Cause and Effect in Human Conduct - James Allen

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1:02Dive into a new language and discover a new world. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a Big Mac, McNuggets, or sausage egg, and cheese, McGrittles, make it a meal, and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite, too. Extra-value meals are back. It's a big something extra. With a Big Mac or 10-piece McNuggets, fries, and a medium coke, all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Causing effect in human conduct. It is an axiom with the scientists that every effect is related to a cause. Apply this to the realm of human conduct, and there is revealed the principle of justice. Every scientist knows, and all men believe, that perfect harmony prevails throughout every portion of the physical universe, from the speck of dust to the greatest sun.

2:04Everywhere there is exquisite adjustment. In the Ciderial Universe, with its millions of suns rolling majestically through space, and carrying with them their respective systems of revolving planets, its vast nebula, its sea of meteors, and its vast army of comets, traveling through a limitable space with inconceivable velocity, perfect order prevails, and again, in the natural world, with its multitudinous aspects of life, and its infinite variety of forms. There are the clearly defined limits of specific laws, through the operation of which all confusion is avoided, and unity and harmony eternally obtain. If this universal harmony could be arbitrarily broken, even in one small particular, the universe would cease to be. There could be no cosmos, but only universal chaos. Nor can it be possible in such a universe of law that there should exist any personal

3:08power which is above, outside, and superior to, such law in the sense that it can defy it, or set it aside. For whatsoever beings exist, whether they be men or gods, they exist by virtue of such law, and the highest, best, and wiseest among all beings, would manifest his greater wisdom by his complete obedience to that law, which is wiser than wisdom, and then which nothing more perfect could be devised. All things whether visible or invisible are subservient to, and fall within the scope of, this infinite eternal law of causation. As all things seen obey it, so all things unseen, the thoughts and deeds of men, whether secret or open, cannot escape it. Do right, it recomseth. Do wrong, the equal retribution must be made.

4:09Perfect justice upholds the universe. Perfect justice regulates human life and conduct. All the varying conditions of life, as they obtain in the world today, are the result of this law reacting on human conduct. Man can, and does, choose what causes he shall set in operation, but he cannot change the nature of effects. He can decide what thoughts he shall think, and what deeds he shall do, but he has no power over the results of those thoughts and deeds. These are regulated by the overruling law. Man has all power to act, but his power ends with the act committed. The result of the act cannot be altered, annulled, or escaped. It is irrevocable. All thoughts and deeds produce conditions of suffering. Good thoughts and deeds determine conditions of blessedness. Thus man's power is limited to, and his blessedness or misery is determined by, his own

5:12conduct. To know this truth, renders life simple, plain, and unmistakable. All the crooked paths are straightened out. The heights of wisdom are revealed. In the open door to salvation from evil and suffering is perceived and entered. Life may be likened to a sum in arithmetic. It is bewilderingly difficult and complex to the pupil who has not yet grafts the key to its correct solution. But once this is perceived and laid hold of, it becomes as astonishingly simple as it was formally profoundly perplexing. Some idea of this relative simplicity and complexity of life may be grasped by fully recognizing and realizing the fact that, while there are scores and perhaps hundreds of ways in which a sum may be done wrong, there is only one way by which it can be done right. And that when that right way is found, the pupil knows it to be the right, his perplexity

6:15vanishes, and he knows that he has mastered the problem. It is true that the pupil, while doing his sum incorrectly, may and frequently does, think he has done it correctly, but he is not sure. His perplexity is still there. And if he is an earnest and apt pupil, he will recognize his own error when it is pointed out by the teacher. So in life, men may think they are living rightly, while they are continuing through ignorance to live wrongly. But the presence of doubt, perplexity and unhappiness, are sure in clinicians that the right way has not yet been found. There are foolish and careless pupils who would like to pass a sum is correct, before they have acquired a true knowledge of figures, but the eye and skill of the teacher quickly detect and expose the fallacy. So in life there can be no falsifying of results.

7:15The eye of the great law reveals and exposes. Twice five will make ten to all eternity, and no amount of ignorance, stupidity, or delusion, can bring the result up to eleven. If one looks superficially at a piece of cloth, he sees it as a piece of cloth. But if he goes further and acquires into its manufacture, and examines it closely and attentively, he sees that it is composed of a combination of individual threads, and that, while all the threads are interdependent, each thread pursues its own way throughout, never becoming confused with its sister thread. It is this entire absence of confusion between the particular threads, which constitutes the finished work a piece of cloth. Any and harmonious commingling of the thread would result in a bundle of waste or useless rag. Life is like a piece of cloth, and the threads of which it is composed are individual

8:17lives. The threads, while being interdependent, are not confounded one with the other. Each follows its own course. Each individual suffers and enjoys the consequences of his own deeds, and not the deeds of another. The course of each is simple and definite. The whole forming, a complicated, yet harmonious, combination of sequences. There are action and reaction, deed and consequence, cause and effect. And the counterbalancing reaction, consequence and effect, is always in exact ratio with the initiatory impulse. A durable and satisfactory piece of cloth cannot be made from shoddy material, and the threads of selfish thoughts and bad deeds will not produce a useful and beautiful life. A life that will wear well, and bear close inspection. Each man makes or mars his own life. It is not made or marred by his neighbor, or by anything external to himself.

9:22Each thought he thinks, each deed he does, is another thread, shoddy or genuine, woven into the garment of his life. And as he makes the garment, so he must wear it. He is not responsible for his neighbor's deeds. He is not the custodian of his neighbor's actions. He is responsible only for his own deeds. He is the custodian of his own actions. The problem of evil subsists in a man's own evil deeds, and it is solved when those deeds are purified. Says Rousseau. Man, seek no longer the origin of evil. Thou thyself art its origin. A fact can never be divorced from cause. It can never be of a different nature from cause. Emerson says, justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts the balance in all parts of life. And there is a profound sense in which cause and effect are simultaneous, and form one

10:27perfect whole. Thus upon the instant that a man thinks, say a cruel thought, or does a cruel deed, that same instant he has injured his own mind. He is not the same man he was the previous instant. He is a little vile and a little more unhappy. And a number of such successive thoughts and deeds would produce a cruel and wretched man. The same thing applies to the contrary, the thinking of a kind thought, or doing a kind deed. An immediate nobility and happiness attend it. The man is better than he was before, and a number of such deeds would produce a great and blissful soul. Thus individual human conduct determines, by the faultless law of cause and effect, individual merit or de-marit, individual greatness or meanness, individual howard. Happiness or wretchedness. What a man thinks that he does, what he does, that he is.

11:32If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless or wretched, let him look to himself. For there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.