Christian pneumatopathy : or, the philosophy of mental healing

Preface

The earnest advocacy and the practical exemplification of the power of mental healing, and their rapid diffusion, rank among the most striking phenomena of our times. Immense is the good, both physical and metaphysical which has thus been accomplished. Great, too, is the intellectual impulse which has hence been imparted to thousands of minds who have been led by this movement to grapple vigorously with the most subtle and profound of metaphysical problems, in their hopeful effort to understand the philosophy of mental healing.

That these efforts have, in some cases, been rather crude, is only what were to be expected. All the earlier and initial efforts of thought in any direction, have been crude compared with the matured results of later times. The geocentric theory of astronomy preceded the Copernician. The phenomena of Paleontology had numerous ludicrous explanations before the modern doctrine of geology was born and reared. All the sciences have exemplified the same psychological law. Psychology and metaphysics have been no exception. Considered in this light, even the crudest of the writing on this subject which in recent years have so rapidly issued from the press, deserve respectful consideration. Partially

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under this cover the author may hope for some indulgence for the imperfections of the following exposition of Pneumatopathy. It ought to be some improvement on its predecessors in the same line ; and this, as it is hoped, may be found to be true. This only can justify its publication, and certainly nothing less will commend it to the public and secure readers.

Some writers will doubtless think that certain fallacious notions might have been better passed over in silence. But those which have been noticed are wide-spread, and by many people they are deemed of supreme importance and infallibly true ; and, as thence armed with divine authority to denounce whatever does not bow to them. They are eminently and painfully obstructive, and they divide into hostile camps, parties which ought to be only friendly rivals and fraternal co-operatives in a great common cause. These fallacies, too, are especially repulsive to the understanding of intelligent lookers on ; and they thus operate widely and powerfully as an injurious prejudice against our whole cause.

Besides, it helps to a more definite conception and understanding of a truth to view its proofs negatively as well as positively, by seeing the refutation of its opposites. It thus becomes more clearly marked off from rival error, and shines both by direct radiation and reflected light.

Some there are who would rather have us wrap up the errors exposed, for fear the exposure will hurt the cause. But truth cannot be harmed by truth, and a studied concealment is calculated to excite distrust, and indicates insincerity or a lack of a genuine conviction of the verity

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of the principles avowed. In the personal ministration and the practical application of truth there is a sphere for the exercise of prudence. But in philosophy there is no such call for delicacy. We want the truth, pure and simple, sharply discriminated from error. Here it is supposed there are no personal or party interests to be conserved or promoted, and that the one only interest to be considered is the removal of error and the advancement of the truth.

It is a ground of frequent regret that the friends of mental healing are divided into numerous opposing schools. The regret is natural, but equally natural is the occasion of it. Such schools are inevitable till dogmatism and mere theoretic speculation give place to the method of science; and, in the meanwhile, these schools are doing their best to show up a portion of supposed truth. They are educating each other and the world. This will continue till each discerns its own errors, and appreciates what is true in the theory of its opponents, so that they can come together and "have all things common."

One of the defects of much of our Pneumatopathic literature is its want of a critical spirit and faculty. Two or three of our earlier writers are well read and have a fund of ideas. But they lack discrimination, and betray too little of the discipline which should mark the qualified expositor of philosophy. They are apt to quote passages from various writers without comprehending them, and use them without due discrimination. They make other men's books obscure their own. One or two cases of this kind the author has thought fit to notice, by way of example and suggested caution. While

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we ought to be acquainted with the world's thought, we ought to know its value and significance before we attempt to use it, and so use it with critical intelligence.

One of the most important desiderata in our moral and intellectual life is a strong conviction without dogmatism. Without strong conviction there is no moral power, and nowhere, is there more need than in the vocation of mental healing. There is good and rational ground for such conviction, and there is really no want of conviction among us on this great subject. The danger and fault here is that this conviction may extend to incidental notions and degenerate into dogmatism. It is also a danger into which some among us have fallen very deeply, and they should serve as a warning to others. While strong in his own convictions, the author propounds no dogmas for others to adopt.

