PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION AND MEDICINE

VERY few would deny the eclipse of religion in this age, especially when measured by the conception of it which the past has afforded. They might save a discouraging view by changing their conception of it, as most people have done and perhaps always will do with any force so perennial as that which has embodied itself under that term. It would seem far more doubtful to affirm the eclipse of medicine in the age when it seems to be in the very midst of its triumphs and to promise still more wonderful achievements. Medicine would be claimed by the physician as the very last department of human endeavor to be overshadowed. The university man devoted to psychology also would not accept the intimation that his subject is under a shadow. But his contention would not be so clear as the physician's. He cannot point to any such achievements as the physiologist can summon in his defence. Besides, one indisputable fact shows its subordinate place among the successful sciences. Once it was much like philosophy, the queen of the sciences. Indeed it was itself the very basis of philosophy. But with the partition of that great dominion it was reduced in rank and the physical usurped the place of the mental in the reflective world. "Philosophy," says Lotze, "is a mother wounded by the ingratitude of her children. Once she was all in all. Mathematics and Astronomy, Physics and Physiology, no less than Ethics and Politics, sprang from her loins. But the offspring soon set up establishments of their own, each the earlier as it made vigorous progress under the influence of parental authority. Then conscious of what they had created by their own endeavors they turned against the comprehensive scope of philosophy, which could not follow them into the details of this new lift, and became weary of the everlasting 'repetitions without progress which had characterized the parental career. At last, when each suckling had attained its independence, it left philosophy in undisputed possession of the insoluble problems of the universe. With this ancient portion she still sits reflecting on the old riddles with the hope of holding fast to the central interest of human knowledge."

 Psychology has had to share in the decline, partly because she sought independence and partly because she had no general mission for the world, and to-day she depends mainly on the traditional place she has had in the curriculum of human knowledge. Psychology has divested itself of all interest in the existence of a soul and, to save an open defence of materialism, employs the term "mind" to denote mental states whose basis it will not discuss. It is a technical study for neophytes and idlers, unless, perchance, it can detect crime or claim importance in pedagogy, for which it has done little or nothing up to date. It has no message for common life, as had the doctrines of Plato and Christianity. It is a kind of learned amusement, or a Brodwissenschaft for those who cannot otherwise earn bread. It lives on the momentum of its traditional importance, and would have been cast out of education long ago but for fear of the consequences of materialism, which all hold but will not avow. It is not a propaedeutic to other knowledge but the refuge of those who either get their wisdom by looking into their navels or escape a dirt-philosophy only by refusing to soil their hands.

 Medicine, however, will claim exemption from this verdict. As already remarked, its practical achievements are second only to those of physics and chemistry. It will vehemently deny any accusation of retrogression. It will passionately resent the charge that the shadows are falling on its course. But in spite of all this I shall insist that it is under an eclipse. We do not see it because we have become accustomed to the darkness. The achievements it has effected, no one will dispute; but their importance is to be measured solely according to our standards of value. If our philosophy, whether intuitive or reasoned, conscious or unconscious, be materialistic we shall see no eclipse. We shall rejoice in the darkness and not be aware of the light. We shall be living like the blind fish in Mammoth Cave. We deny the existence of light because we refuse to look at it. It is man's satisfaction with existence as he finds it that prevents his looking for anything further, especially if he feels the weight of evidence to be against the existence of more than presents itself to superficial vision. When we insist on remaining at the surface we do not see below it. This is what materialism does. It confines man to the external plane of existence. And we are materialists when we take physical science as our measure of reality.

