FURTHER ANALYSIS OF THE UNIVERSE.
In a previous chapter, some special reference has been made to a little German professor named Immanuel Kant. He was born at Königsberg, in 1724. In 1781 he wrote a book which he called "The Critique of Pure Reason." This provokingly modest title, as already said, covered, in reality,the analysis of mind and matter, time and space. It was the most far-reaching piece of purely intellectual work that had ever been given to the world. It has split the heads of hundreds of "philosophers." Certain thinkers have fancied they have thought beyond it, and have supposed it to be laid on the shelf of "deceased philosophy." Meanwhile, we are told, the universities "are returning to the study of Kant." Better still, some of them are even beginning to understand him. Here we shall take him straight,paying no attention to any of the side issues in which he was apt to cover himself up.[56]
Kant, so learned that he was said to "know everything," was completely acquainted with the whole trend of British philosophy, from John Locke to David Hume. He was saturated, too, with the physical sciences. So his first real step in hisCritique of Pure Reasonwas to found himself on the all-inclusive law of scientific idealism. Immanuel Kant did not fool with this law. He did not test it, prove it, and then let it slip out of a loose, greasy mind, as an airy nothing of no practical consequence. He grasped it, and held it, as the bed-rock of all thought and all things. It is a pity he omitted to say so at the very first touch of his work. But he said it clearly enough when he happened to get ready. Thus, for instance:[57]
"In order to prevent any misunderstanding,it will be requisite, in the first place, to recapitulate, as clearly as possible, what our opinion is with respect tothe fundamental nature of our sensuous cognition in general. We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the re-presentation of phenomena; that the things which we intuite are not in themselves the same as our re-presentations of them in intuition, nor are their relations so constituted as they appear to us; and thatif we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, thennot only the nature and relations of objectsin space and time,but even space and time themselves disappear.... What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves, and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility, is quite unknown to us."
Again, in closing his dissection of space, Kant said:
"Objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, andwhat we call outward objectsare nothing else but merere-presentations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known bymeans of these representations, nor ever can be, but respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is ever made."
Once more:
"The faculty of sensibility not only does not present us with any indistinct and confused cognition of objects as things in themselves, but, in fact, gives usno knowledge of theseat all. On the contrary, as soon as we abstract in thoughtour own subjective nature, the object re-presented, with the properties ascribed to it by sensuous intuition,entirely disappears, because it was only this subjective nature that determined the form of the object as a phenomenon."
After awhile, under the maddening caption of "The Possibility of a Conjunction of the Manifold Representations given by Sense,"[58]our German professor virtually crowded his whole work into this one paragraph:
"The manifold content in our re-presentations can be given in an intuition which is merely sensuous—in other words, is nothing but susceptibility; and the form of this intuition can exista prioriin our faculty ofrepresentation, without being anything else but the mode in which the subject is affected. But the conjunction (conjunctio) of a manifold in intuition never can be given by the senses; it cannot therefore be contained in the pure form of sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of re-presentation. And as we must, to distinguish it from sensibility, entitle this facultyunderstanding, so all conjunction, whether conscious or unconscious, be it of the manifold in intuition, sensuous or non-sensuous, or of several conceptions, is an act of the understanding. To this act we shall give the general appellation ofsynthesis, thereby to indicate, at the same time, thatwe cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves."
As to comprehend this paragraph is to analyze the universe, let us grapple with it.
Impatient Dr. Sam. Johnson once kicked a stone to refute Berkeley. Let us take that stone, as a clump of matter, and treat it with the head instead of the foot.
"The manifold content in our re-presentations," says Kant, "can be given in an intuition which is merely sensuous." This meanssimply that the various properties of the "re-presentation" or "intuition" called a stone are "effects on the senses." The color, the texture, the weight, the size—every one of all such "material" attributes—exist, as they are, solely by relation tome, or to some other being in whom is organized the element of "sense." Matter ismadeof impact—impact between its objective background ("the noumenon" or "noumena") and some sort or degree of subjectivity. Without these two terms, their product of interaction, their third term, matter, isnot. So "the manifold content" of a "re-presentation"—or, what is the same thing, the properties of a material object—are "nothing but susceptibility."
By "the form of intuition," Kant meant, as he has repeatedly explained, theplural qualityof space and time. Space is made ofspaces; time oftimes; and the plural contents (always such) of matter can only exist under the plural contents of space and time—that is, in sections of space and sequences of time, these sections and sequences being the intrinsic character, the divisible quality, the essential "form" of space and time as total units or completed things.And the nature of space and time need not be anything moreobjectivethan the nature of matter in general, but can be derived, too, from "the mode in which the subject is affected." "But," says Kant, "all conjunction" is "an act of the understanding," and "can not be contained in the pure form of sensuous intuition"; by which he means that time could never be a conjunct of times, space a conjunct of spaces, nor a stone the conjunct of its properties—each a "synthesis" of a "manifold content"—unless made so by the synthetical unity ofa priorimind.
Kant attributes "unconscious" action to the "understanding"—the unconscious action of "conjunction" or "synthesis." His phrase has been a perpetual stumbling-block to his readers, but he meant exactly what he said. Unconscious mental synthesis is what he afterward designated as "the synthesis ofapprehension."
"By the termsynthesisof apprehension [said he], I understand the combination of the manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby perception, that is, empirical consciousness of the intuition (as phenomenon), is possible."
Kant talks of "making the empirical intuition of a house into a perception, by apprehension of the manifold contained therein," and says that "thenecessary unity of spaceand of myexternal sensuous intuitionlies at the foundation of this act." The "manifold" contained in an "empirical intuition"—take the stone we have used for an example—is simply the diversity of "properties," constituting the object—the color, texture, size, weight, and the rest of them; and these properties are "effects of sense." Every one of them is a relation to subjectivity, a result of impactonsubjectivity, and is in theobjectonly as reflecting orre-presenting there the sensuous nature of asubject. But these various "effects on various senses," these merely subjective separates—how do theyget unitedintoone thing? What constitutes the unity of sensuous manifolds? Every phenomenon being an essential plurality—a lot of "sense-effects"—what closes together the various effects on various human senses, called the properties of a stone, into the one phenomenal object, the stone itself. To this end there must be some common subjective ground of those subjective things, "effects onsense." There must be some subjective unity in which those subjective pluralities all merge, for only asmergeddo they get to be anobject. Now, a common subjective ground of various effects on various senses can only be a commonawareness of them—asynthetical unity of apprehension, or just instinctive, automatic consciousness in the germ. This must be common to all the senses together, and to each sense separately. What, for example, is seeing, but the simple awareness of sight? What is touch, but the simple awareness of feeling? What is any "intuition," which means any taking-in of any phenomenon, but a common awareness, however rudimental or developed, of some conjoined diversity of effects on sense?
