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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In "How to Heal Oneself and Others - Mental Therapeutics," William Walker Atkinson presents a compelling exploration of the mind's potential to influence physical health. Blending practical advice with metaphysical principles, Atkinson's work is an essential contribution to the New Thought movement of the early 20th century, emphasizing the power of thought and belief in healing. The text is characterized by its accessible prose and an engaging tone that invites readers to delve into the complexities of mental therapeutics, reflecting the era's burgeoning interest in psychology and spirituality. Through a series of methods designed to harness mental energy, Atkinson offers strategies that bridge the gap between esoteric philosophy and practical application, aiming to empower individuals in their healing journeys. William Walker Atkinson was a prolific writer and a key figure in the New Thought movement, which profoundly influenced contemporary self-help and holistic health philosophies. His varied life experiences, which included a significant pivot from commercial success to a deep interest in spiritual healing, shaped his perspective. Drawing from various philosophies including Eastern spiritual traditions and Western metaphysics, Atkinson's insights reflect a synthesis of diverse influences that enriched his understanding of the mind-body connection. For readers eager to explore the intersection of mind and health, Atkinson's "How to Heal Oneself and Others" is an invaluable resource. It not only provides practical techniques for self-improvement and healing but also encourages readers to reconsider their own beliefs about mental power and wellness. This timeless text remains relevant for those seeking holistic approaches to health and well-being in today's world. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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How to Heal Oneself and Others - Mental Therapeutics (Unabridged)
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the heart of William Walker Atkinson’s How to Heal Oneself and Others - Mental Therapeutics (Unabridged) is the claim that disciplined, ethically guided thought can be harnessed as a concrete agency for health and wellbeing—cultivated through attention, will, and constructive mental habits—and that the same inner methods, when responsibly extended toward others, may support recovery and resilience within everyday life, thereby challenging readers to experiment with the practical reach of mind in matters commonly left to circumstance, discouragement, or merely physical remedies, and to do so with sobriety, clarity, and a sustained commitment to self-knowledge and mindful action.
This work sits within the New Thought tradition, a genre of early twentieth-century self-culture and popular psychology concerned with the influence of mind upon experience, including health. Atkinson, a prolific American author active in that period, wrote extensively on mental dynamics, self-mastery, and practical philosophy. In this context, the book can be understood as a guide to mental healing, framed for general readers rather than specialists. Its intellectual setting is one in which personal development, suggestion, and the power of belief were widely discussed, and where readers sought accessible methods for translating abstract principles of mind into everyday practice.
Readers encounter a concise, instructional program that treats mental states as levers for change. Without relying on technical jargon, Atkinson outlines a pragmatic approach: understand the formative role of thought, train attention and intention, and apply those faculties to alleviate unhelpful patterns that weigh on bodily and emotional life. The book’s "unabridged" presentation underscores a straightforward promise: a complete articulation of its original argument and method. The voice is confident yet practical, oriented toward results and personal responsibility, and the mood favors calm persistence over grandiosity, inviting readers to test ideas through steady application rather than passive assent.
Stylistically, the book blends didactic clarity with a conversational directness characteristic of self-help writing from its era. Concepts are introduced in plain language, illustrated with everyday situations, and built toward practical applications that emphasize regular practice. The focus remains on what a reader can do—how to orient thought, how to cultivate steadier emotional climates, and how to bring supportive mental influence to bear in interactions—with careful attention to moderation and commonsense safeguards. The method is cumulative: foundational attitudes and mental disciplines prepare the ground for more deliberate efforts to encourage healing, always framed as complementary to prudent judgment and personal integrity.
Key themes recur with steady insistence. Personal agency is central: the mind is presented as a trainable instrument, and character as the outcome of repeated mental choices. Ethical responsibility follows: any attempt to assist others with mental influence must respect boundaries, consent, and goodwill. The text also explores the interplay of habit and attention, the shaping power of belief and expectancy, and the practical value of composure. Underneath these themes lies a continuous question: how far can mental discipline shift the quality of one’s inner life and, within humane limits, contribute to the relief of distress in those around us?
