Class _Jatii Book fe > §AW. o n \r\ COPXRIGHT DEPOSIT. Health and Suggestion Health and Suggestion: The Dietetics of the Mind BY ERNST von FEUCHTERSLEBEN (Sometime Professor of Medicine in the University of Vienna) TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY LUDWIG LEWISOHN, M.A. NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH IQIO Copyright, 1910, by \ C\ V- B, W. HUEBSCH PRINTED IN U. S. A. ©CI.A265712 PREFACE The wave of human thought advances, re- cedes and advances, making some headway, doubtless, but rarely adventuring upon a di- rection wholly new. Hence it does not greatly surprise us to learn that the vivid in- terest taken in mental healing in America within recent years, was shared by another generation and in another land. Any ex- haustive study of that other and foreign move- ment would be out of place here. It suffices o mark its existence and to say a word con- cerning its chief representatives. It is hard to say how early, in Germany, the facts of common experience which seem to point to a curative power in the mind of man, crystallized into any definite doc- trine. It is worthy of note, however, that no less a man than Goethe dwells upon phe- [5] Health and Suggestion nomena of this kind in his autobiography. Others, at all events, followed in fragmen- tary fashion in his wake, until, at the end of the eighteenth century, the well-known novel- ists and satirists Hippel and Lichtenberg took a fairly definite stand in a number of essay- like writings and insisted upon the influence of the souPs temper and development upon the physical organism of man. These vari- ous currents of thought were concentrated by Huf eland in his Makrobiotik which, in its turn, drew from Kant — the greatest name in the movement — his brief essay on " that faculty of man's soul through which, by a mere act of willing, a mastery over our mor- bid sensations may be gained." Kant's little treatise is practical and ex- traordinarily modern in its attitude to the phenomena of mental healing. It had, of course, in its day and country, a wide influ- ence which grew with the fame of its author. Thus, in the first third of the nineteenth cen- [6] Health a n'd Suggestion tury, we find mental therapeutics a recognized subject of instruction at the University of Vienna, and may assume that it became one through the dignity which the great name of Kant had lent it. The typical German classic on mental heal- ing, however, is not Kant's essay but the Didtetik der Seele by the Austrian physi- cian, Ernst von Feuchtersleben, a translation of which is here offered to the American pub- lic. To call this little book a classic in its specific field, is not, in any degree, an exag- geration. It has passed through innumera- ble editions; it is represented in all those ad- mirable series of inexpensive books in which Germany is so rich, (Reclam, Meyer, Biblio- thek der Gesamt-Litteratur) ; it is a favorite gift-book to this day; its vogue, in a word, has been wide, lasting and therefore signifi- cant. Without clamor or insistence the es- sential facts of psychotherapeutics have been present in Germany, as they are — every- [7] Health and Suggestion where and always. But there, as in America to-day, they were thoughtfully reflected upon and interpreted. Nor have the two movements failed to touch. Dr. Worcester tells us (Century: vol. lxxviii, p. 426) how, during his arduous prep- aration for the remarkable work which he at last took up, he read all books pertinent to his subject in various languages " with the ex- ception of Feuchtersleben's Diatetik der See- le." " In some way," he continues, " this inimitable work escaped me, and I have be- come familiar with it only during the last year. It contains the principles of our whole project, and expresses many phases of our thought better than we are able to express it." Ernst von Feuchtersleben was born in Vi- enna in 1 806. He obtained his preliminary training at the " theresianische Akademie," and took his degree (M.D.) at the university of his native city in 1833. His success as a practitioner and teacher of medicine was rapid, and from 1840 until his premature [8] Health and Suggestion death in 1849 ne lectured on psychotherapeu- tics at the university of Vienna. In 1848 he declined the portfolio of education, but accepted an undersecretaryship of state. The immense labor which the complete reor- ganization of the Austrian school system en- tailed broke down his health, and he resigned from office too late to regain the vital energy which he had spent in the state's service. His character is said to have been one of singu- lar beauty, his temper of exquisite serenity and gentleness. This is especially apparent in his poetry of which he wrote not a little, nor any that is not marked by both distinc- tion and grace. He is the author, for in- stance, of the song, universally known in Germany : " In God's high council 'tis decreed That from our dearest at our need We're parted," and of many excellent gnomic poems one of [9] Health and Suggestion which, in a somewhat free rendering, may follow here: " All things create observe thou, a poem as the skies, The babbling of the foolish, the silence of the wise. Know that man's eye can bear not heaven's ray undimmed and bright, That without dreams our waking hours could reach no full delight. Be glad of what is given, yet know what thou dost lack, Do each hour's nearest duty: halt not and turn not back. Let thought not be thy master, in sloth to hesitate, A hero he who, falling, fights 'mid the storms of fate. Close not thy heart in anger, love on until it break, Forget and hope and fear not: remember and — awake! " [IO] Health and Suggestion A word must be said of the character of the following translation of the Diatetik der Seele. Like all but the greatest Ger- man writers Feuchtersleben was far more felicitous in his use of verse than in his use of prose. His prose style is, as a matter of fact, amorphous, wordy and professorial in the old-fashioned German way. But an English-speaking public demands, rightly, clearness of outline and definiteness of ex- pression. Hence the present version, though conscientiously faithful to Feuchtersleben's sense, has been almost entirely recast from the point of view of form. By this method the translator has hoped to gain for his au- thor a wider and less hesitant appreciation. L. L. New York, January, 19 10. t»] CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 15 I. The Power of the Spirit 21 II. Beauty and Health 38 III. Imagination 48 IV. The Will 66 V. Reason and Culture 79 VI. Temperament and Passion .... 96 VII. The Emotions 108 VIII. The Law of Contrast 119 IX. Hypochondria 133 X. Truth and Nature 147 XI. Summary 155 Leaves from a Diary 164 INTRODUCTION Our time is swift, stormy and frivolous. Hence to direct the attention from the dis- couraging life of the present, from the still more discouraging spectacle of a literature wavering amid a thousand meaningless ten- dencies, to the calm regions of the inner man, the contemplation of ourselves — this is to render a genuine service to the public mind. In such reflections we become aware of our connection with the sum of things, of our purpose and of our duty. Serenely resigning the world, which can grant us but little, we feel that the peace we had thought lost takes up its dwelling with us again and that a sec- ond innocence sheds its soothing light over our being. The game of rimes to which only the hand of genius can lend a pregnant symbolism may employ the youthful hours [is] Health and Suggestion even of the less gifted : maturer years should be dedicated to reflection concerning our deepest and most sacred relations with the universe. In doing so we exercise our true business upon earth: a business within the capacity of all, since it is the duty of all. " Our writers," says von Sternberg in a bril- liant essay, " write in the market-place rather than in the quiet study. Hence it is that the noise, dust and coarse reality of the street pervade their works, and that the depth and clarity of our older authors have almost van- ished. This is due to the haste by which we are all so driven to-day. Not to be left be- hind in the race — that is our aim. The philosopher hurls his ideas at the state, the poet his emotions at society. Both are con- tent to achieve a momentary but violent effect. Who, in this age, has time to grow old and to write books that shall never grow old?" To- meet such just complaints and counteract such tendencies is the purpose of the following pages. They are written in a [16] Health and Suggestion spirit of repose, for the refreshment and collection of my own faculties. In a similar spirit they must be read in order to transmit their significance to the reader. By means of a blending of ethics and die- tetics, strange perhaps at first sight, I have sought to exhibit in its practical bearing the healing power of the spirit over the body of man. " The profession of medicine, " to quote the voice of the general public, " is vio- lently averse to a popularization of its arts, to any medical self-study. The physician apparently fears that to become aware of the uncertainty and insufficiency of his knowledge and methods means, for the public, a loss of confidence. Hence it is to his advantage to foster a delusion.' ! In some such way the public reasons, supported, unhappily, by a recent medical writer. Let us grant the contention for a moment. Suppose the delusion to be real. Does it advantage only us doctors, does it not ad- vantage you equally? If faith has cured you [17] Health and Suggestion is it less a cure than one effected by iron or quinine? Is not this faith a real power? May it not, without quackery, serve in place of a physical method? This power of self- delusion, capable of such wonderful effects, should one not rather desire to awaken it and to possess it for one's own welfare? To point out how far that be possible, how faith can be learned — that is the purpose to which this book is to contribute. My expressions are tentative. For the larger part of the as- similation of any doctrine that is to be trans- lated into the actual practice of life, must be left with the individual himself. I have sought to be, in the best sense of the word, popular. A genuine appeal of this kind does not degrade the writer to a vulgar level; it exalts the general understanding to his own. The purpose of my frequent quotations of the words of eminent men is to exhibit the unanimity of sentiment which the subject of this treatise has always enjoyed among minds [18] Health a n Suggestion of experience and insight. Little that I say is new except in that it is unhappily unknown to the many. One may assert fearlessly that no art becomes so rarely the business of a human life as the art whose practice I preach — the art of ruling oneself. And yet it is the first and last of all the arts. [19] Health and Suggestion THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT THE expression " dietetics of the mind " will be at once understood as the sci- ence of the preservation of the soul's health. This science is ethics. All the knowledge, all the efforts of man combine to this great end — to cultivate and foster the moral being which is the fine flower of life and the purpose of existence. We, however, will deal here more specifically with that fac- ulty of the spirit which has power to guard the body against the evils that assail it. The existence of this faculty has scarcely ever been called into question, its remarkable ef- fects have been recounted with astonishment, but its laws have been rarely investigated, nor has it often been summoned to take its true [21] Health and Suggestion place in the practical business of life. But every power that flows from the sources of our spirit's life may be cultivated, may, in a word, be converted into an art. Every art is but the result of some trained faculty of man. He has made an art of life itself, why not, then, make one of health which is the life of life ! Such a training I call the dietet- ics of the soul — a science which I can- not exhaust but to which I venture to con- tribute. In a well digested essay Kant himself has treated of that power of the spirit by which (through an act of pure determination) one may become master of one's morbid feelings. We go farther, for we desire to subdue not only feelings but, if possible, disease itself. The soul is often helped by means of the body, and this process is capable of being re- versed. This is a point of view to which physicians, myself included, have not always given the attention that it deserves. How the soul, then, can guard the body [22] Health and Suggestion against illness — that is my subject. Again I must caution my readers not to expect the completeness of an exact science in the treat- ment of a matter which, like all the phe- nomena of life, is subtle and elusive. In fact, I am quite willing to sacrifice the hol- low satisfaction of having constructed a sys- tem, and incur for these sketches the reproach of mere rhapsodizing. There are subjects concerning which to demand too much is really to demand too little. Such, perhaps, was the science of physiognomy. Like Lava- ter, its originator, we may be content with fragments. But let us guard against the er- ror of that fabled academy of sciences which spent its time in marvelling why a tank of water containing fishes weighed no more than one that held no living thing, but dispensed, throughout its lofty speculations, with the use of scales. In other words, let us seek first to establish the central fact of our doc- trine before we attempt to outline processes and methods. [23] Health and Suggestion Speculations concerning the distinction be- tween, nay, the very existence of, soul and body, have always been and will always be dear to the purely philosophical mind. To the sane and practical thinker they present themselves as almost ludicrous. I appeal to the undimmed, unsophisticated feeling of mankind. He who denies utterly the ex- istence of the soul need not read on. He, on the other hand, who is determined to as- cribe the facts of my experience to the body exclusively, may yet follow me and consider me as discussing the power over the whole body of that part of it which exercises the so-called soul-functions. Wrong-headed as such an attitude would be, it would invali- date neither the facts of the case nor the con- clusions which result. Consider, for a moment, a subtle but none the less exact analogy. In awakening from sleep that power in us which should liberate us is in a state of bondage. Yet it can free itself gradually, and through practice it can [24] ' Health a n Suggestion achieve this end more rapidly and effectively. Thus in the life of the spirit there are vary- ing degrees of a loss of liberty in impulse and action. There is the night of the spirit and here no counteraction is efficacious; there is the twilight of the spirit, still capable of sane desiring if not of willing. This stage is amenable to the help of my doctrines. Be- tween the two is a third stage — the true sick- ness of the soul. Here the will has not died; here, therefore, healing is possible, but not through the mind of the patient but through that of another. To offer a radical analysis of these conditions would be inadvisable. But even without verging on the dangerous domain of metaphysics we may master cer- tain preliminary and fundamental concep- tions. The unsophisticated man feels himself to be an entity and lives without further con- scious 'reflection. Speculation destroys this spiritual innocence and a division enters into our life. The facts discovered by a trained [25] Health and Suggestion consciousness of self establish the existence of a principle not to be deduced from mere sense perceptions. We call this principle the spirit but must not forget that we are dealing with an abstraction merely. For on this planet we know spirit only in its inseparable com- bination with the body of man. A sensible usage calls the one element of this combina- tion soul, the other body. Considering now that we know soul and body only through a highly sophisticated analysis of an appar- ently indivisible phenomenon, the influence of the former upon the latter should scarcely stand in need of proof. To seek to explain the nature of the connection of soul and body would be highly futile. For the thinker and his thought are to himself an entity. The process of thought can not become objective to itself, even as the right hand may grasp the left but never itself. Our thinking, fur- thermore, is conditioned by space and time. The physician may merely observe that the nervous system is the most immediately ob- [26] Health and Suggestion I ■ m i n i ■-■ — — . i ■ ■ n vious link in the common action of soul and body. Any further speculation would be idle. Having established our central con- ceptions we may leave these problems without another word. It is equally impossible here to examine the genesis of sickness and cure. Nor is it necessary. It suffices us to remark that all diseases are due to one of two causes, an outer or an inner one. , Disease is due either to the development, under external stimulus no doubt, of a germ inherent in the nature of the individual, or else the organism suc- cumbs to the hostile forces of its environment^ The latter process, however, also necessitates an innate predisposition conditioned in weak- ness. To diseases of the first order belong all those commonly known as inherited or constitutional. Many other pathological conditions may also be regarded from this point of view oftener and more fruitfully than has been done heretofore. The question now is: whether such con- [27] Health and Suggestion ditions may be mastered through the might of the spirit. It goes without saying that I do not here refer to such prophylactic measures as physicians use either to improve the patient's predispositions or to guard against harmful influences from without. Such preventive actions also originate in the mind, but not in that of the patient. Philos- ophers and philosophical poets are always anxious to show us how a one-sided and over- grown ethical tendency may be repressed, limited, or even eradicated. A similar pro- cedure should be practicable in our own special field. How does any individual's nature and its disposition toward health manifest itself most vividly? Clearly through that which we call the temperament of a man, using the term with the vital meaning of our daily speech and not in accordance with some learned analysis. Man is an entity com- posed of many elements, and the subtlest psychologist can but consider a given tern- [28] Health and Suggestion perament as made up of such elements as are similarly " tempered," thus blending into an individual