Health and Suggestion - Dietetics of the Mind 1910

7/29/2019 Health and Suggestion - Dietetics of the Mind 1910

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Health and Suggestion


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Health and Suggestion:The Dietetics of the Mind

BYERNST von FEUCHTERSLEBEN(Sometime Professor of Medicine in the University

of Vienna)

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BYLUDWIG LEWISOHN, M.A.

NEW YORKB. W. HUEBSCH

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Copyright, 1910, by \ C\ V-B, W. HUEBSCH

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

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PREFACEThe 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 notgreatly surprise us to learn that the vivid in-terest taken in mental healing in Americawithin recent years, was shared by anothergeneration and in another land. Any ex-haustive study of that other and foreign move-ment would be out of place here. It sufficeso 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 seemto point to a curative power in the mind ofman, crystallized into any definite doc-trine. It is worthy of note, however, that noless a man than Goethe dwells upon phe-

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Health and Suggestionnomena of this kind in his autobiography.Others, at all events, followed in fragmen-tary fashion in his wake, until, at the end ofthe eighteenth century, the well-known novel-ists and satirists Hippel and Lichtenberg tooka fairly definite stand in a number of essay-like writings and insisted upon the influenceof the souPs temper and development uponthe physical organism of man. These vari-ous currents of thought were concentrated byHufeland in his Makrobiotik which, inits turn, drew from Kant the greatest namein the movement his brief essay on " thatfaculty of man's soul through which, by amere 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 thephenomena of mental healing. It had, ofcourse, 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-

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Health a n'd Suggestiontury, we find mental therapeutics a recognizedsubject of instruction at the University ofVienna, and may assume that it became onethrough the dignity which the great name ofKant had lent it.The typical German classic on mental heal-

ing, however, is not Kant's essay but theDidtetik der Seele by the Austrian physi-cian, Ernst von Feuchtersleben, a translationof which is here offered to the American pub-lic. To call this little book a classic in itsspecific 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 whichGermany is so rich, (Reclam, Meyer, Biblio-thek der Gesamt-Litteratur) ; it is a favoritegift-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 beenpresent in Germany, as they are every-

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Health and Suggestionwhere and always. But there, as in Americato-day, they were thoughtfully reflected uponand 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 atlast took up, he read all books pertinent tohis subject in various languages " with the ex-ception of Feuchtersleben's Diatetik der See-le." " In some way," he continues, " thisinimitable work escaped me, and I have be-come familiar with it only during the lastyear. It contains the principles of our wholeproject, and expresses many phases of ourthought better than we are able to express it."

Ernst von Feuchtersleben was born in Vi-enna in 1 806. He obtained his preliminarytraining at the " theresianische Akademie,"and took his degree (M.D.) at the universityof his native city in 1833. His success asa practitioner and teacher of medicine wasrapid, and from 1840 until his premature

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Health and Suggestiondeath in 1849 ne lectured on psychotherapeu-tics at the university of Vienna. In 1848he declined the portfolio of education, butaccepted 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 resignedfrom office too late to regain the vital energywhich he had spent in the state's service. Hischaracter is said to have been one of singu-lar beauty, his temper of exquisite serenityand gentleness. This is especially apparentin 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 inGermany

" In God's high council 'tis decreedThat from our dearest at our needWe're parted,"

and of many excellent gnomic poems one of[9]


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Health and Suggestionwhich, in a somewhat free rendering, mayfollow here:

" All things create observe thou, a poem asthe skies,

The babbling of the foolish, the silence of thewise.Know that man's eye can bear not heaven'sray undimmed and bright,

That without dreams our waking hours couldreach no full delight.

Be glad of what is given, yet know what thoudost lack,Do each hour's nearest duty: halt not andturn not back.

Let thought not be thy master, in sloth tohesitate,A hero he who, falling, fights 'mid the stormsof fate.

Close not thy heart in anger, love on until itbreak,

Forget and hope and fear not: rememberand awake! "

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Health and SuggestionA word must be said of the character of

the following translation of the Diatetikder Seele. Like all but the greatest Ger-man writers Feuchtersleben was far morefelicitous in his use of verse than in his use ofprose. His prose style is, as a matter offact, amorphous, wordy and professorial inthe old-fashioned German way. But anEnglish-speaking public demands, rightly,clearness of outline and definiteness of ex-pression. Hence the present version, thoughconscientiously faithful to Feuchtersleben'ssense, has been almost entirely recast fromthe point of view of form. By this methodthe translator has hoped to gain for his au-thor a wider and less hesitant appreciation.