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies less in historical novelty than in its invitation to cultivate steady, constructive mental habits amid uncertainty. Its emphasis on self-regulation, expectancy, and intentional focus will resonate with present-day interests in mindset, resilience, and the lived connection between thought and wellbeing. Approached as a historical resource from the New Thought era, it offers a clear, accessible framework for self-help and ethical assistance to others, while reminding readers to balance inner disciplines with discernment. It encourages reflection on responsibility: what we attend to, how we influence, and the values that guide those choices.
Entering this text, readers may benefit from an experimental mindset—testing principles through modest, consistent practice and observing results with honesty. The guidance is practical, the tone supportive, and the aim restorative: to foster clearer thought, steadier feeling, and considerate influence. Rather than promising instant transformation, the book argues for disciplined continuity as the path to change. Its enduring appeal is the blend of empowerment and restraint: cultivate the mind as a force for good, uphold ethical limits when engaging others, and integrate mental practice with everyday prudence—an approach that remains intelligible and usable across shifting cultural and scientific landscapes.
Synopsis
The book introduces mental therapeutics as a practical system for aiding health through directed thought. It situates the method within a history from ancient healing rites to mesmerism, suggestion, and New Thought. The author states his aim: to explain mind–body principles and provide procedures for self-help and assistance to others. Mental influence is presented as natural, not miraculous, with results depending on order, persistence, and judgment. The opening defines scope, types of ailments addressed, and the method’s limits. It distinguishes mental aid from medical and surgical treatment, urges cooperation with physicians, and frames the work as a manual moving from theory to practice.
The theoretical foundation outlines the nature of mind as composed of conscious, subconscious, and superconscious aspects, each influencing bodily function. The book describes nervous energy or vital force as the medium by which mental states act on organs, circulation, and secretion. Habitual thought is said to imprint patterns upon the subconscious, which then tends to realize them in sensation and action. The author discusses attention, belief, and emotion as the key levers of this process, contending that expectancy and imagination direct physiological responses. He presents this as a lawlike relationship, illustrated by everyday examples of blush, pallor, appetite, and pain altered by ideas.
Suggestion occupies a central place. The text distinguishes autosuggestion (self-imposed ideas) from heterosuggestion (from others), as well as direct, indirect, and environmental suggestion. It emphasizes timing, repetition, and confident tone to secure acceptance by the subconscious. The feeling-tone accompanying a thought is treated as decisive: clear images framed with assurance and relief expectations are said to take root, whereas conflicting doubts weaken the effect. The author describes the receptive state—relaxation, focused attention, and absence of resistance—and methods of inducing it. He notes that suggestion does not create new organs or override physical law, but may modify functional conditions and the sense of discomfort.
The self-healing section supplies procedures for building healthful mental habits. Readers are directed to arrange regular periods, commonly morning and evening, for quiet autosuggestion, visualization of normal function, and calm breathing. Affirmations are to be brief, positive, and present-focused, coupled with mental pictures of vigor and comfort. The author recommends cultivating cheerful interest, curbing morbid talk, and maintaining a 'mental diet' of constructive reading and company. Auxiliary measures include rhythmic breathing, relaxation of muscular tension, proper sleep, and measured exercise. Progress is monitored by small gains in comfort and control, discouraging anxious self-examination. Persistence, even in small daily doses, is repeatedly urged.
For assisting others, the book outlines a standard treatment. The practitioner prepares a quiet, orderly room and receives the client with composure to establish confidence and rapport. A brief, tactful history focuses on symptoms without dwelling on fears. The client is placed comfortably; relaxation is induced by voice, breathing, or light passes, and attention is centered on soothing, definite assurances of relief and normal function. Suggestions are repeated slowly, varied to fit the case, and anchored to daily cues. Sessions are kept within practical limits and scheduled at intervals to consolidate gains. Between visits, clients are given simple autosuggestions and hygienic directions to reinforce the work.
The text includes absent treatment, described as directing helpful thought to a consenting person at a distance. The method employs visualization of the client, formulation of clear suggestions, and fixed hours for transmission to promote regularity. Letters, affirmations, or agreed cues are used to aid receptivity. The author attributes influence to mental vibration or sympathetic rapport, while cautioning that distance work should be auxiliary to personal effort and proper care. Outcomes are said to depend on mutual cooperation and the client’s daily autosuggestion. Ethical limits are stressed: no attempt is to be made without permission, and no claim is set above natural law.
