INTRODUCTION.

“There are two kinds of knowledge. There is a medical science and there is a medical wisdom. To the animal man belongs the animal comprehension; but the understanding of divine mysteries belongs to the spirit of God in him.” (Theophrastus Paracelsus, “De Fundamento Sapientiæ.”)

A great deal has been written in modern books on pathology about the difficulty of defining the word “disease.” The dictionary calls it “lack or absence of ease, pain, uneasiness, distress, trial, trouble,” &c., but against either of these definitions objections may be raised. James Paget says: “Ease and disease, well and ill, and all their synonyms are relative terms, of which none can be fixed unconditionally. If there could be fixed a standard of health, all deviations from it might be called diseases; but a chief characteristic of living bodies is not fixity, but variation by self-adjustment to a wide range of varying circumstances, and among such self-adjustments it is not practicable to make a line separating those which may reasonably be called healthy from those which may as reasonably be called disease.”

To this occult science answers thatsuch a standard of health exists for us as soon as we recognise the unity and supremacy of the law; that the results of obedience to the law are harmony and health, and the results of disobedience are called discords or disease.

Shakespeare says:—

“The heavens themselves, the planets and this centreObserve degree, priority and place,Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,Office, and custom, in all line of order.”—(Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.)

“The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre

Observe degree, priority and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order.”

—(Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.)

If we regard the order, which “is Heaven’s first law,” as the creation of the self-adjustment of accidentally arising circumstances, leaving out of consideration the fundamental Unity of the All and its one purpose, we would then probably find various laws of order in the universe, being essentially different from each other; and it would be difficult to know which of these laws it would be best to follow; but if we recognise in the order that rules all things a manifestation of one eternal law of orderand harmony, the function of Supreme Wisdom acting in nature but not being the product of nature, it will remain for us only to know that supreme Law and obey it. The universe is only one, and is ruled by only one source of all laws; but there are many unities within the constitution of this great Unity; they constitute as many selves within Self, whose separate interests are not identical with that of the whole, and therefore the order obeyed by these temporary selves is not the same as that of the eternal whole. Thus the battle for existence, far from being the cause of the order observable in the world, is in fact the cause of the disorder existing therein.

If man, like his divine prototype, were a perfect unity, a manifestation of will and thought identified and one, there would be only one law to obey: the law of his divine nature; he would be forever in harmony with himself; there would be no disharmonious elements in his nature, seeking to create an order of their own, and thereby causing discords and disease; but man is a compound being, there are many elements in his nature, each representing to a certain extent an independent form of will, and the more one of these modifications of will succeeds in departing from the order that constitutes the whole, and to enact, be it intelligently or instinctively, a will of its own, the greater will be the disharmony which it causes within the whole organism and the greater will be the disease.[1]“A house divided against itself will fall.”Disease is the disharmony which follows the disobedience to the law; the restoration consists in restoring the harmony by a return to obedience to the law of order which governs the whole.

The key to the cure of diseases is therefore in the understanding of the fundamental law which governs the nature of man, and for this purpose it is necessary that a rational system of medicine should know the constitution of man; not only that of his physical body, which is merely the lower part of the house wherein he dwells; but the whole physical, astral and mental constitution of that being called “Man,” which is still the greatest mystery to science, and of which little more than the anatomy, the physiological functions and the chemical composition of thematerial organs and substances composing his corporeal form is either known to or taught by our modern academies.

Great progress has been made by modern science in investigating all the minor details of the shell which man occupies during his life upon this planet; but as regards the inhabitant of that house, the inner man, who is neither wholly material nor wholly spiritual, the ancient sages knew more about his true nature than is ever dreamed of in our medical schools, and it will be undoubtedly worth while to examine their views. Moreover, if the outward body of man is, as they teach, only the outward expression of the qualities and functions of a more interior and invisible human organism; then it appears that many bodily diseases, such as are not caused by direct physical injuries, are the results of disorders existing within that inner organism, and as every true physician should seek to know the causes of diseases, and not merely destroy their external effects, such a knowledge of the “causal body” of man, whose visible image is his “phenomenal form,” may open a new field for pathology and therapeutics, from which a rich harvest may be gathered for the benefit of mankind.

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