Just as the light and frivolous birches hide the rough branches and roots whence proceed health and life, the art of influencing must learn how to surround itself with an aspect of amiability, and, in order to reach men's souls, it must abandon the idea that it must be composed merely of the rougher and more rugged virtues, so much extolled by many philosophers.
I once knew a man who, under the influence to one fixed idea, was about to die.
He imagined that, while drinking the water of a stagnant pool, he had swallowed a serpent, minute at first, but which growing larger inside of his body, caused internal ravages of which he felt himself likely soon to die.
His friends had told me of his singular case, telling me how anxious they were at seeing this so-called invalid wasting away day by day.
I was curious to visit him; I found a real invalid, looking very ill, with features sunken, and hardly able to drag himself about. Pressing his chest, he told us that the serpent was devouring him.
His friends laughed at him and seemed to think that I would join them in their mirth, but I judged the moral evil too serious to try to soothe him by trying to reason with him.
Persuasion alone, based on a real or an imaginary proof, with the aid of suggestion, could save the man.
Instead of laughing with the others, I pretended to believe that he was really ill, and asked him to tell me his story, to which I listened with the deepest attention.
To his great astonishment, I sympathized with him in his trouble, and spoke of one of my friends, a famous healer, who would be happy to interest himself in the invalid and to try to save him.
Two days later I returned, actually bringing with me a physician whom I had told of this strange mania, and who had promised me his assistance, for it was indispensable to have near me someone who could speak authoritatively in order to impress the mind of the invalid.
He examined the patient carefully, prescribed certain medicines, and withdrew, without giving any words of positive hope.
Then began my part, that of a psychologist. I pretended that I would tell him the absolute truth, however brutal it might seem. The doctor had discovered beyond all doubt the presence of the serpent; he had tried certain medication. Would it succeed? He dared not affirm it.
Several days passed, with alternating fear and hope, which indications I noted carefully. Finally, one day the physician declared that he was about to make a decisive test, of which he had great hope of a favorable result.
I had known so well how to be persuasive, and had understood so thoroughly how to surround the patient with the right occult influences, that he no longer rejected the idea of a possible cure; and when, after taking certain medicines that induced him to vomit freely, we showed him the serpent which he believed he had thrown up, our invalid found himself suddenly cured.
After this, if he happened to feel again pain or discomfort of any kind, he attributed it to the ravages caused by the serpent, and, as the cause existed no more, the evil soon disappeared.
This ease shows that one of the conditions of succeeding in the art of persuading is not to batter rudely at convictions that one wishes to uproot. This hardly requires an explanation; in order to persuade someone it is necessary to merit his sympathy; now, one never gains the sympathy of those whose opinions he does not share.
Hence, in order to persuade successfully, one must banish suspicion and know how to listen.
One must not forget the profound egotism that characterizes all imaginary invalids; they are so full of themselves that their ills seem to them to acquire high importance. They can not admit then that the whole world is not interested in their aches and pains, and the importance they themselves attach to them is a subject of development for their malady.
For it is incontestable that all moral emotion has an immediate repercussion on the physical state.
To be able to persuade a patient that he is cured is, in most eases, to free him from his malady; it is always infinitely attenuated, since it is to spare him moral uneasiness, too fruitful mother of bodily ills.
In order to convince an adversary, one must look him straight in the eyes. But it would be very stupid and unskillful to employ this method without discretion.
Some would see in it only insolence, and their irritation would prevent them from feeling the full influence of the gaze; others would feel a certain uneasiness which would cause them to turn the eyes away before having submitted entirely to the gazer's influence, and might prevent them from renewing an interview with a person that had imprest them so unpleasantly.
The best way to begin the use of the eye in influencing is to talk of subjects that will not arouse suspicion in the interlocutor.
One should present himself in an easy and quiet manner and listen without showing any signs of impatience to whatever objections the person may make; some of these may not be lacking in accuracy, and it would be unwise to combat them.
It is unnecessary to add that the least hastiness, which would displace the point of concentration of the thought, would be injurious, and might work serious harm to the success that we seek.
Too great excess of modesty should be avoided, for the transmission of thought--and consequently of influence--is worked at our cost.
