Mind-cure on a material basis

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EARLY NEW EXGLAXD PEOPLE.

Chapter I. The Cuke Of Disease By Concentkation Of Thought

The writer, having acquired the method of curing disease which is practised by the " Christian Scientists," or " Metaphysicians," commonly called Mind-curers, came to the conclusion that the success attending that method is due to Concentration of Thought^ and not to the theology underlying the method.

That disease, even organic, can be cured^ as well as caused, by the Mind, or what is termed the Imagination, is a well-attested fact. In regard to the medical and popular use of the term. Dr. Hack Tuke observes, —

" It signifies, in popular and medical language, that a man imagines certain (bodily) phenomena to have occurred which have not ; or it is meant that certain bodily phenomena which really have occurred are due to no other cause than that he imagined they would. The signification of the term

g contained in the first clause is too often assumed to be the whole truth. That of the second clause is almost, if not altogether, lost sight of. Because effects are produced, and cures performed, by means of a mental condition called the Imagination, it is constantly assumed that these results are imaginary; in other words, that they are all fancy. This is much to be deplored, and one of the objects we have in view is to dispel, as far as possible, so mischievous an error. It is generally implied that these phenomena are of a merely functional or subjective character, more or less dependent on the state of mind, more especially the Will, and that a change of mental condition has been naturally followed by a change in the phenomena, although apparently physical. Such is the broad definition of the Imagination, as it presents itself to the mind when employed in reference to medical facts of every-day occurrence. This is what the orthodox practitioner means, as he complacently smiles, or is indignant, when the success of his heterodox rival is dinned into his ears, and he asserts that it was all the effect of Imagination ; and, in this sense, he is understood by his assailant. But the fact remains, and because it remains, and cannot be really explained-away, it must be explained. The essential must be separated from the accidental, and utilized for therapeutical purposes. It matters little to the patient by what name the remedy is called, whether ' Imagination,' or some of the many ' pathies ' of the day. It is emphatically a case in

BY CONCENTKATION OF THOUGHT. 11

which ' a rose by any other name will smell as sweet.' But to the philosophical practitioner it ought to matter a great deal ; it ought to be a question of exceeding interest." ^

Dr. Tuke thinks that what really happens when one is cured by what is termed the Imagination ^ is, that the attention is arrested and forcibly directed to the part, the prominent idea being the firm conviction that the morbid symptoms will pass away. He observes, —

" On analyzing the mental states combined under the medical and popular use of the term [Imaginnation], it will be found that the Attention is strongly directed to a part of the body with which certain phenomena are associated, that the ideas most vividly presented to the mind are in direct relation to them, and that the force of these ideas is intensified by accompanying states of mind already referred to — Expectation, Hope, or Faith. When a person, on swallowing a bread-pill in the belief that it has aperient properties, is purged, it is said to be through his Imagination ; the mental condition present yielding, on analysis, a definite direction of thought to the intestinal canal ; such leading idea exciting the same peristaltic action

1 Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health and Disease, pp. 18, 19, L. 1872.

'■^ " The Imagination," says Dr. Tuke, " is the grandest mechanical power that the human intelligence possesses, and one which will appear more and more marvellous the longer we consider it. It is an operation of mind altogether inexplicable, and can only be compared with chemical affinity " — vol. cit. p. 21.

as would have been induced by castor oil. The force of this current of thought is augmented by Expectation " (vol. cit. p. 19).

In this connection the eminent English physiologist, Dr. William B. Carpenter, observes : " Of the influence of this ' expectancy ' in producing remarkable changes in the bodily organism, either curative or morbid, the history of Medicine affords abundant and varied illustrations " (^Mesmerism and Spiritualism^ p. 12, L. 1877).

According to Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Hack Tuke, Dr. Charles Fayette Taylor, Dr. Thomas Laycock, Sir William Holland, and others, if a person can be led to expect a certain result, that result is sure to follow.