It must be added here, as vital to the full comprehension of the genesis of matter, that not only every material object, like our example, the stone, is made of essential plurality of sense-effects, but thatevery separate propertyof an object is also made of like plurality. No object, and no property of an object, is, or can be, single, unal, or, in other words,anything, until constructed so, in sense,by the "unconscious understanding" thereof—the synthetical unity of instinctive, automatic "apprehension." To realize this fact, it is only necessary to remember that every property of anything, say the hardness of a stone, is a compound relation between the impact of some ultimate non-ego on the sense of touch, and the peculiar nature of the sense itself: so the property of hardness must containessential diversity, something from each oftwo fundamental sources. As Aristotle, from his ontological investigations, found that matter, if regarded as an absolute independence—an unrelated thing in itself—isno thing, but only chaotic indeterminateness—formless "potentiality"—so Kant, from his psychological inquiry—his dissection of phenomena as existent through perception—found the same truth in deeper significance. Theentire principle of unity, Whether in a feeling, a thought, a material object, or the universe as a whole,can only exist through the principle of mind.
Here is the very bottom of the discoveries of Kant, and the basis, also, of all things.
Mind, then, in its lowest state, is what Kant, "to distinguish it from sensibility," entitled"unconscious understanding." There used to be an old saw in philosophy—still, indeed, at work—to the effect that "there is nothing in the mind that was not first in sense." Leibnitz, adding a piece to the saw, said: "Except mind itself." Leibnitz affirmed, that is, that sense alwayscontainsmind—that mind isinsense as a component of it, and that without mind there is no sense at all. What Leibnitz perceived and asserted, Kantprovedby "observation and induction"—by analyzing phenomena under the law of scientific idealism. Mind in sense—the mind of sense—is justautomatic animal awareness, just "simple apprehension," undeveloped, and in the lowest animal life not to be developed, into "apperception," theconsciousstage of understanding, capable of forming aconcept.
Well, in the genesis of a stone, or any other material object, certain effects on sense are merged in the unit they compose, by reception into the "synthetical unity of apprehension." The stone iscreatedin this way. Its own objective unity—its wholeness, or "form" as a stone—is thus the derivation, the manufactured product, ofsubjectivity as a cosmic element,an element "a priori" to the existence of any possible phenomenon.
The stone, however,isunmistakably objective—is just the palpable thing that everybody takes it to be, out there in space. This is a givenfact of perception—something, as Kant said, "never questioned in experience." As suchfact, how can it be accounted for, when we know, at the same time, that the stone is nothing but a plexus of subjective states? How does the bunch ofinternal impressionsgetexternalized? What is the cause of this reflex, this "re-presentation"? It must be something inherent in the principle ofapprehension itself, or the plexus of impressions would necessarily stay within us. Being wrought internally, it would remain internal. Hence, this "apprehension"—this element of instinctive synthetical awareness—must be in its nature adouble—an entity which reproduces, or throws out before itself, whatever lot of sense-effects it receptively synthesizes, or binds together in a sheaf, known as some object. But all this, summed up, means only that mind, even in its lowest form of "unconscious understanding"—the simple automatic apprehension whichshuts together certain effects on sense into a totality of them—must,as being apprehension, necessarily, though instinctively, apprehended its own product. Here is the full explanation of the amusing, iron-clad conception of Hobbes, that an "image," or a "color," is but an apparition unto us of "motion, agitation, or alteration" in some "internal substance of the head."
The self-reflexiveness of "apprehension" is precisely the same thing,in germ, that the self-reflexiveness of "apperception" is, infull self-consciousness.
The self-reflexiveness of apprehension, in the manufacture of phenomena, was named by Kant "the transcendental synthesis of imagination"—the word "imagination" standing on its roots, and meaningthe image-making faculty. Phenomena, as reflex-conjuncts of sense-effects, are "produced"—put out—by this second function of apprehension; so Kant said he sometimes called it "productive imagination." It is that function of pure elemental, ora prioriawareness, which "re-presents" itself in the constitution of every object, as itsunity, but a unityshapedaccording to someobject's filling of senses-effects. Hence Kant says:
"This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, which is possible and necessarya priori, may be called figurative synthesis (synthesis speciosa)."
Thus Kant found mind in sense, "unconscious understanding," the instinctive awareness of animal susceptibility, as it existed in himself, to be the literal objective basis of all phenomena—the first "material" unity of every "material thing." And he found this elemental source of all unity to be an innate self-activity—a self-seeing mirror, as it were—a double of receptiveness and reflectiveness. Here, at last, was the actual,living thing, of which Locke's "blank-tablet" had long been the still-born, stone figure.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his remarkable investigation of "The Principles of Psychology," posits "mind" as always implied in sentiency, and as necessary to the genesis of any phenomenon, even the "first nervous shock" of a sensitive being. Recognizing the law of scientific idealism, he has seen, too, that our objective world is made up, at the perceptional outset,of such shocks. Again, he has proved, with great detail, that the action of mind is always of one general nature, whether in the lowest animal instinct or the highest conscious reason. But back at the first nervous shock, Mr. Spencerstopswith mind, and says that at the next regress it becomes "unknowable." Yet nearly a hundred years before this investigation Kant showed precisely what this so-called "unknowable"is. He showed that mind, in all stages and states—mind in itself—is a synthetical unity of awareness. In germ, as "unconscious understanding"—as the mind of sense—its function is to be simply apprehensive of, and thus to conjoin in its instinctive cognizance, some "manifold" contained in a "nervous shock," or in various sense-effects, into someunity; which then, asitself apprehended, ormade a reflex, becomes an impression, an image, an object.
A SPECIAL LOOK AT SPACE AND TIME.
Through scientific idealism, fully examined, Kant proved that matter is a manufacture of sense. We have not followed the order of his work, but have gone straight to the heart of it. His own beginning was the dissection of space and time. Still, he implied therein, if only in one remark, all that has here been stated.
