Dr. H. H. Goddard, of Clark University, whose thesis on “the Effects
of Mind on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures” is published in the
American Journal of Psychology for 1899 (vol. x.). This critic,
after a wide study of the facts, concludes that the cures by mind‐
cure exist, but are in no respect different from those now
officially recognized in medicine as cures by suggestion; and the
end of his essay contains an interesting physiological speculation
as to the way in which the suggestive ideas may work (p. 67 of the
reprint). As regards the general phenomenon of mental cure itself,
Dr. Goddard writes: “In spite of the severe criticism we have made
of reports of cure, there still remains a vast amount of material,
showing a powerful influence of the mind in disease. Many cases are
of diseases that have been diagnosed and treated by the best
physicians of the country, or which prominent hospitals have tried
their hand at curing, but without success. People of culture and
education have been treated by this method with satisfactory
results. Diseases of long standing have been ameliorated, and even
cured.... We have traced the mental element through primitive
medicine and folk‐medicine of to‐day, patent medicine, and
witchcraft. We are convinced that it is impossible to account for
the existence of these practices, if they did not cure disease, and
that if they cured disease, it must have been the mental element
that was effective. The same argument applies to those modern
schools of mental therapeutics—Divine Healing and Christian Science.
It is hardly conceivable that the large body of intelligent people
who comprise the body known distinctively as Mental Scientists
should continue to exist if the whole thing were a delusion. It is
not a thing of a day; it is not confined to a few; it is not local.
It is true that many failures are recorded, but that only adds to
the argument. There must be many and striking successes to
counterbalance the failures, otherwise the failures would have ended
the delusion.... Christian Science, Divine Healing, or Mental
Science do not, and never can in the very nature of things, cure all
diseases; nevertheless, the practical applications of the general
principles of the broadest mental science will tend to prevent
disease.... We do find sufficient evidence to convince us that the
proper reform in mental attitude would relieve many a sufferer of
ills that the ordinary physician cannot touch; would even delay the
approach of death to many a victim beyond the power of absolute
cure, and the faithful adherence to a truer philosophy of life will
keep many a man well, and give the doctor time to devote to
alleviating ills that are unpreventable” (pp. 33, 34 of reprint).
47 HORACE FLETCHER: Happiness as found in Forethought _minus_
Fearthought, Menticulture Series, ii. Chicago and New York, Stone,
1897, pp. 21‐25, abridged.
48 H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.
49 HENRY WOOD: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, Boston,
1899, p. 54.
50 Whether it differs so much from Christ’s own notion is for the
exegetists to decide. According to Harnack, Jesus felt about evil
and disease much as our mind‐curers do. “What is the answer which
Jesus sends to John the Baptist?” asks Harnack, and says it is this:
“ ‘The blind see, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear, the dead rise up, and the gospel is preached to the
poor.’ That is the ‘coming of the kingdom,’ or rather in these
saving works the kingdom is already there. By the overcoming and
removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by these actual effects
John is to see that the new time has arrived. The casting out of
devils is only a part of this work of redemption, _but Jesus points
to that as the sense and seal of his mission_. Thus to the wretched,
sick, and poor did he address himself, but not as a moralist, and
without a trace of sentimentalism. He never makes groups and
departments of the ills; he never spends time in asking whether the
sick one ‘deserves’ to be cured; and it never occurs to him to
sympathize with the pain or the death. He nowhere says that sickness
is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthy use. No, he
calls sickness sickness and health health. All evil, all
wretchedness, is for him something dreadful; it is of the great
kingdom of Satan; but he feels the power of the Saviour within him.
He knows that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome,
when sickness is made well.” Das Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p.
39.
51 R. W. TRINE: In Tune with the Infinite, 26th thousand, N. Y., 1899.
I have strung scattered passages together.
52 The Cairds, for example. In EDWARD CAIRD’S Glasgow Lectures of
1890‐92 passages like this abound:—
“The declaration made in the beginning of the ministry of Jesus that
‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’
passes with scarce a break into the announcement that ‘the kingdom
of God is among you’; and the importance of this announcement is
asserted to be such that it makes, so to speak, a difference _in
kind_ between the greatest saints and prophets who lived under the
previous reign of division, and ‘the least in the kingdom of
heaven.’ The highest ideal is brought close to men and declared to
be within their reach, they are called on to be ‘perfect as their
Father in heaven is perfect.’ The sense of alienation and distance
from God which had grown upon the pious in Israel just in proportion
as they had learned to look upon Him as no mere national divinity,
but as a God of justice who would punish Israel for its sin as
certainly as Edom or Moab, is declared to be no longer in place; and
the typical form of Christian prayer points to the abolition of the
contrast between this world and the next which through all the
history of the Jews had continually been growing wider: ‘As in
heaven, so on earth.’ The sense of the division of man from God, as
a finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the
Omnipotent Goodness, is not indeed lost; but it can no longer
overpower the consciousness of oneness. The terms ‘Son’ and ‘Father’
at once state the opposition and mark its limit. They show that it
is not an absolute opposition, but one which presupposes an
indestructible principle of unity, that can and must become a
principle of reconciliation.” The Evolution of Religion, ii. pp.
146, 147.
53 It remains to be seen whether the school of Mr. Dresser, which
assumes more and more the form of mind‐cure experience and academic
philosophy mutually impregnating each other, will score the
practical triumphs of the less critical and rational sects.
54 The theistic explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new
nature within one the moment the old nature is sincerely given up.
The pantheistic explanation (which is that of most mind‐curers) is
by the merging of the narrower private self into the wider or
greater self, the spirit of the universe (which is your own
“subconscious” self), the moment the isolating barriers of mistrust
and anxiety are removed. The medico‐materialistic explanation is
that simpler cerebral processes act more freely where they are left
to act automatically by the shunting‐out of physiologically (though
in this instance not spiritually) “higher” ones which, seeking to
regulate, only succeed in inhibiting results.—Whether this third
explanation might, in a psycho‐physical account of the universe, be
combined with either of the others may be left an open question
here.
55 Within the churches a disposition has always prevailed to regard
sickness as a visitation; something sent by God for our good, either
as chastisement, as warning, or as opportunity for exercising
virtue, and, in the Catholic Church, of earning “merit.” “Illness,”
says a good Catholic writer (P. LEJEUNE: Introd. à la Vie Mystique,
1899, p. 218), “is the most excellent of corporeal mortifications,
the mortification which one has not one’s self chosen, which is
imposed directly by God, and is the direct expression of his will.
‘If other mortifications are of silver,’ Mgr. Gay says, ‘this one is
of gold; since although it comes of ourselves, coming as it does of
original sin, still on its greater side, as coming (like all that
happens) from the providence of God, it is of divine manufacture.
And how just are its blows! And how efficacious it is!... I do not
hesitate to say that patience in a long illness is mortification’s
very masterpiece, and consequently the triumph of mortified
souls.’ ” According to this view, disease should in any case be
submissively accepted, and it might under certain circumstances even
be blasphemous to wish it away.
Of course there have been exceptions to this, and cures by special
miracle have at all times been recognized within the church’s pale,
almost all the great saints having more or less performed them. It
was one of the heresies of Edward Irving, to maintain them still to
be possible. An extremely pure faculty of healing after confession
and conversion on the patient’s part, and prayer on the priest’s,
was quite spontaneously developed in the German pastor, Joh.
Christoph Blumhardt, in the early forties and exerted during nearly
thirty years. Blumhardt’s Life by Zündel (5th edition, Zurich, 1887)
gives in chapters ix., x., xi., and xvii. a pretty full account of
his healing activity, which he invariably ascribed to direct divine
interposition. Blumhardt was a singularly pure, simple, and non‐
fanatical character, and in this part of his work followed no
previous model. In Chicago to‐day we have the case of Dr. J. A.
Dowie, a Scottish Baptist preacher, whose weekly “Leaves of Healing”
were in the year of grace 1900 in their sixth volume, and who,
although he denounces the cures wrought in other sects as
“diabolical counterfeits” of his own exclusively “Divine Healing,”
must on the whole be counted into the mind‐cure movement. In mind‐
cure circles the fundamental article of faith is that disease should
never be accepted. It is wholly of the pit. God wants us to be
absolutely healthy, and we should not tolerate ourselves on any
lower terms.
56 Edwards, from whose book on the Revival in New England I quote these
words, dissuades from such a use of prayer, but it is easy to see
that he enjoys making his thrust at the cold dead church members.
57 H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 46.
58 DRESSER: Living by the Spirit, 58.
59 DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 33.
60 TRINE: In Tune with the Infinite, p. 214.
61 TRINE: p. 117.
62 Quoted by LEJEUNE: Introd. à la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 66.
63 HENRY WOOD: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, pp. 51, 70
(abridged).
64 See Appendix to this lecture for two other cases furnished me by
friends.
65 Whether the various spheres or systems are ever to fuse integrally
into one absolute conception, as most philosophers assume that they
must, and how, if so, that conception may best be reached, are
questions that only the future can answer. What is certain now is
the fact of lines of disparate conception, each corresponding to
some part of the world’s truth, each verified in some degree, each
leaving out some part of real experience.
