the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but
"Promenades", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you stroll,
you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from
Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads
from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from Japan,
fortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and
"naturopaths" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual
count, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a
pretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion
she calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a
"Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel
tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker
chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe
the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called
"New Thought."
We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth;
Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept;
Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And
then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the
purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore
and magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together
with the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.
As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a
fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is
a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that
we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact
that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and
moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of
the blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the
fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He
has certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is
our business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting
our fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our
sentimentality.
Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we shall
plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it.
Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree
that we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in freight
cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from
a national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the
plaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have
the intelligence to form an effective political party and establish
Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God in
the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the
Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these
agencies of starvation? You do not!
What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady
practitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and
pronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital
Letters and LARGE TYPE: "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, #GOD WILL
PROVIDE.# Bread is coming to you! #Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS
COMING TO YOU!!!"
You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have
never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the
gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest
high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named
Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess Elizabeth
tells you:
I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the
right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.
I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials
and advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity. "Are you in the
success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next tells you "How to enter
the silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of
advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden
Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young
Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called
"Power of Will." And here is another book:
Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success,
can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the
Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake
who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh
the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and
Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.
#"Dollars Want Me"#
I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called "All
Sufficiency in All Things," published by the "Unity School of
Christianity", in Kansas City; it explains that God is God, not merely
of the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.
This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands
ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or
wish, just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same
yesterday, today and forever. Abundant Supply by the
manifestation of the Father within us, from within outward,
is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or
spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.... "Know that
I am God--all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am
Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance."
And here is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called "Mind
Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson
will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the
Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will
tell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you
may pronounce to yourself, to convince yourself that you have #Power#,
that the INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its #MIGHT# is yours. Mr.
Atkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow
Bootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you
notice that his magazine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline the
advertisements of such too-practical practitioners.
Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles, who
tells in one pamphlet "How to Be a Genius", and in another pamphlet
"How to Get What you Want". The thing for you to do is--
Saturate your mentality through and through with the
knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.... Look upon
the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department
store, and make it grow; you can.
And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:
Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling:
I CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible
to me. I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the
Power of Success.
Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of the
capitalist system--a "soda-jerker", a "counter-jumper", a book-keeper
for the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life are one in ten
thousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the price
of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison Brown, who was first a
Unitarian clergyman, and then an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San
Francisco, an Honorary Vice-President of the International New
Nonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker or
counter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by mental machinery. All
calculations of probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have
faith, you can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's,
Macy's, or the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself" is the title of
one of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--
Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your
faith. A doubt cuts the connection.
A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth edition,
bears the thrilling title of "#Dollars Want Me#!" In it Mr. Brown lays
claim to being a pioneer:
I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance
of the thought that each individual has the ability so to
radiate his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to
feel him, love him, seek him, and thus draw at will all
things needed for his unfoldment from the universal supply.
"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers:
Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as
you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They
have no power till you give them power. Make them feel this
through your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance
of your work. They will then come to you to be used.
"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:
Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the
Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and,
in the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait
for the manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.
And our author goes on to hand out packages of these
thought-seeds--"Affirmations" as they are called, in the jargon of the
New Conjuring:
I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.
I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized.
I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.
The Indwelling Power cares for my purse.
I own whatever I desire.
I can afford to use dollars for my happiness.
I always have a good bank account. I actually see it.
My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE.
#Spiritual Financiering#
If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and that of
the non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of the
International New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the
"ticker". "What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks
William Morris Nichols in the publication of the "'Now' Folk", San
Francisco:
Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the
Universe good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you
sure of its being honored?
If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are
on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.
Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of
Spirit? If not, then you should at once open one therewith.
For no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of
spiritual funds with that Bank.
And how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:
Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire.
Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the
way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material
supply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to
be, in freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in
earnest, will do.
I turn over the advertisements of this publication of the "'Now'
Folk". One offers "The Business Side of New Thought." Another offers
"The Books Without an If", with your money back IF you are not
satisfied!
Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. Another quotes
Shakespeare: "Tis the mind that makes the body rich." Another offers
two copies of the "Phrenological Era" for ten cents.