"If I take [says Kant] from our representation of a body, all that the understanding thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force, divisibility, and also whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability, hardness, color, there is still something left us from this empirical intuition, namelyextension and shape. These belong to pure intuition, which existsa prioriin the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and without any real object of the senses or any sensation."
Students of Kant have known, in a general way, that he attributed "extension" to "bodies," as derived by them froma priorimind.Spaceis so derived; hence all thingsinspace, which is the "form," the "condition" of their existence, must partake of its nature, which is pure extension, pure "given quantity," as he designates it. But why does theshapeof a material body belong to "pure intuition," andcome from mind? Simply because the shape (let it be of a stone) is merely theobjected"synthesis of apprehension," in which the properties of the stone, as impressions of sense, areunified, but in accordance with their special variety. The shape is their "figurative synthesis," their "synthesis speciosa." Now, in the meaning of Kant, and in the nature of the case, space ismadein precisely the samemanneras a stone; only the stone is full of diverse properties—special effects on sense, got from some impinging background of matter—some "noumenon"—while space has no properties at all, except additions and divisions ofitself—spaces. In other words, the stone is aspecialrelation between mental synthesis and sensuous susceptibility,the latter being in particular impact with some noumenal non-ego, and being definitelyfilledfrom it. Space, on the other hand, is ageneralrelation between the same mental synthesis and the same sensuous susceptibility, the latter holdingno contentsfrom any noumenon, yet being recipient toallpossibility of noumenal impact. Hence, space is just "the synthesis of apprehension" itself, set in self-reflex, objected, phenomenated. The stone, in its unity, its form, its "shape," is this objected synthesis of apprehension,filledwith certain sensuous effects. The synthesis of apprehension, again, as the condition of any special "shape" into which it may be stuffed, is of coursea prioritothestuffed shape; so space isa priorito the stone in space. Once again, space is the outward representation, the very double to the eye, of the synthesis of apprehension; for space is just thevisible synthesis of the apprehended—the transparent base of co-existence for all external things.
It must be remembered that the synthesis of apprehension, as the "mind" of "sense," is itself adouble, containing the pure conjunctive unity of "unconscious understanding" as anactive factor, and susceptibility to impact as a passive factor. In the conjoined relation of these two factors every material phenomenon gets to exist; so there must besomerelation of space toeveryexternal object, and toallexternal objects—which is to say at once that space isinfinite, both in extent and divisibility, so far as it can apply to objectsat all.
And here, too, is the reason that the contained character, the constituent quality, of space—meaning what Kant termed the "form of the intuition"—is essentially plural. This constituent quality of space is are-presentation of mind, as at once active and passive, receptive and reflexive—as fundamentala prioriself-separateness. Butspace itself, as awhole, is thesynthesisof this self-separateness. It is self-unity of self-separateness,materialized. Space, made of spaces, is a thing identical in form and contents. Kant said:
"Spacere-presented as anobject(as geometry really requires it to be) contains more than the mereform of the intuition; namely, a combination of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility into a representation that can be intuited; so theform of the intuitiongives us merely the manifold, but theformal intuitiongives unity of re-presentation. In the 'Æsthetic,' [the first division ofThe Critique of Pure Reason], I regarded this unity as belonging entirely to sensibility, for the purpose of indicating that it antecedes all conceptions, although it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to sense, through which, however, all our conceptions of space and time are possible.... By means of this unity alone (the understanding determining the sensibility) space and time are given as intuitions."
It is easy enough to follow out the genesis of time, in the same way as the genesis of space. The constituent quality of space and time is the same in both, and is subject in both to the same act of synthesis, in order that the essential plurality of "the form of intuition" may be created into the unity of "the formal intuition" itself—the single thing, space or time. But time is the "form" of "in-ternal sense," as Kant put it, while space is the "form" of "ex-ternal sense"—sense being to Kant not its physical organs (which are matter), but mentalsusceptibilityas distinguishedfrom mentalsynthesis. Every phenomenon in space is made of active subjective-synthesis, passive subjective-susceptibility, and noumenal impact. Space and time themselves are made of the synthesis and the susceptibility alone. But pure synthesis, which means just pure identity of awareness, canhaveno "susceptibility," cannot beoccupied, withoutchange of state; and any change of state in a pure general awareness forms succession of states, or, as Kant said, "generates time." But conjunction, again, of synthesis and susceptibility must be the relating of separates, with reference to the objective as well as the subjective factor. As objective effect this relation is pure co-existence of separates in time, through outness from each other—space. All objects, impressions, "effects of sense," must take the order of time; but "objects of internal sense" (feelings, or emotions), having no direct filling from noumena, are not objects in space. Thus, while space is pure synthesis of apprehensionex-ternally objected, time is the same pure synthesis of apprehensionin-ternally objected.
CREATIVE MIND FURTHER PROBED.
The inmost secret of the universe lies in Kant's four words, "the synthesis of apprehension," or what he more elaborately termed "the transcendental synthesis of the image-making faculty."
"It is an operation [he says] of the understanding on sensibility, and thefirstapplication of the understanding to objects of possible intuition, and at the same timethe basis for the exercise of the other functions of that faculty."
It has been intently presented to view in these pages, because it focalises and explains the whole law of scientific idealism, and is the one most important as well as abstruse fact in the genesis of things.
But having duly dealt with this point, it must now be said that "the synthesis ofapprehension,"aloneandungrown, is altogether inadequate to give form to an object, in the full import of that word. For anobjectis something held distinct by itself, in connection with another object, or with various objects. "Unconsciousunderstanding" cannot form such connection and distinction, but can only blindly manufacture single intuitions, affording at most what Kant termed "a rhapsody of perceptions," in which no one would be first or last, or anything at all when past. A fish-worm, perhaps, has such a "rhapsody of perceptions" for its objective world. In the world of man thea priorielement of intelligence which shapes it must be objected in the phase of consciousness proper, or "apperception," as well as "simple apprehension."
In noting the difference between the synthesis of apprehension and the synthesis of apperception, Kant said:
"It is one and the same spontaneity which, at one time under the name of imagination, at another under that of understanding, produces conjunction in the manifold of intuition."
"Apperception" is simply apprehensionapprehended, or mind adequate to self-conceptionand so to conceptions in general. That there can be a stone, as known to ahuman being, there must be a synthesis of sense-effects (its properties), in which they are distinguished among themselves, and of which objects as wholes are distinguished from each other. A synthesis of this kind presupposes not merely "unconscious understanding," but understanding that recognizesitselfin connecting all things else.