L. L.New York, January, 19 10.

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CONTENTSPAGE

Introduction 15I. The Power of the Spirit 21

II. Beauty and Health 38III. Imagination 48IV. The Will 66V. Reason and Culture 79VI. Temperament and Passion .... 96VII. The Emotions 108

VIII. The Law of Contrast 119IX. Hypochondria 133X. Truth and Nature 147XI. Summary 155

Leaves from a Diary 164


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INTRODUCTIONOur time is swift, stormy and frivolous.

Hence to direct the attention from the dis-couraging life of the present, from the stillmore discouraging spectacle of a literaturewavering amid a thousand meaningless ten-dencies, to the calm regions of the inner man,the contemplation of ourselves this is torender a genuine service to the public mind.In such reflections we become aware of ourconnection with the sum of things, of ourpurpose and of our duty. Serenely resigningthe world, which can grant us but little, wefeel that the peace we had thought lost takesup its dwelling with us again and that a sec-ond innocence sheds its soothing light overour being. The game of rimes to whichonly the hand of genius can lend a pregnantsymbolism may employ the youthful hours

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Health and Suggestioneven of the less gifted : maturer years shouldbe dedicated to reflection concerning ourdeepest and most sacred relations with theuniverse. In doing so we exercise our truebusiness upon earth: a business within thecapacity of all, since it is the duty of all." Our writers," says von Sternberg in a bril-liant essay, " write in the market-place ratherthan in the quiet study. Hence it is that thenoise, dust and coarse reality of the streetpervade their works, and that the depth andclarity of our older authors have almost van-ished. This is due to the haste by which weare all so driven to-day. Not to be left be-hind in the race that is our aim. Thephilosopher hurls his ideas at the state, thepoet his emotions at society. Both are con-tent to achieve a momentary but violenteffect. Who, in this age, has time to growold and to write books that shall never growold?" To- meet such just complaints andcounteract such tendencies is the purpose ofthe following pages. They are written in a

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Health and Suggestionspirit of repose, for the refreshment andcollection of my own faculties. In a similarspirit they must be read in order to transmittheir significance to the reader.By means of a blending of ethics and die-

tetics, strange perhaps at first sight, I havesought to exhibit in its practical bearing thehealing power of the spirit over the body ofman. " The profession of medicine, " toquote the voice of the general public, " is vio-lently averse to a popularization of its arts,to any medical self-study. The physicianapparently fears that to become aware of theuncertainty and insufficiency of his knowledgeand methods means, for the public, a loss ofconfidence. Hence it is to his advantage tofoster a delusion.' ! In some such way thepublic reasons, supported, unhappily, by arecent medical writer.

Let us grant the contention for a moment.Suppose the delusion to be real. Does itadvantage only us doctors, does it not ad-vantage you equally? If faith has cured you

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Health and Suggestionis it less a cure than one effected by iron orquinine? Is not this faith a real power?May it not, without quackery, serve in placeof a physical method? This power of self-delusion, capable of such wonderful effects,should one not rather desire to awaken itand to possess it for one's own welfare? Topoint out how far that be possible, how faithcan be learned that is the purpose to whichthis book is to contribute. My expressionsare 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 beleft with the individual himself.

I have sought to be, in the best sense ofthe word, popular. A genuine appeal of thiskind does not degrade the writer to a vulgarlevel; it exalts the general understanding tohis own.The purpose of my frequent quotations of

the words of eminent men is to exhibit theunanimity of sentiment which the subject ofthis treatise has always enjoyed among minds

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Health a n Suggestionof experience and insight. Little that I sayis new except in that it is unhappily unknownto the many. One may assert fearlessly thatno art becomes so rarely the business of ahuman life as the art whose practice I preach the art of ruling oneself. And yet it isthe first and last of all the arts.

