[
  {
    "kind": "header",
    "added": true,
    "text": "Chapter Two. We Meet the Man."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "I knew by the cut of the Van Dyke beard that I was talking to an artist. I could tell by the broad brow and profound depth in his eyes that I was talking to a philosopher. His efficient, vital way of speaking revealed in him a man of action. There was, besides, a light in his eye that showed that he was capable of great inspirations—that he lived close to the Great Unseen Powers of the Universe."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "It was not long afterwards that I found my way to his studio in Carnegie Hall. Here is where he lived and worked. The studio itself was large and positively alive with statuary and paintings that had come from his hand. There was a lifelike bust of Thomas Edison, which was the first piece of sculpture Mr. Russell had ever done. Further on were two busts of Franklin Roosevelt, one made before and one after Pearl Harbor. The latter had been just recently unveiled in Hyde Park, and replicas of it sent to every member of President Roosevelt's last Cabinet. Scores of famous men such as Victor Herbert, Thomas Edison. Hudson Maxim, John Philip Sousa, Sir Thomas Lipton, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Mark Twain, Dan Beard. General Douglas MacArthur, and Colin Kelly looked down upon us with clear, understanding eyes. I have never known of a sculptor who could make eyes as expressive as does Walter Russell."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Most sculptors make the mistake,\" he said, \"of thinking of eyes as form, and they therefore make them as spherical surfaces. Eyes are not forms: they are transparent, and what one really sees is the light of the soul in them—and that is what I try to give them. Until a sculptor is able to see the soul through the eyes, his portrait is merely a portrait of flesh and blood.\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "My attention was quickly absorbed by his two masterpieces: the Mark Twain Memorial, with Mark Twain seated in the center and the characters from his books standing around him; and the Four Freedoms, which he had created at President Roosevelt's request. with the hope that it would eventually be placed in Potomac Park in Washington where the Navy Hospital now stands."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "On the table lay a scrapbook containing scores of newspaper and magazine clippings describing the scientific discoveries he had made. Another scrapbook contained his clippings of the $20 million dollars worth of buildings he had planned and built. Nearby was a beautiful, hand-bound book of autographs of famous visitors to his studio. such as Caruso, Ysaye, Elbert Hubbard, Paderewski, Gabrilowitsch, Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Harding Davis, King Albert of Belgium, and hundreds of others."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "In three bound volumes were cellophane-protected letters from the great of the world, such as Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw, the Duke of Bedford, Cordell Hull. Jesse Jones, Thomas Edison, Michael Pupin, Robert Millikan, Charles Kettering, Lee de Forest, and hundreds of statesmen, authors, scientists, and geniuses in all the arts. Walter Russell has been told that one letter from Rudyard Kipling, congratulating him on his Mark Twain Memorial, was the last letter he had ever written."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "In a locked case were contained the manuscripts of a massive masterpiece of philosophy which he is completing for New Age thinking and practice in all human relations, and a still greater work on the science of the future, to be called This Light-Wave Universe [published in 1947 as The Secret of Light]. Both of these volumes will be ready late in 1946. He has been working upon them for twenty-Five years, releasing bits of them occasionally, to the consternation of the entire scientific world."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Why have you set 1946 as the date of their publication?\" I asked. \"And why has it taken so long to write them?\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"The world has not been prepared to accept or even comprehend the new cosmology until now,\" he answered, \"nor has it been willing or ready to accept the New Age philosophy. The world needed to suffer in order to understand the simplest of universal principles, the unity of man with man and with God. The world of men had to reap the harvest of its seeds of hate, selfishness, and greed it had been sowing for centuries. It had to reap this harvest in order to learn at universal law is inevitable and inescapable."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"The lime element was not set by me, but by the Source from Whom I gain my knowledge and receive my most detailed and explicit instructions. That date was written down by me in May of 1921, at which time I was fully informed of the world carnage which was to take place during the interim as the harvest of the seeds of greed and selfishness which the world had been sowing.\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "There was tremendous modesty in the man as he spoke, a quietness and dignity. There was a simplicity and honesty and unselfconsciousness. and a tremendous peace. I could see at once that if I could find the secret of his power, I would have something to give to the world that would be priceless."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "When we had seated ourselves in the midst of his pictures and statues, I turned to him."