"I am conscious [said Kant] of my identical self in relation to all the variety of representations given to me in intuition, because I call all of themmyrepresentations.... The thought, 'These representations, given in intuition, belong all of them to me,' is just the same as 'I unite them in one self-conscious.'... Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuition, as givena priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedesa prioriall determinate thought. But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves ... but is on the contrary, an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than thefaculty of conjoininga priori, and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition."
So, to theexistenceof anydistinguishable object, there mustpre-existthe element of mind in the phase ofself-consciousness as well assub-consciousness. Both must enter the object. Hence, when Kant talked of "the objective unity of self-consciousness"—another of his profoundest deductions—he meant literally that "the synthetical unity of apperception," as well as "the synthetical unity of apprehension," ismaterializedin allconceivable things. To form the sense-effects of a stone into a single "intuition," they must be merged in a synthesis of apprehension; but tosetthe intuition as thus created—to make it remainitselfin the midst ofothers, it must be merged with them in a higher synthesis—a common connective consciousness, which, distinguishing them in itself, re-presents them as distinguished.
It was here that Kant reached his famous "Categories," which are merely reflexes of the pure synthetical unity of mind, as formingthe unity of all things and of all connection among them.
The principle of mind, beginning, as we have seen, even with the instinctive mind of sense, is a spontaneous self-activity, receptive, reflexive, and resumptive of its doubles. By being the first, it unifies any and every manifold of sense-effects; by being the second, itre-presents the product—throws itout; by being the third, it apprehends the externalisation, and a percept is born. Apperception, or full consciousness, is the same self-activity, self-reflex, self-sight, transformed into "understanding." Thus, mind is essentially atriadas well as aunit. But, if so, it must reflect itself to conception as a "Quantity"—a sum of its own phases; and in these phases, it is a "Unity," a "Plurality," and a "Totality."
Mind, again, as justa-prioriprinciple and basis of all things, is manifestly their universal "Quality." But, as self-reflexive, self-resumptive, it is at once a "Reality," a "Negation," and a "Limitation," which means it is that which, in its double, contraposes one state to another, while, as a whole, it is the limit of both states.
It goes without saying that a principle of self-reflex is the "Relation" of its reflexes, and in this relation is a "SubstancewithDependence," a "CausewithEffect," and a "Reciprocity" of its separates.
This is a very short cut to the Kantian Categories, but sufficient, perhaps, if we bear in mind that, whileimplicitin the mind of sense, they are reflexes of conscious, not "unconscious" understanding. The synthesis of mind through conceptions proceeds, not by the formation of sense-effects into units of intuition, but by the formation of these already-made units (objects or their properties) into species, genera, and ultimate universals—the pure unity of these groupings, without regard to the things grouped, being just the purea prioriunity of self-conscious awareness. Thus, those ultimate universals, the categories, are objective reproductions of pure conceptive synthesis, without which there could beno connection of things in thought—which would amount precisely to norealised objectsand noobjective experience.
One of Kant's industrious reviewers, Sir William Hamilton, fancied that Aristotle'scategories were "genera of real things," while Kant's categories were "determinations of thought," and, as mere "entia rationis," must "be excluded from the Aristotelic list." But there are no "genera of real things" exceptas"determinations of thought"; and, in making an experimental classification of objects, Aristotle found some of the Kantian categories, because the synthetical unity of mind had put those categories into the objects at the creation of them. To Kant anobjectmeant something of which Sir William Hamilton had no boding.
THE GENESIS OF "TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS."
It must now be easy to see that mind, in its general form, is three-in-one—a triad. It is a self-reflexive, self-related unit, of three phases. The first phase is automatic "apprehension." The second is conscious "understanding." The third, which we touch here, is "reason." In reason, mind is still the general cosmic principle of awareness, with the function of synthesis, or conjunction. As intuition, it has perceived things. As conception, it has classified them. As a last synthetical unity of awareness, it must include, or "comprehend" them—must relate them to its conjunctive unity in their full scope, which means simply in the ultimate reflexes, or forms, of its own nature and action. As process, this can only be done by referring all things to pure synthesis, or connective identity, asfinal cause.
Seeingthings, and thenthinkingthem, we always end by asking, "Why?" Theyare,each and all so and so; but what is the "reason" for it? The pureformof answer, apart from all contents, is "because"—on account ofcause. Thus reason forms its synthesis of comprehension by referring the particular to the general for a cause—a process that can never stop short of including all things in ultimate unities of cause. It is evident that ultimate unities of cause must contain all subordinate causes or conditions under them. There can be just three such ultimate unities; for there are just three possible kinds of being and conditions that relate to their universals: subjective being and conditions to subjective unity of them; objective being and conditions to objective unity of them; and all being and conditions, both subjective and objective, to the universal unity of being and conditions. These final unities, again,asfinal—as totalities of conditions with none beyond—are themselves "unconditioned."
Reason, then, as ana-priorisynthetical unity, necessarily refers all conditions of things to their final or absolute unities, which are in reality nothing but conceptional reflexes of Reason'sown constructivesynthetical identity.Tobean identity of mind, for instance, to the conditions of subjectivity, reason must receivethemintoitsunity, which thus becomestheirtotality. Now what is the objective re-presentation, the rational conception of the totality of subjective conditions? It is simply the "transcendental idea" of pure subjectiveness, or Soul. In the same way the totality of objective phenomenal conditions, is the idea of the Universe; while the totality ofallconditions, both subjective and objective, is the idea of that in which all mind and all matter are related as their final cause or reason—God.
THE GRAND RESULT OF DISSECTING PHENOMENA.
Since the days of Immanuel Kant, no philosophy, no rational theology, no ultimate science, not referring to the results of his work, has had any real basis in thought—the reason being that he saw through, and explained, the principle of universal relativity, the law of scientific idealism, and relaid the whole structure, from the corner-stone up.
