least, premature. The experiences which we have been studying during this
hour (and a great many other kinds of religious experiences are like them)
plainly show the universe to be a more many‐sided affair than any sect,
even the scientific sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our
verifications but experiences that agree with more or less isolated
systems of ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? But why
in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such system of
ideas can be true? The obvious outcome of our total experience is that the
world can be handled according to many systems of ideas, and is so handled
by different men, and will each time give some characteristic kind of
profit, for which he cares, to the handler, while at the same time some
other kind of profit has to be omitted or postponed. Science gives to all
of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and succeeds in
preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. Religion in the shape
of mind‐cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and
prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better
in a certain class of persons. Evidently, then, the science and the
religion are both of them genuine keys for unlocking the world’s treasure‐
house to him who can use either of them practically. Just as evidently
neither is exhaustive or exclusive of the other’s simultaneous use. And
why, after all, may not the world be so complex as to consist of many
interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus approach in
alternation by using different conceptions and assuming different
attitudes, just as mathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial
facts by geometry, by analytical geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or
by quaternions, and each time come out right? On this view religion and
science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to
life, would be co‐eternal. Primitive thought, with its belief in
individualized personal forces, seems at any rate as far as ever from
being driven by science from the field to‐day. Numbers of educated people
still find it the directest experimental channel by which to carry on
their intercourse with reality.(65)
The case of mind‐cure lay so ready to my hand that I could not resist the
temptation of using it to bring these last truths home to your attention,
but I must content myself to‐day with this very brief indication. In a
later lecture the relations of religion both to science and to primitive
thought will have to receive much more explicit attention.
Appendix
(See note to p. 121.)
CASE I. “My own experience is this: I had long been ill, and one
of the first results of my illness, a dozen years before, had been
a diplopia which deprived me of the use of my eyes for reading and
writing almost entirely, while a later one had been to shut me out
from exercise of any kind under penalty of immediate and great
exhaustion. I had been under the care of doctors of the highest
standing both in Europe and America, men in whose power to help me
I had had great faith, with no or ill result. Then, at a time when
I seemed to be rather rapidly losing ground, I heard some things
that gave me interest enough in mental healing to make me try it;
I had no great hope of getting any good from it—it was a _chance_
I tried, partly because my thought was interested by the new
possibility it seemed to open, partly because it was the only
chance I then could see. I went to X. in Boston, from whom some
friends of mine had got, or thought that they had got, great help;
the treatment was a silent one; little was said, and that little
carried no conviction to my mind; whatever influence was exerted
was that of another person’s thought or feeling silently projected
on to my unconscious mind, into my nervous system as it were, as
we sat still together. I believed from the start in the
_possibility_ of such action, for I knew the power of the mind to
shape, helping or hindering, the body’s nerve‐activities, and I
thought telepathy probable, although unproved, but I had no belief
in it as more than a possibility, and no strong conviction nor any
mystic or religious faith connected with my thought of it that
might have brought imagination strongly into play.
“I sat quietly with the healer for half an hour each day, at first
with no result; then, after ten days or so, I became quite
suddenly and swiftly conscious of a tide of new energy rising
within me, a sense of power to pass beyond old halting‐places, of
power to break the bounds that, though often tried before, had
long been veritable walls about my life, too high to climb. I
began to read and walk as I had not done for years, and the change
was sudden, marked, and unmistakable. This tide seemed to mount
for some weeks, three or four perhaps, when, summer having come, I
came away, taking the treatment up again a few months later. The
lift I got proved permanent, and left me slowly gaining ground
instead of losing it, but with this lift the influence seemed in a
way to have spent itself, and, though my confidence in the reality
of the power had gained immensely from this first experience, and
should have helped me to make further gain in health and strength
if my belief in it had been the potent factor there, I never after
this got any result at all as striking or as clearly marked as
this which came when I made trial of it first, with little faith
and doubtful expectation. It is difficult to put all the evidence
in such a matter into words, to gather up into a distinct
statement all that one bases one’s conclusions on, but I have
always felt that I had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at
least) the conclusion that I came to then, and since have held to,
that the physical change which came at that time was, first, the
result of a change wrought within me by a change of mental state;
and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not, save in a
very secondary way, brought about through the influence of an
excited imagination, or a _consciously_ received suggestion of an
hypnotic sort. Lastly, I believe that this change was the result
of my receiving telepathically, and upon a mental stratum quite
below the level of immediate consciousness, a healthier and more
energetic attitude, receiving it from another person whose thought
was directed upon me with the intention of impressing the idea of
this attitude upon me. In my case the disease was distinctly what
would be classed as nervous, not organic; but from such
opportunities as I have had of observing, I have come to the
conclusion that the dividing line that has been drawn is an
arbitrary one, the nerves controlling the internal activities and
the nutrition of the body throughout; and I believe that the
central nervous system, by starting and inhibiting local centres,
can exercise a vast influence upon disease of any kind, if it can
be brought to bear. In my judgment the question is simply how to
bring it to bear, and I think that the uncertainty and remarkable
differences in the results obtained through mental healing do but
show how ignorant we are as yet of the forces at work and of the
means we should take to make them effective. That these results
are not due to chance coincidences my observation of myself and
others makes me sure; that the conscious mind, the imagination,
enters into them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but
in many others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly
seems to enter in at all. On the whole I am inclined to think that
as the healing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane
of the normally _un_conscious mind, so the strongest and most
effective impressions are those which _it_ receives, in some as
yet unknown, subtle way, _directly_ from a healthier mind whose
state, through a hidden law of sympathy, it reproduces.”