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Can you give me the secret of your life?\" I asked."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "He hesitated, then replied."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Yes. I believe sincerely that every man has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity. I believe that mediocrity is self-inflicted and that genius is self bestowed. Every successful man I ever have known, and I have known a great many, carries with him the key which unlocks that awareness and lets in the universal power that has made him into a master.\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"What is that key?\" I asked."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"That key is desire when it is released into the great eternal Energy of the universe.\" \"Can you explain more fully what you mean by that?\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"I have found out that the real essentials of greatness in men are not written in books, nor can they be found in the schools. They are written into the inner consciousness of everyone who intensely searches for perfection in creative achievement and are understandable to such men only."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue, and the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "Geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other than that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our limes as Edison, Henry Ford. or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them.\""
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "Walter Russell has proven this in his own life. His record of production would reveal a versatility, quality, and volume which would be creditable as the life's work of at least five men, and this equally applies to the sports and fun of life as to its work. He claims he has never known fatigue while obeying the law, but when he does break it he feels a sense of guilt in discovering the slightest evidence of fatigue which tells him that he has broken it."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Do you mean to say you never get tired?\" I queried."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"What is it that gets tired?\" he asked. \"Can energy tire or become fatigued? Certainly not, for all energy is the thought-energy of the universal Creative Force, and that never lessens. The Universal Intelligence is constant and forever balanced."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Can Intelligence fatigue? Most certainly not, for that is as con-slant as the universal energy which manifests it. Therefore, there is no such thing as the mind becoming tired."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"What is it then, that makes us say we are tired? Only one thing: an unbalanced body, nothing more. If we think we are tired or ill, it is only because we have done something to unbalance the bodily conductivity of the universal electric current which motivates it. So long as any machine, organic or inorganic, holds to the balanced tempo of its own normalcy of measured rhythm, just so long as it obeys the periodic law which gives it a normalcy of work and rest in the inorganic machine, or wakefulness and sleep in the organic one, and just so long as it replaces its worn-out organic or inorganic parts, that machine is as certain to go through its normal balanced life period without fatigue or illness as the sun is sure to reappear on the morrow."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"Joy and happiness are the indicators of balance in a human machine, just as a change in the familiar hum in a mechanism immediately indicates an abnormalcy to the practiced ear of the mechanic. An inner joyousness, amounting to ecstasy, is the normal condition of the genius mind. Any lack of that joyousness develops body-destroying toxins. That inner ecstasy of the mind is the secret fountain of perpetual youth and strength in any man. He who finds it finds omnipotence and omniscience."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"The electric energy which motivates us is not within our bodies at all. It is a part of the universal supply which flows through us from the Universal Source with an intensity set by our desires and our will."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"The greatest part of the energy which we have stored for the use of our precious day is often gone before ten o'clock in the morning. Not so with geniuses and successful men. They know how to work without waste of energy. In order to gel the best that is within themselves, they learn to eliminate from their thoughts and actions everything which subtracts from their purposes. These lessons come to all of us, but with a big majority they go in one ear and out the other. The great man, however, learns that every event and experience of his life affects every other event and experience he encounters. He learns not to attribute a failure or success of this moment upon this moment alone, but to all moments of his life."
  },
  {
    "kind": "author",
    "added": false,
    "text": "\"I therefore say to you that tiredness and fatigue are effects caused by ignorance of Nature and disobedience to her inexorable law. You may command Nature to the extent only in which you are willing to obey her. You cannot intelligently obey that which you do not comprehend. Therefore I also say. ask of Nature that you may be one with her, and she will whisper her secrets to you to the extent to which you are prepared to listen. Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her.\""
  }
]