THE JOURNAL OF MAN does not fear to perform its duty and use plain
language in reference to the obstructionists who hinder the acceptance
of demonstrable sciences and prevent all fair investigation, while
they occupy positions of influence and control in all collegiate
institutions.
It is not in scorn or bitterness that we should speak of this erring
class, a large number of whom are the victims of mis-education--of the
hereditary policy of the colleges, which is almost as difficult to
change as a national church, or a national despotism. The young men
who enter the maelstrom of college life are generally borne along as
helpless as rowing boats in a whirlpool. It is impossible for even the
strongest minds to be exposed for years, surrounded by the
contaminating influence of falsehood, and come forth uninjured. But
while we pity the victims of medical colleges and old-fashioned
universities, let us seek for our young friends institutions that have
imbibed the spirit of the present age.
Man is essentially a spiritual being, and, even in this life, he has
many of the spiritual capacities which are to be unfolded in the
higher life. Moreover, there are in every refined constitution a great
number of delicate sensibilities, which no college has ever
recognized.
There has been no concealment of these facts. They have always been
open to observation,--more open than the facts of Geology and
Chemistry. Ever since the earliest dawn of civilization in Egypt,
India, and Greece the facts have been conspicuous before the world,
and, in ancient times, have attracted the attention of imperial and
republican governments. And yet, the literary guild, the
_incorporated_ officials of education everywhere, have refused to
investigate such truths, and shaped their policy in accordance with
the lowest instincts of mammon,--in accordance with the policy of
kings, of priests, of soldiers, and of plutocrats; and this policy has
been so firmly maintained and transmitted, that there is not, to-day,
a university anywhere to be found that possesses the spirit of
progress, or is willing to open either its eyes or its ears to the
illumination of nineteenth-century progress, and to the voice of
Heaven, which is "the still small voice of reason."
"_Of the earth, earthy_" is the character of our colleges to-day as it
was in the days when Prof. Horky and his colleagues refused to look
through the telescope of Galileo. Is not this utter neglect of
Psychometry for forty-five years (because it has not been _forced_
upon their attention) as great an evidence of perpetuated stolidity as
was the conduct of the Professors of Padua 280 years ago in shunning
the inspection of Galileo's telescope, when the demonstration has been
so often repeated that Psychometry is a far greater addition than the
telescope to the methods of science and promises a greater enlargement
of science than the telescope and microscope combined.
"_Of the earth, earthy_" is a just description of institutions which
confine their investigations and limit their ideas of science to that
which is physical, when man's life, enjoyment, hopes and destiny are
all above the plane on which they dwell and in which they burrow.
Physical science is indeed a vast department of knowledge, but to
limit ourselves to that when a far grander realm exists, one really
more important to human welfare, is an attempt to perpetuate a
semi-barbarism, and the time is not _very_ remote in this progressive
age when the barbarism of the 19th century literature and education
will become a familiar theme.
The efforts of intellectual rebels to break through the restrictions
of collegiate despotism have not yet had much success, and my own
labors would have been fruitless in that respect if I had not been
able to combine with others in establishing a more liberal college,
the _Eclectic Medical Institute_ of Cincinnati, which still retains
something of the progressive spirit of its founders.
Simultaneously with the American rebellion against British authority,
_Mesmer_ in France made an assault upon that Chinese wall of medical
bigotry which Harvey found it so hard to overcome, but although he
secured one favorable report from the Medical Academy at Paris, he was
never admitted to an honorable recognition. Now, however, the baffled
truth has entered the citadel of professional authority and the
correspondent of the New York Tribune tells the story as follows: