CONTENTS
Preface
From the Pre-Adamic to the Human
“In the Bush”
The Human Body as a Temple
Christ Was Asleep
The Oneness of Life and Being
Evolutionary Reconciliation
The King’s Touch
Nearer to Nature’s Heart
What is the Meaning of Evil?
Intelligent Physiological Designing
What is the Higher Law?
War From The Evolutionary Viewpoint
A Christmastide Musing
Thinking as a Fine Art
Selfishness and Nervousness
The Ever Present Judgment
The Unfulfilled Ideal of Religious Liberalism
The Spiritual Utility of Physical Correspondence
Reactions In The Higher Development
Dogmatism, New and Old
What Is Disease?
The Cosmic Consciousness
Splinters
Preface
A Series of Constructive Sketches and Interpretations
By Henry Wood
Author of “Ideal Suggestion,””Studies In The Thought World,””God’s Image In Man,””Victor Serenus,””Edward Burton,””The Political Economy of Humanism,” etc.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive the outward and the inward, Nature’s good and God’s.
—Browning
Although the general purpose of this book is unitary, in the broad sense, its various studies and interpretations are quite unlike. They touch upon different aspects of life, and their mutual relation is mainly below the surface. The particular order in which they receive attention is therefore of no consequence. A few of them, subject to considerable revision, have appeared in various magazines.
The underlying motif of the author is constructive and not iconoclastic. It is by the positive light of Truth that the shades of error are to be dissipated. There is a deep spiritual hunger among men, the nature of which is often not clearly discerned, and this is the real cause of a universal restlessness. This craving cannot be satisfied upon the plane where the search is most generally made. The higher nature must receive proper sustenance, and failing in that, no physical, intellectual or ethical redundancy can make good such a radical incompleteness. There is a general though mainly a blind quest for the normal divine counterpart which alone can round out the vital necessities of the human constitution. Such a demand is a positive prophecy of supply.
At the beginning of the twentieth century a general evolutionary reconciliation of the higher order is apparent. Everything there is has some fitting place and legitimate office. In the great scheme of the Whole, each church, sect, system and institution, however imperfect, which is striving to uplift men contains the most good for its own particular section of the human family, and its very existence is a witness of such adaptation. As rapidly as its utility is outgrown, in the natural order it will be replaced by one more fitting, and this may be without any overt antagonism or criticism. If one finds his normal hunger more fully met in some new institution, that which previously has been regnant will drop away of itself, and no one need try to strip it away.
That which is truly liberal will not denounce that which is conservative, nor even that which is “narrow.” The higher evolution silently relegates everything to its “own place,” arbitrary outside judgments to the contrary notwithstanding. Simply bear aloft the truth, or your highest ideal of it, and let it deal with error as the rising sun deals with darkness. If the shadows are to be sternly fought let the light do the work. Its spontaneous weapons are more effective than those of human forging, be they never so well fashioned.
The authority of the inner Light—which is God in the human soul—may gently replace dictation from without. Truth is impersonal and a mirror-like subjective response to its presentation is the final test of genuineness for every man. The writer of these pages will welcome the application of this touchstone to his own utterances.
Cambridge, Mass., 1901.
From the Pre-Adamic to the Human
A Study In The Higher Evolution
So he drove out the man; and he planted at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim,
and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
—Genesis III. 24
There is more of philosophy, evolution and even science in the Bible than we often recognize, but they underlie the letter, and are usually set forth in the terms of symbolism. As a literature, also, it is of great interest, and is cosmopolitan in the widest sense. Beneath the surface of its flowing stream of historic circumstance and event, its delineation of personal character and racial institutions, its varying ethical standards and religious rituals, there lies embedded a rich substratum of eternal and universal laws and basic truth. Its inherent wealth receives more profound appreciation now than was accorded at any time in the past.
While it has been widely studied and reverenced, and technically translated into many tongues and dialects, it is only under modern conditions, and in the sunshine of late research that its profounder beauty and significance are brought to light.
While few still regard the account of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the expulsion of man therefrom, as literal history, perhaps a considerable majority have gone to the other extreme, and count it all as only a kind of misty tradition or primitive folklore, of no special significance. But it is vastly more. While we should avoid reading anything into the text that is not inherent, it remains that esoteric, metaphysical and psychological teachings crop out in profusion. It is true that the authors of Sacred Writ were not scientists or philosophers in the modern sense, and it is probable that they did not technically apprehend the lower and higher evolution.
If, as was formerly supposed, Moses wrote the Pentateuch, except the last eight verses, which give an account of his death, how could he, even metaphorically, teach any truth which was positively unknown at that time? He knew nothing of the X-ray, the phonograph or the solar spectrum, but yet he manifests a perception of certain grand universal principles which must have been acquired without books or instruments. He probably knew little of geology or astronomy, as sciences, but yet his representative account of creative development, through symbolism, receives the virtual sanction of the most advanced science of today.
But though the Book of Genesis shadows forth in allegory and metaphor the general truths of cosmology in substantial accord with modern research, this relation is comparatively secondary and correspondential. The great drama upon which the writer or writers of this account lift the curtain, is really a living soul-picture. Upon the surface the narrative appears objective and historic, but in action and motif it is psychical, spiritual and subjective. Its story is written not only in the race, but it is virtually repeated in every individual unit. It takes all men to make Man. A very able philosophical writer recently suggested that if Tolstoy and Gladstone could have been rolled in one, what a wonderful man the combination would have made! But even then there would have remained some angles and crevices. It would require the universal combination to make the composite ideal. Says Browning:—
Progress is the law of life: man is not Man as yet.
The radical difference between the account of the creation of man in the first chapter of Genesis, and the forming of Adam in the second chapter, is very significant. In the first account we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” This seems to represent both archetypal and ideal man. It is a picture of the potential; yet in a certain abstract sense, it was complete in the beginning. That was God’s image. In the second account, which deals with expressive and objective personification, it is stated that, “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.” It is evident that prevailing systems have mistakenly taken the material manifestation for the reality itself. This having been made a starting-point, the error has been installed by implication through the whole historic superstructure. The creation from the dust represents the materialistic idea that man has had of himself. Though really “a living soul,” to his own consciousness he was, and now is, a material being. But the imperishable image and likeness of God ever remain back of all degrees of outward personality which imperfectly represent it. Adam is the first and lowest in order among the humanized expressions. He stands for a state of consciousness. He has left the climax of instinct behind and taken one step, which is an infantile degree in the domain of reason. Successive steps or characters will continue until the last Person will discover his full identity with the divine ideal, and this will be at-one-ment. Sins are the mistakes which are incidental and educative during the progressive states of consciousness. Their penalties are corrective. Salvation is thinking in accord with spiritual perception, instead of with and in conformity to material sense. The reign of disorder and physical dissolution will continue among all personalities which have not fully outgrown the Adamic point of view. The continual “missing of the mark,” which is due to immaturity, will steadily diminish with the unfoldment of the spiritual or Christly ideal. Material man cannot translate a soul philosophy unless it be expressed in sensuous terms, or rather it remains an insoluble riddle until his inner vision is, at least, partially opened. The story of Eden is an intuitive outline of inherent laws and principles which are beyond time, space or locality. It is a sketch of the march of animal man across a boundary into the kingdom of humanity.
The whole Sacred Word, from Genesis to Revelation, is a moral and spiritual mirror, and in that fact lies its unfolding and inspiring power. Its law, poetry and prophecy, its graphic history of persons, tribes and races, its warm, picturesque allegory, parable and metaphor, its lights, shadows, warnings and ideals, its ethics, gospels and epistles, and its long narration of experiences and events; all primarily symbolize and picture forth forces which live and move in every human soul. Objectively, it is a great current of collective and complex activity, in which there pass before us, kaleidoscopic views of patriarchal and pastoral life, slavery and freedom, institutes of priestly orders and sacrifices, the government of judgeship, the reign of kingship, the wisdom of seer and the warning of prophet, captivity and tragedy, conquest and defeat, Messianic expectancy and fulfillment, but in a profound sense all these are taking place in every one of us. It is only in the subjective realm that they become warm and vital. Within, they are like the invigorating and illuminating rays of the sun, while without, as mere historic narrative, they but superficially stir us upon the plane of the intellect.
Independent of any theory of special inspiration, or that the illumination of Biblical authorship was unique or exclusive in its kind, it is yet evident that the sacred writers attained an eminence in moral and spiritual perception which made them tower as mountains among the surrounding foothills. It was their internal power to inspire in high measure that gave their writings a place in the sacred canon. Inspiration involves the spiritual altitude of the individual, regardless of time or race. He who looks from a mountain summit sees a vast area spread out before him, and relation and perspective are clearly discerned. He is a seer.
Instinct and inspiration, though manifested upon very different planes, have a striking resemblance in directness and exactitude. The Biblical authors antedate the great modern development of intellect. In the evolutionary order, they were nearer the period when instinct and insight relatively were more dominant. They dwelt in a native and unsophisticated borderland of God and nature, which now is but dimly understood. In an essential way their spontaneous and lofty curriculum was beyond the range of that of any modern university. Our intellectual pride and complex civilization have dimmed our eyes to the clearness of their simple perception and penetration. They have a scattered line of succession in the prophetic souls that have appeared all through the ages. It is, and always has been possible for intuitive souls to see without eyes and hear without ears, and such penetration and openness to the Unseen, is as orderly in its proper field as the boasted scientific methods of the present day. But the future ideal will include both.
It is of but incidental importance whether Genesis, or the Pentateuch, were of Mosaic or other authorship. The particular human channel is immaterial, but the vision upon which the account is based was a rare one. It involved a positive divine intimacy and receptivity. Whether amid the primitive solitude of Patriarchal life, or within a modern environment of intellectual activity, that soul which habitually lifts itself into conscious contact with the Oversoul gradually develops a faculty for a clear sight of the moral order, latent in all, but having little modern appreciation or exercise.
The Bible is the available record of the inspirations—the word meaning breathed into—of a scattered galaxy of great open minds. But their accounts of these divine interviews are colored in outward expression by temperament and environment. If Isaiah had lived in the nineteenth century, doubtless his message would have been similar to that of Emerson, and the poetic hymns of the Psalmist might have been not unlike those of Whittier or Browning. The prosaic and exoteric trend of Occidental thought has literalized and often almost congealed the warm and poetic flow of Biblical phraseology thereby rendering it superficially inharmonious. When cast in rigid materialistic form, its native sparkle and beauty vanish. But the higher criticism together with the light of evolution, the new cosmology, and recent psychology and philosophy, are all restorative and not destructive forces. New beauty, unity and vitality are evident in remarkable degree. We have a grander and more profound revelation than any past generation could have conceived, because instead of breaking in from without, it is now recognized as the divine quality and voice, in and through man, making itself audible in his soul. The Book of Genesis, therefore, is an intuitive statement of the laws and principles of human unfoldment, with an epitome of cosmic correspondences.
Before considering more specifically the evolutionary significance of the Edenic expulsion and the “Flaming Sword,” it may not be amiss to further generalize regarding their context and setting. Hebrew scholars inform us, that that language has very little tense significance. Its verb-forms denote state or condition, rather than time or succession. This knowledge, in itself, should lead us to rise from the rigid limits of form and phenomenon to the inner spirit and its hidden exuberance of divine life and law. If the consciousness of the reader of Scripture be centered dominantly upon the material and objective domain, he finds, and is only capable of finding what is literal and formal, but the developed soul discovers the key and penetrates within. What the Book is, depends entirely upon what one is receptive to. In the deepest sense, the Biblical personalities and events symbolize inner moral qualities, principles and spiritual states.
The great ladder of psychical and spiritual evolution that spans the human scale, has its foot in the Adamic consciousness, and its summit or ideal in that of the Christ. Every member of the race is struggling upward at some intermediate point. Through every experience of slipping, or falling back, we are to gain some additional skill in climbing and in avoiding pitfalls. We all begin in the Adamic stage of development. Every babe is an innocent little Adam. The first universal error is to count the seen and sensuous as the intrinsic and real. That is the “original sin.” To learn that the material form is only the outward expression or articulation of the spiritual and veritable self, is the object of all human experience. One would suppose that this vital truth could be easily and quickly made familiar, but it seems to be the work of a lifetime to lodge it securely in the human consciousness. Man is made in the image of God. As God is Spirit, the seen form cannot be that image, but Adam, dweller in a sensuous paradise, mistakes the shadow for the substance. But the spiritual self is latent within him, and the purpose of existence upon this plane is to awaken it into actualized manifestation.
As told in Biblical similitude, the unfoldment of humanity begins with the Garden of Eden. Pre-Adamic man was not really Man, but represented the grand climax of the animal kingdom. His instinct was exact, but the spiritual, and even the rational faculty was yet latent. He was irresponsible, sensuous and innocent. He was unmoral, for he was incapable of being either moral or immoral. Imagine the type! What a grand animal! Physically, how perfect! What keen senses! What herculean strength! How symmetrical the form! Here was the full ripeness of one great evolutionary subdivision, and the boundary was now reached and to be crossed. Instinct had made no mistakes, and knew of none. How beautiful the Garden, with its crystal rivers, its perfect climate, and its interminable succession of perfected fruits and flowers! Nothing that any one of the senses or appetites could desire was wanting. Summon the imagination, and behold the most indescribable wealth of color, form and perfume, in relation with a superlative keenness of capacity for enraptured fascination. Such was the Edenic paradise.
But one eventful day the God-voice in the expanding Adamic soul became audible. The line had been reached. Rationality was born. Infantile stumbling reason now took the helm and mistakes at once began. What a contrast with former unerring instinct! What a fall it seemed to be! The threatening shadow of a new principle—a moral law—hung over man, and unrest and discontent began. The beautiful Eden was gone forever, but though “the fall” was a rise, it did not seem so, and even today the opposite belief has not entirely passed. A great residuum of animalism was carried over, but perfect contentment in it had been lost. But what amazing possibilities were dawning for the future! This is a picture, not of historic events, but of universal and evolutionary human experience!
Note a few other symbolic features of the great transition. Adam and Eve represent the intellectual and the spiritual, the rational and the intuitive, the masculine and feminine elements in the human soul. The outward expression of these principles, in distinctive sex, is but superficial and incidental. Adam came first in order. The rational faculty being the lower came earlier into manifestation. “First the natural and afterward the spiritual.” How true the order of the narrative to the course of evolutionary unfoldment! The proper equilibrium between rational and spiritual perception constitutes the normal human unit. The ideal union between these fundamental factors, with the spiritual element leading, must take place before the Christ can be begotten and brought forth in human consciousness. When the soul invites the overshadowing of the divine Spirit, the son or likeness of God will make his advent in outward expression.
Adam gave names to things after the sensuous impressions which they produced upon him. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was set in the midst of the Garden, and the inner Voice, for the first time audible, told man that the penalty for partaking of its fruit would be death; that is, to his type.
“For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Not physical dissolution, which already prevailed, but death to native ignorant innocence, to contentment and sensuous satisfaction. The cessation of animal man, pure and simple, was at hand.
One kind of a soul was lost, with the discovery, as of gods, of another. It was a veritable exchange of worlds. The knowledge of good and evil was a new accomplishment. To know good and evil is to gain knowledge by contrast, to discriminate between things which are transient and relative, and those which are positive and absolute. A little later in the narrative, Cain and Abel personify the lower and higher consciousness. In human experience these are in constant repetition, the manifestation of Cain coming first in the natural order. The barbarian of today, wherever found, is in the state personified by Cain. But this person is more than an animal and cannot get back into Edenic contentment. He is a stammering learner in the primary class of the school of humanity.
Sin is an experience which comes from ignorance. Redemption is learning to choose the higher instead of the lower. The thorns and thistles, the struggle and pain, the strife and upheaval are incidental to the conflict between the lower and higher consciousness during the education of the spiritual man. Some of the tremendous battle-scenes which are pictured in Milton’s Paradise Lost, fitly illustrate the contentions which rage in the soul. What amazing charges and retreats, and what signal victories and defeats! How many times the ground is fought over!
To gain physical strength, one must constantly exercise, which means to overcome some degree of physical resistance. There is a corresponding utility in moral and spiritual obstacles in the higher realm. The temptation and fasting of Jesus for forty days in the wilderness symbolically represents a period of great soul growth, through overcoming. To conquer those subtle antagonistic forces which are typified by the devil, is to gain strength. Everyone must meet, and finally vanquish his own adversary. As shown in the epic poem of Job, he is a normal and necessary character in human development. As the Adam soul goes down in the conflict, the spiritual self becomes dominant, and this brings about an at-one-ment between the conscious ego and the spiritual selfhood. Later in the Pentateuch, Egypt represents the sense consciousness and Moses symbolizes spiritual perception.
Adam is always mistaken in his conclusions, but all moral freedom and voluntary growth of character require that he must find out his errors through experience, for a compelled righting, from without, would make him a dependent automaton. The divine element in man is his Redeemer, or subjective Christ. It is the leaven which must leaven the whole lump. The incarnation—from being merely one finished historic act—becomes the most fundamental and universal principle in the human economy.
We may now take up specifically the symbolism immediately connected with the account of the expulsion and Flaming Sword. It is wonderfully interesting to observe the intimate correspondence between its teaching and that of the highest modern psychological and spiritual philosophy. The ripeness and climax of animalism had come in the Garden, and instinct was about to become subordinate to the rational faculty. In its own time and place the animal nature had been normal and good, but now in its decadence, its inherent deficiency would become manifest, through contrast. How weak, helpless and ignorant the human infant seems today, when compared with a trained, docile, Arabian horse, yet how superior in potentiality, in rank, in quality, in divinity! When primeval man became human, there was introduced such a divine capacity and such unbounded ideals, that their very immensity caused untold restlessness and dissatisfaction. There was kindled an insatiate desire for knowledge which never was to be entirely satisfied. It was a great hunger with but a morsel of available food in sight. As the new faculty unfolded, it positively forced man out of the Garden. What a contrast between former contentment and present unrest! Awakened souls are having some similar experiences upon a higher plane today. Our ideals make us impatient with actual attainment.
Man cries out, “O, let me get back into Edenic bliss and contentment, and be rid of these new longings and this unrest. Before his exit from Eden, he seemed only good in his own eyes. Afterwards he knows good and evil by contrast, and even the good seems very imperfect. He turns his face backward toward the Garden gate, and there flashes before him the terrible Flaming Sword, which turns every way. He may still submerge himself in animalism but he cannot again be an animal. The Sword is tempered with penalty and also with negative spiritual potency. In the new domain these will finally prove educative and stimulating, but he is yet in the dim twilight of that understanding. He has fallen from the exactitude of instinct and the mistakes of the yet crude rational faculty leave him floundering among thorns and thistles. He is unaware that his dissatisfaction is really a hunger for the divine. Go back he cannot, and to go forward means sweat and sorrow. Although he is entering an infinitely higher kingdom, to him it is a “fall,” and so it is easy to account for the great tradition. Although another paradise, transcendently more beautiful and pure is potential, and in waiting, it is so far in advance that his dull sense-perception can hardly catch a glimpse of it. He has looked down so long that he is seemingly incapable of looking up.
The trend of the whole cosmos and all that it contains is forward. Pre-Adamic man might animalize himself as he would, but to do so after his rational incarnation as Adam, was to “kick against the pricks.” So the animal cannot go back to the vegetal, nor the vegetal to the mineral, nor the mineral to the elemental. A great law cuts off retreat over every evolutionary boundary. The Flaming Sword is everywhere to the rearward. There may be temporary degeneracy, and even what scientists call “a reversion to type,” but these are but eddies in the great stream which ever sweeps forward.
Eden is no more for human kind. What a grand demonstration of the divine order, dignity and design! How mistaken the former belief that Eden was a holy and spiritual paradise, and that “the fall” was an historic calamity that must be repaired and the old paradise regained! The sooner these errors are recognized, the better for humanity, for their rectification is an important factor in evolution itself.
The more deeply we study the human constitution, though it seems paradoxical, the more we see the utility, and even the beneficence of dissatisfaction and obstacle. The rough ground must be tilled and cultivated. Otherwise no strong moral fiber could be grown and no God-like character wrought out. The narrative not only symbolizes the experience of the race, but foreshadows, in degree, that which takes place in every human unit. We must try, not merely to get rid of the thorns and thistles, but to transform them. We are on the highway from a material to a spiritual consciousness. The Flaming Sword is behind, and it is the divine love and goodness which keep it in its place. It would be easier for a man to go back to childhood, or for the blossom again to wrap itself in the bud, than for one to parry the sword, and scale the walls of the Garden. But even were it possible, the beauty would have dissolved.
The sense of moral incompleteness, as well as the force of spiritual ideals now urges man onward. Thus the positive and negative poles of his nature are both wrought upon to compass his salvation. The Flaming Sword being set up in every soul, becomes a universal guaranty of progress. Eden is now but a sensuous illusive dream. But even yet, it often seems so attractive that we unconsciously start backward, only to find ourselves plunged into a tangle of kindly thorns which guard us from our seeming selves. The beguilement of the serpent is ever repeated, but each time we gain a little more wisdom. All life is progressive life, because it is barred behind. Thus the law of spiritual evolution is the foundation of religion. “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.”
To stand still in the midst of the universal onward drift is to fight against God, and his orderly law. The friction of such resistance will finally smooth off all excrescences and compel conformity. To remain the same is impossible. Tomorrow will never be like today, for the soul can never call a halt. Forces are set in motion which finally will kindle their correspondence within. Their work in cutting away useless material is like that of the sculptor. Only in that way can the beautiful statue be released.
Friends! We live in a better universe than we ever have imagined. We often have repeated with our lips, “God is Love,” but never have practically believed it.
In its essence, evolution is the flow and expansion of life. Darwin and his contemporaries had eyes only for its material and outward expression. The great succession of organic forms upon which they centered their attention only makes up its index or printed page. They are the characters which recite a story, but they are not the story. The earlier evolutionists counted life and mind only as dependent properties of organized matter. Was there ever a more marked case of “putting the cart before the horse”? Forms are the plastic and expressive index of the unseen reality which molds them. Practical idealism needs nothing so much as an understanding of, and an assimilation with the higher evolution. With this included, it is rounded out and made symmetrical; without its light and interpretation it is defective. There are those who, having in mind the former and lower definition of evolution, feel impelled to deny the whole law of growth and progress. They would deal only with the perfect abstract. They infer that advancement is only apparent, and that we can leap up the whole length of the evolutionary ladder at one bound. No! We have not become, but are becoming. That is what makes life interesting. Normal spiritual progress is heavenly. Stagnation, even at the highest imaginable altitude, as we are constituted, would be the reverse. No man ever was, or ever should be perfectly content. That belongs only to the pre-Adamic consciousness. Leaving the Garden behind, a wholesome and impelling divine dissatisfaction is ever with us. The keynote of the human scale, the vibrations of which we are now sounding, is aspiration. That is the theme which should enlist the universal chorus. Paul recognized this eternal ascending spiral of truth, and voiced the same in his noted evolutionary aphorism: “Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
The problem of pain and suffering is a never ending mystery to existing institutions, as a consequence of prevailing materialism and a lack of understanding of the law of growth. So long as one is entirely comfortable in the basement of his consciousness, he is likely to dwell there. We might almost as well remain in the Garden, were it possible, as to linger longingly in the vicinity. It is then something to be thankful for, rather than regretted, that hedgerows of thorns spring up behind us, almost in a night. Browning, the great modern poetic prophet, beautifully interprets this principle:—
Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three-part pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
As closely related to this principle the thought is too prevalent, that psycho-therapeutics is only another improved scheme for quieting disagreeable sensation, or in other words for dodging inherent corrective penalty. But, at most, that only would be gaining time by paying compound interest in the future.
We cheat ourselves when through any partial paralysis, we take away the educational opportunity of experience. The real healing of pain is in its transformation, and this comes as soon as its beneficent purpose is recognized. Spiritual development and the higher hygiene have their real foundation in the upliftment of the consciousness.
Every enemy, whether external or internal, must be converted into a real friend. Whatever it be, so long as we regard it as an adversary, an adversary it will effectually remain. It will not have accomplished its purpose.
In any careful and deep review of the past, doubtless most of us see that our seasons of trial were periods of our greatest spiritual growth. But while this remains true, it is difficult so to interpret the pain-messenger while he is in evidence. But, in very fact, if we receive his sharp prodding as a needed evolutionary impulse he soon bows himself out. It is hardly possible to emphasize this great truth too strongly. Someone will say, “I am holding firmly to wholesome ideals, but am unable to demonstrate them.” Perhaps we unconsciously wish to continue in the seeming delights of Eden, and the Flaming Sword confronts us. But only to material sense is it a sword. To the spiritual self it is a symbol of love. If the higher therapeutics were merely a truce with sensation, its operation would be confined to the animal plane, but it is rather a comprehensive touchstone to interpret human experience. Life in the depth of its philosophy is an unending paradox to the lower self. There is an effeminate and unwholesome sentimentalism prevalent which multiplies suffering through the fear and belief that is an intrinsic evil. Anesthetics are resorted to in unwarranted degree. Our sensory equipment, instead of being dulled artificially and often half paralyzed because of our dread of unpleasant sensation, should be keen and discriminative. Like a perfect clear-cut mechanism it should be in the most efficient condition to know and interpret every impression, so that its exact import may be determined and utilized. Abundant life gives quickness of perception, while an opaque and unresponsive organism tells of deadness and decay. As the result of modern compounding and chemical concentration, potions to deaden sensation are presented in seductive form, and these nostrums are conventionally called “remedies.” One may easily be made oblivious to experiences which have beneficent intent if they were heeded. Let us not forget that sensation of every kind, and on every plane, has instructive use and meaning, in connection with our practical development.
But it may be truthfully urged that most of our mistakes were not willful, but due to ignorance, and still further, that the penalties of today come up from the subjective realm where their foundation was laid long ago. Perhaps their beginning was made while we were irresponsible, or even was ancestral in its origin. But this does not discredit the beneficence of law, nor lessen the utility of sifting and interpreting all the educative experiences of life. Its subtle reactions, of whatever kind, are intended to add their dynamic force to our advancement.
We need to know, beyond theory, that nothing from without can harm the real and potential man. In Emerson’s philosophy of “Compensation,” he has clearly shown, that, in the last analysis there can be no injustice, and that everything that comes, in some way has been invited. We are surrounded with paradoxes, and they will not dissolve until we look down upon them, instead of into them from one side. We have come into the world to bring it into subjection and to create it anew for ourselves and for others. The sensualist, for himself, builds a world to correspond, and the materialist finds only an environment of forms and blind forces. Those who have traversed the sea know that the most dense fogs often do not extend beyond the altitude of the mast-head, and while blindness and confusion may prevail below, from that vantage-point there is a clear penetration and correct perspective. Symbols are like a transparent medium; we must look through and beyond them, and not merely at their imagined shape and color. The realist will make light of ideals, and as a proof of their validity demand their immediate realization. That which is potential and inherent he cannot see, therefore he denies it. As time is but a passing sensuous measurement, that which is To Be, virtually is. The matter-of-fact world will continue to characterize idealists as visionaries, but he who holds to his ideals, in the best sense is their owner. By an irrepealable law, day by day he is being transformed into their image and likeness. It may be admitted that in visible outward accomplishment he finds himself in strong evolutionary lock-step with his outward human environment, but his creations are living and indestructible forces. The “Word” is ever being made flesh. By a process as constant and immutable as gravitation, the ideal is ever in transmutation into the actual, mind indexes itself in body, thought builds itself into action, and the human imaging faculty erects its own mansion stately or otherwise, and dwells within. Even in the material world we are really surrounded, not by things, but by our thought of them.
The great radical mistake which holds the race back from the more rapid attainment of the Christly consciousness, may be described as an essential and hereditary lack of perspective. The petty things that are near cover our field of vision, and shut out the larger and unseen environment. How insignificant the little thought-world with which we are in conscious touch, as compared with the cosmic consciousness which it is our privilege to cultivate and occupy! Our relations are with the Universal. Soul growth is determined, both by the quantity and quality of its reactions. The Soul coins its own divine treasures, and they are real and conscious possessions which are subject to inventory. They make up that unbounded wealth which is open to everyone by simple appropriation and cultivation. Emerson aptly expresses this great law:
Ever the Rock of Ages melts,
Into the mineral air,
To be the quarry whence to build
Thought and its mansions fair.
We are not to condemn Adam unsparingly, but to utilize him. He is good in his normal place. Before the Edenic expulsion he was rightfully on the throne. He is superseded, and now is to serve. As a present ruler, he is matter out of place.
When our eyes are once opened to the great evolutionary reconciliation which lies at the foundation of all things, we shall behold the beatific harmony of the whole Moral Order, and the hitherto unmeaning aphorism that “All is good,” will burst upon our expanding consciousness. Like a bow in the heavens, the Flaming Sword of Love is a guaranty of the soul’s eternal progress.
“In the Bush”
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome.
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan.
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
—From “Good-by” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The above lines by Emerson, in their climax, voice the greatest truth which can occupy the human mind. They are inscribed upon a bronze tablet which is set in a mass or conglomerate rock, near the summit of “Schoolmaster Hill,” in Franklin Park, Boston. It is on or near the site where his humble cottage stood among the trees, when, in early life (1823-1825), he was engaged in school-teaching. They form a part of one of his early poems, which is entitled “Goodbye.”
Here we are furnished the key which will unlock the mystery of Emerson’s great individuality. In this is revealed the source of the forces which afterwards rendered him the most intuitional and idealistic of philosophers—nay, prophets—of modern times.
In this brier sketch we propose no exposition of the Emersonian philosophy, but only a momentary penetration beneath the surface of circumstances to discover the motif of his life and work. Why was Emerson, Emerson? What afterwards differentiated him from the other great minds of the Concord school, and singled him out from among the Transcendentalists of the period for his unique inspiration? The few lines quoted above lift the curtain, and make it all plain.
The prophetic authors of “Holy Writ” were the Emersons of their respective eras. They met with God “in the bush;” but, incidentally, their own reports of their interviews were tempered and tinged by the peculiar conditions of their own environment. Had Emerson been a contemporary of Isaiah, their messages doubtless would have been much alike.
The scientific accumulations of the past form a great capital which is now available for a present starting-point, and so the modern seer has a great advantage over his ancient predecessor. While his access to the high plane of divine wisdom may be no more free, the fruits of his insight crown the summit of ages of evolutionary progress. The world needs more Emersons. An overwrought intellectual activity among the Occidental races has hidden and displaced the faculty of spiritual insight, until its very existence is generally ignored, if not denied. “Where man in the bush with God may meet,”—how few realize that such a statement is more than poetic license or visionary idealism! How few know it as a truth, and still less as an experience!
The Universal Christ, speaking through the personal Jesus, proclaimed the Spirit to be a “teacher.” Has this been looked upon as a scientific statement or a religious platitude? If in the highest attainable zone of spiritual knowledge and universal wisdom there be unbounded supplies waiting for appropriation, they are available for those who lift their receptive capacity to that high level. From the limitless divine reservoir nothing is withheld. If ever it seems restricted, the condition is due only to our low view-point. The pure mountain ozone cannot be inhaled from the low level of a malarious plain. “The bush”—or the silence—may form the pathway of ascent to the “Mount of Transfiguration.” “The secret place of the Most High” is no fiction. Paradoxical as it may seem, the literalists, more than all others, have missed the scientific exactitude which so often crops out in the Bible.
The “Mount,” or the divine auditorium, is existent in the supreme altitude of the human consciousness; and all may make themselves at home there, in varying degree, as they will. The attendant ushers are desire, aspiration, and stillness. At intervals the soul must be emptied of intellections, and swept clean and void to invite the occupation of the Presence.
Nothing less than some degree of experimental research can prove to any one that the Spirit is “a teacher.” Therefore, the world is slow to accept it. It need hardly be noted, also, that the modern Church—using the term inclusively—has been reluctant to recognize this most fundamental of all truths. With the impartation of divine wisdom will come, also, a wealth of wholesome forces which promote harmony and kindle energy.
The vital communion of the Divine with the human is impossible upon the plane of the intellect. We may reason about God, and speculate regarding his character and methods; but this alone has little power to develop a positive and intuitive conscious oneness. The great mass of the controversial theological tomes of the ages almost wholly represent intellectual concepts. It is upon this level that creeds and dogmas have their birth and dwelling-place.
The utterances of some of the seers and psalmists of old depict an earnestness for the divine consciousness which it were well for us to cultivate, in an age when the divine presence is so generally put far away. We should divest them of strangeness and supernaturalism, and receive them as exact scientific statements and as truths which are normal and in full accord with the psychological, ethical, and spiritual laws of the human constitution. Only then will their true import be realized. A single example from the Psalms will illustrate their spirit:
As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
—Psalm 42:1
How could fervid desire be more graphically and beautifully expressed? Supply responds to demand, and there is no law more veritable or exact. The divine intimacy of each soul includes elements which are both special and universal. In each case there is something unique and unlike the relation of any other.
To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna; and I will give him a white stone,
and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it.
—Revelation 2:17
The visions of “Saint John, the divine,” underneath “the letter,” have a wonderful quality which is yet very lightly appreciated. On the human side the divine companionship with each one is a personal secret. It is the channel which keeps us in vital touch with the Universal Life. A sense of incompleteness ever waits upon man’s nonrecognition of the mystic union. Perfect unity must include variety. A conscious individual relation with the Universal, with the ear attuned to the utterances of the “still small voice,” tends powerfully to heal the complex discords which otherwise reverberate through the chambers of the soul.
Emerson was what he was, not only because he discerned the unity and interrelation of all things, but yet more because he met God face to face “in the bush.” He early gave full exercise to his spiritual equipment; and, therefore, the scope of his seership was remarkably broad in extent and rich in quality. In high degree he became the mouthpiece of God to this generation.
The Human Body as a Temple
The physical organism of man, without question, is the masterpiece of the whole material creation. Even when considered simply as a complex mechanism, apart from mind, it occupies the superlative rank. From the anatomical viewpoint, its grace, proportion and perfect adjustment to environment fill one with wonder. It is also a marvelous demonstration of the principle of cooperation. The office of each organ or member is unique, and its activity is not more for itself than for all the others. Every one is a standing object lesson of altruism and ministry. It takes them all to make a unit. Under normal conditions the part of each, like the various characters in a drama, is promptly and intelligently performed. Such is the beautiful and harmonious human structure when untouched by abnormal conditions.
Technically defined, according to the nomenclature of the animal kingdom, man is a vertebrate, but within closer limits he is a mammal. Still more definitely, he is a primate among mammals, but even this distinction he shares with the apes. But though far superior to them in delicacy, refinement and complexity of functions, the actual structural differences seem not so very important. But evolution has put in some fine work, as instanced by the human hand, which is only a high development of the animal paw.
A comparison of various human qualities with those of the units of the vegetable and animal kingdoms shows that unnumbered flowers have rarer combinations of color and fragrance, and more beautiful contour; trees, greater size, solidity and symmetry; animals, superior speed, endurance and physical power; birds, and even insects, keener senses and instincts, and many other accomplishments, which by material measurement excel man in every direction. Relatively, as a biological product, he is deficient in sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling and speed, and is subject to a prolonged helpless infancy.
Why then is the human body—though composed of like perishable materials—so intrinsically unlike any other material organism? Because it is a Temple. A temple is a consecrated edifice. Its stone and brick components may be like those of other buildings, but they are set apart for a distinct and different purpose. This makes the body more than an organism. It is a Sanctuary. The light within shines out through every portal. Behold the changing emotional glow upon the countenance, the light of the eye, the ripple of laughter, the thoughtful expression, and we begin to feel the tremendous step between the highest brute and humanity. If the body be a temple, it is or should be consecrated. Said St. Paul in his letter to the Romans: “Nothing is unclean of itself; save to him that accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” Again, in a similar letter to the Corinthians, he describes the body as “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” It is evident that that which consecrates the body is a peculiar quality of thought. While it is highly important to keep the physical organism cleanly—in the ordinary sense of the term—it is clear that consecration means more than a physical process. The term “holy” comes from hal, which means whole or well. In reality, the definition of” Holy Spirit” is the Spirit of Wholeness. It is, then, not only the consecrating influence, but also the essence of perfection and completeness. In no way does it detract from the peculiar sanctity and divinity of the term to restore its original psychological and even therapeutic aspects, and thus conserve its full-orbed and inherent significance. The profound, and even scientific psychology of Paul, has been largely missed or hidden by arbitrary and doctrinal interpretations which have been shaped to fit prevailing systems of thought. Uncolored by these accretive influences, and unbiased by conventional preconceptions, we find that Paul was wonderful, not only in Apostolic religious zeal, but in the degree of his philosophical insight.
Unlike temples made with hands, the sanctuary for the use of man is built from within. The thought and ruling mental pictures of its owner outwardly articulate themselves, not only in its facade, but in the proportion of every architectural detail. The process of consecration or profanation goes on unceasingly by means of the activity of the consciousness. Both are cumulative. If the inherent sacredness of the human temple were constantly felt by the imaging faculty of man, what would become of abnormal outpicturings? There would be no negative from which they could be printed. Then would the office of the fleshy sanctuary be held in high honor. Its aisles and corridors never would be contaminated by the fumes of nicotine, or the unhallowed mastery of stimulants, nor could the deformity of shape which is dictated by Parisian models replace the beauty and symmetry of the divine ideal. Is it not sacrilege to carelessly violate the Higher Law by destroying that perfection of form which is the acme of the Creative Handiwork? How is the beautiful organism of woman sapped of its vitality and marred by the crowding of vital organs into abnormal shapes, until the advent of a child into the world becomes an agonizing and unnatural operation instead of the normal event for which nature has made ample provision! Gracefulness, poise and freedom are transformed into unresponsiveness and rigidity, and the resulting ills which come from hygienic sin are counted as “mysterious dispensations of Providence.” Confusion and penalty uniformly wait upon vain attempts to improve upon Mother Nature.
If the human temple be consecrated with clean thought, and high respect be given to its sacred office of soul-expression, it will measurably respond and reflect the honor upon its resident executive. That will be a “blood purifier,” by the side of which the most available patent panacea will pale into insignificance. The reflex influence of the pure body upon the man whom it houses will also be harmonizing and helpful. The temple will closely correspond to the service which goes on within. It will faithfully echo back honor or dishonor, clean thought or unclean, harmony or discord, optimism or pessimism.
Whether or not “The Man with a Hoe” be the shaping of “lords and masters” without, the man with the body has that instrument molded by a master from within. The inner man, who wields either implement, determines both its quality and that of the product.
Christ Was Asleep
And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow; and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? —Mark IV. 38.
That part of the sea of human life which lies within the latitude of the intermediate or psychic zone of man’s threefold constitution is subject to sweeping storms and tempests. During the long and adventurous voyage of the soul’s spiritual unfoldment, the craft is freighted with a miscellaneous cargo of varying and untold value, while the sailing-master in charge has not fully mastered the science of navigation. In the subjective hold are stored a variety of earthy forces, untamed emotions, wild passions, experimental and unsymmetrical imaginations and impulses. Various intellectual lading is also found upon deck which seems snugly stowed for ordinary weather, but often it remains untested until the passage is well advanced.
The voyage begins well. There are many days when the weather is calm, the sky serene, the sunshine bright and the surface of the great deep glassy and unbroken. During the dreamy days of spring and summer, there are periods when the zephyrs hardly raise a ripple. The sails are lightly filled, and the course lazily followed. Everything goes smoothly.
But suddenly, at the close of a long summer afternoon, heavy clouds roll up around the horizon, the lightning flashes, and peals of thunder break the stillness of the atmosphere. Now the wind howls through the shrouds, the angry waves threaten and the crew are seized with the utmost alarm. There is a hurrying to and fro. The craft pitches and rolls violently, and the cargo shifts and sets up a corresponding commotion. The ship’s timbers creak and groan, and there is imminent danger of sinking. All on board are affrighted, and as a last resort, the cry is heard “Awaken the Christ!” Ever since the voyage had begun, he had been comfortably “sleeping upon a pillow.” So far, only the psychic faculties have manned the yards, shifted the sails, set the compass and handled the rudder.
The noble vessel now seems likely to sink. The spiritual ego is prostrate, unconscious and out of sight. Call him on deck! He only can rebuke the soul’s tempest. It is now his office to command the winds, and to cry with authority, “Peace, be still!”
The storm had been invited. But for its appearance the divine self would have remained latent and undiscovered. The Christ, or spiritual ego, was hardly known to have been on board, or if so he had been forgotten. As an actual passenger he had not been visible, and as a commander no need of him had previously been felt.
The Christ of the Jesus of 1900 years ago is present even though quiescent, in the deep background of every soul today. He is no mere historic character or supernatural visitant from a far-away heaven, but the normal and present divinity, always and everyday “on board.” He is waiting to be awakened. Bless the psychic storm which alarms the crew, for nothing less than its buffeting would serve the purpose. The tempest is neither evil nor in vain.
Put the divine ego in command and let him remain on deck. Then though the winds shriek and the billows surge mountain high, order and discipline will prevail, and the noble vessel will keep an even keel and make good progress. In spite of the stress of psychical storm and physical tempest the soul-craft will triumphantly ride the waves, and in due time reach the desired haven.
The Oneness of Life and Being
The Significance of Late Scientific Discoveries
The threshold of the twentieth century marks a time when the thoughts, accomplishments, and expectations of men are expanded as never before. The era is entirely unique, for there is nothing in history that is worthy of a comparison. Scientific discoveries in new directions, and through fields hitherto unexplored, are flashing their illumined messages before us in such an unbroken procession that we are almost dazed at their import. We stand peering into the future, and exclaim with fervid intensity: What next? Nature, as if seized with an unwonted prodigality, is yielding up her choicest secrets and lavishing her riches upon us. The rigid dogmatisms of the past, whether philosophical, scientific, social, or religious, are becoming fluidized and conforming their now plastic shapes to the harmonious outlines of cosmical law and orderly divine interpretation. Forces and principles which patient analyzers have traced and followed in different directions, until they were lost in unrelated byways, are being compared, harmonized, and unified. A general synthetic philosophy, for which the world owes much to Spencer, is gaining sanction and confirmation. Variety in unity is the present and future inspiration. No finished creation, no incoherence, nothing unrelated, but a warm, living, unfolding social organism, all inclusive in its proportions, is objectified by the collective human consciousness. No endless conglomeration of disconnected lives, orders, species, families, and kingdoms, but One Life, pulsating through all, even though expressed through manifold individuation, form, and consciousness. Spirit and matter, God and man, and all nature thus have their respective parts, relations, and interactions in the cosmic economy. The growing and now almost acknowledged monistic philosophy of the present time was not possible at an earlier date. Evolutionary knowledge and interpretation has but recently arrived at such a goal.
The writer of this essay does not claim to have made any original scientific investigation in physics, or to possess the technical equipment of a specialist in that department. His effort is only to trace and interpret the logical significance of recent tendencies and discoveries which have been announced by some of the most eminent exponents of science and philosophy, or in other words to give utterance to what is now “in the air” and outline a “feeling” which is rapidly coming into the general consciousness.
The great mountain of systematic Truth is being ascended by well-trained explorers on every side. Formerly, each scientific department confined itself to its own little hillock, and looked askance across a chasm at all the others. There was an abundance of specialization but little or no synthesis. Geology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and all the natural sciences each fenced off its own domain, and trespassing was not expected. But climbers on all sides of the great summit of human attainment are now, as they toil upward, coming consciously face to face. The logician is beginning to respect the intuitionalist, the “hard-headed” scientist complacently finds himself supplemented by the idealist, the educator seeks the aid of the psychologist, and the physicist is rather happily surprised to find in his own latest researches that his very solid and real “matter,” without any loss, is dissolving into ether—and perhaps into spirit. As all roads once led to Rome, so now all the paths of scientific exploration are converging into monism. They are like a mass of many colored intricate strands that may be systematically gathered and twisted into a strong cable, secure and unbreakable. As each investigator brings in his special contribution to the great shining mass of related knowledge, thus rounding its fair proportions, the faces of all become radiant with unwonted sympathy and wonderment. Each has laid his tribute upon the altar of a social universe, a divine living organism.
The crass materialism which formerly characterized scientific research is rapidly fading, and, although human interpretations of Divinity still vary widely, a blank atheism is now exceedingly rare. The solidity of matter has departed, and whether a given substance presents itself to the senses in a solid, fluid, or gaseous state is found to be a mere question of temperature and compression. Thus from the sensuous and concrete as well as from the more abstract view-point, distinctions are but provisional and incidental, and the former supposed chasm between the seen and the unseen is not only bridged but filled. The visible and invisible, the audible and inaudible, material and immaterial, are but terms bestowed upon our narrow sensuous limitations. To modern science they have no absolute significance, but merely indicate variable and interchangeable rates of etheric vibration.
The great land-slide from dualism toward monism has been very rapid, and it has come as a logical sequence of the evolutionary philosophy. This could not have resulted had evolution continued as materialistic in its basic principles, as it was forty years ago. So long as mind and spirit were regarded as mere properties of organized matter, or even as its antithesis, the dualistic philosophy was logically reasonable. Then science insisted upon considering all phenomena only in terms of matter. The higher and later evolution now locates progress in mind and life, and each grade indexes or outwardly articulates itself by corresponding physical forms. The ichthyosauri have become extinct, not because such marine reptiles have come to nothing, but for the reason that that peculiar quality of mind or life has advanced, and therefore expresses itself in a higher embodiment. A particular form is dropped when no longer suitable for fitting expression. The “conservation of energy” forbids that any force shall perish. The body of a tiger is not an arbitrary structure, having an attenuated property called life, but rather an expressive instrument shaped from within, in every detail, to obey the mandates of a feline cunning, ferocity and cruelty. Under the monistic philosophy, it follows that the finer vibrations in all organisms control and externally manifest themselves by those of greater crudity. It will be readily noted that such an order of operation involves no dualism. A short time ago, psychology, now rapidly developing into a science, was but little known, and was looked upon as beyond the scope of proper scientific research. It had no recognized orderly relations, and no governing laws in its methods and phenomena.
It is true that there yet remain many scientists who avowedly are monists, and yet whose monism is cast in material limitations and terminology. Perhaps this is largely the result of a conventional habit of describing things, for under it they must include the ether itself. Ideas are more subtly and rapidly changed than are the fitting terms for their exact expression. Habits are persistent. Whatever matter may be in the abstract, materialism signifies more a quality of human consciousness than an exact definition of objective substance.
The former supposition that matter is “dead stuff” has passed as thoroughly as the assumption before noted that spirit and matter are antipodal in their nature and essence. The more subtle and startling discoveries in modern science seem to be making a steady approach toward a spiritual monadology much like that so ably advocated by Leibnitz. Everything from the atom up to the largest organism possesses a soul, or more exactly is a soul. “If our intellectual action,” says Professor DuBois of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College, ” finds physical expression in nature, and not only reason but imagination is found to be an aid in physical investigation—may we not retrace our steps, and again define all science as the verification of the ideal in nature!’
All the processes in nature are vital rather than mechanical. It was formerly believed that the rising of the sap in a tree was due to a mere capillary attraction or chemical activity. Biologists now generally admit that it is due to a living vital force. The natural inference seems to be that these various orders of organic life possess some degree of intelligence. When confined by the cleft of a rock, this force in a tree, under certain conditions, will exert an immense pressure and split it asunder. Vines will lift great weights, and roots will run for a long distance through dry sand, or along the surface of bare rock, to find congenial moisture and nutriment. The crystal is our relative, and is expressing vital and orderly discrimination. After its own method and fashion it is chanting a hymn of praise to its eternal Designer and Artificer. Everything in its own rhythm is joining in a universal chorus. Emerson thus discourses of expression:—
“All form is an effect of character; all condition, of the quality of life. Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance, and Unity into Variety. The universe is an externalization of the soul. Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.”
The monistic philosophy of today teaches that spirit and matter are but different aspects or vibrations of one primal energy, and this truth is rapidly coming into the consciousness of the deepest thinkers of the world. On page 35, in “Matter, Ether, and Motion,” Professor Dolbear in speaking of the ether says: “It does not seem proper to call it matter.” He further suggests as a specific name the term “substance.” If it stands under everything, this seems very suitable.
The logical result of the higher evolutionary philosophy appears to be in full accord with these conclusions. While there is some variation in details, the same result in the main is fortified by such names as Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, Hartmann, and by the most eminent names of this generation, including Spencer, Haeckel, Cope, and many others that might be enumerated. Spencer’s philosophy does not teach the priority of matter as related to mind, but at the most, that it is a parallel or concomitant development. Mind, force and matter, to him, are all manifestations or states of one inscrutable and universal principle—the “Unknowable.” The essential unity, harmony, and interrelation of all phenomena, physical, mental, and spiritual, inclusively having their roots in the Deity, is evidently the grand truth which is not only to reconcile, but to solidify, science and religion.
The structure of the atom—the theoretical unit of matter—remains an unsolved problem. No chemist or physicist has yet been able to shed any light upon it. Regarding the relativity of atoms in space, in the descending scale, Professor W. S. Jevons in the “Principles of Science” says (page 146): “Scientific method leads us to the inevitable conception of an infinite series of successive orders of infinitely small quantities. If so, there is nothing improbable in the existence of a myriad universes within the compass of a needle’s point, each with its stellar systems and its suns and planets in number and variety unlimited. Science does nothing to reduce the number of strange things that we may believe.” One is reminded of the former theological specutions of the schoolmen regarding the number of angels that could dance upon the point of a needle. If we might count “angels” as atoms, science may seem more extravagant than theology. Said Professor DuBois, in a lecture before the Bridgeport Scientific Society:—
“We admit as a physical fact, that at least within certain undefined limits in our organism, matter obeys will, and brain particles move at the impulse of volition. Now, molecules, the physicist tells us, are separated by spaces indefinitely great as compared to the size of the molecules themselves, and these spaces are filled with ether, which condenses around the molecules like the atmosphere about the earth. Within the limits of the cranium, then, we may conceive of a whole solar system in miniature. The whole great Universe with its suns and systems is represented in those tiny, whirling, moving brain particles. Now, upon one of these little brain particles, separated by an immense relative distance from its neighbors, let us imagine a race of tiny, intelligent beings like ourselves, to live. One of these little homunculus looks off from his tiny earth, with his tiny telescope, as we do from ours, and observes motions and bodies moving hither and thither.”
But there is now a rapidly growing disposition among investigators to conclude that, in the last analysis, the atom may not be material at all. Instead of a tiny solid speck it is probably but a vibratory point of etheric force. No atom could be so tiny that its subdivision may not be conceived. Is it then a metaphysical abstraction, instead of a physical reality? If so, modern science may yet come to a virtual endorsement of the monadism of Leibnitz. All that we know of matter to which we apply terms is merely the experience of our own mental reaction or state of consciousness. Our names for sound, odor, color, extension and resistance are simply the names of our own sensations. They are really terms of mind, and are unthinkable when disconnected from it. There can be no noise where there are no ear-drums. The aural organ is only an interpreter of a vibratory phenomenon, which in the abstract is entirely beyond description, except as we label it vibration. The impressions above enumerated are therefore seen to have no objective exactitude. If this be idealism, it is truly logical; and who will aver that it is not scientific? Even so conservative and materialistic a philosopher as Haeckel says: “The opponents of the doctrine of evolution are very fond of branding the monistic philosophy as c materialism,’ by confusing philosophical materialism with the wholly different and censurable moral materialism. Strictly, however, monism might as accurately be called spiritualism as materialism.” But his monism seems incomplete, and to lack the omnipresent intelligence and coherence which at least is implied in Spencer’s “Unknowable.” Haeckel finds all potentiality wrapped up in each atom. He invests them individually with psychical qualities, including intelligence, volition, sensation, and desire, with unceasing duration. But the human mind will never be satisfied with any atomic theory as the basis for primary causation. Man is so constituted that he is restless until he finds a Cause which is unitary, all-inclusive, intelligent, and beneficent. The fact that such a demand is found in every detail of his nature—in fact, that he is made for it—is conclusive evidence, in itself, of its truth. It would do violence to all logic to deny that which has been written in him as the law of his constitution. Sings Goethe:—
He from within must keep the world in motion,
Nature in Him, Himself in nature cherish;
So that what in Him lives, and moves, and is,
Doth ne’er His power nor e’er His spirit miss.
After noting the convergence of philosophy, science, and religion at the present time, in fact their virtual cooperation, Professor DuBois remarks: “The inspired assertions of a Paul, the insight of the poets from Goethe and Pope to Wordsworth and Tennyson, may be found reflected in the pages of Darwin and Spencer and Huxley and Fiske. Inspiration, imagination, science—here all agree. The ‘carpenter theory’ has gone forever.” It may be not so very important whether that all-inclusive Eternal Intelligence be called, “The Power that makes for Righteousness,” “The Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed,” The Universal Spirit, or God. The vital point is, what ideal do these various terms convey to men’s minds? In his poem, “Each and All,” Emerson voiced one of his ideal concepts:—
Over me soared the eternal sky;
Full of light and of Deity;
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
The evolutionary philosophy, having been largely cleansed of its former materialism, is now recognized, even in its lower ranges, as being psychical in its sovereignty, rather than mechanical, structural, and physical. Its accomplishments are from living centers rather than through outward accretion. The whole educational curriculum for organisms, upon every plane, would seem to be expressed in the single term, aspiration. This innate tendency is of course aided by the reaction of environment. Differentiation and natural selection are but provisional and auxiliary methods. Among the more recent scientists, Professor Cope very plainly places structural organisms as resultant expressions of preceding and formative psychical concepts and necessities. He says, “The entire process of ascending evolution appears to be dependent on the presence of mind, that is consciousness, in its successive stages, from the simple to the complex.” More concretely, it might be stated that thought and ideals find articulation in a cruder material, or rather in a cruder aspect of the same material. “As is the inner, so is the outer.” “Rising from phenomena to cause,” says Frederic Harrison, “is but the translation of sensation into reality. And this reality is a mental fact.” Mind is noumenal and structure phenomenal. Modern scientific thought, not only among psychologists, but among biologists and naturalists, is tending strongly in the same direction. It follows that bodies do not build minds, but that the latter, by a universal law, seek external embodiment and manifestation. This order seems to guarantee the independent existence and continuance of mind. It is obvious that if mind were but a property of organization, it would be purely a dependent, and conditioned as to action and duration by the integrity of the outer structure. The significance of this principle on the human plane can be easily inferred. If mind be primary, it follows that when its organized structure or embodiment becomes unsuitable, and is laid off, only a form of expression has been forfeited.
But the foregoing fragmentary outlines of certain aspects of the monistic philosophy deal only with the border-land of the great subject. The grand modern problem and mystery lies wrapped up in the universal ether. Nothing exists without some base, and scientific monism now finds the foundation of all phenomena in this elusive all-pervasive medium. The greatest of all future developments in human research seem to be those which are involved in its nature, uses, and significance. If there be atoms, this is beyond and back of them. Everything indicates that all bodies float in it and are of it. Is it mind, or matter, or neither? Scientists are in substantial agreement that it is an all-abounding frictionless medium of wonderful density, which conveys waves or vibrations that our senses translate as light, and also those phenomena known as magnetism, electricity, and gravitation.
The hypothesis that vortex rings in the ether form the basis of all atoms, in whatever aggregation, is gaining ground, and is of wonderful import. What we know as matter would thereby be resolved into ether manifested in varying rates and modes of vibration. Logically, matter as matter thereby disappears. It becomes in the last analysis only “a mode of motion.” While no energy is ever lost, the vibration and form of all bodies depend upon atomic and molecular activity, and are subject to transformation and transition. Through a knowledge of electrical, chemical, magnetic, and mechanical laws, man is able so to manipulate existing vibrations as to produce new combinations with precision.
There always has been a very natural and intense curiosity in the human mind regarding the nature of the atom, and the possibility of bridging the chasm between it and that which is beyond. Tennyson beautifully voices this in his familiar lines:—
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Says Sir Isaac Newton, near the close of his “Principia:”—
“And now we might add something concerning a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies mutually attract one another at near distances and cohere if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances as well repelling as attracting the neighboring corpuscles, and light is emitted, reflected, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this spirit mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain to the muscles.”
The term “spirit” he evidently uses in the sense of something not material in its nature. Science avers that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle, and it is generally agreed that for such action some universal medium is absolutely essential. Not long ago, the president of one of our leading universities, in an after-dinner speech, said, “Out of the research of chemists and biologists there is unfolding something which might as well be called Love, as by any other name.” Is there a correspondence between what we call attraction on the lower planes and love on the higher? or in other words, is love the voluntary, individuated, higher manifestation of a universal etheric substance? Turning, for a moment, in this connection to a spiritual phraseology, we are reminded, that God is omnipresent, and that “God is Love.”
If the ether be super-material, and the atom but a vortex wave or vibration of the same, we seem to arrive at the border-land of a spiritual universe. Owing to the anthropomorphism of the past, science, for a little time, may prefer to use some such term as “Eternal Energy” in place of God, as a matter of habit, but of what wonderful significance is the convergence of recent human ideas! Putting aside all dogmatisms, is science about to become religious and religion scientific? Such a unification would be, perhaps, the most startling and inspiring step in human evolution that we can imagine.
That all phenomena are but varying aspects of etheric vibration is coming to be quite generally conceded. This is the most logical interpretation of all molecular action and transformation. It is understood that Lord Kelvin has technically demonstrated such a hypothesis.
For some of the generalizations of this chapter, and also for a few of the quotations from scientific authorities, the writer desires to make his acknowledgments to Dr. C. T. Stockwell of Springfield, Mass., whose very interesting articles upon this subject were published in 1897. He reports Tesla as saying, that: “Nature has stored up in the universe an infinite amount of energy. The eternal recipient and transmitter of this energy is the ether. The electro-magnetic theory of light and all the facts observed teach us that electric phenomena and the ether are identical.” Also that Professor Hemstreet, in writing of these views of Tesla, says: “Now call this energy God’s mind and the ether God’s body, then we have the secret of eternal life and the process of cosmic evolution…God in the ether is no more strange than a soul in the body…Mind in ether is no more strange than mind in flesh and blood.”
Under such an hypothesis, thought transference becomes both rational and scientific. Thought-waves go out through the ethereal medium, and their impact sets up a sympathetic vibration in the mind and brain of other organisms, or perhaps more especially in the particular one to whom they are specifically projected. Many other psychical phenomena, heretofore looked upon as supernatural, or at least strange, would here find lawful basis and interpretation. Could we intelligently apply the universality of law, there would be nothing strange in the whole cosmic economy.
Note the significance of the following quotations from eminent scientists:—
“If it be true that one must struggle to find words to convey one’s thought with reference to the physical phase or phases of the ether, how much truer it is when attempt is made to suggest how it may be that from these vortex atoms, with their inner or nonvortical modes of motion, an organism, like man, with all the attending physical and psychical phenomena, is built up. God has nothing but his own perfect substance to make worlds (and all that they contain) out of.”
“Matter, therefore, is not only divine, but it is the crowning act of divine love and self-sacrifice. It is God giving away himself for man to use, to enjoy, to govern.”
“Further than this, it is in perfect accord with the law of all parenthood, of the very substance of God himself, that we, his children, body as well as soul, come. Thus, verily we are c begotten, not made’; being of one substance, and children because we are so in very deed and truth.”
“Putting this latest truth of science into nineteenth century language,” says Calthrop, “we say God has nothing but himself to make his children out of. They are spirit because he is spirit. They live because he lives. They inherit into his love, his wisdom, his eternity. There is only one mind, and they share it; only one life, and in that life they live; only one spirit, and they are spirit.” “In him we live and move and have our being.”
“A God whom we may possibly approach in some far-off tomorrow is to give place to a God in whose bosom we rest, the presence of whose life and love we daily and hourly feel. God the ultimate fact and spirit, the sure foundation on which all things rest; this is the thought of the twentieth century, into which we of the nineteenth have just made our entry.”
We need not claim, dogmatically, that the ether is God, but everything seems logically to point to the conclusion that it is at least his most universal, intimate and primal self-expression. We lawfully think of all phenomena as his thought made objective. If all forms, whether solid, fluid, or gaseous, are but differing vibrations of one substance, we must conclude that that portion of them with which the human senses come most in contact belong to the relatively cruder subdivision. This, not in any baser moral sense, but in an unfolding order of progression, as being less advanced. Undeveloped man is more intimate with them. The intuitive penetration of the world has counted matter as “gross” or “brute,” not because it is bad in itself, but because it is associated with the first steps of human unfoldment. Spiritual progress, therefore, lies in the direction of finer and still finer vibrations, both individuated, and as ruling in the consciousness. The primary or deific vibration may be not only basic, but the finest of all.
How many spiritual bodies, within each other, of ever increasing refined vibrative quality make up structural man we may not estimate. But progress seems to be manifested by a successive casting off of the outer and cruder, for the next in succession, as soon as its educational purpose is served. If reincarnation be true (regarding which no opinion is here advanced), it would seem to be for the reason that such an educational purpose had not been fully completed. It seems normal that soul or mind must have an objective experience and embodiment in matter, or more correctly in a material consciousness. Browning has expressed this thought:—
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on.
By this consciousness it is seemingly—not really—distanced from God, its primal source. Is it, that in working its way back through an educational discipline of free but experimental choices, it may develop an intelligent appreciation, recognition, and love for its universal counterpart and Reality—the “Father’s House”? Man never can get away from God except in consciousness.
If the casting off of a cruder form of bodily expression for one more refined, which is already enclosed within it (conventionally called death), be progress, may there not be more such transitions before ideal and perfect divine oneness is attained? Science would then define “death” as the utilization of an embodiment of finer etheric vibration. And now let us consecrate the ether, and even matter, and no longer regard anything as “common and unclean.”
The cosmos is a living cosmos, and the mind of man, as a spiritual dynamo, has relations and attractions with every part of the whole macrocosm. In speaking of this relation from the scientific view-point, Professor DuBois exclaims, “What limit can we set to man’s action?” And further: “So far as we understand the constitution of the universe we live in, it is made sensitive to will, and through its whole extent it thrills at the touch of spirit hands. The action of man’s will in such an universe may accomplish any conceivable result.”
The divine idealism of Emerson, as yet scantily appreciated, voices a similar thought:—
The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.
What a day it will be for the world when science fully accepts the unity of all force and the underlying oneness of all phenomena, whether physical or spiritual! God will be found to be “All in All,” in reality, and this will not be pantheism. As soon as science and religion become fully unified a great revival of both will follow. God, Love, Mind and Life fill all space. When such a consciousness is cultivated, it virtually reveals a new universe. It comes with the opening of a new human ideal, a fresh visual faculty. The observer feels an all-inclusive, dynamic, pulsating Life, with which he is filled, and in which he is enclosed. All limitations, historic, dogmatic, formal and scholastic, are pushed back and the horizon infinitely widened. “Old things have passed away and behold all things have become new.” God is not only “personal,” with all that term implies, but infinitely more. All being is spiritual Being. If the ether be the manifestation of spirit, wherever the former is, the latter, being its cause, must persist. Nothing is “secular” because everything is sacred and divine. Nothing is supernatural because everything is normal. There is no death and no inanimate matter. The cosmos is filled with poetry, intuition, emotion, and brotherhood. The supposed coldness of mathematical and all other exact scientific truth is transformed into a warm, rhythmical responsiveness.
In man, nearness, oneness and God-likeness are to be unfolded through a progressive recognition of their inherent truth and normality. Evolution gains its dynamic force through an all-pervading spirit of hopeful endeavor, or, in other words, an ideal which is always an impelling forward attraction. As Emerson puts it:—
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
As our former ideas regarding the impenetrability of matter give place to the reality of etheric vibration, other new and startling probabilities open before us. “Solidity” is a mere sensuous illusion. Says Dr. R. G. Eccles, in quoting from Maxwell: “The most solid steel is built of molecules that are not and cannot be in actual contact with each other. They exist in it like a cloud of gnats or flies, and only appear one instead of many, because they move together as in a mass.” Thus it is with all “solid” bodies. When the rhythm favors, bodies can pass freely through each other. Jevons, in his “Principles of Science,” remarks, “For anything that we can know to the contrary, there may be, right here and now, passing through us, and this world, some planet invisible to us, with mountains, oceans, lakes, rivers, cities and inhabitants.” Dr. Young also suggests that “there are worlds, perhaps pervading each other, unseen and unknown, in the same space.”
In one of the series of Bridgewater Treatises, the late Professor Babbage compares the ether to “a vast library on whose pages is registered all that man ever said or woman whispered.” There are untold myriads of sound, color, and light waves, of which our dull senses take no cognizance. There are other etheric waves, innumerable, which are utterly incomprehensible to us with our present equipment. The voices of nature “rest not night or day” from chanting the glory of the Creator, as displayed in all his works. Every form of beauty is his thought in translation. In proportion as our thought-forms come into at-one-ment, he finds human expression. If the ether possesses infinite dynamic vitality and spiritual correspondence, it is like an eternal reservoir containing all divine potentiality for man.
Before the term “omnipresent” could have any vital meaning to humanity in general, it was necessary that religion and spirituality should be reinforced by science and philosophy. The infinite boundaries of space—hitherto called empty—are filled with God; and if with God, then with Love, Life, Intelligence, Wisdom, Beneficence, Poetry, Beauty, Cohesion, Energy and Truth. The Father gives all—Himself— to his children. All spirits are embraced in Spirit. Matter is resolved into an appearance. All things cease to have separateness, for nothing exists but Being.
Evolutionary Reconciliation
When refined from its former materialism, the evolutionary philosophy exhales the spirit or an optimism that cannot be limited. What a great and rapid advance within the forty years or more since Darwin and Wallace formulated their theories of “The Struggle for Life,” and “The Survival of the Fittest,” to the present accepted altruistic basis, even from the standpoint of a science that is yet materialistic! When first imperfectly recognized, the law of progress appeared selfish, if not even cruel. The great procession of advancing material forms was found to be moving in accord with fixed laws, but the fact that it was orderly could ill atone for its pessimistic temper. All potency was declared to be in matter, which grew in obedience to a blind, inherent, but invariable tendency. But it may be admitted that, in spite of the mistaken spirit of the movement, its reliable method was a distinct advance beyond former concepts of an arbitrary regulation that was capricious, even though theoretically of divine origin.
The bitterness of the “struggle” that destroyed the less fit and the lack of general unity and design, together with the seeming unmoral and unspiritual trend of the new philosophy, combined to produce upon the world a somewhat chilling sensation, conveying an implication of agnosticism, if not of atheism. If, indeed, the natural order were found to be cold and utterly selfish, as well as orderly, could it be any real advance over the former more agreeable, even if erratic and uncertain, economy?
It was natural that the lower aspects of the new philosophy should come first into view. The coarser and cruder are always more obtrusive. But soon it began to rectify itself, so that even its pioneers gradually saw other sides of their rising structure; and presently other investigators added new breadth to its proportions, until it began to show coherence, unity and design, and, still more recently, altruism, beneficence and even love. Many added their contributions—that of Herbert Spencer, perhaps, being the greatest of all—and roundness and symmetry became fully evident, especially under the warm and beautiful touches of Le Conte and Drummond. The wonderful grace and harmony of the different sides and interrelations of the present evolutionary temple were undreamed of one short generation ago. Even the most conservative physicists and biologists now admit the demonstrability of the higher elements already noted. But it is also true that much of the materialistic trend and flavor—subtly, but perhaps almost unconsciously—is still retained. With all of its admitted saving and altruistic aspects, it yet means, to the majority, only a procession of seen forms, unmoral and largely mechanical, even though possessing a quality called “life” as the result of organization. In the race, the weaker perish, while the stronger survive and propagate their kind.
We may now note what we believe to be the crowning necessity to make development appear consciously what it is in truth—congruous, logical and complete. In effect it is the metaphysical (that which is beyond the physical) point of view: condensed into a few words, that all progress is located in the unseen mind, soul, or life of everything, and that the seen forms are only expressions, or indexes. The advancing states are steps of internal character, and this seizes upon matter to translate itself outwardly. Matter per se never progresses; that is, so long as it remains relatively matter. It is the banner or sign-board of the particular character that is temporarily using it and playing behind it. The same plastic material appears, disappears, and reappears in higher or lower shapes, as the case may be. It is clay grasped by the hand of its molder. The elements that today make up the body of a tree, or a dog, may have figured in the material structure of seer or philosopher. It is the user, not the material, that ascends. The owner lays hold of it and erects it according to his own specification. It is just the well-fitting clothing, showing the quality and taste of its proprietor. He makes no mistake in its shaping, but a history of the raw material would show endless mutations. For illustration, the real tree is the tree-life, not the stuff that it lifts into graceful form. True, we may study the latter and appreciate its beauty and symmetry, but it is unwise to mistake the picture for the substance. The dynamic potency, or active energy, is all in the unseen tree. This lays hold of the cruder equipment and deftly fashions it true to species, overcoming gravitation and other obstacles in its expansive outpicturing. The principle is clear. Internal soul conditions correspondingly mold and fashion the outer. The figure 5 means nothing in itself, but it is an index or symbol of the living reality of number. Life never perishes, and its manifestations are endless.
It follows that the less fit, which were supposed to have been crowded out of existence, are perfectly conserved and only awaiting suitable costume in which to give a shadow pantomime of their next step of unfolding quality. Nothing is, nor can be, lost. Conservation in some form is universal. Those lives that seem to drop out of the great procession—said to die—disappear only to reappear in nobler and sweeter shapes.
When the higher human plane is reached, man becomes a conscious partner with Divinity, and, recognizing the law, cooperates in his own evolution. This he accomplishes through ideals, which he sets up before him, and like great magnets they draw him forward. He identifies himself with the law of unfoldment until he becomes a law unto himself.
In the light of the principles already outlined, let us now gather up and interpret, synthetically, the grand purpose and spirit of that higher and real evolution of which the procession of seen forms furnishes the translation. We may reverently infer that God is the Substance of all things, and that he made everything from himself. This is not pantheism, but divine (or spiritual) monism.
It is a great fundamental principle that there will ever be a spiritual restlessness in man until he finds God, or, in other words, attains the divine consciousness. This is the evolutionary drawing force. The quest is universal, even though with the vast majority it be unconscious. Men are ransacking the earth, hunting high and low, to find—they know not what. In reality, the goal is the living contact and jointure of their own higher selfhood with the Universal. Religions are instituted, theologies set up, ordinances observed, sacraments celebrated, rituals formulated, denominations established, and ethical systems and philosophies promulgated—yet all are but varying attempts to find the great Ideal: to behold the one Reality. Seemingly, these earnest efforts form a great discordant chorus. Outwardly they are incongruous and often appear antagonistic. But they all may be defined as the multiform searching of sincere, striving humanity to satisfy a subtle soul-hunger. Not one of the many means employed is bad—not one but what has a use. The spiritual evolutionist can condemn none. They are all different roads toward the “Father’s House.” Whether narrow, indirect, or steep, they are well-meant attempts to satisfy the great longing. Every man will cling to that in which he—and he is just like no one else—can see the most of God. The Romanist finds more of the Divine in consecrated art and ceremony, while the varying schools of Protestantism turn with differentiated emphasis to creed, ritual, ordinance, doctrine, sacrament, music, prayer and praise, each with the inherent, even if unintelligent, importunity—”Oh, that I might find Him!” Institutions fit themselves to human peculiarity. Not one in its special time and place can be spared for a substitute. But men will search the objective world over for God, before they are ready to find his presence and image within. The lower rounds of the evolutionary ladder are thus all outside. It seems almost like a paradox that the highest one is the nearest, or, in a word, subjective.
Can we not now see and feel the logic of universal reconciliation? Everything in God’s universe is our near relative. Even institutional science is reaching such a conclusion. Nothing can be really antagonistic. May we not now bring this reconciliation yet more into the concrete? Have those who have felt the stirring of the broader spiritual philosophy always exercised a tolerant judgment and charity for those who are toiling up steps in the rear? Has not some disrespect and even condemnation been shown toward the sectarian and the literalist, and perhaps mild contempt for the devotee of creed and dogma? Think a moment. The members of the most bigoted sect, just for the present, find more of God in their chosen system than they can possibly find elsewhere. Among the endless variety of instrumentalities that are pushing men along, every church, creed, system and philosophy has a place; and not one can be dispensed with until its work is fully done. Those who are just now upon such a round of the ladder as fits them must take that step before they are ready for the next. Let us be as fully reconciled to them as to those with whom we touch elbows. This does not in the least favor inactivity, or a supine content with things as they are, but it does imply the absence of antagonism and the exercise of an intelligent charity. We may show our better way, in season and out of season, but it is not the better way for the other man until he so recognizes it. He will not and should not move until, in response to light from within, he does so of his own free will.
The oft repeated metaphysical aphorism that “All is good” has been mystical and often incomprehensible, but under the searchlight of the higher evolution it is clarified and resolved. If the progressive stairway contained a hundred steps, might we not say that one who is upon the twentieth step is as good in his place as one who is upon the fiftieth, provided he is faced forward and keeping step? Both are brothers in the all inclusive procession and bound for the same destination. Just now the man fits the step, and the step the man.
It is unwise to make any overt attacks upon old beliefs and ideas. The moment they have served their purpose they will melt into fluidity and furnish the very material needed for recasting. Love is the sequence of reconciliation, and here the beauty of its universality will be felt. We are thus led to believe that evolutionary progress is but another name for education Godward. It is the gradual uncovering, through growing human capacity, of an all-inclusive Love—not only a love that seems religious and spiritual, but one that may truly be termed cosmic. “God is Love.”
May we not now divine the great necessity that is laid upon man? Although always a spiritual being, having God’s image within him, and although he has ever lived, moved, and had his being in the Eternal, yet he must needs be involved, or cast in low form, in order that through the educational process of working his way back he may discover his true rank. He has been distanced from the Deity only in consciousness. In reality he has never left the “Father’s House,” his seeming journey being only a dream in sensuous matter and material embodiment.
Life may be likened to a mighty gulfstream, sweeping away from the Great Source and bearing everything upon its bosom, only eventually to float all back again with perfected understanding and recognized oneness. During this great voyage, individuation and voluntary God-likeness are unfolded. The Word becomes flesh in order that flesh may finally become the Word.
Finally, can we with the telescope of faith essay to catch a supreme glimpse of the great educational curriculum? In the tremendous cycle of creative development, the Divine Life first involved itself into the lowest or most diffuse forms, and at length, through a series of grand steps, gathered itself and became more determinate, coherent, organized, and individuated—successively unfolding life, organic life, sensation, instinct, consciousness, self-consciousness, spiritual consciousness and finally divine consciousness—thus blossoming into “sons of God,” in which form, with ever-growing capacity and reciprocal love, the rounding of the circle is made toward the “Father’s House.” Divine Love craves voluntary and intelligent love in return, and nothing less than its fullness can bring the complete equilibrium of the Perfect Unity.
The King’s Touch
The history of this remarkable ceremony, which prevailed in England for seven hundred years, and in France much longer, seems much like a romance. But besides its unique romanticism, which might render it of interest as a curious study in folklore, it includes phases of occult law of importance to every student of philosophy and psychology, if not indeed to humanity at large. It is always instructive to review historic customs, beliefs and phenomena in the light of present knowledge. The working of the human mind in its multiform expressions, whether in the present era or in ages unlike it, is a real drama where “all the world’s a stage.”
The great modern discovery of the universal “reign of law” furnishes a powerful searchlight, by means of which we may look into and often illumine the dark corners of the past. The time was when events were supposed to happen, not especially in accord with law, but capriciously, or as the result of a special interposing “Providence,” as the peculiar occasion required. The inviolability of the natural order both in the material and psychical realm, now so generally admitted, involves many logical reconstructions of opinion respecting the true interpretation of numberless undoubted facts. The historic verity of much which before has been unquestioned must now be denied, unless laws can be discovered, or rather recognized, under which actions and events took place. The science of today, therefore, has an important work to accomplish in finding the key to many unusual phenomena. Philosophy and psychology not only have concern with the underlying principles involved in manifestations of the present time, but also with the basic causes of the appearance, persistence, and disappearance of myths, delusions, and all other erratic transactions which have ruffled the surface of human experience. Their “why and wherefore ” must be sought by every searcher after truth. The modern doctrine of the dominance of law has become so persistent that no unusual perturbation in human thought past or present can remain exempt from inquiry. Even a philosophical study of wholesale fanaticism may be not without profit. Begin research at whatever point we may, logical relations will .branch out in all directions. Everything— good, bad, or even false—is what it is, and comes when it does in response to the behest of law. Modern psychology shows that lines of sequence in the domain of mental activity are no less exact, even though more difficult to cognize, than those of the physical counterpart. Even if pure superstition give rise to significant result, it is worthy of attention.
The extent of former positive belief in the therapeutic efficacy of “the king’s touch” can hardly be imagined, and is only revealed by a careful study of the records. For century after century it received the full assent of the most intelligent races and nations, and was sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authority. In the ritual of the Church of England “The Office for Touching” occupied a prominent place, and continued in the “Book of Common Prayer” until the year 1719. Kingly power and control, which included priestly prerogatives, were very near and real to the human mind down to a comparatively recent date. The king was king by virtue of divine right. Whatever the character of the man, kingly potency inhered in the office. As soon as firmly seated, the monarch was conceded to be heaven-appointed and divinely hedged about. Besides, in England at least, being officially the head of the church, he was a representative of religious authority.
Truly to interpret an age, it is necessary to put ourselves in its shoes, and direct our gaze from its stand-point, which is exceedingly difficult. To our rational, scientific and democratic vision the superstition of three hundred years ago seems childish and inane, but to the undeveloped citizen of that period its transactions were logical, vital and religious. Shakespeare, in “Macbeth,” in the conversation of Malcolm and Macduff with the doctor of physic, incidentally reflects the thought of his time:
Malcolm: Comes the king forth, I pray you?
Doctor: Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
They presently amend.
Malcolm: I thank you, doctor.
Macduff: What’s the disease he means?
Malcolm: ‘Tis call’d the evil:
A most miraculous work in this good king;
Which often, since my here-remain in England,
I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,
Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace.
In a book published in 1684 by John Browne, “chirurgeon (surgeon) of his majesty’s hospital, London,” sixty cures are minutely and circumstantially described, as also, “many scrofulous tumors and sores which disappeared immediately.” Browne was a practitioner of established reputation, for his book was stamped with the approval of the College of Physicians and the most eminent surgeons of the day.
The reliable historian, Evelyn, in his “Diary,” volume second, page 15a, under date of July 6, 1660, says: “His Majesty began first to touch for ye evil according to custom, thus: his Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting-House, the surgeon cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where they, kneeling, ye king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant, a chaplain in his formalities, says, “He put his hands upon them and healed them.”
Richard Wiseman, sergeant-surgeon to King Charles I., in one of his chirurgical treatises, says: “I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of many hundreds of cures performed by his majesty’s touch alone without any assistance from chirurgery.”
We may now cull a few representative statements from the multitude of histories and annals which are regarded as authentic and credible.
The first record of the exercise of the king’s touch in England is that of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) given by the historian Brompton. Stow, in his annals, also gives detailed accounts of them, beginning even with the first “cure.” “The number was very large and increased every year.”
Edward I. (1272) first introduced the practice of giving a gold or silver medal, called a “touch-piece.” (Records of the Tower of London.)
Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) touched extensively, great crowds often pressing about her as she journeyed from place to place.
Charles I. in 1630, by pompous proclamation, invited all who stood in need of a cure to repair to him “for the heavenly gift.”
Charles II. between 1667 and 1682 has a record of touching 92,107 persons.
On March 30, 1714, Anne touched two hundred persons, among whom was Samuel Johnson, the future lexicographer, then thirteen months old. Touching was continued by the “Pretenders,” and did not entirely cease in England earlier than 1745.1
The French kings claimed the gift of touching back as far as Clovis (481-511), and it continued as a royal prerogative down to Charles X., who “touched for the evil.” (See the proces verbal, in the Ami de la Religion, vol. XIV., where every particular of the “cures effected” is set down in detail, and attested by Desgenettes of Notre-dame des Victoires.)
A few intermediate specimens may be added from the large number duly recorded and attested.
Philippe VI. le Valois (1328-1350) “cured fourteen thousand persons of the king’s evil.”
Henri IV. (1589-1610) “touched and healed about fifteen thousand persons a year.” So says Andre Larent, the king’s physician and counselor, in his book on the royal prerogative, published in 1609.
Louis XIV. (1643-1715) in one year touched sixteen hundred sufferers.
Similar statements might be multiplied to any extent from reliable records and attestations.
In a brief, impartial attempt to interpret these long continued public events, there seems to be good ground for believing:
First, that the people, from king down to the humblest subject, including the medical profession, were substantially unanimous and sincere in the belief of ” the divine gift” as pertaining to the kingly office.
Second, that probably no one will now believe that the king had any special healing power per se, or even that he was a passive divine channel in any greater degree than any of his subjects, other things being equal. The kingly prerogative was therefore an unmitigated superstition.
Third, that there were unnumbered cures. There is a mountain of testimony to that effect, and no general or specific contemporaneous denial. The main disease (scrofula) upon which the supposed gift was exercised was of such a determined and visible character that any universal mistake regarding the facts is manifestly impossible. Unlike any obscure or invisible nervous derangement, the disorder in question was tangible and thoroughly in evidence. While it is unnecessary to believe that every case was immediately and fully healed, the general rule and tendency must have been very marked to gain both popular and professional attestation.
The premises of the problem now presented seem to be as follows: (1) Universal sincerity; (2) No unusual power resided in the office, per se; and (3) Undoubted evidence for centuries of important results.
It therefore seems clear that all the wonderful therapeutic potency demonstrated must have been psychically resident in the living faith and confident expectancy of the disordered sufferers. There was a peculiar and very positive mental activity, even though awakened by, and having for its basis, pure superstition. If such faith and expectancy through any law of mind are so efficient for good, the questions naturally come to the modern investigator: Can they be awakened in any more rational and orderly way than through superstition? Do greater light and knowledge put us at a disadvantage in comparison with an age of comparative ignorance and superstition? While this force of the past cannot be reinvoked, may it not have a possible lesson for us? Faith has been conventionally regarded as little else than a changeable religious emotion, but now the question naturally arises, can it not be cultivated in an orderly, systematic and scientific way? Is it not possible that a more lengthened mental concentration upon a sought ideal, voluntarily undertaken, may have something of the same potency that resided in the temporary use of superstition? An investigation in this line ought to be inviting to every inquiring mind.
Let us imagine a case in concrete form. An ignorant peasant, with mind sluggish and despondent, vital energies at a low ebb, and offensive physical disfigurement, comes for the king’s touch. Perhaps brought from a long distance with much difficulty, the long expected day, the most important of his whole life, arrives. Filled with awe and wonder, he knows that his salvation is at hand, and he entertains no doubt or unbelief. He has thought, and for a long time will think, of nothing else. Amid dramatic, kingly and ecclesiastical pomp the great transaction is complete. Dormant and unconscious emotional forces are stirred into intense activity, and ideals of that great boon, health, displace all else. Amid the thrill of a new enthusiasm which penetrates to the depth of his being, the consciousness of disorder is crowded out, and the body lawfully responds to the inherent force of mind over matter.
Can the individual of today, without the impelling force of superstition, and in the absence of imposing pomp, through an intelligent psychological cultivation approximate the same result? Even if such a disorder as scrofula would not always quickly respond, may not the potency of mental forces be systematically employed with profit? What about the subtle types of nervous derangement, which are so rapidly increasing, especially in America? It would appear that orderly truth in the nineteenth century ought to include as much potency for good as the dramatic superstition of three centuries ago.
Institutional science, with its modern wealth of laboratory equipment, gives much attention to speculative and phenomenal experiment in psychology. Why may it not also make a little investigation into a more practical realm, which would include therapeutic possibilities? Whether or not entirely conventional, the world, struggling under a great burden of woes, sorely needs every helpful influence that can be brought to bear for their amelioration. No one will claim that all possible laws and principles have yet been utilized. Whatever is true, even if seemingly somewhat occult in character, must have some fitting place and use in the evolutionary economy, and possess a certain significance in its relation to human welfare.
Footnotes:
- For some of these and the following details credit is due to Brewer’s “Dictionary of Miracles.”
Nearer to Nature’s Heart
From drug medication as a therapeutic system, to the observance of intelligent hygienic regulation is a great advance. It leads away from the artificial toward the natural, and from the experimental and empirical to that which is logically in accord with the constitution of man. Hygiene cooperates with the beneficent forces of nature instead of repressing or opposing them, and employs prevention, thereby in large measure displacing the necessity of cure. It operates through ascertained law, and so far as that is understood becomes logically scientific.
But may not another and yet more subtle force be recognized as an important part of our equipment which may be brought to bear against abnormal conditions? Modern investigation is inclined to delve deeply in order to discover hidden principles and deal with primary causation. A further and inner extension of hygienic effort is clearly in order. It has been conventionally assumed that the human constitution was a fixed quantity and quality to be dealt with only by some change or improvement in external conditions and physical adaptation. But a pertinent question is suggested: Can that supposed fixture or human ego be so modified in itself as to come into different relations with its own physical instrument? In other words, if man himself is not a mere material mechanism, but rather an intelligent ego and unseen entity, may not some beneficent change take place on his part with a view to a more complete control of the outer organism? Does even the most efficient patching-up of the latter include all that can be done to improve the relation between the two?
It has been abundantly proved that anger changes the secretions; that fear deranges the circulation and impoverishes the blood; that anxiety wastes the nervous energy; and that selfishness, pessimism and immoral thought sap the vitality. These, and many other things, make it evident that nothing in man is fixed, and that the subjective realm is a promising field for new observation and effort. Now consider how many inharmonious and disorderly elements come daily into the average mind and consciousness. All these, even if not acute and outwardly noticeable, are constantly causing friction in the physical organism. The body, or external expression in quality, is a result and correspondence of the average mental status which is behind it. The process being very complex and gradual, renders it somewhat difficult to trace the direct connection.
It follows, that if discordant mental conditions admittedly pull down physical tissue, high, harmonious and optimistic thinking ought to build it up. In other words, mental positives should have even more power for good, than careless and unwitting negatives in the other direction. The question now comes in regard to the practicability of a change in the quality of one’s thinking and the cultivation of a higher consciousness. Well established psychological law proves that habits of thought may be formed as readily as physical habits. As a matter of fact, the former are all there are, for so-called physical habits are but resultant expressions of what is back of them.
The practicable means to be employed to lift one’s thinking is mainly through systematic concentration upon well chosen ideals that one wishes to actualize externally. It is idle to claim that one cannot gradually change his nearest neighbors, which consist of the mental pictures which are the continual product of the imaging faculty. The mind is not only constantly adding to its gallery of art, but it is also taking on the color and quality of the particular works upon which its gaze is most earnestly fixed. By natural law, the tendency of the physical organism is to articulate and externalize them. Nothing is more certain than their molding influence. Shall then these nearest of neighbors be harmony, health, soundness, sanity, love, courage and optimism or their negative opposites? We choose them, and they mold us.
We are souls having bodies, and not bodies having souls. The latter idea indexes our gross, even though unwitting, materialism. Man is higher than his visible instrument or embodiment, and should continually affirm his rule. It is his legitimate kingdom. He may cultivate a growing sense of spiritual supremacy, increasingly dominate physical sensation, and by degrees free himself from its tyranny.
Hygiene, to be truly comprehensive and scientific, must begin to concern itself with the cleanness of mind as well as body, and with the ventilation of the thought-atmosphere as well as the air of the apartment. Bad mental pictures must be classed with sewer-gas and pessimism rated like malaria. Idealism and optimism must take their place among sanitary agencies, and man utilize his hitherto slumbering resources and focalize his thought-forces. Vitality can be increased from within. All this is exceedingly simple when the working of the law is intelligently grasped. It involves no nonsense, superstition, denial of matter or anything else that is unreasonable. It does not disparage physical hygiene, but is friendly and cooperative.
What is the Meaning of Evil?
By common consent, any rational solution of the origin, nature and purpose of evil is one of the most difficult and profound undertakings in which the human mind can engage. As a problem it has been regarded as insoluble, and has steadily held its place as the king of all mysteries. The seeming universal presence of evil as co-existent with an omnipotent and omnipresent Deity of goodness and love is the paradox of the ages. It is the mental and spiritual Sphinx, or the great interrogation point which has challenged reason and pressed for interpretation upon all generations of men.
If conventional and accepted religious systems be questioned they will reply that evil and sin are terrible realities, everywhere waging a hand-to-hand conflict with good, the outcome of which, at least for the present, trembles in the balance. Theology will answer that under the powerful beguilement of a great evil personality, mankind fell into “an estate of sin and misery,” and so continues. Ethical systems will testify to the omnipresence of their great enemy, whether it be personal or impersonal. Turning to the physical sciences, biology would note an all-prevailing antagonism and selfish struggle and point to the world as constituting one vast cemetery. Anthropology, paleontology and archeology would respond that even the fittest survive but provisionally, and that that small minority in its turn is relegated to the less fit majority. Material evolution would add its endorsement. In many cases, also, the specious plea would be put forth that the cosmic order itself contains no sanction for morality. Thus the plaint becomes a chorus, and in one form or another all prevailing philosophies, whether their viewpoints be supernatural or naturalistic, recognize a great objective Power other than the Good, and acknowledge this invincible antagonist to be the arch-enemy of man.
The sense of a fundamental dualism being universal, there has been no end of effort to interpret the great antagonistic force. Was it eternal or created, inherent or incidental, educational or vindictive? If created in an economy which is monotheistic, what a reflection upon its goodness and even its justice! The assumption that it is a living objective principle, implacable and irrepealable, has filled the world with sorrow and pessimism. Even where a more modern and liberal philosophy has proclaimed its waning power as related to human destiny, the general materialistic view-point in great measure still emphasized its hostility.