life. " Every human being," says Herder, " bears in the form of his body as well as in the endowments of his soul the possibilities of that harmony which should be the goal of his efforts. This is true of all forms of human existence, of deformity so feeble that it can scarcely sus- tain life, as well as of the divine form of a Greek demi-god. Through lapses and errors, through cultivation, want, and prac- tice, each mortal still seeks to attain that harmony of his powers which constitutes the profoundest enjoyment of our being." And which is no less, we may add, the very condi- tion of health. Man, then, the only being in the scheme of nature who can regard himself objectively, should be able to rise to such a higher con- ception of self. He whom Protagoras called the measure of the universe should be able to become the criterion of himself. And [29] Health and Suggestion surely no one who has ever withdrawn into himself from the confusion of the external world will deny the influence of the soul from this point of view. He will admit that mas- tery over self can be gained and hence over such disease as is rooted in the self of the individual. The fact of such a procedure once established, we shall examine its methods in future chapters. To attribute to the soul, however, a power and mastery beyond its own immediate domain will seem more marvellous and more questionable. But the world in which we live is, after all, nothing but a web spun by our own natures. To the man it is a scene of strife, to the child a play-ground, to the glad of heart it is serene, to the tear-stained eye it is turbid. As it is perceived, so it works. The images and thoughts that have affected the soul most potently cause man's happiness or misery. And to control their appearance and disappearance in the field of consciousness must surely be within our [30] Health and Suggestion power. The anxiety and acuteness that we use, so often, alas, to darken and to dull our vision should be used to gain for us a brightly seeing eye. The wild storm on the heath which drenches the companions of Lear to the skin cannot touch him, for in him the storms of grief and indignation silence the lashing of rain and the roll of thunder. We may go a step farther than the lesson sug- gested by this illustration. It is well known that those unhappy beings whose souls dwell in the darkness of insanity are often free from many bodily evils that assail those liv- ing about them. In this case the soul, con- centrated upon its own mad activities, with- draws all attention from the body and thus renders the latter impervious to external in- fluences. And should not a will concentrated upon the pursuit of sacred and reasonable ends be able to effect as much as the distorted power of madness? A British author, discussing the influence of fog and coal-smoke upon the health of [3i] Health and Suggestion his countrymen, {Medical Reports: 1830) communicates the following conclusions of his investigations. " It is open to question whether many of the diseases that are at- tributed to the atmosphere of our city may not rather be ascribed to its manners. For just as the body, amid all variations of tem- perature changes its degree of inner warmth but little, so there is in the nature of man a power of resistance which, in a state of healthy activity, usually suffices to maintain an equilibrium between himself and the hostile forces in his environment. Physicians have not a little to say of sick ladies who, too feeble to cross a room, dance without difficulty through half a night in the arm of a favorite partner. Thus a desired stim- ulus arouses the indolent fibers to activity. The same principle accounts for the fact that the idle, the empty-minded and the fashion- able suffer most acutely from the atmosphere of London. The man whose powers and whose attention are constantly transmuted [32] Health and Suggestion into activity knows nothing of the state of the barometer. It is true enough that the dreary month of November is a period of melancholy and suicide; but the drab color- ing of the sky cannot overshadow the clear aether of a serene spirit. Even the patho- logical excitement of mania transcends the influence of the atmosphere. Not autumn with its falling leaves, but the associations which man, the great self-torturer, has con- nected with its appearance, weigh so oppres- sively upon us. The morbid anxieties of the hypochondriac, which rise and fall with the weather, are in the end due only to an inner activity or the lack of it which controls his mood. Such a patient is generally, even if it be but at intervals, weak of character. Let him earnestly lay hold upon this vital truth and strive for his own welfare. He will become his own best physician." What practitioner is not tempted to mul- tiply similar instances from the field of his own experience? They are almost as fre- 1331 Health and Suggestion quent as any other kind, especially in those great cities whose darkening atmosphere seems to consist of the passions, the anxieties, and the thoughts of their inhabitants. A figure such as Goethe's Werther may gain from us the sympathy due to misfortune and disease, but suicidal tendencies are the inher- itance of natures too sensitive, souls too gentle, who cannot hold their own against the harshness of life's realities. Stronger minds are not unassailed, and many an active physician has known periods during which only the most self-sacrificing devotion to his duties was able to sunder the clouds that threatened to obscure his moral and physical well-being. In such fateful days his activity saves him even from those dangers to which itself has given rise. Thus the wounds which duty inflicts upon us always hold the balm of their own healing. It is instructive to quote Goethe at this point. He did not feel the impetus that comes from the fulfillment of professional C34] Health and Suggestion duties, but achieved his end through the sheer exertion of unnecessitated will. " I was once," he tells us, " inevitably exposed to the infection of a malignant fever, and warded off the disease only by means of determined volition. It is almost incredible how much, in such cases, the moral will can effect! It seems to permeate one's whole being and to render the condition of the body active enough to repel all harmful influences. Fear is a condition of sloth in which any enemy may take possession of us." To instance such facts from the life of Goethe has an unique value. For in the life of that great soul all that in others is mere self-delusion was actual and objectively true. From all these examples we may conclude that life itself is but that power in the in- dividual which is able to make the external subject to an inner law, which can assimilate that which is alien and thus, though con- stantly dynamic, change only its conditions and never its essence. A bodily power of [35] Health and Suggestion this kind must surely find its strongest sup- port in the spiritual nature of man. An in- ner activity is the condition of self-preserva- tion ; the development of the spiritual in man is, again, the condition of inner activity. The potency of thought in any human being is the measure of the originality and sponta- neity of his own life. He lives, he is, in proportion as his soul is active. It is true that a thousand varying influences lie in wait for the poor mortal, that the whole world is such an influence, but the strongest of all is the character of man. Character is man. For as all beings are but the symbols of power, so man has nothing of his own but the energy through which he reveals him- self. And if the native energy of his soul flag, let him impose upon himself conditions that demand its expenditure — let him seek circumstances in which volition is unavoid- able ! It is an old and true observation that the traveler and the bridegroom are generally immune to disease and death. [36] Health and Suggestion " Rarely or almost never," says Bulwer, " will disease fasten itself upon us in youth unless we ourselves dwell upon it and invite it. One sees men of the most delicate con- stitutions who, amid the imperious claims of their calling, have no time to be ill. Let them be idle, let them begin to brood, and they die. Rust corrodes only the unused steel. And even if that were not so; if activ- ity and sloth were subject to the same evils, yet the former can more readily escape them or at least offer a nobler consolation.' , But I must not let the agreement of an admirable writer persuade me to promise more than I can perform. My concern so far has been merely an empirical corroboration of the fact that the spirit has power to ward off the in- fluences of disease. In the pursuit of that end I have said too much rather than too little. [37 I II BEAUTY AND HEALTH IN the first of these fragments it was my purpose to claim for the spirit of man a power of resistance against the forces of the external world. It was my purpose, too, to go farther and to proceed from the power of resistance to one of actual influence. Thoughtful mystics have spoken of the secret power exerted by the will resigned to God as well as by sin upon our mother earth. Since, in their view, our body is the instru- ment by which the world is formed and trans- formed, they ventured the conclusion that to rule the body is to rule the world. But I stopped short, fearing the reproach of infer- ences too daring. By accident, however, a book has come my way in which I thought, [38] Health and Suggestion least of all, to find any reflection upon the fancies that we are here pursuing. In this book I find expressed much that I felt, but hardly ventured to put into words. Let me set it down for what it is worth. " Is it so foolish to suppose that the action between body and spirit is a complete inter- action, that, therefore, the permeating soul can affect the world without us and, in mani- festing its highest energy, even work its will upon the earth itself? To conclude rigor- ously, to be dissatisfied with imperfect infer- ences, would mean the acceptance of this truth. Thus one could suggest the hypothesis that the good man cleanses the earth and air about him, but that evil thought and deed foul their own habitation. Think of the popular belief concerning the scenes of mur- der. And for the perception of truths deeply rooted in nature, popular mythology is a val- uable source; for it takes its rise in men and women whose alert senses have not been dulled by the exercise of reflection. One won- [39] Health and Suggestion ders, in this connection, whether a well-known and admirable Berlin physician who diagnoses dermatological cases by the mere delicacy of the sense of smell, could not transfer this method of perception from the physical to the moral world." This quotation the reader may interpret for himself. I shall follow more ordinary paths. But let it be remembered that when we have brought the incredible into the realm of probability we have done much toward rendering the merely improbable certain. But to proceed to the true business of this chapter. " Persons of our sex," writes a clever woman,* " may retain their health by con- ceiving a strong disgust for disease and by embracing the conviction that health itself is beautiful and worthy of love and admira- tion." A true conviction, surely! For the form of man is the expression of his inner well-being. * Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. [40] Health and Suggestion In one of the pleasantest of the " Physiog- nomical Fragments," Lavater seeks to prove that there is a visible harmony "between moral and physical beauty and between moral and physical ugliness. This is as certain as that the Eternal Wisdom has clothed each being in a fitting form. One must, of course, con- ceive this beauty not as consisting in some fleeting charm, but as the spirit itself making the flesh luminous. Also one must discount the ravages which rooted folly and passion inevitably inflict. The physiognomists, at all events, have succeeded in proving that the organism possesses inherently the ideal form of its own final development and that nature brings this development about by a method that is at one with the necessary procedure of human thought. For our special purpose we may append as a corollary to this truth the fact that, if the spirit possesses the power of working upon the form of the body, this power may be made manifest as well in beauty as in health. Those habits of feeling and [41] V Health and Suggestion willing which produce character also condi- tion the movements of the voluntary muscles and are, therefore, the origins of those facial features which decide the comeliness of any individual. Any frequently repeated ex- pression of the countenance, whether it be to smile, to twitch, whether it be derisive, sor- rowful or angry, leaves its trace upon those delicate fabrics. Nor is this all. It leaves a memory of itself which leads to increasing facility of repetition and finally affects endur- ingly and formatively the muscles and the cellular tissues. But this apparently super- ficial exertion of the power of the spirit is not likely to remain merely superficial and to leave no mark upon the solid substructure of the body. It is open to question whether the bony cranium to which the muscles adhere may not itself feel the plastic influence of their continued activity. Persons of a pas- sionate nature, at all events, have more wrin- kles in age than those of a quieter temper. The epidermis, contracted and expanded so [42] Health and Suggestion often under the stress of emotion, has re- tained these lasting folds. A process, analo- gous to this facial one, takes place in all other parts of the organism. To be free from carking care and to breathe deeply and fully during a long period will not be without its effect upon the development of the chest and of the important organs which it holds. On the other hand, the languishing circulation due to a continued depression of spirits will not fail to leave traces of itself in the insuffi- ciency of necessary secretions and the dis- turbance of the digestive organs. And in proportion to their endurance, violence and conformity to the original nature of the indi- vidual, will such processes leave their indeli- ble impress upon his organic being, formally and functionally. All parts of the human organism (comparable to a living circle) interact upon each other. The nature ex- pressed in a pale and wrinkled face will be equally attested to by a low voice, a wavering gait, an uncertain hand, an incapacity to de- [43] Health and Suggestion cide, a morbid sensitiveness to changes in the weather, in a word, by all the heralds of dis- ease. Thus may the body be poisoned or else guarded and healed by the fruits of the spirit's sowing. Beauty, then, is in a certain sense only the manifestation of health. A harmony in the functions will produce har- mony of form. If virtue then may make one beautiful and vice ugly, it would be rash to deny that the fruit of virtue is health and of vice disease. Nature holds a secret court whose arbitra- ment is gentle, long-suffering, but ineluctable. She marks those errors that flee the eye of man and are not amenable to his law. Her judgments, eternal like all streams of the primal Energy, extend from generation to generation. Man, brooding in despair over the secret cause of his suffering, will often find it in the sins of his fathers. That old and tragic saying of the inevitable conse- quences of action holds good, not only mor- ally and legally, but physically. It will come [44] Health and Suggestion to be more and more recognized that the feebleness and the diseases of our children are rooted far more deeply in moral than in physical causes. Not cold baths will guard them, not bare throats, not experiments of this sort or that, but a culture of a quite dif- ferent kind — a culture whose origin must be in ourselves. Physicians have often had to bear — nor always unjustly — the reproach of a crass materialism, of regarding man as a mere bundle of bones, muscles, viscera, and skins, set in motion by the action of the air's oxygen upon the blood. In this treatise we may repel that imputation. From our point of view the physician sees and proclaims heal- ing in that quarter whence priest and moralist assert it to arise. " Who can fail to under- stand," wrote Schiller in his youth, " that a constitution able to draw pleasure from every event and to sink every personal sorrow in the perfection of the universe must also be most profitable to this bodily machine?" And such a constitution is virtue. [45] Health and Suggestion Morality has its geniuses no less than art. Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Howard, Penn, were what they were and present the images of lives so exquisitely harmonious, because kindly nature, by gifting them with organisms of a native capacity for the highest develop- ment, met their ethical tendencies half-way. In common mortals we can observe, on the other hand, how the agonized wrestling of the spirit forces from the clogging body a few sparing blossoms of true freedom. All the more gloriously, however, will such stray gleams of the heavenly light break through our mortal integuments, and the saying of Apollonius that even wrinkles have their beauty will fulfill itself again and again. For what is beauty, after all, but the spirit break- ing through the flesh, or health but beauty in the functioning of the organism? Where the soul finds an instrument attuned to its purposes the ease with which virtue is prac- ticed will often obscure its glory. There the result will seem inevitable. But where a [46] Health and Suggestion single harmony must be extracted from many- jarring discords — there the miracle will stand confessed. And as, in some great, sol- emn moment, its hidden beauty will illumine a good man's face, so may the sacred posses- sion of health be often achieved by a single bold and deep determination. " Let no one," exclaims the enthusiastic and prophetic physiognomist, " aspire to make man beautiful without making him better! " And let no one, we may add from the innermost depth of our convictions, let no one without making man better, seek to pre- serve his health. 