Minds which are chiefly woven of the strands of custom, and especially if all their interests are of the same fabric, are disposed to describe mental healers in contemptuous epithets, as quacks and charlatans. We excuse some of them on the score of their strong provocation, which is of the same kind as that of the excited and turbulent shrine-maker of Ephesus. But still we are tempted to retort by throwing a stone into their fragile house of crystal. Nothing on earth that has stood through ages has ever been marked by various forms of false pretense so much as the brotherhood of these administrators of physicial poisons for medicine. Even a degenerate priesthood has scarcely surpassed them here, for these from the nature of the case could impose on themselves more readily than the physical doctors. The patron saint of these doctors among the

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Greeks, who were the national genius of the world, was Hippocrates. His name is still held in memory and exalted honor for his supposed extraordinary medical wisdom. We have some records which show the quality of that wisdom. It is said, for instance, that he claimed to cure grave maladies by such things as the pulverised eye of an insect, the tooth of a fox, the horn of a goat, the heart of a mouse, the blood of a white pup, the bile of a turbulent heifer. Not a partical better than these are the most honored medicines of modern times, of which abundant proof can easily be furnished. Within a centuary they have become systematically worse, because uniformly poisonous, with their deadly qualities concealed under the terms of a dead language. For " the healing art " and for many physicians we have the highest respect ; but we claim a right to attempt to improve on their method ; and this is the head and front of our offending as Pneumatopathists.

The author here offers to the world a little of what he thinks it needs and will accept. But it is of no value as a dogma, but only as a stimulant to the intellectual and spiritual life of some to whom it may be adapted ; and from various quarters the author has been glad to derive the instruction and development which have prompted him to undertake the work here offered to the public ; and especially, and with distinguished consideration, it is hereby dedicated to the service of his fellow-workers and investigators in this noble field of metaphysical toil.

Chapter I. Rise Of Pneumatopathy Into Acknowleged Importance

Pneumatopathy is a precise and comprehensive term to designate the theory and practice of mental healing. It may be used comprehensively to designate all such theories. In that significance it has a distinct and preeminent place in the circle of human thought, and is a much needed word. There is perhaps no other term inventable that can properly and completely fill so lofty and large a place. One writer has proposed phrenopathy to fill this office. But that term properly denotes the pathology of the brain, and belongs wholly to the phrenologists, who have long ago appropriated the first part of the term, and that which is the most distinctive. It is plainly far too material to express the theory and practice of pure mental healing.

Another writer proposes psychopathy to express all this. This is much better than phrenopathy. It is more supersensible. But it is not sufficently intellectual. Psyche, like our word soul, very frequently ranks mentally below our word spirit and the Greek word pneuma. When soul and spirit, psyche and pneuma are used distinctively, psyche and soul denote rather the emotional power of our supersensible nature, while mind and spirit and pneuma denote the superior and more intellectual element. Now it is this higher element which needs expression, as this is the agent which heals, and so the first part of our word falls naturally into position, while the second. part of the word expresses the sensitive part of our nature on which the active intelligence operates. Pneumatopathy is therefore the perfect expression of the great idea of mental healing, and comprehends all possible theories. For this end we have formed it, and we use it in this significance.

Some distinctive epithet will then be necessary to express any one of the different theories of mental healing. The author prefers the epithet " Christian " to all others, because he believes that his theory is in spirit and tendency eminently Christian. He might have been content with the preadopted phrase " Christian Science;" but it stands for some ideas which are equally unchristian and unscientific, and the adoption of the phrase would seem to sanction those errors. Besides, the term science is not distinctive. Christian theology is Christian science, but it is not the science we have in view. We therefore want a term which defines our particular science as mental healers, and that is found in Pneumatopathy, and the adjective, Christian, defines it still further as expressive of characteristic Christian principle on this subject.

The subject of Pneumatopathy rises in recognized importance with the progress of human intelligence. But among some of the lower conditions of our race the "medicine men " have a place of power, and it is a striking, verefiable fact that their methods are largely mental. They operate on the imagination and on the hope and fear of their patients. Their method has generally been curtly disposed of as an appeal to superstition ; and so the intrinsic mentality of the curative (and sometimes destructive) action has been overlooked. From the beginning the curative action has been mental, even when men did not understand their own mental processes. A scientific analysis of this was impossible before the dawn of modern science.

Mind-healing of some kind has been an element more or less prominent in all religions. In the noblest of them all it is conspicuous; and in Jesus and his most eminent apostles it becomes the very atmosphere on which are fed and borne their historic name and fame. Their wonders in mind-healing seem to be the fragrant and incorruptible spices in which all their other excellencies are embalmed and preserved to future ages. The Christian Church Catholic has always claimed a special endowment of mind-healing virtue as her perpetual heritage from the Lord, though many protestant divines, from sectarian impulses, have denied the claim to all but the Apostolic Church, or to times not much later. Other protestant divines of equal note have allowed that all churches ought in some degree to have and verify a power of this kind.

