“Thoughts Are Things”
New Thought's lost pioneer Prentice Mulford was a metaphysical troubadour who suffered a tragic struggle
The modern writer who most decisively advocated the health-and-wealth-attracting powers of the mind is an American journalist, essayist, and mystic troubadour whose legacy—while woven between the lines of motivational literature—has faded like pencil on a water-logged page: whaler, miner, prospector, and journalist Prentice Mulford (1834–1891).
Mulford’s work forged the transition of New Thought—an umbrella term for America’s positive-mind philosophies—from a predominantly health-based outlook, once called “mind cure,” into an all-purpose metaphysical system for happiness and success.
Without his influence, terms like manifest, Law of Attraction, and thoughts are things might be unfamiliar today.
Mulford’s tracts of the late 1880s and early 1890s mark the vital moment when New Thought’s abstruse, Victorian-era tone fell away. From his writing emerged a modern and appealing vernacular, which won a vastly expanded, enduring audience for mind-power metaphysics—though not necessarily for the forgotten author himself.
In many respects, Mulford was the most influential—and borrowed-from—of all early self-improvement writers. His life journey proved an exercise in repeat self-transformation—and, toward its end, the pioneering seeker struggled to live by the principles he popularized.
He may have lost his life to that struggle.