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Health and Suggestion

THE POWER OF THE SPIRITTHE 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 theknowledge, all the efforts of man combine tothis great end to cultivate and foster themoral being which is the fine flower of lifeand the purpose of existence. We, however,will deal here more specifically with that fac-ulty of the spirit which has power to guardthe body against the evils that assail it. Theexistence of this faculty has scarcely everbeen called into question, its remarkable ef-fects have been recounted with astonishment,but its laws have been rarely investigated, norhas it often been summoned to take its true

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Health and Suggestionplace in the practical business of life. Butevery power that flows from the sources ofour spirit's life may be cultivated, may, in aword, be converted into an art. Every artis but the result of some trained faculty ofman. He has made an art of life itself, whynot, then, make one of health which is thelife 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 hastreated of that power of the spirit by which(through an act of pure determination) onemay become master of one's morbid feelings.We go farther, for we desire to subdue notonly feelings but, if possible, disease itself.The soul is often helped by means of thebody, and this process is capable of being re-versed. This is a point of view to whichphysicians, myself included, have not alwaysgiven the attention that it deserves.How the soul, then, can guard the body

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Health and Suggestionagainst illness that is my subject. AgainI must caution my readers not to expect thecompleteness of an exact science in the treat-ment of a matter which, like all the phe-nomena of life, is subtle and elusive. Infact, I am quite willing to sacrifice the hol-low satisfaction of having constructed a sys-tem, and incur for these sketches the reproachof mere rhapsodizing. There are subjectsconcerning which to demand too much isreally to demand too little. Such, perhaps,was the science of physiognomy. Like Lava-ter, its originator, we may be content withfragments. But let us guard against the er-ror of that fabled academy of sciences whichspent its time in marvelling why a tank ofwater containing fishes weighed no more thanone that held no living thing, but dispensed,throughout its lofty speculations, with theuse of scales. In other words, let us seekfirst to establish the central fact of our doc-trine before we attempt to outline processesand methods.

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Health and SuggestionSpeculations concerning the distinction be-

tween, nay, the very existence of, soul andbody, have always been and will always bedear to the purely philosophical mind. Tothe sane and practical thinker they presentthemselves as almost ludicrous. I appeal tothe undimmed, unsophisticated feeling ofmankind. 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 bodyexclusively, may yet follow me and considerme as discussing the power over the wholebody of that part of it which exercises theso-called soul-functions. Wrong-headed assuch 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 nonethe less exact analogy. In awakening fromsleep that power in us which should liberateus is in a state of bondage. Yet it can freeitself gradually, and through practice it can

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Health a n Suggestionachieve 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 andaction. There is the night of the spirit andhere no counteraction is efficacious; there isthe twilight of the spirit, still capable of sanedesiring if not of willing. This stage isamenable 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 notthrough the mind of the patient but throughthat of another. To offer a radical analysisof these conditions would be inadvisable.But even without verging on the dangerousdomain 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 thisspiritual innocence and a division enters intoour life. The facts discovered by a trained

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Health and Suggestionconsciousness of self establish the existence ofa principle not to be deduced from mere senseperceptions. We call this principle the spiritbut must not forget that we are dealing withan abstraction merely. For on this planetwe know spirit only in its inseparable com-bination with the body of man. A sensibleusage calls the one element of this combina-tion soul, the other body. Considering nowthat we know soul and body only througha highly sophisticated analysis of an appar-ently indivisible phenomenon, the influenceof the former upon the latter should scarcelystand in need of proof. To seek to explainthe nature of the connection of soul and bodywould be highly futile. For the thinker andhis thought are to himself an entity. Theprocess of thought can not become objectiveto itself, even as the right hand may graspthe left but never itself. Our thinking, fur-thermore, is conditioned by space and time.The physician may merely observe that thenervous system is the most immediately ob-

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Health and SuggestionI m i n i - . i nvious link in the common action of soul andbody. Any further speculation would beidle. Having established our central con-ceptions we may leave these problems withoutanother word.