Dr. Carpenter's theory is, that expectation of either health or disease may become the dominant idea in a person's brain, and so control the person both mentally and physically, producing either health or disease as the case may be. An idea may become the dominant idea in a person's brain, unconsciously to the person, as shown in epidemic Delusions.^

1 Of epidemic Delusions — the Flagellant and Dancing manias of the Middle Ages ; the supposed Demoniacal Possession in the nunneries of France ; the Mewing and Biting manias in the nunneries of Germany; the ecstatic revelations of Catholic and Protestant visionaries; the strange performances of the Convulsionnaires of St. Medad ; the Tarentism of Southern Italy; the Tigretier of Abyssinia; the Leaping Ague of Scotland— Dr. Carpenter says " the condition underlying them all is the subjection of the mind to a dominant idea^^ — vol. cit. p. 3. For an account of most of these delusions see Dr. Hecker's account

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The cure of disease by concentration of thought is probabl}^ effected by the idea of health becoming, unconsciously to the sick person, the dominant idea in the sick person's mind by transferred thought. Thus the mind-curer's mind is concentrated upon the idea that the sick person has no disease, and this idea, being transferred from the active brain of the mind-curer to the passive brain of the sick person, it becomes there the dominant idea, and the sick person becomes well.

That the dominant idea in the patient's mind becomes an idea of health in consequence of the thought of the mind-curer is evident from the fact that many mind-curers do not lead their patients to " expect a certain result " by talking to them ; also from the fact that cures are effected when the patient has no knowledge of being treated.

That thought can be transferred from one brain to another, the experiments made by the Society for Psychical Kesearch (London) have demonstrated. This Society, as is well known, embraces some of the most distinguished names in the scientific and philosophical circles of Great Britain.^

of the " Dancing mania," forming part of his treatise " On the Epidemics of the Middle Ages," translated for the Sydenham Society by Dr. Babington.

1 The President of the Society is Prof. Henry Sedgwick of Trinity College, Cambridge; while among the Vice-Presidents may be mentioned Prof. W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.E., of the Eoyal College of Science in Dublin; the Bishop of Carlisle; Prof. Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., of Cambridge; and Prof. Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., of the Owens College, Manchester.

The first report of the Committee on Thought-transferrence 1 given to the Society contains the following conclusion : " There does exist a group of phenomena to which the word ' thought-reading,' or, as we prefer to call it, thought-transferrence, may be applied, and which consist in the mental perception, by certain individuals at certain times, of a word or other object kept vividly before the mind of another person or persons, without any transmission through the recognized channels of sense " (^Mind Reading and Beyond^ p. 69, B. 1885, W. A. Hovey).

In regard to thought-reading Dr. Carpenter remarks : " Every one who admits ' there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy ' will be wise in maintaining a reserve of possibility as to phenomena which are not altogether opposed to the laws of physics or physiology, but rather transcend them. Some of the writer's own experiences have led him to suspect that a power of intuitively perceiving what is passing in the mind of another, which has been designated as ' thought-reading,' may, like certain forms of sense-perception, be extraordinarily exalted by the entire concentration of the attention " (^Mental Physiology, p. 633, N. Y. 1874).

The experiments made by the Society for Psy-

1 The committee consisted of Edmund Gurney, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; F. W. H. Myers, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College; F. Podmore, B.A., and Prof. Barrett.

BY CONCEKTEATION OF THOUGHT. 15

chical Research have proved that not only thoughts and visual impressions — diagrams and the like — but tastes and pains may be transferred from one mind to another by concentration of thought.

If concentration of thought can cause pains, is it unreasonable to assume that it can cure pains ?