Timidity is always an obstacle to the influence of the eye, which should, at the very first interchange of glances, look straight and frankly into the eyes of the interlocutor, at the top of the bridge of the nose.
The first conflict once over, one should turn away his eyes carelessly; especially he should avoid the eyes of his opponent (as we will call him) in the first minutes of conversation, before your own have gained any hold on him; one should in some way fix his gaze without allowing his eyes to gain a hold over your own.
In short, he who wishes to influence another by his look, must take the greatest care not to let him suspect his design, which would immediately put him on the defensive and render all your efforts vain.
I once knew a young man named Yon-Li, who went to call on a Daimio with the intention of serving as a mediator between him and one of his friends.
In strict truth, I should say that the object of this proceeding was not wholly disinterested, since he wished to urge the Daimio to conclude a transaction that was injurious to his own interests.
Besides, the friend had promised a round sum to You-Li if he should succeed in influencing this important personage to the point of accepting this solution.
For a long time the young man had practiced exercises in the development of psychic influence, and he believed that he had arrived at the point when one is sure of himself.
He entered and immediately threw on the Daimio a glance which the other thought rather singular; he tried to surmise the cause of a look which became almost aggressive in its expression of determination to dominate him.
He was a man of strong will, who had for a long time exercised his powers of penetration.
He had no great difficulty in discovering the motive that actuated the young Yon-Li, and he conceived the idea of fighting him with his own weapons.
Taking care to avoid looking into the pupils of his visitor's eyes, he fixt him in the way which we have described, concentrating his gaze at the top of the bridge of the nose and strongly centering his thought on the idea of domination.
The young amateur was not prepared to meet an attack more powerful than his own; his bold assurance faltered a little; under the influence of that penetrating look he blinked, lowered his eyelids, and gently turned away.
He was vanquished, and it was with hesitation that he made his request. It was not entertained or even listened to, and he had besides the embarrassment of confessing, despite himself, the indelicate step which he had been ready to undertake.
The influence of the eye is undeniable; it is occult power set in vibration by the force of the thought; it is the result of the action of the forces that surround us, combined with our own vital force.
One should not use these forces by chance. It is well to use them, especially, as arms, offensive or defensive, in the great battle won by wisdom and a knowledge of human nature.
In order to attain that authority of the eye, which is one of the first conditions in the study of acquiring mental dominance, certain exercises are necessary:
For example, it is well to lay a stick of bamboo across a sheet of vellum, and then seat oneself at a few steps' distance and stare fixedly at the bamboo without allowing the eye to wander to the sheet of vellum.
One must use all his strength of will to avoid blinking.
This exercise should begin with counting up to twenty, then to thirty, increasing the enumeration up to two hundred, which is enough.
When one can perform this first exercise easily, it will be time to pass to another, a little more complicated.
Having made a hole in the sheet of vellum-- taking great care to pierce it in such a way as to have the edges of the opening neat and cleancut, the experimenter now rivets his fixt gaze on this aperture one, two, three minutes, longer if possible.
It is well also to place oneself in front of a bright, smooth surface, preferably polished tin-- lacking one of silver or gold--and to seek in it the reflection of his own eyes.
Plunge your gaze into the inmost depths of your eyes; from the beginning this will be a good exercise in compelling the gaze of others to yield to your own.
In this situation, turn the head from right to left, then from left to right, without losing sight of the reflection of your eyes.
This strengthens the muscles of the eyes, and gives one's glance firmness and the desired power.
One should avoid winking the eyes and lowering the eyelids, and should practice meeting firmly the gaze of others.
Leaders of souls should not forget this one thing: Too great wealth of words is hostile to conviction. If speech is like jade, silence is like a diamond.
Speech is like a diamond when it is the vibrating form of the concrete thought and when it presents itself in a quiet way, rendering its suggestions familiar and clear by the way in which the orator knows how to present them.
Prolific speech is the medium of powerful thought--of that thought of which we should be master and not slaves.
Speech is the seed, good or ill-omened, which, sown in irresolute natures, may produce either nettles or wheat.