It is equally impossible here to examinethe genesis of sickness and cure. Nor is itnecessary. It suffices us to remark that alldiseases are due to one of two causes, anouter or an inner one. , Disease is due eitherto the development, under external stimulusno doubt, of a germ inherent in the natureof the individual, or else the organism suc-cumbs to the hostile forces of its environment^The latter process, however, also necessitatesan innate predisposition conditioned in weak-ness. To diseases of the first order belongall those commonly known as inherited orconstitutional. Many other pathologicalconditions may also be regarded from thispoint of view oftener and more fruitfullythan has been done heretofore.The question now is: whether such con-

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Health and Suggestionditions may be mastered through the mightof the spirit. It goes without saying thatI do not here refer to such prophylacticmeasures as physicians use either to improvethe patient's predispositions or to guardagainst harmful influences from without.Such preventive actions also originate in themind, but not in that of the patient. Philos-ophers and philosophical poets are alwaysanxious 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 ownspecial field.How does any individual's nature and itsdisposition toward health manifest itselfmost vividly? Clearly through that whichwe call the temperament of a man, using theterm with the vital meaning of our dailyspeech and not in accordance with somelearned analysis. Man is an entity com-posed of many elements, and the subtlestpsychologist can but consider a given tern-

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Health and Suggestionperament as made up of such elements asare similarly " tempered," thus blendinginto an individual life. " Every humanbeing," says Herder, " bears in the form ofhis body as well as in the endowments ofhis soul the possibilities of that harmonywhich should be the goal of his efforts. Thisis true of all forms of human existence, ofdeformity so feeble that it can scarcely sus-tain life, as well as of the divine form ofa Greek demi-god. Through lapses anderrors, through cultivation, want, and prac-tice, each mortal still seeks to attain thatharmony of his powers which constitutes theprofoundest enjoyment of our being." Andwhich 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 calledthe measure of the universe should be ableto become the criterion of himself. And

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Health and Suggestionsurely no one who has ever withdrawn intohimself from the confusion of the externalworld will deny the influence of the soul fromthis point of view. He will admit that mas-tery over self can be gained and hence oversuch disease as is rooted in the self of theindividual. The fact of such a procedureonce established, we shall examine its methodsin future chapters.To attribute to the soul, however, a power

and mastery beyond its own immediatedomain will seem more marvellous and morequestionable. But the world in which welive is, after all, nothing but a web spun byour own natures. To the man it is a sceneof strife, to the child a play-ground, to theglad of heart it is serene, to the tear-stainedeye it is turbid. As it is perceived, so itworks. The images and thoughts that haveaffected the soul most potently cause man'shappiness or misery. And to control theirappearance and disappearance in the field ofconsciousness must surely be within our

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Health and Suggestionpower. The anxiety and acuteness that weuse, so often, alas, to darken and to dull ourvision should be used to gain for us a brightlyseeing eye. The wild storm on the heathwhich drenches the companions of Lear tothe skin cannot touch him, for in him thestorms of grief and indignation silence thelashing of rain and the roll of thunder. Wemay go a step farther than the lesson sug-gested by this illustration. It is well knownthat those unhappy beings whose souls dwellin the darkness of insanity are often freefrom 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 thusrenders the latter impervious to external in-fluences. And should not a will concentratedupon the pursuit of sacred and reasonableends be able to effect as much as the distortedpower of madness?A British author, discussing the influenceof fog and coal-smoke upon the health of

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Health and Suggestionhis countrymen, {Medical Reports: 1830)communicates the following conclusions ofhis investigations. " It is open to questionwhether many of the diseases that are at-tributed to the atmosphere of our city maynot rather be ascribed to its manners. Forjust as the body, amid all variations of tem-perature changes its degree of inner warmthbut little, so there is in the nature of mana power of resistance which, in a state ofhealthy activity, usually suffices to maintainan equilibrium between himself and thehostile forces in his environment. Physicianshave not a little to say of sick ladies who,too feeble to cross a room, dance withoutdifficulty through half a night in the armof a favorite partner. Thus a desired stim-ulus arouses the indolent fibers to activity.The same principle accounts for the fact thatthe idle, the empty-minded and the fashion-able suffer most acutely from the atmosphereof London. The man whose powers andwhose attention are constantly transmuted

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Health and Suggestioninto activity knows nothing of the state ofthe barometer. It is true enough that thedreary month of November is a period ofmelancholy and suicide; but the drab color-ing of the sky cannot overshadow the clearaether of a serene spirit. Even the patho-logical excitement of mania transcends theinfluence of the atmosphere. Not autumnwith its falling leaves, but the associationswhich man, the great self-torturer, has con-nected with its appearance, weigh so oppres-sively upon us. The morbid anxieties ofthe hypochondriac, which rise and fall withthe weather, are in the end due only to aninner activity or the lack of it which controlshis mood. Such a patient is generally, evenif it be but at intervals, weak of character.Let him earnestly lay hold upon this vitaltruth and strive for his own welfare. Hewill become his own best physician."What practitioner is not tempted to mul-

tiply similar instances from the field of hisown experience? They are almost as fre-