As to the process by which thought is transferred from one brain to another, it is impossible at present to determine. The Committee on Thought-transferrence, just referred to, observe, —

'' It is quite open to surmise some sort of analogy to the familiar phenomena of the transmission and reception of vibratory energy.^ A swinging pendulum suspended from a solid support will throw into synchronous vibration another

1 Prof. Joseph Lovering, of Cambridge, Mass., says : "All structures, large or small, simple or complex, have a definite rate of vibration, depending on their materials, size, and shape, and as fixed as the fundamental note of a musical chord. . . . When the bridge at Colbrooke Dale was building, a fiddler came along and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders though this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant fiddler to fiddle away to his heart's content. One note after another was struck upon the strings, until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop." " Tyndall tells us that the Swiss muleteers tie up the bells of the mules, for fear that the tinkle should bring an avalanche down. The breaking of a drinking-glass by the human voice, when its fundamental note is sounded, is a well authenticated feat." "The nightingale is said to kill by the power of its notes " — Half-hourBecreations in Popular Science, Second Series, pp. 401, 402.

pendulum attached to tlie same support, if the period of oscillation of the two be the same ; the medium of transmission here being the solid material of the support. One tuning-fork or string in unison with another will communicate its impulses through the medium of the air. Glowing particles of a gas, acting through the luminiferous ether, can throw into sympathetic vibration cool molecules of the same substance at a distance. A permanent magnet brought into a room will throw any surrounding iron into a condition similar to its own ; and here the medium of communication is unknown. Similarly, we may conceive, if we please, with many modern philosophers, that for every thought there is a corresponding motion of the particles of the brain, and that this vibration of molecules of brain-stuff may be communicated to an intervening medium, and so pass under certain circumstances from one brain to another, with a corresponding simultaneity of impressions. No more than in the case of the magnetic phenomena is any investigator bound to determine the medium before inquiry into the fact of transit " (vol. cit. pp. 67, 68).

Serjeant Cox, President of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, tells us that the evidence of the phenomena of " thought-reading " ^ is overwhelming. He remarks : " No supernatural power

1 Serjeant Cox considers the term thought-reading to be misleading. He says: "The common conception of 'thonghtreading ' is that thoughts are things — words printed somehow

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need be invoked to explain these phenomena. Physiology will assist Psychology to a solution of the problem. The brain is the material — that is the molecular — organ by which the operations called mental are conducted. This brain is constructed of a countless multitude of fibres, so fine that many millions of them are contained within the compass of a sixpence. These fibres are instruments of infinite and inconceivable delicacy. They vibrate to waves of the atmosphere, and respond to vibrations of other brain fibres that are imperceptible to sense. Even the vastly coarser strings of a harp take up waves of the atmosphere^ that our senses do not perceive, and echo the sound made by other harp-strings in motion. But the atmosphere is not the only medium for transmitting motion.

"upon the mind or brain — which the person having the faculty of thought-reading peruses, precisely as he would read a book, or that it is a picture positively painted upon one mind and actually viewed by the other mind. With such a name and such conceptions of the theory, it is not surprising that the fact itself should be received with incredulity, as wholly inconsistent with what we know of brain structure and mental action. Thoughts are not written upon the brain, and if they were so written the eye of another person could not read them there. Even the overwhelming evidence of the existence of the phenomena has not sufficed to remove the prejudice caused by the unfortunate name inflicted upon it. At some risk I prefer to throw aside that familiar and misleading name, and to substitute for it one that precisely expresses the fact without appearing to affirm the source of the fact or the means by which it is produced. I therefore adopt the descriptive but not prejudging title of Mental Sympathy and Communion " — vol. cit. p. 22.

Itself floats in a more pervading fluid which physicists have agreed to call " the ether." Any person who has witnessed the experiments of Prof. Tyndall with sensitive flames, showing how the atmosphere in a large room cannot be stirred so slightly that the flame will not betray the motion, will readily understand how the vibration of the finest brain fibre may be communicated to other brain fibres. The telephone is a still more startling illustration of the multitudinous atmospheric waves imperceptible to our very obtuse senses,^ which can perceive only the smallest fraction of the things and motions that surround us. But infinitely more delicate must be the waves of the ether. They must penetrate the most compact substance, solidity being only a human conception, not a fact in nature. Brain action is brain motion. When any mental act is done, the fibres of the brain are set in motion, and of these motions the Conscious Self takes cognizance. The psychological conclusion from this physiological fact will be at once apparent. An idea of thought in my mind is attended with certain molecular movements of certain fibres in my brain. The motions of these fibres in my brain is communicated by ether waves