While the belief in a great adverse Personality having a general headship has weakened, the case is not much improved, if, in human consciousness and belief, an impersonal and all-powerful cosmic principle or the same diabolical character takes his place. A careful study of the psychology of man shows that belief, fear and pessimism, when seated in the human consciousness, can to their subject clothe even unreality with dynamic realism. “If you keep painting the devil on the walls, he will by and by appear to you,” says the French proverb.
No means of reconciliation between good and evil has been found by philosophy, science, or logic, and an elastic supernaturalism has not been more successful. All have been confronted by an unfathomable and essential dualism. The universe has been made twain, or in reality divided against itself. The term, supernaturalism, is here employed only to denote what some mistakenly believe to be beyond the realm of orderly law. But the spiritual—for which the term is often used—is as natural (normal) as that which is material. Dualism being in its very nature an insurmountable barrier in the direction of any solution of the problem of evil, the only alternative is monism. A still further and deeper study will reveal that this monism must include, not only good and evil, but also what are known as spirit and matter. These are not separate and antagonistic powers and entities, but varying aspects and concepts of the unitary order. But we must not anticipate.
Turning for a moment to prevailing systems of Christian theology, we find that those which are still most largely accepted—if judged by their still existent formal standards—have for their primary foundation the literal story of Eden with its introduction of evil. But many of their personal exponents, now swayed by the irresistible influence of modern thought, admit that the historic narrative must be a matter of correspondence, allegory and symbolism. But these always have some deep and real meaning. From every reasonable point of view the literalized story of the “Fall” as the origin of evil is untenable. The validity of the dogmas, the foundation for which is thus so clearly removed, need not be discussed in this connection. But the Edenic tradition is by no means the only arbitrary attempt to account for the origin and persistence of the adverse principle. Each religion has its unique hypothesis. Comprehensively studied, these hypotheses have so many similar features as to suggest a common root. Space will permit of but one or two illustrations.
In the religion of ancient Egypt, Osiris is essentially the good principle, and his warfare with evil is perpetual. His brother Seth, called by the Greeks, Typhon, is his opponent. They represent light and darkness, physical good and physical evil, the Nile and the desert. The warfare is for the welfare or the destruction of the human soul.
The Zoroastrian creed was also fundamentally dualistic. Ormuzd and Ahriman were the representative antagonists. They were both creative and original spirits, and the existence of evil in the world was thus supposed to be primary and fundamental.
In Buddhism matter, conscious desire and existence constitute the main elements of evil, and the blotting out of these conditions in human consciousness makes up the triumph of the good. This transcendent, formless, tranquil state is Nirvana.
The spectacles of human pain, misery and guilt, with seeming undeserved calamity and uninvited disaster, have caused a common revolt from the hypothesis that the cosmic order is the sole manifestation of a beneficent and loving Deity. An anthropomorphic and even capricious divine administration, subject to certain limitations and imperfect dominion, has inferentially been assumed. From the generally admitted premises any other logical conclusion would be difficult. Comparatively, the universality of law is but a concept of yesterday, and any theory of its complete beneficence must wait for future understanding and acceptance. Thus, during the entire historic period, and among all peoples, whether Christian or Pagan, Gnostic or materialistic, theistic or atheistic, Calvinistic or Arminian, dualism in some form has prevailed, and man has trembled before an adversary of superhuman power which, whether or not an objective reality, he has erected in his own consciousness. From the ancient Greek philosophers and Hebrew seers, who found the idea of divine justice irreconcilable with wickedness triumphant and innocence trampled underfoot, down to the modern pessimist and atheistic materialist, there is a profound conviction that we live in the midst of a perverted moral order. Even Nature, “red in tooth and claw,” seems a living though unintelligent epistle wherein diabolism stands out in characters of bold relief.
It has been respectively affirmed that evil is a creation of the devil, which is to be redeemed through Christ; that it is an influence from an inferior though unconquerable perverse spirit; that matter is inherently adverse to righteousness or, according to Plato, “brute matter;” and finally, by pessimism and materialism, that there is no God or moral order, but only blind unmoral Force. The Christian ideal of confidence and trust, even under divine chastisement, though reflecting upon the deific character, has in it a kind of prophetic reconciliation and final spiritual beneficence. It is therefore far superior to all other religious systems. The true touchstone for any philosophy or religion is its ascertained and experimental relation to the constitution of man. Does a theory or hypothesis fit him, his needs and capacity, and also make for harmony in a general unitary design? If so, there is valid endorsement and even proof. Factors must be studied, not singly, but in relation and interrelation. Among them all man himself is the most significant. Can a beneficent teleology be discerned? Persistent analysis and specialism have greatly displaced an intelligent synthesis. The whole is often hidden by one of its parts, therefore objective misplacement and disproportion are the result of a faulty subjective bias.
Man wittingly or unwittingly violates law—physical, mental, or spiritual—and the inner tribunal and sequential penalty judge him. The law in itself may be kindly and the penalty educational, but to his untrained vision they both seem adverse and even evil. But only through some experimental infraction of the moral order can undeveloped man divine its mandates. Only the freedom of choice, and some degree of discipline, greater or less, for missing the mark, make developed moral character and spiritual fiber possible. As man progresses in inner unfoldment and attains higher evolutionary planes, his divergence from the moral highway will become more slight. At length he will feel its leadings and outgrow the necessity of the hard punitive cuffs and blows which are provisionally required to startle him and push him out of the deep ruts of animality. If man could know and do only the good he would be an automaton, and to him, being destitute of any point of comparison, it would not be good. Growth is only possible through wise choosing and exercise. Where there is but one, choice is impossible. Enforced and involuntary virtue, unmixed with freedom to choose unwisely, would be slavish, and to man as he is constituted would virtually become vice.
Anticipating for a little our conclusion, we will concisely state it, and then proceed to show how logic, analysis and relativity buttress and confirm it. Evil is real as a relative subjective condition, but unreal as an objective entity. It is man’s faulty practicing, and has no seat or power outside of him. As designating a lower round in the ladder of human ascent than that occupied by the observer, it is pertinent as a term, but yet without abstract realism in the nature of things.
Human definitions of evil are most unstable. Ethical standards are continually shifting, as measured by differing races, religions, legislative codes and especially by successive eras. Previous to 1850, with rare exceptions, slavery was not only excused but sanctioned by the leading authorities of religion, politics and social economy. It was even “divinely instituted.” Briefly put, it was not evil. Today, a paltry half-century later, such an ethical standard would be rated as barbaric. Glance forward a little, and note another almost certain readjustment—nay, revolution! War, when thinly glossed with patriotism, so called, by the side of which slavery as formerly practiced in the United States is but a pygmy of evil, remains ethically correct according to the general sentiment of the nations of Christendom. But there is every indication that long before A. D. 1950, no one will be bold enough to defend it. Then it will be unmitigated evil. What a continual alteration of measurements! We are like people upon an express train when the whole landscape seems to be flying by while they remain stationary. Good and evil are not abstract opposites separated by a great, unbridgeable gulf, but changeable subjective relations.
But it may be plausibly objected that although institutions and customs, like slavery and war, change in human appreciation, there are qualities which remain intact. Take love and hate. Would not the former through all ages remain good and the latter evil? This presents dualism in its strongest form; but let us look a little deeper. Love and hate are real as relative educational states of consciousness, but who will affirm that hate has any cosmic objective reality? Love being positive has valid realism. Hate is a negative condition. These qualities are what men see and feel in themselves. Says Emerson: “Evil is merely privative, not absolute; it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity.”
As man is constituted, love could not be discriminated if there were absolutely nothing else. All true interpretation must include some degree of contrast; indeed, the human consciousness itself consists of one interminable procession of contrasts. As man feels evil or hatred within, it seems to be veritable without. It is a magnified reflection of his subjective consciousness, for as he is against things they seem to turn themselves against him. His own imperfect inner states are stamped upon all his environment. He is looking through a colored lens. This is a necessary psychological and spiritual stage for an immature and progressive free moral being to pass through. Logically, this brings us to the border of a positive idealism, which teaches that each one for himself creates his own objective universe. If he makes his own world, including his own good and evil, does he not inaugurate his own heaven and hell? When, therefore, he has fully conquered himself he has conquered the world. Dr. John Fiske has discussed “the mystery of evil” from the scientific standpoint in a way which has attracted wide attention. His masterly logic is irrefutable, and no loophole is left for the entrance of any theory of dualism. It therefore becomes highly significant and encouraging that monism is not merely the product of “metaphysical speculation,” but that science and positive spiritual philosophy converge to a common conclusion. It may be added that religion, when vitally rather than dogmatically defined, is in full accord. Dr. Fiske clearly shows that evil has an indispensable function and is not something interpolated from without. His illustration through the contrasts among colors, though perhaps familiar, is apt. If there were but one color it would not be a color. As the human mind is framed, contrasts, are absolutely indispensable.
In the grand epic of Job, Satan, the personification of evil, is represented as the tester, the prover, or in reality as the educator of men. In that highly dramatic picture of the process of human spiritual evolution his part is presented as normal, and he is painted with none of that radical and destructive malignity with which he is conventionally credited. In fact, he is represented as among the sons of God, and as holding dignified converse with the Deity. His office is the placing of obstacles and doubts in the pathway of man, so that through the exercise of overcoming, he may gain strength to mount to higher levels. It is obvious that, when thus interpreted, he ceases to be the traditional devil. He is a spiritual fencing-master through whose activity man is to gain moral and spiritual dexterity and power, but ignorance transforms him into a real enemy.
The experience of Job, in substance and degree, delineates the travail of every human soul in its birth to the higher consciousness. As a literal transaction it would be meaningless. As the composite photograph of a great process in the kingdom of the soul, it has startling significance. “The world, the flesh and the devil” have long been regarded as the trinity of evil, but it increasingly appears that the first two are good when not abused. When misplaced, they form an image of the third. Asceticism is thus stripped of its theoretical virtue and sanctity. Body and soul are no longer regarded as hostile factors, but as congruous and supplemental in their relations.
“Thinketh no evil” virtually puts evil out of existence. To paint its picture and dwell upon it, even for the well-meant purpose of a righteous opposition, is to increase its realism and scatter its seed. This has been the conventional, but unscientific and unsuccessful way in which the world has tried to get rid of it. After a vain trial of realism for ages for its suppression, why not employ idealism? “But I say unto you that ye resist not evil.” The scientific value of non-resistance is that it destroys all the realism that evil possesses. In proportion as one turns his back upon it and leaves it behind, it dissolves into its native nothingness. The pessimist magnifies it, and disarms poor humanity in the assumed conflict. The optimist sees the educational and corrective side of evil experiment and thereby transmutes it, and so brings goodness into expression. “Evil, be thou my good,” said Milton.
If God be All in All, eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent Love, he could not have created essential evil, or its personification. “All that he made was very good.” But, unconsciously to himself, man is a creator. His constructive thought uprears specters of misplacement and ignorance, and they solidify before his eyes and threaten him. In a deep sense, for him who believes in a personal devil and fears him, there is one. Regardless of the lack of abstract reality, his own malignant mental image of such a being stands out before him charged with the power which he has conferred upon it. The human imaging faculty is an instrument of unimagined creative significance.
But it must be admitted that the only evolutionary approach to an intelligent appreciation of Reality—as Universal Goodness—lies through a field of adverse appearances. Like the windmills which confronted Don Quixote, they seem like veritable giants. As soon as intelligent discrimination takes place, the force of contrast urges one forward. Negatives and penalties continue their fearful prodding from behind, until self-formed ideals of good are erected in front and beckon an advance. As the prevailing sense of self is material, man counts things that physically threaten, not only as evil, but as morally evil. An indefinable feeling of guilt makes a demand for an available “scapegoat” in the shape of something outside, which shall either bear the blame or atone for it. Although reflected as in a mirror, man does not recognize his own thought-likeness. One tumbles and falls, and then blames the beneficent law of gravitation.
Let not some shallow critic claim that this philosophy is an apology for evil or sin, or that it logically sanctions any kind of iniquity. When understood it does exactly the reverse. There is no “dodging.” The only salvation is that which comes through character. All sin, even that of ignorance, plants the seeds of its own punishment, and no interpolated “scheme” can or should prevent it. The penalty is its corrective and educational counterpart. Pain and punishment are therefore the beneficent friction that turns men back from what would otherwise be self-destruction. They are like a thick hedge of thorns which guard the edge of a precipice. Punishment is self-imposed. If fire burned one’s body painlessly, the careless would soon be without hands. Our course through life is laid by a compass of constant choosing, and the wisdom of our choices should increase by experience. There is no escape from penalty except by a putting away of its cause. Transgression and punishment are differing aspects of the same thing. A true philosophy of the economy of evil, although it limits it to the subjective realm, discourages sin vastly more than any system which promises a “scapegoat.” If one wittingly violates law, he only adds compound interest to his own discomfiture. Optimism and idealism, therefore, far from glossing over sin, give it no soil or moisture for growth. Every law of one’s own being invites, nay, urges, compliance and harmony. It pleads with him to be “saved.” Man should therefore study himself. All the forces of the universe are inherently beneficent, and punishment forms a negative though important part of such beneficence. If the moral order in itself needs no revision it honors its author. If it be susceptible to improvement, it indicates a Deity who is changeable, if not unreliable. Man must conform to God, and not God to man.
When, as indicated in the allegory of Adam and Eve, the God voice of intuition, reason, and moral responsibility began to make itself audible in the garden of the human soul, a great evolutionary boundary was crossed. It was from the ignorance and instinct of animalism into the domain of an educational experience of “good and evil.” Positive good can be known only in the light of some degree of its contrasted negative. Man had arrived at the capability of becoming Godlike. This was not merely one great historic racial transaction, but the general order of development for the individual consciousness. When pre-Adamic man becomes Man, a divine restlessness takes possession of him. A paradise on a higher plane than the former one is now demanded. Here is the genesis of evil. Some “missing of the mark” was absolutely essential before man could ever rise through the increasing wisdom of voluntary choices. Thus, evil is the name of the “growing pains” of good. It is the acrid and unripe fruit, which, through seasonable warmth, moisture, and even tempest, appears later in delicious golden clusters.
It is at once evident that evolutionary processes are not completed on this human plane of existence or present embodiment. If this were the only proof of man’s future continuance, it would be conclusive in itself. Perhaps it is not so very important whether the particular method be spiritual advancement on the next plane or “reincarnation,” but progress must continue. Nothing in the whole moral order is abruptly broken off. Everything guarantees mental and moral sequence. Conservation and continuity have no accidents. Cause and effect, and supply and demand, are unitary in combination, and completeness is assured by the very nature of things. Progress is therefore eternal, and a certain negative relativity of so-called evil ever pushes from behind as a fulcrum over which there is a never-ceasing moral leverage. Says Carlyle: “Spiritual music can only spring from discords set in unison.”
Evolutionary development is now beyond the realm of mere physical forms, its activity being more marked among the unseen lives and souls which mold and uprear them. The climax of size and crude muscular strength in organisms seems to have been passed. The present trend of science, also, is from the physical and seen toward the psychical and unseen. As the viewpoint of the Real is approached, evil retreats and dissolves. All that is vital in religion, positive in philosophy, true in morality, veritable in science, inspiring in nature, and beautiful in art are but varying and fragmentary aspects of the great unit of Truth. Evil is what appears upon turning the eyes backward and downward. When at length everything is polished by the friction of unwise experiment, each factor will find its fitting niche and specific interrelation. Men often criticize the moral order, pointing out its short-comings and possible improvements. Ingersoll would have made health contagious instead of disease. Under such an economy doubtless it would be regarded as of little value. The logic of the situation as already noted brings us not only to what philosophy denominates monism, but to spiritual monism. Not that matter is bad or unreal, but rather a name for the cruder aspect of things. This is not pantheism, but ideal and spiritual realism. If the cosmic order be the multiform though unitary manifestation of one all-prevailing Deity, we are in the midst of a glorious Theodicy. We have an all-wise and beneficent Heavenly Father who is “without variableness or shadow of turning.” Unity, perfection, and potentiality are guaranteed without a hair’s breadth of deviation. Life is one, even though in multiform demonstration and individuation. It makes visible its own slower vibrations and erects them into forms which we measure by our sensuous discrimination. In the drama of the Whole each principle and force plays its normal role, and perfectly fills the character. The universe is a never ending panorama rolling noiselessly in the atmosphere of divine optimism. As Robert Browning puts it:
“There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”
Pessimistic superficiality is synonymous with spiritual blindness, while optimism beholds unity in variety and “good in everything.” Organization requires and includes diversity of function, so that even a negative, like evil, has its legitimate office. Contrasts counterbalance each other, and thus the rounded sphere of the whole divine order has polish, symmetry and completeness.
Intelligent Physiological Designing
Any study of the correspondence or relativity between mind and body must include factors which are subtle and complex, if not elusive. Like other many-sided problems, it should be approached impartially and without that bias which colors any effort to make facts bend to some preconceived theory or system. Never before the present time was the value of truth, for its own sake, so highly appreciated. The world is hungry, not merely for facts, but for their true interpretation. Phenomena are mainly significant as being the index and expression of orderly law which is back of them. To modern inquiry, it is no longer a finality to reply that they are strange, unaccountable or even supernatural. The latter has come to be regarded as only the higher zone of the natural. The philosophical mind at once feels impelled to follow back, link by link, the chain of causation through superficial occasions and secondary origination, toward primary and foundation sources. The study of natural law, now so generally admitted to be universal, is not only interesting, but it also lends itself to practical utilization. If we are consciously or unconsciously making architectural drawings of that which is to be built in outward form, we should try to improve ourselves in such an art. The age demands that truth shall be applied truth, and no other test will be accepted.
Psychology and physiology are terms which designate two related and most intimate sides of the human unit. Employed apart, one cognizes man as mind, and the other as body. If both are supplementary factors, any study of either by itself or out of relation must be, in degree, misleading.
There are two general, though not always sharply defined schools of thought concerning the essential nature of man. One adheres to a philosophy which is primarily materialistic, while the fundamental basis of the other is psychical, idealistic and spiritual. The first defines man, essentially as a physical being, though highest in the scale of organization. The material organism is taken to be the basic source of his mind or soul. Conventional biology which considers organization, structure, development and function, deals with animate matter, and not with psychology. As regarded by institutional philosophy, man, as a term, means the seen form which of course possesses a subtle complex property called mind. Mental activity is rated as brain activity. Intellection is virtually regarded as the result or manifestation of concordant material organization. Expressed concretely and personally it would be, “I am body, but have a soul.” The latter is taken to be the dependent, for that which is a property cannot be otherwise.
The basic principles of the other philosophy may be outlined briefly as follows:—Man is essentially a psychical and spiritual being. Expressed individually it would be: “I am soul and have a body.” The visible form is man’s outward correspondence and expression, but in reality it forms no part of his real being. His mind, soul or life forces have grasped suitable material and molded and erected the body as a sensuous response to physical environment. A figure on the blackboard is not the cause, but the index or articulation of the reality of number. The body is composed of material which has previously served other orders of life, and will continue this subsidiary office in the future. He who has the present grasp of it is one of a long series. An individuated dynamic entity has taken it into his service. It is now a stringed instrument to be played upon by its proprietor. Normally, he is to make it useful, and rule and fashion it as the potter does the clay.
The two different philosophies noted, bestow a widely different emphasis upon the inner and the outer, the unseen and the seen, idealism and realism, regulation and authority from within, or without, and therefore never have been mutually reconcilable. There is a more or less distinct line of cleavage between them which runs through all religious, philosophical, social and educational systems. Occupying as they do diverse viewpoints, their varying interpretations, when applied to life, purpose, health, conduct and destiny have profound significance. In the light of these generalizations we may now proceed more specifically.
The vital physiological processes in the human organism are divided into two general classes. One embraces those activities which are conscious, or under the direct supervision of the will. These include eating drinking, walking, talking, hearing and the ordinary exercises of the senses. But the other class, which takes in all the unconscious, or more properly the subconscious processes, is far more numerous and complex. Among them are the digestion, assimilation, circulation of the blood and all the multiform activities of the sympathetic nervous system with their innumerable delicate relations. These form a wonderful interdependent manufacturing plant, which in an orderly way converts food and drink into blood, bone, brain, muscle, fat and all the various secretions of the body. All these marvelously subtle processes go on, hidden from observation, from those most vital and important, down to the minutest sweat gland, and molecule of the whole economy. It is impossible for us to imagine any mechanism so intricate, finely adjusted and altogether wonderful. Could we look in upon it appreciatively we would be astounded. If the conscious mind be put at rest by sleep, or an anesthetic, these complex activities continue. What dynamic intelligence directs them? Orderly mind or soul, but all goes on below the surface of consciousness. Normally, no mistakes are made. Every element which is taken in, through an amazing power of selection, goes to its fitting place and fulfills its proper function, and this not only specifically, but with perfect synchronism and unitary cooperation. All these innumerable concurrent movements we ordinarily include under the simple term, “life.” But how much it means!
Although the subconscious operations go on seemingly without observation, a closer study reveals that they shade into the conscious counterpart, and that both are necessary to unitary completeness. Let us note some of their joint phenomena. From some cause, intense fear startles the conscious mind. What are the results? The heartbeat is quickened to a flutter, every muscle trembles, tears start unbidden, the sweat glands pour out a cold perspiration, the blood leaves the surface, kidney-action is intensified, the extremities lose their warmth and the saliva dries up. Do these cause the fear, or vice versa? Be the emotion well founded or purely imaginary, the delicate mechanism is thrown into the utmost confusion. Not unlike a heavy blow, its effects are often lasting. We name it after its material result and call it a “nervous shock.” It is really a psychical perturbation, though it causes a nervous shock. Even a recurrence of its mental picture from memory, long after, will often send a responsive shudder through the whole physical organism.
The facts noted are perfectly familiar, but the underlying law with its logical tendencies and deductions is largely unrecognized. If a great, though brief fear will produce such phenomena, all lesser fears will act to some extent in the same direction. If in a moderate degree anxiety and worry become continued and habitual, they may have even more harmful and permanent sequences. Careful observation and experience also show that anger, jealousy, grief, guilt, hatred, suspicion and every other inharmonious passion or emotion, by a positive law act in the same direction. They are like sand thrown into the bearings of delicate machinery, when oil is needed. Friction and derangement follow. Intense anger is sometimes fatal in a moment. Pessimism and even selfishness belong to the same unwholesome category, though their action may be so complex and slow as to be distinctively untraceable. Psychical agitations send a tumult through the ganglionic nerve-centers which transmit the disturbance outward to the extreme limits of the organism. Now if the average human consciousness be the highway for an unending procession of inharmonies, as all signs indicate, where can perfect health be expected?
We here are brought to a parting of ways between the two philosophies first outlined. The psychical, while admitting that occasions and secondary causes may be from without, holds that the realm of primary causation is in mind. The materialistic school finds it to be in the physical part, per se. The modern germ-theory for the origin of disease is an obvious product of the latter philosophy. There is however at least a respectable minority of the medical profession who incline to the view that germs are a concomitant, or even a result, rather than the primary cause of disorder. If states of mind are back of physical pathological conditions, the minute organisms are clearly secondary. Many of them are admittedly beneficent as scavengers, but those which are specifically harmful only come where the soil and conditions invite them.
A few years ago it was stated that an eminent scientist in Vienna swallowed a considerable amount of cholera-germs and that they proved innocuous. His positive and conscious fearlessness furnished no physical susceptibility. But in ordinary cases there may be subconscious fear which would leave the door open to contagions, even if they were taken in unconsciously. Therefore a negative condition may prove to be a standing invitation to current neighboring ills, even where no specific fear or expectation exists. Not everyone who is exposed to a contagion responds, for to an organism of positive and wholesome vigor, it is but a negative. Specific germs do not arbitrarily find a lodgment where conditions do not invite, and this shows them to be secondary. But it is provisionally important that they be destroyed, for the reason that congenial soil does exist on every side. It follows that the highest ideal is to close the door of primary susceptibility. As fast as that is done, the harmful germ will perish from lack of subsistence.
Having noted some psychical destroyers of physical harmony, let us inquire concerning its kindly preservers. If one class will pull down, or always tend in that direction, logic and experience should show that the opposite will build up. Both professional and lay opinion is substantially unanimous concerning the potency of what is termed “faith” in this direction. Fear and faith are respectively the negative and positive poles of mind. The unnumbered cures resulting from a strong, even though superstitious belief of a divine or miraculous efficacy residing in some shrine, holy bone, consecrated relic, king’s touch or mystical ceremony, will hardly be questioned. The potency of bread-pills and water hypodermics, under favorable conditions, has also been abundantly demonstrated. The law under which the imagination becomes so potent, remains without systematic interpretation and utilization, and conventional interest in its working does not usually penetrate below the mere surface of events which are soon forgotten. The imaging faculty has been regarded commonly as elusive, capricious and hardly worthy of serious study. But if it have a creative power which may be greatly harmful or helpful its possibilities should be investigated. When a positive ideal, or mental picture can be formed which, for the time being at least, takes possession of the consciousness, we find that it rules out or displaces its opposites and negatives. This determinate ideal, faith, fear or whatever it be, tends to outward articulation. “The word is made flesh,” and “as is the inner so is the outer.” It is simply a natural physiological sequence without an iota of magic or miracle.
In a scientific sense, faith may be defined as psychical energy, and this under favoring conditions may be set in motion by pure superstition. The momentum of a stone which is rolling down hill is the same whether it were started by accident or design. But besides that peculiar emotion termed faith, it is found that other wholesome and positive emotions and ideals take hold of the subconscious physiological processes. Among them are love, courage, optimism, purity, harmony, altruism, but above all, a cultivated sense of a normal divine immanence, as Omnipresent Good. This should be regarded, not merely as moral and religious truth, but as having a scientific and evolutionary basis in the nature of things. Exhaustive chemical and mechanical tests in the laboratory have detected in minute detail, the invigorative effects of these positive states of consciousness. The submerged bodily activities respond to psychical suggestion with an exactitude which can only be interpreted as a law.
It is true, however, that, specifically, these unseen dynamics are elusive and difficult to trace and measure on the phenomenal plane. For instance, no one can dogmatically affirm what proportion of that immunity from smallpox which comes from vaccination is due to the operation per se, or how much is resident in the permanent feeling of ensured protection. This positive consciousness—which amounts to a virtual and abiding auto-suggestion of the fact—is also reinforced by general surrounding belief in the specific immunity. There are helpful as well as harmful psychical contagions. In conventional therapeutics the subtle mental factors are always present. Were it possible entirely to eliminate from the patient his confidence, or faith, in physician, remedy, nurse and friends, then, and only then could the inherent potency of the specific that is employed be estimated. It is well understood among the profession that the practitioner in whom the patient has no confidence is heavily handicapped. The limited period of usefulness which many widely heralded remedies seem to possess is also significant. As the novelty of their advertised power wears away, their efficacy appears to suffer a corresponding deterioration, and they join the great procession which has already gone to oblivion. But something new replaces them.
The more exhaustive the investigation, the more positive the conclusion appears that the reign of psychological forces is imperious. The body is like a musical instrument of untold delicacy, whose strings may be stirred by vibrations of sweetness and harmony, or swept by discord and jangling.
But one more phase of the subject can here be considered, and that involves the degree of the practical application of these principles to everyday life and experience. The great need of the world is applied truth. In this age of rapid progress in so many directions, therapeutics will not long lag behind. The marked increase of insanity, the manifest prevalence of neurasthenia and its numerous pathological relatives, the general exacting tension of modern life, with a too prevalent pessimism and materialism—all these present grave problems. The medical profession includes many noble and conscientious men who doubtless will not hesitate to supplement conventional systems with their reasonable psychic interrelations as rapidly as their validity can be demonstrated. Intelligent and broad-minded investigation is all that is needed. The hints which follow regarding practical utilization, are submitted as sound and logical deductions from the well-founded philosophy already presented. In addition, the writer offers them as the mature result of a long, careful and conservative study of concrete personal experiences, the data of which have been carefully collected.
The old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is well founded. It follows that the ideal to be sought is such a degree of physical, mental and spiritual poise as shall render disorderly conditions more infrequent and exceptional. Rational, physical hygiene is important, but it is far from all. What the average man needs is not so much some strange curative specific, as an intelligent and growing nonsusceptibility to current ills. Life should increasingly become a luxury, and not a “tale of woe” to be endured. Living, per se should be an exuberant joy. The weeds of melancholia, and asceticism as well, should be given no soil or moisture, and robust vigor and harmony blend and unify the three zones of man’s nature. Nine-tenths of our ills are of our own ignorant or unconscious creating, but as a rule we do not have an inkling of this until well along in life. Said Marcus Aurelius:—”The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”
Can we gradually re-form our thoughts—or in other words refurnish our mental dwelling-places—or must we take them as they chance along? As well ask if the pilot must always go exactly with the wind. The same “faith” or state of mind that tends to restore, also would tend to prevent, therefore the two involve but one principle. Psychical harmony, upon which physical harmony must largely depend, requires subjective hospitality to the inner truths of being.
If, as already shown, faith be potent for good, how is the average man to invoke its aid? Is it synonymous with credulity and superstition? Under modern conditions these are rapidly disappearing and there are few who do not believe, not only in cosmic law, but in an orderly moral economy. Does it follow that faith among men is soon to become extinct? Has the Creator put a premium upon ignorance and self-delusion to the extent of making them more valuable as restorative agents than knowledge? No! faith has its logic and laws. Its definition must be broadened from a supposed blind expectant emotion, to a lawful and intelligible, determinate, psychical energy. A scientific faith is not the hope of things not seen, but the “evidence of things that are not seen.” For a certain class of minds, the shrine or holy relic may be available today, but disillusion may supervene by tomorrow. The question then recurs; how then shall the intelligent man proceed through the right use of psychological forces to get that grasp and control of the seen organism which is so desirable? It can come but gradually and must be a cultivated growth. Through a persevering thought-habit it is possible consciously to identify the ego with the real mind, man or soul, rather than the visible form, and thereby realize a growing sense of control. The normality of the executive rule of the higher and real will grow more pronounced, and gradually become a familiar feeling.