1 47 i Ill IMAGINATION THE psychologists of our day are wont to reproach those of an earlier time with having split up the oneness of the hu- man spirit by the assumption of a number of segregated higher and lower faculties, such as reason, understanding, desire, will, imagina- tion and memory. So far as these faculties are thought of as being independent powers working out the laws of their individual na- ture the critics are right in their objection. For the spirit of man is single, whole and indivisible, and the only distinction to be made is one among the varying forms of an identical activity. But these forms can really be discriminated from each other and the process has its undeniable practical value. [48] Health and Suggestion And such distinctions have always served the cause of knowledge better than any indis- criminate lumping together. Hence we shall here follow the analytical methods of that older school. We may analyze ourselves (to use a geo- metrical analogy) in the directions of as many radii as are conceivable from the centre of our innermost being to the circumference of infinity. Despite that possibility, there will always be three tendencies to which all others can be referred: thought, emotion (in which imagination and feeling blend) , and volition. These three form the whole inner being of man. Thought is the food, emotion the air, volition the gymnastic of the spiritual life. So it becomes our business to discover how by means of each of these three forms of activity the soul seeks to repel the invading ills of the body. If now among these powers of the soul there is to be an arrangement in the order or rank or dignity, we must assign the lowest [49] Health and Suggestion to the imagination, a middle station to voli- tion, the highest to thought or the power of reasoning. This, at least, is the order in which these activities develop in the course of the individual's life. The boy imagines or dreams, the youth desires and acts, the man thinks. And if it be true that nature proceeds from the lower to the higher, then our scale of values stands approved. But nature also begins the processes of spiritual life with the imagination. From this point of view, too, we may follow her guidance. Imagination is the bridge between the worlds of the body and the spirit. It is a strange, changeful and mysterious faculty. One hardly knows whether to assign it to the body or the soul; whether we rule it or are ruled by it. But for that very reason it is eminently powerful in transmitting the energy of the soul to the body and hence of special import to us as a mediator. And some in- trospection will, as a matter of fact, demon- strate that neither thought nor desire may be [So] Health and Suggestion immediately embodied, but need the touch of the imagination before they can truly appear. Imagination is the mediator among, the mov- ing power behind, the various members of the spiritual organism. Without it the power of representation stagnates, all concepts remain torpid and dead, and all emotion crass and sensual. Hence the vitalizing magic of dreams, the dear children of imagination, hence the might of genius, of poetry the art, and of poetry the spirit of all lofty human endeavor. Imagination, we may add, is the least ex- plored and the least explicable of all the faculties of the soul. As many curious dis- eases show, it seems to cohere with the very structure of the body, primarily with the brain and nerves. It seems to be not only the foundation of all the more delicate facul- ties of the soul, but, in truth, the connecting link between soul and body. Kant, the philosopher par excellence, who was hardly the man to sing a hymn to that goddess " ever [SO Health and Suggestion changeable and ever new," yet observes that the power of the imagination is deeper seated than any other. A man, he was wont to say, deeply penetrated by a sense of social pleas- ure, will have a keener appetite than one who has been on horseback for two hours, and cheerful reading is more healthful than gym- nastics. From this point of view he con- siders dreams as nature's method of sustaining the vitality of the soul even in sleep. And in his profoundest work he asserts that the pleasures of congenial society are due to the increased peristaltic action of the stomach and looks upon the resultant increase of health as the justification of social wit and merriment. Another thinker fittingly called the im- agination the climate of the soul. In it, too, the diseases of the soul (in a strict sense) have their seat. For if they inhered in the soul alone, they would be errors and vices, if in the body, they would not be ailments of the soul. But in the twilight of the imagina- tion where soul and body meet, where the I 5*1 &: Health and Suggestion body throws its shadow across the light of the soul — there arises that final terror and infirmity of man whose destruction is the ultimate end of spiritual healing. Imagina- tion is ever a tendency toward the unreal and in such a tendency there are the seeds of both happiness and misery. If it take root and grow rank so as to produce waking dreams, we are already on the way to madness. And even " The poet's eye in a fine phrensy rolling," — does it not often, as by some unholy magic, summon the demons which it can only repel by fixing its gaze on the eternal star of beauty? To sum up: What the world of external phenomena with all its potent in- fluences is to the outer man, the world of imagination is to the inner. Hence it is clear how the quality of its activity must be a decisive factor in questions of disease and health. When I said, a moment ago, that feeling and imagination blend, it was not said to [53] X Health and Suggestion avoid the necessity of a finer distinction. But in truth feeling and imagination are but the passive and active sides of a single element. Any one who is practiced in introspection will recognize here far more than a play on words. We suffer when we turn the sensitive surface of our emotions toward the harsh world; we liberate ourselves from suffering if we offer the resistance of an active imagination. So here, as always, man's sorrow and joy flow from the same source. That which has power to hurt must equally have power to heal. How destructive the imagination may be, is sufficiently well-known. The unhappy vic- tim of a monomania will not fail finally to create the evil he has so long feared and invited. The story of Boerhave's pupil is apposite. This youth, while pursuing his course of medical studies, was so profoundly impressed by the great teacher's description of diseases, that, in due order, the symptoms of each declared themselves in him. Having [54] Health and Suggestion endured, in the order in which the science of each was taught, fever and inflammation and nervous weakness, he finally gave up a course of study that had brought him to the brink of the grave. Again: In September, 1824, an English waiter read in a newspaper an ac- count of a certain John Drew who, having been bitten by a mad dog, fell a victim to hydrophobia. In the very act of reading, the unhappy fellow was overtaken by the same dread disorder and scarcely saved by the phy- sicians at Guy's hospital. Very striking is the frequent instance presented by those un- happy persons who are troubled by remorse for a youth spent in debauchery and by a fear of the lagging but as they imagine cer- tain consequences of their errors. In the truest sense do they create the bodily evils that they fear, and induce disease and debility through mere worry. Every practicing physician must have ob- served analogous phenomena in others and in himself. Many a medical student, specializ- tssl Health and Suggestion ing on the diseases of the eye, sees the mouches volantes floating before his retina and so really impairs his sight; or even, in extreme cases, lives in constant fear of a cataract. During the frightful epidemic that raged in Europe some years ago one often heard the members of a social gathering, so soon as the conversation struck that fatal sub- ject, complain of and really exhibit symptoms of the evil that terrorized their imaginations. I have purposely taken instances from the living facts of contemporary life. Much that is more wonderful could be cited from books. But the point I desire to make must now be clear. If the imagination can make man sick, can it not make him well? If I can grow ill because I imagine myself to be so, must I not be able to preserve my health by the aid of the same faculty? Let us consider now such cases as answer this question in the affirmative. I do not care to repeat here all that is said and can be said of the influence of confidence, music, [561 Health and Suggestion sympathy, and hope upon disease. I may merely intimate that whatever can heal organs that have begun to disintegrate must be all the more potent to keep them whole. All such methods of cure belong to the realm of the imagination, but as time progresses, our children will learn to attribute to the same source many results that are but ill un- derstood to-day. Nor does that fact rob such methods of any dignity or value. For, because the imagination has cured me, it does not follow that my cure is an imaginary one. A patient, to take a typical instance, asked his physician to give him certain pills. The latter considered them useless in the specific instance but, being urged constantly, finally gave the sick man gilded bread pellets. After the lapse of a few days the patient de- clared that the pills had not only had the re- sults which he had hoped for and desired but had also worked as a powerful emetic! Was the result less real because it was, in a sense, imaginary? An English physician desired to [57] Health and Suggestion test the value of a new instrument of which he entertained great hope. It was to be ef- fectual against a paralysis of the tongue of long standing. First, however, he introduced a clinical thermometer into the patient's mouth. The latter, believing the thermome- ter to be the new instrument, at once declared with ecstatic pleasure that the paralyzed mus- cles had regained their power. Were the movements of his tongue less real because, in a sense, imaginary? This is not the place to consider how many of these effects are due to hypnotic influence. That the body can be affected by imagination and will consciously directed toward a certain end is one of the oldest observations of hu- manity. Practices based upon this observa- tion have been common in the Orient for many ages. The Eastern peoples are unques- tionably more at home in the world of the imagination than we of the harder and more practical Western temperament. Neverthe- less the influences which, in our daily life, we [58] Health and Suggestion see powerful and positive natures exert upon delicate and undecided ones, are all referable to similar causes. Even the reasoning of a distinguished individuality does not become ours wholly until the individuality itself has touched our imagination. The man of genius aff ects the world long before he is understood. He touches the imagination of men and draws them into the circle of his spiritual percep- tions. These phenomena are symbolic of the loft- iest manifestations of human life. A spirit- ual atmosphere, comparable to the physical one, surrounds the world — surrounds each century and even each day. This atmosphere is the combined result of the influences of all the individuals in a given epoch. Once formed, however, it reacts again upon each unit in the human mass. Thoughts, percep- tions and images float unseen about us. We breathe them in, assimilate them and com- municate them again without being conscious of any of these processes. One could then [59] i Health and Suggestion call this atmosphere the outer soul of the world. The spirit of an age (Zeitgeist) is its historical manifestation; the curious phe- nomenon of fashion a Fata Morgana within its wide domain. The smallest social groups are permeated by this spirit of the world and the age; our most intimate thoughts are touched by it. We may now consider how the individual in his narrower sphere of activity helps to shape this world-spirit. The hero's courage communicates itself potently and at once to his half-paralyzed comrades; the tremor of fear is involuntarily infectious. A hearty laugh, the sign of an invincible cheerfulness of heart, will change the spirit of a whole company and force an answering smile to the lips of the most disgruntled. The yawn of boredom will pass from face to face and work like the presence of a traitor among friends. Thus it has never surprised me to hear that honest and intelligent persons declare them- [60] Health and Suggestion selves to have really seen the ghosts which the exorcist banished by his questionable art. In a good sense as well as in an evil, faith is still omnipotent; it can still bring miracles to pass and still move mountains. Assume that your brother is good, and he will be good; trust the erring and he will err no more. Believe that your pupil has gifts and he will develop them; consider him a dunce and he will prove your assertion. The whole of nature is but an expression of the divine spirit and its highest law is this: to translate the real into the ideal, so that the Divine Idea may at last shape the world in its own image. Volumes could be written on this subject. What I desire especially to point out, how- ever, is that where the imagination of an in- dividual has grown too feeble to exert its healing power, the imagination and will of another may be used as a source of health and strength. A feeble imagination be- [61] Health and Suggestion tokens a hectic condition of the soul; for the imagination may be likened to the lungs of the spiritual life. The imagination, it may be added, is fem- inine in its nature; from it result that endur- ance and that high degree of physical sound- ness that is often observed in the delicacy and purity of the female frame. How often do we not see such tender natures, woven ap- parently of air and light, outlast, by the power of fair imaginings, the coarser-fibered broth- ers of the race. Is not hope, even according to Kant, the soberest of the prophets of rea- son, the true protecting genius of human life ? And hope is the daughter of imagination, the sister of dreams. Hence the power of fair and noble imaginings is not the least of the forces that produce longevity. But the beauty of our lives, too, is in the hands of the imagination. A famous woman of our own day asserts that along with the fitting maturity of age she has been able to preserve the flexible energies of youth. That, surely, c 62 ] Health and Suggestion i.s due to the imaging imaginative power which we enjoy in her works. The catastro- phies that destroyed such natures as Novalis, Kleist or Heine, would never have taken place, had the fire of their imaginations been used to ward off the ills which, by a prodigal and violent use, it served rather to consum- mate. And this brings me to a desired point : the imagination is the dreamy side of the emotive faculty, it is feminine and should never wholly lose a certain passivity. It is a soft and virgin flame which if carefully guarded illumines and warms. Let it break from such wise bondage and it will consume the world. We should not forget that humor and wit are both the children of imagination — wit and humor that free us from pretense and hollowness in the moral world, and, in the physical, act as sources of infinite refresh- ment and strength. Finally there is art, the noblest daughter of imagination, the loftiest of the efforts of [6 3 ] Health and Suggestion man. Art creates those waking dreams that console us for the contrast between the real and the ideal in our human lives. The plas- tic arts and the arts of music and eloquence appeal half to the body, half to the soul. Music, especially, as an acute observer points out, is directly related to the health of man. The reason is as follows: A human being, happily conscious of all his powers and fac- ulties, is in a state of high physical and spir- itual health. Music spreads such a vitaliz- ing harmony throughout our organs, it com- municates its vibrations to the nervous sys- tem and the whole man sings and sounds, however silent, in the direction of his deepest needs. Music embodies the harmony of our emotions : all the arts strive after a harmony of relations not found in the real world. Hence it is that they are guardians of the highest health, but they must be guided by a virile spirit that leads to peace and to rec- onciliation with life and with the universe. Their lovely light will illumine for us the [6 4 ] Health and Suggestion path of life, and in death they will surround us with harmonies, such as Jacob Boehme heard — harmonies that will blend at last with the ineffable music of the spheres. [65] IV THE WILL IN speaking of the will I do not mean the faculty of desiring, whether in a higher or a lower sense. I mean that active en- ergy of our being, regnant over all other pow- ers, which is more easily felt and recognized than defined, but which may fitly be called the practical faculty of man. Every one, even the weakest, knows that he possesses this faculty to will which the strong man de- velops into character. This power is the essence of the individual; it puts reason and imagination in motion and thus reveals the marvels of man's spiritual life. It is this power which the moralist, the lawgiver, the teacher, the physician and, above all, the die- tetitian of the soul seek to utilize. Through [66] Health and Suggestion it the mastery of the spirit over the body must be consummated. Consider the won- ders that it performs when, as instinct, it dwells in the night of unconscious minds. Shall it not equal those marvels when, as will, it rises into the clear field of the con- sciousness of man? In vain does one seek to reason a madman out of his delusions, the monomaniac out of his fixed idea. But if the patient's activity be appealed to, if the will be stirred, a hope- ful change is discerned at once. Such a stim- ulus must come, as a rule, from without. But if he who is sick in soul and body could sum- mon a portion of this energy from the depths of his own being, the benefits would be cor- respondingly great. Let it be remembered that the will can be trained and developed, and that there was never greater need of that process than in our day when reason and im- agination are in the highest state of cultiva- tion but the faculty of action in frequent abeyance. And if character be, as Harden- [6 7 ] Health and Suggestion berg, says, a completely cultivated will, then the building of character is a perfectly definite process. Reason can be alienated, emotion waver amid the claims of various contradic- tory impressions; not so the will, if it be flex- ible without weakness, strong without rigid- ity. The inner man is, in the last analysis, one and expresses himself in the world in the terms of one faculty. To strengthen that faculty and turn it to righteousness — that is our task. With Goethe in Clavigo one would exclaim: "Consider too curiously and your soul will languish and your very deeds be sick. Will, and you are freed from sorrow. The most wretched condition is that in which we cannot will. Rouse yourself and you will be all that you were, all that you can be ! " Body