IN RELATION TO HEALTH
There is nothing so multiple in its composition, and yet nothing so
seemingly simple, so unit-like a unity, as normal personality—a normal
character englobed by a normal body. Normality is the product of a
two-fold force, the true interrelation between the organs of the body
and a similar interrelation between the inner faculties, culminating
in a rhythmic interaction between the two. The normal man acts in the
completeness of his manhood in all that he does, never adopting the
rôle of either mere machine or mere ghost. In so far as the inside and
the outside of man work as a unity, the dignity of human personality
manifests itself; any departure from harmony approaches that dangerous
borderland beyond which lies disintegration and disorder. Disease is a
lack of rhythm, a note in the scale out of tune. Health is harmony.
Up to the time that consciousness of existence awakens, the processes of
life operate under the stimulus and protection of the human and physical
environment which surround the infant. With the immediate effect of
suitable shelter and wholesome nourishment we are fairly conversant. As
to just what direct or indirect influence psychic surroundings have upon
the subconscious life of a baby, we are not in a position to dogmatize,
though we can arrive inferentially at certain rational probabilities.
Apparently the infant, and certainly the child, is extraordinarily
sensitive to subtle forces. Acting upon this supposition the Christian
Church from the beginning, by a symbolic and sacramental act, has aimed
to thrust children deep into the bosom of God by the rite of baptism, and
claimed for them not only a place but a place of chief importance in the
spiritual society. Instinctively the mother, with exquisite solicitude,
whispers her ideals for the future of her offspring into the ears of
the babe at her breast, talking as though to one whose consciousness
were awake. In this way Samuels have been raised to Israel. At the close
of each day the mother bids her child sleep by singing lullabies and
hanging mystic poppies over wide-awake eyes. She speaks in the highest
type of language, in poetry adorned with song, to this little unconscious
scrap of humanity. In other words her mystic sense is pressing upon the
mystic sense of her child as naturally and fittingly as her arms fold the
infant body and her lips touch its cheek.
Unless positive proof to the contrary is adduced, it is safe to believe
that it makes a great difference to the child’s after life of what sort
its psychic environment is during its first years on earth, whether the
minds about it are healthy, expressing themselves healthily, whether the
tone of family life is hopeful and spiritual. Though it cannot finally
determine the course that the child’s life will take, at any rate it
affords the best opportunity for making it a worthy course. My conviction
is, that the difference between good and bad psychic environment for
a baby is the same as that between healthy and unhealthy vegetable
environment for a young plant. An infant abandoned by its mother to the
care of nurses and servants, be the provision for its animal comfort and
safety what it may, begins life with a minimum of opportunity. Man is not
born mere animal but man from the first breath. Therefore from the first
breath he needs man’s surroundings. In order that his latent character
may have its best chance, he ought to be given the most congenial human
environment available. If there is no conscious self, at any rate there
is a subconscious self, struggling at a very early moment by baby smiles
and frets, gropings and babblings to utter itself. Psychology seems to
have reached at least this conclusion—that the subconscious is, that it
is the fundamental part of man, that it is his most sensitive self, never
relinquishing that which it grasps and grasping everything that touches
it.
Psychic forces may influence mightily the subconscious life of an infant
and promote healthy character, but have they any effect on physical
well-being? The reply would seem to be that, if at any time in the span
of a lifetime they work beneficently in this direction, it is probable
that they do so from the outset. It would be sheer waste of time to
adduce arguments to prove that healthy minds conduce directly to healthy
physique. The difficulty is to find the limit of such influence, so vast
is it. Physical well-being, however, is not an end in itself, and it is
a subversion of the human order to aim at health of mind or character
in order that our physique may be improved. So nicely is human nature
proportioned and adjusted that it is doubtful whether a person could
achieve physical health by becoming good with that sole end in view.
Physical health is not essential to a high degree of human efficiency,
though health of character is and therefore must be sought first because
of its priceless value. But it is our just assumption that a child
with a healthy body is more likely to have a normal inner personality
than if it had a sickly body. Outer and inner health act and react and
interact so that it is equally true to say that, given a healthy mind
and disposition, other things being equal, the body will have the best
opportunity of being normal and, whatever its condition, of being used to
the best advantage. There can be no consideration of higher importance
than to make a child sensitive as soon after birth as possible, to his
psychic, moral, and mystical environment. It will conduce to loftiness
of character and, for aught we know, to useful longevity and vigor of
physique.