In recent times, the question has been carried outside the pale of the Church and divested of its supernatural aspect. Admitting the frequent recurrence of certain wonderful phenomena, the new question has been raised, whether we cannot reduce them to the operation of known laws of mind or of organized matter. We shall then widen, they say, our knowledge and divest miracles of their specially marvelous element ; and by some it is supposed that we shall extrude God, as well as all supernaturalism, from the sphere of the knowable and even of the conceivable.

The initial essays of what may be called the modern movement were very crude. Here the sense rules, and makes experiments and decrees for spirit. At first Mr. Mesmer thought the healing agent was magnetic. He, therefore, used magnetic iron tractors, which he traced over the bodies of his patients. After seeing Gasner achieve the same results by manipulation, he inferred that the healing virtue was in his body. It was thence denominated animal magnetism, alias mesmerism. Then from the labors of others it became designated as electro-biology and vital electricity. Finally our savants, like Carpenter and Braid, have found it all out, and have resolved it into the effect of mental concentration and expectant attention and hypnotism. This indicates progress. The cause and agent are now alleged to be wholly mental. This moves in our line and reaches to our outposts. It is wrong only by incompletness. As hypnotism, it is a repression of thought. As expectant attention, it is a mental surrender to error by surrender to the expected. We want an explanation which is complete and wide awake, and thoroughly mental, and this we think is furnished in Christian Pneumatopathy, in brief outline.

It was in the light given to it here that I at first understood the phrase " Christian Science." I liked the phrase, both from my religious feelings and scientific convictions. I wanted to see Christianity more scientifically and philosophically conceived and expounded ; and I indulged the hope that this was one of the great lines of its progress. But having found myself here mistaken, I adopted a term which is at once precise and comprehensive and significant — Pneumatopathy.

Pneumatopathy cannot be the enemy of any of the sciences, or hostile to any honest line of intellectual labor and research. It can assimilate them, as it must, if it be true. In fact as all is mind, all of them are branches of Pneumatopathy. Their adherents do not know this, because they do not understand Pneumatopathy and the fundamental verity on which it stands, that all is mind. From this principle it follows that all sensible phenomena are only a lower department of mental phenomena. Hence, on the other hand, anatomy, surgery and physiology are no enemies to Pneumatopathy, but aids, and subordinate forms in which it works. The same holds true of all the other physicial sciences, so far as their procedure is just and truly scientific. Pneumatopathy is the focal center of them all, and claims the service and allegience of all ; just as the head claims the service and allegience of all the members of the body. We therefore bespeak the attention and good will and co-operation of all parties ; and we are sure they will not disappoint us, though they may not accord with us in all our claims and doctrines.

Pneumatopathy is therefore not necessarily opposed either to clairvoyance or mesmerism or spiritualism, or any other class of manifestations which legitimately tend toward a fuller knowledge and development of the mental powers of man. Pneumatopathy is not an iconoclast, but an architect, and is glad to employ all the arts and sciences as her builders, excavators, masons, sculptors, and decorators ; and she alone is judge of their relative duties and positions, and she draws the plan and makes the assignment of places for all.

A new intellectual era is dawning. A new significance is going to be attached to all human things, whence new forces in all directions will be evolved All things are changing, and that in the line of progress; and progress is always in the line of augmented mentality and spirituality. All the forms of disease are changing, and also the method of treating them. They are becoming evermore closely allied with the nervous system and the brain, and so with the mind ; and their treatment must therefore have a growing quality of mentality. The regular physicians are learning to rely less on physicial medicine and more on mental conditions. Therefore, to make this subject a topic of special and chief study must be wise, and in accordance with the march of the human mind.

The lower and sensible forms of action and influence are not to be neglected and despised. Nothing whatever should be so treated. All things, all phenomena? have a place and an effective relation to everything else, and true science consists in observing these relations. Nothing is more fully agreed on in modern times than that all things constitute a unity of forces and convictions. Free-thinker and orthodox unite in this. Therefore the sensible and the supersensible have a living relation to each other. That does not mean that the relation is all on one side, that there is anywhere an action without an equal reaction. It therefore does not mean that while mind acts on body, body does not act on mind ; on the other hand, that body acts on mind without any reaction from mind. Therefore both are to be the subject of careful study and investigation, and both to be used according to their normal and vital relations.