 Men, individually and collectively, are governed by their conceptions of the cosmos. They may not always be clearly aware of these conceptions, or at least of their origin in tradition or environment. But however they have acquired it, all have some conception of a relation to things in general, and this conception determines their conduct. If man adopts the doctrine that matter is the prius and limit of reality he makes himself the subject of what he must forever estimate as inferior to himself. Matter he regards as inert and unintelligent, though he admits that in the fortuitous combinations of its elements intelligence escapes as an accident. But he regards matter as the womb and the grave of all that he prizes. He will not worship what he has to conquer in order to live. A. universe that offers no permanent development for intelligence and morality in the individual must encourage pessimism and despair. We may conceal all this from ourselves in the pleasures of outwitting the power that will extinguish us if we do not conquer it. Material satisfactions—the freedom that wealth may bring from the hardship of toil and suffering—may hide from us for a while the ugly Medusa-head of nature, but when we come to pay our bonds we are confronted with the terrific oracle of Oedipus: "May'st thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art." Only a spiritual conception of reality will rescue idealism from the clutches of a dark fate. The stability of nature and the preservation of peaceful societies hide the gulfs over which we live. But when nature reverts to chaos, in tornado or earthquake, we discover the frailty of all human power. "The earth, green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations were we further down, and Pan to whose music the nymphs dance has a cry in him that can drive all men distracted." Famine and disease will make the stoutest hearts quail unless education and courage have trained them to accept the issue in defiance. No religious faith teaches the worship of impersonal forces. Reverence is reserved for something else than' matter. Unless the divine can be found somewhere in the mysterious labyrinths of nature, man accepts battle with nature's forces with the assurance only of death and with no hope of salvation. He grits his teeth and plunges into the war without expectation of either giving or receiving quarter. While obedience to the laws of nature may bring him much, it is the obedience of prudence, not of reverence. It requires another philosophy to subdue the hostility of the mind to forces that have the power to crush, but neither the intelligence nor the mercy to save. Materialism can only exalt the remorseless sway of force, the pitiless juggernaut of Time crushing its own worshipers. Wise men, of course, will not whine over tasks that cannot be done or hopes that cannot be realized, but they would be happier if the cosmos offered something for idealism to cherish. Materialism is a good antidote for superstition and ignorance, and it is the philosophy which forces attention to the fixed uniformity of nature; but personality can find no ideals in impersonality, and it is here that this philosophy fails to satisfy the desires of man. Hence he is impelled to penetrate the veil into the inner sanctuary of nature in the hope of finding a satisfaction that materialism cannot give.

 Among savages, religion and medicine were the same thing. When Greece shook off the incubus of polytheism, medicine was frankly materialistic, having discarded religion. It was left to Plato to revive interest in the mind and in such religion as philosophy could support at that time. In Christianity all three joined 'hands. Psychology offered a philosophic defence for the existence and immortality of the soul, and medicine took care of the body in the interest of the soul. After the revival of science, each went its own way, medicine into materialism and psychology into idealism or spiritualism. But materialism triumphed and even subjugated psychology to its own services, and left religion without sympathy or protection. The great ethical ideals that made the mind more important than the body have now retired into the limbo of illusion, and a full stomach is considered a greater desideratum than any amount of penance or piety. Materialism, whether avowed or denied, has absorbed every form of activity and has extended its influence over every institution. Religion lives only upon traditions. The great belief in a soul and in its survival of bodily death has crumbled into ashes, except for that faithful class which either stops thinking or turns to science for its hopes. Medicine has taken charge of all that is worth living for, and those who have money and leisure may worship in soft pews and listen to the ritual, or to desperate efforts to adjust worn-out creeds to a philosophy which is incompatible with them.

 But the last twenty-five years have developed a movement which is now like only a small cloud on the horizon but which bids fair soon to change the whole scientific and philosophic tendency of the age. Just at the moment when religion seemed to be dying the new movement came into sight, and yet religion turned away its face. It, too, has become saturated with materialism and goes stumbling about, blindly groping for light and protection, while its erstwhile enemy, medicine, wears the crown of victory. The primary object of religion was to save the soul; that of medicine to save the body. As long as psychology could maintain that there was a soul and that its preservation was more important than that of the body, religion reigned supreme and medicine occupied a secondary place. The coffers of mankind were poured into the church. Money and salvation went together. But materialism has turned the tables. Medicine is now more lucrative than priestcraft. We do not believe we have any souls, but we are sure of our bodies, pace the good Bishop Berkeley and the Christian Scientists. Medical science is organized to save the body and does not care what becomes of the soul, if there be any. Its business is not with another world. It has a business syndicate's grip on the passion to live. It has availed itself of this advantage and but for competition and a code of ethics not yet extinct would have no better reputation than Shylock. Christianity has always taught that salvation is free; it supported the priest by wages paid collectively, and thus socialized religion. Salvation was not individually paid for until the sale of indulgences, and this terminated the abuses associated with the more mercenary tendencies of religion.