It will be so much the more dangerous if it should be resumed in a few words, those incisive words that draw mental pictures which take root in the brain.
Long lectures have only a repressing effect on the spirit.
One's listeners, endowed with will and discernment, very soon give up trying, under the avalanche of words that fall on their ears with the monotony of flakes of snow, to distinguish truths that are uttered in the confused mass of verbiage.
On the contrary, they force themselves to turn these thoughts from this wordy chaos, in which the confusion equals the monotony.
As for others, the laxity of their attention does not permit them to follow the same idea very long, and, all effort being painful to them, they will not long follow the orator in the mazes of thought through which he would conduct them.
But those that know how to present their thought in a few phrases, in a way that impresses itself on their listeners, may easily become leaders of the masses.
The first quality of the speaker who would be convincing should be to think deeply of what he wishes to say.
As soon as he knows how to transform his thoughts into clear-cut images, the contours of which will not admit of any one's divining one line to be different from the line intended, he will be careful to project them into the minds of others under the form of lights and shades.
We have already seen how the power of thought had the gift of influencing others, particularly when this force is aided by the power of the eye; when these two ruling faculties are augmented by the power of spoken discourse, the listeners are conquered by the ideas that are presented to them.
He that will acquire these gifts will find that he can interest men and attach them to himself; in a word can lead them by means of the influence that will assure him of mental empire over most of his contemporaries.
It is necessary, also to base oneself on the theory of like attracts like, in the expansion of the sympathetic radiation which must converge toward great numbers to illumine men's souls.
It has been remarked with what facility people follow noble impulses, heroic appeals, and generous outbursts.
…It is not well to dwell too long on the same subject, so that one can allow some rest to the weaker brains in an audience.
Still, it is an undoubted fact that to jump from one subject to another, and to leave them only to attack them again, as is the custom of some speakers, is more fatiguing and less satisfactory, for minds wearied by this continual exercise end by ceasing to follow the flight of these fugitive thoughts; and, after waiting in vain for some repose in a discourse, they give up trying to follow the constant flight of a too soaring imagination.
Conciseness and clearness in speaking is thus a great force in the work of influencing, which is a noble task for one who undertakes it seriously.
Moderation must be among the qualities whose aim is to second the action by the word in order to direct the focus of attention toward the principal thought which, excluding all accessory thoughts, should be imposed on the minds of his auditors by the speaker that wishes to extend his influence over them.
Discretion is equally indispensable in forming influence by speech.
Intensity of determination, when it reaches a certain point, possesses a dazzling influence which few ordinary mortals can resist, for it envelops them before they are aware of it and thus before they have dreamt of endeavoring to withdraw themselves front it.
Moreover, the man who retains the power of influencing rarely needs to exert himself, in order to exercise it effectually, for the need of protection from it is non-existent in most persons.
They are rare who are morally sufficient for themselves and who pass through life without feeling the need of resting their weakness on a supporting and directing force.
Still less numerous are those who accept with courage the consequences of their acts and do not seek to place the responsibility for these acts on an outside influence, which, however, they are ready to repudiate if they are successful.
Reflection, or rather concentration, is the faculty of self-recollection, of shutting ourselves far away from every thought that is not the one that should engage our attention.
It is force that we bear within ourselves, but which we develop to its highest degree by cultivation and application.
It is by the habit of reflection that we succeed in reviewing very rapidly every side of a question and in weighing the pros and cons of the resolutions to be taken.
I hate the sort of people who let their thoughts wander blindly instead of seeking to glean profit from what they hear.
Nothing is more disconcerting than to feel the attention of one to whom one is speaking drifting away and wandering after his thoughts, while you would like to convince him by your words.
This lack of attention is always the ma of a vacillating will which cannot bring itself to follow an idea by concentrating its mental powers on an examination of the various aspects which it presents.
Influence over others is acquired especial by perseverance of the will and concentration of thought, the undulations of which, project around us, come to reach the minds that we wish to impress.
With perseverance, you succeed in causing effectively to penetrate the minds of your hearers the thoughts the emission of which will attract similar thoughts, and their undulations returning to affect you will increase your conviction, giving you thus the more power to spread it around you.