As a Man Thinketh (1902)

Allen, James. As a Man Thinketh. Chartwell Books, 2015.

Over a century before David Foster Wallace said the same thing (albeit in a much more contemporary way) to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College, James Allen produced a veritable antecedent in As a Man Thinketh. The short treatise is based on Proverb 23:7: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...." And in between the writing of the proverb and Allen, Hamlet uttered the words "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...." The common stance is that it is the mind that is primarily responsible for our character, our perception, and ultimately our experience in this life. Allen's is a mind-over-matter philosophy wherein our very thoughts are the seeds of every act of man. We don't understand how powerful our thoughts are. They extend way beyond mere noetic activity. "Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance." Like other aphoristic prose stylists such as Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne, James Allen has achieved a crafted piece of wisdom literature whose every sentence is instantly quotable. Toward the end of the piece, he extends the proverb: "As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains." In a culture where we are constantly urged to change our circumstances (which usually means an endless procession of quitting), Allen reminds us that we can alter our circumstances by taking control of what we think.