CASE II. “At the urgent request of friends, and with no faith and
hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful
experience with a Christian Scientist), our little daughter was
placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about
which the physician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis.
This interested me, and I began studying earnestly the method and
philosophy of this method of healing. Gradually an inner peace and
tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner
changed greatly. My children and friends noticed the change and
commented upon it. All feelings of irritability disappeared. Even
the expression of my face changed noticeably.
“I had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discussion,
both in public and private. I grew broadly tolerant and receptive
toward the views of others. I had been nervous and irritable,
coming home two or three times a week with a sick headache
induced, as I then supposed, by dyspepsia and catarrh. I grew
serene and gentle, and the physical troubles entirely disappeared.
I had been in the habit of approaching every business interview
with an almost morbid dread. I now meet every one with confidence
and inner calm.
“I may say that the growth has all been toward the elimination of
selfishness. I do not mean simply the grosser, more sensual forms,
but those subtler and generally unrecognized kinds, such as
express themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy, etc. It has
been in the direction of a practical, working realization of the
immanence of God and the Divinity of man’s true, inner self.”
LECTURES VI AND VII. THE SICK SOUL.
At our last meeting, we considered the healthy‐minded temperament, the
temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering,
and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of
crystallization in which the individual’s character is set. We saw how
this temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a
religion in which good, even the good of this world’s life, is regarded as
the essential thing for a rational being to attend to. This religion
directs him to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the
universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of
them, by ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or even, on
occasion, by denying outright that they exist. Evil is a disease; and
worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only
adds to the original complaint. Even repentance and remorse, affections
which come in the character of ministers of good, may be but sickly and
relaxing impulses. The best repentance is to up and act for righteousness,
and forget that you ever had relations with sin.
Spinoza’s philosophy has this sort of healthy‐mindedness woven into the
heart of it, and this has been one secret of its fascination. He whom
Reason leads, according to Spinoza, is led altogether by the influence
over his mind of good. Knowledge of evil is an “inadequate” knowledge, fit
only for slavish minds. So Spinoza categorically condemns repentance. When
men make mistakes, he says,—
“One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to
help to bring them on the right path, and might thereupon conclude
(as every one does conclude) that these affections are good
things. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that
not only are they not good, but on the contrary deleterious and
evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get along
better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and
remorse. Harmful are these and evil, inasmuch as they form a
particular kind of sadness; and the disadvantages of sadness,” he
continues, “I have already proved, and shown that we should strive
to keep it from our life. Just so we should endeavor, since
uneasiness of conscience and remorse are of this kind of
complexion, to flee and shun these states of mind.”(66)
Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the
beginning been the critical religious act, healthy‐mindedness has always
come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such
healthy‐minded Christians means _getting away from_ the sin, not groaning
and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and
absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method
of keeping healthy‐mindedness on top. By it a man’s accounts with evil are
periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with
no old debts inscribed. Any Catholic will tell us how clean and fresh and
free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means
belonged to the healthy‐minded type in the radical sense in which we have
discussed it, and he repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this
matter of repentance he had some very healthy‐minded ideas, due in the
main to the largeness of his conception of God.
“When I was a monk,” he says, “I thought that I was utterly cast
away, if at any time I felt the lust of the flesh: that is to say,
if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy
against any brother. I assayed many ways to help to quiet my
conscience, but it would not be; for the concupiscence and lust of
my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest, but was
continually vexed with these thoughts: This or that sin thou hast
committed: thou art infected with envy, with impatiency, and such
other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in
vain, and all thy good works are unprofitable. But if then I had
rightly understood these sentences of Paul: ‘The flesh lusteth
contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit contrary to the flesh; and
these two are one against another, so that ye cannot do the things
that ye would do,’ I should not have so miserably tormented
myself, but should have thought and said to myself, as now
commonly I do, ‘Martin, thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for
thou hast flesh; thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof.’ I
remember that Staupitz was wont to say, ‘I have vowed unto God
above a thousand times that I would become a better man: but I
never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such
vow: for I have now learned by experience that I am not able to
perform it. Unless, therefore, God be favorable and merciful unto
me for Christ’s sake, I shall not be able, with all my vows and
all my good deeds, to stand before him.’ This (of Staupitz’s) was
not only a true, but also a godly and a holy desperation; and this
must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will be
saved. For the godly trust not to their own righteousness. They
look unto Christ their reconciler, who gave his life for their
sins. Moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in
their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned.
Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against
the flesh, lest they should _fulfill_ the lusts thereof; and
although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves
also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they
not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of
life, and the works which are done according to their calling,
displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith.”(67)
One of the heresies for which the Jesuits got that spiritual genius,
Molinos, the founder of Quietism, so abominably condemned was his healthy‐
minded opinion of repentance:—
“When thou fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be, do
not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. For they are effects of
our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common enemy will
make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that
thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of God and his favor,
and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace,
telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting
it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse instead of
better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. O blessed Soul,
open thine eyes; and shut the gate against these diabolical
suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in the mercy divine.
Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with
others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping
on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his
fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the
course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his
race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen
once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy
which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the
divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight and
conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou
oughtest to use—not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap
no good.”(68)
Now in contrast with such healthy‐minded views as these, if we treat them
as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite
view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please so to call it, based on the
persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and
that the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to
heart. We have now to address ourselves to this more morbid way of looking
at the situation. But as I closed our last hour with a general
philosophical reflection on the healthy‐minded way of taking life, I
should like at this point to make another philosophical reflection upon it
before turning to that heavier task. You will excuse the brief delay.
If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to the
interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that
has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion. Theism, whenever
it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has
shown a reluctance to let God be anything less than All‐in‐All. In other
words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become
pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of
absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or practical
theism, which latter has ever been more or less frankly pluralistic, not
to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectly well satisfied with a
universe composed of many original principles, provided we be only allowed
to believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and that the others
are subordinate. In this latter case God is not necessarily responsible
for the existence of evil; he would only be responsible if it were not
finally overcome. But on the monistic or pantheistic view, evil, like
everything else, must have its foundation in God; and the difficulty is to
see how this can possibly be the case if God be absolutely good. This
difficulty faces us in every form of philosophy in which the world appears
as one flawless unit of fact. Such a unit is an _Individual_, and in it
the worst parts must be as essential as the best, must be as necessary to
make the individual what he is; since if any part whatever in an
individual were to vanish or alter, it would no longer be _that_
individual at all. The philosophy of absolute idealism, so vigorously
represented both in Scotland and America to‐day, has to struggle with this
difficulty quite as much as scholastic theism struggled in its time; and
although it would be premature to say that there is no speculative issue
whatever from the puzzle, it is perfectly fair to say that there is no
clear or easy issue, and that the only _obvious_ escape from paradox here
is to cut loose from the monistic assumption altogether, and to allow the
world to have existed from its origin in pluralistic form, as an aggregate
or collection of higher and lower things and principles, rather than an
absolutely unitary fact. For then evil would not need to be essential; it
might be, and may always have been, an independent portion that had no
rational or absolute right to live with the rest, and which we might
conceivably hope to see got rid of at last.
Now the gospel of healthy‐mindedness, as we have described it, casts its
vote distinctly for this pluralistic view. Whereas the monistic
philosopher finds himself more or less bound to say, as Hegel said, that
everything actual is rational, and that evil, as an element dialectically
required, must be pinned in and kept and consecrated and have a function
awarded to it in the final system of truth, healthy‐mindedness refuses to
say anything of the sort.(69) Evil, it says, is emphatically irrational,
and _not_ to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final
system of truth. It is a pure abomination to the Lord, an alien unreality,
a waste element, to be sloughed off and negated, and the very memory of
it, if possible, wiped out and forgotten. The ideal, so far from being co‐
extensive with the whole actual, is a mere _extract_ from the actual,
marked by its deliverance from all contact with this diseased, inferior,
and excrementitious stuff.
Here we have the interesting notion fairly and squarely presented to us,
of there being elements of the universe which may make no rational whole
in conjunction with the other elements, and which, from the point of view
of any system which those other elements make up, can only be considered
so much irrelevance and accident—so much “dirt,” as it were, and matter
out of place. I ask you now not to forget this notion; for although most
philosophers seem either to forget it or to disdain it too much ever to
mention it, I believe that we shall have to admit it ourselves in the end
as containing an element of truth. The mind‐cure gospel thus once more
appears to us as having dignity and importance. We have seen it to be a
genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal to imagination to cure disease;
we have seen its method of experimental verification to be not unlike the
method of all science; and now here we find mind‐cure as the champion of a
perfectly definite conception of the metaphysical structure of the world.
I hope that, in view of all this, you will not regret my having pressed it
upon your attention at such length.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Let us now say good‐by for a while to all this way of thinking, and turn
towards those persons who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the
consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its
presence. Just as we saw that in healthy‐mindedness there are shallower
and profounder levels, happiness like that of the mere animal, and more
regenerate sorts of happiness, so also are there different levels of the
morbid mind, and the one is much more formidable than the other. There are
people for whom evil means only a mal‐adjustment with _things_, a wrong
correspondence of one’s life with the environment. Such evil as this is
curable, in principle at least, upon the natural plane, for merely by
modifying either the self or the things, or both at once, the two terms
may be made to fit, and all go merry as a marriage bell again. But there
are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular
outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice
in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any
superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires
a supernatural remedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more
towards the former way of looking upon evil, as made up of ills and sins
in the plural, removable in detail; while the Germanic races have tended
rather to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of
something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to
be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.(70) These comparisons
of races are always open to exception, but undoubtedly the northern tone
in religion has inclined to the more intimately pessimistic persuasion,
and this way of feeling, being the more extreme, we shall find by far the
more instructive for our study.