Through a law of mind, now well recognized, the simple repetition of ideals or suggestions with some concentration upon them, tends to make them graphic and dominant in the consciousness. To illustrate, let us suppose that physical sensation reports to the ego: “You are ill,” or “You are very weak.” Is he obliged to surrender at once and regard its testimony as final? If, as before noted, causation be mainly psychical, and it be normal for the mind to lead and the body to express, why not try changing the thought-current? Let it be turned most intensely in the opposite direction. Let him reply, mentally, with emphasis, “I (the real ego) am well!” “I am strong!” “I rule the body!” and repeat and affirm these and similar auto-suggestions, even if at first mechanically, and he will gradually change his consciousness concerning himself. For reasons already noted, the tendency will be for the body to fall into line and express the ideals. The executive thus assumes rightful control in his legitimate kingdom. The leadership becomes that of the man rather than the instrument. Is this not logical? But can this employment of ideals be thorough and entirely successful upon the first trial? As well ask if a child who is just learning the alphabet can read a poem. A thought-habit, like any other habit is only formed through systematic persistence. But he who discerns the law and earnestly tries to utilize it will be a thousand times rewarded. The affirmation of wholesome suggestions should begin long before their seeming necessity. They then become one’s most intimate companions, and the order of their action is from within, outward. The law that one becomes or grows like his ruling ideals has long been known, but it rarely has been utilized.
There is a great racial current of fears, forebodings, morbid depressions and peculiar personal weaknesses that, altogether, have a powerful momentum to carry us downward. It will not do to drift, but we must row against the prevailing materialistic tide. Suggestion, by the most conservative authorities is conceded to be of wonderful potency. But it need not be hypnotic, dependent and from without, but voluntary, independent, idealistic and from within. At length its quality becomes so ever-present and familiar that its trend and spirit install themselves securely in the consciousness. The specific impulses finally become a calm and harmonious state of mind. This is the “faith,” which then may be defined as attained psychical and spiritual momentum towards ideal conditions. Thought, scientifically regulated, is the motive power in the background.
It is not easy to present unfamiliar principles so that to some, at least, they will not seem visionary, but their general recognition is surely coming before the twentieth century is far advanced. The onward evolutionary drift, while slow, is very certain. It is quite proper that conservatism should prevail, so that all new departures, if extreme, may be tested by experience and criticism, and thus have any possible excrescences polished off before having general hospitality accorded to them.
What is the Higher Law?
The term “higher law” implies the existence of other law which is relatively lower, either in quality, scope, or potency. Law, unqualified by any adjective, is defined by Webster as, “In general, a rule of being or of conduct, established by an authority able to enforce its will; a controlling regulation; the mode or order according to which an agent or a power acts.” In a further elaboration, he says, “The power which makes a law, or a superior power, may annul or change it.” While this is true in the subordinate sense, especially as employed in the realm of human enactment, it is obviously unfitting, if applied to the higher or divine law.
The definitions of law in the past, as a mode of operation, whether upon the physical, psychical or spiritual plane, almost uniformly have been given an objective interpretation. It consisted of the dominance of a Will, or Force, which was supposed to be operative from without. It bore the aspect of an arbitrary regulation, somewhat like the mandate of a powerful monarch. In government, it was the imposition of kingly or legislative fiat; in physics, simply a necessary uniformity of sequence; and, in the moral and spiritual domain, the objective “Will of God,” expressed in external revealed regulation. Practically, the idea has widely prevailed that the divine government was arbitrary and subject to modification. But the higher inspiration of present thought measurably discovers in law some elasticity and even spontaneity. The present ideal of the moral order is therefore delightful and satisfying. To the human consciousness the former aspect of mechanical rigidity in law is dissolving. Not that there is any lack of perfect order in any corner of the cosmos or any doubt as to its reliability, availability and beneficence, but the arbitrary, unrelated and supernatural coloring of the universal order is fading under the clear light of the new philosophy of life.
Law is supremely natural. It is written not upon objective tablets, but in the nature of things. The rules to be observed by man are inscribed in his constitution. Law of any rank is unchangeable and immutable from the standpoint of its own plane. But the superior dominion of the higher law is now coming into recognition. The sap rises in the tree, not because gravitation is suspended, but because tree-life, in its order, outranks the earthy attraction. The forces of mind transcend mechanical and chemical powers, and therefore receive a deserved homage. It is eternally ordained that the higher shall dominate the lower, finer vibrations those which are more crude, and the unseen realm that of sense. In the three zones of man’s nature the spiritual is primarily causative and obviously supreme. In the proportion that the conscious ego occupies that vantage-ground and vibrates from it as the recognized center, there will come organized power and harmony. Man grasps and utilizes the higher law when from the spiritual altitude of his own nature he cooperates with the divine order, and also reaches down with gentle but firm dominance through the various strata of his own organism.
That which is the higher law for one is not identically the same for another. In its general and abstract ultimate, no one at present is fully equipped for its perfect recognition. It is every man’s relative higher law which differs in degree, scope and complexity from that of his fellows. To primeval man there was no moral law, and from the confines of the Adamic plane but little of the abstract law is intelligible. Law, to any man, provisionally includes that which he may now possibly recognize, but which still lies somewhat above his everyday consciousness. He should learn to cooperate with it without being in subjection to it. It is his to grasp and use. Step by step, as he mounts upward, new spiritual leverage is at hand from which lines of relationship radiate in every direction. As the railroad switchman, from his elevated tower of observation, governs the direction and destination of ponderous trains by the simple moving of a handle, so the normal mission of the unfolded ego is the orderly governance of things which are below. As before noted, the higher law for no two individuals is quite the same. But they are alike in the general fact that what any one may appropriate and employ today has more transcendent yet attainable accomplishments which stretch on in advance. As human ideals are pushed forward, they carry with them corresponding legal privileges and appurtenances. “To him that hath shall be given.” He who can bring into his own soul a conscious oneness with the “Oversoul” will receive a divine equipment which he may wield with ever-increasing efficiency. This may be defined otherwise as intelligent identification with the subjective Christ. Only this will insure well-rounded and harmonious growth. In a deep sense we create the path upon which we are to walk. The leverage provided by every one’s higher law reaches downward and outward. Seek ye first the kingdom of harmonious spiritual consciousness, and the lower planes and landscapes, dressed in living green will lie stretched out before you, each in its appropriate order and rank. But, by the law of growth, realization must be gradual.
The final interpretation of the higher law will be found in that universal attraction called Love. As it is developed, it will represent an ever-increasing lawfulness. Love in its subordinate forms is educational. Personal, paternal, filial, and even conjugal loves are the training schools of that broader, perfected, impersonal Law of Attraction. The higher law, which is not quite the same thing to differing individual consciousness, will finally be merged into that Higher Law the grand ideal of which is so charmingly voiced by Tennyson:—
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off, divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
War From The Evolutionary Viewpoint
War, like every other human phenomenon, may be studied from a variety of points of view, thereby revealing unlike aspects. We may survey it from the patriotic, ethical, social, humanitarian, religious or economic standpoint, and as a result reach one-sided and even misleading conclusions. But the evolutionary significance of war subtly permeates or rather underlies them all. The things which are revealed by the conventional studies enumerated are in the nature of surface indications, while only a deeper penetration into the constitution of man can lay bare the causative roots and essence of wholesale human conflict.
The same war may be holy or unholy, necessary or unnecessary, humanitarian or barbarous, as logically interpreted from the premises of the observer. But the true significance of every great human activity is only determinable in the light of a philosophy which is both metaphysical and evolutionary. But even under such an examination there are two sides of the subject which seem unlike and even in opposition. On one hand it is not easy to look at war specifically and relatively without some feeling and appearance of pessimism. But as the optimistic conclusion is the only true and final one, we suggest that if the first pages of this chapter carry any tinge of the former, judgment be held in abeyance until the final summing up is reached. In the closing synthesis we shall find that war is only an educational incident in an eternal economy which is wholly beneficent and optimistic. This larger encloses and swallows up the smaller, for the circumference of the Good is boundless.
Beginning, then, with the more specific and limited investigation, we may definitely state the foundation principle, that the sole cause of war is found in the evolutionary survival of brutehood in man, while objective questions or international differences, which are commonly regarded as causes, are really but occasions. The almost universal popular obliviousness to this vital distinction is responsible for a large part of the misery of the world. Occasions, being comparatively superficial, should be entirely under human control. Real causative forces are too deeply imbedded in the nature of things for the average man to grasp, much less to truly weigh and measure.
While the phenomenon of war is visible and objective, war itself is entirely within the mind of man. The action of armies and navies commonly called war is only war’s outward expression. The latter is secondary. When collective passion arises to such a pressure as to find embodiment in fitting instruments, the visible signs are named war. But the term is applied to a symptom rather than to the disease. The real culprit hides himself beneath a great pile of rubbish. While the idealistic philosophy inculcates only a recognition of the good, war is the dominant recognition of evil.
We are now prepared to take what may seem a bold step, and affirm that the greatest harmfulness of war does not consist in its material desolating touch, the bitterness of pain, the tragedy of wounds, the carnage of battle, nor the accompanying harvest of disease. Terrible and revolting as these concomitants appear to us, the monster which overtops them all is the great tidal wave of collective hatred. This is behind all bullets and shells, and all fuses are ignited by its heat. Among the millions of a great nation which is in the throes of strife, not one in a thousand loses life or limb in battle, while the deadly spirit of destructive antagonism rankles in the national heart, to its utmost territorial limits. Consciously or unconsciously, all are immersed in a great psychical sea of hatred, and, aside from actual combatants, the one and absorbing impulse towards the other millions is destruction. The more complete such destruction the greater the rejoicing. The passion becomes so general and consuming that it might truly be diagnosed as a sweeping and collective monomania. Any normal and true sanity must include a measure of love and sympathy towards every human brother, of whatever race or name. Any so-called patriotism or religion which limits this outflow to national boundaries is a sham and a deception. A true evolutionary or even humanitarian view shows that nationality is but artificial. The race is nothing less than a solidarity.
Hatred is more disintegrating to its subjective possessor than to its assumed objective. Its blight begins at the core. It glories in the destruction of thousands of innocent men when they happen to be on the “other side.” From its very nature, enmity dwarfs the soul and stunts every normal and wholesome impulse towards growth in virtue and Godlikeness. The judgment of wholesale brute force is blind, and has no guaranty of justice. Even if war seems to have a righteous excuse, its corrupting character is inherent and indelible. Human brotherhood, love and unity are so deeply engraven as normal in the constitution or man, that a reversal of them is not only abnormal but positively deadly. The Sermon on the Mount, with its injunction, “Love your enemies,” is so vitally a part of man’s life that its violation, so long as it continues, constitutes “the unpardonable sin.” The very nature of the case determines it. That peculiar “sin” is not an act, but a condition. “God is Love,” and his nature is the economy of the cosmos. Even the “stars in their courses” turn against him who tramples upon universal law. War is often more dangerous to the victorious than to the defeated nation. Its “flaming sword” turns every way. To violate the basic principles of one’s being is to invite subjective penalty, until amid the bitter dregs of an unnecessary and dearly-bought object-lesson one in the last, desperate extremity “comes to himself.”
While we will not aver, as someone has vividly depicted, that the invisible forms, or astral bodies, of those who pass out amid the strife of the battlefield continue the destruction in which they are so absorbed—hardly aware of the loss of their cruder shapes—yet what a boundless contrast between such a removal and a transition which is in any degree ideal. What confusion! What darkness! What a psychical obsession by the demon of destruction!
But the war system is drawing near its end. Moral, ethical and even political differences among nations are soon to be adjusted by ideals of right rather than by brute force. Through the merciful and beneficent progress of spiritual evolution, the countless multitude of souls which in the past have been ushered into the unseen, quivering with convulsive struggles, and fresh from the fields of conflict, is not to be duplicated in the future.
The keynote of the great Christian ideal as expressed by the “Heavenly Host” was, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will towards men.” However we may differ regarding the degree of literalism or symbolism involved in the song Celestial, there can be no difference of opinion as to the principle declared, or that it enunciates the rule through which man’s highest development is to be worked out. The final touchstone by which every objective institution, system or phenomenon must be judged may be summed up in the question, is it based upon love and goodwill? These form the all-inclusive, human ideal. Whether on this or the next plane of existence, it is the only possible creator of that condition of harmony called heaven. It is progress upward and onward. Every war is an evolutionary turning backward, a bringing of the brute again to the front.
All differences of less than an international magnitude have been legally and constitutionally provided for, and vengeance, even so-called righteous vengeance has been outlawed and constituted a crime. When the evolutionary step from the brute to man was taken, a large residuum of the former was brought over. The new veneer, though very apparent was yet very thin. The working unit was the individual, and there was belligerency toward everything beyond. Slowly the limit extended so as to include the family, and, step by step, to take in the clan and the tribe, and it has now reached the nation. Here we are still lodged. Patriotism is yet construed to be regard for those within the national limit, with an inferred and ill concealed jealousy and antagonism towards all outside. Politics, ethics, poetry, fiction and literature, with practical unanimity are here encamped. When will they move on? When will all humanity be practically included? So soon as the whole family of man is seen to be an organism. In the past it has seemed to be but a mass of disconnected and even antagonistic elements. The highest good of each was supposed to be included only in itself. But the dawn of the great truth, that Humanity Is One cannot much longer be postponed.
What an utter inversion of all logic to give relatively small crimes repulsive names, while that on the most gigantic scale is counted, not only as excusable, but laudably patriotic and even glorious. The rising of the war spirit into overt activity is rarely the result of any deliberate and well-reasoned purpose, but rather of a general cumulative and contagious passion. The principles of the Sermon on the Mount not only are designed for practical use, but are positively scientific. William Penn and his associates put them into actual demonstration. They lived in the midst of ten powerful and barbarous Indian tribes, with no military defense whatever. They were armed, though without visible weapons, and were strong with unseen strength. But as the brute still depends, both for defense and aggression, upon its horns, claws or beak, so men put their trust in armies and navies, giving little heed to the compelling force of moral ideals. Nearly all wars have come, not from a dispute as to any vital principle, but from racial or religious prejudice, personal or party ambition, selfish hunger for territory or a lawless antagonism falsely labeled patriotism. There are plenty of plausible excuses, but it is mainly through such incidents or weaknesses that passion assumes the character of a tidal wave, and a nation is swept into that wholesale destructive spirit whose outward manifestation is called war.
Millions who would scorn to play the bully in any lesser relations will applaud themselves for doing it on an international scale. If at the outset of a conflict there are misgivings or objections among the more thoughtful majority, they are swept away by a loud and aggressive minority, and by a well-known psychological process the movement soon carries all before it. While there has been no ethical change in reality, that which seemed unnecessary and unholy becomes righteous. On the surface every war is undertaken for some justifiable and beneficent purpose. But were it possible to eliminate all the elements of selfishness, personal and collective ambition and military glory subtly present in multiform combination, what would be left?
But as a wholesome optimism shows that good comes out of evil, may not war be justified upon such a principle? It is really a question of how dearly good shall be purchased. So long as men insist upon paying a very high price for what may be had for the asking, war will have a negative utility. There are some things which each generation insists upon learning through bitter experience. One advantage in this is that the knowledge gained is very thorough. To drive out a lesser evil by means of the sum of all evils is revolutionary rather than evolutionary; nevertheless the purpose is often accomplished. If “war is hell,” it can never be desirable until, in a dire emergency, hell is needed as a medicament.
During the prevalence of war the whole psychical atmosphere is surcharged with ideas of destruction. Weapons, armaments, murderous inventions, sieges, charges and conquests are the staple mental pabulum. Every mind is filled with pictures of strife and carnage, and everything not pertaining to war is at a discount. Unless of the warlike variety, literature is flat, fiction dull, art insipid, history lifeless and science tame. The enginery of war is all important. There is no glory but military glory, and no heroism but that of the sword. The glamor of the pomp and pageantry of war alone is brilliant. The white-winged fleets of commerce are transmuted into gigantic vehicles of death and destruction. The peaceful uprearing of decades is leveled in a day, and the slowly accumulated savings of a nation are squandered with a prodigal rapidity. Human life in all its phases is overshadowed by the dark cloud of wholesale slaughter. The gospel doctrine of non-resistance is unrecognized and dependence is still centered upon carnal weapons.
The future political ideal among nations is federation, but this can come only through a previous federation of heart and soul. We are members one of another, whether in smaller or larger combination. The world is materially tied together in many ways unknown in the past, but good-will is the strongest and only normal bond. The weal of each is more and more the weal of all. Profoundly viewed, there are no “diverse interests.” Universal good-will would usher in a veritable millennium—a kingdom of heaven upon earth.
Having outlined a few of the psychical aspects of war, it may be in order to enumerate and trace out a few of the roots which subtly nourish the spirit of militarism. We may note:
First, through Fiction. Its glory and glitter, its pomp and pageantry are delineated in the action and plot of novels, where the spirit of antagonism often runs through the whole warp and woof. Military grandeur and heroism are made the vital center around which all circumstance and interest revolve.
Second, through the Drama. War struts upon the stage, and is deftly interwoven with charming scenery, environment, incident, love-making, rescue, sentiment, freedom and even peace itself. Its cruelty and demoralization are hidden and its intrinsic character outwardly painted and gilded.
Third, through Art. The ideal mission of the artist is to cultivate, through the eye, the spirit of beauty, harmony, symmetry and spirituality; but his talent is often degraded to the representation of battle-scenes, impossible charges, the clash of arms, savagery and mortal combat. No matter how technically correct such creations may be, for the more perfectly done the more harmful, they intoxicate the mind with a mock grandeur and photograph mental pictures which are lastingly demoralizing.
Fourth, through Poetry. Even poets, whose privilege it is to be the prophets and inspirers of mankind, often forget their grand mission, and glorify the scenes of human strife, through the charm of rhythm, versification and literary art.
Fifth, through History. Historians unwittingly lend their aid to dignify the insatiate Moloch. A very large and unnecessary proportion of the records of the past is especially devoted to human conflict, intrigue, ambition and conquest; and thus the student of history lives and breathes the atmosphere of destruction, which not only surrounds but permeates him.
Sixth, through Tradition. Folklore and legend paint highly-colored incidents, and present surface details of the monster with his great mass of terrible realism forgotten or hidden.
Seventh, through Music. The divine art of music is invoked to divert the attention of men from the inner spirit of enmity. It confers a sentimental charm upon the deadly intent. What would an army be without the roll of the drum, the shriek of the fife, and the inspiring melody of the march? The Marseillaise has hypnotized its countless thousands. Without the impelling power of martial music, the poetic mask of the wholesale destruction of life and limb would be stripped off and its true nature laid bare. Its inspiring strains upon the battlefield yield a collective mental intoxication, so that carnage and cruelty are forgotten.
Eighth, through caparisonment and decoration. Why should men adorn themselves with feathers when they are bent upon mutual destruction? To make them forget, so far as possible, the nature of the business in which they are engaged.
Ninth, through the magnitude of military operations. The colossal scale of imposing evolutions and the rhythm of marches, cause men to lose their individuality and become simply part of a vast destructive machine. An army is a despotic unit. A single will is imperious, so that the authority of a czar is freedom itself in comparison.
Tenth, through early education. Ferocity in the child is stimulated and cultivated by stories, precepts, playthings, and especially by military drills. The “boys’ brigades” of the present day undoubtedly have a harmful tendency. In passing let us express the hope that they may soon be replaced by something like the “George junior republics,” where discipline, industry, judgment and self-control are stimulated, without any admixture of the belligerent sentiment.
May we also add a kindly hint regarding the subtle influence of military and even patriotic associations? While rightfully glorifying the heroic virtues of our honored ancestors, there is an insidious possibility of apotheosizing this same deceitful passion. The light of the opening decade of the 20th century is far brighter than that which shone upon our worthy forefathers.
The reformation of educational histories may also be noted as of vital importance in the dethronement of the tyrant of mutual destruction! A sentimental hatred towards other nations is imbibed by millions of childish minds, and innumerable impressions of antagonism are made which hardly can be effaced. The determining influence which comes from such seed-sowing in the fertile soil of youthful mentality is beyond computation.
How can each one of us, as individuals, lend a hand in the advancement of this great reform which already has received some impetus?
Let every pulpit which is occupied by an ambassador or the Prince of Peace proclaim anew the very foundation principle of Christianity.
Let the hundreds of thousands of noble women who belong to the great temperance, charitable, humanitarian and other reformatory and benevolent organizations agitate for the removal of this colossal relic or barbarism! In no other way can they so effectively relieve the woes of humanity which they are trying to heal. Let those numerous societies which have been formed to perpetuate patriotic sentiments, and to keep in mind the heroic achievements of noble ancestors, have a care that in their well-meant enthusiasm they do not unwittingly stimulate the subtle spirit of militarism.
Let every philanthropist and economist who is conscientiously striving to stop one or two small leaks in the ship of state, give some heed to the great reefs in its course upon which it may be dashed.
Let every wife and mother who has a husband or son, who, in the course of events, may become food for the insatiate monster, add her voice to the swelling chorus which shall demand its abolition.
Let every scientist and evolutionist, who is anxiously waiting for the time when the animalism in man shall be overcome, urge a higher moral and spiritual unfoldment; for only this can still a selfish antagonism.
Let the daily press, now so largely devoted to the details of a degrading sensationalism, rise to the occasion in an educational work important beyond all precedent.
Let teachers, who are shaping and guiding plastic minds, show the beauty of peace; let them teach the power of higher ideals, and how to win real victories; let them exhibit moral heroism as manly and honorable when compared with brute force; let them remind their pupils that “he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.”
Let fathers seek to guide that youthful exuberance in their sons, which finds expression in militarism, into higher channels and toward more worthy ideals.
Let the sovereign people, in the elections of members of congress and senators, choose such men as will not misrepresent them, and longer sustain the reign of brute force in the place of law, reason and right.
Let the great truth go out to the world that so soon as men overcome the animalism within them they virtually conquer enemies without. Let them put away suspicion, envy and revenge, and rise to a manhood which shall be characterized by justice, mercy, love and peace.
It now remains to sum up the subject in the light of the broadest evolutionary and metaphysical philosophy. If in the absolute and ultimate the foregoing pages seem to involve any degree of pessimism, we shall endeavor to set at rest such an impression. So far war has been considered relatively and specifically, and such a view brings out its ugly features. But in the broader study of human progress in the whole divine economy, it is only incidental and educational. Evolutionary advancement is not uniformly steady. It often takes a bound forward or seemingly backward, which, in a way, is revolutionary. The smaller revolution is enclosed in the larger evolution. Even an apparent retrograde through educational influence may store up added momentum for an accelerated progress toward the ideal of universal love and peace. If, as before quoted, “war is hell,” some taste of hell may reveal its quality as no amount of precept could do. Contrast may render a most important aid as a true interpreter. “Evil” finally blossoms into good because within it are contained purifying fires which in due season reduce falsity to ashes and bring into full view the great normal reality of eternal Good.
The unending march of human development is never by measured step, for vibration is universal. Every rounded action contains an element of reaction, and there is some natural recoil to every forward impulse. As the surplus steam in a boiler finds vent through the safety valve, so the residuum of brutehood in man will seek occasional outlet until it finally disappears. Such outbursts are both indexes and object lessons. War, therefore, while ideally bad, is provisionally good. So long as it exists it has a utilitarian mission. Its black background helps to give strength and tone to the high light and color of the great panorama of human ascent. It aids man to interpret himself. By its rough measuring-rod he computes distances and maps out ascents. If we stood upon the metaphysical vantage ground, war would be absurd and meaningless; but it is the necessary accompaniment of the material plane and outlook.
The incident of war does not in the least invalidate the unbounded beneficence of law, nor the absoluteness of the All Good. It is one of the great “growing pains” of the transition from the Adamic to the Christly consciousness. Among its passing lessons are vicariousness, human interdependence and racial solidarity. In the eternal climb towards the Kingdom of the Real, the road is thorny only so long as thorns have a use. War, though hellish as an ideal, may be a means and furnish an impetus toward a more refined realism. It will survive only so long as materialism needs a testing ground.
A Christmastide Musing
The ringing of Christmas chimes ushers in another joyful season, during which reciprocal love finds its most copious overflow. Every living principle has a rhythmical movement, for the law of action and reaction is universal. As we slowly wind up the spiral of human ascent it is, therefore, normal to find recurring pulsations of unusual strength. Like the floods of spring time, these accentuated hours represent the great periodic rise of human interest and affection, the mingled currents of which refresh and enrich human life and experience. There are brought to the front those diviner faculties in man, which in the ordinary stress of daily routine are latent, or at least comparatively inactive. The exuberant spirit of such a season is a temporary object lesson of a coming steady and continual state of consciousness toward which, through moral and spiritual evolution, the world is tending.
Outside of and beyond the inspired historic associations connected with this anniversary, it is especially profitable to observe it on account of the exercise it gives to a soul-force of the highest and divinest quality. The principle which dwells back of the innumerable Christmas activities, many of which may seem trivial and unworthy, is that which alone will finally assure the salvation of the world.
This dynamic force, with the exercise of a wholesome optimism will logically help forward a coming age, when selfishness, wrong and materialism will have become outgrown, because of the transformation of the spirit which is back of them. As is the average individual, so is the mass, and all institutions are secondary and resultant. To turn the hearts of a people, will in due season mold legislation, government and ethical and even political standards into complete correspondence. To hold the best ideals for men, and see their best side, is the most efficient means to bring these into actualized manifestation. Here at the opening of the twentieth century, amid the intensest moral questioning and spiritual hunger the world has ever known, there is an unbounded field for every well directed effort for character upliftment. Aggression, animalism and the settlement of international differences by brute force, cannot be overcome by pessimism, nor by descending to fight them upon their own plane, but only through the force of moral ideals.
The spirit of love must everywhere be mingled in the complex life of mankind, for it is the only conserving element. Its absence is uniformly disintegrative. Nothing less than its sweetening potency will transform the negative and undeveloped powers of unspiritualized man. Without a liberal seasoning of this divine principle in society, the lower elements which evolution has brought over sink the soul into an arrested development. Its absence of manifestation makes barren all the relations and activities of human existence. The lack of its warm cohesive force furnishes the essence and motive of all wars, contentions and disorders. It is common to attribute all these vestiges of brutehood to the lack of intellectual development, but the repressed and frozen outflow of the basic element in man’s constitution is the true reason for their prevalence.
As before noted every normal and beneficent faculty should have its vibrations of special activity, thereby lifting the general level and finding at least occasional fruition. “Times and seasons” are all needed as diverse parts of a larger unitary activity. In the broader view, reaction, or inactivity, is a period for the gathering of new potency for a stronger onrush than before. As just now the climax of darkness and lengthened nights is past, and the light and warmth of the sun’s rays steadily wax, so in the larger year of man’s unfolding, his higher forces and godlike powers are massing in unprecedented volume and their momentum of love will be irrestible.
The historic and local incarnation had a worldwide significance because it was an ideal and object lesson of developed humanity. It was the first ripened fruit of a great coming harvest. Man was filled with divinity, and nothing less than this in any age can normally round out his complex being. But if the historic manifestation were entirely unique and unapproachable, or were an experience in matter of any quality of soul extra-human, it would have little significance for man. Being infinitely beyond his reach, it could neither be an ideal nor an inspiration. But how natural and compelling as a supreme specimen of moral and spiritual attainment! How thoroughly practical and important as a goal for which to strive! It exhibits man in full stature, permeated and controlled by love. If “God is Love,” Love must be the substantial principle of the universal economy. It means fullness of life. It is the rich exuberance of the deific overflow. Its growing subjective dominance in man, is the prophecy of a general incarnation.
The Christmas spirit which finds concrete expression in giving and loving, is a fore-gleam of a universal state of consciousness. In this brief hint is wrapped up the promise and potency of an assured coming condition. It is not only a religious, but a scientific necessity, that from the law of its nature Divinity seeks expressive instruments. Jesus recognized the intrinsic oneness, but through the ages such an inspiration or supreme consciousness has been veiled and mystical. But under the searchlight of recent thought, which may be defined as idealism made practical, there is a veritable renaissance.
From his very constitution, man must be restless until he finds God. But a search through intellectual logic is certain to be unsuccessful, and may bear fruit in agnosticism. Man can know God only through the development of the divine sample—love—in his own soul. This principle is theologically set forth in the Gospel according to Saint John.
The restless longing which men inherently feel to bring their souls into contact with the Great Reality is generally uninterpreted, even to their own consciousness. Something is lacking; they know not what. Each, according to his individual bias, allies himself with that church, institution, creed, or theology wherein to him there seems to be most of the Divine. With “lo here,” or “lo there” sounding in his ears, he turns to all these objective things instead of looking directly within himself. The only glimpse of spiritual verity must be found in the divine image within. The fullness of love is latent in his own soul, but as he is all unaware of it his restlessness continues. It is yet to be unfolded through recognition and exercise.
The rising tide of the larger Christmas is the brightening dawn of the higher selfhood; the uncovering of the likeness of God. The education of the love faculty is the way leading to that plane of consciousness which constitutes the “Father’s House.” The smaller objective and formal Christmas is not enough. Above the music of visible chimes, the spirit of the sweet hymn of the old German poet comes floating in:
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, If he’s not born in thee thy soul is all forlorn.
—From The Cherub Pilgrim by Johannes Scheffler
While beautiful glimpses of the loftier aspects of love, in varying degree, have caught the eye of poets and prophets, its general exercise in the concrete has been looked upon by the world as an ideal that was very far distant. It was something for saints in the clouds, but not for mortals who stood with both feet upon the ground. It might form some part of the furniture of a heaven beyond the grave, but, except in sentimental attenuation or low quality, it had little mundane practicality. To enlarge and clarify our views, we must therefore study the cosmical side as well as that aspect which is distinctly religious. How much larger and nearer is this great entity of spiritual attraction than we have ever imagined! While as physical beings we live in an atmospheric sea which envelops the earth, in the reality of our being, which is spiritual, we are embosomed in the Omnipresent Love. What a real though unseen environment! Is it personal, does someone inquire? It is both personal and more than personal, as we choose to view it. It is not easy to divest that term of all concepts of limitation and locality. “In him we live, and move, and have our being.”