Before Kant it was known well enough that "matter," however we must all accept it with our hands and eyes, has no standing, under the analysis of thought, except as a system of effects on ourselves. Hume, we remember, saw all this so clearly that he pronounced the very organs of sense, "our limbs and members," to be "not our body," but "certain impressions" to which the mind ascribes "a corporeal existence." Our limbs and members certainlyareour body—the only body we have—but Hume was right in his meaning that ourbody is a phenomenon which has no existence but as a plexus of impressions on a principle of intelligence, possessing various modes of reception, named senses. But thisprincipleofintelligenceitself was, to Hume, not a fact to be grasped by "reason," not a principle to be known and described, but was to be taken as a "force and vivacity" unknowable beyond aninstinctof it. Hume's unknowable "force and vivacity"—an improved form of Locke's "blank-tablet"—Kantanalyzedin the light of its products; namely, those conjuncts of sense-effects called objects; those conjuncts of objects called species, genera, and categories; and finally those conjuncts of all things and all conditions of things, called transcendental ideas. Now, such conjuncts of various "manifolds" actually exist. They are man's percepts and concepts; they are his facts, his environment. Butaspercepts and concepts, and always conjuncts of "the manifold," they are formed, organized, totalized, through aprinciple—the principle of perception and conception itself. This is Kant'sa-priorisynthetical unit, common and necessary to all "things" and to all "experience."
The last word of any weight, against this reduction of matter to mind, was said a few years ago by that exceptionally acute thinker, Professor Huxley, in his summary of Hume. Too able and learned, both as philosopher and scientist, to question idealism, Huxley admitted it unqualifiedly. But, not having gone beyond the British proofs of it, he defended what is commonly called "materialism" in this way:
"If we analyze the proposition that all mental phenomena are the effects or products of material phenomena, all that it means amounts to this: that whenever those states of consciousness which we call sensation, or emotion, or thought, come into existence, complete investigation will show good reason for the belief that they are preceded by those other phenomena of consciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion. All material changes appear, in the long run, to be modes of motion; but our knowledge of motion is nothing but that of a change in the place and order of our sensations; just as our knowledge of matter is restricted to those feelings of which we assume it to be the cause."
To this last posture of materialism, a competentunderstanding of Kant is theonly reply that has ever been needed. It is simply of no consequence to the case what states of consciousness precede or follow other states of consciousness. Let it be granted (whether true or not) that "phenomena of consciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion" precede all others. What of it? Kant has proved to us thatnophenomenon of consciousness—no matter, no motion, no sensation—and, beyond all these, no time and no space, in which all the rest appear—has, or can have,any existence, except as put into unity, form, and order, by the unity, form, and order of mind. If both "the synthesis of apprehension" and "the synthesis of apperception" enter into any state of consciousness named matter,to give it birth, there is no possibility that the element of intelligence can be anafter-birthof the process.
All our objects, then, from a germ cell to the horizon, are constructed such through a mental principle innate in our own structure. But here it must be re-iterated and re-emphasized that whatever we, as units of mind, may embody in objects asform, thefillingof themis not ours. It has a source apart. The filling of our objects comes from "the ultimate non-ego," the "background of matter." This ultimate non-ego was a heritage to Kant from British idealism. He took it for granted at his first step and held by it unchanged when he was old and exhausted. He called it the "noumenon," the "real correlate of matter," and pluralized it as "things in themselves." But he insisted, as firmly as Herbert Spencer has since done, that the "noumenon" is "unknown and unknowable."
In a certain way—vital enough, too—"things in themselves"are"unknown and unknowable." Man is a small, dependent, limited being. Let us admit at once every old proverb in the world, to the effect that "the finite cannot comprehend the infinite." Sir William Hamilton issued a tedious list of such proverbs. Let us adopt the whole of it. "The finite cannot comprehend the infinite." The very meaning of "things in themselves" is that they are withheld from us in theirspecific contents. But in theirgeneral naturethey are related and revealed to us; and the revelation is always asserted when we name them "source ofimpact," the "real correlate of matter," "things in themselves," or even "the unknown and unknowable." Is there an "unknown and unknowable?" Yes, thereis. But whateverishasbeing—musthave being, or not be that which "is." So much then weknowof "the unknown and unknowable"; it has being; it is afact. But we know it negatively, as well as positively. We know what it isnot, on precisely the same ground that we know what itis. Being a "noumenon," it isnota phenomenon; being a "thing initself," it is not what things are tous. Being "the real correlate of matter," it isnotmatter, but is the objective background of matter.
Butnow: Kant had analyzed matter and found it to be arelation—a relation between finite subjective awareness and this very noumenal background now in evidence. He had found, too, that allmatter—every spicule of it—isexhausted in the relation. He had found that, out of the relation,matter has no existence. By these presents, then, we know that the objective background of matter, the ultimate non-ego, isnot material.
And, at this point, where are we, if wepause and think? When reduced to elements, to principles, what is there of the universe—the all of things? Just the subjective and the objective, mind and matter. Hence, that which isnot matterismind. Nothing else is left for it.
We may wriggle at this terminus as much as we like, but there is no dodging it. It may be said, for instance, that, while weknowandexperiencenothing but mind and matter (including with matter its phenomenal vistas, space and time), we canimagine somethingelse than either; and, during the past fifty years, this nonsense has found lodgment in some heads. Now I can imagineanything, in the meaning that I can arbitrarily produce some foolishfancy. I can imagine a white blackbird, with his tail-feathers on his head. But I cannot imagine even this self-evident contradiction as a thing of neither mind nor matter. What is an object of "imagination" in the meaning of fancy? It may be empty of matter, and so unlike the white blackbird. Butnoobject of imagination can be empty of mind. Imagination is itself an act of mind; hence every possible product of imagination must partake of mind.If, therefore, I imagine something apart from mind and matter, it must still spring from mind, contain mind, and sonotbe apart from mind. The "reductio ad absurdum" can be had cheap and sure, just where it is most needed.
After Immanuel Kant had once and for good dissected the universe, it seems a pity that he declined to put his findings together, and take the last logical step of his magnificent demonstrations. As a requisite, perhaps, to his microscopic analysis of human subjectivity, he declined to generalize his own discoveries. In short, Kant's synthesis was Hegel. But Hegel we need not follow, as our short cut to him, through the solution of noumena, is worth more, as yet, than the whole German tour of "post-Kantean philosophy."
Very early in his work Kant said:
"There are two sources of human knowledge (which probably spring froma common, but to us unknown root), namely, sense and understanding. By the former, objects aregivento us; by the latter,thought."
