1847–1916 — The lineage's systematic thinker
Troward is the one member of this lineage who argues rather than instructs. He spent twenty-five years as a judge in British India, retired, and then set out to give the mental-science claims of his day something like a logical structure.
Troward was born in India to British parents, educated in England, and returned to India in the civil service, rising to Divisional Judge in the Punjab. He held the post until retiring to England in 1902 at fifty-five.
Retirement is where his writing life begins. In 1904 he delivered the Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science; in 1909, the Doré Lectures at the Doré Gallery in London. Both were transcribed and published, and both are still in print more than a century later.
He painted, he read widely in scripture and in the science of his day, and he wrote like a judge: define the terms, state the principle, test it against objections.
Troward's organising distinction is between two modes of mind. The objective mind reasons in both directions, weighs evidence and chooses. The subjective mind reasons only deductively: it accepts a premise it is given and works out the consequences without ever questioning it.
From that single distinction the rest follows. If the subjective mind cannot argue with what it is handed, then the quality of what you habitually hand it decides the quality of what it builds. Neville's law of assumption is this argument, compressed into an instruction.
Troward is harder going than anyone else in this lineage. The sentences are long and the vocabulary is Edwardian. What you get for the effort is the reasoning behind the instructions everybody else gives you.
If you have ever wanted to know why an assumption is supposed to work rather than simply being told that it does, Troward is the only writer here who attempts an answer.
Begin with the Edinburgh Lectures (1904) and read them in order; the argument is cumulative and the later chapters assume the earlier ones. The Doré Lectures (1909) are warmer and more devotional. The Creative Process in the Individual (1915) is the most developed and the most demanding.
All three are in our Source Archive in full, chapter by chapter, free to read.
The subjective mind is only able to reason deductively and not inductively, while the objective mind can do both.
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, 1904
The subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind.
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, 1904
The objective mind reasons in both directions and can weigh and reject ideas. The subjective mind reasons only deductively: it accepts the premise it is given and works out the consequences. This is why, on Troward's account, a persistently held assumption produces matching conditions.
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (1904), read in order from the first lecture. The argument builds, and the later lectures assume the earlier ones.
Yes. Neville recommended Troward by name in his lectures, and the law of assumption is recognisably Troward's account of the subjective mind stated as a practical instruction.
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