 In all this period, however, medicine was not socialized. The individual paid for his services. Saving the body was not free, it had to be paid for. As soon as materialism triumphed it decreased the interest in another life and intensified the passion for this one. This situation has yielded a harvest for medicine, and medicine has availed itself of its opportunities. In fact, medicine is not wholly exempt from the charge of extortion. The salvation of the body is the primary thing. Indeed there is nothing else to save. Psychology offers us no soul in which to be interested, and physiology has undertaken to correct or prevent the ravages of disease and the brutalities of accident. In the meantime discovery and invention have multiplied the comforts of life and justified materialism of her children. Our wealth goes into saving the body; and such attention as the soul gets, where it is assumed at all, is perfunctory and ritualistic. In the Middle Ages men built cathedrals and worshipped God, living like Simeon Stylites; in the present age we build hospitals and worship our bellies, living like princes. Materialism has commercialized everything, and medicine, despite its charities, has not escaped the general tendency. The university was founded to defend religion and has developed into a forum for science. Only the denominational college remains to protect religion. The non-sectarian institution has to cultivate Laodiceanism in order to attract students and Mr. Carnegie's pensions in order to save paying its teachers duly for their services. Psychology, which might have saved the soul for ethics and religion, has gone off into "empiricism" or materialism; and medicine, no longer having to cope with mental phenomena, has a free field for materialistic therapeutics. Mind no longer counts either as a cause or a prize. The body is everything, and the resources of civilization are employed in protecting private property from the hungry maws of the masses, who were once taught by Christianity that they were our brothers and were deserving of the right to live When medicine cannot exploit the poor, it refers them to the almshouse and buries them in Potter's Field. The physician may not save the epicure's body, but he may get his money. No religion comes in to make it imperative to consider man's soul. Only his body deserves or receives attention, and that only when he can pay for it or when we wish to evade the appearance of inhumanity.

Charity is the remnant of the religion which materialism has displaced, and, in the light of evolution, with its struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest or strongest, even charity threatens to become an extinct virtue.

 'Religion managed to get into a hostile attitude towards science. At the inception of Christianity they were allied except for the contest with the Epicureans and their materialism. Even there the argument was ad hominem [argued to emotions and not to reason]. The Epicurean admitted the existence of a soul but denied its immortality; and when confronted with alleged evidence of survival, instead of acknowledging defeat, he changed his ground and continued in his denial. He gave up the existence of the soul rather than admit its mortality and accept a reconciliation with religion. Otherwise religion quickly seized upon philosophy and science for its support and directed its hostility to art. Idolatry, as the embodiment of art and of a purely esthetic conception of the divine, was the bete noir [bugbear] of Christianity. The early Christian could not distinguish between the symbolism and the reality of polytheism, and, taking offense, rightly I think, at the sensuous conception of the divine as nothing but sublimated matter, established a conflict with art and an alliance with science. Science, at least when it based its explanations on atoms and similar realities, rested as much on the supersensible as religion had done, and hence had in that respect a natural affinity with religion. So long as religion could enlist philosophy and science in its defense it was assured of protection. But as soon as it began a dalliance with art its decay began, with the rise of materialism in the church. When pictures and cathedrals became necessary for religion, the protection of philosophy was no longer necessary, or it required too strenuous use of the intellect to justify the labor. So physical science began a career independent of religion and soon attacked its fundamental claims. Physical science won in all its battles until religion now crouches in terror before the loss of all its traditions. Psychology and philosophy are no longer its handmaids, but have gone off into the service of the intellectual curiosity shop. Medicine has appropriated all that had belonged to its rival or master and has assumed a determined hostility to everything spiritual.