There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot find
dupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice commands:
Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled
"Strands of Gold" or "from Darkness into Light!"
Another announces:
The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of
Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's
Remembrance, the Akashic Records.
And here is an advertisement published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:
Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you
appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want
to be? What would overcome your present and future
difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full
particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your
service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology.
Understanding awaits you.
And looking in the body of the magazine, you find this Philosopher
imparting some of this Understanding. Would you like, for example, to
understand why America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels of
the Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, which are numbered
2951561591, which added make 45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not
at first see what that has to do with the War--until the Philosopher
points out that "9 is the number of completion, indicating the end of
a cosmic cycle." That, of course, explains everything.
And here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead science,
Astrology. It is called "Lucky Hours for Everybody: A True System of
Planetary Hours--by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar." It teaches
you things like this:
Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters
relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the
emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The
lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities,
and to hire servants of both sexes....
A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several
vain attempts to transact important business in the hours
ruled by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she
was nearly always fortunate in what she began in the hours
ruled by Saturn. Upon investigation I found her name was
ruled by the Sun negative, and that she had Capricorn with
Saturn therein as her ascendant at birth, which explains.
And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported in the "Weekly
Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over two-horse
power oil engines which fail to act. "Going a little apart, he came
back in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all right now and will
work satisfactorily.' and without any further difficulty it did." We
are told how Dr. Rawson gave a demonstration of his method to a
newspaper reporter the other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking
into space, he apparently became absorbed in deep contemplation and
said aloud: "There is no danger; man is surrounded by divine love;
there is no matter; all is spirit and manifestation of spirit."
You might at first find difficulty in believing what can be
accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this; not merely are
two-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic
machine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may
recall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons was
taken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here is a
New-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds of our
Nonsense magazines:
London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have
been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with
"charmed lives" are being made every day, according to
Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has
found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He
calls it "audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the
powers of God by right thinking," is the agency through
which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will
not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead
beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of
prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly,
and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began
has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of
the statements of Dr. Rawson....
At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.
Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated
them for an hour before they started, and not a man was
knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in
his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is
spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet
fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the
chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it
never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of
shells and bullets which did not touch him.
#The Graft of Grace#
All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world
of commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science
and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and
Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and
Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the
wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you
must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New
Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church
of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal
communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to
protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in
estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?
The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that
is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which
operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and
healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the
competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to
swindle or to starve.
For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got
along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine
and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been
possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to
influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will
find a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be
dispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over
his meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us,
in the net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money,
and in order to get it he has to impress those who already have
it--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of
parasitism and exploitation.
So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a
martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I
care not how sincere, how passionately proletarian a religious prophet
may be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a
competitive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools,
conducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell
Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi,
John Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.
A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes to
me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women,
with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of
personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact
that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which
science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the
well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome
experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering
with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon
their producing "phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will
not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should
resort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud,
and science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary
power of the subconscious mind?
Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us
about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the
city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my
wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife
recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to
get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is
seeking to communicate with me! The #séance# was a public one, a
gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and
half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a
vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the
room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit
of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery
accent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the
various confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit
of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of a
child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr. Holmes; and
one of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst
into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall
that the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all
the papers a couple of months before!
And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of
America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in
New York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of
Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the
field of mental healing, and of all other "occult" forces and powers,
whether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors,
new moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new
sculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental
and moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself
from economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being
exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing
through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many men I
know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new
quackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness
in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I
know--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and
admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all
mankind and ended by fooling themselves!
In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the
Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere,
self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can
persuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am
mocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.
All that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being
trapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by
exploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world
without end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race,
until justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with
his fellows.
* * * * *
#BOOK SEVEN#
#The Church of the Social Revolution#
They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--
Infidel hordes that believe not in man;
Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,
But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.
They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,
They have buried him deep under steel and stone--
But we come leading the great Crusade
To give our Comrade back to his own.
Waddell.
* * * * *
#Christ and Caesar#
In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are
told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto
him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for
that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If
thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we
know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really
meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with
"temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and
died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three
centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his
proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common,
except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted
catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.