and soul languish in an hundred bonds which are indestructible. But there are an hundred others which a single act of determination will tear asunder. These are the bonds with which we bind ourselves and call by the traditional names of indecision, [68] Health and Suggestion inattention, moodiness and moroseness. We seek to excuse in ourselves these undermin- ing demons of soul and body against which the healing soul should direct its specific ef- forts. Indecision is a cramp of the soul which easily ends in complete paralysis. Not death is cruel to man ; man is cruel to himself. For he does not envisage his certain end calmly, but with half-closed eye and hesitant steps. There is no more significant instance on rec- ord of the corroding effect of uncertainty and the healing power of a decisive attitude than one communicated by Herz. He had a pa- tient in the last stages of a consuming fever. The hope which the physician felt it his duty to hold out, coupled with the pa- tient's consciousness of his desperate state, fed and redoubled the ravages of the disease. And so Herz determined upon an heroic measure. He told the patient that death was inevitable. A terrible excitement en- sued, then sorrowful resignation. That [6 9 ] Health and Suggestion evening the patient's pulse was regular; dur- ing the night it was quiet. The fever grew less from day to day; at the end of three weeks the patient was well. Of course, Herz must have known his man to risk the experi- ment. But the foundation of that experi- ment is deeply rooted in the general nature of man. Incapacity to decide often grows from the unhappy thought : It is too late ! But that very thought should aid decision. If it is really too late, determine to meet your certain fate calmly. If it be not too late, make your effort at once, for your success is worth it. There is a beautiful significance in that touch in the old legends that the knight who would win the treasure must not look back! Inattention, which is but an indecision of the mental faculties, is a condition of the soul analogous to tremors in the body. It is an oscillation indicative of the fact that the power of the soul is insufficient to assume a steady and certain direction, so that rest, [7o] Health and Suggestion change and entire cessation of activity are necessary. Experience teaches us that a strong volitional impulse may moderate and finally remove bodily weakness. How much more effectual will it be in controlling the motions of the mind. I have observed in my own case that those wavering spots before the eye called mouches volantes, as well as the dancing of the letters upon the printed page, both disappear so soon as I fix a con- centrated attention upon the objects before me. Thus an act of the will can direct, sup- port and strengthen the phenomena of the inner life. For this reason I have always held diver- sion to be a more than questionable cure for diseases both of the body and the soul. The collection of all the faculties, on the con- trary, and a wisely directed will, have seemed to me truly beneficial in such cases. For life works from within outward, but the attack of death is an external one. If the patient urges the objection that he has not the [7i] Health and Suggestion strength to summon his will, or to engage his faculties in a given direction, my advice is that he place himself in a situation that forces exertion upon him. Granted that you have no definite occupation nor the inclination to engage in one. You may still, in the service of your own good, offer yourself to another or to the state, you may still bind yourself and enter -upon a situation where the dictates of honor will force your will to take up the healing work. And do not hesitate long among the possible objects of choice. It is the first step that counts. Act counter to your inclination in the first instance and the inclination will come. Plunge into the move- ment of life. The social duties will soon be- come pleasures and the dreary thoughts take their leave. In diseases of the mind and nerves, reason is ineffectual, the passage of time only palliative, but resignation and ac- tivity omnipotent. It is an unfailing law that a stronger stim- ulus will displace a weaker. Permeate soul [72] Health and Suggestion and body with the diffusive power of the will and all the alien forces of life become feeble and of no avail. To shun all that is harm- ful, tiring, injurious to soul and body is im- possible. But to turn one's whole being tensely in a definite direction, to embrace a definite aim — that is a possible way of weak- ening the attack of hostile influences. The aim should be an active rather than a con- templative one. But even one of the latter kind can work wonders if the soul but plumb its own depths, if time and space disappear and eternity be contracted into the spiritual experience of a moment. Moodiness is the detestable demon that pretends to an aesthetic elegance and distinc- tion. To be sure, we all have varying moods, but woe be to us if our moods have us ! The poet should use his moods as the sculp- tor uses a block of marble — as the material of art. You and I can not do that. But we can use our moods to shape life, which may be the noblest and completest of all the works [73] Health and Suggestion of art. Lavater has written an ethical dis- course against "ill humors"; I am tempted to write a medical one. No man can avoid sadness, but every one moroseness. In sad- ness there is a certain magic, an element of poetry; but moroseness is the prose of life and akin to ennui and sloth. It is a sin against the holy spirit in man. The source of this poison is custom, " the nurse of man," and its resultant vices. If we were accustomed from childhood on to shun idleness, and always to exchange the seri- ous business of life for some cheerful and refreshing occupation, we would not know the meaning of ill-humor. If we had never grown accustomed to sleeping through the serene hours of early morning, we would never awaken in that state of moody indo- lence which usually follows a recognition of the lateness of the hour. If we had always insisted on order in the things about us, a finer harmony would rule our souls. A well ordered room strengthens the morale of the [74] Health and Suggestion inner life. Above all, we must use our mo- ments rightly. One is not, at any given mo- ment, inclined to everything: always, how- ever, to something. And that one thing should employ and satisfy us. For change is the law of life. Isolation produces moroseness and, accord- ing to Plato, self-will. Conversation with the world may have the same effects: it is a wise admixture of the two that will make our spirits healthy and serene. Above all, how- ever, will a recognition of the Divine Love that guards our steps free us from evil moods. A nature truly grateful for all the good life holds will bear the evil with hope and pa- tience. And if any mortal be so unhappy as to have brought with him into the world a native heritage of ill-humor, let him not think himself wise, but sick, and let him not refuse the most drastic curatives to free his spirit from torture. To turn now from the phenomenon of ill- humor to the methods of its cure, to the power [75] Health and Suggestion of the will over conditions which are deeply rooted in the nervous organization of man. Instances of this power are not far to seek. I have read of a man who by mere willing could produce inflammation on any desired part of his body.* Similarly there are peo- ple who have learned to regulate voluntarily the action of the heart. The savages of a certain tribe of American Indians, if they be- lieve that their necessary work on earth is done, lie down, although they may be in the :;ii vigor of bodily strength — and die. The victorious errorrs of Demosthenes over an in- herent physical disability" are well-known. An American named Brown tells in his me- moirs how the ventriloquist Carvin acquired his art. Physiologically, psychologically and ethically the process was a curious one and highly symbolic of the nature of human effort. First there was a presentiment of the * Feuchtersleben might have added the still more strik- ing instance of the physical stigmata of Christ actually appearing in many authenticated cases upon the bodies of nuns. — Translator. [76] Health and Suggestion latent power, stirred by mere accident; next a mild attempt followed first by apparent success, then by failure. Then came bitter strife to recapture the fortunate moment, a real success next, and then untiring practice until an ultimate facility was reached that merged into habit. Thus many modifications of muscular action that are almost unknown may be revived or learned anew by a voli- tional activity. And in the whole marvellous organism of man many other powers are latent which an iron will may awaken and reveal. The doctrine of the stoics, the loftiest and purest of pre-Christian teachings certainly proved, through its numerous disciples, the potency of the will. It was not the force of an arid syllogism that steeled the souls of the stoa's followers — it was the might of the human will that effected the highest ethical movement of the pagan world. Experience precedes ratiocination, nor has the latter ever produced the former. It was no formal . [77] Health and Suggestion demonstration which inspired that stoic who proved the might of his doctrine, as Cicero relates, in the presence of the great Pompey, " Pain is no evil " the philosopher declared, and conquered, in the presence of onlookers, a violent attack of gout that befell him. It was no formal demonstration that inspired him, I repeat — it was the living emotion of his faith's significance that urged on the will of the man to a miracle. The stoa first taught its disciples to will. Having learned that, they began to reflect and philosophize and so left us that great saying : The spirit wills and the body must. Not teaching nor reflection nor yet enthusi- asm, shining upon man like a light from above, can warm or vitalize. Deeper than that must be the source of salvation. To translate into living action the doctrines ab- stracted from the experience of the ages and here set down — that is a task requiring all we have of strength and nobleness, but a task, with God's help, not impossible of ful- fillment. [78] REASON AND CULTURE WE have delivered a eulogy upon the might of the will, we have insisted that it be exercised untiringly in a given direction. The question now comes: what are we to will? what direction shall wc give to our efforts? It is knowledge that must answer this vital question, knowledge, the fairest fruit upon the tree of life ripened under the light of reason. Imagination is lost in wandering dreams, the will leaves chaos still unformed, unless the directing soul stand behind both. This is our loftiest theme : to show how spiritual and mental cul- ture can avail over the dark forces of our material nature, and establish the health not only of men but of Man. [79] Health and Suggestion The investigator of human nature is met by no more wonderful phenomenon than the power of purely intellectual conceptions over the bodily organism. That is the great pre- rogative of man's nature, that in him ideas can be transformed into emotions and that through such a process the spirit may rule the body, even as ordinary emotions trans- late the action of the body into spiritual terms. In the possibility of such intellectual- ized emotion — the ethico-religious, for in- stance — lies the differentiation of Humanity from all else. Lower beings do not think the causes of their emotions conceivable, and purely rational beings cannot share our emo- tional life. In man alone the blending is a fact of consciousness. No further medita- tion concerning the fact that such is the case is needful here. It is our duty 7 to apply it. He whose cultivation has been in the right direction will acknowledge the might of thought over his entire being. Anyone who is accustomed in his psycho- [80] Health and Suggestion logical thinking to regard the spiritual and the bodily life as one, will have no difficulty in grasping the trend of my argument. Not so he who is wont to think of body and mind as two entities struggling in the bonds of an unnatural union, and who shares the opinion that every gratification of the senses is a deadly attack upon the spirit which can be cultivated only at the expense of the body. This unfortunate asceticism condemns man to certain failure, for every energy that lives in him must slay one part of him for the sake of another. It may be thought that the fre- quent instances of delicate scholars and stout ignoramuses confirm this wretched notion. We are asked, similarly, to contrast the stal- wart countryman and the narrow-chested city- dweller. But these facts are really delusive. The point really at issue is one's conception of the true nature and ends of human cul- ture. A certain scholar, for instance, has spent half his life in the contemplation of geomet- [81] Health and Suggestion rical figures, and neglected the contempla- tion of man; or else, he has delved into the mines of history and left the gold of the pres- ent lying untouched at his side. Seeking the kernel of things, he has not touched the husk. Yonder stout fellow, on the other hand, may not be as foolish as our scholar thinks. But he has made the art of enjoyment his study. The so-called country bumpkin may know quite enough to fulfill his moral and civic du- ties — no small equipment for any man. The arrogant townsman may not know so much. True culture is the harmonious development of all our powers. It will make us healthy, good and happy. It will teach us to know the sphere of our talents and their nature; it will show us how to subordinate, without destroying, the imagination of childhood and the impetuous will of youth to our mature* reason. Here, then, is that part of the soul's healing which will culminate in the sunny noonday of our lives. Is it possible to distinguish the cultivation [82] Health and Suggestion of the will, which we have already discussed, from that of the faculty of knowledge? The qualities of will and emotion result directly from the point of view with which we en- visage life, and that point of view, again, is the direct result of our culture. In ourselves are dread and consolation, in ourselves para- dise and hell. To the clear eye the world will be serene, and our convictions, origina- ting our moods as they must, are at the foun- dation of all our being. That, at least, is true, if our intellectual view of the world is truly native to our soul and has become one with our entire being. In that case it will be a support to the weary, a pillow of rest to the suffering, a source of new strength to the strong. The frail body of Spinoza would have failed long before it did but for the en- during might of his lofty convictions. That is the great secret. Think of the universe in its oneness, and your soul will be serene. Consider the ultimate ends of the cosmic process, and the evils of this world will dis- c 8 3 : Health and Suggestion appear. Have no regard for the approval of man and its lack will not wound you. Think of the complement — somewhere in life — of all that gives you pain and strive to serve the necessary harmony of the All. If the Egoist is most keenly aware of evil, because so few things contribute to the ends he desires, he reaps the just punishment of the narrowness of his attitude in which lies his undoing. To broaden one's attitude, to live with great thoughts — that is healing ! Life is a gift, but it is more than that: it is committed to our care. We have the right to rule it, but only in the service of duty. If the main cause of half the valetudina- rianism we observe be a morbid attention fixed on the processes of our own body, how can we better meet the evil than by rising, in the commerce with lofty thought, above the pettiness of personal preoccupations? It is pitiful to see wretched folk so anxiously con- cerned over their material well-being that they are in the best way of undermining it. [84] Health and Suggestion The very physician whom they consult is filled with contempt. They perish of a fu- tile yearning after life. For they lack that culture of the spirit which alone can liberate man from such miseries by freeing the im- mortal part of his being and giving it charge concerning the rest. No more need be said concerning the glory of the stoic's life. We attributed it rather to the will than to the sources of the will. But observe that those spirits, from Pythagoras to Goethe, have reached in the fullness of power the utmost limits of the life of man, who have lived ceaselessly in the presence of high and im- personal thoughts. Only a serene envisag- ing of the All can give us true health; only insight can give us that serenity. The acut- est of thinkers and he who plumbed deepest the abysses of the spirit; who through calm contemplation prolonged a life the natural measure of which was of the shortest, and who has ever been thought of as brooding and dark — Spinoza himself utters, in his [85] Health and Suggestion formally geometrical fashion, this saying: " Serenity can never exceed its just measure ; it is always of good. Sadness, on the other hand, is always an evil. The more our spirit comprehends, the more blessed are we." Such is the high and calm might of true phi- losophy, that it can assign a station to man from which, not without sympathy, but ut- terly devoid of struggle, he can contemplate the shifting pictures of the phenomenal world. From the fullness and unity of his truly cul- tured soul the philosopher will regard the past as a sacred inheritance, the future as the certain goal of a clearly recognized effort, the present as a possession entrusted to his care — a possession which he alone can truly eval- uate, whose benefits he alone can store up, whose pleasures he alone can enjoy with the keenness of unending youth. That is the might of philosophy. Not of such philoso- phy, however, as makes the head glow but leaves the heart to freeze. It must proceed from the thinker's innermost soul and [86] Health and Suggestion irradiate his whole being. It must not merely have been learned; it must have been lived! Its beginning and its end must be the proving and the knowing of oneself. How foolish, then, to yearn for a happiness of which we know nothing. Only in the mind can happiness be found, for happiness is itself but a conception of human thought. Whoever has contrasted, in his own experi- ence, the dull state of mere sensual well-being with the emotion that attends spiritual clar- ity — such an one will know that a profound and living reality underlies my words. Such clarity of the spirit, then, is the guardian and the cure of our being. The