Practical chapters apply the method to common functional disturbances—nervousness, insomnia, indigestion, circulation irregularities, and certain pains—where suggestion aims to steady function and lessen needless tension. Strategies for habit-reform address tobacco and alcohol use, overeating, nail-biting, and similar tendencies by substituting new cues and self-commands. Directions are given for alleviating fears and despondency, and for assisting children through stories and example rather than formal formulas. Throughout, the author urges sanitary living, moderation, and, when structural disease or acute conditions are suspected, consultation with competent physicians. Mental means are presented as a helpful factor, not a substitute for necessary mechanical or medical intervention.
Guidance for practitioners addresses personal preparation and conduct. The healer is to maintain calm health, self-control, and a hopeful manner, avoiding sensational promises. Records of cases, reasonable fees, and punctual appointments are recommended, along with neat surroundings and privacy. The text advises cooperation with regular physicians, refraining from diagnosis beyond one’s scope, and keeping within legal boundaries. It warns against cross-suggestion—allowing the client’s fears or outside talk to nullify progress—and offers ways to counter it by reinforcing confidence. Self-care is emphasized: adequate rest, recreation, and one’s own autosuggestion regimen, so that the practitioner’s presence itself conveys steadiness and reassurance.
In conclusion, the book presents mental therapeutics as an orderly application of known mental laws to the relief of human ailments. Its central message is that thought, belief, and feeling, consistently directed, can modify bodily function and comfort, especially in functional disorders and habits, and can be taught for self-help and service to others. The author counsels sobriety, patience, and ethical restraint, urging cooperation with common-sense hygiene and professional care. He summarizes the method as clear intention, receptive calm, confident suggestion, and steady repetition, guided by observation. The closing chapters encourage readers to practice faithfully, measure results, and let modest success accumulate.
Historical Context
How to Heal Oneself and Others - Mental Therapeutics appears out of the Progressive Era in the United States, roughly the first decade of the twentieth century, when rapid urbanization, new print markets, and reformist energies converged. William Walker Atkinson worked largely in Chicago around 1901-1908, editing New Thought periodicals and issuing practical manuals on mental healing through local publishers. Boston and New York furnished parallel hubs, with religious experimentation, psychology lectures, and medical debates shaping public discourse. The book’s milieu is one of storefront healing institutes, correspondence courses, lyceum lectures, and inexpensive self-help tracts, all circulating through expanding rail and postal networks. The time and place thus fostered a popular, pragmatic therapeutic language promising self-mastery amid industrial modernity.
The immediate historical backdrop is the New Thought movement, whose roots trace to Phineas P. Quimby (1802-1866), a Maine healer active in the 1840s-1860s who emphasized the role of belief in illness. Warren Felt Evans’s The Mental Cure (1869) systematized such ideas, while Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health (1875) and the Church of Christ, Scientist (organized 1879 in Boston) signaled mass interest in mind-cure. By the 1890s, New Thought clubs and conventions spread across Chicago, Boston, and beyond, with the International New Thought Alliance formally organized in 1914. Atkinson’s book adopts this tradition’s central claim that thought and suggestion shape health, recasting it as a practical regimen for everyday readers.
Nineteenth-century research on hypnotism and suggestion supplied a quasi-scientific framework for mental therapeutics. James Braid coined hypnotism in 1843; Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpetriere in Paris publicized hypnotic states in the 1870s-1890s, while Hippolyte Bernheim’s Nancy school championed suggestion as a therapeutic tool. By the 1890s, medical and popular audiences in the United States encountered hypnosis through clinics and stage demonstrations. Emile Coue’s method of autosuggestion became globally prominent in the 1910s-1920s. Atkinson’s text reframes suggestion and autosuggestion as disciplined, ethical practices, separating them from theatrical sensationalism and arguing for repeatable, self-directed techniques aimed at nervous disorders and functional complaints common in the era.