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Health and Suggestionquent as any other kind, especially in thosegreat cities whose darkening atmosphereseems to consist of the passions, the anxieties,and the thoughts of their inhabitants. Afigure such as Goethe's Werther may gainfrom us the sympathy due to misfortune anddisease, but suicidal tendencies are the inher-itance of natures too sensitive, souls toogentle, who cannot hold their own againstthe harshness of life's realities. Strongerminds are not unassailed, and many an activephysician has known periods during whichonly the most self-sacrificing devotion to hisduties was able to sunder the clouds thatthreatened to obscure his moral and physicalwell-being. In such fateful days his activitysaves him even from those dangers to whichitself has given rise. Thus the woundswhich duty inflicts upon us always hold thebalm of their own healing.

It is instructive to quote Goethe at thispoint. He did not feel the impetus thatcomes from the fulfillment of professional

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Health and Suggestionduties, but achieved his end through the sheerexertion of unnecessitated will. " I wasonce," he tells us, " inevitably exposed to theinfection of a malignant fever, and wardedoff the disease only by means of determinedvolition. It is almost incredible how much,in such cases, the moral will can effect! Itseems to permeate one's whole being and torender the condition of the body activeenough to repel all harmful influences. Fearis a condition of sloth in which any enemymay take possession of us." To instancesuch facts from the life of Goethe has anunique value. For in the life of that greatsoul all that in others is mere self-delusionwas 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 externalsubject to an inner law, which can assimilatethat which is alien and thus, though con-stantly dynamic, change only its conditionsand never its essence. A bodily power of

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Health and Suggestionthis 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 manis, again, the condition of inner activity.The potency of thought in any human beingis the measure of the originality and sponta-neity of his own life. He lives, he is, inproportion as his soul is active.

It is true that a thousand varying influenceslie in wait for the poor mortal, that the wholeworld is such an influence, but the strongestof all is the character of man. Characteris man. For as all beings are but the symbolsof power, so man has nothing of his ownbut the energy through which he reveals him-self. And if the native energy of his soulflag, let him impose upon himself conditionsthat demand its expenditure let him seekcircumstances in which volition is unavoid-able ! It is an old and true observation thatthe traveler and the bridegroom are generallyimmune to disease and death.

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Health and Suggestion" Rarely or almost never," says Bulwer,

" will disease fasten itself upon us in youthunless we ourselves dwell upon it and inviteit. One sees men of the most delicate con-stitutions who, amid the imperious claims oftheir calling, have no time to be ill. Letthem be idle, let them begin to brood, andthey die. Rust corrodes only the unusedsteel. 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 themor at least offer a nobler consolation.' , ButI must not let the agreement of an admirablewriter persuade me to promise more than Ican perform. My concern so far has beenmerely an empirical corroboration of the factthat the spirit has power to ward off the in-fluences of disease. In the pursuit of thatend I have said too much rather than toolittle.

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Health and Suggestionleast of all, to find any reflection upon thefancies that we are here pursuing. In thisbook I find expressed much that I felt, buthardly ventured to put into words. Let meset it down for what it is worth.

" Is it so foolish to suppose that the actionbetween body and spirit is a complete inter-action, that, therefore, the permeating soulcan affect the world without us and, in mani-festing its highest energy, even work its willupon the earth itself? To conclude rigor-ously, to be dissatisfied with imperfect infer-ences, would mean the acceptance of thistruth. Thus one could suggest the hypothesisthat the good man cleanses the earth and airabout him, but that evil thought and deedfoul their own habitation. Think of thepopular belief concerning the scenes of mur-der. And for the perception of truths deeplyrooted in nature, popular mythology is a val-uable source; for it takes its rise in men andwomen whose alert senses have not beendulled by the exercise of reflection. One won-

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Health and Suggestionders, in this connection, whether a well-knownand admirable Berlin physician who diagnosesdermatological cases by the mere delicacy ofthe sense of smell, could not transfer thismethod of perception from the physical to themoral world."

