— namely, the ability to repair his own parts and to reproduce
himself. It was shown that no automobile, for example, had been
invented that could patch its own tires, and that no case had been
reported to the Bureau of Vital Statistics where a happy Ford had given
birth to a litter of little Fords in some wondering garage.
God Is Dead? Antique
Idea
Whereas at the turn of the century the great scientists
were rather
bowing God out of the universe, it now appears that under the influence
of a more mature and therefore profounder knowledge of the natural
sciences He is being ushered back with new respect into the world He
made. It is becoming somewhat obvious, as a distinguished thinker has
declared, "that if so much mind is required to read off the processes
of the universe, it must itself be the product of mind." A universe
once thought to be the result of a blind self-assembling of force and
matter without benefit of a directing intelligence is a theory
increasingly untenable to the modern mind.
Sir James Jeans, distinguished British scientific man,
said that our
universe seems to be more like a great thought than a great machine.
Amplifying this opinion, he declared, "I would say as a speculation,
not as a scientific fact, that the universe is a creation of some great
universal mind underlying and coordinating all our minds," and he
concludes, significantly, "Scientific knowledge seems to be moving in
that direction."
Strangely enough, the minor thinkers have not yet quite
comprehended
this change of front in the scientific world. It would seem the
profounder scientists are usually years in advance of the lesser
teachers. The latter little realize how out of date they are with their
simulated erudition and bored amusement. They wave aside what they
consider the old, outworn spiritual view of man and his world.
Meanwhile, the great thinkers have already restored the theistic belief
to an honored place in their cosmology. The small fry, if past
performance may truly prophesy, catch up with this speeding truth at a
slower pace—it takes about twenty years. But sooner or later, people
return like the prodigal to belief in God and their own essential
worth.
Greater Men Coming
It will conceivably be popular once again as in days long
gone to
declaim to popular applause Shakespeare's noble lines, for these many
years unhappily in disuse: "What a piece of work is man!" Indeed,
Professor Whitehead, in his Adventure
of Ideas, has already led the way. "The importance of man," he
says, "as the supreme organism is beyond question. With all his
shortcomings in image, attribute, and deed he deserves to be visited by
Him who has ordained the stars."
At this point warning should be given that, like every
other essential
truth, the fact of man's greatness may work itself out in forms
beneficial to society or in a manner subversive to human good. Stress
on the sovereignty of the individual and his potential powers may lead
to men like gods, investing all life with new dignity and meaning, or
to men, selfish and predatory. It all depends upon the ideals that
motivate these greater personalities we are seeking to develop. An
unspiritual, non-religious, pagan philosophy of individualism leads in
the realm of thought to crass humanism, in the social order to ruthless
Toryism, and in politics to the dictator. The important element in a
renewed faith in man is the spiritualizing of his life and purpose.
Thus our point of view has in it the danger of creating
dictators, but
it also has the possibility of flowering out in men of great humanity
like Schweitzer. It may make men who go for power and special
privilege, but it may, if God touches them to release their greatness,
make men to match the mountains, unselfish benefactors of humanity.
"God give us men," the poet once prayed, for, said he,
"the time
demands strong minds, great hearts. . . ." So it does, and only God can
give those strong souls, who bless the world. An individualism without
spiritual understanding is filled with dark and sinister possibilities.
When inspired by God, it becomes the salvation of our
common life.
Strong, good men, technicians of the secret of spiritual power, ever
secure for themselves life's richest values, but more importantly they
guarantee to all men the establishment of a social order of equity,
justice, and enduring goodwill.
The sort of individualism I am advocating here is that
which was in the
mind of William James—"We and God have business with each other," he
said, "and in that business our highest destiny is fulfilled."
Have a High Opinion of
Yourself
It is therefore perfectly proper and in very good style
for you to
entertain a high opinion of yourself. Square your shoulders, and march
forth bravely to meet life. You are more than a match for it. You are
not going down to defeat. You are unconquerable. Not by your own merit,
of course, but by the grace of God you may become the greatest being in
God's world— and you must believe that; you can believe it.
There are many reliable sources to which we may turn for
verification
of this amazing assertion. The poets tell us it is true. They sing of
the greatness of man. But the poet, alas, is not universally honored by
a generation which has deified the practical man, he whose touch turns
all to gold, or as sometimes happens, to debts and unemployment.
For some, the poet's songs seem to have wasted their
sweetness on the
desert air. The great poets are, however, the abiding seers of the
human race. Their ears are more sensitive than ours. They hear the rich
overtones of life where truth is whispered from high places. They have
eyes with long-range vision, with power to penetrate to the essence of
things through the dust of the streets which blind us whose sight,
alas, is so faulty. It may be that in his brooding, a master poet is
made ready for some illumination which comes finally, whereby in
flashing insight he sees things as they are, even as a flash of
lightning on a dark night reveals with cameolike distinctness a
darkened landscape. As Guido in Browning's "Ring and the Book" saw
Naples, its towers and steeples, and Vesuvius with its wisp of smoke on
a stormy night etched for a flashing second before his gaze, so the
poet once or twice in a lifetime beholds the glory of truth itself. He
tells us of his vision in words that become immortal, less for their
music than for truth which, Woodrow Wilson once pointed out in glorious
phrase—"is no cripple; it can run alone."
