…After all [in this book] are the ideas and the methods of this newest champion in the lists of human ailments. Every healer seems constrained to develop his own theory and methods, though as Professor Goddard long since indicated, and the new President of Colgate intimated, all get about the same results. Monsieur Coué is an opportunist. With Bergson’s star in the ascendant like William James’s star a while ago, Coué takes into account Bergson’s distinction between intelligence and intuition, and makes the most of intuition, asserting that “We possess within us a force of incalculable power, which, when we handle it unconsciously, is often prejudicial to us. If, on the contrary, we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves and allows us not only to escape and to aid others to escape from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative happiness, whatever the conditions in which we find ourselves.” This unconscious self he considers the general guide of all our bodily functions. Since the will is often misused or misuses us, Coué — like Gerald Stanley Lee in another field — substitutes and cultivates and if necessary re-educates the imagination. “If you can persuade yourself that you can do a certain thing, provided it is possible, you will do it, however difficult it may be.” Thus Coué sets the imagination off against the will, and uses imagination through what he calls “self-mastery through conscious autosuggestion.”–The Review of Reviews, Volume 66
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