But as the supersensible is the superior, and the evident end of the sensible, this should receive the greater attention, should be treated with the greater respect, and in its light all else should be contemplated. The supersensible mind should rule, and all lower forces should be treated as subordinate, and as of value only in relation to this. Thus mind should be made practically and theoretically the end of all and the king of all. In medicine, or the healing art, therefore, Pneumatopathy is the pathy which covers and includes all others that are legitimate, and puts them all in their proper relations and positions relative to each other, and to the whole, the pneuma or spirit.

Hence the sober, scientific precision of our method- It is, like all true science and philosophy, limitless in its breadth. It has no artificial boundaries and exclusiveness. Nor is it a blind, empirical eclecticism. It is broad by principle, and what it excludes or includes is so treated by law. It is forever the focal point of all thought and action ; and except as we are working in a line toward that focus we are not working philosophically. Here we rest our case ; and on this issue we appeal to the expanding thought of the world, confident of a coming great success, and for which we both labor and wait.

Pneumatopathy involves an entire system of metaphysics, religion and theology. Without all this, one may have considerable gifts of mental healing, just as one may be a good man without being a profuncl student in the science of religion and morals. Yet knowledge is always power ; and men of intelligence will always try to understand their own mental processes and the laws of the universe, sensible and supersensible. The more thorough is their knowledge and the more full and clear their comprehension of the philosophy of this subject, the more firm and unwavering will be their mental action in the process of mental healing. The theory, well understood, is thus a living power in its practical application.

This book is but an epitome of the thoughts and facts, and valuable truths, which belong to the subject on which it treats. It is presented as a guard against some very foolish and wild notions, which have gained currency under the name of Christian Science, and as a broader and more philosophical exposition of the foundations and laws of mental healing, or the broader subject of Pneumatopathy.

Some writers on the subject of mental healing, have done well. Respectable in learning, and patient in the accumulation of a certain class of data, they have presented a strong array of evidence of the power of mind over the body; they have also done something, one of them in particular, Rev. W. F. Evans, in expounding the philosophy of the subject ; but they are excessively one sided at the best. They have never recognized the converse fact, that the body has a power, large and various, over the supersensible faculties; and therefore they cannot do anything by way of a scientific exposition of the relations of the two classes of phenomena. Further, they do not take into consideration, what should be obvious to all who affirm that mind is the only reality and substance, that the body is mind, a congeries of modes of mind, the lower forms, in which the mind is self-manifested, and that the same is true of all of the phenomena of the external world, and all organisms, external to our own. This oversight creates another hiatus in our work, and reveals a task of the first importance, which has not been conceived, much less performed, namely, an exposition of the subject which reduces all phenomena to one all-embracing mental unity, and furnishes the laws by which in unity all are governed ; a Pneumatopathy which covers all the knowable, whether it be called matter or spirit, body or mind, and which also therefore utilizes all phenomena in their proper relations to others, thus disclosing a panopathy as the expression of Pneumatopathy.

The author, from his pre-college days, has been occupied to a large extent in studies which are vitally allied with the present theme, and in those earlier days he became a firm believer in egoistic idealism, or the doctrine that all is mind, that whatever is immediately known is the ego, and its concious modes. This he has studied and expounded from a purely philosophical aspect during many years in the past ; and it is only in recent years that he has been led to connect it directly with the healing agency, while he has always seen that it removed all the scientific difficulties pertaining to the

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conception of miracles, and that it brings them more directly within the range of an extensive attainability among men ; yet he treated it irrespective of its direct practical bearing upon the profession of mental healing, while conscious of its application thereto. Of late years he has made it a special study in this line and direction, and has devoted to this study most of his time. This book is set forth in the hope that it will serve as an initial guide to inquirers on this subject, and also as a text-book in classes studying it under the direction of a competent teacher. The author is far from wishing to imitate those who oppose all reading except one book. " Prove all things." Read all, and sift the chaff from the wheat. All have some good in them, some more than others, and so far all have much room for improvement, which is sure to come from trained minds who study the subject for the love of it and for the advancement of truth.

The author has not gone into detail in proving the fact or the power of mental healing. It is assumed that that has been already well and variously performed. Examples are innumerable, and generally familiar ; the only question that remains concerns the law which the facts exemplify. This law, or set of laws, which constitute the science of the subject, is the great quest.

A book on philosophy should not be a mere advertisement, and therefore little is herein said of the author. He is lost in the great principles unfolded. The Truth is everything. Its power is great, and often wonderful. We have been again and again surprised in the course of our practice and observation to see its operation, to see how mental action in the Truth and the Spirit has been a power both great and rapid in its effect. This is as it should be, because mind is all, and its supersensible action is of a higher rank than sensible action.