Only soulless animals can be satisfied with physical splendor or count
muscle sufficient in itself. Man by virtue of his manhood can never
live according to merely animal laws. His animal nature itself is
ultimately weakened if he does. In proportion as he has fine physique
he must develop a fine mind and character. If not, unrestrained passion
and ruin stare him in the face. The body finds its full meaning and so
its possibilities, only when the soul has discovered itself and claimed
its liberty. It is then alone that a whole army of anxieties and fears
is scattered, leaving the body free and joyously adventurous, ready
to identify its movements with those of the soul. Consequently it is
not illogical or untrue to say that the first requisite for physical
efficiency of a child is to insure that whatever its subconscious life
is able to drink in should be sweet, wholesome, and strong. The tone of
domestic life, the character of the child’s attendants, the whole expanse
of human bosom on which it lies and from which it receives nourishment,
ought to be as near what one would wish it to be if from the first the
little babe had a conscious as well as a subconscious self, and were
a morally responsible and not a mere non-moral agent. There can be a
healthy domestic environment for the keen-eyed, deep-seeing child only
when it has been preceded by a similar environment for the baby. What
the tone was for the purely subconscious, it will be for the conscious
life when it awakes. Therefore even though parents are skeptical of
their influence upon infant subconsciousness, they cannot dispense with
attention to its character if they hope to bring beneficial pressure to
bear on the child’s conscious life. From the first they must learn to
deal with a baby as a moral being, impressionable beyond observation.
When we turn to man’s conscious life and the relation between health of
body and a healthy consciousness we are on more demonstrable ground.
Experience has proved that our external and internal faculties work
in sympathy with one another. If the body is distressed, the inner
consciousness droops; if the inner consciousness becomes morbid or out
of sorts, the body, though not always actually falling ill, loses in
efficiency. Yet, let it be added, the body is less able to bear psychic
illness than the inner self to bear physical illness. The body can never
turn psychic suffering into nerve and muscle, but the psychic nature can
weave malady into genius through the powerful operation of the Mystic
Sense.
To be healthy is a commendable ambition. Being in good health, our
desire is to become as immune as may be to disease, or being ill to give
ourselves the best chance of recovery. Health is preserved by keeping
body and mind in close relation to health-giving processes. It is not
our concern to discuss in this connection questions of diet, sanitation,
hygiene, exercise and similar aids to the promotion of health. Their
value is of the first order and may not be ignored or discounted. But
just now we are concerned with another part of human nature which has
much to do in determining our condition of body—the sense which furnishes
us with ideals.
The objective of an ideal is found in the idea flowing from the mind
of God. It is as real to the Mystic Sense as a flower is to sight and
smell. An ideal is the reflection of God’s idea and is distorted or true
according as the sense which perceives ideas is healthy or diseased. The
Mystic Sense relates us to ideas, and enables us to touch, test, see
and hear them, as truly as our bodily senses enable us to touch, test,
see and hear the world of matter, form and sound. A healthy ideal is a
vitalizing force, an unhealthy ideal is an invitation to disease. Ideals
are subjectified ideas.
In the course of the development of that most experimental of all
sciences, medicine, not only has dosing been reduced to a minimum, but
also the natural recuperative powers of the patient have been discovered
and are relied upon. The physician tries to open, for the sick, doors
into nature’s healthiest rooms. The patient being placed in a vitalizing
environment is expected by the use of his will and Mystic Sense to
respond to it. The physician alone can do but half the work. The will,
and not only the willingness, to live, a mystical laying hold of the idea
of health, is in all cases a valuable, in some an indispensable, factor
in the process of recovery. The suggestion of health predisposes to
health; the suggestion of disease is provocative of disease. Medicine may
be both a material curative and a sacrament of health.
The habit of our day has been such as to create in us a marked
pathological consciousness. The very process which, by slow degrees, has
been driving disease to the wall, has produced in us a sensitiveness
to the idea of disease that is inimical to health. The discovery of the
causes of disease has peopled the imagination, even of those who have
never looked through a microscope, with an army of hostile germs to the
obscuration of those superior influences which conduce to well-being,
until we have become chronically nervous of the hidden perils which beset
our path. Insignificant pains are construed into the symptoms of the last
disease discussed in the papers or the advertisement of a proprietary
nostrum. Momentary fluctuations in health send us tripping with anxious
brow to the doctor. Dabbling in pathology is an undesirable occupation,
especially for the young. The wrappers of patent medicines, let alone the
medicines themselves, have caused more agony than peace of mind and have
been more provocative of disease than of health. Happily we are emerging
from the patent medicine stage.
A therapeutic consciousness ought to be the normal consciousness. The
forces which make for life are in excess of those which make for death.
The universe would go into steady decline were not the dominant forces
salutary, and life would flicker out like the wick of a candle guttered
in its socket. There is an inexhaustible fund of vitality open to man
and we are competent to draw upon it so that we shall receive a maximum
rather than a minimum. Part of the function of science is to put man into
such a relation to the nature outside of him as to place the wholesome
and remedial at his disposal, preventing disease by immunizing him from
it. It is the common laws of health which are the most important. With
the curious inconsistency which characterizes many human beings, we
frequently see men adhering to some vigorous regimen of secondary or
doubtful importance, while all the time they are flagrantly disobeying
some primary law of health. The unity between the outer and the inner
necessitates not only an intelligent and scientific treatment but also
that which is mystical and more or less mysterious. Prayer, which is at
once an appeal to the Source of Life to let loose saving health in our
direction and an opening up of our being for the reception of hidden and
unknown aid, is a higher form of psychic effort than either suggestion
or auto-suggestion in that it includes both, though not precluding the
concurrent use of either. Auto-suggestion looks only for self-induced
benefit to the patient by application to an impersonal ideal; prayer does
not think merely to apprehend a passive or indifferent remedy, but also
to be apprehended by healthful, forceful Personality, like but superior
to our own. A prayer to the ether would have in its reflex effect a
totally different influence on the petitioner from a prayer to what was
conceived to be a personal God. Similarly the quality of the virtue which
is the result of mere ethical culture is as different from that which is
the product of correspondence with the Christian’s God as cotton is from
linen. Nor is it that God is inactive until we pray. He is operating to
the uttermost that our listless or passive or antagonistic personality
will allow. The highest personality can do his best to the object of his
love only when the latter adopts a responsive and co-operative attitude.