Psychology’s institutional rise and religious experiments in counseling further normalized talk-based and belief-centered healing. William James’s Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) analyzed conversion, will, and mind-cure with sympathetic rigor. The Emmanuel Movement in Boston began in 1906 under Rev. Elwood Worcester and Rev. Samuel McComb, with neurologist Isador H. Coriat as medical adviser, offering suggestion therapy and moral guidance to patients with nervous ailments. In 1909, Sigmund Freud lectured at Clark University, introducing psychoanalysis to American audiences. Atkinson’s manual aligns with this climate, translating psychological insight and pastoral counsel into lay techniques, emphasizing habit formation, attention, and expectancy effects in recovery.
The Progressive Era’s medical professionalization decisively shaped both the appeal and the rhetoric of mental therapeutics. The American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education (founded 1904) spearheaded standards that culminated in the Carnegie Foundation’s Flexner Report of 1910, authored by Abraham Flexner under Henry Pritchett. The report condemned low standards at many proprietary schools, recommending rigorous laboratory science, hospital affiliations, and state oversight. Its impact was swift: the number of U.S. medical schools fell from roughly 155 in 1904 to about 66 by 1930, with homeopathic and eclectic institutions disproportionately shuttered. Concurrently, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 curbed misbranding in patent medicines, exposing fraudulent remedies but also fostering public skepticism toward commercial drugs. In this consolidation of scientific authority and licensing, alternative healers faced legal and cultural pressure, and many recast their work as educational or spiritual counsel rather than medical treatment. Atkinson positions mental therapeutics as a system of self-training and rational self-suggestion, repeatedly emphasizing personal responsibility, non-interference with physicians, and the non-chemical nature of his methods. That strategy reflected the legal environment created by state practice acts and the professional campaign against irregulars. Yet the same moment boosted demand for noninvasive, low-cost therapies for nervous exhaustion, insomnia, and anxiety, conditions for which mainstream biomedicine offered limited relief. The book thus occupies the contested borderland between professionalized medicine and lay self-care, adopting scientific vocabulary while preserving the New Thought promise that disciplined belief can trigger physiological change.
Religious pluralism and the American encounter with Asian philosophies after 1893 also catalyzed mental healing discourse. The World’s Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893 featured Swami Vivekananda, whose presentations popularized Vedanta and yoga among educated Americans. The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, further spread ideas about subtle bodies and mental causation. Atkinson himself wrote under Indo-inflected pseudonyms in the 1900s, signaling openness to cross-cultural synthesis. The book’s emphasis on breath, concentration, and disciplined thought echoes this climate, adapting select Eastern concepts into an American, results-oriented therapeutic idiom.
The epidemic of nervousness in industrial America provided the social demand. George M. Beard coined neurasthenia in 1869 to describe fatigue, anxiety, and overstimulation linked to telegraphs, railroads, and urban life. S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure in the 1870s prescribed seclusion and regimen, while Progressive Era efficiency crusades, capped by Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, intensified concerns about willpower and productivity. Middle-class readers sought techniques to steady attention, regulate sleep, and master moods without sedatives. Atkinson’s program of autosuggestion, mental imagery, and will-training addresses these widespread complaints, presenting non-pharmacological routines aimed at restoring poise and functional capacity in a competitive, mechanized society.
As a social critique, the book challenges both medical paternalism and the fatalism of industrial modernity. It democratizes therapeutic agency by relocating part of healing to disciplined mental practice accessible to clerks, teachers, and housewives beyond elite clinics. It implicitly contests class divides in care by offering low-cost self-instruction at a time of rising medical fees and regulatory barriers. It also rebukes the era’s mechanistic view of the body, arguing that belief, expectation, and habit possess measurable physiological consequences. While respectful of scientific medicine’s advances, the work exposes gaps in the treatment of chronic nervous disorders, urging a synthesis of personal responsibility, ethical self-culture, and empirical observation.
How to Heal Oneself and Others - Mental Therapeutics (Unabridged)
LESSON I THE SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALING
In these lessons I shall give you the essence and substance of the best scientific know ledge regarding the prevention and cure of physical ills by the power of the mind.
