The Problems of Psychical Research Part 16

Here, then, are the probable conditions; also the state of the agent and percipient. Now what about the _connecting links_?

Here we come to the heart of the problem. I shall be as brief as possible, since we cannot pretend that the problem is yet solved. I merely offer a few suggestions, some original, others advanced before by writers on these subjects.[44]

In order to obtain a specific action we must employ a specific instrument: a telephone for a telephone; a brain for a brain.

Every living thing is a dynamic focus.

A dynamic focus tends ever to propagate the motion which is proper to it.

Propagated motion becomes transformed according to the medium it traverses. A force may be transmitted or transformed.

In an identical medium there is only _transmission_.

In a different medium there is _transformation_.

A dynamic nucleus, in propagating its motion, sends it out in every direction; but this transmission becomes perceptible only on the lines of least resistance.

A process that is at once chemical, physical, and psychical goes on in the brain. A complex action of this kind is propagated through the grey matter, as waves are propagated in water.

Regarded physiologically, a thought is only a vibration, probably, which does not pa.s.s out of its appropriate medium. It is propagated, and it must be along the motor nerves, since science admits no other route. But the _thought itself_ does not radiate; it remains "at home," just as the chemical action of a battery remains in the battery; it is represented abroad by its dynamic correlate, called, in the case of the battery, a _current_; and in the case of the brain, I know not what; but whatever its name may be, it is the _dynamic correlate of thought_. Thought, therefore, is dynamic. Thought is transformed; and may be re-transformed, in another organism which supplies the necessary conditions. Thought may be restored.

We have now reached, from a purely physiological standpoint, a position which I desired to reach before I advance the final part of the theory--which may at first sight appear somewhat fantastic. But telepathy itself is fantastic; and yet, being a fact, it must be accounted for somehow, or left altogether unexplained.

It has always been contended by a peculiarly-gifted group of individuals known as "clairvoyants," that we possess a "spiritual body"--just as we possess a physical body--of exactly the same shape and appearance; and that we inhabit this body at death. It is further contended that all our physical senses find their exact counterpart in this "etheric double"; there is a physical eye and a spiritual eye; a physical ear and a spiritual ear, etc. With the spiritual eye we see "clairvoyantly"; with the spiritual ear we hear "clairaudiently," and so forth. I shall not discuss the possibility of such a body, except to say that there is now a ma.s.s of evidence in its favour. a.s.suming it to exist--a.s.suming it to be the exact counterpart of the physical body--then it too possesses a brain; and it too must pulsate and vibrate just as the physical brain does, when accompanying thought.

Now this inner body may be the _vehicle of thought_. It may possess "centres" whose normal office is to send and receive telepathic messages. One "etheric centre" may thus act upon another "etheric centre" directly--only indirectly upon the physical brain cells. The action would thus be dynamic, yet psychical; physical in a sense, yet not physical as we conceive it. Philosophy tells us that the table we see (the _phenomenon_) is not the "real" table (the _noumenon_)--the reality behind; but, if we knock the two tables together, the _noumena_ touch, just as the phenomenal tables do; only we have no means of knowing or directly seeing it. Thus there is a sort of physical communication of a spiritual thing. Those who have entered rooms of a certain character have often sensed their "psychic atmosphere." This is a sort of duplicate or replica of the physical atmosphere, yet it is different from it. The whole subject is so subtle that one cannot follow it unless he has had some experience or some knowledge of these things.

The process cannot be explained in clear-cut fas.h.i.+on--any more than mediums can tell the source of their thoughts and impressions. A little intuition is needed in order to grasp the problem and comprehend its difficulties.

Were I to try and state my theory briefly, then it would be somewhat as follows: Every thought necessitates a three-fold phenomenon--(1) the purely psychic activity; (2) the physiological correlate; and (3) the "dynamic correlate," which is as yet unrecognized by science. This "dynamic correlate" is the manifestation of the activity of the etheric double; which sets into motion certain vibratory activities which, though they are not physical vibrations, are their counterpart or _equivalent_ on the plane above matter--the "astral" plane, if the term be allowable; which is parallel to, but not identical with, the material plane. Thus by a sort of "doctrine of correspondences" we arrive at the conclusion that telepathic action is physical, in a sense, yet is not sufficiently physical to be measured by our instruments in the laboratory. The activity is, as it were, the _noumenon_, of which the physical vibration would be the phenomenon; but no phenomenal aspect of this activity may ever be manifested to us; and hence never be capable of being registered by science, as it exists today.