Thus Tennyson, in "The Princess," in some of the most
exquisite lines
in English verse beholds the real value of you and me:
"The
splendor falls on
castle walls,
And snowy
summits old in
story;
The long
light shakes
across the lakes.
And wild
cataract leaps in
glory;
Blow,
bugle, blow! set the
wild echoes flying!
Blow,
bugle! answer,
echoes! dying, dying, dying."
This is
the
supernal beauty of the natural world, but lime and decay
will wear it down.
"O
love, they die in you
rich sky.
They
faint on hill or field
or river."
Not so with man; that fate will not overtake him sees the
poet in
ecstatic vision, and so he sings of the high, soaring triumph of man—
"Our
echoes roll from soul
to soul
And grow
forever and
forever."
You
Are
Greater
Than You Think
That is what you
are, the one
great
unbreakable, undefeatable creature
in this universe. "The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim
with age,"
Addison tells us,
but you
"shall
have eternal youth." What a figure you
are! Standing at the center of a universe that waxes old like a
garment, you alone are indestructible. As Dostoievski nobly expressed
it, "We are citizens of eternity." Why, then, should you let the little
things of daily life defeat you and destroy your strong effectiveness?
Remember who you are. The world may look like Goliath, the giant, but
you can defeat it for the simple reason that you are what you are, and
that is enough.
But if the testimony
of the
poets is
not convincing, let us hear from
the men of science. They are, it appears, widely considered the oracles
of our time. They inform us that we do not know half of our real value.
We need and have the right to an enlarged conception of ourselves. Dr.
Alexis Carrel, distinguished scientist and Nobel prize winner, turned
away from those who entertain a low estimate of man. To Carrel,
"despite its stupendous immensity, the world of matter is too narrow
for him (man). Like his economic and social environment, it does not
fit him. With the aid of mathematical abstractions his mind apprehends
(and rules) electrons and stars. He is made on the scale of the
terrestrial mountains, oceans, and rivers." It is you this great
scientist is talking about.
Take a deep breath,
for you
are
greater even than that, for Doctor
Carrel is not yet through with you. "But he belongs also to another
world. A world which, although enclosed within himself, stretches
beyond space and time. And in this world, if his will is indomitable,
he may travel over the infinite cycles." That is the latest word of
modern science about what you are. Let a deep laugh well up within you
at the grotesque idea that you ever believed life could defeat you.
The great
philosophers must
also be
heard from on this important
subject. What do they say about man? One of the supreme thinkers of
modern times was Immanuel Kant. Through his brain passed some of the
greatest thoughts ever entertained by the mind of man. He sums up all
his great thoughts into just two which are expressed in a familiar
passage: "Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and
awe the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them, the starry heavens
without and the moral law within." What did he mean by that? Simply
that in each of us there is something in wonder and beauty comparable
to the majesty and magnificence of the celestial vault. Can that be
possible? Life bears it out.
Elevator
Boy
Braves Fire
I read of an
elevator boy in a
cheap
hotel. He was only a kid off the
streets and of doubtful parentage, a bit of the flotsam and jetsam of
life. In the dead of night fire broke out in the upper stories of the
hotel. The stairway was soon cut off. The only way of escape was the
elevator. The boy ran his car tentatively a time or two up into the
burning hotel, bringing down the terrified guests. The heat became
intense, the smoke blinding. He went up again and came down with
others. Should he go back for more? Up above was fire and incredible
heat and probable injury, perhaps even death. He felt the cool air from
the street. Life was sweet to him. Why should he risk his life? Nobody
would expect it of him, for he was only a waif. Why not make his escape?
But something within
him
resisted.
He slammed the door of his car and
again and again shot up into that hell of fire and flame until finally
he went once too often and the car became his funeral pyre. Was it not
the moral law within coming into its own, by which life reaches its
true level of equality with the stars in their glory?
These poets and
scientists and
philosophers, testifying to the
greatness of you and me, remind us of a Book written long ago. It is a
Book designed to help people know and realize themselves. In it we are
told that "God created man in his own image, . . . and gave him
dominion." The Book tells of a great Personality who touched men here
and there and they became men of power and strength. One of the men
helped by this Personality wrote about the power He gives to those who
believe in Him: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to
become," That is to say—this Personality helps them to become what they
have it in them to become.
Man in himself is
not strong
or
great although he possesses
intrinsically the elements of greatness. When in humility of spirit and
by an act of surrender he opens himself to the grace of God his
Creator, then, like a dynamo, ready for the power for which it was
made, he is attached to the source of an energy which transforms him
from mute ineffectiveness to creative force.