Let us now consider some of the causes of the sudden rise of Pneumatopathy into power and influence, as indicative of its future influence and triumphant reign.

The sudden rise of this subject into almost universal prominence is one of the most striking psychological phenomena in history. Waves of special thought and feeling of great power have occasionally swept over communities, and for a period defied all the powers of resistance from the scoffer and preacher, and the prosaic utterance of the common earthly duties and demands ; and then after a while they have ebbed away and been soon forgotten. Mental healing may be one of these mental tidal waves of transient and unhealthy influence. So some contend. Time alone can tell, for the conviction of all, though some of us can prophesy with strong assurance and to the conviction of many.

One of the causes of its rapid emergence into prominence is a powerful reaction against the materialism which our age has developed. Evolution has been conceived materialistically. All who received it thoroughly were supposed to be logically materialists. Hence a sort of materialistic monism was very prevalent and very confident, if not also very dogmatic.

Against this all our higher and more spiritual faculties revolted. Men who could not rebut evolution could not admit its alleged and apparent materialistic conclusion. They therefore resorted to every possible evasion, and were ready to welcome every ally in their work. Among these allies appears the doctrine of mental healing, and the set of ideas associated with it by all parties. Mental healing appeals to the senses, and can be tested by all. Health is welcomed by all, and the healing is supposed to prove the independent power of mind. If all this is true, it is more than any form of materialism can stand. It is, therefore, one of the most natural and powerful reactions against materialism.

Another of these reactive agencies against materialism is modern spiritualism ; and it is very powerful. Its adherents are numerous and its influence is very subtle and wide spread. If it is true, it furnishes sensible proof of our conscious existence after the dissolution of our grosser organism ; and this is incompatible with the doctrine that our conscious life is only either a mode or an effect of this organism.

But then this very extensively degenerates into a peep and mutter, hide and seek effort at intercourse with imperfect fellow-creatures, while the great God, the supremest of all facts and potencies, is by many forgotten or ignored, and even denied. This is every way pernicious, and infinitely degrading. It would in the end be little better than materialism itself ; because a self-conscious Being of infinite perfection is the only guarantee of our eternal welfare in the ultimate and everlasting domination of the right and the true.

Hence to many minds of a spiritual order, the vulgar spiritualism is offensive. These want a spiritualism which is more exaltedly spiritual. They want the Infinite Spirit to be made all in all, and matter to be nothing but a transient and sensible phenomenon ; and all finite beings but the self-conscious reflectors of the infinite consciousness. These by the ruling quality of their minds are pneumatopathists. On this basis they naturally seek to explain all the phenomena of mental healing ; and from this disposition they naturally oppose the doctrine that the healing is done by disembodied human agencies, irrespective of God, and without a direct reference to him as the only ultimate power. But then this is only an accident, a temporary and rudimentary feature of spiritualism, not its essential quality, and this objectionable feature may soon pass away, and lofty minds may hold to a spiritualism which is not obnoxious to these obj ections, and which also violates no law of mind. As we are agencies of the divine healing power, it is conceivable that God may, under certain conditions, use us for the same work, after we have passed from this life, revealing a spiritualism which is rational, devout and holy and lovely.

Another cause is the manifest progress in psychical knowledge and interest in all psychical studies. The age has come to see that matter is an insignificant factor compared with mind, that mind is nature's king, as science is everywhere proving. Even physical science pays homage to mind, as the source of all its victories. We are thus led to an indefinite surmise as to the extent of the power of mind over matter ; and are quite ready to welcome any apparent proof of its direct power over disease and all bodily infirmities. Some are doubtless too ready to believe and to accept coincidences as causes. At all events these things have helped to bring a very great and sublime thought to the front, and it will not retire to the rear till it is compelled by the resistless power of opposing scientific evidence.

The progress of idealistic conception has also had an influence in the same direction. All modern Germans are idealists of one type or another, and English psychologists, and even the Scotch, have been unable to resist its claims, so that they are almost unanimous in admitting that all we directly know are subjective states, thus making all phenomena mental, all forms and sensible objects, modes of mind. So mind, as conscious subject, is the only known reality and power. What is the extent of this power we know not. We are continually discovering new laws, which are all laws of mind ; and who shall say that we shall not disclose a law and power of direct healing ? None. We cannot prove the negative ; and others may have satisfactory evidence of the affirmative.