most important result of all culture is the knowledge of self. To each human being God has granted a certain measure of power, and a certain relation of the faculties among themselves. This measure of power, when neither overstepped nor undeveloped, conditions the integrity and health of the in- dividual. To have recognized its nature and [87] Health and Suggestion extent is the crown of human wisdom. Be- yond that no man can go : the inscription upon the temple at Delphi required but that. And the man who can fill this measure of his ca- pacities with such true culture as is not only a possession, but a condition of his whole soul — he will be able to guard his life and his health. He will live in a free and unfettered state, belonging only to himself and able to command nature to purge each alien or in- fected drop of blood from his bodily frame. " The highest good," says Herder, " which God has given to all his creatures was and remains the individual's existence." If that be so, then culture is the key to our greatest treasure. Nature has set for us the natural space of life by giving us an innate power of resistance and self-renewal. But we can lengthen this space and strengthen those qual- ities by the influence of a trained soul. If the cultured man achieves a knowledge of self, however, it is by learning to under- stand himself as a part of the great Whole, [88] Health and S u g g e s t i o n and by cooperating with the other parts. With this vital conception indeed, a truly hu- man culture must begin. From it alone springs spiritual content. If you observe the hypochondriac you will learn that, in the last analysis, the evils that beset him spring from a murky egoism. He lives, thinks and suf- fers wholly for the sake of his wretched little self whose interests he fancies threatened. Blind to all the sources of beauty and good- ness that nature and man oiler, without pa thy for the joy and — what is worse — the sorrows of his kind, he lies in wait for the least phenomenon in the dark corners oi his timid heart and dies daily throughout the span of life. Others are but the objects of his envy. To himself he is a source of anx- iety that ceases only with his own life. Life, h he constantly pursues and which, as constantly, escapes him. at last becomes indif- ferent to him and he lapses into an almost animal condition. He can no longer sa;. — ith :':.t sane and health": man: nothing human ['89] Health and Suggestion is alien to me, for, in truth, everything is. In Orestes-like desperation he clings to the bit of mortality that is himself. What to him are nature, humanity, culture? Hypo- chondria is egoism and egoism is always coarse and crude. Direct the spirit of such an unfortunate, if there still be time, toward a contemplation of the All. Present to his befogged vision the fate of his race: in a word, cultivate him, and the demon which no medication was strong enough to attack will hide its face from the light of day. If a sense of community with the world and the race is curative in so high a degree, it must be equally potent in exercising a pre- ventive function. From such a humanitarian point of view, in fact, the most important practical results arise. Self-abnegation, re- nunciation, temperance in the largest sense, in brief, the conditions of true health, fol- low in its wake. If it is important to exert the strength of an energetic will at the right moment, it is even more important to know [90] Health and Suggestion in what hour to curb it. Such restraint, which shows that the spirit has risen to a true conception of law and abhors the fortui- tous, can only be gained through culture. The stimulation of the will is most effective in temporary illness of the soul, but reason con- quers those that are chronic. Even so, joy, while it strengthens vitality for a moment, exhausts it at last. Serenity, on the other hand, is constantly healing, supporting, and, in a sense, nourishing. A genuine elevation of feeling, it has been said, is the best way of avoiding collisions both with society as a whole and with individuals. But man may elevate himself only through contemplation, the daughter of reason. The thoughts of God fill the immeasurable All, and man, in developing his own thoughts, blends his life with the divine life and becomes a part of the spiritual springs that flow through creation. The Brahmin who submerges his soul in a sea of contemplation and blends his will with the Will of God lives temperately and hap- [91] Health and Suggestion 1 ■ Ill ■[■■■I1M1IIH1II Ml ■■IHH ■■■III III IMIIlll IM| pily through a length of years which no Eu- ropean, busied with a thousand nothings, can attain. Similarly Kant, so imperfectly equipped by nature for the struggle of life, draws strength and the power of extreme longevity from great and impersonal thoughts and seems to corroborate the theory which asserts the common origin of the Indie and Germanic races. It was not alone the power of imagination which shaped the harmony of Wieland's life; it was the equal cultiva- tion of every faculty, the directing of his bright understanding toward the laws of the universe — these, aided by a happy tempera- ment, gave him that blithe old age which shines like some friendly legend in the annals of German literature. High meditation, in fact, is truly human and truly blessed. It leads man gently on to the highest point of his destination and helps him in the practice of his mortal life. How beneficent is it to attain to an insight into that great concatena- tion of the world's forces that seems to point [92] Health and Suggestion to some final divine unit}'! How excellent is it to regard reverentially those shining souls who have conquered mortal frailty through the might of the spirit and stand like the images of gods in the temple of history. Plato learned and taught though in his eightieth year, Sophocles composed the CEd'i- pus Coloneus in his old age, Cato in years equally advanced felt no distaste of life; Iso- crates shone as an orator in his ninety-fourth year, Fleury as a statesman in his ninetieth. Meditations which wrung from nature the secret of the archetype of her creatures ac- companied Goethe far beyond the ordinary limits of man's life. Let no one assert that our own time con- tradicts the beneficent effects of spiritual cul- ture on the body. It may appear to many that the refinement of the understanding, the enlightment of the intellect have rather tended to produce a feeble and sickly genera- tion. But, in the first place, mere refinement of the understanding is not true culture. [93] Health and Suggestion Wherever our century has produced the lat- ter, the happiest results have surely been in evidence. Wherever, in addition, a prema- ture tension of the intellectual life has harmed the body, it has brought with it the means of healing the wounds inflicted by itself. Do not reading, conversation, individual reflec- tion, open the sources whose streams renew and refresh us? It is not the question here of the transformation of a feeble organism. That is the function of the imagination and of faith. But observe bright, clear-headed men and you will not find that they complain of ill-humors and constant indispositions as do they whose bodily functions, ever present in an otherwise empty field of consciousness, mar the whole of life. If, then, we have refreshed our imagina- tion by art, steeled our characters by moral aims, enlarged our horizon by culture — if we have done these things we will easily con- quer the hostile forces which the universe is constantly sending out against us. Thus we [94] •■ Health and Suggestion perceive, with profound satisfaction, that bodily and spiritual activities and efforts of every kind unite to fortify and complete our happiness; and that life, art and knowledge are but beams of the same universal sun. [95] VI TEMPERAMENT AND PASSION THESE fragments would be entirely too incomplete and too fortuitous in method, did we not devote some space to a discussion of the temperament and the passions of men. A given temperament, to be sure, is too often beyond the reach of any tempering influence, the passions have been discussed both passionately and dispassion- ately — and they rule us still. Much, too, concerning this side of our subject can be inferred from what has been said up to this point. Yet, as explicitness is a virtue prized by many readers, we may proceed for a space. Essentially there are but two general types of temperament of which all others are but [96] Health and Suggestion modifications or combinations of modifica- tions. These are the active and the passive. Into these two classes all the innumerable links of the human chain are readily grouped. As character is the expression of the trained will, so temperament is merely the sum of native inclinations. A given inclination is the crude material on which the will works. If successfully, the inclination too will merge into the building of character. But if the emotional tendency is recalcitrant, it becomes passion. Thus temperament is at the root of our passions of which, also, there are two great classes. Acute psychologists and phy- sicians have always recognized this truth and have hence, as was said above, distinguished temperaments as active or passive, passions as exciting or depressing. The sanguine and choleric temperaments are active; the mel- ancholy and phlegmatic are passive. Nor is it true, though- it has often been asserted, that the inert temperament has an easy task in dealing with the problems of practical life. [97] Health and Suggestion The inertia in nature is powerful; in man it is far more difficult to conquer than the opposite excess. But this conquest is neces- sary, for true wisdom demands a dynamic not a static condition of the soul. Indiffer- ence is death. It is this vital truth that robs of all validity an arid prejudice against the passions as such. For the latter are but in- tensified inclinations without which there would be no living interest in the life of man. The ancients fabled the Muses to be the daughters of memory: the mother of mem- ory is love. An inclination must exist before wisdom can temper and direct it. Indiffer- ence arises where there is no inclination and from it, in turn, proceed boredom and sloth. " A man who wounds me," exclaims a lively author, " injures my body only, he who bores me slays my soul." And what of the man who bores himself? Love and hate — these, after all, are the foundations of life. It mat- ters little that hate is but a hidden love as death is but a hidden life. Attraction and [98] Health and Suggestion repulsion are equally necessary expressions of a state of complete health. Indignation it- self is a living force as necessary to the soul as the gall to the body. In a word : the pas- sions are powers. You cannot persuade yourself into courage, but a degree of indig- nation will arm you with it. And no powers are to be neglected or eradicated. They are to be studied, trained, ordered. Does not Lessing even speak of a passion for truth? Is not all enthusiasm impassioned? And is not enthusiasm the very flame that nourishes the life of man? It helps us where cool cal- culation is impotent; it develops all unsus- pected powers of preservation and healing. Persons of ability always desire some move- ment in the soul or in the world. Cato the elder — so his Greek biographer tells us — was happiest when Jove thundered. But does not an unimpassioned life, it will be asked, save waste of time and energy? May not an insect hidden in its chrysalis be pre- served alive for years ? Do not plants grow- [ 99 ] Health and Suggestion ing in a cellar possess a longer life than those that, in the free sunshine, suck up the mois- ture of their mother earth? And what about toads living a secular life at the core of some stone? A long life, I answer, is not there- fore a healthy one, and man is not a toad. And if the passions — these intensified in- clinations — had no other purpose, yet they can fight each other, the good pitted against the evil. Reflection alone will never be able to deal with any passion. But one passion, however violent, can be balanced by another, as love by pride, or vice versa, indignation by friendship, rage by laughter, etc. Na- ture, the wisest of all pedagogues and the best, lea.ds man through his inclinations — Nature who understands the treatment of her children. As to the specific passions: *Swift joy ex- cites and exhausts; enduring serenity, on the * Feuchtersleben does not distinguish passions and emotions properly so called with any stringency. The fact does not invalidate his argument. — Translator [IOO] Health and Suggestion other hand, nourishes the plastic processes of life. The former overstimulates, the latter strengthens and heals. Violent rage and noble indignation sustain the same relation to life and to each other as joy and cheerful- ness. The flame of age eats into the struc- ture of the organism; the steady fire of in- dignation sustains it. And the degree in which these passions are present in an indi- vidual depends upon character, that is, finally, upon the ethical element. Rage is a vulgar passion directed to vulgar ends and sinks to the level of its object. When we are en- raged our enemy has reached his aim, for we are in his power. Indignation is a moral emotion, a noble passion which lifts us above the vulgar, and by rendering the latter con- temptible protects us against it. It is this voiceless, lofty scorn which, an unconscious sign of divinity, plays about the lips of the Apollo Belvedere. Plato called the passions " fevers of the soul " because they are crises during which, as during the fevers of the [IOI] Health and Suggestion body, the soul is healed of long-rooted evils by a process of purification. If such benefits result from the passions commonly called evil, we need scarcely repeat the same arguments concerning the good. Only this must be added: that of all the emotions hope is the most life-giving, and so, for our purpose, the most important. It must not be thought, however, that we can defend the passidns unqualifiedly. The good that we have said of them applies to them only so long as they do not exceed a certain measure, so long (strange as the re- mark may seem) as they are active. For the passions, exceeding a decent measure, become, in our sense, passive. Whatever relates it- self to the reasonable side of man's being is active, because a truly human activity is pos- sible only in the sphere of reason. What- ever, on the other hand, succumbs to sensu- ality alone is, humanly speaking, passive. For a man is then in the grip of crude forces which he can no longer rule. Violent rage, [ 102] Health and Suggestion for instance, is not, as one would think, ac- tive. It is a demon in whose grasp the ob- sessed individual suffers, becoming thus pas- sive in his noblest parts. And so all violent passions, paradoxical as it may seem, belong to the domain of weakness. They are usu- ally awakened by some misfortune that crushes our primal spiritual strength. The boy weeps and rages, the man, earnestly col- lecting his powers, works toward the future. His passions cheer the horizon of his being; move him without exhausting him, and warm without consuming his heart. Such passions are the insignia of true strength. Reflections of this character, were no doubt, in the mind of Kant when he made the distinc- tion between " strengthening and melting emotions." A remark of Saussure's con- cerning a " trite melancholy " inspired the great philosopher. Saussure, he said to himself, tacitly contrasts a trite with an in- teresting and noble melancholy. And truly there is one that may be reckoned with the [ 103] Health and Suggestion strengthening rather than with the enfeebling emotions. That thought goes deep ! The pain of a great soul, whether it be for some loss sustained, or wrung from it by a con- templation of the futility of the eternal cir- cling of human life — such pain, such sorrow, are not depressing, but elevating and strength- ening. It is such suffering pride that alone conquers the might of fate. But little need be added concerning the physical effects of the emotions. It is pos- sible for any voluntary effort to equal violent emotion in shocking the organism of man. Is not that a fact within the experience of all? Who does not know the gleaming eye, the vigorous pulse, the deep breathing, the smooth front of the man inspired by joy? Who does not know the trembling, stammer- ing, shivering, the rough skin, the beating heart, the sunken pulse, the pallor and dis- comfort of the coward? Equally familiar are the difficult breath, the cold, pale, wrin- kled skin, the hesitating step of one who is [ 104'] *j Health and Suggestion abandoned by hope. Consider the blush of modesty, the pallor of envy, the bright face of happy love, the yearning in the eyes of unrequited passion. Think of the iron bands of jealousy literally throttling us, the torren- tial blood in the veins of rage — its red face, laboring breath and wild glances! Passion knocks in no figurative sense at the gate of the heart. Its first result is always an interference with the circulation of the blood. Hope deferred or utterly lost has physical results that no thinking physician can fail to consider. Ramadge indeed is inclined to assert that such psychical causes are often at the root of pulmonary disease. And it is likely enough that frequent conges- tions in the breast, due to prolonged depres- sion, may develop otherwise latent tenden- cies of a consumptive character. Remorse, the bitterest and most futile of human emo- tions, effects the body of man in ways equally deleterious. The dangers of one's temperament and of c 105 ] Health and Suggestion one's passions are to be counteracted — as I have pointed out above — by other pas- sions, by reason and, finally, by habit. A capacity for the formation of habits is, surely, the kindest device that Providence uses for the preservation of its creatures. It is by the formation of habits that life holds its own and turns alien forces to its use. To form right habits is the begin- ning and the end of ethics as well as of spirit- ual healing. Reason is never active at moments of emo- tional excitement. But the well-trained in- tellect prevents the occurrence of such moments by subjecting the inclinations and passions to the rule of rational habits. Re- garded from this point of view, composure is not an absence of emotion but a state of equilibrium in the emotional life. I have indicated how the passions may allay each other. They may, however, act also as stimuli among themselves. Take a given individual and arouse in him a passion [106] Health and Suggestion consonant with his present mood and temper, and all the other passions, like the corre- sponding strings of a