I do not know whether or not I have made this theory very comprehensible, but it seems to me some such theory might explain the facts and at the same time do away with the difficulties. At all events no theory of telepathy which has been advanced to date can be said to be explanatory, when all the facts are taken into consideration; and if this first tentative groping serves to stimulate others to speculate, and above all to _experiment_, in this obscure field, I shall feel that a first onward step has been taken toward a correct understanding of the "Marvels of Telepathy."

FOOTNOTES:

[40] See Dr. G. B. Ermacora's paper in _Proceedings_, S.P.R., vol. xi.

pp. 235-308.

[41] Professor Henry Sidgwick, as we know, was Professor of Moral Philosophy in Cambridge, and his works on _Ethics_ and _Political Economy_ are considered standard in all countries.

[42] This is the argument put forward by, e.g., Carl Snyder, in his _New Conceptions in Science_, pp. 306-7.

[43] See my article in _The Monist_ (July-September 1913, pp. 445-58), "Earlier Theories of Gravity."--H. C.

[44] Especially Dr. Ochorowicz, in his excellent work, _Mental Suggestion_, to which I am indebted for several of the ideas which follow.

CHAPTER IX

THE USES AND ABUSES OF MIND-CURE

Within the past few years the country has been flooded by a host of books, pamphlets, and periodicals dealing with "psychotherapy" and mind-cure in general. In some ways it would be impossible to exaggerate the good which this has done. It has cheered-up many desponding souls; it has brightened many a life; it has stimulated activities and lines of thought which otherwise would have remained dormant; it has added real zest to life and made it worth living. Undoubtedly, too, real cures have been effected by means of these modern mental methods, and any one who denies this must surely be ignorant of the vast amount of steadily acc.u.mulating evidence in their favour. The many advantages of the system are doubtless pointed out with acuteness and insisted upon with vigour in the books which defend it, and need not be re-stated here. And yet, while I acknowledge all this; while I am forced to admit the many wonderful cures and much mental relief on account of these newer methods of healing, I still believe that a vast amount of harm is also brought about by the incautious application of the doctrines taught; by over-enthusiasm for the ideals which are ever before us, luring us on and on. In the present chapter, therefore, I propose to show in what these pitfalls consist; to ill.u.s.trate some of the errors into which over-enthusiastic "mental-curists" are apt to fall.

First of all, however, a confession of faith! For a number of years I believed as implicitly as it was possible for any one to believe in the great power of mind to cure disease. I read nearly every book of importance that had been published on this theme--including Mrs. Eddy's books, all the standard works on hypnotism, mind-cure, faith-cure, new thought, etc. I was deeply imbued with the truths they contained. I became greatly opposed to the so-called "materialism" of medical science. The rationality and philosophical truth of the mind-cure systems appeared to me irrefutable.

The fundamentals of the system are indeed well laid. We know of the tremendous effects of the emotions upon the body--its functions, secretions, etc. Cheering faith and optimism are a.s.suredly great incentives to health; more than that, they are actual physiological health-stimulators. We know that we can make ourselves ill by morbid and unwholesome thoughts; and, as Feuchtersleben says: "If the imagination can make man sick, can it not make him well?" By opening up the great "sluice-gates" of the organism we somehow allow a great influx of spiritual energy to pervade us, and the disease vanishes. It is a very fascinating doctrine, and, for many diseases, doubtless a true one.

In spite of all this, however, I believe the present tendency to treat all diseases--or next to all--by purely mental methods is a great mistake. It leaves many persons ill and crippled for life; it allows many hundreds of others to sink and fall into premature graves.

And the first objection I would make to mind and faith-curing, and all kindred systems, is this: that _they tend to suppress symptoms rather than remove causes_. This is a very grave objection indeed. If one suffers constantly from constipation or dyspepsia, the natural habit of the mind would be to worry about them more or less and take steps to prevent their continued progress. But the faith and mind-curists say: "No, it is not at all important; imagine yourself whole and well, and whole and well you will be!" Many persons have done this and their troubles have, apparently, lessened and disappeared. They may have and they may not. It is easy to ignore troubles of this kind; but this sort of ostrich-philosophy, which buries its head in the sand and refuses to look at what is before its eyes, is not natural or by any means the best for the bodily organism. Ignoring symptoms does not cure them. What such persons fail to take into account is this: that any unpleasant symptom which may have arisen must be due to _some cause_--sickness and disease do not arise _de novo_ and without just cause. This is not the order of a good and kind nature. It must be due to _something_, and generally that "something" is the condition of the body at the time; and that condition depends, in turn, upon the previous habits and modes of life.