66 Tract on God, Man, and Happiness, Book ii. ch. x.
67 Commentary on Galatians, Philadelphia, 1891, pp. 510‐514 (abridged).
68 MOLINOS: Spiritual Guide, Book II., chaps. xvii., xviii. (abridged).
69 I say this in spite of the monistic utterances of many mind‐cure
writers; for these utterances are really inconsistent with their
attitude towards disease, and can easily be shown not to be
logically involved in the experiences of union with a higher
Presence with which they connect themselves. The higher Presence,
namely, need not be the absolute whole of things, it is quite
sufficient for the life of religious experience to regard it as a
part, if only it be the most ideal part.
70 Cf. J. MILSAND: Luther et le Serf‐Arbitre, 1884, _passim_.
71 He adds with characteristic healthy‐mindedness: “Our business is to
continue to fail in good spirits.”
72 The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal
against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the
opinion of this world. To our own consciousness there is usually a
residuum of worth left over after our sins and errors have been told
off—our capacity of acknowledging and regretting them is the germ of
a better self _in posse_ at least. But the world deals with us _in
actu_ and not _in posse_: and of this hidden germ, not to be guessed
at from without, it never takes account. Then we turn to the All‐
knower, who knows our bad, but knows this good in us also, and who
is just. We cast ourselves with our repentance on his mercy: only by
an All‐knower can we finally be judged. So the need of a God very
definitely emerges from this sort of experience of life.
73 E.g., Iliad, XVII. 446: “Nothing then is more wretched anywhere than
man of all that breathes and creeps upon this earth.”
74 E.g., Theognis, 425‐428: “Best of all for all things upon earth is
it not to be born nor to behold the splendors of the Sun; next best
to traverse as soon as possible the gates of Hades.” See also the
almost identical passage in Œdipus in Colonus, 1225.—The Anthology
is full of pessimistic utterances: “Naked came I upon the earth,
naked I go below the ground—why then do I vainly toil when I see the
end naked before me?”—“How did I come to be? Whence am I? Wherefore
did I come? To pass away. How can I learn aught when naught I know?
Being naught I came to life: once more shall I be what I was.
Nothing and nothingness is the whole race of mortals.”—“For death we
are all cherished and fattened like a herd of hogs that is wantonly
butchered.”
The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern
variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the
pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of
sensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for
pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic
literature. They would have despised a life set wholly in a minor
key, and summoned it to keep within the proper bounds of
lachrymosity. The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as
this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved
for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the
Hellenes had attained to being in the classic period. But all the
same was the outlook of those Hellenes blackly pessimistic.
75 For instance, on the very day on which I write this page, the post
brings me some aphorisms from a worldly‐wise old friend in
Heidelberg which may serve as a good contemporaneous expression of
Epicureanism: “By the word ‘happiness’ every human being understands
something different. It is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds.
The wise man is satisfied with the more modest but much more
definite term _contentment_. What education should chiefly aim at is
to save us from a discontented life. Health is one favoring
condition, but by no means an indispensable one, of contentment.
Woman’s heart and love are a shrewd device of Nature, a trap which
she sets for the average man, to force him into working. But the
wise man will always prefer work chosen by himself.”
76 RIBOT: Psychologie des sentiments, p. 54.
77 A. GRATRY: Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, 1880, pp. 119‐121, abridged.
Some persons are affected with anhedonia permanently, or at any rate
with a loss of the usual appetite for life. The annals of suicide
supply such examples as the following:—
An uneducated domestic servant, aged nineteen, poisons herself, and
leaves two letters expressing her motive for the act. To her parents
she writes:—
“Life is sweet perhaps to some, but I prefer what is sweeter than
life, and that is death. So good‐by forever, my dear parents. It is
nobody’s fault, but a strong desire of my own which I have longed to
fulfill for three or four years. I have always had a hope that some
day I might have an opportunity of fulfilling it, and now it has
come.... It is a wonder I have put this off so long, but I thought
perhaps I should cheer up a bit and put all thought out of my head.”
To her brother she writes: “Good‐by forever, my own dearest brother.
By the time you get this I shall be gone forever. I know, dear love,
there is no forgiveness for what I am going to do.... I am tired of
living, so am willing to die.... Life may be sweet to some, but
death to me is sweeter.” S. A. K. STRAHAN: Suicide and Insanity, 2d
edition, London, 1894, p. 131.
78 ROUBINOVITCH ET TOULOUSE: La Mélancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged.
79 I cull these examples from the work of G. DUMAS: La Tristesse et la
Joie, 1900.
80 My extracts are from the French translation by “ZONIA.” In abridging
I have taken the liberty of transposing one passage.
81 Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners: I have printed a number of
detached passages continuously.
82 The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, Boston, 1806, pp.
25, 26. I owe my acquaintance with this book to my colleague, Dr.
Benjamin Rand.
83 Compare Bunyan: “There was I struck into a very great trembling,
insomuch that at some times I could, for days together, feel my very
body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the
dreadful judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned
that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging
and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was,
especially at some times, as if my breast‐bone would have split
asunder.... Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden
that was upon me; which burden also did so oppress me that I could
neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.”