Dissecting, with Kant, the nature of "understanding," we have discovered in it the unalform of all our re-presentations—of every perceptible and conceivable objected fact. Dissecting "sense," with the same instructor, we have found it to be certain modes of mental susceptibility, its physical organs being nothing but relations between susceptible awareness and the noumenal unknown, like all the rest of "matter." Led, once more, by our Professor straight up to this noumenal unknown, wherehewilled to stop and turn his back on it, we have only had tolook, in order to see it collapse into the self-retention of Spirit—spiritoutofus, but stillin itself, and thus going to make up the totality of Spiritual Being. We have thus found the "one common root" of all knowledge and all things. But we have touched, also, the apex of thought, and can now see what is meant—really and fully meant—by "absolute idealism."
Absolute Idealism is not merely a phrase; it is a grand and glorious fact. Immersed in matter, stuck in our senses, we may insist on looking at sensuous phenomena as our friend John Jasper looked at the sun, with honest contempt for Copernicus and Newton. "De earf donotmove roun' de sun," exclaimed thesturdy preacher, "but de bressed sun move roun' de earf. Dere she go now: don't I see her wi' dese very eyes?" Parson Jasper did see the sun moving round the earth, and in the same way we all see the objects of our senses existing in perfect independence of ourselves. Still, as surely as astronomy has proved the delusion of taking the sun's movement from the eye, philosophy, with the aid of "practical science," has proved the delusion of taking objective re-presentations as not constructed through subjective being. The inevitable end of this proof is the dissolution of noumena as anything "material," and the inclusion of all things in Universal Spirit. Of such spirit, finite subjectivity is a function—a necessary participative reflex, through which the Universal Spirit is life, manifestation, self-evolution.
SOME SEQUENCES OF ABSOLUTE IDEALISM.
Since Kant, we have said, "no philosophy, no rational theology, no ultimate science, not referring to the results of his work, has had any real basis in thought." It must be added that since the fulfilment of Kant'sCritique, especially by Hegel, there has not been one stone left as a foundation for "materialism." It goes right on, however, in multifarious forms, its defunct exponents still imagining they live. Surgical psychology, in special, is still as active with scalpel and microscope as if ours were the day of Coudillac and Erasmus Darwin. The knife goes into the brain, and the eye peers after it, with the funny expectation of seeing, with Dr. Cabanis, some spicule or plexus of matter, there, "which secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." The work is excellent as anatomy, and may have a plenty of important uses. But we, here, if we havehad the capacity and patience to grasp the findings of Immanuel Kant, know that mind can never be derived from any physical correspondence of its nature and action. We know that every possible attempt at such derivation is merely a side-show of Parson Jasper's great astronomical comedy, which Copernicus exploded four hundred years ago. We know that every fiber, every solid or liquid, of the brain, with every movement of every atom it contains, is a ready-made physical object in a ready-made space and a ready-made time. But if we know Kant, we know, without a misgiving, that space and time, with all things in them, are not only dependencies but are literal creations and manufactures of a universal principle namedmind. We know it is this principle which furnishes the form, the unity, and so the very existence of every phenomenon. Hence we know, finally, that the first step in the understanding of matter is the analysis of mind, through which all matterisand isconstructed. Without this first step, all other steps are simply a stumble in the dark—the blind-man's buff of children. Or we may say, with a little more dignity, perhaps, that everymaterial law of the cosmos is subject to "The Law of Scientific Idealism."
Now scientific idealism, pursued to the end, merges in absolute idealism. The source and substance of the universe is Intelligent Spirit; or, as the Bible and its Theologians say, this is the All-In-All.
For fifty years—from the publication of Kant'sCritiquein 1781, along through Fichte, and Schelling, to the death of Hegel in 1831—the vast illumination of thought that has been summed up as "German Transcendentalism" strove to unify natural theology and practical science in "Absolute Idealism." It will yet be seen that the work was done, however ill-comprehended. The good old Kant still had his whole head with him when he said, in 1787, "the danger, in this case, is not that of being refuted, but of being misunderstood." The Comtes, the Hamiltons, the Mills and Spencers—with no end, too, of their German brothers—are illustrious examples in proof of Kant's remark, however greatly they may be respected within the limits of their own work.
Once and for good, the history of philosophy, when understood, and the history ofscience, when understood, have joined in the proof that the principle of all life—we may say God if we like—is Spirit Principle.
Transcendentalism—a bulky word, but covering much more than the letter of it—was naturally too high and too deep a result to get all at once into the average human head. For thirty-odd years after the close of its epoch in Germany—or until, in 1864, Dr. James Hutchison Stirling produced hisSecret of Hegel—not a man stood on the earth adequate to reproduce transcendentalism in basis and system. But the practical gist of it, without the full center or circumference, gradually became a part of the world's literature. In Britain, most notably through Thomas Carlyle, the new light penetrated biography, history, criticism, and even political disquisition. In America, focused in Ralph Waldo Emerson, the same light, whiter and purer if less flaming and burning, both vivified and purified all things on which it was shed. There the Infinite Oversoul and the finite undersoul seemed once again to meet in communion and evolution. Meanwhile, Theodore Parker, with his vast scholarship and overpowering courage, preached Jesusof Nazareth, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule, with little regard for any organized theology of his day, whether its Unitarianism or its Calvinistic Orthodoxy. Back of all this, as now appears, there was a plain, uncultured, but inquiring and thoughtful man, in the byways of New England, who from the mechanism of clocks turned to the workings of the human mind, and in his own way reached the depth of knowledge and the mysteries of life. From a few practical experiments, he, too, analyzed the things of matter, and found them to be re-presentations, externalizations, of elemental spirit. And then he drew the inference that spirit molds, directs, governs matter, and so that health of mind materializes health of body.
But now, at once, the whole question at issue confronts us—what is the true and full position and powerof mind in therapeutics? This question must be answered, here, not from the Quimby standpoint, and much less from that of the shallow muddle termed Christian Science, but from the standpoint of actual, accredited, established metaphysics, now substantially bearing the concensus of religion,philosophy, and the practical investigation of material phenomena.
By aid of Kant, with our short-cut to the logical and necessary end of his achievement, we have grasped the elemental source and solvent of man and his universe. It is Spirit in its evolution. But, in this evolution, man—or say rather and alwaysthe principle of sensation and consciousness in which man inheres—is merely the general form, diversely individualized, of the One All-Inclusive Spirit in the activity of self-manifestation. The earth, the sun, moon, and stars, the human body, its house and the landscape, with every particle of all of them, are outwoven of universal Spirit through the loom of subjective being and unity. The forms of matter, with no exception, are fabricated in this way. Thus, not figuratively, but literally and with exact knowledge, we may repeat after St. John:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made."