These have engendered the diseased condition we see before us; and the only effective and rational way to stop the effects--the symptoms--is to stop the causes, to change the habits of life which have led to such results; and not to tinker with the effects. Even pain may be ignored to some extent; but pain is due to a certain pathological state which requires treatment. It is simply an indication of an existing bodily condition. What is the good of ignoring that state, when it exists?

Symptoms may be ignored, but the causes of those symptoms run on in the body, nevertheless, and in the end work havoc and breed sickness and decay.

I am aware of the fact that the Christian Scientists, e.g., would reply to this that the bodily state (there is no body, according to them, but we let that pa.s.s, for the moment) _is_ cured at the same time; that, by the mere affirmation that the body is whole, we thereby make it whole; we do not suppress symptoms, we remove causes as well. This I deny, at least in many cases. I have seen too many of such "cures" _and relapses_ not to know whereof I speak. A patient goes to a "healer" and becomes "cured." A few weeks or months later his trouble returns; or, if not the same trouble, another and perhaps a worse one. This is "cured" in turn, and so on.

Now it is a well-known fact that a disease suppressed in one place or one direction has a tendency to break out in another. It has been gathering in force all the time within the body, and finally bursts forth again worse than before. "And the last state of that man was worse than the first." The _causes_ have run on. Similar causes can produce opposite effects--just as opposite causes can produce similar effects.

Although no tangible connection between the first and the second illness can be traced, it is there nevertheless; and both have been produced by a common cause. We cannot ignore causes; we must treat them; and if we do not, they will, in the majority of cases, repay us a thousandfold for our past neglect.

When a person is diseased the majority of mental-scientists would at least admit that certain unphysiological conditions were present and needed to be overcome. If this be so, I ask: Why should we allow the body to become diseased at all and thus necessitate its cure by mental or any other means? Would it not be much simpler to prevent such a diseased condition, in the first place, by proper physiological habits of life; and so render any cure by mental or other means unnecessary? It seems to me that, by thus allowing the body to become diseased, and then "curing" it by mental control (even granting that this is the case), we burn the candle at both ends--for the reason that we devitalize the body by allowing it to become diseased and then waste more energy in the mental effort to get well again! Would it not be more simple and more philosophical so to regulate the life that such diseased states and such cures are unnecessary?

The fundamentals of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine are well known. G.o.d is all in all; G.o.d is good; hence all is good. Sin and sickness are delusions of poor mortal mind. They do not really exist. And this, they say, may easily be proved--on the one hand by the cures which take place; and on the other by the doctrine of idealism, which philosophers and scientists alike are accepting more and more as a satisfactory interpretation of the universe. The whole system is very delightful--and very illusory!

In the first place, as to the cures. I must contend that because some remarkable cures have been effected, that, therefore, the _doctrines_ of Christian Science are not thereby established. We know similar cures have been effected at Lourdes; over the bones of saints (which did not really exist under the sacred cloth); over (fraudulent) "chips of the Cross"; by means of hypnotism, and in a hundred ways. The whole root of the matter lies in auto-suggestion; in the patient's faith in himself, and in the degree of faith he places in the curing object or dogma. The dogma may be quite false, but the cures are effected just the same.

Because cures are effected by Christian Science methods, therefore, it is no proof whatever that the Christian Science theology or philosophy is right. It may be one huge error, but the cures would be effected just the same--provided the faith, the emotions, the imagination and spirit of the patient be touched in an appropriate manner.

True it is that science and philosophy tend towards idealism; and the belief that there is, strictly speaking, "no matter." But this belief need not make us any the more believers in Christian Science and its methods. There is a subtle error here which is unperceived by the majority. When first the truth reaches the mind that there is "no matter" that matter cannot feel, etc., it bursts like a flood of light upon the unfettered mind and appears a fact so overwhelmingly great, so vast and so true, that to gainsay it would be to acknowledge ignorance of its teaching; to admit intellectual shortsightedness. (This is perhaps the reason for the supercilious superiority of many Christian Scientists; they imagine that no one perceives this truth but themselves.) And once grasped, is it not self-evident, and does not all else follow in consequence? At first sight it would indeed appear so!