But in presenting the theory and practice of Mental Therapeutics[1] to you I shall carefully avoid all reference to mysticism or occultism, or strange metaphysical and philosophical theories. Mental Therapeutics is a science, not a superstition;[1q] it is something based on sound scientific facts, and not upon vague imaginings.
Nature surely contains enough wonders for us, without the need of our exploring any so-called supernatural realms in our search for the relief of the ills and pains of mankind. 'l1he Power that has called us into being has placed at our disposal many wonderful means of self-help, and self-cure. There is no need for us to become "spooky" or uncanny when we begin the study of Mental Therapeutics, nor when we carry the theory into the realm of actual practice. There are greater wonders and mysteries wrapped up in the domain of Nature than have ever been dreamed of by man in his search for the supernatural.
Neither is there any need of dragging the religious element into Mental Therapeutics, for it has no direct connection with the scientific side of the subject. There is no one who has a greater, deeper, or more profound respect, veneration, and reverence than have I for the Power which is back of all Nature, and which is yet manifest in every one of her activities. Moreover, I firmly believe that a firm faith in that Power has an uplifting effect upon the minds and souls of persons, and therefore tends to keep them in health, and to restore health when it has been lost. But, I believe that theology and Mental Therapeutics are two distinct. fields of human thought and activity. I do not believe in making a religion of Mental Therapeutics, and of mixing theological doctrines with the scientific methods of applying the latter.
In fact, while many persons have received benefit from Mental Therapeutics administered under the guise and form of religious teaching, I also believe that many more persons have been repelled and kept away from the wonderful benefits of this form of treatment by reason of the strange and queer theological teachings of some of the healers. There is no reason in the world why any person should forsake his or her chosen religionthe faith that has been of such great comfort and consolation to him or her during many years of lifein order to obtain the benefits of the "new" healing methods. Rather do I believe that the best therapeutic methods of this new system may be applied with the best results when the patient is supported by the comforting, assurance of his or her own chosen faith.
Under the guise of mental healing many persons have been induced to forsake the faith of their fathers, and the faith of their youth; too often with the result that they have become like ships without a rudder, drifting and floating backward and forward with every passing current. These people have let go of the old, without getting a firm hold on the new. At the last, all religion may be summed up in three general principles, viz.: (1) Belief in the existence of a Supreme Being or Power, from whom all life proceeds; (2) faith in, and dependence upon, the goodness of that Being or Power in all the affairs and circumstances of daily life; and (3) living the Right Life, in accord with the highest teachings of the best faiths, and in accordance with the dictates of one's own conscience. Having these principles, and living up to them as closely as one can, one is truly religious, no matter what his faith or profession.
So, my students, in these lessons you will not be torn away from the safe anchorage of your religious faith, nor asked to accept some strange and new theology as a precedent to your learning the art and science of healing yourself and others. While, as I have said, all thinking men recognize the presence and being of a Supreme Power, and seek assistance and aid from, and depend upon it accordingly; still we shall find that this Supreme Power has placed within our grasp the means and methods whereby we may study and practice this science, as we would any other science. Mental Therapeutics is neither a religion, nor a theology; it is a scientific system of healing by natural means and methods.
Moreover, although Mind is the great force and power with which cures are made under the system of Mental Therapeutics, we shall not be asked to accept any particular metaphysical theory of "What is Mind?" We do not insist upon teachers of physical science telling us exactly what Matter is! The truth is that they do not know; neither does any one else know. And, likewise, no one knows just what Mind is; nor are they likely to know. Mind, Matter, and Energythese are the three great manifestations of the Supreme Power; and it has pleased that Supreme Power to render them perhaps forever unknown to us in their final nature. The sanest attitude to take toward these mysteries is that of Herbert Spencer, i.e., that Mind, Matter, and Energy are the threefold aspects of the manifestation of that "Infinite and Eternal Power" from which all things proceed; and which, like the Power that has called them into being, is Unknowable at the last.