But the principle of animal apprehension and human apperception—or say just theconscious and the sub-conscious—is not the Ultimately Creative One, but is, inus, only a sub-creative power and agency. We simply individualize it in endless degrees and variations, all of us framing the same general world of objects, conceptions and feelings, but no one of us being, seeing, or feeling, in all respects, exactly like any other incarnation of our common identity.
But while theform—the unity, and thus the individuality—of all things, is materialized from Spirit through sensation and consciousness in subjectivity—while this is the secret and genesis of all creation—we must ever hold fast to the equally basic and universal fact that thefillingof the form—the infinite variety of impact on subjectivity which furnishes the diversity of objects—all this comes from that ultimate spirit-background crudely called "the unknown and unknowable."
Now this background of Absolute Spirit, the very withholding of which from finite creatures constitutes them such, institutes their law of progress, and gives movement of expression to the Infinite Itself, can only be absorbed and mastered by human beings throughstudy, work, and experience. While genuine metaphysics, then, assures us of our spirit-origin and relative oneness with God—of being God's children far more directly and intimately than most of us have ever imagined—it teaches us that for practical purposes, in our condition of existence called "matter," it makes no differencewhatwecallthis condition. 'Tis something actual, something definite, somethingfixed, just as long as we are in our earthly relation to it. From this point of view, Dr. Johnson's kicking of the stone to refute Berkeley was a deserved kick, and even Byron's fun was justified in his tipsy lines,
"When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said."
All things are spirit surely enough; but the phenomena of matter, as transformed spirit, are related to each other under the laws of what we necessarily designate as material nature. Little by little, through long and hard exertion, we find out what these relations are, and how they are fitted to the human center of them. Some things are good to eat and to nourish us; others to poison and kill us. Acold or fever may be a manifestation of spirit, and an herb or drug may be another; but if the herb or drug counteracts and destroys the cold or the fever, and experience proves it ten thousand times, who cares to analyze a dose of aconite or a cup of saffron-tea into a draft of "mortal" or "immortal" mind? The process is a mere fooling with ideals—hysterics jumping at the moon.On metaphysical grounds—as far as anybody knows what metaphysics really means—there is no need that our physicians, if they are "good physicians," should trouble themselves much about a Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. Esculapius came into the world long before her, and his followers will stay in it long after her materialized divinity has risen into a more spiritual and a more intelligent state.
The same may be said of our theologians. Their creeds have not come out of nothing, however much the spirit of them may have grown thick and muddy through crude understandings. The Christian Church, surely, can yet offer to mankind something better than the Eddy "Church Scientist"; and if it can, it is in no ultimate jeopardy from a few, or a fewhundred, congregations of half-educated faddists.
For a student of history—not in its moments, but in its decades and centuries—it is easy to see that "Christian Science" has the reason of the fact andthe spread of it, in its being a protest against the depressing materialism around it—a materialism which, though rationally decapitated by Kant, has shown marvelous activity, for a corpse, ever since the execution.
The medical profession, too, has partly, if indirectly, been responsible for Mrs. Eddy's crazy horse of "metaphysics," running away in the dark, and butting its own brains out. From Dr. Mesmer to Dr. Charcot, it took about a hundred and twenty years for "animal magnetism," under the softer names of "hypnotism" and "suggestion," to achieve full and final standing in the French Academy of Medicine; and the mental phenomena attending "mesmerism" have still but little "respectability" among "regular physicians." But, that curative agencies are not confined to drugs has long been settled in the public mind—such part of the public mind, at least, aspermits itself any considerable reading and thinking.
Has the pulpit itself—orthodox and not so orthodox—contributed to the success of Eddy "Science"? We must say it has. The practise, among the sects, of twisting the Bible out of its straight, historical, natural significance, and fitting its texts to every sort of whim, folly, and malefaction—this general practise has at last culminated in Mrs. Eddy'sKey to the Scriptures, with pretty nearly the dissolution of them in the abomination of interpretation.
But "Christian Science"—the Eddy misfit for a specious name—has had its rise, and it has probably risen about as high as it can reach, notwithstanding its rapid extension for the moment. Only its protrusion from insignificance and non-attention was needed to uncover its foundation on the sands of ignorance, its strength in the perennial weakness and credulity of mankind, and its business success in ordinary, or more than ordinary, business cupidity. Has it done no good in the world, then? Ah, that is another question. Whatever may have been the chief motive of itsfounder, and whatever may have been its "comedy of errors," it has forced the inception of a movement that, as a whole, may have vast results for the human mind and the human body. Whatever material medicines may be necessary to mankind while they themselves are in a material condition, psychic forces in the cure of disease can no longer be ignored. What is the extent, and what the limit, of these forces, is a problem that must be examined. As conditionally—here and now—man isboth spiritual and corporeal—it would seem to be a self-evident conclusion that he must have both material and spiritual aids to health. That we can "jump" our condition, before we get out of it, is the most tremendous paradox ever presented to the human mind; but the sequences—even physical—of systematically opening the finite soul to the Infinite Spirit may be incalculable. The revival, or definite rediscovery, in modern times, of healing the sick by the soul and the laying-on of hands, came to pass some fifty years ago, in the United States, through the honest, single-minded, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. If the spirit of evil—of hypocrisy, selfishness and avarice—hasentered into the movement of mental healing through another source, the frequent necessity of very human means to divine ends is once more illustrated.
VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF THE NEW THOUGHT.
Just now, the general cause of metaphysical therapeutics is separating rapidly into various "schools," few of them having much consideration for the pretentious health-trust, "Christian Science."
In the South, for instance—at Sea Breeze, Florida—a Mrs. Helen Wilmans has founded a settlement of houses and lands, souls and bodies, with books, pamphlets, and a weekly press, all devoted, mentally, morally and physically, to psychic dominion over all things.Freedomis the name of the organ that specially spreads Mrs. Wilmans' light and curatives. She has capacity in a comparative degree, and energy, with self-confidence, in the superlative. She proclaims this:
"Intellectual power in the individual comes from concentration of the mind upon an idea until the truth or falsity of the idea becomes apparent. Likewise the power of the race inthe unfoldment of a race problem must come from a concentrated effort to discover a hitherto unfolded racial capacity; and this is the meaning of the movement I am inaugurating here."
