IX

It would be unfortunate to emphasize the popular preëminence of

Christian Science at a cost of the neglect of the significance of the

many other forms of "drugless healing," which bid for public favor

by appeal to ignorance and to occult and superstitious instincts.

Some are allied to Christian Science, and like it assimilate their

cult to a religious movement; others are unmistakably the attempts

of charlatans to lure the credulous by noisy advertisements of

newly discovered and scientifically indorsed systems of "psychic

force," or of some personal "ism." For many purposes it would be

unjust to group together such various systems, which in the nature

of things must include sinner and saint, the misguided sincere, the

half-believers who think "there may be something in it," or "that

it is worth a trial," along with scheming quacks and adepts in

commercial fraud. They illustrate the many and various roads traveled

in the search for health, by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the

highways over which medical science pursues its steadfast though it

may be devious course. Among them there is plausible exaggeration and

ignorant perversion and dishonest libel of the relations that bind

together body and mind. Among the several schisms from the "Mother

Church of Christian Science" there is one that claims to be the

"rational phase of the mental healing doctrine," that acknowledges

the reality of disease and the incurability of serious organic

disorders, and resents any connection with the "half-fanatical

personality worship" (of Mrs. Eddy) as quite as foreign to its

tenets as would be the views of the "Free Religious Association" to

the "Pope of Rome." "Divine Healing" exhibits its success in one

notable instance, in the establishment of a school and college, a

bank, a land and investment association, a printing and publishing

office, and sundry divine healing homes; and this prosperity is now

to be extended by the foundation of a city or colony of converts,

who shall be united by the common bond of faith in divine healing

as transmitted in the personal power of their leader. The official

organ of this movement announces that the personification of their

faith "makes her religion a business and conducts herself upon

sound business principles;" their leader publicly boasts of his vast

financial returns. With emphatic protest on the part of each that

he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his system is quite

original and unlike any other, comes the procession of Metaphysical

Healer and Mind-Curist and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and

Astrological Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clairvoyant

and Esoteric Vibrationist and Psychic Scientist and Mesmerist and

Occultist. Some use or abuse the manipulations of hypnotism; others

claim the power to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite

the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibrations, or by some

equally lucid and demonstrable procedure; some advertise magnetic

cups, and positive and negative powders, and absent treatment by

outputs of "psychic force," and countless other imposing devices.

In truth, they form a motley crew, and with their "Colleges of Fine

Forces," and "Psychic Research Companies," offering diplomas and

degrees for a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book,

represent the slums of the occult. An account of their methods is

likely to be of as much interest to the student of fraud as to the

student of opinion.

There can be no doubt that many of these systems have been stimulated

into life or into renewed vigor by the success of Christian Science;

this is particularly noticeable in the introduction of absent

treatment as a plank in their diverse platforms. This ingenious

method of restoring the health of their patients and their own

exchequers appealed to all the band of healing occultists from

Spiritualist to Vibrationist, as easily adaptable to their several

systems. In much the same way Mesmer, more than a hundred years ago,

administered to the practice which had exhausted the capacity of

his personal attention, by magnetizing trees and selling magnetized

water. The absent treatment represents the occult extension movement;

and unencumbered by the hampering restrictions of physical forces,

superior even to wireless telegraphy, carries its influence into the

remotest homes. From ocean to ocean, and from North to South, these

absent healers set apart some hour of the day, when they mentally

convey their healing word to the scattered members of their flock.

On the payment of a small fee you are made acquainted with the

"soul-communion time-table" for your longitude, and may know when

to meet the healing vibrations as they pass by. Others disdain any

such temporal details and assure a cure merely on payment of the

fee; the healer will know sympathetically when and how to transmit

the curative impulses. Poverty and bad habits as well as disease

readily succumb to the magic of the absent treatment. Such an

hysterical edict as this is hardly extreme or unusual: "Join the

Success Circle.... The Centre of that Circle is my omnipotent WORD.

Daily I speak it. Its vibrations radiate more and more powerfully day

by day.... As the sun sends out vibrations ... so my WORD radiates

Success to 10,000 lives as easily as to one."