But, while we do not know "just what Mind is," we most assuredly do know just how it works. Like electricity, the nature of which we do not know either, we have harnessed Mind to do work for us. We have in Mind a wonderful and most potent force or natural energy, and we have learned how to guide, direct, and apply its energies and power in the direction of the healing of physical ills. We have discovered that Mind works as regularly, and as surely, as does electricity. And we know that we may set it to work in special direction, surely and invariably, when we provide the channels for its expression.
As we proceed with these lessons, we shall discover also that not only does Mind prevent and cure diseases, but that it also causes diseases. Fear has slain more human beings than the most malignant fever. Its victims are numbered by the millions. And not only does it kill, but it cripples and incapacitates millions, and renders them miserable and unable to live normal lives and to perform efficient work for themselves and those dependent upon them. Like all other great forces, Mind acts negatively as well as positivelyit harms as well as benefits. Wisdom consists in learning its laws and principles of operation; and thereby learning to prevent its undesirable working, and to encourage, cultivate and direct its beneficent activities.
In these lessons I shall try to bring order out of chaos in mental healing. There has been so much ill-digested teaching on the subject, and so much fanciful and often absurd theorizing, that the intelligent student is often perplexed when he begins the study thereof.
A writer upon this subject, in a recent magazine article, has well said: "Past teaching respecting the influence of the mind upon the body has been clouded and distorted by the errors of superstition, the inaccuracies of ignorance, and the exaggeration of fanatical extremists whose prejudiced observations and reports were more does electricity. And we know that we may set it to work in special direction, surely and invariably, when we provide the channels for its expression.
As we proceed with these lessons, we shall discover also that not only does Mind prevent and cure diseases, but that it also causes diseases. Fear has slain more human beings than the most malignant fever. Its victims are numbered by the millions. And not only does it kill, but it cripples and incapacities millions, and renders them miserable and unable to live normal lives and to perform efficient work for themselves and those dependent upon them. Like all other great forces, Mind acts negatively as well as positivelyit harms as well as benefits. Wisdom consists in learning its law and principles of operation; and thereby learning to prevent its undesirable working, and to encourage, cultivate and direct its beneficent activities.
In these lessons I shall try to bring order out of chaos in mental healing. There has been so much ill-digested teaching on the subject, and so much fanciful and often absurd theorizing, that the intelligent student is often perplexed when he begins the study thereof.
A writer upon this subject, in a recent magazine article, has well said: "Past teaching respecting the influence of the mind upon the body has been clouded and distorted by the errors of superstition, the inaccuracies of ignorance, and the exaggeration of fanatical extremists whose prejudiced observations and reports were more or less colored by commercial motives or sectarian enthusiasm. And so it was no little wonder that teaching mental healing grew into a mass of religious contradictions, unreliable observations, and groundless assertions. It has required much painstaking labor on the part of modern physiologists and psychologists to clear away this accumulation of rubbish and ignorance, and to lay a scientific foundation for a rational system of mental hygiene based upon the known laws of mind and matter."
The student will notice that in these lessons I have not confined myself solely to the psychology of Mental Therapeutics. I have accepted the facts of modern physiology as correct; and have directed the use of the power of the mind along the lines of these physiological facts, One of the great mistakes of unscientific practitioners of mental healing has been the fact that they have refused to accept physiology as existent; but have used the mind in a general hit-or-miss fashion. The scientific practitioner, on the contrary, acquaints himself with the physiology of the normal person, and then bends the mental energies toward restoring this normal state and condition of functioning. By knowing just how the organs of the body function in health, the practitioner is better able to picture in the mind of the patient (and in his own mind) exactly what conditions are desired to be created. As the mental picture is the pattern around which Mind creates, it will be seen that the importance of creating the right kind of mental pattern cannot be overestimated. There is a great truth of Mental Therapeutics stated here; and the student will do well to make note of it.
But, while we shall be led into the study of elementary physiology in connection with the psychology of cure, we shall not be bothered with technical scientific terms. Wherever possible these technical terms shall be discarded. When it is impossible to proceed without them we shall explain them in simple terms, so that any person of average intelligence will be able to understand them. True knowledge does not consist of a parrot-like memorizing or repetition of long words, or foreign terms; rather does it consist of an understanding of the real meaning of the things described; particularly as regards the question of “how they work.”
