that Nature compels us to sleep at all.
If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not
look to this brother. His contentment with the finite incases him like a
lobster‐shell and shields him from all morbid repining at his distance
from the Infinite. We have in him an excellent example of the optimism
which may be encouraged by popular science.
To my mind a current far more important and interesting religiously than
that which sets in from natural science towards healthy‐mindedness is that
which has recently poured over America and seems to be gathering force
every day,—I am ignorant what foothold it may yet have acquired in Great
Britain,—and to which, for the sake of having a brief designation, I will
give the title of the “Mind‐cure movement.” There are various sects of
this “New Thought,” to use another of the names by which it calls itself;
but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be
neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without
apology, as if it were a simple thing.
It is a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative
and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter
of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory
elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power.
It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature
is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market,
to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers,—a phenomenon never
observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest
insecure beginnings.
One of the doctrinal sources of Mind‐cure is the four Gospels; another is
Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan
idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of “law” and “progress”
and “development”; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of
which I have recently spoken; and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a
strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind‐cure movement is
an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an
intuitive belief in the all‐saving power of healthy‐minded attitudes as
such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a
correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously
precautionary states of mind.(44) Their belief has in a general way been
corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this
experience forms to‐day a mass imposing in amount.
The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have
had their health restored. The moral fruits have been no less remarkable.
The deliberate adoption of a healthy‐minded attitude has proved possible
to many who never supposed they had it in them; regeneration of character
has gone on on an extensive scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to
countless homes. The indirect influence of this has been great. The mind‐
cure principles are beginning so to pervade the air that one catches their
spirit at second‐hand. One hears of the “Gospel of Relaxation,” of the
“Don’t Worry Movement,” of people who repeat to themselves, “Youth,
health, vigor!” when dressing in the morning, as their motto for the day.
Complaints of the weather are getting to be forbidden in many households;
and more and more people are recognizing it to be bad form to speak of
disagreeable sensations, or to make much of the ordinary inconveniences
and ailments of life. These general tonic effects on public opinion would
be good even if the more striking results were non‐existent. But the
latter abound so that we can afford to overlook the innumerable failures
and self‐deceptions that are mixed in with them (for in everything human
failure is a matter of course), and we can also overlook the verbiage of a
good deal of the mind‐cure literature, some of which is so moonstruck with
optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect
finds it almost impossible to read it at all.
The plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been due to
practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of character of the
American people has never been better shown than by the fact that this,
their only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of
life, should be so intimately knit up with concrete therapeutics. To the
importance of mind‐cure the medical and clerical professions in the United
States are beginning, though with much recalcitrancy and protesting, to
open their eyes. It is evidently bound to develop still farther, both
speculatively and practically, and its latest writers are far and away the
ablest of the group.(45) It matters nothing that, just as there are hosts
of persons who cannot pray, so there are greater hosts who cannot by any
possibility be influenced by the mind‐curers’ ideas. For our immediate
purpose, the important point is that so large a number should exist who
_can_ be so influenced. They form a psychic type to be studied with
respect.(46)
To come now to a little closer quarters with their creed. The fundamental
pillar on which it rests is nothing more than the general basis of all
religious experience, the fact that man has a dual nature, and is
connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and a profounder
sphere, in either of which he may learn to live more habitually. The
shallower and lower sphere is that of the fleshly sensations, instincts,
and desires, of egotism, doubt, and the lower personal interests. But
whereas Christian theology has always considered _frowardness_ to be the
essential vice of this part of human nature, the mind‐curers say that the
mark of the beast in it is _fear_; and this is what gives such an entirely
new religious turn to their persuasion.
“Fear,” to quote a writer of the school, “has had its uses in the
evolutionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of
forethought in most animals; but that it should remain any part of
the mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. I
find that the fear element of forethought is not stimulating to
those more civilized persons to whom duty and attraction are the
natural motives, but is weakening and deterrent. As soon as it
becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and should
be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue.
To assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its
expressions, I have coined the word _fearthought_ to stand for the
unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined the word
‘worry’ as _fearthought in contradistinction to forethought_. I
have also defined fearthought as _the self‐imposed or self‐
permitted suggestion of inferiority_, in order to place it where
it really belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and
therefore not respectable things.”(47)
The “misery‐habit,” the “martyr‐habit,” engendered by the prevalent
“fearthought,” get pungent criticism from the mind‐cure writers:—
“Consider for a moment the habits of life into which we are born.
There are certain social conventions or customs and alleged
requirements, there is a theological bias, a general view of the
world. There are conservative ideas in regard to our early
training, our education, marriage, and occupation in life.
Following close upon this, there is a long series of
anticipations, namely, that we shall suffer certain children’s
diseases, diseases of middle life, and of old age; the thought
that we shall grow old, lose our faculties, and again become
childlike; while crowning all is the fear of death. Then there is
a long line of particular fears and trouble‐bearing expectations,
such, for example, as ideas associated with certain articles of
food, the dread of the east wind, the terrors of hot weather, the
aches and pains associated with cold weather, the fear of catching
cold if one sits in a draught, the coming of hay‐fever upon the
14th of August in the middle of the day, and so on through a long
list of fears, dreads, worriments, anxieties, anticipations,
expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly train
of fateful shapes which our fellow‐men, and especially physicians,
are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with
Bradley’s ‘unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.’
“Yet this is not all. This vast array is swelled by innumerable
volunteers from daily life,—the fear of accident, the possibility
of calamity, the loss of property, the chance of robbery, of fire,
or the outbreak of war. And it is not deemed sufficient to fear
for ourselves. When a friend is taken ill, we must forthwith fear
the worst and apprehend death. If one meets with sorrow ...
sympathy means to enter into and increase the suffering.”(48)
“Man,” to quote another writer, “often has fear stamped upon him
before his entrance into the outer world; he is reared in fear;
all his life is passed in bondage to fear of disease and death,
and thus his whole mentality becomes cramped, limited, and
depressed, and his body follows its shrunken pattern and
specification.... Think of the millions of sensitive and
responsive souls among our ancestors who have been under the
dominion of such a perpetual nightmare! Is it not surprising that
health exists at all? Nothing but the boundless divine love,
exuberance, and vitality, constantly poured in, even though
unconsciously to us, could in some degree neutralize such an ocean
of morbidity.”(49)
Although the disciples of the mind‐cure often use Christian terminology,
one sees from such quotations how widely their notion of the fall of man
diverges from that of ordinary Christians.(50)
Their notion of man’s higher nature is hardly less divergent, being
decidedly pantheistic. The spiritual in man appears in the mind‐cure
philosophy as partly conscious, but chiefly subconscious; and through the
subconscious part of it we are already one with the Divine without any
miracle of grace, or abrupt creation of a new inner man. As this view is
variously expressed by different writers, we find in it traces of
Christian mysticism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and of the
modern psychology of the subliminal self. A quotation or two will put us
at the central point of view:—
“The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite
life and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in and
through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back
of all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it
Kindly Light, Providence, the Over‐Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever
term may be most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to
the great central fact itself. God then fills the universe alone,
so that all is from Him and in Him, and there is nothing that is
outside. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We are
partakers of the life of God; and though we differ from Him in
that we are individualized spirits, while He is the Infinite
Spirit, including us, as well as all else beside, yet in essence
the life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and
so are one. They differ not in essence or quality; they differ in
degree.
“The great central fact in human life is the coming into a
conscious vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite
Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. In
just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our
oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine
inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of
the Infinite Life, do we make ourselves channels through which the
Infinite Intelligence and Power can work. In just the degree in
which you realize your oneness with the Infinite Spirit, you will
exchange dis‐ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and
pain for abounding health and strength. To recognize our own
divinity, and our intimate relation to the Universal, is to attach
the belts of our machinery to the powerhouse of the Universe. One
need remain in hell no longer than one chooses to; we can rise to
any heaven we ourselves choose; and when we choose so to rise, all
the higher powers of the Universe combine to help us
heavenward.”(51)
Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete
accounts of experience with the mind‐cure religion. I have many answers
from correspondents—the only difficulty is to choose. The first two whom I
shall quote are my personal friends. One of them, a woman, writing as
follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the Infinite Power,
by which all mind‐cure disciples are inspired.