The Wilmans' conception of mind-healing has been illustrated as follows by a correspondent ofFreedom, who discusses and admits the curing of disease among devout Catholics, exalted and prayerful, at the shrine of St. Anne in Illinois. It is all natural, he says:
"If with equally strong belief they should pray to God, Buddha, St. Peter or Paul, Mrs. Eddy or Mrs. Wilmans, or a stump or stone—or should they stand on their heads, or drink water from a certain river, or anoint the sick parts with clay and spittle—the result would be the same. Their mind would cure their bodies. Mind is king."
In some respects, the paper,Freedom, is almost as free from "material sense" as the book,Science and Health. Mrs. Wilmans has a correspondent who asserts, and probably believes, that, by the concentrated power of her finite female mind, she has "never failed once in five years to avert the fury of severe summerstorms." She has "demonstrated," she says, the dominion of mind over material nature, "as clearly as any Mental Scientist has demonstrated it over disease."
And here is an official announcement from Mrs. Wilmans' organ:
"Freedomis the only paper published whose leading and constantly avowed object is to overcome death right here in this world and right now. If you want to learn something of the newly-discovered power vested in man which fits him for this stupendous conquest, read this paper, and keep on reading it."
"The new thought" has traveled West as far as South. It recently had among its organsThe Temple, of Denver, Colorado, "a monthly magazine devoted to the fuller unfoldment of the divinity of humanity," the editor of which was Mr. Paul Tyner, who afterwards conducted theArenaof Boston, consolidated withThe Journal of Practical Metaphysics. The purpose of the latter periodical was "the unification of scientific and spiritual thought and the new philosophy of health." The editor was Horatio W. Dresser, a Harvard graduate, an excellent philosopher of the ontologicaltrend, and a polished writer, reminding one partly of Spinoza and partly of Emerson. Mr. Dresser's books,The Power of Silence,The Perfect Whole, and others, have given him a wide reputation in his particular field of work, and have constituted him a center of the most logical and scholarly literature connected with "metaphysical healing." This literature, too extensive for specialized designation, is under the propagandism of the Boston "Metaphysical Club," an active and growing organization.
The Boston "Metaphysical Club" comprises too much exact information and solid learning to accept or countenance the extreme vagaries of "Christian Science," and appears to be acting as a balance-wheel to the whole movement of "the new thought." In a recent leaflet the Club has taken special occasion to dissect and repudiate that most preposterous doctrine of Mrs. Eddy's "science," the absolute nothingness of matter.
The title of the leaflet referred to isChristian Science and the New Metaphysical Movement, with the added phrase,An Intelligent Discrimination Desirable. One excerpt is this:
"Christian Science proclaims the unreality of matter, and of the body. The rational and broader thought, not only admits the validity of the body, as veritable expression, but claims that it is as good, in its own place and plane, as is the soul and spirit. While susceptible to mental molding, it is neither an error nor an illusion. Moreover, it is friendly to its welfare to affirm both its validity and goodness. It is to be ruled, beautified, and utilized in its own order, and not denied an existence. Even admitting that the whole cosmos is, in the last analysis, but one Universal Mind and its manifestation; even admitting that all matter is but a lower vibration of spirit, and that the human body is essentially a mental rather than a physical organism; still, matter has its own relative reality and validity, and is not to be ignored as illusion."
Of its kind, nothing better than this could be said even by a Hegel. It is exactly the correct statement of the great metaphysical truth.
The leaflet agrees with the criticism of this volume, that "the spirit of Christian Science is autocratic rather than democratic," and says:
"Its polity and ritual, in every detail, areshaped and directed arbitrarily by a single will. There is no room for investigation, liberty of thought, progress, or further revelation. There is no recognition of related physical science or evolutionary progress."
The monograph continues thus:
"The liberal movement stands for freedom of soul, and is in no way opposed to subordinate orders of truth.... It does not ignore the good in existing systems, disparage reasonable hygiene, or deny the place of certain departments of surgery. It is not insensible to the present and provisional uses of simple external therapeutic agencies, at least until individual unfoldment and the recognition of higher law become more general.... While understanding, both from experience and observation, that a systematic employment of mental potency in a rational, scientific, and idealistic manner has a wonderful and unappreciated healing energy, its exponents do not think it necessary to form a new and exclusive religious sect."
The main premise, of course, of all the schools of "mind-healing" is that "the mind can and should control the body." Let us gostraight from this premise to the manner of applying it, as explained, for instance, in a little book entitledThe New Philosophy of Health, excellently well written, by a Miss Harriet B. Bradbury.
"The healer [says this author] simply holds in mind with great tenacity, for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, an image of the patient as he should be. This image, by the process known as 'thought transference' is impressed upon the sick man's mind as a possibility, when his own strong desire, seizing it, is able to reproduce it as an actuality. He may be quite unconscious that he has done anything for himself, and when he finds himself well, gives all the credit to the man who, as he thinks, has 'healed' him. Yet the change is wrought by no man, but by the great life-giving force which two wills working in harmony have called into perfect action."
In confirmation of "the law of mental causation," Miss Bradbury says:
"The most significant of recent biological experiments are those which have been conducted at the Smithsonian Institute with a view to discovering the physical effects ofdifferent mental states. They have proved that the different emotions produce immediate chemical changes within the physical organism, and it only remains to continue the investigation to learn just how each habitual emotion is finally reflected upon the outward frame."
So that "old mesmerist," Dr. Quimby—for this was exactly his view—has got along as far as the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. And here let us introduce the names and cogitations of a few authorities so "eminently respectable" that the "very best and most conservative people" need not shrink from becoming acquainted with them.
In a work onPractical Idealism, William DeWitt Hyde, President of Bowdoin College, tells us:
"There are certain classes of disease for which hypnotic treatment is highly beneficial. Mental healing in all its various forms, in so far as it is valuable, rests on the principle that body and mind are very closely inter-related through the partly conscious but chiefly unconscious control of the vital functions through the nervous system; and that the state of the mind at any given time, and consequently thestate of the body, in so far as we know it at that time, is made up of a relatively small presentation of sensation, and a very large contribution of associations. Hence a very slight suggestion through the senses, by speech, or physical contact, or eradication of fixed images, anxieties, and fears, may introduce a new nucleus around which an entirely new set of associations will cluster; so that through the renewing of the mind the body may come to be transformed."