It is impossible to appreciate fully the extravagances of these

occult healers unless one makes a sufficient sacrifice of time

and patience to read over a considerable sample of the periodical

publications with which American occultism fairly teems. And when

one has accomplished this task he is still at sea to account for

the readers and believers who support these various systems, so

undreamt of in our philosophy. It would really seem that there is

no combination of ideas too absurd to fail entirely of a following.

Carlyle, without special provocation, concluded that there were about

forty million persons in England, mostly fools; what would have been

his comment in the face of this vast and universal array of human

folly! If it be urged in rejoinder that beneath all this rubbish

heap a true jewel lies buried, that the wonderful cures and the

practical success of these various systems indicate their dependence

upon an essential and valuable factor in the cure of disease and the

formation of habits, it is possible with reservation to assent, and

with emphasis to demur. Such success, in so far as it is rightly

reported, exemplifies the truly remarkable function of the mental

factor in the control of normal as of disordered physiological

functions. This truth has been recognized and utilized in unobtrusive

ways for many generations, and within recent years has received

substantial elaboration from carefully conducted experiments and

observations. Specifically, the therapeutic action of suggestion,

both in its more usual forms and as hypnotic suggestion, has shown

to what unexpected extent such action may proceed in susceptible

individuals. The well-informed and capable physician requires no

instruction on this point; his medical education furnishes him with

the means of determining the symptoms of true organic disorder, of

functional derangement, and of the modifications of these under the

more or less unconscious interference of an unfortunate nervous

system. It is quite as human for the physician as for other mortals

to err; and there is doubtless as wide a range among them, as among

other pursuits, of ability, tact, and insight. "But when all is

said and done," the fundamental fact remains that the utilization

of the mental factor in the alleviation of disease will be best

administered by those who are specifically trained in the knowledge

of bodily and of mental symptoms of disease. Such application of an

established scientific principle may prove to be a jewel of worth

in the hands of him who knows how to cut and set it. The difference

between truth and error, between science and superstition, between

what is beneficent to mankind and what is pernicious, frequently lies

in the interpretation and the spirit as much as, or more than, in

the fact. The utilization of mental influences in health and disease

becomes the one or the other according to the wisdom and the truth

and the insight into the real relations of things, that guide its

application. As far removed as chemistry from alchemy, as astronomy

from astrology, as the doctrine of the localization of function

in the brain from phrenology, as hypnotic suggestion from animal

magnetism, are the crude and perverse notions of Christian Scientist

or Metaphysical Healer removed from the rational application of the

influence of the mind over the body.

X

The growth and development of the occult presents an interesting

problem in the psychology of belief. The motives that induce the

will to believe in the several doctrines that have been passed

in review are certainly not more easy to detect and to describe

than would be the case in reference to the many other general

problems--philosophical, scientific, religious, social, political,

or educational--on which the right to an opinion is accepted as an

inalienable heritage of humanity or at least of democracy. Professor

James tells us that often "our faith is faith in some one else's

faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case." Certainly

the waves of popularity of one cult and another reflect the potent

influence of contagion in the formation of opinion and the guidance

of conduct. When we look upon the popular delusions of the past

through the achromatic glasses which historical remoteness from

present conditions enables us to adjust to our eyes, we marvel that

good and great men could have been so grossly misled, that obvious

relations and fallacies could have been so stupidly overlooked,

that worthless and prejudiced evidence could have been accepted as

sound and significant. But the opinions to which we incline are all

colored o'er with the deep tinge of emotional reality, which is the

living expression of our interest in them or our inclination toward

them. What they require is a more vigorous infusion of the pale cast

of thought; for the problem of the occult and the temptations to

belief which it holds out are such as can be met only by a sturdy

application of a critical logic. Only as logical thoroughness comes

to prevail over superficial plausibility, as beliefs come to be

formed and evidence estimated according to their intrinsic value

rather than according to their emotional acceptability, will the

propagandum of the occult meet with greater resistance and aversion.

The fixation of belief proceeds under the influence both of general

and of special forces; the formation of a belief is at once a

personal and a social reaction--a reaction to the evidence which

recorded and personal experiences present, and to the current beliefs

of our environment. To an equal extent is the reaction determined

by the temperament of the reagent. And although the resulting

individual beliefs, however complex, are not matters of chance nor

are their causes altogether past finding out, yet some of their

contributing factors are so vague and so inaccessible that they

are most profitably considered as specific results of more or less

clearly discerned general principles; and in many respects there is

more valid interest in the general principles than in the particular

results. It is interesting, and it may be profitable, to investigate

why this area is wooded with oak and that with maple, but it is

somewhat idle to speculate why this particular tree happens to be

a maple rather than an oak, even if it chances to stand on our own

property, and to have an interest to us beyond all other trees.