“The first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or
depression is the _human sense of separateness_ from that Divine
Energy which we call God. The soul which can feel and affirm in
serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nazarene: ‘I and my
Father are one,’ has no further need of healer, or of healing.
This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for
wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine
union. Disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on
this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific
Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how can weariness enter the
consciousness, how illness assail that indomitable spark?
“This possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has been
abundantly proven in my own case; for my earlier life bears a
record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism, with spine and
lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no more impure than they
are to‐day, although my belief in the necessity of illness was
dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in the flesh, I
have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years without a
vacation, and can truthfully assert that I have never known a
moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touch constantly
with excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. For
how can a conscious part of Deity be sick?—since ‘Greater is he
that is _with_ us than all that can strive against us.’ ”
My second correspondent, also a woman, sends me the following statement:—
“Life seemed difficult to me at one time. I was always breaking
down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous
prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of
insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the
digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of
doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed
up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But I never
recovered permanently till this New Thought took possession of me.
“I think that the one thing which impressed me most was learning
the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental
touch (this word is to me very expressive) with that essence of
life which permeates all and which we call God. This is almost
unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves _actually_, that
is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepest
consciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination
from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and
invigoration without. When you do this consciously, realizing that
to turn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence
of God or your divine self, you soon discover the unreality of the
objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which have
engrossed you without.
“I have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude for bodily
health _as such_, because that comes of itself, as an incidental
result, and cannot be found by any special mental act or desire to
have it, beyond that general attitude of mind I have referred to
above. That which we usually make the object of life, those outer
things we are all so wildly seeking, which we so often live and
die for, but which then do not give us peace and happiness, they
should all come of themselves as accessory, and as the mere
outcome or natural result of a far higher life sunk deep in the
bosom of the spirit. This life is the real seeking of the kingdom
of God, the desire for his supremacy in our hearts, so that all
else comes as that which shall be ‘added unto you’—as quite
incidental and as a surprise to us, perhaps; and yet it is the
proof of the reality of the perfect poise in the very centre of
our being.
“When I say that we commonly make the object of our life that
which we should not work for primarily, I mean many things which
the world considers praiseworthy and excellent, such as success in
business, fame as author or artist, physician or lawyer, or renown
in philanthropic undertakings. Such things should be results, not
objects. I would also include pleasures of many kinds which seem
harmless and good at the time, and are pursued because many accept
them—I mean conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in
their various development, these being mostly approved by the
masses, although they may be unreal, and even unhealthy
superfluities.”
Here is another case, more concrete, also that of a woman. I read you
these cases without comment,—they express so many varieties of the state
of mind we are studying.
“I had been a sufferer from my childhood till my fortieth year.
[Details of ill‐health are given which I omit.] I had been in
Vermont several months hoping for good from the change of air, but
steadily growing weaker, when one day during the latter part of
October, while resting in the afternoon, I suddenly heard as it
were these words: ‘You will be healed and do a work you never
dreamed of.’ These words were impressed upon my mind with such
power I said at once that only God could have put them there. I
believed them in spite of myself and of my suffering and weakness,
which continued until Christmas, when I returned to Boston. Within
two days a young friend offered to take me to a mental healer
(this was January 7, 1881). The healer said: ‘There is nothing but
Mind; we are expressions of the One Mind; body is only a mortal
belief; as a man thinketh so is he.’ I could not accept all she
said, but I translated all that was there for _me_ in this way:
‘There is nothing but God; I am created by Him, and am absolutely
dependent upon Him; mind is given me to use; and by just so much
of it as I will put upon the thought of right action in body I
shall be lifted out of bondage to my ignorance and fear and past
experience.’ That day I commenced accordingly to take a little of
every food provided for the family, constantly saying to myself:
‘The Power that created the stomach must take care of what I have
eaten.’ By holding these suggestions through the evening I went to
bed and fell asleep, saying: ‘I am soul, spirit, just one with
God’s Thought of me,’ and slept all night without waking, for the
first time in several years [the distress‐turns had usually
recurred about two o’clock in the night]. I felt the next day like
an escaped prisoner, and believed I had found the secret that
would in time give me perfect health. Within ten days I was able
to eat anything provided for others, and after two weeks I began
to have my own positive mental suggestions of Truth, which were to
me like stepping‐stones. I will note a few of them; they came
about two weeks apart.