 Psychic research, with its facts to suggest or to prove the existence of a soul and its survival, had neither a scientific nor a therapeutic interest for medicine. Professing to be devoted to a scientific view of man, the moment that any promise of sustaining the value of personality appeared on the horizon, medicine and academic psychology began either to take to cover or to ridicule what had been the real object of psychological science in the beginning. Medicine had founded its claims on materialism, and psychology dared not oppose medicine for fear of losing its bread. Both ridiculed what they had not the courage to face nor the knowledge to understand.

 But medicine did yield to the influence of Christian Science! It pretended to investigate it, but there was nothing scientific in the verdict, though it was correct enough in all probability. It laughed at mesmerism until mesmerism was revived under the term hypnotism and then, accepted the facts and their utility; but the moment that hypnotism approached the confines of the supernormal it was to be neglected. Christian Science followed. The system was one half spiritualism and one half a scheme to make money. Neuropathic patients whom the regular physicians could not cure went in multitudes to the new "Science" and were cured. The demonstration that drugs were not always necessary for successful cures was a challenge to the whole system of medicine, which rested on chemistry alone. Mind was not a factor in the pharmacopoeia. Psychology made no such claim as Christian Science did, and if it had done so, materialistic medicine would have laughed the claim out of court. It was content simply to attack the cures of Christian Science on the evidential side. It was an easy victory to show that Christian Science was not scientific. But the fact remained that sufferers sought and found relief or health in a system which did its work in defiance of physiological orthodoxy. This fact would not down, and it was not the exclusive property of Christian Science. Mental healing had been successful long before Mrs. Eddy gave it notoriety. Hypnotic suggestion had been scientifically applied by Charcot, Bernheim, Janet, Baron von Schrenck-Notzing and a host of predecessors. But its methods were too esoteric for the average practitioner to use or to learn and the confidence in drugs rose in proportion to the assurance that materialism was the true philosophy.

What medicine should have done was to seize the first indication of any unusual mental phenomena and investigate them scientifically, and then, by a just verdict, make an end of the matter. But what did it do with mesmerism? It appointed a committee which reported much charlatanry and some important facts in the claims of Mesmer and his followers; and then refused to accept this verdict, packed a committee to condemn it, and published the later report, shelving the first. Orthodoxy and dogmatism, bigotry and intolerance are not confined to religion and their results are not felt there alone. Science can destroy its own authority as easily as did religion. Why science should have neglected the investigation of hypnotism and taken alarm at Christian Science is explainable only by the ease with which it could divest the latter of its claims; but even there "McClure's Magazine" did more and better work than the medical profession.

 There is no escaping the fact that mind as well as matter is a causal factor in the world. But materialism, though it might have conceded this fact, has stubbornly refused to recognize it. Though the physician knew that the mental condition of his patient was a factor in therapeutics, he refused to give it the place in practice that it merited. He was too much absorbed in brain centers, about which there has been written as much unprovable metaphysics as about the unseen. Matter was the prius of everything and that was the end of investigation. However, the slow and steady accumulation of facts by psychic research, if it has not been able scientifically to establish the causal influence of mind on matter, has opened the densest materialistic mind to something besides brain centers. To introduce a soul into the investigations of biology and physiology is to revolutionize them. Psychology might have shared the honors of this result, but it chose to run away, preferring either materialism or intellectual snobbery. But psychology and medicine have only postponed the day of judgment which is coming to rob the old authorities of their prestige and power. The stone which was despised of the builders is to become the head of the corner. Mind will take a place among the causal agencies of nature. This position will be won either by the study of suggestion and mental healing or by the evidence for survival after death. Medicine will have to give up the exclusive use of drugs and admit the influence of mental states on the condition of the body. The more gracefully it does this the better for its own influence. Its hostility to Christian Science was at least excusable, and the 'writer thinks justified, by the equally one-sided views which that system takes. Mind is one of the causal agents in the world, but it is not the only one. However, the writer freely concedes that without the evidence of psychic research, the materialist has the best of the case. The facts and the argument are on his side, if the supernormal is to be debarred from consideration.