Cosmical love is a larger and thoroughly normal and scientific idea of what is theologically denominated the “Holy Spirit.” Philosophically, it must have as its logical basis a recognized beneficence of natural law. The inherent friendliness of the universal order has not yet come into general recognition, but it is clear to the more highly developed insight of an important minority. Nature, when spiritually interpreted, is friendly and only friendly. The theological “Holy Spirit” is spoken of as being “sent” or “poured out.” How can it be sent when it is always here? If God is Omnipresent Love and Life, where can he be absent? What is the meaning of omnipresence? It is obvious that the sending and receiving of that which is always present can be only a seeming. But while we are living in and permeated with the divine atmosphere of love and life, to us it is absent if our consciousness be closed.
Nature is seemingly adverse only when we trample upon her methods, and even then her penalties, though often apparently severe are educational, and when rightly understood benignant. What a mighty Friend when we cooperate with her! Blinded by our crass materialism and lack of spiritual discernment, we are deaf to her harmonious voices and unwittingly believe that she is unmoral if not immoral. Let us, therefore, enlarge the theological idea of a limited and capricious “Holy Spirit,” sent only at rare intervals by a distant and extra-cosmic Deity, until it becomes identical with that Omnipresent Reality which fills the universe with unseen harmony. What are those all-inclusive attractions which men have called the blind properties of matter, naming them for convenience gravitation and cohesion? May they not be a lower plane of manifestation of the magnetism of love? The sun sends out his wooing rays and every flower and living thing reflect his warm gladness, lifting their heads and springing forth in joyful responsiveness. Even the stars of heaven flash out their beatific sparkle to each other, and every atom of the universe is held in the raptured embrace of a universal enchantment.
Wherever a sense of indwelling love is graphic and genuine, there, and only there, is the real Christmas. When this state of consciousness becomes collective the morning of a veritable holy day will have dawned.
We are accustomed to think of the Sermon on the Mount and the golden rule as moral ideals; but they are far more. They are scientific. They exactly fit the constitution of man upon all its planes. The intelligent and perfect adjustment of means to ends, in any department, psychical and spiritual, as well as material, properly belongs to the domain of exact science. The scope of relativity and of demonstrable continuity can no longer be restricted. The normality and sanity of nations, as well as individuals, is graded by the quantity of the love element which has been incorporated within them.
The idea of a general incarnation in no sense renders the historic ideal less impressive or beautiful, while it potentially lifts all mankind toward the same level. The Prince of Peace is yet to set up a nativity in the common heart and life of the human family.
Thinking as a Fine Art
Art is the systematic application of knowledge or skill in effecting a desired result. In a broad sense, it is nature humanized, or re-expressed through the power of the human mind. Man studies the laws of nature, and becomes familiar with her forces, and then intelligently combines, re-arranges and re-presents them in forms that accord with his own ideals. Art is a skillful use of materials. It covers every wise employment of means for the accomplishment of desirable ends. Man is a secondary creator. While nothing is created anew, it is his office and privilege to reproduce, recombine and apply. As he comes into sympathetic at-one-ment with divine laws and methods, he commands and embodies their accomplishments.
The inventor only finds something that already is, in the nature of things. He humanizes or brings into actualization some combination which always existed in the boundless realm of the Absolute. All truth always was, and always will be true, though but the merest fraction has yet had human demonstration.
Art is higher and quite differentiated from instinct. The former is educational and progressive, while the latter only travels round in a little circle. But, by a seeming paradox, there may be bad art while there can be no bad instinct. In the evolutionary scale, art does not exist below the human plane. When pre-Adamic or animal man developed rationality it first became possible.
Art does not exist outside of reasoning mind, and it is only a name for mental method which is more or less skillful. All that ever comes into visibility is only its expression. A beautiful statue or painting is not art but only a work of art. There is no art in an art museum, but only the indexes of artistic genius which lives in human thought and imagination.
In the conventional classification of the arts, we have, first, the mechanical and industrial, often designated as trades; next the liberal arts which include philosophy, and the various sciences, and finally, the fine arts, which as commonly defined, embrace the exercise of the taste and imagination as applied to the production of what is beautiful. In the broader definition, these include, poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. In current use, however, the term is largely confined to visible productions, but it is evident, that the broader interpretation, including poetry and music, is more fitting.
But essential fine art cannot be fully defined by such an area. It really comprehends the cultivation of the human imaging faculty, both in exercise for its own sake, and for sequential expression. All art is mind art. This is no less true in the industrial arts, than in those that are more refined. Their plane of expression is more crude, and their visible productions are in correspondence. There is a larger amount of physical exertion, but back of every such effort there is a qualitative mental action. The real distinction between the industrial and the ornamental, or esthetic arts, is one of motive.
We conventionally term things artistic, in the degree that they appeal to our sense of the beautiful, but high or fine art is that which is most perfectly and beautifully fitting, upon whatever plane expressed. So simple a product of the mechanical arts as a perfect box, if it exactly suit its purpose, is more artistic than a bad statue, even though in a nominally lower department. The intelligent design fits the end sought. While the motive is nominally more crude, the mental action is more perfect. The arrangement of the mental materials which are back of the expression is more truly artistic. Art is mental ability to image correctly. We speak of the cunning hand of the artist. But though the muscles of the hand seem to acquire a kind of education, they are only the passive instruments, and the more perfectly passive in their relation to the imaging faculty, the better the product. The great artist, in sculpture or painting, is he whose hands and tools are not only passive, but utterly lost in their responsiveness to the intensity of the imaginative design.
Let us now examine some of the reasons for considering the skillful activity of the thinking faculty, when exerted in behalf of its own symmetry, as high art. We have already shown that in lower and more limited and visible production, all artistic ability is in the mind, and the greater must include the less. All expert mental activity for the accomplishment of desirable ends is artistic, and the higher the motive, the finer the art.
True art cannot be degraded to the economic or material plane. While a desire for the control or outward possession of a highly artistic work may give it a large commercial value, the truest ownership consists in the measure of human responsiveness which its beauty can awaken. This is the underlying basis of its material value as a possession. Thus it follows that every beautiful product meets with a true owner in every responsive admirer. Often the external possessor can exercise but little real ownership from lack of capacity.
The soul has a riches and coinage of its own which knows no bankruptcy, and which never can be mingled with the realms below.
The mission of art is the production of beauty, but only its more subordinate works belong to the plane of visibility. A symmetrical mind and personality is a higher artistic accomplishment than a beautiful statue. The latter, as before noted, is only an outward expression of the beautiful mental image which existed before it, and but the merest fraction of fine ideals ever comes into actuality on the sensuous plane. It therefore follows, that but a very small minority of great artists ever produce marble statues or paintings on canvas. Beauty is a quality. It may be expressed in form or shapeless, objective or subjective. But even in objective form, it is only the index of mind-art. We say that a painting is beautiful, because it perfectly reproduces nature in form, color, tone, foreground and perspective, but in deeper definition, its real merit consists in the fact that the artist has been able to reproduce the sensation in us that he felt in his own soul. We enjoy his work because of this delightful response which is awakened in our feelings. Technical perfection is valueless to an unresponsive soul. Perhaps abstract beauty may be defined as the essence of those ideals which bear the greatest fidelity to nature. But personal standards are so different, that it almost may be questioned, whether or not there be any such thing as abstract beauty on the plane of form. If the fragrance of a rose were very poisonous, the sense of delight with which we now view the graceful blossom would be lost. In other words, though its form and shading be never so perfect, its beauty would be gone. Our names for objective things are therefore the names of our own impressions.
But it seems safe to assume that forms whether in nature or art that are symmetrical, unless limited, as in the case of the supposed rose by some unlovely quality, awaken sensations of delight in the human soul. But any technical excellence that is in excess of the imaging faculty of the observer is lost. On the other hand, if it be inferior to his own ideal, it awakens no subjective response.
Beauty, then, is neither more nor less than an harmonious vibration of soul, whether set in motion by expressions on the material, moral, or spiritual plane. While it may be stirred into action through the channels of the outer senses, it would appear logical, that immaterial beauty, or that which is contained in thought-quality, must be superlative, if not even all-inclusive.
We are finally brought to the conclusion that all that is delightful and lovable in the universe, is but an extension or reflection of soul-quality. While the form and tint of a flower are the occasion of a delightful sensation, its cause is always subjective. Even in the absence of the outward suggestive form, the imaging faculty may be trained to project into the mind its mental picture, and pleasure is experienced.
The most intrinsic and supreme beauty is that of the spiritual domain. The graceful lines and harmonious proportions that appear in a masterpiece on canvas by a Raphael, or in a statue by Canova, cannot be compared with a symmetrical soul. The intelligent designing of soul-beauty through lofty thinking is transcendent as a fine art.
But conventional curricula, and educational assumption have not recognized thinking as a fine art, or even an art at all. With all our assumed high ideals of education, thought has remained untrained and mostly unguided. Its activities have been largely employed for storing away a great mass of unrelated and arbitrary facts, or in other words, for building a showy mental warehouse, externally ornamental but often internally hollow. Such is denominated learning. A thing may be a matter of history, or even an undoubted present fact, and yet have no value. Worthless lumber occupies valuable room in the psychical depository. The chaff of negation, friction and sensuous realism is an unprofitable harvest.
Take the study of history, to which so much time is conventionally devoted. It is almost an unbroken record of human friction, ambition, war and conquest. It contains little or no idealistic stimulus, but mostly a burden of depressing realism. The evolutionary condition of humanity, being lower in the past than at present, it is a going backward in consciousness, not merely chronologically, but psychologically, ethically and spiritually. It is unartistic, because it is an arbitrary survey of a land of crudity and ignorance where the motive and action are heavier and grosser than those of the living present. By this we would not disparage the normal study of the past as a matter of relation and evidence of progress, but only of making the mind a storehouse for unmeaning facts and events of negative quality.
What would we think of an artist, who should spend hours each day in a gallery filled with misshapen and ill-designed statues that were entirely below his present power of productive attainment? To turn about in the evolutionary highway, is to consciously live in the low-vaulted past and to saturate ourselves with its friction. Such is crude art, or rather not art at all. It may involve plenty of thought activity, but little or no artistic training.
A mere technical expertness of thought, cultivated for its commercial value, in some measure may be necessary under present conditions, but it is not high art. Weighed by the false standards of a material commercialism, such an arbitrary adroitness may be financially remunerative but not ideal.
In the realm of fiction, the subtle tracings and suggestions of coarseness, if put in graphic form command the highest pecuniary reward. To take a ten thousand dollar prize, a story must be written upon a “realistic” plane. It must appeal to the sensuous instincts, if not directly to the lower propensities that still under veneer prevail among the great majority. If it can powerfully stir that class of mental strings into sympathic vibration, it is regarded a success. But it is false art.
The artistic way to destroy evil is not to hold it in the light and analyze it, with the hope of making it repulsive, but to put it out of the consciousness. Every mental picture is a suggestion, and stirs its corresponding unisons and vibrations in responsive souls. Pope’s familiar lines about an acquaintance with vice express both a psychological and scientific truth. We are qualified by every mental delineation. As every atom in the whole cosmos affects every other atom, so every idle thought modifies the mind in some degree and puts its own quality in the ensemble. Even if one detests crime, he cannot long immerse his consciousness in its depicted turbid waves without taking on a little of the slime and sediment. The more immature the mind, the deeper the absorption.
The modern daily press, with its startling headlines and suggestive cuts, portraying crime and scandal, and making mentally graphic everything that is discordant and abnormal through familiarization, is a gigantic force largely exercised in the wrong direction. Through a creative law yet lightly regarded, the seed of innumerable ills, discords and disorders is scattered broadcast, but when its hideous fruit is ripened into objective and material expression, we fail to recognize the connection.
Everything around us has more or less power to transform us into its own image. If human happiness and harmony be desirable, it is bad art to go on ignorantly creating their destroyers. We busily delineate deformity and then wonder where its offshoots all come from. After putting up abnormal patterns, we unwittingly make them bright by daily renewal and polishing.
By irrepealable law, we grow like what we dwell with and feed upon. But after producing our discords by elaborate mechanism, we turn about and conclude that they were made outside and belong to our divinely ordained normal economy. The mind dwells in the midst of its own creations and cannot avoid them. Says Milton:—
A mind not to be changed by place or time,
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
We galvanize specters into life, and then engage in mortal combat with them. Such is realism. But art, if it be true art, is always noble. Its end is human sanity, normality and harmony, and it works with intelligent skillfulness towards such a consummation.
Systematic mental gymnastics is the efficient means to such an end. Daily seasons of concentrative high thinking, with the discordant external world barred out of the consciousness is of wonderful utility. Not outward things, but thoughts of them make up the thinker’s world. After a long enumeration of beautiful ideals, Paul says, “think on these things.” But instead of thus enriching our mental treasury, we invite depressions, evils and disorders, and thus create an unwelcome environment. We thereby generate negatives into seeming entities. When not so engaged, we do the next worst thing by filling our minds with a conglomerate and seething mass of useless facts, histories, sensations, opinions and antagonisms which are not vital or constructive. Thought exercised upon rubbish deftly creates more rubbish, and a large part of conventional learning is of this quality. We shall begin to have education worthy of the name, when the principles enunciated by Pestalozzi and Froebel are extended into all grades and departments. What then is the inference? Rivet the thought upon every desirable ideal, physical, moral and spiritual, affirming its potential possession, for this is the way to embody and possess it.
But even so-called evils gradually bring their own antidote. The ugliness of bad art in the imaginative faculty at length becomes unbearable, and this compels a general re-forming. Practical idealism teaches us to work in accord with the laws of our own being. Present ideals are far superior to those which belong to past ages.
To move backward in the theological realm, is to retire from sun-lit apartments into the comparative gloom of a basement.
While the “beacon lights” along the pathway of history may be glanced at as evolutionary landmarks along the slow spiral of human ascent, and while their heroism, as set against the background of their local environment may awaken our admiration, we cannot long afford to leave the comparative high plateau of the present, and go back to encamp upon the malarious lowlands of the past.
The artistic attitude of thought is to stand with back to the past, and eyes towards the future. With its gaze thus directed, ideals continually rise up in the brightening vista and beckon us onward. The past may roughly push us along, but only the future can gently draw.
The great creative law of thought is, that it always presses for expression. There is no exception. It is a positive and enduring tendency even in the animal. It specifies, and then moves on to action and shaping.
Every overt manifestation, whether of heroism or criminality, self-sacrifice or animalism, is a logical harvest. The incubation of warm and vital thinking hatches a visible brood of its own color and shape. Continuous concepts of the imaging faculty, if exercised in a given form or outline, at length cause it to solidify or gain embodiment. Every one may become a great artist, in some department, in proportion as cogitative forces are educated, and their shape and quality beautifully outlined. One who has developed mind-art should be able to surround himself with high ideals, and dwell with them.
Bearing in mind the general law of thought-creativeness, some of the various departments or channels for its exercise may now be suggested.
Beginning with motives which express themselves in material visibility, we find that although these belong to an inferior plane, they are worthy of exercise, and have great educational value. The seen and sensuous are good in their own places, and appeal to the great majority because this grade of consciousness is what prevails. Through the use of these, mind-art is stimulated and prepared for its higher grades of unfoldment.
Evolutionary progress in preference and taste in externals is from the crude and loud, toward a refined harmonious complexity. The gewgaws, high colors and gorgeousness of the barbarian, shock the cultivated taste by their incongruity. They may indicate a powerful impulse, but art is yet undeveloped. As unfoldment takes place, contrasts are softened, tones blended, and harmonized congruity and unity increased. There is finer art. This, whether in costume or habitation, whether utilitarian or decorative.
The elevation of woman from a sensuous subordinate, and toy-like dependent of man, toward a true refinement and a mental and spiritual equality and independence, is outwardly indexed by an increasing preference for harmony and quietude in dress and environment. Still more progress is needed in this direction. The “new woman,” if really to be a new woman, has yet much to achieve in overcoming the tyranny of existing conventions.
Though measurably emancipated from the barbarity of tawdry display and hostile colors in clothing and accessories which formerly prevailed, yet the slavery of a false art still largely continues in imposed forms of inutility, inconvenience, untidiness and unhealthfullness. This comes from the lack of independence and individuality. No art can be true art unless it have free and normal expression.
The imposition of an arbitrary authority in habiliment, as decreed by Parisian mandate, is a despotism which should be thrown off. There are yet to be new abolitions of slavery. Artificialism distorts all activity and expression.
But if conventions in the mere appearance of attire and decoration be rigid and irrational, what shall be said of those which distort and enfeeble the human organism? That divine masterpiece, the perfect and symmetrical form of woman is reshaped and deranged under the insane delusion that its beauty is thereby enhanced. Has nature made a mistake in her plans and specifications? The ideals held out in fashion plates and shop-window forms indicate that she has. It is a logical inference that we are trying to correct divine mistakes.
It is difficult to estimate, not only the inartistic deformity but the suicidal tendency of such false mind art in its final results. A cruel unwritten social legislation fetters, obstructs and turns back racial improvement and perfection. Abnormity comes so gradually and insidiously, and is so general, that it is mistaken for the normal. Under the spell of false ideals, thought force becomes disastrous, and its baneful effects go down as a universal legacy to coming generations.
We would by no means locate all the lack of such vital art in the sex already more especially referred to. Both the responsibility and consequences are general, and a universal reformation of ideals is needed.
High art is a close partnership with Nature. We fatally handicap ourselves when we oppose her. She is an omnipotent friend, and lends all her forces to concordant human activity and attainment, but if we vainly insist upon a quarrel, our discomfiture is assured. As we take her hand and let her lead us along her smooth paths, we may revel in her delightful harmonies. They all fit our constitution, for they are in and a part of us.
Spenser’s familiar lines, written three hundred years ago:—
For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the body make,
express a truth, which, while poetic in style, is scientific in exactitude. But the great world-current of thought at that time, and since, has been so sensuous and materialistic, that its truth has been hidden. Not until recently has there been any indication that the imperious sway of a crude realism, almost wholly objective and external, was being seriously questioned. But now its weakness is manifest. A constructive idealism is awakening from dormancy into living vigor. It has attained evolutionary ripeness. Its welcome light is now penetrating the dark byways and dusty corners of existing systems, and cannot longer be shut out. To those upon the watchtowers, whose finer vision is open, the advent of the great transition is already realized. Its benignant flood of forces is already sweeping away a congealed crust of human limitations, which though self-constructed, has been solid through the ages.
In the mental and spiritual realm are located those unseen forces which are able to fuse and re-cast human expression into shapes of artistic symmetry. In the past, our energies have been employed in unscientific and hap-hazard fashion. All this because we have disregarded the higher law. Instead of arming ourselves with it projectiles, we have kicked against its pricks. We are the executives of its forces and may command them. We can do even more. Through the exercise of a consummate art we measurably reform and re-create for ourselves the objective world.
Through the high art of thought-molding, man may not only utilize existing laws, but gradually become a law unto himself. He steps out from his little traditional groove, into untrammeled range and freedom.
Note the wonderful scope of future possibilities which are capable of realization, through an application of the now well recognized principles of idealism. First, what may mind art do for the human body? It would doubtless be possible, within three or four generations, for the race to become physically beautiful, strong and robust. The general consciousness of the past, has largely focalized itself upon negatives, deficiencies, disorders and evils and has generated them into active expression. When forces, ignorantly employed, pull in opposite directions, progress is impossible. Harmonized, united and pulling together they become invincible. If everyone, day by day, would systematically image positive patterns of harmony, happiness, beauty, strength and perfection they would soon be universally articulate and manifest. Such an exercise might soon be made a mental habit. Granted, the process of realization can be but gradual, yet if negations were once displaced from the field of consciousness, all their deformed and abnormal progeny would steadily fade from sight. We should have no more “bad heredity.” Morbidity and disorder would rapidly diminish, and decrepitude and old age steadily be pushed back from the human foreground. Slavish conditions have been rated as normal, simply because they are common. We have unwittingly set up our own ungraceful limitations, which at first have been plastic, but as though made of cement, they have gradually hardened into adamantine walls. The new philosophy of health will show us how to make them crumble, whereby we may be released from bondage.
Such an accomplishment of artistic development as has been outlined, is no overwrought theory, but a practical possibility. So soon as the concurrent thought-forces of men and women become scientifically and artistically shaped, their beautiful casting will materialize before us. There is abundant scattered thought-activity, but concentrative unity is what is needed.
How can a craft be steered if the needle of its compass points, at hap-hazard, in different directions? How can bad art produce beautiful works?” By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?”
There are two vital principles which are inherent in the imaging faculty, that have a significant bearing upon its productions. They are its creative force and its untiring activity. It must create, and it must act. Nothing within or without can prevent it. For centuries man has been trying to discover perpetual motion, but really he has it within him. He has been untiring in his study of every problem of rapid and economical production, while the most busy factory in the world is in his own soul. As he creates after his own patterns, all his works are original. While he is the evolutionary compendium of all that has gone before, he is unlike any part of it. No two individual thought-forms, whether of principles or things, were ever quite the same. The endless variety of physiognomy that we behold is no more differentiated, than the corresponding thought which produced it. Chance has had no hand in this endless complexity.
If we and our ancestors had always thought along exactly the same lines, we should all look alike. In the abstract, there is one full-rounded perfect ideal, and in the actual, every one fills some part of it, but no two quite the same part. The aim of a true mind-art is to constantly increase that proportion.
The potential power of all is stored in each. It has all been involved, but its latency must be quickened. It is like the coiled mainspring in a watch, which is pressing for release and expansion. But we unwittingly resist the enlargement from within. The walls of cold intellectualism, formulated dogmatism and worldly conventions are rigid and unyielding, and our artistic soul aspirations are thereby repressed. We are walking in long used ruts so deep that with difficulty we can step out, and even sometimes hardly look over their borders. We plod along, stamping our own initials upon the unartistic and deformed models that have been strewn by our predecessors. Like sheep, we follow the bellwether, even though the course bend upon itself and lead through sloughs of despond.
But each one may soften his rigidity and let the spring that is within him uncoil, and thus develop an artistic originality. This frees the divine spontaneity in his soul, and symmetrical action and beautiful form are manifested.
Belief in the power within is the key which unlocks vital energy. Faith in a thing must precede its accomplishment. To stimulate belief, we must open up our own possibilities, and keep them in view. Nothing will so lift up and inspire a despairing human unit, as a picture of his own inherent divine and unlimited capacity.
Idealism is therefore the supernal artist that is able to shape and polish mind and body, the latter through the former. The purest models are those which lie clustered at the divine center of man’s being. At his very heart is the Christ-pattern, and the closer that he can concentrate his consciousness upon it the grander and more perfect its creative skill. But, as with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, we feel that what we crave is so deep as to be beyond our reach, and we have nothing to draw with. We look into its crystalline depths, and feel our thirst, and at the same time our helplessness. But the divine imaging faculty, with the skill of true spiritual art, bridges the chasm, and lifts the deep potential to the surface of the seen and actual.
Our high possibilities are precious because of the labor and effort required for their realization. Nothing less than interminable cutting, hewing and polishing, will release the beautiful captive statue from the rough block of virgin marble, and so all true art is simply a liberation from rigid, external limitation. We are souls hibernating amid congealed surroundings, but there are signs of spring time. The soft south wind of a diviner consciousness may blow upon our frigidity and make the waters flow.
With all our boasted modern civilization, there are primal principles which have been better understood by some of the more natural and simple peoples of the past. The Spartans were wise enough to systematically surround their wives, when in conditions of prospective motherhood, with beautiful pictures, images and statues, and Lycurgus even enforced this custom by the requirements of law. The final result, was a race of such physical perfection as the world has rarely known. Such an accelerated racial development is at last understood to be as practicable upon the mental and spiritual planes as upon the physical. The Spartans emphasized only the lower domain of the great law, but we, with our over-wrought externalism, have failed to observe even that. It is not proposed here to enter upon the great subject of heredity, but its laws which work along the lines just indicated, are of tremendous and unappreciated import to mankind. Correct and artistic imaging is not only of transcendent importance in the peculiar conditions just noted, but for each and all. The thought of every individual is tributary to the great psychical currents which encircle the earth.
Mental imaging can never become artistic until it is centered above the animal plane. Upon that low level there are no anchors but what will drag when subjected to the strain which comes from the surges of prejudice and passion.
Antagonism is not only false and unartistic, but positively destructive in its tendency. The law of peace and good-will, otherwise known as the law of love, exactly fits the constitution of developed man. High art includes all that is perfectly fitting to a noble end. It is adaptable and constructive. The divinity within which shapes our ends, is the divine imaging faculty which fashions our souls.
This great fact is only of recent and yet partial appreciation, for the supposition has been that the shaping was mostly done for us. We are wrought upon not from without by a Deity of capricious will, but by a God of love through his beautiful and orderly laws which inhere in our own constitution. His method is a working in us “to will and to do.” We are so free that we may take of the profusion of divine material, and build it up in the shape we will, even after a Christly model.
What a broadening of art interpretation! No longer limited to marble statues, and painted surfaces, it comprehends every activity of the imaging faculty. We are as truly shaping, shading and tinting these mind forms and spiritual perceptions as is the painter those which he spreads upon canvas. Creation never exhausts itself, or comes to the end of its designs. Its production is inimitably variable. It is probable that during the world history, no two leaves have been exactly alike. The same with thoughts and ideals. The universe is never monotonous, however much it may seem so to us. There is no limitation to man’s potential skill or intelligence. With his growing recognition of law, the whole boundless cosmos is his. Every fresh concept of its unlimited scope, releases him more and more from traditional trammel and earthy gravitation. His triumphant freedom will consist, not in being independent of law, but of wielding it. In its name, and with its endorsement, he goes forth creating with ever expanding ability.
All the crude productions of mind-art that meet our gaze along life’s highway, have a use not for study, but for avoidance. They are buoys to show the shoal places and rocks. Without these we should aimlessly drift. But if the right road were walled on each side, making divergence impossible, we should become automatons, incapable of growth, through the lack of choice. Our operations would be forced and mechanical. A free choice for a free man among patterns is therefore a necessity.
Truly defined, from the evolutionary standpoint, there is no unmitigated bad art, on the one hand, nor any of perfected quality on the other. All specifications have some relative goodness, and each is a landmark along the path of advancement. Fine art is simply intelligent and normal progress, from the present attainment, wherever that may be. It is a step skillfully taken, from one round of Jacob’s ladder to the next, in whatever part of its entire length. Wherever in the great procession we are marching, we need to keep well-marked and harmonious time with the universal trend.
The race is only in its alphabetical exercises. We are like children in the early stages of kindergarten work, molding plastic clay into crude and grotesque forms. We unwittingly shape images of fear, weakness, disorder, decrepitude and old age, and then fall down before the works of our own hands and do them homage, and grow into their likenesses. Our inner vision being blurred, we see so dimly, that we think God formed them for us.
The world is a grand studio, and we are all artists, engaged in chiseling forms, and breathing into them quickening, palpitating life. In proportion as we shape these animated things in accord with the principles of high art, we shall be inspired by their companionship, thrilled by their beauty and molded by their symmetry.
Selfishness and Nervousness
Neurotic disturbance is so much in evidence in America that it has given us an unenviable notoriety, in this direction, among the nations in general. We boast of our high civilization, but however desirable this may be, if peoples and races lower in the intellectual scale are more free from this fundamental deficiency in nerve force, there is something abnormal in our midst, and we will do well to seek for the underlying cause. It is common to attribute the undue prevalence of nervous disorders to our dry and exciting climate, or some other “glittering generality” which does not bring the responsibility directly home to the individual. “Human pride constantly demands scapegoats,” and the supply is unlimited. But it would be better for us, collectively and individually, to “confess judgment,” for that in itself tends to mitigate penalty. When a fault is definitely located its rectification is well advanced.
Overwork conventionally bears a large share of the blame for nervous collapse, but far oftener, the cause is over indulgence in some of its many forms which have selfishness for their root. What we call “the pressure of modern life” is really born of a selfish ambition. Broadly defined, selfishness includes every abnormal concession to the lower nature. Any such surrender is mental and moral in its character, for those manifestations which seem distinctively “physical” are only the outpicturing and expression of that quality of mind which is back of them.
Certain physical habits—so called—as for instance, the immoderate use of tobacco, stimulants, drugs, strong tea and coffee, and other hygienic transgressions are admitted producers of nerve disturbance. The sensations produced by these agencies, including those that are earlier and seemingly pleasurable, and later, from their abuse, those which are painful, are all really psychical and not physical, per se. The physical organism is only the medium which by use of the nerve channels conveys pleasurable or painful sensations to the mind—the unseen selfish self. There is an interior, spiritual and more real self which is intact, but as this is generally latent and largely unrecognized, the lower and provisionally dominant self is that which is in evidence. But in this brief sketch, space will not permit of a consideration of the deeper selfhood.
The selfish self receives both gratification and pain, in varying degree, through the medium of its physical equipment. The latter is not the recipient of the message, but only the wire which conveys it. The man—or mentality—as sovereign, should exercise the power to control, transform and adjust the messages which are sent out and received at his headquarters. While this is the ideal, it may be admitted that its realization must be gradual because the evolutionary stage for its fullness is not yet reached. Human emancipation from materialistic slavery is a matter of degree and development. But the laws of growth need iteration and reiteration, for they form the only highway for a forward movement. To find the tap-root of certain vegetables requires deep digging, and so the primal and vital elements of causation for human expression are hidden by those which are secondary and near the surface.
Selfishness, when broadly defined, is not limited by avarice regarding the mere possession of things, but as before noted, it includes every sensuous gratification of the lower nature which is indulged for its own sake. It deceives its own victim, for man is so constituted that penalty finally far outweighs all the seeming present advantage. A true self interest is normal but selfishness is the abnormal area which lies beyond. It would draw in and not give out. It gradually develops a vortex in which the ego becomes submerged. The equilibrium between what is subjective and objective is lost and the subject of the unbalance is often least of all aware of the seat of the difficulty. As life in its rounded fullness is a matter of harmonious relations the focusing of the consciousness upon self brings morbidity and confusion.