Among the more tangible tendencies that in various ways lead to the

occult there is distinguishable what may be termed the intensely

personal temperament,--the mental attitude that absorbs knowledge

only when dissolved in an all-pervading personal medium; the attitude

that finds a paramount significance in the personal interpretation

of experiences, and reacts to massive and extensive generalizations

most vaguely and impotently; the attitude that offers a weak and

verbal assent to scientific principles and to the realities of

nature, but inwardly cherishes an intense belief in the personal

purport of the order of events, and earnestly seeks for a precise

explanation of individual happenings. "The chronic belief of

mankind," says Professor James, "that events may happen for the

sake of their personal significance is an abomination." It is this

chronic mental habit that broods upon the problem of subjective

experiences, and is ready to recognize in signs and omens the guiding

principle of rationality; not that this is always done designedly and

superstitiously, but the underlying bent obscures the consideration

of experience in any other than a personal light, and obstructs that

illumination of the concrete by the generic, which constitutes an

indispensable factor in the growth of wholesome thought. The victim

of this unfortunate habit will remain logically unfit to survive the

struggle against the occult. Only in so far as he succeeds in getting

away from his personal perspective will he be able to appreciate

the true status of the problem which enlists his interest. Above

all is it necessary to subordinate explicit individual explanations

to the general illumination of well-established principles. It may

be interesting to note that the partaking of mince-pie at evening

induces bad dreams, but it is hardly profitable to speculate deeply

why my dream took the form of a leering demon with the impolite habit

of squatting on my chest. The stuff that dreams are made of is not

susceptible of that type of analysis. The most generous allowance

must be made for coincidences and irrelevancies, and it must be

constantly remembered that the obscure phenomena of psychology,

and, indeed, the phenomena of more thoroughly established and

intrinsically more definite sciences, cannot be expected to pass

the test of detailed and concrete combinations of circumstances. In

other classes of knowledge the temptation to demand such explicit

explanations of observations and experiences is not so strong,

because of the absence of an equally strong personal interest; but

clearly this does not affect the logical status of the problem.

The reply to this argument I can readily anticipate; and I confess

that my admiration of Hamlet is somewhat dulled by reason of that

ill-advised remark to Horatio about there being more things in heaven

and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The occultist

always seizes upon that citation to refute the scientist. He prints

it as his motto on his books and journals, and regards it as a slow

poison that will in time effect the destruction of the rabble of

scientists, and reveal the truth of his own Psycho-Harmonic Science

or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one thing to be open-minded, and to

realize the incompleteness of scientific knowledge, and to appreciate

how often what was ignored by one generation has become the science

of the next; and it is a very different thing to be impressed with

coincidences and dreams and premonitions, and to regard them as

giving the keynote to the conceptions of nature and reality, and

to look upon science as a misdirected effort. Such differences of

attitude depend frequently upon a difference of temperament as well

as upon intellectual discernment. The man or the woman who flies to

the things not dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not

understand the things which our philosophy very creditably explains.

The two types of mind are different, and, as Professor James

expresses it, "the scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical

mind shy from each other's facts just as they fly from each other's

temper and spirit."

Certain special influences combine with these fundamental differences

of attitude to favor the spread of belief in the occult; and of these

the character of the beliefs as of the believers furnishes some

evidence. At various stages of the discussion I have referred to

the deceptive nature of the argument by analogy; to the dominating

sympathy with a conclusion, and the resulting assimilation and

overestimation of apparent evidence in its favor; to the frequent

failure to understand that the formation of valid opinion and the

interpretation of evidence in any field of inquiry require somewhat

of expert training and special aptitude, obviously so in technical

matters, but only moderately less so in matters misleadingly

regarded as general; to bias and superstition, to the weakness

that bends easily to the influences of contagion, to unfortunate

educational limitations and perversions, and, not the least, to a

defective grounding in the nature of scientific fact and proof.