^ ''The singular instrument called the Microplione proves the presence about us of innumerable waves of soimd, so slight as to be inaudible to us. It reveals to the ear a new world, as the microscope has opened a new world to the eye. This revelation is another proof of the fact that our senses are constructed to perceive only an infinitesimal portion of the sights and sounds about us."

to the corresponding fibres m your brain, setting up in them a similar motion precisely as the harp that is played upon evokes the same tone from the strings of the untouched harp. These motions of my brain impart to your brain identical impressions, and consequently we think and feel in unison, — not, of course, always in concert, but in the same direction."

" These impressions," continues Serjeant Cox," " communicated from brain to brain, are not perceived at all times, because we are constructed to be conscious of one impression only at one instant of time, and, for the most part, Consciousness is engaged in taking cognizance of some other more vivid impressions. Moreover, some brains are less sensitive than others — have coarser fibres — and therefore are more slow to catch the finer impulses. Let it be understood that this explanation is presented to the reader not as the assertion of a proved fact, but merely as a suggestion of the manner in which the undoubted phenomena of Mental Communion and Sympathy might be accomplished by purely natural means, without attributing them to the supernatural, the miraculous, or the spiritual " (^Mechanism of Man, vol. 2, pp. 22-27, L. 1879).

Mr. W. D. Gunning gives the following case of "thought transferrenceT' "An eminent physician of Philadelphia, who was making some investigations on the ' odyle ' of Reichenbach, told me that he went one day to hear a 'trance-medium, an

'inspirational' speaker. The medium was a frail, sensitive woman, and one of the most successful of her class. The doctor went to try an experiment. He wrote out a very short lecture, memorized it, and tore up the manuscript. When he entered the hall, the audience had assembled, and the medium sat on the platform. He fixed his eye on her, and, by a strong effort of will, caused her to rise and walk forward to the desk. Then he thought over his lecture, keeping his will on her, and she delivered it, word for word, as the words rose up in his mind.^ The woman intended no deception. She knew that she was not speaking her own thoughts, and, very naturally, she referred the control to a spirit."

"Now something^^^ says Mr. Gunning, "must have passed from the doctor's mind into the brain of the medium. There was no speech, no gesture, no visible sign, and yet the thoughts matured in one brain were passing, by a subtle chemistry, into the brain of another."

Mr. Gunning's conclusion is, that the thoughts were carried from the doctor's to the medium's brain on waves of nerve-fluid (we will call it nerve-fluid, he says), and that the thoughts were

1 Mr. Gunning says : " The doctor's case does not stand alone. When Dr. Bell began the investigation of Spiritualism, he was surprised to find the medium echoing back his own thoughts. . . . Others have had the same experience , I have had it myself." Mr. Gunning tells us that it was only when his mind was intently fixed upon the medium, that his thoughts were echoed back — vol. cit. p. 14.

uttered from the woman's lips as they were shaped in the doctor's brain, because each wave falling into her brain produced there the same motions as those produced in the brain in which it was generated, just as the electric fluid clicks the same symbols in the office which receives the despatch as in that which sent it.

Mr. Gunning observes : " The brain takes note, not of real objects, but of their representations. Al Hassan did a great service when he demonstrated that the ray of light does not pass from the eye to the object, as all the philosophers had taught, but from the object to the eye. We are just learning the significance of the Arab's demonstration. Rays of light flowing from an object into the eye shake the optic lobes of the brain, and we see, not the object, but a representation of it. Now, if any other force could affect the optic lobes of my brain as light affects them, I would see, although in utter darkness ; and if any other force could shake the auditory centres as sound shakes them, I would hear, although in the silence of an Arctic night ; and if, my brain being quiescent, any other mind could induce in it those motions which my own thoughts induce, I would act and speak the thoughts of that mind as if they were my own " (^Is it the Despair of Science ? pp. 11-13, B. 18T0).

