As a Man Thinketh is a New Thought philosophical essay that explores the importance of thought in the outcome of people’s lives. Allen published the text in 1903, amid a spurt of creative energy in which he wrote six works in three years. He titled the text after a quote from the biblical passage Proverbs 23:7, illustrating the connection between New Thought and Christian theology. New Thought, starting in the late 19th century and gaining steam into the early 20th century, led to various notable writings, many of which inspired the contemporary self-help nonfiction genre. As a Man Thinketh is an example of such a text, dedicated to a broad, general audience that encourages people to harness the power of their minds to improve their lives.

The world in which Allen wrote As a Man Thinketh influenced his construction of the text. In the early 20th century, roughly 30% of the British population lived in poverty (Thane, Patricia. “How Poverty in Modern Britain Echoes the Past.” The British Academy, 2019). People lived without hope, trapped while working jobs that underpaid them and financially exploited them. Allen knew this personally, as he worked for nine years in a factory to support his family after his father’s death. However, he never gave up his intellectual pursuits and the realm of thought. As a Man Thinketh thus provides a metaphysical roadmap to Allen’s own success. He credited New Thought and his engagement with philosophical ideas for his elevation from factory worker to lauded academic and author, and his seminal work explores the various facets of how thought impacts life.

The essay contains seven sections. The first, titled “Thought and Character,” introduces Allen’s central claim and the aphorism that inspires the book’s title, the King James Version Bible passage, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” (7). Allen believes that people’s thoughts dictate their actions and their characters. Whatever a person thinks, they inevitably become. Thoughts, positive or negative, turn into personalities, positive or negative. Allen opens the section with a simile, comparing thoughts to seeds and actions to plants. He makes his argument more understandable to readers through the use of simile, connecting his intellectual ideas to examples from the physical world that readers would be familiar with: People can clearly visualize their thoughts blossoming into actions like the flowers in springtime. In addition, he includes a quotation from the Dhammapada, a foundational Buddhist text, that further supports his point by stating that “in purity of thought, joy follows,” meaning that people who think happy, virtuous thoughts become happy, virtuous people (8). This section introduces The Formative Power of Thought as a theme by establishing the concepts integral to the text’s central premise. Allen’s argument in this section is relatively simple: To be a good person, think good thoughts.

The second section, “Effect of Thought on Circumstances,” is the longest and most in-depth. Allen evaluates the cause of people’s life conditions, connecting the outer world’s tangible realities to the inner world of the mind. He again uses the simile of a garden, complicating the imagery by distinguishing between good thoughts, which produce flowers and fruits, and bad thoughts, which produce weeds. The gardening simile weaves throughout the text, and Allen frequently uses lush language connected to the natural world, adding a lyrical quality to his argument and a Transcendentalist, poetic tone. For example, he writes, “As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss” (14). More simply put, a person makes the decisions that impact their life, and both pain and pleasure offer lessons. This section introduces Self-Actualization Through Habit, Self-Discipline, and Personal Responsibility as a theme. A lengthy paragraph describes the importance of practicing positive thinking to “crystallize” good thoughts into positive “habits” (22-23). Habits, Allen argues, create the circumstances around a person, so good habits lead to good outcomes. Allen ends the section with a poem he wrote, which romantically highlights the power of “human Will” over the “tyrant Circumstance” (24-25). Capitalization elevates the concepts of simple nouns like “will” and “circumstance” into crucial, abstract ideas beyond their conventional definitions; “Circumstance” comes to mean all the forces of the world that conspire against a person, while “Will” implies the indomitable spirit and freedom of choice within each human being.

In the third section, “Effect of Thought on Health and the Body,” Allen details the impact of thought on bodily health, connecting his argument to Phineas Quimby’s theories on healing. Allen asserts that health originates in the mind, explaining that even if people change their physical bodies, they must change their thoughts to improve their health: “Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food” (27). Allen encourages readers to consider the root of their health issues, attributing ill health to thoughts instead of bodily ailments, which illustrates his connection to the New Thought movement’s mesmeric origins.

Allen moves on in the next three sections to examining purpose and achievement, two concepts that he braids together as crucial elements of creating a positive, virtuous, and focused life. The Importance of Vision in Making a Meaningful Life emerges as a theme in these sections. The fourth, “Thought and Purpose,” explains Allen’s belief that one must identify a central purpose in life, as this helps one develop inner strength. Allen defines purpose broadly, as either “a spiritual ideal” or “a worldly object” (30). He encourages readers to avoid aimlessness by choosing something to dedicate their life to and thereby avoid “weakness,” a word he repeats eight times in the brief section, highlighting its importance. Allen uses “strong” or “strength” a matching eight times, which illustrates the parallelism that runs throughout the text, helps establish the connection among Allen’s ideas, and emphasizes the importance of purpose.

In the fifth section, “The Thought-Factor in Achievement,” Allen again contrasts weakness and strength, this time in the context of selfishness. Achievement, or the fulfillment of purpose, occurs only when one gives up selfish urges. Allen uses parallel structure to craft the last sentence of the section, which elucidates this point: “He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly” (38). The repetitive structure of the sentence construction emphasizes a positive correlation between achievement and sacrifice.

Expanding on the ideas of the two previous sections, the sixth section, “Visions and Ideals,” further explores the relationship between vision and purpose by examining the notions of the Ideal and the Vision. Allen capitalizes both terms throughout the section to emphasize their abstract significance. Vision, he argues, is the dream that a person has that they hope to achieve, while their Ideal is the idealized self they become by fulfilling the Vision. Allen uses a third-person anecdote that describes his own life, his rise from factory worker to academic, depicting his intellectual ascent as his Vision and the person he thus became as his Ideal. This anecdote adds credibility to his argument and further clarifies his exploration of the terms “Vision” and “Ideal.”

The final section, “Serenity,” which alludes to Allen’s study of Buddhism, synthesizes the ideas he explores in the previous sections into a call for readers to seek peace and calmness in their lives. Returning to his use of lush language to describe the effects of serenity, or a life lived in ultimate peace, Allen describes the outcome of a peaceful life as submerged in “the ocean of Truth” and among “the isles of Blessedness” (46). The final paragraph of the text presents a call to action, as Allen promises readers that a peaceful life and their ideal await them if they have the courage to practice both “self-control” and “Right Thought” (46). The entire text works as encouragement to push readers to engage with Allen’s ideas of “Right Thought” by practicing positive thinking and creating positive habits, so the last lines of the book strive to impart a lingering sense of inspiration.