Title page from Keeping Fit.
Published in 1914, Orison Swett Marden’s Keeping Fit is a part-handbook, part-sermon, and part-“to do” list.
Marden himself was a leading exponent of “New Thought” in the late 19th and early 20th century. “New Thought” believers argued that thought had a direct influence on life: if you thought you were happy, successful, and well-liked, the odds were in favor of all three of those things being true. “New Thought” also had some similarity with Christian Science insofar as the philosophy held that sickness was a matter of wrong thinking and bodily infirmity could be cured with proper mental effort. Continue reading