Irritability, censoriousness, resistance and extreme sensitiveness are among the well recognized symptoms of nervous prostration, but their potency among its causes is not so generally understood. Their work is subtle, hidden and powerful. How futile, and even absurd, to put drugs into the stomach for the cure of such conditions. The burdened nerves are not to blame, for they are only the passive wires of communication. But they become disabled and shattered by the friction induced by messages of discord, unrest and pessimism. The seat of the trouble is back of the material organism, and to deal with that exclusively is only to manipulate results without touching causes.
As a change of outward environment causes a change of thought currents, it often mitigates nervous depression so long as novelty and strangeness continue, but sooner or later the pressure of the centralized consciousness comes back upon the congested self. Permanent healing must begin at the center. External panaceas do not turn but only briefly interrupt the current which flows into the egotistic whirlpool. The bitterness of the current of life must be sweetened at the fountain. When the mind persistently revolves in the little circle of selfhood the sense of normal relation and harmony is lost, and the end is a refuge in some conventional retreat where an unscientific and materialistic treatment affords little hope.
The abhorrent sensationalism of the daily press is also concurrently responsible for much of the nervous unrest of the present era. Whatever is morbid, tragic, abnormal and diabolical is thrust before the eyes and minds of people in its loudest form, and if anything is lacking, enough is manufactured to keep up a mental inebriety. A gigantic mass of discord is produced for a daily dose. The psychic storm is continuous, and only thought isolation and control will guarantee immunity. It hardly need be noted that selfishness is the main cause of modern sensationalism.
Antagonism is a most potent factor in nervous degeneration. This is but another side of selfishness. As one sets himself against people or things, they all seem to him correspondingly belligerent. Nothing is more destructive than a continual resistant and pessimistic spirit. We are not detached human units, but life is the product of multiform and complex relations. To ignore this great truth causes a sense of separateness and this breeds selfishness and a discordant physical articulation and correspondence. We are living in a social universe and personal mal-adjustment brings penalty.
It is possible for everyone to consciously cultivate trust, passivity, non-resistance and optimism in increasing degree. Salvation and poise come from persistent high thinking. One may take the principles here briefly outlined and work out his own conclusions and at length his own conditions.
The Ever Present Judgment
The Judgment Day never began and never will end. An eternal inquest is being held, and every principle, opinion, belief and theory is being tested, valued, measured and given its award. This process goes on, unmarked by time or other limitation.
But from our own conscious and local standpoint, the present era, as compared with any past period, is preeminently judicial. Everything is being brought before a real, though invisible tribunal.
It is not easy to comprehend the unique quality of the opening years of the twentieth century. Superficially viewed, there seems to be a general breaking up of foundations, a fluidizing of solids, a shattering of time honored fixtures and religious heir-looms, rather than a solemn judicial proceeding. But there are both. The scope and inclusiveness of the present searching inquiry is unbounded. The sheep are passing to the right hand, and the goats to the left.
The scene may not be so sensuously dramatic as that which literalism has delineated in prose, enshrined in poetry, and spread in glowing color upon canvas, but it has a deeper truth. There is no gathering of small and great in a vast semi-circle, before an august Throne, from which doom is formally proclaimed by a great, though limited and local Judge, but the investigation is deep and the sentences righteous.
Who can stand in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican at Rome, and gaze upon Michael Angelo’s representation of the Last Judgment, and not be thrilled by the literal and terrible realism so graphically portrayed? That great picture, with its many groups of life-sized figures, some in whose faces are depicted the sublime triumph of a heavenly ecstasy as they mount upward, some held by the pains of purgatory struggling for release, and others hurried into the boat which is to convey lost souls to their place of eternal torment, translates in terrible form, the ruling thought of an era, literal, severe, repressive and intense. The very atmosphere was loaded with intolerance, and every discoverer, inventor and seeker for Truth subjected to persecution, and often death. We gaze at such indexes of past states of human consciousness with amazement and surprise. They are the silent witnesses of former opinion that was held and imposed with most terrible earnestness and intensity. With the wide progress of human evolution, we have drifted away from such a judgment day, for it is outlawed and relegated to the rubbish heaps of the past.
The new tribunal is located in the human mind, and it is not less but more divine on that account. It is far truer and more vital than the deliverances of past intellectual logic, belief and dogma, all of which have been partial and capricious. It is now seen that the grand and supreme test of every principle or system is, does it fit the constitution of man? To this judgment bar, everything must be brought. Here is the rational, moral and spiritual test—all in one. Past mental activity has been so purely objective, that all its measurements have been shifting and uncertain. Things have been judged merely by other things, without being brought to the touch-stone of Truth.
Every institution must stand or fall, in proportion as it comports with human nature and need. This alone will show its value, and so fast as the proof is made, it must pass to the right hand or the left. All principles, opinions and systems, rather than persons, are summoned before the Bar of God which is set up in Man. The mistake of the past has been in looking for it outside. It has been, “lo here,” and “lo there,” while the Kingdom of Heaven, and the necessary verdict that leads to it are within.
Note more specifically some of the trials which are taking place. Take first, our boasted modern civilization, and bring it to the judgment bar. Said Lessing: “This is not an enlightened age, but an age becoming enlightened.” We have had long spells of dark stormy weather, with here and there a rift in the clouds, through which glimpses of the clear azure could be seen, but as a whole the horizon has been threatening and uncertain. There are yet wars and rumors of wars, and human interests, really unitary, appear in antagonistic colors and aspects. We call ourselves an enlightened and Christian nation, but such an estimate is superficial, and cannot be maintained in the inner court to which appeal must be taken. While on the smallest, or personal scale, it is not longer regarded as ethical or regular to settle differences by brute force, yet when these are multiplied a million fold, and a nation, instead of an individual is involved, it is regarded, not only as permissible, but as a duty and it takes on a glamor which is miscalled patriotism. The real issue may be dim and sentimental, or even entirely mistaken, but Church and State, as a rule, still regard a final settlement on the animal plane as justifiable. The greater and more subtle force of moral ideals is lost sight of, and psychic waves of animalism roll over the area of nations, lifting men off their feet, and sweeping them along like driftwood. To threaten war and call hard names, wins “the applause of the galleries,” and there will be no lack of it until another general evolutionary step is accomplished. But sometimes advance is made through the mighty surges of action and reaction.
It may be suggested that there are faulty boundary lines to be rectified, wrongs that should be righted, and brave peoples who are striving to throw off tyrannous yokes and gain their freedom. If so we can aid them more effectually than by the sword, or by threats of the sword. Even from the low standpoint of worldly wisdom, more can be accomplished through diplomacy and friendly mediation, than by threat and bluster, for when passion rules, wisdom, even of the lower sort, takes its departure.
Antagonism, whether personal, sectional or national, is destructive in its tendency and cannot be made otherwise. The very primal laws of the human constitution so proclaim it. For persons to antagonize each other, is mutually disastrous, because in the nature of things, the law of oneness and attraction is the fundamental basis of all true life and action.
What has made the “Sermon on the Mount,” the most important statement of vital principles in the world? Not the place, time or manner of its enunciation, nor even the personal authority of its author, but the fact that it scientifically is in accord with man’s nature and everlastingly true. It is not a mass of religious sentimentality, nor merely a statement of moral doctrine, but a living ethical and spiritual verdict, having a universal scope.
Conventional civilization stands condemned before this judgment bar of truth. Nothing can change this decree but a general lifting of its motives and forces from the seen, sensuous and external, into the realm of man’s deeper and higher nature and selfhood begin to feel their quickening impulse. The tribunal of truth now affirms that potential spiritual unfoldment is stored at the soul center of every human unit. Illimitable powers have been involved and are only waiting to be quickened into full and harmonious expression. What a change of the present curriculum does this involve! Like everything else, educational methods must come to judgment, and very much that is now regular and institutional will be relegated to the left hand. The sheep and goats will go each to their own place, and that even by specific gravity.
Again, the educational methods of the past, when tested by their human adaptability, are found to be wanting. The prevailing ideals have included the gathering and crowding into the mind of a great mass of facts, events and opinions, the vast majority of which have no genuine value. A thousand things that may be abstractly true, are meaningless and valueless when collected in unrelated and incongruous accumulation. The true object of education is to make men and women, and not mere walking encyclopedias. Good citizenship rather than technical intellectual expertness is what the world of today most needs. The intellect is surfeited while the intuitional, ethical and spiritual nature is left barren and void.
But a coming change is already manifest. The child-nature and educive capacity are beginning to receive some merited attention. Its innate possibilities are seen to be illimitable and they do not need repression, but unfoldment. Constructive ideals, like living germs, are being sown broadcast, and even the so-called higher grades of education.
The inner court will impose a condemnation upon the sensationalism of the modern daily press as decisive as that now pronounced upon unsound meat and decayed vegetables. The very seeds and sprouts of every noxious mental weed will be detected and laid bare and they will wither in the sunshine of vital truth.
Turning to another great department of human experience, what are the deliverances from the tribunal of truth regarding manifested disorder, and disease, mental and physical? That they are the work of man’s own hands, or more exactly his misdirected fears, emotions and expectations. His distorted and negative states of consciousness, altogether form a busy factory from which new products of abnormity are continually finished and turned out. We invoke and erect mental specters and disorders on every hand, and then fall victims to the enemies of our own fashioning.
The testing which is now going on in human judgment, regarding the true causes and remedies for disorderly conditions of mind and body was never before so exact and thorough. The seers and philosophers of all ages have virtually agreed in regarding man, distinctively as a thinker. He is not a mere bundle of bone, sinew, flesh and nerve, although he at present possesses these things, for his own use. He is much more than a passive instrument whose office it is to be played upon by physical sensations, discords and inharmonies. A feeling that he is material, in his being, has put him into slavery to his own physical organism. He has thought himself into weakness, fear and disorder because he has been unaware of the creative power of his own imaging faculty. He has therefore surrounded himself with a self-made environment of discord and gratuitously given it dominion. Limitations that we have set up, we can push back, for they are no part of God’s economy. The divine heritage of every human being is health, wholeness and harmony, of mind and body. These reside potentially in every “image of God,” or as Paul defines it “temple of the Holy Spirit.” To increasingly command them involves the possession of a cultivated sense of an intrinsic oneness with omnipresent divinity. In unmistakable tones the tribunal of Truth is voicing its verdict, and a separation to the right and left, on this vital principle is taking place. The conventional externalism of the past, which regards man primarily as a body and tries to patch him up with outside panaceas has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Cultivated sound thinking, inspired with a spiritual and creative optimism produces mental and physical sanity and harmony.
But every unfoldment in human experience is tentative, gradual and evolutionary. The new will displace the old, only so fast as the laws of man’s constitution are correctly interpreted. The potencies of mind for the healing of human ills will be utilized only so far as their scientific adaptability forces its supreme convictions into the human consciousness. Thinking must be reformed, and distorted mental pictures, appearances and evils displaced by pure mental ideals, firmly held. The creative power of mind must change its habitual activity, from the negative to the positive side of man’s nature. The fruits though very gradual in appearance are sure of manifestation.
Does someone ask, could the general power of thought “add a cubit” unto the stature of the race? Much in that direction, provided the universal appropriate thinking were begun two or three generations previous. Could one, by mental and spiritual forces, ward off a cold, fever or an attack of dyspepsia? Often yes, but to make it much surer the cure should rather be prevention, built up by months or years of higher and more positive thought beforehand.
Man’s supreme need is the recognition of his own divine quality. He is God’s highest form of outward expression. But instead, sensuous man has ever been separating himself in consciousness from the Eternal Spirit. The allegory of Adam and Eve hiding themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden carries a deep meaning. This separation in consciousness has fruited in leanness, unrest and disorder. Without its great normal, spiritual and even scientific complement, human activity and expression become desert-like and morbid.
Wealth, power, material development and civilization, although well in themselves, have made the whole mental horizon materialistic, thus shutting out the divine intimacy and completeness and tending to render human friction universal. The God-voice in the soul of man, though still and small, is a judicial utterance distinct in its teaching and its leading must be followed if man would truly discover what he is. No other guidance can fill its place. When its warm influx is lacking, man only hibernates in the confines of a cold, earthy and negative existence. He must penetrate beneath the self-made crust of his superficial sensations, until he discovers the primal principles of his own being, and his oneness with and place in the Universal. He must gather up the fragments of truth which lie in scattered confusion about him, and bring them together and fill them with organic unity and life. There is ever before us a great valley filled with dry bones, like those over which the Prophet Ezekiel prophesied. They must come together, bone to bone, and sinew to sinew, and breath must enter in and there will be life. Nothing less than a spiritual quickening and unfoldment can make mankind wholly alive. Until we gain a higher and truer perception, we grope our way among shadows and unrealities, and are unable to explore more than the lower fragment of our own legitimate domain and heritage.
We are summoned by the judgment bar of truth to higher standards and responsibilities. Evolutionary processes lift us to new planes of possibility, privilege and duty. Thought, feeling and conduct must be readjusted, in order to pass to the right hand, in the light of the searching which characterizes the beginning of the twentieth century. The stuff of which character is made, is being fused and tested in a continuous life-trial, and only the pure metal will remain unharmed and unconsumed.
The “books” are always open, and these comprise our own thought creations, whether idle or otherwise, and by their quality we are acquitted or condemned. The universal scrutiny will leave nothing hidden. It searches all dark corners and brings to light the accumulated rubbish of ages. The heaps of chaff that have accumulated on the threshing-floor of racial activity, will be blown away by the relentless winnowing of the awakened spiritual intuition.
Said one of the Hebrew prophets, “God will search Jerusalem with candles, “signifying that truth will unsparingly ferret out error, and bring it to naught. This spiritual testing touches every phase and department of human life and expression. Nothing is exempt. A great beam of search-light is turned upon the foundations and cornerstones of institutions, whether ecclesiastical, social, civil, literary, educational or industrial, to reveal their quality. The Cathode rays of recent discovery are a fitting illustration of the penetrating rays of Truth, as they pierce every covering and lay bare the true inwardness of all things. There is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed. Every idle thought is brought to judgment, and beautiful and pure volitions will have their corresponding fruit and blossom. Again, the Bibles, and all the sacred writings of the world are brought into the range of this great spiritual search-light. The grand records of lofty human experiences, aspirations and inspirations, stand out in living characters, to be known and read of all men. They comprise a history of the living consciousness of the seers and prophets who have had a cultivated intimacy with the Divine Mind, and who have dwelt upon the highlands of spiritual attainment and outlook. They present in high relief the visions of the “pure in heart,” who have seen God, and translate the supernal knowledge of those who know the “mind of Christ.” They interpret the intrinsic divinity of man, and show him to be the normal expresser and embodiment of the infinitude of unmanifest good which is waiting to fill all the channels of manifestation.
The light of the “Spirit of Truth,” when cast upon the sacred literatures of the world also divides the gold from the dross, the eternal from the incidental. Inspiration inheres with scientific accuracy in degree in the things that inspire. The inspiration of any book, literature, prophet or person resides in their uplifting power.
The light of Truth, while revealing the beautiful outlines of every spiritual entity, dissolves the literalism, penetrates husks and shells, revalues tradition and circumstance, and demonstrates the specific gravity of each and all. The Bible of Christendom is rescued from the position of an instrument, upon which, through literalism, the discordant music of many and unlike creeds can be discoursed, to that of a vehicle which conveys harmony, unity and life. Idolatry is subtle, and that phase of it which magnifies the letter of scripture, while losing its spirit, has widely prevailed. The book is honored in proportion as its eternal and intrinsic elements are discriminated and wrought into human life. It has lessons to be learned, and warnings to be heeded, while also its progressiveness, fallibility and purely human elements must be intelligently recognized. The brightness of the modern search-light rescues the Bible from the fetichism, externalism and false glamour which have been unwittingly centered upon it. It lifts it into its true and rightful dignity, as an inspirer of life, and an educational force in the unfoldment of a spiritual manhood. The seers and sages of olden times are not literally authoritative, but rather aids and teachers in the high art of soul-development. They encourage us by their successes, and point out their failures for us to avoid. If they were a special order their teaching would possess but little significance for us. But they are our brethren, a part of the great human solidarity. Their revelation of God to us is through their own lives and experiences. We must therefore conclude that the “higher criticism,” and the newer interpretation of the Bible have been of untold value in bringing to light its supreme practical use and value.
Again, as everything, “small and great,” must appear before the judgment bar of Eternal Truth, the Church, as an institution can claim no exemption. Says Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, “The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Here is graphically symbolized that penetrating test to which all institutions, creeds, rituals and ceremonies must be subjected. To what degree do they reform and transform the thoughts and intents of the heart? In what measure do they unfold a higher and diviner consciousness? In what degree are they, as Jesus affirmed of his own words, spirit and life?
Every ecclesiastical institution must render up its account at the great inquest of Truth. How does it meet the deep demands of the human constitution for strength, harmony, beauty and more abundant life? How many meaningless forms, external observances and usurpations still find place, and even nourishment, under the cover of institutional sanctity? To what extent has truth been recognized and cherished for its own sake? How much has human life been enriched, rounded out and quickened in its course God-ward? What is the real value of institutional religiosity, in the promotion of pure thinking and the development of life and love? Is it in any degree responsible for the prevalent idea of a mechanical salvation, or a way of pleasing God through a round of formal observances and requirements? Does it mean more freedom and normal growth for all man’s complex nature? What saith the Spirit unto the churches?
But if religious institutions are weighed in the balance of truth, and “found wanting,” where shall those of a civic and political nature appear? Reputable, conventional and time honored standards are under challenge. What about the outworking of those moral and social results for which humanity is wearily waiting? Where is that wise conservative statesmanship which rises above partisan heat, bluster and chicanery, which the country and the world so sorely need at the present time? Where is that calm and temperate equipoise which is so needful as an antidote, amidst all the self-seeking and sensationalism of modern civilization? Where is that high romantic and idealistic fiction, that might be such a powerful vehicle to carry home the influence of noble and inspiring thinking and living? Alas! overshadowed by a deluge of debasing realism, which becomes commercially valuable in proportion as it gets lower in motive and more subtle in refined sensuality. What of a conventional slavery, whose bonds of custom, fashion, form and social legislation, stifle the free impulses which the soul feels in the direction of its own progress and unfoldment? What of a sensational press, which pours forth an endless flood of false or morbid mental pictures which crowd their unlovely features into immature and receptive mentality. All must come to judgment. Everything must pass through the winnowing process and the chaff will be consumed in the day of trial. There seems to be delay, but judgment is already here. The axe is “laid unto the root of the trees.” Souls will not be lost, but as the things to which they cling go down, there will be age-long friction and fiery trial.
One more great idol, that of modern materialistic science, must come to trial. All truth that is scientific, is the handmaid of religion, and will pass to the right hand. But all that pseudo-science, which worships the creature rather than the Creative Spirit, which seeks human salvation in mere external improvement, which finds in matter, self causation and potency, rather than general design and unity, with all that science “falsely so called,” which tries artificially to improve upon divine perfection, is condemned already. All this not by any vindictive mandate, but by its own intrinsic hollowness and limitation. It sets up its own outermost boundary lines, and in the nature of the case cannot go beyond them. It limits its own vision, and is color-blind to spiritual verities that are near—yes even within—because they are not of the sensuous realm. But the judgment day which we have attempted to outline is not an assize of doom, darkness or fatality. It is kindly, helpful and not vindictive. Its whole purpose and outcome are to make manifest the good. The ” left hand” is the abode of negation, or that which lacks the divine basis of reality and truth. It represents the nothingness of that which has seemed evil. It is the educational background where we subjectively build up appearances, specters and imaginings only to finally learn that they are men of straw. It is the evolutionary realm of darkness, without some slight acquaintance with which, we could not distinguish and appreciate the light. It involves that necessary freedom of choosing in the absence of which there could be no intelligent moral character.
But the educational value of negation does not require that the bitter cup be drained to the dregs. We all have tasted it in sufficient degree to form the basis for a judicial training. To escape the sentence or its age-long harshness we must quickly accept its verdict and come into at-one-ment. Still more, by such a relation we gain its irresistible momentum and have its endorsement. But fighting against it, is a fight against the Universal.
The “judgment day” is a time of hope and satisfaction. Only through its thorough sifting could we find the reality of the good, and the hollowness of its relative opposite. It gives the only complete revelation of the Divine Mind. It tends to bring into manifestation the inner, intrinsic and eternal Christ—that supreme truth which had its fullest expression in the personality of Jesus. It is not limited to one local, historic “Son of God,” but is working out a universal sonship. It provides for an everlasting increase of spiritual illumination. It will even transform the bodies of men into living “temples of the Holy Ghost,” and this not merely in some mystical and symbolic sense, but in practical and concrete expression. Truth translates the former magic of miracle and supernaturalism into the subtle and silent working of orderly law.
The searching light of truth reveals a great gulf between the lower and higher planes of consciousness. It can be passed over only through a radical change in motive, standpoint and relation. The character of the Adamic domain is fixed, and all sojourners there are under the reign of disorder and materiality. Mind and body are honeycombed with an earthy and tomb-like mortality. The dwellers in this realm live in physical sensation and are colorblind to the principles of real being.
The blazing light of the inner tribunal makes it clear that true life comes through openness toward God. The traditional faraway God is not a “Present Help.” God is in us and we are in him. The spiritual domain is not some dim, distant and future possibility but the living reality of today.
Nature is no longer a “common and unclean” environment, crude and unresponsive, but the vital expression of divine love and beauty. The high viewpoint of the subjective judgment-seat enables us to discover that all realities are at the right hand, while falsities and appearances go to the left. The verdict brings a spiritual flame which will consume the “wood, hay and stubble ” of our own soul-structure, and so if we carelessly identify the ego with the unreal we invite the condemnation of adverse judgment. Such a verdict is no light and unimportant opinion or superficial supposition.
With the passing of the old idea of a formal and dramatic assize, we have been inclined to go to the other extreme and so have come to minimize the tremendous significance of spiritual quality and character. It will be a sad and terrible calamity to find ourselves out of harmony with and virtually fighting against the Universal. The fact that penalty is natural, and ultimately corrective, rather than arbitrary and vindictive, does not render it easy to be borne. The left hand is still the abode of misery and woe. Our punishment comes from the divine in us rather than from the divinity outside. How terrible to be at odds with one’s own nature! How abnormal to be out of joint with ourselves! Powers perverted, capacities vacant, intuitions denied, aspirations turned down, inner and consequently outer darkness, material props broken, the hollowness of formality exposed, the spiritual self unclothed, the things which have filled our consciousness snatched away, and we thrust as strangers into a strange land!
Are we unacquainted with our spiritual selves? If so, every law, force and principle in the whole cosmos stands at our inner tribunal and pleads with and for us to come into conformity with the moral order.
The Unfulfilled Ideal of Religious Liberalism
In these days, when theological creeds are waning and religious dogmatism has so largely spent its force, it would naturally appear liberal churches whose faith is simple, wholesome and attractive should be distinctively prosperous and aggressive. But, outwardly and numerically at least, such a consummation has not been realized. During the last two or three decades, while there has been a remarkable growth in the population of the country, the numerical increase of liberalism, as a system, has fallen relatively much behind. As a comparative factor in the collective religious whole, it seems to have relatively ebbed in a measure that is worthy of serious attention.
The causes which may be assigned for this apparently anomalous state of affairs are doubtless somewhat complex. But perhaps a discriminative study of present conditions, coupled with a simple outline of the historic forces which led to the rise and spread of a freer religion, especially in New England, may shed some light upon the problem and measurably aid in its interpretation. Is it not possible to locate with some degree of accuracy those commissions and omissions which are accountable for the lack of that vigor and of those wide-spread positive results which might have been logically expected?
Every progressive soul must warmly appreciate the high mission, beneficent influence, and past accomplishment of the liberal denominations. Since the early part of the century now just ended they have sweetened moral acidity, rationalized an imposed superstition, lightened a Puritanic austerity, and gladdened millions of beating hearts, not merely among their own adherents, but through their outward penetrative influences, which have softened the former rigidity of Christendom through and through.
In a broader sense of the term, liberalism includes many vital principles of the great Reformation in the sixteenth century, which were germinal in the humanizing of theology and ethics and in molding them more nearly into accord with the autonomy of the mind of man. But in this inquiry reference is limited to modern liberal ecclesiastical organizations, as distinguished from those known as Trinitarian and orthodox, in the United States. As a distinctive movement, Unitarianism began in 1815 to organize a liberal theology under a democratic or what is known as a congregational polity.
Soon there followed an important landslide into its ranks, the extent of which may be inferred from the fact that among its existent societies of today no less than one hundred and twenty were originally orthodox Trinitarian. The change marked the ripeness and culmination of the Calvinistic theology, which included such an emphasis upon the doctrine of “three Persons” that in great degree there were in the thought of men three Gods. Monotheism had well-nigh given place to tritheism. Extremes invariably result in reaction, and in this case it was most pronounced. Under the molding influences of Martineau, Channing, Theodore Parker, and their associates, the rising system was coherently rationalized, spiritualized, and made more definitely natural and scientific than any previously accepted body of doctrine. Then followed a lessened emphasis upon biblical literalism, with freer interpretation and more impartial criticism. As a logical sequence, there came a denial of the “fall of man” from holiness in Adam as the representative head of the race, of the total depravity of human nature, the substitutional atonement, and eternal punishment. The dignity of man and his divine sonship were brought to light and affirmed. The Holy Spirit, instead of being a “Person,” was identified with the omnipresent God, or as the direct influence of the mind of God upon the mind of man. An inborn immortality of soul was generally accepted, with the belief of the progressive attainment of all men in holiness and happiness. The movement was rather in the direction of free thought than toward any fixed even though liberal theology. While it had much in common with other religious systems, it avoided dogmatism and encouraged open inquiry for new truth. Perhaps the most prominent and ideal exponent of liberal thought was Channing. So broad and beautiful was he in spirit that dogmatism and sectarianism melted away before him.
In due time a kind of philosophical coalescence naturally formed between Unitarianism, which is here more distinctively considered, and the transcendentalism of Emerson and his associates, the latter subtle element entering in and softening and rounding out the lofty ethics of the denominational leaders, thus bringing the combination considerably in touch with the prevailing German philosophy and theology. The rational and scientific spirit more and more prevailed. Theological abstractions weakened, and the constitution, capacity and needs of man began to be studied in their adaptability and relation to religious truth. Increasing simplicity continued, and coming down to the present time the system was finally focalized into the recent brief but all-inclusive formula of doctrine: “The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.”
But justly to estimate the progress and triumph of the truth and spirit of Unitarianism, one must go outside of its denominational boundaries. Its leaven has “leavened the whole lump.” In liberal measure the rest of Christendom has appropriated its principles and taken on its color, while carefully avoiding its name. Like many another innovation, it has been gradually taken possession of without thanks, or even any fair recognition. It has yielded its vitality to its former opponents. Its real conquest therefore has been esoteric and without observation.
But there is another important phase of organized liberalism that claims attention. It engaged with vigor in a long and arduous iconoclastic work, which was so absorbing that constructive effort fell into neglect. After leading innumerable weary souls out of bondage, its own garner became lean and failed to furnish them with adequate sustenance. It broke many shackles, but the released limbs grew feeble for lack of exercise. Its task of pulling down the decayed framework of other systems became so absorbing that protest and negation at length became the rule. In the mean time the necessity for iconoclasm had come to an end.
The spirit of liberalism is amiable, its humanitarianism lofty, and its charity abounding, but its spiritual fabric lacks strength. The reason for this seems to be that, in its escape from and reaction against supernaturalism and superstition, it came under the prevailing influence of scientific materialism. The divinity of man and his normal spiritual oneness with God, though held in theory, have been practically over rationalized. On this account new esoteric systems and philosophies possessing more of the spiritual element, are springing up and showing wonderful increase. The present trend of the multitude may be described as a reaction from a reaction. It is therefore easy to divine the real cause of the slow growth, or rather the relative decadence, of denominational Unitarianism. It is the lack of a distinctive spiritual philosophy and a corresponding psychological hygiene. Among its individual exponents there are many and notable exceptions, but these, by comparison, tend to emphasize the truth of the generalization.
The prevalent viewpoint and plane of effort in the liberal church is mainly included in the field of material altruism, social reforms, and humanitarianism. These are most excellent so far as they go, but are not all. They constitute an important part of practical religious life and character, but stop far short of the full ideal. Man is a spiritual being, and the higher aspirations of his soul must be ministered unto and developed. The spiritual nature must be definitely fed, for “man shall not live by bread alone.” This higher attainment has increasingly come to be regarded as beyond the limit of every-day practicality. The externalism of the stress and motive of occidental civilization at length becomes barren and burdensome, and humanity craves something deeper and more satisfying. That which is without, however refined and humanized, fails to fill an esoteric and subjective void. Even physical science is striving more and more to penetrate beyond the surface and to get at the soul of things. Prevailing materialism breeds pessimism, and both are the result of a low viewpoint of observation.
The wonderful march of material science, invention and physical adaptation has done little to lift the burdens under which men are groaning. The hunger of the higher nature is no better satisfied under the contribution of all the boasted modern improvements than when life was vastly more simple. Literature and fiction under the plea of devotion to art, pander and appeal mainly to the lower zone of man’s complex nature. Idealism and a spiritual philosophy are looked upon as unpractical, and the ponderous juggernaut of materialism rolls on threatening everything which is more refined than itself. The fog of pessimism subtly prevails high and low. The greater the profusion of material comforts and luxuries, the more general the discontent and sullen dissatisfaction of men with their condition. The panacea of remedial legislation, so much relied upon, only complicates and increases the friction between the various classes and conditions of men.