84 For another case of fear equally sudden, see HENRY JAMES: Society
the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff.
85 Example: “It was about eleven o’clock at night ... but I strolled on
still with the people.... Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a
crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in
an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one
of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling
of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor
victim’s bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, ‘Ho hai!’
involuntarily reëchoed by all of us, was over in three seconds; and
then I know not what happened till I returned to my senses, when I
found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if prepared
to be devoured by our enemy, the sovereign of the forest. I find my
pen incapable of describing the terror of that dreadful moment. Our
limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beat
violently, and only a whisper of the same ‘Ho hai!’ was heard from
us. In this state we crept on all fours for some distance back, and
then ran for life with the speed of an Arab horse for about half an
hour, and fortunately happened to come to a small village.... After
this every one of us was attacked with fever, attended with
shivering, in which deplorable state we remained till
morning.”—Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohammedan Gentleman,
Leipzig, 1857, p. 112.
86 E.g., “Our young people are diseased with the theological problems
of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These
never presented a practical difficulty to any man—never darkened
across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them.
These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping‐coughs,” etc.
EMERSON: “Spiritual Laws.”
87 Notes sur la Vie, p. 1.
88 See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caractères, 1894, who
contrasts les Equilibrés, les Unifiés, with les Inquiets, les
Contrariants, les Incohérents, les Emiettés, as so many diverse
psychic types.
89 ANNIE BESANT: an Autobiography, p. 82.
90 SMITH BAKER, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September,
1893.
91 LOUIS GOURDON (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine, Paris,
Fischbacher, 1900) has shown by an analysis of Augustine’s writings
immediately after the date of his conversion (A. D. 386) that the
account he gives in the Confessions is premature. The crisis in the
garden marked a definitive conversion from his former life, but it
was to the neo‐platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward
Christianity. The latter he appears not fully and radically to have
embraced until four years more had passed.
92 Confessions, Book VIII., chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged.
93 TH. JOUFFROY: Nouveaux Mélanges philosophiques, 2me édition, p. 83.
I add two other cases of counter‐conversion dating from a certain
moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck’s manuscript
collection, and the narrator is a woman.
“Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or
less skeptical about ‘God;’ skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all
through my early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the
emotional elements in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I
joined the church and was asked if I loved God. I replied ‘Yes,’ as
was customary and expected. But instantly with a flash something
spoke within me, ‘No, you do not.’ I was haunted for a long time
with shame and remorse for my falsehood and for my wickedness in not
loving God, mingled with fear that there might be an avenging God
who would punish me in some terrible way.... At nineteen, I had an
attack of tonsilitis. Before I had quite recovered, I heard told a
story of a brute who had kicked his wife downstairs, and then
continued the operation until she became insensible. I felt the
horror of the thing keenly. Instantly this thought flashed through
my mind: ‘I have no use for a God who permits such things.’ This
experience was followed by months of stoical indifference to the God
of my previous life, mingled with feelings of positive dislike and a
somewhat proud defiance of him. I still thought there might be a
God. If so he would probably damn me, but I should have to stand it.
I felt very little fear and no desire to propitiate him. I have
never had any personal relations with him since this painful
experience.”
The second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will
overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process
of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough. It is like
the proverbial last straw added to the camel’s burden, or that touch
of a needle which makes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly
begin to crystallize out.
Tolstoy writes: “S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows
how he ceased to believe:—
“He was twenty‐six years old when one day on a hunting expedition,
the time for sleep having come, he set himself to pray according to
the custom he had held from childhood.
“His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked
at him. When S. had finished his prayer and was turning to sleep,
the brother said, ‘Do you still keep up that thing?’ Nothing more
was said. But since that day, now more than thirty years ago, S. has
never prayed again; he never takes communion, and does not go to
church. All this, not because he became acquainted with convictions
of his brother which he then and there adopted; not because he made
any new resolution in his soul, but merely because the words spoken
by his brother were like the light push of a finger against a
leaning wall already about to tumble by its own weight. These words
but showed him that the place wherein he supposed religion dwelt in
him had long been empty, and that the sentences he uttered, the
crosses and bows which he made during his prayer, were actions with
no inner sense. Having once seized their absurdity, he could no
longer keep them up.” My Confession, p. 8.
94 Op. cit., Letter III., abridged.
I subjoin an additional document which has come into my possession,
and which represents in a vivid way what is probably a very frequent
sort of conversion, if the opposite of “falling in love,” falling
out of love, may be so termed. Falling in love also conforms
frequently to this type, a latent process of unconscious preparation
often preceding a sudden awakening to the fact that the mischief is
irretrievably done. The free and easy tone in this narrative gives
it a sincerity that speaks for itself.