The feeble spot in much, if not most, prayer, is that it asks without
importunity, or importunes without appropriating. The Mystic Sense must
reach up until it feels the hand containing the gift, and take the gift
as its own. Auto-suggestion is a lame term indicating the application of
the ideal to the defective. Suggestion is a similar application on the
part of another to a companion. With a background of prayer, the insomnia
patient can with profit watch the dream sheep go through the hedge,
or lay himself in the cradle of old nursery rhymes, or welcome to his
bedside the veiled legions of slumber as they troop forth on their silent
errand from the presence of Him who giveth His beloved sleep.
Faith, which is simply the highest operation of the mystic sense, is as
necessary to the complete work of healing as in the days when Jesus said,
“According to thy faith be it unto thee.” It appropriates to the full the
remedial contents of scientific agencies which, under its touch become
sacramental, and clothes the life in the soft robe of unanxious peace
and serene cheerfulness. It is easy enough for a well man to talk to the
sick concerning the desirability and curative value of a therapeutic
consciousness. The depressed soul resents the necessity of being called
upon to act independently of the body and in opposition to it. Most
patients, too, for the time being are inclined to count each one his own
case unique. But the Mystic Sense is wonderfully elastic. Cheerfulness
comes by being cheerful, hope by being hopeful, calmness by being calm,
healthymindedness by being healthyminded. This is the work of the Mystic
Sense living in the realm of vigor even when the body is in distress.
When the Mystic Sense goes exploring in high altitudes it never comes
back empty handed. Even when it fails to return with health of body, it
holds in its grasp health of mind. A blithe spirit in a feeble body can
accomplish more than a sluggish spirit in a robust body. There are two
kinds of healthymindedness—temperamental and acquired. The latter is the
most powerful and may be had by anyone who cultivates his Mystic Sense.
The extent to which the Mystic Sense works toward a cure cannot be
formulated. It varies with conditions. Of this we can be assured. It is
always salutary, frequently indispensable. Diseases caused or induced by
an abuse or morbid use of the imagination cannot be banished without the
aid of the Mystic Sense as the chief agent. The imagination must be cured
before the sickness can be cured, and there are instances when the cure
of the imagination is the cure of the disease. That is none the less a
disease, the seat of which is in the psychic, rather than in the physical
part of self.
Two things remain to be said. First, our day is laying a dangerous accent
on the value of mere physical life in man. It tends to foster physical
self-consciousness and is an aspect of degrading materialism. All the
efforts being put forth in the direction of making it possible for the
physically feeble to survive, are dangerous, unless followed up by
commensurate efforts to make them lit as characters. Mere existence and
mere longevity are false gods.
It is haply justifiable for men of low breed, who honestly think this
life the only one, to grasp at all its available gifts, and struggle to
retain it on any terms for as long a period as may be. But not so among
those who have risen to a knowledge of the meaning of immortality, even
in its lesser aspects, of the perpetuation of the nation and the race,
and the persistence of a man’s work and influence among men after he
himself has vanished. For such there is a higher food than mere life,
beside which mere survival looks cheap and worthless.
“A man must live, we justify
Low shift and trick to treason high,
A little vote for a little gold
To a whole senate bought and sold,
By that self-evident reply.
But is it so? Pray tell me why
Life at such cost you have to buy?
In what religion were you told
A man must live?
There are times when a man must die,
Imagine, for a battle-cry,
From soldiers, with a sword to hold,—
From soldiers, with the flag unrolled,—
This coward’s whine, this liar’s lie,—
A man must live!”[10]
There is, however, a type of heroism which is not as uncommon as it seems
to be for it is hidden—the type to which Kipling refers when he says:
“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on, when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”—
and once more we quote from another writer:
“Let us, for one thing, never forget that physical health
is not the true end of human life, but only one of its most
important means and conditions.... Death may and should be
risked, the slow but certain undermining of the physical health
may be laudably embarked on, if only the mind and character
are not damaged, and if the end to be attained is found to
be necessary or seriously helpful, and unattainable by other
means.”[11]
Secondly, special and mystical means of promoting or regaining health
must have as a background the accumulated knowledge and scientific skill
of the day. If there are individual exceptions here and there, they go to
prove the rule. We can no more ignore the history of medical and chemical
science, the findings of the microscope and laboratory, without disaster,
than we can cut our country off from the traditions, laws and customs
of yesterday without similar results. On the other hand, it is at least
equal folly to flout or discredit the mystical experience of the ages.
Human life, individually and corporately, is a unit, and due recognition
must be given to all that goes to make it up.