But what have the liberal churches to do with all these subtle inharmonies? Much, as have also all the other Christian churches. The whole Church, while ethically important, is primarily constituted for the spiritual development of the race. In proportion as its field of labor is limited to the realm of material things its higher ideal is not realized. The cultivation of the spiritual consciousness is not here used in the sense of other-worldiness, or primarily as a preparation for that future state. It is as normal, as an evolutionary step here and now, as is the improvement of the lower intellectual or social zones of man’s nature. It is even more important because it is higher. It belongs to the natural order, is amenable to law, and has practicality. An impression has become common among men that such a consciousness belongs to some intangible and supernatural domain far away, if indeed it be not entirely imaginary. But Channing, the great prophet of prematerialistic Unitarianism, thought otherwise. Note a few of his ringing sentences:
“I call that mind free which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness. I call that mind free which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit helps to its own spiritual enlargement.”
Such a normal upliftment with a rational recognition of its restorative influence upon the physical organism of man, as well, is what humanity is seeking, even though unconsciously, to round out its shrunken proportions, and it should be the high office of the church, both liberal and conservative, generously to minister to such a universal hunger. Man is and will be restless until he finds his supplement and completeness in the Universal. While neither the church nor any other objective institution can furnish him, from without, with that divinity which only can be found within the deeps of his own being, it can powerfully aid in arousing and warming its latent and benumbed energies into wholesome activity. A positive spiritual philosophy, when vital at the soul-center, will radiate, as its legitimate fruit, transformed ethical, social and physical conditions. As the highest is sought and cultivated, lesser things will be added in their order. Before the church can fulfill its high ideal it must emerge from under the wide-spreading shadow of dominant materialism into the sunlight of a deeper reality. It must penetrate beyond the surface of the phenomenal, and fully recognize and deal with the primal and noumenal. Man must be interpreted to his own consciousness not as formed of the dust, but as a living spiritual entity in the process of individual unfoldment. It is to be hoped that the great current of liberalism, which in its earlier course received so many clear and wholesome tributaries, will not become bound in the shallows of an unspiritual age, and measurably miss that spiritual robustness which was so conspicuous in Channing, Starr King and other earlier apostles of the faith.
The Spiritual Utility of Physical Correspondence
In the dislodgment and defeat of a strong foe, through military strategy, the most decisive results are often gained through a movement known as outflanking. Whether the antagonist be real or seeming, material or mental, the front he presents is always formidable. There his entrenchments are the strongest and in that direction his heaviest guns are mounted and trained. But often, by a flank movement, a weak side is disclosed, and complete capture and defeat are made possible with a comparatively small expenditure. Taking the principle as outlined, let us attempt to lift it, no less concretely, into the esoteric and spiritual realm. But preliminary to tracing its relative parallelism, we may note an extreme position that perhaps is too prevalent among exponents of the New Thought. In our emphasized loyalty to the basic principle of mental causation for personal physical expression, which, per se, cannot be questioned, we possibly have overlooked the important, even if subordinate, suggestive influence of bodily correspondence and sensation. Some advise that sensory messages and experiences be ignored; but may it not be wiser to study their laws, and through their teaching to exercise guidance and control? The reflex influence of physical suggestion upon the mind and consciousness must be taken into account, and any philosophy that entirely ignores this factor is deficient.
Suppose that the sensory nerves report to the ego: “You have a headache.” From the metaphysical standpoint it is regarded as regular, ideally to deny the same, and so by direct mental effort to dominate the intruder and cast it out. But perhaps that cannot be done at once, and the reflex impression of the physical experience lingers, and through suggestion persistently lends to the mind its own quality. The pain gives its testimony for a purpose; in other words, the body with its lessons forms an important part of our normal educational training on this plane of expression. The physical organism is the testing-ground and gymnasium for soul development. There has been an inclination among some of the disciples of the New Thought to become imbued with the extravagances of an extreme sect in the denial of the educational uses and even validity of the material body. Nothing exists in vain. Consistent loyalty to all fundamental metaphysical principles is clearly compatible with the admission of the wonderful reciprocity between the soul and its expression. The relation is indispensable to both. The great Unit of Truth is not one-sided, but is formed of truths in normal proportion. The materialist and the spiritual extremist represent the rigidity of opposite poles, while the warm, golden zone of rational and harmonious relativity is spread out between them. An all-around viewpoint is indispensable, for extremists only recognize things that are in their own direction. With these preliminary generalizations, we are led to the specific heart of the topic in question.
It is a psycho-physical law that human thought, when centered upon any particular organ, member, or section of the material organism, sets up an increased local circulation and activity, which in quality will be correspondential. It has often been demonstrated that, in greater or less degree, one may warm his feet on a cold day by persistently centering his thought upon them. It is well known that during sleep, while the brain is comparatively quiescent, a lessened proportion of the circulation is drawn in that direction. But far more delicate experiments in the laboratory show the exactitude of the law. Exhaustive tests indicate that an increased fullness of the vital fluid invariably follows the track of the movable center of consciousness. Emotions and propensities in the mind, when active, stimulate and quicken the various physical relations through which they function, and the latter send back their sensory note of reply. How shall this fact be utilized? Can a harmful activity be diverted and turned in a new direction? How shall the mind and body be trained to aid each other instead of being at odds? Can a flank movement through the physical, or an alliance with it, be made practically useful in the expulsion of inharmony from both? It is certainly desirable to have a cooperation of the spiritual, mental and physical forces, rather than to have the latter in opposition to the first two. The flank movement, then, through which disorderly foes of all grades may be more readily defeated, consists in the utilization of the physical mechanism as an efficient even if subordinate ally.
Coming into closer limits, we advance from the general physiology toward the center—to that wonderful section, the brain. Within this fertile domain the mind, or rather the man, functions directly and qualitatively. Disregarding the theoretical details of phrenology, we are aware, in general, that the brain-cells located in the crown of the head function for the moral and spiritual faculties. These include faith, hope, courage, harmony, with an implied recognition of life and strength in the Unseen. Wide observation also indicates that those negative qualities and emotions, among which are fear, anger, inharmony, depression, selfishness and materialism, function and have their correspondence in those groups of cells that range lower down in the brain structure. Without denying that this subordinate domain, when normal, has legitimate use and place, the fact remains that with the vast majority it has become disproportionately active, congested and dominant. It has usurped the main current of human consciousness. Too small a portion of human thought is of the ideal quality. In physical terms, the lower groups of brain-cells are over-stimulated. So long as this continues, reflex action tends to promote and accentuate the disproportion, which already is abnormal. It may be likened to a machine working in the wrong direction.
Suppose one makes an effort to send thought in a new and higher direction. He finds it is not easy because the higher related functioning power is feeble. It has not, in the past, received its due need of nourishment and invigoration. Then comes the necessity for the real cooperative process. If, as before noted, the concentration of positive thought locally induces an increased activity, why not give the neglected brain-cells in the coronal region their due? Send them the wholesome tonic of a good supply of thick, rich blood through the means of a localized consciousness. Thus they may become fertile and vigorous functioning-ground for the highest soul forces, and concordant reciprocity will result. On the other hand, the diversion will relieve and lighten the congested and overwrought groups of the lower and unspiritual sections. With physical inflammation relieved and circulation equalized, even though the process seem mechanical, the reflex character of the sensory reports to headquarters will be changed. Concretely to accomplish this, one should consciously center the thought in the upper brain-cells, and to aid he should think for the time being that his thought is located there. This will not be easy at first, but may increasingly become a thought habit. When exercised, it should produce a glow and conscious thrill in the region indicated. After it is clearly localized, the highest spiritual quality—which may be described as communion with the Universal—may mingle and fill it to perfect proportion. Among the favoring conditions for inducing the desired result may be mentioned general passivity and full physical relaxation, with slow, deep breathing. Like an unstrung instrument, there must be an absence of all tension.
By way of a general deduction from the specific activity outlined above, it follows that the consciousness should pay proportionate visits to its various physical apartments and not remain unduly in any one of them. If a part of the many beautiful corridors of the temple of the body are never swept clean by the freshening presence of the spiritual executive, vigor diminishes and opacity becomes dense. If the ego domicile mainly in the lower functioning brain cells, spiritual elasticity is lost and a cramped rigidity follows. We should, therefore, occasionally make a triumphant entry into the various geographical provinces of our physical kingdom, carrying inspiration, encouragement and renewal. All will learn to welcome our coming.
The sanctum sanctorum of the seen form is the coronal section, and all its equipments are in accord with its high-altar service. Here every correspondential feature is congenial. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” The ‘cities of the plain “are the abodes of inharmony, disorder and animalism. Our complex nature contains so much subtle analogy that even spatial altitude lends some inspiration. When Jesus was about to give utterance to the Beatitudes, “he went up into a mountain; and when he was set, his disciples came unto him.” Again, speaking from the viewpoint of the Christ, Jesus said: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” The evolutionary trend of humanity is not merely onward; it is upward.
Gain the cooperation of the seen and unseen with the force of their vital correspondence! The figure of the Supreme Ideal—the subjective Christ—has been carved by the aspiring soul during its loftiest flights; and there it stands in regal beauty upon its pedestal. Come up, O Consciousness, from the dust and grime and sweat of the lowlands, at favorable intervals, and sit down in its presence! Gain there a residence, and feel its transforming power!
Reactions In The Higher Development
The great work of spiritual evolution in the individual as in the race, is continuous but not uniform in its visible progress. As the growth of a world from the primal nebulous condition to fitness for human habitation is through storm, upheaval and friction, so the evolution of the spiritual ego is often marked by paradoxical manifestations, and sometimes the greatest progress is made through a seemingly backward movement. From superficial observation and sensation there is often reason for discouragement. The hard experience in which one just now may be submerged, perhaps covers the whole horizon. Under the stress of present conditions it may be far from easy to take the true and broader view so as to behold the smaller provisional trial as a real and necessary part of the larger progress.
If one is trying to bring the higher life into outward expression, and even if after years of substantial success in the main, there come an unexpected eclipse, remember that shadows are but temporary. What though there be an upheaval in mind, body or estate, it is only a readjustment for the gathering of new forces. If there has been previous restoration and some higher development, such a phenomenon is only evidence that the good work already begun needs to be still further deepened. Perhaps one has long cultivated spiritual hygiene, and become quite secure in his conscious freedom from psychical and physical inharmony. Owing to some unwitting lack of higher adjustment, or former error, sub-consciously preserved, there comes a recurrence of old conditions which were supposed to have been outgrown. Be assured, they have returned only with beneficent and kindly purpose.
Certain questions naturally follow from superficial observers. Has too much been expected of the higher therapeutics? Do these reactions indicate that its results, as generally claimed, are not well founded? In reality the reverse. From the surface below, truth upon the higher plane often seems paradoxical. But it is never in opposition to spiritual law. The facts may be freely admitted. Any cause that cannot face inquiry and confront honest investigation is unworthy of the attention of seekers after truth. If the exponents of any philosophy become unduly dogmatic, it is time to make a readjustment and set the compass anew. If the metaphysical movement has practical value, it can bear criticism and invite the attention of the world to its claims and accomplishments.
When deeply and correctly interpreted, any such recurrent experiences of disorder do not invalidate but rather endorse and enforce all the rational claims of the New Thought. They are later and deeper refinements which show the necessity for individual work, and may indicate some degree of past neglect. Men cannot become careless and disregard the higher law and yet be entirely happy. But the law is really more kindly to us than we are to ourselves. During the spiritual evolution of each individual, there are seasons when foundations must be re-examined and various crises met. There is an inner tribunal by which we are judged, and its mandates when deeply interpreted are in reality as beneficent as they are superficially severe. The judgment gives its subject a necessary testing and seasoning. Is it severe and unfortunate? No, only good. It is the divine purifier, and to so recognize it, and bid it do its work will finally reveal it as a friend. To resist and count it as evil will multiply its severity. It is really the operation of the Spirit, coming to confirm and consummate its work. “Our God is a consuming fire.” But only the “wood, hay and stubble” are burned, while the higher and real self remains intact.
Every hour of suffering, if rightly interpreted, eliminates some of the false material which has been built into the human structure, leaving less in stock. Selfishness in its myriad forms dies hard. It is so deeply ingrained that only a recognition of the real goodness of the refinement will mitigate the seeming severity of the process. Pain is not ideally good or to be sought. But when actually in evidence, one should interpret its beneficent and higher mission in order to realize its developing and uplifting power. The later and deeper refinements will then be but the harbingers of a resurrection to a higher plane with greater opportunity and usefulness. Only that restoration of mind and body is ideal and complete which builds its foundations deeply and divinely.
Dogmatism, New and Old
It is safe to avoid all kinds of extremes. Dogmatism, whether ancient or modern, past or present, is unprofitable. It may appear in the form of negative positiveness as well as in that of positive positiveness. The uncolored truth, without fear or favor, is the most valuable of all possessions.
Doubtless some unnecessary prejudice against the principles of mental and spiritual healing is often aroused by extreme and unwarranted statements which are sincerely intended to be in its behalf. While ideally and potentially the half has not been told of its power and value, yet its deep truth is not visible from the superficial viewpoint of the ordinary observer. To him it simply is not true. Therefore hyper-enthusiasm in behalf of a new departure often has an influence just the reverse of what is intended. The public in general also lack that discrimination which is necessary to distinguish that which is pure and legitimate in any movement from accretions and imitations which really form no part of it. Its extremes are mistakenly taken to be truly representative.
When there is a seeming failure in the working of well-founded principles, the fault is not in them but in the field of their application. Some responsive receptivity in the subject is indispensable. Seed will not at once spring up in a stony and unprepared soil, and assuredly not where there is no soil at all. The germ of truth is likewise conditioned in its manifestation. Only a combination of seed and soil can cause the blade to put forth. “Mighty works,” and even works in any degree are only possible in an organism where there is some vital faith and subjective hospitality.
Extremes always beget opposing extremes. High idealistic propositions are abstractly correct, and under favoring conditions in the future will be demonstrable. But to affirm them positively to one who does not understand idealism, without discriminative interpretation, is unwise, and often leads to disappointment. The greatest of human teachers voiced this sentiment in exact terms.
That the primary causes for physical conditions are inherently mental is true; but it does not follow that the body can be changed “while you wait” by a superficial change in the mind. Logic is good, but it is subject to abuse. Because a man can lift three hundred pounds, it does not follow that he can lift three thousand, even though the principle be the same. Idealistic statements, true in a certain sense and of great utility when understood, may be harmful and repulsive when made to a “realist,” for to him they are false.
As a consequence of general erroneous impressions regarding the claims of the present evolution of psycho-therapeutics, there is probably hardly a writer or teacher of the principles of mental causation, as related to physical expression, who has not often had presented a supposed “poser” something as follows: “How about poisons, stimulants and contagions? and how about broken bones?”
The few suggestions here presented are designed for the benefit of extremists on both sides. Let the advocates of a practical idealism on their part remember that but few yet occupy their standpoint. Ideals are abstract realities now; but their outward actualization can be but gradual, and this should always be made clear. If Paul attained such a spiritual consciousness and control as to render the bite of a viper harmless, it does not follow that everyone who has started in the New Thought can or should cultivate the intimacy of such a reptile. Can every play-writer be a Shakespeare or every speaker a Demosthenes? The law of spiritual accomplishment may include perfect immunity from harmful viper bites; but only the rarely developed expert can grasp that law as an efficient weapon and wield it with perfect dexterity. But the degree to which each one can utilize it will ever grow toward his ideal, even though on the present plane of existence it may never reach it. Let one’s responses to skeptical queries always be fitted to the questioner’s own plane of observation.
Turning briefly to those observers who think that the well-known effects of poisons, stimulants and contagions, disprove the law of mental causation, and hold that the resulting phenomena are due to chemical or direct physical potency per se, let us reason together a little below the surface.
The physical body, one second after it has been laid aside by the conscious and subconscious man or mind (a process called death), is utterly unresponsive to poisons, stimulants and contagions. May it not be fairly inferred that former responsiveness came through the subconscious mind rather than merely by direct chemical contact? The principal in the case was clearly the seeming unconscious mental intermediary. While immediately after “death” all the physical constituents remain intact, that through which outside agencies—as occasions—gained their potency has been removed. In other words, the cause has gone. Causes and occasions must be discriminated. The former are always within, and expressed in a common term, may be called susceptibility. Occasions are from without, and are only convenient opportunities. They have no absolute power, as entities, and can only exert such an influence as susceptibility has conferred upon them. But to man’s personal sense, susceptibility has installed itself as that which has laws of its own; and he is their subject and victim.
Suppose that ten persons are equally exposed to small-pox. Two respond to it, and eight do not. To the eight who did not “take it,” it was not a contagion at all, but simply a non-entity. The two who presented a fertile and ready-made soil had unwittingly produced susceptibility. Through the subtle processes of the imaging faculty, man—for himself—is a creator. Disease, therefore, is his own contrivance. He has erected certain limits, which though not in the moral economy, he calls laws, and is obliged to do them homage. But they are not divine laws. This is illustrated in many places where the principle is never suspected.
A certain degree of immunity from smallpox doubtless comes from vaccination. In reality, the operation is a contrivance which tells upon the subconscious mind. There comes from it an abiding inner sense of protection from the disorder. Whenever the attention of the conscious mind is called to the subject, a spontaneous auto-suggestion of immunity wells up from within. It amounts to a kind of steady, hidden faith, and is re-enforced by surrounding belief and acceptance. The clay of the body is but the passive and expressive incident in the transaction. But the psychological elements are, of course, a terra incognita to the medical practitioner who performs the “operation.” If water could be surreptitiously substituted, the inoculation would be much more safe and cleanly and perhaps equally effective.
Subjective laws of limitation are made personally and collectively with the same facility that legislative enactments are imposed by the State; but unlike the latter, so long as they are recognized, they enforce themselves.
To lessen general and even personal responsiveness to poisons, stimulants and contagions, is a gradual and seemingly very slow work, as we count time. It is entirely a question of degree or of susceptibility transformed by almost imperceptible stages. But, until the time does arrive when the widely subjective law of their potency is positively repealed, common sense would indicate that they be let alone. But many are repealing it, for themselves, to a degree not yet often recognized.
The germs of disease have no power per se, but an inviting and fertile soil on every hand confers local potency upon them. Quarantines are therefore necessary so long as the present state of collective consciousness regarding germ-causation continues. The foregoing hints may aid some inquirers in the way of an intelligent discrimination between real causes and frequent occasions, and show that strict metaphysical principles are thoroughly logical and in accord with common sense. Specific applications of the laws which have been outlined will suggest themselves in many forms. Let metaphysical leaders be clear and simple in their teachings, and much superficial and ignorant criticism may be avoided. If one be possessed of dogmatism he is in servitude, but truth when closely and sincerely followed never leads one astray.
What Is Disease?
All are aware that the primary definition of the term, disease, is simply “a lack of ease.” But this gives a very inadequate idea of its significance as it is usually employed. A lack is only a negative condition, and does not involve any positive and objective entity. But words are only the labels for ideas. If the proper meaning of a term has been superseded in the mind and consciousness by something quite different, the latter is what it really stands for.
Disease, as a term, carries the idea of an intangible but very real enemy which comes from without and seizes hold of its victim. In varying degree, it is regarded as a malignant adversary, from no one knows where, with which we are obliged to grapple. Its appearance is largely a matter of chance or luck. Like an armed enemy, it springs out of ambush and makes an attack more or less disastrous.
While it is true that unhygienic antecedents are increasingly recognized, it yet remains that they cut but a small figure to the average man. And still worse, mental antecedents practically mean nothing. Conventionally, disease is nothing less than an implacable foe. Who sends it, and where does it come from? Nobody knows exactly, and the “profession” is often as much in the dark as the laity. Take an epidemic of grip. When it gets ready, it comes. Palace and hovel alike suffer. Be the weather dry or damp, balmy or severe, it apparently makes little difference. Its selection of victims to ordinary observation is fatalistic. But our sensory equipment tells us that it is very uncomfortable and we want to be rid of the sensation. Doctor and drugs are summoned to fight off the intruder.
We suggest a proposition so strongly in another direction that to many it will seem, not only paradoxical but absurd. Disease is provisionally and educationally good. This does not in the least mean that it is ideally good, or to be sought. Bear the distinction in mind. But when it is actually in evidence, it in some way has been invited, and its mission, if understood, is beneficent. We give it an evil character, and thereby—to us—it is made malignant. We clothe it with a wicked mask to our own consciousness, and this intensifies it actually and physically. If we were aware that we were dealing with a messenger, which though corrective and disciplinary was normal and kind, three fourths of its bitterness would at once vanish. Both fear and antagonism multiply its pains, while concordant vibration therewith fulfills its purpose and its departure soon follows.
Let us try to re-define disease. It is simply the friction caused by the surge of divine and recuperative forces to repair our mistakes. These forces are always working in the right direction. Should they then be aided or thwarted? A fever is a quickened effort of these internal energies to remove obstructions. If a physician by material means tries to force down the temperature towards the “normal” he is fighting nature’s quickened effort to repair a condition. He would change the weather by a manipulation of the thermometer.
Disease is the burning out of the “wood hay and stubble” which we unwittingly have built into our structure. Its mission is to purify, and this is true, not only of the body, but of thought and consciousness. It is an educator and refiner, but we look at our ugly picture of it and refuse to learn its lessons. No person ever will have the grip unless he unwittingly have some grip fuel accumulated all ready to be ignited. So of every other man-made subdivision of “disease.” Moreover, unfriendly germs are positively innocuous unless a congenial soil has been already prepared.
The saving forces should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Even if an .offending organ be called bad and weak, this state of thought toward it intensifies the condition. “I have a bad stomach.” The more you put that quality upon it, the more it will put your estimate of it into expression. This is not sentiment or conjecture but positive law. To affirm goodness of our members is like a lubricant to machinery.
The inner and real man is all the time trying to express himself more freely through the outer organism, but is repressed by crudeness, materialism and opacity. As light shines through glass so the soul and spirit should shine through its responsive though cruder instrument.
Can any individual immediately realize these ideals in their fullness? No! because we are all in some degree of evolutionary lock-step with present environment. But we may work toward them. We violate law upon the spiritual, psychical or physical plane—or all of them—and then complain of the kindly penalty which inherently comes to arouse and free us from ourselves. We then look about for a “scapegoat,” and find one either in “Providence,” chance or contagion. Let us cease the creation and multiplication of evil, disease and abnormity, for they are all man-made. They are negative educational experiences during the process of the evolution of the spiritual self. Our knowledge, especially of ourselves, is yet but partial, and we learn even though slowly through mistakes. The moral order is perfect and beneficent. To regard it otherwise, and to make it unfriendly by our thought, is like shutting out the light at noonday organism is the nearest objective. The sensory equipment makes all that is within this boundary intense, and practically, it is often congested. In this small area, the average man lives, moves and has his apparent being. Indeed, he often identifies it with the ego itself. It seems a kind of little world while all beyond is remote. The next larger unit is the family. Around this area is a deeply marked boundary. Still larger circles enclose, respectively, the neighborhood, club, church, union, order, town, city, party, state, section and nation. The latter, in the present evolutionary state is about the largest unit that has definite lodgment in the consciousness of today. Patriotism is good but still closely limited. But many fail to reach even so far as that, and find it difficult to spread their conscious interest beyond their section or political party. Outside of this, all is feeble and indistinct. Humanity at large seems like a loose aggregation and has little apparent solidarity. Perspective is lacking and petty things hide the larger objective.
The Cosmic Consciousness
Only quite recently has the term “cosmic consciousness ” come into use. It stands for something which may be regarded as a modern development. Perhaps then it may warrant a brief attempt at its definition, and also an inquiry as to its utility. Relation and interrelation as now understood, are rich in promise and already profitable in realization. That everything is good for something else is quite generally known, but that it is good for all else is not quite so clear.
In the light of modern thought, analytical separation and disjointedness are being supplemented by a synthetic, constructive and unifying philosophy. Chasms are being bridged and valleys filled. Even many things which have been rated as inorganic, are now interpreted as having organic relations of wider breadth, and smaller units are merging into those which are larger. Scientists assure us that every atom of the cosmos has attraction for, and relation with every other atom.
But of still greater importance to us is the direct relativity between the human ego and environment. Then follows that significant question: What constitutes environment? This is a very elastic problem. Objectively, it may include but a very narrow range or a very wide one. But, subjectively, and in a much deeper sense, environment is a matter of the consciousness. In a certain abstract way, one may have relations with China, even if he be not aware of the existence of such a country. But such a tie means nothing. To be vital in any degree, it must exist in the consciousness. There must be some knowledge and feeling of it at the subjective end of the relation.
It is true that the individual is normally dynamic and positive, while the material environment, whether consciously large or small, is only static and negative. But there is a mutual dependence. Even that which is negative must be included to make up the essential unit.
Let us note some of the various degrees of individual consciousness. The physical Suppose that upon some clear evening we fasten our gaze upon a few of the most brilliant fixed stars and feel that we have positive relations with those glorious though distant suns. How inspiring and harmonizing to cultivate such a feeling of neighborly interest! We all belong to one Order, and one System! But the cosmic consciousness stretches still beyond. It includes a cultivated oneness and interrelation with the universe of Eternal Mind and Spirit. Even the human consciousness, seemingly so puny and limited, has room for a living impression of the Universal. This Totality we call God. Yet to the average individual, what a far-off, limited and changeable ideal does the term convey!
How narrow most of the human moods! “Why so hot, little man?” represents a very common subjective state which often gives complexion to all that is outside. Plasticity to the Infinite tends to restore, uplift and harmonize. The fragmentary things of life are rejoined and repaired, the fogs and shadows dissolve and the rough places are made smooth. What a marvelous creative agency is the consciousness! It makes its own kingdom and covers the entire area. The whole divine cosmos may be its own. Through receptivity we may let it print itself upon us. Practically, this higher zone of thought also provides for an output of high living. The cosmic consciousness is vastly more than an intellectual appreciation. It is an intelligently cultivated feeling, not merely of nature and mass, but of a universe of Mind, Spirit and Love. It involves soul responsiveness to the largest environment. Paul voiced this thought specifically in his immortal aphorism: “All things are yours.”
Splinters
The scattered fragments of Truth are being gathered up and fitted, each in its place, “without sound of hammer,” into one great temple.
Molecules are only smaller worlds, and worlds but molecules in relativity.
The twentieth century will usher in a rapidly increasing spiritual consciousness.
We must join hands to walk safely over pit-falls.
Life cannot die. Forms perish; but the great universal stream of vitality surges on, unspent and undiminished.
There are modern, as well as ancient prophets.
The loftiest biblical phraseology must receive soul-assimilation before it can be more than ancient history.
Heaven and hell are very real but they are states of mind.
Move forward as rapidly as you will, and your ideal is always in advance.
As well thrust an active vigorous animal into a cast-iron mold, as once for all to exactly define truth in external formula. In either case, life is extinguished.
Lovers do not love each other, but their own ideals of each other.
The supernatural is only the higher zone of the natural.
The beauty of the landscape dwells in the holder. The man by his side may not beholder recognize it.
The spiritual is as natural as the material, and equally subject to orderly law.
The external world is a great mirror reflecting to each one his own subjective quality on an enlarged scale.
The grand cycle of life starts with an involution of primal energy from God, and returns to the “Father’s House” after the educational unfoldment of divinity in the self-consciousness.
Sincerity is a gem of the first water.
Only that is normal which fits the constitution of man.
Evolution, in its essence, is the name of an invisible onward flow of life and mind rather than of a succession of seen forms.
True religion is not a belief but a growing living force.
To most men, only those places which have been consecrated by human ceremony are sacred, but God is everywhere.
Pessimism not only sees the worst side but galvanizes it into form and existence.
The human body is really a temple. Let us beware of its desecration or defilement.
God is in actual contact with every soul but how few feel it.
When man practically recognizes God as Love the at-one-ment takes place. Love begets love.
The present misfit of existing creeds to real conditions should be corrected. The Church cannot afford to dissemble.
Altruism is a privilege rather than a duty.
Retribution is an inward condition of our own fashioning.
The scientific way to conquer an enemy is to transmute him into a friend.
In the end moral ideals are more compelling than arms and coercion.
To mentally bathe in delineations of crime and abnormity is to take on—even though unconsciously—a little of their slime and sediment.
Our real enemies are within rather than without.
The time is at hand when the base realism of fiction will no longer be rated as artistic.
The brightened glow of Immanuel in the human soul shines through the external man.
What we give we receive back with interest.
What are often called causes are only the nearby links of a chain which stretches backward indefinitely.
Children are little sensitive mirrors of surrounding thoughts and conditions.
New recognitions of truth, even though of the highest quality, find “no room in the inn.”
The limitation of conventions and the bondage of the seen hold the world in thralldom.
One life permeates all things, and there is no corner of the cosmos too remote to feel its heart-throb.
Diversity of interest is only a seeming.
Subjective conditions are the lens through which the world is seen, and they give it their own color, tone and quality.
Eden represents only a sensuous paradise.
God reigns in and through law and is never self-contradictory.
Thoughts, being forces, every mind is a creative center from which waves of qualitative energy are going out in all directions.
The Bible, to each one fills his own idea of it. Of the numerous sects each finds in the Book just what it looks for.
You never saw your friend nor has he ever beheld you. Only fleshly mantles and wrappings are visible.
If one thinks that things are against him they soon range themselves in that fashion.
Mental pabulum should be as carefully selected as the menu for dinner. Who would eat decayed vegetables or tainted meat?
Man has a bodily form, but he is not it. Mistaken identity is a serious matter.
Violations of law, whether spiritual, mental or physical, are debts drawing compound interest.
If the Church is to retain and feed its following, it must proclaim both a spiritual gospel and a spiritual hygiene.
Nature, to the materialist, is but a cold, loveless, remorseless machine.
To each one, his own highest divine ideal of God, is God to him. He is incapable of paying homage to anything beyond.
The imaging faculty is a real creative force for each individual.
We speak of the forces of Nature, but they are rather One Force, though it is of diverse manifestation.
Divine revelations, no longer confined to one narrow channel, are being sought for and found in all directions.
True education consists in training the thought to train itself.
Ideal man would be the true expression of God.
The whole world is seeking God, but the quest is mostly unconscious.
Many things must wait for the vindication which time alone can furnish.
The Mount of Transfiguration is in the silence, and desire and aspiration are the attendant ushers for those who would make the ascent.
The End