musical instrument, will begin to sound and the essential harmony of the man's life will sing itself to the spiritual ear. For not silence but harmony is the law of life ; not indifference but calm. [107] VII THE EMOTIONS THE majority of those who have dis- cussed the emotions seem to have con- ceived them as being in some sense outside the order of nature and not subject to its laws. They bemoan, deride, admire or contemn man: they do not study him. But nature, as a matter of fact, is not subject to our reproaches: it is always indivisibly one, all-inclusive and governed by changeless law. Hate, rage and envy, therefore, have their place in the eternal economy of things. Definite causes have given rise to them, and they have definite qualities as worthy of con- templation as many other things the study of which fascinates us. When an inner or outer change occurs of [108] ■H Health and Suggestion which we are the true cause, i. e. which fol- lows necessarily from the nature of our be- ing — we may be said to act. When a given change, on the other hand, is only partly due to our own natures — we suffer. And every emotion affects our body in such a manner that our power of action is either increased or diminished. When, therefore, an emo- tion arises immediately within us, it expresses itself in action ; otherwise its result is passion. Alternately, then, our spirit acts and suffers. When wholly itself, i. e. when guided by clear conceptions, it acts; erring, it suffers. It fol- lows that the more our spirit be subject to error, the more keenly will it suffer. But a soul trained to the contemplation of truth will enjoy a high degree of activity. Joy is the emotion that raises the soul to a higher degree of perfection; sadness, on the contrary, robs it of its power to act. Love is nothing but joy accompanied by the representation of an external object, hate is sorrow conditioned in the same manner. [ 109] Health and Suggestion The similarity of an object to one that has been the cause of joy or sorrow to us will awaken in us those undefined emotions of love or hate which we call sympathy or antipathy. The powerlessness of man to check or govern his emotions I deem true servitude. In such cases the spirit has abandoned its rights to external influences. It approves good and follows evil. And since spirit and body are so intimately at one, the latter too is delivered into the power of external nature of which it is a part. I attune my spirit to joy for this reason, that tears and terror are the signs of a weak soul and hence hindrances to both virtue and health. In proportion to its health will the human frame enable the spirit to develop and to increase its power. To act reasonably means simply to act ac- cording to the necessities of our nature when properly understood. But it is the essential nature of every being to preserve its existence. A truly free human being thinks of nothing [no] " Health and Suggestion so little as of death. His wisdom consists not in the contemplation oi death, but in that of life. For a free spirit is one who lives reasonably, not ruled by fear, but striving by ever new activities to preserve its being. It seeks to know the essential nature of things, and by such true knowledge to rob all hindrances to joy and action of their power. Hence this studv or the emotions. All our efrorts and instincts derive from nature, either immediately, or mediately in the sense in which we ourselves are part of the natural order of things. These instincts that result immediately from our own being are related to the spirit in so far as the lat- ter lives by the light of clear ideas : other instincts are related to the spirit only in pro- portion to its own turbidness. The power of these is not truly human at all, for they are utterly dependent upon the external. Hence the former class of instincts gives rise to ac- tivities, the latter to passions. The former are ever good, the latter of a mixed nature, [in] Health and Suggestion good and evil. Hence in the actual prac- tice of life it is our first duty to cultivate the reason. Thus and thus only can man's true happiness be brought to pass. And his true happiness is but that peace of the soul which comes from the contemplation of God. But again, the cultivation of the reason consists in a recognition of God in the laws of nature. It must be man's highest aim, then, to fortify those emotions which conduce to a knowledge of the true nature of things, and to let them curb and govern their more lawless brethren. An emotion which has grown to be a pas- sion ceases to be such so soon as we attain to a clear conception of its nature. For at the root of passion is a turbid thought. And fortunately there is no emotion of which we cannot gain a clear conception. By gaining a clear conception of anything I mean such a conception as connects the individual phenom- enon with the economy of the universe, and judges it according to the laws of eternal justice. Such reflection is instructive in two [112] Health and S u g g e s t i o n ways. It teaches us first that man can dimin- ish the suffering that is emotional in its origin, and, further, that the action and passion of man have but a single source. For instance : Mortal man is so constituted that each one arcs all others to live in conformity to his own notion of right and harmonious living. In an unreasonable man this desire, when thwarted, degenerates into suffering. But in the reasonable man's soul this desire grows into active virtue. So all desires, so long as they spring from imperfect knowledge, are passions; rightly looked upon, rooted in clear cognition, they blossom into actions. To comprehend the emotions is, then, the most efficient method of keeping them in bounds. At least no other method seems to be within the limits of our power. For the forming of clear conceptions is the single source of the powers of the human soul. As the reason succeeds in ordering all things under the conception of their neccssi our passions are mastered and our sufferings [113] Health and Suggestion decreased. Each phenomenon of life, illu- minated by this insight, heightens our energy. Experience confirms this truth amply. Our sorrow over any loss decreases with a recognition of the loss's inevitableness. No one pities an infant because it cannot speak or walk and is not conscious of itself. But if the majority of men came into this world with all faculties mature, and only occasion- ally in an infantile condition, then infancy, being no longer looked upon as necessary and inevitable, would be considered pitiable, be- cause exceptional, and not necessitated by a changeless law. If we cannot, at all times, rise to a clear cognition of the nature of our inclinations, we may yet arrive at right action by assum- ing certain truths dogmatically, absorbing them as far as possible, and adapting them to the varying circumstances of life. Among such truths is this : that hate can be mastered by love. If we dwell upon this truth, if we consider the blessedness of love and the [ii4] Health and Suggestion inevitable impulses of human action, the evil that men do and that incites our anger will play but a small part in our imagination. This warning, however^ must be sounded: that in the ordering of our thoughts we give prominence to the element of good in each thing considered; for only so is that feeling of joy born that leads to action. If the de- sire of fame incite you, consider what is noble and genuine in what you desire, and how true fame may become your portion; do not think of fame's misuse or its transitoriness. Such thoughts torture him whose hopes are wrecked and who thinks to seem wise when he is but venting his bitterness. Those de- sire fame most ardently who are forever pro- claiming its futility. Thus the impoverished miser is never tired of babbling of the mis- use of wealth and the vices of the rich; the rejected lover bewails the inconstancy of the female sex. Both succeed only in increasing their misery and in showing that they can neither bear it in a manly spirit nor refrain [us] Health and Suggestion from looking upon others' happier fortunes with a jaundiced eye. One emotion can only be conquered by an- other and stronger one. And those active emotions are the stronger that are related to the spirit of man. And the more inclusive the activity of the spirit is, the more potent to concentrate all life upon a single end, the stronger will be the emotions which it rules. Now the spirit of man may reach a point at which the forms of all phenomenal appear- ances are merged in the idea of God. At that point there arises in the heart the love of God, the purest, best and strongest of all emotions. In it all others fade. Lay hold upon this feeling and you will walk actively in a clear light, having conquered all pas- sions and all extreme desires. But this emotion, like every other active one, is rooted in knowledge. For as we learn to know the nature of many things we ap- proach gradually to a knowledge of the high- est. From this knowledge flows the deepest [H6] Health and Suggestion happiness of the soul. And as love is but joy or happiness accompanied by an imagina- tive representation of its cause, it follows that this joy springing from a knowledge of the universe, will lead us to that love of God which conquers all things, being itself uncon- querable. Our happiness, our liberty, our health, all our mortal weal rest finally upon the change- less and unchanging love of God. To be sure, the majority of men think differently. Obedience to their lusts they esteem freedom and hold themselves enslaved when yielding to eternal laws. They do not realize that blessedness is not the reward of love, but love itself. We gain blessedness not by curbing our passions; we curb them because we are blessed. And so I have come to the end of all I desired to say of the mastery of passion and the freedom of the spirit. It is clear how much more powerful the wise man is than the fool. The latter is driven around the circle [H7J Health and Suggestion of external things, attains no inner satisfac- tion, reaches no consciousness of himself, of the world or God, and ceases to be when he ceases to suffer. No storm can sway the wise man's soul. Conscious of the eternal necessi- ties of things and of God, he can never cease to be or to act. The road which I have here mapped out may seem a hard one, yet is it to be found. It must be hard, for how else should it have been found and followed by so few? But all things lofty are as difficult as they are rare. [118] VIII THE LAW OF CONTRAST THE life of man, like the whole of nature, is subject to laws that follow, accompany and condition each other. There is a law of equilibrium in the universe in which all contradictories merge — an eter- nal pulse-beat of nature which propels life through the veins of the world. Even in the growth of plants, these tender children of peace and silence, nature, still true to this law, hides a profound contradiction. For plants grow by the systematic development of one knot or center of force after another. A concentration of power takes place at each of these knots, only to spread out again and shoot forth in the processes of plant forma- tion. This method is typical of nature's [119] Health and Suggestion working. In the whole of creation there is no advantage without a corresponding lack, no gain without loss, no rise without a fall, no contradiction that does not somehow end in reconciliation. So in the little world of man's life there is a constant interchange of tension and slackness, sleep and awakening, joy and sorrow, like the systole and diastole of our living breath. Our lives move in a circle conditioned by such oscillations. Ac- tion and reaction in this system are propor- tionate to each other's strength. A naturalist offers the following remarks pertinent to the subject. " He who walks too fast must soon slacken his pace. He who moves about too much must soon seek proportionate rest. He who exhausts in one day the emotions and activi- ties of two, will soon be forced to a day of inactivity and dullness. The more violent the excitement of our waking hours, the deeper will be our sleep. Equally a sensation will fade rapidly in proportion to its vio- [120] Health and Suggestion lence, and the impetuousness of a desire is the measure of its briefness. The extreme point of rage is usually its end. And thus too the freest and most self-sufficing soul will be capable of the profoundest self-abnega- tion in the service of the good of man." If these living contrasts follow each other swiftly and violently, it is plain that the vital forces must soon be exhausted. If, on the other hand, life inclines too steadily in one direction, the contrast, which is also its condi- tion, is lost. Hence it must be our aim to learn to treat wisely and balance duly these contrasts in our lives. Happy that man who, at the brink of dissolution, can summon the old vitalizing battle to his soul! Equally happy he in whom the battle, raging too strongly, can be silenced by voluntary repose. Thus it is possible to oppose the varying elements of life to each other and regulate contradictory tendencies among themselves. And this is the fundamental law of the soul's healing. But no one can fulfill or even [121] Health and Suggestion learn to understand this law who has not first learned to know and to rule himself. It is not enough to be wary of meat and drink, to alternate in proper order and proportion rest and action, or even to read my reflections on the influence of feeling, willing or think- ing upon man's health. You must do vio- lence to yourself, if necessary; know your- self, train yourself, morally and intellectually. Then and then only will you recognize the meaning of that integrity of the individual's nature which is health. Nor let any one affirm that strength for such an effort is not given him. The spirit is mighty: its com- mand will create the power to obey. The necessity for joy and recreation after periods of earnest activity or suffering need not be insisted upon. It makes itself duly felt, even as the kindliness of nature com- pels the weary body to gently irresistible sleep. Only the scholar, restlessly delving in the mines of knowledge, needs a warning not to transgress this law of nature. If [ 122] Health and Suggestion Mephistopheles had rendered Faust no serv- ice but a temporary release from brooding activities, Goethe's hero need never have despaired. Thus it is with sleep. With awakening it is very different. Here the strong hand of compulsion is often present. Life points out each man's way with its iron wand. Well for him who seeks it at once and follows its wise direction before fate applies it to his writhing back. For it takes a high grade of inner and spiritual culture to remember the necessity for seriousness, even for pain, in the ecstasy of sensuous delight. " What is that mysterious power? " asks the French poet Salvandy, " which causes some affliction to arise from our most vivid joys, as if man, in tasting them, were faithless to his des- tiny?" The truth that a sensitive soul has here perceived in the moral world extends itself to the physical. Pain is not only the seasoning of pleasure but its very condition. Thus night must have existed first or there [123] Health and Suggestion could have been no day. Nature knows its task, and never gives a loveless gift. It has added thorns to the rose and he who would rob life of every sting would also rob it of every joy. A little accidental annoyance will often free us from an hitherto incurable melancholy. Rich, satisfied and idle person^ are the usual victims of hypochondria. Some inner warning compels them to constant self- torture, for there is the profound gap in their lives which pleasure cannot fill. The wise man prevents such painful feelings and seeks even the inevitable shadow upon the garish road of life. Twilight broods over the nor- mal fate of man. In the glaring light of happiness as in the darkness of misfortune lurk equal temptations. And he who has known both will listen gladly, in the midst of joy and light, to the still small voice of sorrow. In the capacity to do that the art of life culminates and the healing of the soul is perfected. Upon the first appearance of this little [ 1 24 ] Health and Suggestion book it was the above paragraph that aroused the antagonism even of those who were in agreement with my general argument. " What makes the thought of Southern countries so immensely attractive," asked a brilliant woman, " but that they present the fair image of an eternal Spring? And do we not conceive of a better life under some such symbol of lasting serenity? Is there not an element of monkish asceticism in a view that makes pain an essential of human life? Nay! We are here in order to be happy, and our aim should be to make beauty and goodness prevail over the earth." How gladly would I agree to this conten- tion of a beautiful soul. Who would not desire to share its dreams? But, alas, we must work out our salvation in the world as it is. If, for a space, we forget that fair dream, it is but that it might return the sooner and remain the truer for us. For man's longing is given him that he may approach the height of the ideal, not that the ideal [125] Health and Suggestion should be brought to the level of life's reality. Our dreams are to guide our efforts, not be realized and thus cease to be as stars above us. All this the clear-seeing Greeks beauti- fully symbolized in the myth of Zeus and Semele. The highest ceases to be the highest if it be dragged down by a too constant use. Reflect upon our destiny with true thought, not with idle wishes, and you will be recon- ciled. You will leave the gorgeous heaven of the oriental imagination to those who are content to paint without the use of shadow. If more perfect worlds await us, a more per- fect or, at least, a different organization will fit us for them. In this world pleasure is conditioned upon pain which is at the root of life and its activity. And who, after all, will work best toward an amelioration of our earthly lot — he whose heart is full of futile dreams, or he who is conscious of the reality of things as they are ? Who — to put the matter on a lower plane — will enjoy life most? He, surely, who takes the world [126] Health and Suggestion as he finds it and reconciles himself to it. Life is activity. Joy is the emotion that ac- companies this activity when it is unhindered. But hindrances must exist and must have existed in order that joy may be. And that is only repeating our former argument con- cerning the necessity of pain. Pain, in a word, is the necessary spur without which life, as it is now constituted, could not go on. Nor is this view a melancholy one. It is in conformity to our true