A Teacher
Grenville Kleiser
Building mental power by daily disciplined self-culture exercises
The transmission
Grenville Kleiser (1868–1953) was a Canadian-born American author and instructor who wrote a long shelf of inspirational and self-development guides, many on oratory and effective speech.
He taught public speaking at Yale Divinity School before becoming a full-time author, and his books — issued largely by Funk & Wagnalls — were staples of the early-twentieth-century self-culture and mind-power market.
His 1917 volume How to Build Mental Power (Funk & Wagnalls) is a large compendium of lessons and exercises for developing concentration, ordering one’s thoughts, forming sound opinions, and strengthening imagination, memory, and will.
Kleiser’s animating idea is that the mind, like a muscle, grows with deliberate, repeated exercise: brief daily drills in concentration, attention, memory, and willpower, practised consistently and tracked over time, steadily build mental capacity.
This “mental gymnastics” framing — self-improvement as disciplined daily practice rather than sudden insight — places Kleiser in the practical, self-culture wing adjacent to New Thought.
What they gave
Mind-as-muscle framing: popularised the idea that mental faculties grow through deliberate daily exercise.
- Concrete drills: supplied brief, repeatable exercises for concentration, will, memory, and imagination.
- Self-culture compendium: How to Build Mental Power (1917) gathered mind-training practice into one practical manual.
- Habit and progress emphasis: stressed consistent daily practice and incremental gain over one-off effort.
In their words
Concentration will rapidly build your mental power. It is vital to large mental growth and personal advancement.
Lofty thoughts, high ideals, and worthy ambitions stimulate and inspire the mind, and thence react upon the body imparting to it purity, sweetness, soundness, and vigor.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: the self-culture movement, New Thought’s mental-discipline current, and public-speaking pedagogy. Influenced: later self-improvement drill literature; concentration and memory-training programmes.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- How to Build Mental Power1921
- How to Speak in Public1906
- Talks on Talking1916