Part II
Introduction to
In the first part of this volume I have endeavoured to explain the general principle which underlies my work. I will now present my proposition from a slightly different angle, as it were, to ensure a clearer view of it, that is, I shall deal with it in the light of its practical application to the acts of everyday life.
I trust I may do something to convince thinking men and women that conscious control is essential to man’s satisfactory progress in civilisation, and that the properly directed use of such control will enable the individual to stand, sit, walk, breathe, digest, and in fact live with the least possible expenditure of vital energy. This will ensure the highest standard of resistance to disease. When this desirable stage of our evolution is reached the cry of physical deterioration may no longer be heard.
I will write out as concisely, as definitely, and as boldly as possible, my claims and my main argument. In a second part I have added some more discursive notes and comments, which I trust will meet the many requests I have received for further light on certain points in my former book.
With the records of my casebooks for over twenty years before me I feel it right to set down my convictions in terms that do not admit of any doubt or uncertainty. My conclusions upon the urgent question of physical decadence have not been formulated in haste. They are deductions from a long series of striking results and observed facts, and, frankly, I consider them so important that I cannot hesitate to deliver my message in a tone which may appear to some to savour of over-confidence. So be it!