condition and illu- minates our destiny. The blending of joy and pain in our mortal lot is a symbol of the divine intention. Without suffering char- acter cannot be shaped, nor, on the other hand, can the spirit be cultivated without pleasure. Not comfort but duty is the end of man. The flat monotony of indulgence ends in a satiety that teaches us the blessed- ness of labor, and our own heaven-storming desires urge only the mind of folly to despair; they attune a wise man to temperateness. [ 127] Health and Suggestion The whole life of man would be, but for the spur of pain, a blank page upon which he should write the noble if difficult record that he has suffered, that is, that he has lived! And the writing of this record is man's true happiness. We, at least, can have no con- ception of happiness but this. Youth, full of its illusions, can scarcely rise to this reflec- tion. To the mature man who has suffered disappointments it is an old story. If it seems to rob life of value, surely it compen- sates by giving our earthly struggle a higher significance. Happiness is uncertain and transitory; duty is assured and eternal. Pain exists but to bring forth its own consolation. And this very contradiction in our life is the seal of its high destiny. No smile is so beautiful as one that struggles through tears, no yearning loftier and more lasting than one that can never be satisfied. He who re- nounces, truly enjoys. The cross, wound with roses, will still be the symbol of our life. The contradictory element in our lives is [128] Health and Suggestion now established by an effort of thought. It remains to seek it and its effects in the prac- tical business of existence and to inquire how, in each instance, the necessary equilibrium may be established. Joy and sorrow are ex- pressions of man's most sensitive side, namely, the emotional. But rest and work follow the same law of alternation. Activity is the condition of man's life. But an activity ex- cessive in duration or intensity may neverthe- less jeopardize the harmony of our being. Nor is the same rule inapplicable to the physi- cal organism. The alternation between nour- ishment and the expenditure of energy is to be regulated by temperance. A steady oscillation is equally necessary in the highest regions of human thought. And so the subtlest thinkers, who have tried to project their minds even beyond the limits of reason- ing, have finally concluded that the weal of man rests upon an alternation of consciousness and unconsciousness. It would, of course, be mere pedantry to [ 129] Health and Suggestion attempt to force a necessary spiritual and physical equilibrium upon ourselves and to attempt to regulate man as though he were a watch. By no conscious act is conscious- ness to be escaped. Only a mood may be voluntarily summoned. Most favorable to health and happiness is the acquisition of a thoughtful and comforting attitude toward life. Such a state, half-voluntary, will pre- serve the golden mean between too intense an absorption and its contrary. It will deflect attention from ourselves and healthily blend our activities with those of the universe. This condition can only be attained by a cul- tivated soul; it cannot even be wholly ex- pressed, possessing, like all the conditions of man, a mystical, inexplicable residuum. On this subject Schelver has some preg- nant reflections. "Let each man consult his own experience as to when he has been most blessed. Surely in his activity, in a state not of being but of a constant becoming. He is then lost in the happiness of life, and his [130] Health and Suggestion works, originating in no artifice or conscious intention, blossom from his soul like leaves and fruits from the tough fibers of wood. And indeed we know that he who seeks too eagerly to grasp and hold the objects of his desire will lose them in the moment of his illusory success. He errs in trying to grasp what he should receive. For all things are, and it only remains for them to be for him. Let him quietly receive and the gates of life will be open unto him. For this reason mem- ory and with it true comfort return to the heart when age has dulled the edge of im- moderate desire. From the conflict between desire and dissatisfaction man returns to the holy instinct of life itself." Here, then, is an aim for the art of life and for the soul's healing — to be ever clear- sighted concerning oneself, but to avoid a scrutiny too meticulous; to be able to regard serenely and objectively all the phenomena of being, within and without; to receive all influences, assimilate them, and yet to remain, [131] Health and Suggestion amid all the shifting flux of things, oneself! He who achieves this aim can be his own teacher, friend, adversary, protector, physi- cian. All life is rhythmic, having its beat and fall. As our very gait consists in a continual falling forward, so all rounded progress rests upon a harmony of alternating contradic- tories. This harmony differs for each indi- vidual. It is not to be found by reflection, but by practice in the battle of life. It is achieved when man is conscious of no organ of his body and no activity of his soul as a separate organ or a separate activity, but feels the functioning of the former and the projection of the latter to be merged in the general expression of himself. To be con- scious of an organ is a sign that the organ is awry; to be conscious of none — that is health. [132] IX HYPOCHONDRIA THE healing power of the soul is di- rectly applicable to the saddest and most foolish of human infirmities, hypochondria. Reason, morality, humor, and even religion have attempted, in their various ways, to combat this demon. But of late he has taken to affecting cleverness, and no one who pretends to subtlety or dis- tinction will repel him. To call him egotism is but a vain attack, for egotism is no^v thought to be the infallible sign of thought- fulness and liberality. Let us attempt to show that this monster is a mere nothing, and our attempt will be more effective. When Wieland died, a venerable voice, speaking at his bier, said: " When man be- [ 133] Health and Suggestion gins to examine his physical or moral being, he usually finds himself to be ill. We are all afflicted with a disease called life." There was a true definition of hypochondria, of that species, at least, against which the healing of the soul can prevail. There is another kind which the physician must treat. Of the for- mer, however, it is not enough to say that it is an imaginary disease. There is a suffi- cient reality at the basis of it. All of us mortals are only relatively healthy. Each has prescribed for him the way by which he must, at last, go down to death. And he needs but to scrutinize himself too closely or with imperfect knowledge to recognize this way and — to travel it faster than was nec- essary. So long as we are well enough to do our day's work and to enjoy the rest that fol- lows it, so long, I say, it is our duty as citi- zens and men, to take no further thought of our body. Pain is presumptuous. Recog- nize it and it will grow apace. But many [134] Health and Suggestion men pet pain and cosset it until it grows un- wieldy and threatens to destroy them. Pain is great only in proportion to our littleness. Imagine a Themistocles or a Romulus gap- ing at his tongue before a mirror or feeling his pulse ! I go farther and assert that fear, which is the source of this evil, may be used as a curative motive. For does fear heal? Does anything so precipitate the coming of old age as the fear of it? An ancient Per- sian speaks of five ways by which life is com- monly shortened: Want in old age, long disease, immoderate wandering, the constant thought of death, and — fear. Is it not true that the hypochondriac dies daily of his fears? He is the type of those wretched creatures who are ever calling upon a physi- cian, who read deeply and morbidly in medi- cal lore, who seek for infirmities in their bodies and who, as has been well pointed out, are as likely to die of a printer's error in a medical book as of anything else. These [135] Health and Suggestion are the human ciphers whom Plato banished from his Republic and whose diagnosis he gives so perfectly. " Is it not shameful/' asks Socrates, " to run to a physician not because an inevitable disease has attacked us, but because idleness and luxury have induced conditions in us for which the descendants of iEsculapius are at pains to invent names? If a carpenter be ill, he has a physician cure him, whether it be by some purgative or an incision or a cauter- ization. But if the physician were to give him a long diet-list and recommend a hun- dred little precautions, the man would at once say that he has no time to be sick and that it would profit him little to be ever concerned over his condition and abandon the business by which he earns his bread. He would dis- miss the physician and, returning to his wonted manner of life, continue to be healthy, to live and to work. But if his vital energy be too weak to admit of this process, he will take leave of life upon terms so pitiful. Thus [136] Health and Suggestion would the plain man act. Shall he whose calling lies on a higher plane think more meanly? By Zeus, there's nothing in the world so hinders us in making a proper de- mand upon life as an exaggerated anxiety over our bodies. Such an anxiety makes hard the conducting of domestic affairs, de- stroys the strength of the warrior and pre- vents the citizen from fulfilling his duties to the state. It is the death of art and science and, dreaming ever of imaginary ills, ren- ders comprehension and reflection impossible. Wherever it be, it prevents man from all proofs of virtue. iEsculapius healed the wounds of heroes. It is nowhere reported that, by long devices, he sought to extend the miserable existence of valetudinarians and thus permit them to beget a posterity as weakly and as wretched as themselves. A man congenitally weak and ruined by intem- perance he deemed worthy of life neither for his own sake nor for that of his fellow-citi- zens, nor did he think his art given him for [ 137] Health and Suggestion the sake of such an one though he were rich as Midas." If this point of view seem to us not only antique but antiquated there is yet enough truth in it to make it worth our consideration. Intelligent men have always -considered that species of hypochondria of which I am speak- ing as a mere nothing. One of the most intel- lectual of these — himself a victim — namely, Kant, proceeds like a true German philosopher, and annihilates the obstacle in his path. He asserts all men who insist upon the reality of hypochondria to be unreason- ing. " If morbid fears attack him he seeks their cause. If he find none or find that the cause, though real, is beyond the reach of his activity, he turns boldly to the necessary business of life. He lets the anxiety lie by as though it did not concern him and pro- ceeds to those matters that constitute his duty." This determination has our complete approval. And we know that Kant succeeded in carrying it out. For the sage of Koenigs- [138] Health and Suggestion berg, in spite of the hypochondria that was really caused by flat-chestedness, attained an unusual age. " There are grave diseases," says Lichtenberg, " of which it is possible to die. There are others, not so fatal, that may nevertheless be discerned without particular study. Finally there are those that cannot be seen without a microscope through which, however, they look horrible enough. And the microscope is hypochondria. If a man cares to use that instrument he will find him- self ill daily. Of especial frequency is the hypochondriacal existence of an imaginary consumption. This notion is fed by the fool- ish symptoms dwelt upon by romancers. The consumptive coughs, to be sure ; but not every one who coughs is consumptive. Similarly are other symptoms to be regarded. In a word, the diagnosis of a complex condition should be left to the physician and to him alone." As the hypochondria which we are here dis- cussing is not even a disease, it may be ne- [ 139] Health and Suggestion gated and hence expelled by the attack of a real distemper. Make the hypochondriac ill; let him see, for a space, what real illness is, and he will be cured. And, finally, whether this wretched state be weakness, imagination, sloth, dullness, egoism, disease or incipient insanity, there is still one angel whose flam- ing sword will keep it from the Paradise of man's life, and that angel is activity. For this reason the hypochondriac deserves no sympathy. I see no reason why a social stigma should not be attached to this wretched mania, and its willful victim be excluded from the ranks of the polite. Such a method would be more effective than any philosophi- cal panaceas. If society has ever the right to attack the individual, this is an occasion on which that right may be exercised. For the hypochondriac will soon be cured if he is hard put to it to live at all. Where, however, the soul has applied those healing powers which we have attributed to it in this treatise, hypochondria cannot exist. [ 140] Health and Suggestion I should like to see the man, who, surrounded by fair imaginings, directing his path by the might of a trained will, serenely regarding the great world, and cultivating all his pow- ers harmoniously — I should like to see a man of such a temper attacked by hypochon- dria. To elaborate that statement would be merely to repeat myself. But the phenom- enon of hypochondria itself had to be treated here. For the ailment is symptomatic of our age. There are three especial predispositions to hypochondria that concern the physician of the soul, not the apothecary. These three are : egoism, idleness, pedantry. Of the first two we have spoken at sufficient length. The third should be noted, the more so, as in life qualities are often misinterpreted as pedantry that have nothing in common with it. Not orderliness and punctuality, qualities hardly conceivable in a state of excess, constitute pedantry. It is the spirit of littleness that forgets the end in the means and falls a slave [141] Health and Suggestion to conventional idols that deserve the name. Not the quiet scholar who in the better com- pany of books neglects the noisy world, not he is the pedant, but rather that scholar who, in the world of books, forgets the world of the spirit, to whom the letter, ceasing to be a symbol, becomes a reality. Such an one is concerned over the editions of Aristotle and careless of the Stagirite's thoughts; he is interested in the records of the past, but unconscious of the life they express or the purpose which they served. Finally there is the pedant who would be the last man to think himself one, namely, the gilded fop of the drawing-room who has raised the social observances that are mere means to pleasant human intercourse into a serious end. Thus he esteems the trivial as serious, and the truly serious issues of life as trivial. And these forms of pedantry are analogous to the one with which I am here especially con- cerned. What is more symptomatic of lit- tleness of mind, that is, of pedantry, than to [ 142 ] Health and Suggestion forget the true aims of life in a constant con- cern over the minor ailments to which our flesh is heir. This hypochondria is a kind of vanity of health. It leads, in the end, to spiritual death in proportion as it seeks, with childish anxiety, to escape the death of the body. And this hypochondria is full of self- satisfaction and has even in our days em- bodied its ideals in an idol which we must ex- amine more closely. The melancholy of famous men has often been remarked. The saying of Aristotle that lofty and thoughtful souls are inclined to sadness needs little proof. Camoens, Tasso, Young and Byron appear before us clothed in an atmosphere of ideal gloom. But there is a distinction among these. For the sadness of the first two edifies us, but that of the others we affect to share. I cannot fittingly pursue the immediate subject. Great men may embody their feelings in verse as they choose. But of modern poetry as a whole we may boldly declare that it is not [143] Health and Suggestion an affair of great men and great sorrows, but of sickly conditions. Wretched, banal, un- spiritual hypochondria is the nurse of modern letters, and the appreciation of a young poet will soon need the physician rather than the reviewer. A young fellow, spoiled rather than trained in the parental home, without experience, knowledge or purpose, void of all power to work or to enjoy, becomes conscious of his contemptible lack of certainty and healthy development. He reads novels, runs to the theater and writes verses. On a sud- den he perceives that his moral vacillation and intellectual boredom are really an aching void and an ideal yearning. He plunges his hand into the sea of melancholy phrases with which the poetic streams of the last decenia have well-nigh overwhelmed us. He bathes in these waters and mirrors himself in them. Camoens and Byron are his fellow-sufferers. But since the hour of modernity has advanced his sorrow strikes him as more interesting than theirs and he looks forward toward its [ H4] Health and Suggestion passing into a second edition. Thus the poor wretch wears out his puling youth. When the stern hand of life is really at his throat — his helpless misery is complete. Knowing neither himself nor the world, he grasps vainly at his poetic images which can help him no longer, and he and his tawdry glories seek a common grave. Such is the fate of the untalented. But the true poet himself may similarly wreck his soul. For he loses himself even more thor- oughly in the abysses of ego-mania, mistakes hypochondriacal moon-gazing for poetic cre- ation and at last suffers that frightful cleav- age of his inner life to which the tyro can only pretend. But such poets attract their publics and since everyone is a member of the reading public nowadays, it seemed nec- essary not to neglect these phenomena here. We must protest against the pseudo-Youngs and pseudo-Byrons, for we must cleave to life. We need courage, not despair. Literature of a different order we have ourselves- dwelt [145] Health and Suggestion upon as among the most effective means by which the soul may achieve its healing ends. But in addition to art and to activity, which is the alpha and omega of our method, there are still two things — to be mentioned in our next chapter — which are of more import to the hypochondriac than anything that ever was written in any book. C 146 ] X TRUTH AND NATURE THE first curatives as well as preventa- tives of all human ills are truth and nature. An utterly pure and free ex- istence we cannot lead. We are forced into the inevitable conventions of social inter- course. Here