The great error, however, lies here. Because this fact is _theoretically_ true, it is not _practically_ true also. We may admit the one; we cannot accept the other. The fallacy has been clearly pointed out by Sir Oliver Lodge (_Hibbert Journal_, January, 1905), and I cannot do better than to quote his words in this connection. He says:

"We cannot be permanently satisfied with dualism, but it is possible to be over-hasty and also too precisely insistent. There are those who seem to think that a monistic view of existence precludes the legitimacy of speaking of soul and body, or of G.o.d and spiritual things, or of guidance and management, at all; that is to say, they seem to think that because these things can be _ultimately_ unified, therefore they are unified proximately and for practical purposes. We might as well urge that it is incorrect to speak of the chemical elements, or of the various materials with which, in daily life, we have to deal, or of the structures in which we live, or which we see and handle, as separate and real things, because in the last resort we believe that they may all be reduced to a segregation of corpuscles, or to some other mode of unity.... The language of dualism or of multiplism is not incorrect or inappropriable or superseded because we catch ideal glimpses of an ultimate unity; nor would it be any the less appropriable if the underlying unity could be more clearly or completely grasped. The material world may be an aspect of the spiritual world, or _vice versa_ perhaps; or both may be aspects of something else; but both are realities, just the same, and there need be no hesitation in speaking of them clearly and distinctly as, for practical purposes, separate ent.i.ties."

This, it seems to me, disposes of the argument for Christian Science drawn from idealism. No matter whether the material world exists or not, we always have to live _as if_ it existed. If we close our eyes and walk across the room, we shall be rudely stopped by the brick wall at the opposite end when we come to it. No matter how strongly we believe that such a wall does not exist, it does, nevertheless, stop us; we have to live _as if_ it existed. And, just so, it seems to me; no matter how strongly we may believe that the body does not exist, we always have to live and act _as if_ it existed--so long, at least, as we live in and inhabit the body at all.

Christian Science says that hygiene, diet, etc., are unimportant factors in the cure of disease. They "do not count." Apart from the immediate, practical disproof which cases of blood-poisoning, etc., would offer to such a theory, it may also be disproved theoretically. For if it be unnecessary, e.g., to fast during illness--if food is a negligible quant.i.ty and can be left out of account--why do Christian Scientists ever eat at all? If food is unimportant in one case, it must be in the other case also. And if it be replied to this, as it is, that the only reason for food is because the Christian Scientists are not yet sufficiently "advanced" and have not yet sufficient "enlightenment" to do without it; then, I reply, by the same logic they are not as yet sufficiently advanced, and have not as yet sufficient knowledge to treat all cases of accident and disease, which, in point of fact, they do treat. If the limitation be acknowledged in one direction, it must be acknowledged in the other direction also. Christian Scientists cannot yet live without food because they have not yet sufficiently "perfected"

themselves. So, in like manner, they should not treat many cases of disease they do treat because they have not yet sufficiently "perfected"

themselves.

I might advance arguments such as the above to fill many pages. But I do not think it necessary. As a cure for certain functional diseases, for nervous disorders, and for many of the affections of the mind, mental methods of treatment must be acknowledged to be a great and a most important factor. But when an organic lesion is present, in grave states demanding immediate attention, I think it little short of criminal that such states should meet with almost total neglect because of the perverted ideas of physiology and a sickly sentimentalism illogically extended from the philosophical doctrine of idealism. As a metaphysical doctrine, it may be correct; as a basis for medical practice, it is certainly incorrect. Let us once more set our feet to earth and determine to live a good and a useful life in the material world of which we undoubtedly form a part. We are _in_ a material world, and I believe we should be _of_ it. I, for one, raise my voice in protest against the tide of intellectual asceticism which is inclined to accept without question the modern doctrine and methods of "psychotherapy" and mind-cure in place of the more rational and certain measures of hygiene and medicine. The further a pendulum swings in one direction, the further will it swing in the other, when released. And I believe that the modern extreme acceptance of faith and mind-cure in all its forms is but the moral and intellectual and spiritual reaction against the materialism of the past generation. Hail the day when it again swings back to its mid-position; and when mental methods of cure and bodily hygiene shall together march hand in hand to the joint attack against disease! They each have their mission to fulfil, their cases to cure.

Tolerance, tolerance! Let them each recognize the rights of the other!

CHAPTER X

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE OUIJA BOARD[45]