“1st. I am Soul, therefore it is well with me.
“2d. I am Soul, therefore I _am_ well.
“3d. A sort of inner vision of myself as a four‐footed beast with
a protuberance on every part of my body where I had suffering,
with my own face, begging me to acknowledge it as myself. I
resolutely fixed my attention on being well, and refused to even
look at my old self in this form.
“4th. Again the vision of the beast far in the background, with
faint voice. Again refusal to acknowledge.
“5th. Once more the vision, but only of my eyes with the longing
look; and again the refusal. Then came the conviction, the inner
consciousness, that I was perfectly well and always had been, for
I was Soul, an expression of God’s Perfect Thought. That was to me
the perfect and completed separation between what I was and what I
appeared to be. I succeeded in never losing sight after this of my
real being, by constantly affirming this truth, and by degrees
(though it took me two years of hard work to get there) _I
expressed health continuously throughout my whole body_.
“In my subsequent nineteen years’ experience I have never known
this Truth to fail when I applied it, though in my ignorance I
have often failed to apply it, but through my failures I have
learned the simplicity and trustfulness of the little child.”
But I fear that I risk tiring you by so many examples, and I must lead you
back to philosophic generalities again. You see already by such records of
experience how impossible it is not to class mind‐cure as primarily a
religious movement. Its doctrine of the oneness of our life with God’s
life is in fact quite indistinguishable from an interpretation of Christ’s
message which in these very Gifford lectures has been defended by some of
your very ablest Scottish religious philosophers.(52)
But philosophers usually profess to give a quasi‐logical explanation of
the existence of evil, whereas of the general fact of evil in the world,
the existence of the selfish, suffering, timorous finite consciousness,
the mind‐curers, so far as I am acquainted with them, profess to give no
speculative explanation. Evil is empirically there for them as it is for
everybody, but the practical point of view predominates, and it would ill
agree with the spirit of their system to spend time in worrying over it as
a “mystery” or “problem,” or in “laying to heart” the lesson of its
experience, after the manner of the Evangelicals. Don’t reason about it,
as Dante says, but give a glance and pass beyond! It is Avidhya,
ignorance! something merely to be outgrown and left behind, transcended
and forgotten. Christian Science so‐called, the sect of Mrs. Eddy, is the
most radical branch of mind‐cure in its dealings with evil. For it evil is
simply a _lie_, and any one who mentions it is a liar. The optimistic
ideal of duty forbids us to pay it the compliment even of explicit
attention. Of course, as our next lectures will show us, this is a bad
speculative omission, but it is intimately linked with the practical
merits of the system we are examining. Why regret a philosophy of evil, a
mind‐curer would ask us, if I can put you in possession of a life of good?
After all, it is the life that tells; and mind‐cure has developed a living
system of mental hygiene which may well claim to have thrown all previous
literature of the _Diätetik der Seele_ into the shade. This system is
wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism: “Pessimism leads to
weakness. Optimism leads to power.” “Thoughts are things,” as one of the
most vigorous mind‐cure writers prints in bold type at the bottom of each
of his pages; and if your thoughts are of health, youth, vigor, and
success, before you know it these things will also be your outward
portion. No one can fail of the regenerative influence of optimistic
thinking, pertinaciously pursued. Every man owns indefeasibly this inlet
to the divine. Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic
modes of thought, are inlets to destruction. Most mind‐curers here bring
in a doctrine that thoughts are “forces,” and that, by virtue of a law
that like attracts like, one man’s thoughts draw to themselves as allies
all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. Thus one
gets, by one’s thinking, reinforcements from elsewhere for the realization
of one’s desires; and the great point in the conduct of life is to get the
heavenly forces on one’s side by opening one’s own mind to their influx.