That Mr. Gunning is right in his conclusion, a study of the phenomena designated as Spectral Illusions appears to afford proof. " These are clearly," says Dr. Carpenter, " sensorial states not excited by external objects ; and it is also clear that they frequently originate in cerebral changes, since they represent creations of the mind, and are not mere reproductions of past sensations " (^Mental Physiology^ p. 113).

Proof of the correctness of Mr. Gunning's theory is also afforded by those so-called subjective^ sensations "which have their origin," says Dr. Carpenter, "in local changes that produce impressions on the nerves of the parts to which they are referred, we have examples in the flashes of light which are symptomatic of disease of the retina or of the optic nerve ; and in the singing in the ears, which, while sometimes due to a disordered condition within the ears themselves, appears more frequently to arise from an affection of the auditory nerve in its course by the pulsations of a neighboring artery " (vol. cit. p. 156).

In connection with the fact of transferred thought, the question arises as to the manner in which transferred thought can produce such a marvellous result as the cure of disease. The motions produced in the brain by transferred thought are

1 "The designation 'subjective,'" says Dr. Carpenter, "is commonly given to all those sensations which arise out of either bodily or mental states whose existence is not consequent upon any ' objective ' or external change. But strictly speaking, it should be limited to the working of the Ego's own mind; since those which are produced by physical impressions made on the nerves witliin his body, just as truly belong to the Non-ego, as do those made by operations from without " — vol. cit. p. 155.

soon superseded by other motions, and one would suppose that the effect of the transferred thought would end with the cessation of the motions. That such is not the case may be inferred from what is known of the effects of automatic, unconscious, mental activity, termed by Dr. Carpenter, Unconscious Cerebration.^

That the cerebrum may act upon impressions transmitted to it, and may elaborate intellectual results, such as we might have attained by the intentional direction of our minds to the subject, without any consciousness on our parts, is only the psychological expression of a doctrine that originated with Leibnitz and has been almost universally adopted by metaphysicians in Germany.

Sir William Hamilton, who alone of British psychologists has fully developed the theory of Latent States of Mental Activity, or Mental Latency, distinguishes three degrees of the condition. The first is to be seen in acquired knowledge. " I know a science, or language," he says, " not merely when I make a temporary use of it, but inasmuch as I can apply it when and how I will. Thus the infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures

1 *'Few discoveries," says Serjeant Cox, "have been more abused and ridiculed by the Metaphysical School of Mental Philosophers. None, however, is more completely confirmed by examination of mental facts and phenomena. The conception of it once clearly formed, every day, almost every hour, of our lives, supplies us with proofs of Unconscious Cerebration, whether we note the actions of our minds or observe the actions of others — vol. cit. p. 21.

lies always beyond the sphere of consciousness, hid in the obscure recesses of the mind."

" The second condition of Latency exists," Sir William Hamilton states, " when the mind contains certain systems of knowledge, or certain habits of action, which it is wholly unconscious of possessing in its ordinary state, but which are revealed to consciousness in certain extraordinary exaltation of its powers. The evidence on this point shows that the mind frequently contains whole systems of knowledge, which, although in our normal state they have faded into absolute oblivion, may, in certain abnormal states, as madness, febrile delirium, somnambulism, catalepsy, etc., flash out into luminous consciousness, and even throw into the shade of unconsciousness those other systems by which they had for a long period been eclipsed and even extinguished. For example, there are cases in which the extinct memory of whole languages ^ was suddenly restored, and, what is even more remarkable, in which the faculty was exhibited of accurately repeating, in known or unknown tongues, passages which were never within the grasp of conscious memory in the normal state." 2

* Dr. Biicliner says: " It is credibly asserted that in the hospital of St. Thomas, in London, a man, after recovery from a severe injury to the head, spoke in a foreign language. The language proved to be his mother-tongue — Welsh — which, however he had forgotten during a thirty years' residence in London" — Force and Matter, p. 124.