is a restraint which we can- not avoid and which, as a rule, we are forced to esteem. But to add the coercion of an- other untruth, another convention, and, above all, from within — this would be folly de- servedly punished by destruction. There is but one morality and that is truth, but one sin and that is untruth. The former means life and health, the latter means decay. Like a secret poison do social pretense and un- truth gnaw at our vitals, but we have ceased [147] Health and S u g g e s t i o n to be conscious of their destructive power. Never was this evil greater than to-day. So- phistication of every kind has entrapped us into constant untruth of which we are as proud as city-women of their pallid cheeks. Even so the incurable invalid rejoices at the cessation of pain. Hope illuminates his face with a smile that strikes his physician as a bitter and pitiful irony. That is a symbol of our world. No one has the courage to be himself. And yet health is nothing but the opposing of our true and strong and sincere selves to the hostile forces of the world. The thinker is not unconscious of this evil. " Be true to yourself! " he calls out to a conven- tionalized generation. " Your salvation lies in truth ! " And this warning should be ad- dressed to every individual. To play a part throughout the course of one's life, even if it be played so gracefully that we may echo the plaudit e of the Emperor Augustus — even so it must wrench and exhaust the vital forces before their time. And why should [i 4 8] Health and Suggestion we play a part? Is it not easy to be sincere? Does it take any exertion to show ourselves as we really are? To men I would say: there is no strength without truth; and to women: without truth there is no charm. And genius is, in the last analysis, the power to be true. The original writer is he who, without consulting books, sets down what he has truly found in his innermost self. He produces work which strikes the most erudite with astonishment. His words have a fresh- ness and immediacy which every poet envies him. We would, therefore, be better artists if we were truer men. Our miseries and in- competencies grow from our falseness. Let us take courage to deceive neither others nor ourselves. To have the source of all bless- edness within oneself, could there be a hap- pier fortune? Ourselves are the sources of truth, of imagination and of the pure will. And what can save us from the falsity that surrounds us on all sides? A deep joy in nature. The study of nature produces an at- [ H9] Health and Suggestion omosphere in which our deepest and subtlest selves can be born and developed. If the tender plant which is our spirit shrivels and seres in the hot-house of society, transplant it to an austere wilderness and it will revive. Even the Epicurean who has tasted every joy must finally confess that those joys are the highest which do not trouble the peace of the soul. And these joys are two: the contem- plation of the soul and the contemplation of nature. Nor is there any fact of loftier and deeper significance than this: that when the greatness and loveliness of nature refresh the senses, the spirit is elevated and enlarged. You may say what you please in favor of so- ciety. Assuredly it teaches man his duty and there is nothing higher than that. But only solitude will give him content. The eye that gazes upon the immeasurable blue of the heaven or contemplates the glories of the manicolored earth, loses sight of the mean anxieties that harass man in the market-place. The thoughts of nature are all lofty, and [150] Health and Suggestion man's contemplations may become like them. The ego becomes aware of its own littleness and yet, with thoughts fixed on infinity, finds its happiness in the eternal harmony of things. It learns justice of nature's changeless laws — nature which loves even when it destroys, in which alone are truth, repose and health. All sane spirits who have given man the fruits of a pregnant solitude, have flourished amid such feelings and will ever think of nature with a deep reverence. That Lessing had no feeling for nature is a myth that grew out of a foolish paradox. It is among natural- ists that you will find those scholars who at- tain a great and serene old age. As the inti- mate study of nature, if it is to prove fruitful, necessitates a certain childlikeness of attitude (such as we find in Howard and Novalis) — even so it creates this quality in those who pursue it and gives them the boon of a second youth. Every effort of the spirit is, in a sense, but the study of nature. And he who has the [151] Health and Suggestion power and the insight to treat all things from this point of view will keep his spirit sane and happy. Like the faithful rotation of day and night will his inner life move in the circle of law and he will at last and blessedly comprehend that his feeling for the harmony of the universe is that harmony itself, of which the mind that thinks it is, of course, it- self but a part. To teach this truth, nature implants a feeling for its loveliness in the heart of the Savage and the child. To illus- trate this truth a Newton investigates the laws of the universe. And thus the purpose of man is attained : to comprehend the moving spirit of Creation and to rejoice in his knowl- edge of it. The consolation that this af- fords can not be overstated. He who has not experienced emotions of this order may consider my phrases empty: he who will at- tempt to enter that lofty region of feeling and thought will soon see an adumbration, at least, of the truth of what I say. For every man is an Antaeus and grows strong in con- [152] Health and Suggestion tact with his mother the earth. Nature af- firms the individuality of each human being, but in her great and austere presence the lit- tle passions of the flesh and the world are stilled. Converse with nature effects all that we have demanded of man in the foregoing pages. For nature works upon the whole man. It fills his imagination with noble and refreshing images; it circumscribes and strengthens his will; its mighty silence calms him ; its workings, infinite yet curbed by eter- nal law, induce thoughts that are vital and energetic; the circling regularity of its appear- ances establishes the equilibrium of his soul; the multiform glory of its loveliness, whether in leaf or star, puts mean anxieties and mor- bid preoccupations to flight; its greatness raises us above ourselves until all our feeling, our thinking, and our desire merge in a submission to the divine order of the All. Thus nature becomes religion and the last and loftiest synthesis of life is complete. [153] Health a n r d Suggestion It will now be clear that all the efforts of the human spirit are essentially one — whether expressed through philosophy, art, ethics, social culture or spiritual healing. Nevertheless, this recognition of the oneness of life must not deter us from the cultivation of our particular and specific fields of inter- ests which will finally merge, if but faithfully tended, into the harmony of the universe. These reflections could become endless if pursued in every direction possible. I con- tent myself, however, with recommending, as a commentary upon this chapter, a book that truth, nature and religion seem themselves to have written, namely, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. All that remains for me is to summarize as briefly and practically as may be the reflections of the foregoing pages. [154] XI SUMMARY REFLECTIONS concerning that which, in the twilight of self-analysis, we call the connection between soul and body, are futile or even dangerous unless they are consciously made with some practical end in view. From this standpoint it will not, per- haps, be unwelcome to our readers if we sum- marize — in aphoristic form — the results of our investigations. First, however, it will be well to offer a few remarks that could not, fittingly, have been made before. The first condition of man's soul gaining a mastery over his body and thus preserving the integrity and energy of his life is that he believe in the possibility of such a process. [155] Health and Suggestion Theoretically its possibility may, no doubt, be demonstrated. It seemed better to us to let the proof be a practical one. In addition to the instances given many others might have been cited. A few of these may be added now. Mead records the case of a woman who, suffering from an abdominal dropsy com- bined with marasmus — a thoroughly physi- cal affliction ! — was cured by having - her thoughts energetically directed toward a cer- tain object. He records another case of a woman who, in a state of decline, was freed from her most distressing symptoms by real- izing, with a deep sense of its sinfulness, the misguided conduct of her youth. It was a true triumph of learning and of learned in- terests when Corning was healed of a violent fever by the pleasure he took in conversing with a fellow-scholar. Most of these in- stances happen by chance, that is, without con- scious forethought. In Herz's invaluable treatise on dizziness, however, various exam- Health and Suggestion pies are adduced in which similar results were gained by the physician's wise forethought. Nor is this all. I ventured to attribute to the spirit power even over life and death. And I can quote at least one authenticated case where that power was exercised. It is given in the Austrian Medical Year-books (XIV.4.) according to the relation of the British physi- cian, Dr. Cheyne. The case is that of a certain Colonel Townshend who, at will, lay down and suspended all signs of life. His pulse ceased beating; a mirror held be- fore his face recorded no respiration. Half an hour later his heart would begin to beat, his pulse to throb, his* breath to come and go. In a short while he would converse with the attendant physicians. — But we desire, at this point, not to multiply proof, but to re- capitulate. The belief in the healing power of the soul once thoroughly established, the next step for the individual must be to learn to regard him- self objectively. A difficult problem! For [157] Health and Suggestion we are not to practice the meticulous self- observation of the hypochondriac, but to turn upon ourselves a serene look, even one of good-humored irony, such as results from any true philosophy and from any healthy ethical view-point. When we come to regard ourselves in this manner — analyzing the stimuli in us that lead to active self-expression — we discern something in us that wills, and something that thinks. This method of analysis we have pursued and have discovered certain necessary principles of a healthy life. Turn your im- agination toward the beautiful and joyful; nourish your emotions on what is lofty and serene ; train both by a contemplation of great art. Cleanse, strengthen and ennoble the will and let it impel the ego. Self-restraint — that is the great discipline which moral and physical health demands. And self-restraint can be achieved only by the law that man en- forces upon himself. He who desires to be healthy, spiritually and physically, must, in [158] Health and Suggestion some deeply earnest hour, have determined to rule himself and he must be true to this de- termination throughout life. He will experi- ence relapses, without doubt. But steady, willing and steady practice will make each step easier, until the final victory is gained. Hence it is man's duty to lay this categori- cal imperative upon himself, and to oppose this new and stronger I to the indecision that may come upon him. Similarly a distraught state of the soul must be met by a collection of all the faculties. He who is a slave of evil habits must tear himself free, and he who is at the mercy of the moment — let him turn stringently to the habit of righteousness. Let us develop in ourselves the might of thought and let the understanding be fixed upon the ego. Thus that knowledge of self which is analogous to the restraint of the will can come into being. To these should be added such genuine and vital science as will teach us the divinity of knowledge. And the highest knowledge, teaching us to merge the [159] Health and Suggestion conception of self into the idea of the All, leads us finally to the bosom of that living faith wherein alone are enduring serenity and cloudless health. Only he who has become small in his own esteem can feel that which is lofty and can be reached by it. Therefore let us hold in our hearts that beautiful prayer " for a clean spirit and great thoughts." Repose, inner and outer, is the first and most indispensable curative of human ills. In many cases it alone will suffice ; in the rest it will be an invaluable aid of other means; in all it will prove the best preventative. And this repose is of the spirit. The study of nature will induce it most certainly, for which reason that study is more to be com- mended to sensitive natures than the passion- ate zest and partisanship engendered by the contemplation of history. One's temperament is to be curbed and balanced by the corrective of conflicting pre- occupations. Thus the active man should strive to think; the thoughtful man to act. [160] Health and Suggestion The passions should not be smothered and with them the hidden seeds and essences of life and health. They should rather be bal- anced, moderated, and ruled. Let the active passions and emotions be given free rein, but the depressing ones be vigorously curbed. Courage, joy and hope — this is the trinity of health. Culture is to be achieved by the tone and the direction we give our inclina- tions. This is the method of God. And our purpose has been to achieve the culture of the body through the spirit. The proper tempering of our natures is to be brought about by a proper balance of contrasting con- ditions. Thus joy is to alternate with sor- row, tension with relaxation, thoughtfulness with that appropriate folly which Horace commends. These states and activities will relieve and complement each other like the colors of a skillful painting. And no spir- itual illness will assail him who is so pene- trated by a sense of this necessity of change that he will 2 if need be, call even painful mem- [ 161 ] Health and Suggestion ories and sorrow itself to his aid. This would be the place, too, where I might dis- cuss the changes of mood induced in the soul by the alternation of universal phenomena, by the change of day and night, of morning, noon and evening. But here a hint must suffice. To him who has already fallen a prey to hypochondria we can only repeat the counsel : to turn his attention from the close narrow- ness of himself to the spectacle of the race's universal joy and sorrow. In sympathy with his kind he will cease to pity himself or, at least, learn to deserve the sympathy of his fellow-men. In view of the great develop- mental processes which society is now under- going, this other-regarding attitude rises to the dignity of a sacred duty. Nor is it as dif- ficult of achievement as the confirmed egoist would have us think. For so soon as we enter utterly into another's condition, it ceases to be alien and becomes our own. And finally: In the loveliness of nature, [162] Health a n'd Suggestion the everduring and lifegiving, let every un- blessed soul find or prepare him the healing balm that is denied to no creature. Amid the boundless multiformity of human character and fate let him find the norm which it is his to reach. And, having discerned it, let him but strive to be and to remain himself — sincerely, truly, immediately, as is the Deity's creative word. 1 163 1 LEAVES FROM A DIARY HE who desires to keep body and soul in perfect health must learn early to concern himself with the general af- fairs of mankind. Often observing myself I have found thought, even in the most turbid mood, free and clear and forever unassailable by the external. But I could not translate it into emotion or project it in an action. You desire to learn the art of prolonging life? Let us rather teach him who truly knows life the art to endure it. To continue to observe, to think, to learn [i6 4 ] Health and Suggestion — that alone can arouse our sympathy for the life of man; that alone can keep the cur- rent of our own life in its course. In the bosom of each soul slumbers the ter- rible seed of madness, and we must use all ac- tive and serene powers to keep it from awak- ening. The dreary and ignoble skepticism of the worldling is mere weakness. For every one can resign himself to those difficulties against which the strong man fights but which faith alone can conquer. Imperfectly educated physicians are usually skeptics. Cultivate the beautiful. Beauty nourishes both goodness and health. Seek such society as leaves you stronger to continue your chosen work. The society that [165] Health and Suggestion leaves you weak and empty should be fled like a contagion. A moderate optimism not only results from every sound view of life, but is also the con- dition of the soul's healing effort. If you are dissatisfied with the universe and hence with yourself, your soul will be corroded by wretched brooding and your inner health will be lost. We should treat ourselves as a certain phy- sician is said to have treated his patients: those who were incurable lost their lives ; they never lost hope. " I don't know why, but I should regard a black poison with more horror than I do this clear liquid." Thus Merrimee makes a girl speak who is about to poison herself. The remark holds a weighty lesson. Pain [166] Health and Suggestion and pleasure depend upon the colors which our souls lend the unavoidable. A philosophy which always contemplates death is false. True philosophy is the wis- dom of life and takes no account of death. Given time, man can become the master of any circumstance, be it through comprehen- sion or absorption. This process is analo- gous to the body's becoming used to poisons. The human soul can not deny that its hap- piness depends, in the end, upon the enlarge- ment of its innermost essence and possessions. If any cultured person be asked when he was most happy, he will confess it to have been in the season of his youth when every day added new worlds to his horizon, new stars to his intellectual heaven. As one gets old, this blessedness is more sparingly granted. [167] Health and Suggestion Mortal knowledge has, after all, a definite limit. Thus our age must seek strength and content in meditating on what lies beyond. Life is not a dream. It becomes a dream through the guilt of man's soul which will not heed the cry of the awakener. " How shall I will, dear doctor, since it is the very power to will that I lack? " " If you are lacking to yourself, dear pa- tient, what am I to prescribe for you but — yourself ? " [168] wESSSL 0F CONGRESS 021 101 208 n