 The cowardice about this question is astonishing when we consider how alert the scientific mind is in other provinces. The most useless inquiries in physics or chemistry, will engage hundreds of men and unlimited resources, if only fame or curiosity can be satisfied. North Pole expeditions are organized at enormous expense with nothing of importance as a result, and the public goes wild about them. But when one offers to prove that man has a soul or that the mind may be a factor in therapeutics, he meets only ridicule. The momentum of materialistic science is so great that the most important of all problems has to wait for half a century to win attention.

 The present writer thinks that the main contention in this field has been sustained and that it is only stupidity and prejudice that stand in the way of its wider acceptance. He will no longer make any concession to a skepticism that refuses to investigate.

The one great change which the proof of the causal influence of mind will bring to medicine will be the placing of ethics in a more important position in therapeutics. Materialism with its drug methods was based upon the assumption that medicine could cure the effects of vice and sin. Physicians knew better, but the patient wanted to believe this and it was not always convenient or profitable to disillusion him on this point. The achievements in the use of materia medica in lieu of spiritus medicus tended to sustain confidence in the possibility of escaping the consequences of sin, and man went to his physician instead of the priest for relief. The time was when he went to the priest first and afterward to the doctor. But this procedure has been reversed. Materialism taught us to believe that, if we only had good enough doctors, we could sin as we pleased. We consulted the physician and took his drugs instead of buying indulgences. The fact is that the one is no better than the other for buying release from moral responsibility. If chemistry can relieve us from the consequences of sin, why give ethics any place at all? So thought materialism in its attempt to evade the facts of morality. But to put mind among the therapeutic agents is to turn the tide the other way. It will not set aside the achievements of the materia medica, but it will add a new force to healing. The physician will have to become a psychologist and a moralist. He has already found, in spite of his materialism, that drugs will not do everything, and he squints cautiously towards mind-cure without realizing the extent of the changes that must come from any dalliance with it. But to it he must come, if he is to be scientific at all, instead of resting in traditions and dogmatism no less fatal to progress than mediaeval theology. But physician and patient alike must learn that ethics are the best and the cheapest therapeutic, and that mind is the primary factor in healing. We cannot substitute drugs for conscience, except to secure more fees and fewer cures. What is needed is the organization of the medical profession on the same basis as the priesthood. Disinterestedness and humanity must be the primary motives of its work, or at least the mercenary interest must be minimized. As it is to-day, the clergyman receives on the average scarcely a living wage, and this is right enough if there be no soul to save. The rewards should all go to the physician if the body is all in all. But when we are assured that there is a soul and that it survives in another and invisible environment, the physician must either adjust his practice to the demands of ethics or retire from the field.

 The physician may endeavor to heal without raising the question of ultimate causes, but he cannot effect a permanent cure until his patient is spiritually sound. The individual is not always the sinner and hence the physician cannot always throw the blame on the victim. He must cure, if he can, regardless of the relation between individual and social sin. No doubt each man must accept responsibility for his error, but too often the sin is that of society and the individual has to bear the suffering vicariously. The happiness of the successful is often more or less at the expense of the unsuccessful. Hospitals and asylums are embodiments of this idea, and the only question is, how far the principle shall be applied. The passion to live is so strong that if man is without any belief that better times are reserved for him beyond the grave, he will give all he has, to prolong consciousness. The physician's advantage in the situation is tremendous. If he does not possess character he may make the suffering of the patient a thumbscrew for extorting good fees.

 Half the applause heaped on medicine is from those who rejoice at the ability to escape the results of sin and to outwit nature or Providence. Since medicine is so near religion, it must be socialized and brought to recognize that the morality of patients is more important than life. That condition can be secured only by changing the relative position assigned the body in the scheme of values that we cherish. Materialism, on its own premises, of course, is justified in its estimate, but only because it does not recognize the existence and the superior importance of the soul. The consequences, however, of the estimate, like all those of materialism, are proving disastrous. If the materialist wants to debauch either in philosophy or life he can get it; for nature will not interfere with our choice. It will silently weave about it a set of consequences which ultimately correct the error, and we can escape only by retracing our steps.