In his famous
address on "The
Energies of Men" William James declared,
"Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess
and which they might use under appropriate circumstances." A scientist
is reported recently to have said that the average man uses but twenty
percent of his brain power. When you think of some people, that sounds
like optimism. Think of it—you are using, if you are an average person,
only one fifth of your mental capacity.
Consider what you
could make
of life
if you increased that only fifty
percent. In the personality of every individual is a great reservoir of
unused power. But in many of us just a miserable little trickle is
getting through, and on that we live and do our work. The great secret
of life is to put a key into the lock, turn back the sluice gates and
let that power, like a terrific stream, flow into your mind and
personality, transforming you into a person of strength and
effectiveness, well able to meet and master all circumstances.
Applied Christianity
helps
people to
tap this reservoir of power within
themselves. I have seen it work so astoundingly in so many lives that I
have come to believe that the man who will not use this power so freely
available to him is as foolish as a man who, knowing that oil is in his
back yard, refuses to sink a well and instead goes on living from hand
to mouth. That is exactly what is done by people who, knowing of the
power real Christianity holds, refuse to let it into their lives.
Of course, I realize
that much
Christianity as preached and practiced
fails to reveal this power. It has been made a lifeless thing of creed
and ceremony, and stereotyped jargon and allowed to be considered a
system of social ethics only. Christianity is not a creed to be recited
but a power to be tapped. Nor is it only a social bill of rights,
although it is that in every sense of the phrase. The important thing
to emphasize in that it is a source of inward power by which weak
personalities can become strong; divided personalities can become
unified; hurt minds can be healed; and the secret of peace and poise
attained.
Every
Weakness
Can Be Cured
There is no weakness
or
illness of
personality that cannot be cured by
applied Christianity. The science of psychology is revealing the wonder
and possibility of human personality, just as exploration in early days
opened up the possibilities of the physical world. One great fact
growing out of it is the absolute and amazing results in becoming
bigger and better and stronger personalities, to be obtained through
faith in and practice of the spirit and presence of Christ. Thoughtful
men today are learning the validity of the experience of a man named
Paul, who, himself a divided personality, met Christ and ever afterward
went about saying a wonderful thing: "I can do all things through
Christ who giveth me the strength." The strange power found by the sage
of Tarsus long ago is still available for any man who is wise enough to
want this power and who will take it. To meet Christ in this sense is
to meet yourself for the first time in your life, and you will be
happier with the new self than the old, for now you will begin truly to
live.
I was speaking one
night along
this
line, and at the close I noticed a
young woman waiting for me in obvious agitation. As soon as she saw
that I was unoccupied she approached and with great intensity asked,
"For God's sake, can you do anything for me?" She was a handsome young
woman, stylishly dressed. It was evident that she had been drinking to
excess. My reply was, "No, I cannot do much for you but I can introduce
you to Someone who can do for you anything that needs to be done." I
asked her to go into my office, where she told her story.
She had come of a
good family
and
was a graduate of high school and
college, in both cases with honors. Her training was religious and
idealistic. She had married, but the marriage had failed and a divorce
had eventuated. Her earlier ideals of life became blunted as she
acquiesced finally in the loose morality of the times. It brought her
no happiness but, on the contrary, increased the dissatisfaction and
misery of her life. Her mind fell into a state of bewildered confusion
and she was assailed by an overwhelming repulsion and disgust. When I
saw her, she was, to use her own phrase, "at the end of a shabby rope."
"No," I said, in the quiet of my office, "there is little I can do for
you but I will make you a proposition if you really want help." I then
told her that if she would completely surrender her life in every
respect to Jesus Christ and take the power He would give her in return,
she would enter into an altogether new life.
She asked, "How do
you
surrender?"
To which I replied, "Just say to
Christ, 'I give my life into Your hands.'" Again she questioned, "How
can I take the power He offers?" For answer I picked up a book and held
it out to her. "Take it," I said, "it is as simple as that." She did
these things as simply as a child, this sophisticated, ultramodern
girl. There in the office of the Fifth Avenue church the ancient
miracle repeated itself whereby Christ touched a life and it was
changed, really changed. She became, to use the words of the New
Testament, "a new creature." It was real too.
In the years that
have passed
since
that night she has become happy,
strong, and good. Life, no longer near the shallows, is at high tide
for her now. Only vital Christianity can perform a service like that.
Other forces have been invented or discovered which can change the face
of nature, but only this kind of Christianity can transform human
nature.
Some people may
doubt an
experience
like this, or explain it away on
psychological grounds, or smile it away as old-fashioned evangelism.
But that has no effect on my thinking for I am not speculating in
theories. I am merely stating events that I have witnessed and know to
be facts. No man can argue away a fact. It is because these facts were
known to be true that we can say positively that any person who is not
satisfied with his life and wants a better one can have it by the
method outlined in this chapter and throughout this book. This
guarantee is absolute and unqualified and may be and is supported by
the pragmatic slogan, "Ask the man who has experienced it."
"The New Art of Living"
by Norman Vincent Peale
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