Fact and Fable in Psychology. Joseph Jastrow
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anæsthetic and promulgate a decree that the latter be harmless. Christian Science does not flinch from this position. "If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake and the patient dies, even though physician and patient are expecting favorable results, does belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken. In such cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case and this special person, believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by mortal mind. The consequence is that the result is controlled by the majority of opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber." But why should the opinions of οἱ πολλοί [Greek: hoi polloi] be of influence in such a case, and the enlightened minorities be sufficient to effect the marvelous cures in all the other cases? Christian Scientists do not take cold in draughts in spite of the contrary opinions or illusions of misguided majorities. The logical Christian Scientist concludes that he need not eat, "for the truth is food does not affect the life of man;" and yet at once renounces his faith by adding, "but it would be foolish to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating, until we gain more goodness and a clearer comprehension of the living God." And the mental physician, to be consistent, must be a mental surgeon also; and not plead that, "Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of mind, it is better to leave the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of surgeons."
But it is unprofitable to consider the failings and absurdities of any occult system in its encounters with actual science and actual fact. It is simply as a real and prominent menace to rationality that these doctrines naturally attract consideration. Regarding them as illustrations of present-day occult beliefs, we are naturally tempted to inquire what measure of (perverted) truth they may contain; but the more worthy question is, How do such perversions come to find so large a company of "supporting listeners"? For to any one who can read and be convinced by the sequence of words of this system, ordinary logic has no power, and to him the world of reality brings no message. No form of the modern occult antagonizes the foundations of science so brusquely as this one. The possibility of science rests on the thorough and absolute distinction between the subjective and the objective. In what measure a man loses the power to draw this distinction clearly, and as other men do, in that measure he becomes irrational or insane. The objective exists; and no amount of thinking it away or thinking it differently will change it. That is what is understood by ultimate scientific truth; something that will endure unmodified by passing ways of viewing it, open to every one's verification who comes equipped with the proper means to verify,—a permanent objective, to be ascertained by careful logical inquiry, not to be determined by subjective opinion. Logic is the language of science; Christian Science and what sane men call science can never communicate because they do not speak the same language.
IX
It would be unfortunate to emphasize the popular preëminence of Christian Science at a cost of the neglect of the significance of the many other forms of "drugless healing," which bid for public favor by appeal to ignorance and to occult and superstitious instincts. Some are allied to Christian Science, and like it assimilate their cult to a religious movement; others are unmistakably the attempts of charlatans to lure the credulous by noisy advertisements of newly discovered and scientifically indorsed systems of "psychic force," or of some personal "ism." For many purposes it would be unjust to group together such various systems, which in the nature of things must include sinner and saint, the misguided sincere, the half-believers who think "there may be something in it," or "that it is worth a trial," along with scheming quacks and adepts in commercial fraud. They illustrate the many and various roads traveled in the search for health, by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the highways over which medical science pursues its steadfast though it may be devious course. Among them there is plausible exaggeration and ignorant perversion and dishonest libel of the relations that bind together body and mind. Among the several schisms from the "Mother Church of Christian Science" there is one that claims to be the "rational phase of the mental healing doctrine," that acknowledges the reality of disease and the incurability of serious organic disorders, and resents any connection with the "half-fanatical personality worship" (of Mrs. Eddy) as quite as foreign to its tenets as would be the views of the "Free Religious Association" to the "Pope of Rome." "Divine Healing" exhibits its success in one notable instance, in the establishment of a school and college, a bank, a land and investment association, a printing and publishing office, and sundry divine healing homes; and this prosperity is now to be extended by the foundation of a city or colony of converts, who shall be united by the common bond of faith in divine healing as transmitted in the personal power of their leader. The official organ of this movement announces that the personification of their faith "makes her religion a business and conducts herself upon sound business principles;" their leader publicly boasts of his vast financial returns. With emphatic protest on the part of each that he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his system is quite original and unlike any other, comes the procession of Metaphysical Healer and Mind-Curist and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and Astrological Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clairvoyant and Esoteric Vibrationist and Psychic Scientist and Mesmerist and Occultist. Some use or abuse the manipulations of hypnotism; others claim the power to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibrations, or by some equally lucid and demonstrable procedure; some advertise magnetic cups, and positive and negative powders, and absent treatment by outputs of "psychic force," and countless other imposing devices. In truth, they form a motley crew, and with their "Colleges of Fine Forces," and "Psychic Research Companies," offering diplomas and degrees for a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book, represent the slums of the occult. An account of their methods is likely to be of as much interest to the student of fraud as to the student of opinion.
There can be no doubt that many of these systems have been stimulated into life or into renewed vigor by the success of Christian Science; this is particularly noticeable in the introduction of absent treatment as a plank in their diverse platforms. This ingenious method of restoring the health of their patients and their own exchequers appealed to all the band of healing occultists from Spiritualist to Vibrationist, as easily adaptable to their several systems. In much the same way Mesmer, more than a hundred years ago, administered to the practice which had exhausted the capacity of his personal attention, by magnetizing trees and selling magnetized water. The absent treatment represents the occult extension movement; and unencumbered by the hampering restrictions of physical forces, superior even to wireless telegraphy, carries its influence into the remotest homes. From ocean to ocean, and from North to South, these absent healers set apart some hour of the day, when they mentally convey their healing word to the scattered members of their flock. On the payment of a small fee you are made acquainted with the "soul-communion time-table" for your longitude, and may know when to meet the healing vibrations as they pass by. Others disdain any such temporal details and assure a cure merely on payment of the fee; the healer will know sympathetically when and how to transmit the curative impulses. Poverty and bad habits as well as disease readily succumb to the magic of the absent treatment. Such an hysterical edict as this is hardly extreme or unusual: "Join the Success Circle.... The Centre of that Circle is my omnipotent WORD. Daily I speak it. Its vibrations radiate more and more powerfully day by day.... As the sun sends out vibrations ... so my WORD radiates Success to 10,000 lives as easily as to one."
It is impossible to appreciate fully the extravagances of these occult healers unless one makes a sufficient sacrifice of time and patience to read over a considerable sample of the periodical publications with which American occultism fairly teems. And when one has accomplished this task he is still at sea to account for the readers and believers who support these various systems, so undreamt of in our philosophy. It would really seem that there is no combination of ideas too absurd to fail entirely of a following. Carlyle, without special provocation, concluded that there were about forty million persons in England, mostly fools; what would have been his comment in the face of this vast and universal array of human folly! If it be urged in rejoinder that beneath all this rubbish