2 Sir William Hamilton gives an account of the Comtesse de

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The third class of latent modifications are included in the question stated by Sir William Hamilton, " whether, in the ordinary processes of mental life, there are mental modifications, i.e., mental activities and passivities of which we are unconscious, but which manifest their existence by effects of which we are conscious." Sir William's answer is, " I am not only strongly inclined to the affirmative — nay, I do not hesitate to maintain, that what we are conscious of is constructed out of what we are not conscious of, — that our whole knowledge, in fact, is made up of the unknown and incognizable " (^Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. 1, pp. 339-348, L. 1859).

Serjeant Cox observes : " The mental condition to which the appropriate name of Unconscious Cerebration has been given may be thus described : In certain conditions some of the mental faculties work without consciousness by ourselves of their action. The brain, or some portion of it, thinks,

Lavel, who, when asleep, sometimes talked in the Breton language, but did not understand a single syllable of what she had uttered in her sleep, upon its being related to her. She was born in the province of Brittany, and was nursed in a family where nothing but that language was spoken. Sir William Hamilton also gives an account of a young woman who could neither read nor write, but who, while sick with a nervous fever, talked Latin, Greek, and Hebrew with most distinct enunciation. It was discovered that when nine years old she had been charitably taken by a Protestant pastor, a very learned man and a great Hebraist, who was in the habit of walking up and down a passage in his house, into which the kitchen door opened, reading with a loud voice out of his favorite books, the Greek and Latin Fathers, and Rabbinical books, —vol. cit. p. 343.

26 THE CUBE OF DISEASE

feels, has ideas, goes through complicated and elaborate courses of thought, and even prompts to action without consciousness of the operation of the individual, who, at the same moment, is consciously employed in some other mental work. Sometimes there is a self-consciousness of the results of such action ; sometimes, also, the results are cognizable by others, although quite unrecognized by the actor " (voL cit. p. 11).

Dr. Carpenter shows that " much of our highest mental activity is to be regarded as the expression of the automatic action of the cerebrum ; and that it may act upon impressions transmitted to it, and may elaborate results such as we might have obtained by the purpossive direction of our minds to the subject, without any consciousness on our parts." " Looking," he adds, " at all those automatic operations by which results are evolved without any intentional direction of the mind to them, in the light of ' reflex ' actions of the cerebrum, there is no more difficulty in comprehending that such reflex actions may proceed without our knowledge, so as to evolve intellectual products when their results are transmitted to the sensorium, and are thus impressed on our consciousness, than there is in understanding that impressions may evolve muscular movements, through the reflex power of the spinal cord without the necessary intervention of sensation." ^ " Cerebral changes may take place unconsciously, if the sensorium be

1 Principles of Human Physiology, p. 607, 5tli edit. 1855.

either in a state of absolute torpor, or for a time non-receptive as regards those changes, its activity being exerted in some other direction, or, to express the same fact psychologically, that mental changes, of whose results we subsequently become convinced, may go on below the plane of consciousness, either during profound sleep, or while the attention is wholly engrossed by some entirely different train of thought." " The more we examine into what may be termed the mechanism of thought, the more clear does it become that not only an automatic^ but an unconscious action enters largely into all its processes." " There is considerable ground to believe that the best judgments are often mentally delivered in difficult cases, by the unconscious resolution of the difficulties in the way of arriving at a conclusion, when the question (after being well considered in the first place) is left to settle itself.

"It has, on several occasions," continues Dr. Carpenter (quoting from a lecture delivered by himself) " occurred to me to have to form a decision as to some important change, either in my own plans of life, or in those of members of my family, in which were involved a great many of what we are accustomed to call pros and cons, . . . And I believe that in all such cases where we are not pressed for a decision, our best plan is to let the question settle itself by Unconscious Cerebration ; having first brought before our minds, as fully as possible, everything that can be fairly urged on both sides." Dr. Carpenter quotes the following account given by Oliver Wendell Holmes.