The mystery attaching to the behavior of the magnet led Mesmer

to call his curative influence "animal magnetism,"--a conception

that still prevails among latter-day occultists. The principle of

sympathetic vibration, in obedience to which a tuning-fork takes up

the vibrations of another in unison with it, is violently transferred

to imaginary brain vibrations and to still more imaginary telepathic

currents. The X-ray and wireless telegraphy are certain to be

utilized in corroboration of unproven modes of mental action, and

will be regarded as furnishing the key to clairvoyance and rapport;

just as well-known electrical phenomena have given rise to the

notions of positive and negative temperaments and mediumistic polar

attraction and repulsion. All this results from the unwarranted

and absurd application of analogies; for analogies, even when

appropriate, are little more than suggestive or corroborative of

relations or conceptions which owe their main support to other and

more sturdy evidence. Analogy under careful supervision may make a

useful apprentice, but endless havoc results when the servant plays

the part of the master.

No better illustrations could be desired of the effects of mental

prepossession and the resulting distortion of evidence and of logical

insight than those afforded by the career of Spiritualism and that

of Christian Science. In both these movements the assimilation

of a religious trend has been of inestimable importance to their

dissemination. Surely it is not merely or mainly the evidences

obtainable in the séance chamber, nor the irresistible accumulation

of cures by argument and thought-healings, that account for the

organized gatherings of Spiritualists and the costly temples and

thriving congregations of Christ Scientist. It is the presentation

of a practical doctrine of immortality and of the spiritual nature

of disease in conjunction with an accepted religious system, that

is responsible for these vast results. The "Key to the Scriptures"

has immeasurably reinforced the "Science and Health," and brought

believers to a new form of Christianity who never would have

been converted to a new system of medicine presented on purely

intellectual grounds. Rationality is doubtless a characteristic

tendency of humanity, but logicality is an acquired possession,

and one by no means firmly established in the race at large. So

long as we are reproved by the discipline of nature, and that

rather promptly, we tend to act in accordance with the established

relations of things; that is rationality. But the recognition of

the more remote connections between antecedent and consequent, and

the development of habits of thought which shall lead to reliable

conclusions in complex situations; and again, the ability to

distinguish between the plausible and the true, the firmness to

support principle in the face of paradox and seeming nonconformity,

to think clearly and consistently in the absence of the practical

reproof of nature--that is logicality. It is only as the result

of a prolonged and conscientious training, aided by an extensive

experience and by a knowledge of the historical experience of the

race, that the inherent rational tendencies develop into established

logical habits and principles of belief. For many this development

remains stunted or arrested; and they continue as children of a

larger growth, leaning much on others, rarely venturing abroad alone,

and wisely confining their excursions to familiar ground. When they

become possessed with the desire to travel among other cultures,

their lack of appreciation of the sights which their journeys bring

before them gives to their reports the same degree of reliability and

value as attaches to the much ridiculed comments of the philistine

_nouveaux riches_.

The survey of the modern occult makes it seem quite utopian to look

forward to the day when the occult shall have disappeared, and the

lion and the lamb shall feed and grow strong on the same nourishment.

Doubtless new forms and phases of the occult will arise to take

the place of the old as their popularity declines; and the world

will be the more interesting and more characteristically a human

dwelling-place for containing all sorts and conditions of minds. None

the less, it is the plain duty and privilege of each generation to

utilize every opportunity to dispel error and superstition, and to

oppose the dissemination of irrational beliefs. It is particularly

the obligation of the torch-bearers of science to illuminate the

path of progress, and to transmit the light to their successors with

undiminished power and brilliancy; the flame must burn both as a

beacon-light to guide the wayfarer along the highways of advance, and

as a warning against the will-o'-the-wisps that shine seductively in

the by-ways. The safest and most efficient antidote to the spread

of the pernicious tendencies inherent in the occult lies in the

cultivation of a wholesome and whole-souled interest in the genuine

and profitable problems of nature and of life, and in the cultivation

with it of a steadfast adherence to common sense, that results in

a right perspective of the significance and value of things. These

qualities, fortunately for our forefathers, were not reserved to

be the exclusive prerogative of the modern; and, fortunately for

posterity, are likely to remain characteristic of the scientific and

antagonistic to the occult.