 Therapeutics, no less than ethics, require a soul and the physician will never effect the best results until he accepts that point of view. He cannot do it, of course, with the methods of normal psychology. It is the residual phenomena of nature that establish the widest conclusions. They have to be unified with the whole, and in doing this we discover new agents. Forced by the facts to recognize mental states as causal agents in therapeutic processes, however limited the field of their activity, medicine admits an entering wedge into its scheme of things and sooner or later it must submit to the restoration of the ethical and religious point of view, divested of the mass of illusions and errors that have gathered about it like barnacles. Curing diseases without curing sin only multiplies the cases with which we have to deal, and present-day medicine is no help in the ethical regeneration of man. We seek at enormous expense the means for escaping pain, but we will not give a cent to ascertain whether we have a soul and what its duties are. Liberty and irresponsibility are what we desire, and not an ideal that looks beyond an Epicurean paradise.

 And yet there is always progress. We take present satisfaction as an index of the right condition of things. It is this that makes all conservatism. But nature never rests. She will have change at all costs. If we' resist it we pay the heavier penalty. We may cry as much as we please over the crumbling of the past into ashes, with all those institutions which we have learned to prize, but we would not do so could we see in the change a sure harbinger of a greater paradise. It is the darkness of the future that makes us lament the loss of the past. Give us a beacon light into the future and we can endure much. Ethical ideals beyond sense can find their justification only in a non-sensuous philosophy; and ethical ideals point to the future. They are ideals for that reason. Psychology does nothing for us unless it supplies them, and medicine can effect no permanent cures without accepting as imperative and primary the need of ethical adjustments. It will have to make mind the cause and effect, to speak paradoxically, of all that it does accomplish, if it expects to achieve its best conquests. Indeed religion and medicine will have to join partnership again and they can do this only by one of them abandoning materialism and the other accepting science as its guide. The one should be no more a commercial business than the other, but commercial they must both be, when materialism is our only philosophy.

 Public opinion has accepted materialism without knowing what it means, and it pays its servants according to their power and willingness to pander to its wants. Education and religion are organized for catering to materialism and no scientific truth is sought, except such as may come from the accidents of that organization or from the necessity of supplying material wants. Respectability is on the side of materialism, and spiritualism, which had ruled eighteen centuries of civilization, badly enough, it is true, but with more success than either Greece or Rome achieved, is forsaken and forlorn and left to foster its faith without evidence. Fortunately it is rapidly gaining a position from which it may issue with "grim fire-eyed defiance" to challenge any dispute of its claims. It will then dictate terms to religion and medicine, to the one without disturbing its faith and to the other without disturbing its science, and psychology will come again to serve them both, recovering its rightful domain in cultivating the wider interests of man.

 Man first placed the golden age in the dim vistas of the past, but philosophy and science soon showed that it was only mythological. Christian idealism, accepting the legend of paradise and man's fallen estate, making the present carnal life one of sin and suffering, placed its golden age in the future where it seemed safer from attack. Legend may be assaulted by history, but imagination can only be ignored or ridiculed. Faith proved a stronger fortress than tradition, which dissolves in the light of science like a morning mist before the sun. Yet science with its materialism and redoubtable energies came again to conquer the world from illusion and in doing so left nothing but darkness. But mariners will not sail the seas without a harbor in which to anchor and something to requite their toil. There is no commerce with the unknown, and hence it will devolve upon science either to submit to some other source of knowledge and governance or to give us a religion that shall be stronger than faith and more adventurous than doubt. "Science," says Lord Morley, who was saturated with the philosophy of the Encyclopedists, "when she has accomplished all her triumphs in her own order, will still have to go back, when the time comes, to assist in building up a new creed by which man may live." That time has come, and recreant or cowardly is the man who does not seize the opportunity to shield the ideals that may bring a "little sheen of inspiration out of the surrounding eternity to color with its own hues man's little islet of time." All action has its fruition in the future and we must see the prospect before we can act rationally. Only he who has hope can be moved to any ventures that have idealism for their motive or progress for their rational end.

 For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.