This quotation the reader may interpretfor himself. I shall follow more ordinarypaths. But let it be remembered that whenwe have brought the incredible into the realmof probability we have done much towardrendering the merely improbable certain.

But to proceed to the true business of thischapter.

" Persons of our sex," writes a cleverwoman,* " may retain their health by con-ceiving a strong disgust for disease and byembracing the conviction that health itself isbeautiful and worthy of love and admira-tion." A true conviction, surely! For theform of man is the expression of his innerwell-being.

* Rahel Varnhagen von Ense.[40]


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Health and SuggestionIn one of the pleasantest of the " Physiog-

nomical Fragments," Lavater seeks to provethat there is a visible harmony "between moraland physical beauty and between moral andphysical ugliness. This is as certain as thatthe Eternal Wisdom has clothed each beingin a fitting form. One must, of course, con-ceive this beauty not as consisting in somefleeting charm, but as the spirit itself makingthe flesh luminous. Also one must discountthe ravages which rooted folly and passioninevitably inflict. The physiognomists, atall events, have succeeded in proving that theorganism possesses inherently the ideal formof its own final development and that naturebrings this development about by a methodthat is at one with the necessary procedureof human thought. For our special purposewe may append as a corollary to this truththe fact that, if the spirit possesses the powerof working upon the form of the body, thispower may be made manifest as well in beautyas in health. Those habits of feeling and

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V

Health and Suggestionwilling which produce character also condi-tion the movements of the voluntary musclesand are, therefore, the origins of those facialfeatures which decide the comeliness of anyindividual. Any frequently repeated ex-pression of the countenance, whether it be tosmile, to twitch, whether it be derisive, sor-rowful or angry, leaves its trace upon thosedelicate fabrics. Nor is this all. It leavesa memory of itself which leads to increasingfacility of repetition and finally affects endur-ingly and formatively the muscles and thecellular tissues. But this apparently super-ficial exertion of the power of the spirit isnot likely to remain merely superficial and toleave no mark upon the solid substructure ofthe body. It is open to question whether thebony cranium to which the muscles adheremay not itself feel the plastic influence oftheir 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

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Health and Suggestionoften under the stress of emotion, has re-tained these lasting folds. A process, analo-gous to this facial one, takes place in all otherparts of the organism. To be free fromcarking care and to breathe deeply and fullyduring a long period will not be without itseffect upon the development of the chest andof the important organs which it holds. Onthe other hand, the languishing circulationdue to a continued depression of spirits willnot fail to leave traces of itself in the insuffi-ciency of necessary secretions and the dis-turbance of the digestive organs. And inproportion to their endurance, violence andconformity to the original nature of the indi-vidual, will such processes leave their indeli-ble impress upon his organic being, formallyand functionally. All parts of the humanorganism (comparable to a living circle)interact upon each other. The nature ex-pressed in a pale and wrinkled face will beequally attested to by a low voice, a waveringgait, an uncertain hand, an incapacity to de-

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Health and Suggestioncide, a morbid sensitiveness to changes in theweather, in a word, by all the heralds of dis-ease. Thus may the body be poisoned orelse guarded and healed by the fruits of thespirit's sowing. Beauty, then, is in a certainsense only the manifestation of health. Aharmony in the functions will produce har-mony of form. If virtue then may make onebeautiful and vice ugly, it would be rash todeny that the fruit of virtue is health andof vice disease.

Nature holds a secret court whose arbitra-ment is gentle, long-suffering, but ineluctable.She marks those errors that flee the eye ofman and are not amenable to his law. Herjudgments, eternal like all streams of theprimal Energy, extend from generation togeneration. Man, brooding in despair overthe secret cause of his suffering, will oftenfind it in the sins of his fathers. That oldand tragic saying of the inevitable conse-quences of action holds good, not only mor-ally and legally, but physically. It will come

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Health and Suggestionto be more and more recognized that thefeebleness and the diseases of our childrenare rooted far more deeply in moral than inphysical causes. Not cold baths will guardthem, not bare throats, not experiments ofthis sort or that, but a culture of a quite dif-ferent kind a culture whose origin must bein ourselves. Physicians have often had tobear nor always unjustly the reproachof a crass materialism, of regarding man asa mere bundle of bones, muscles, viscera, andskins, set in motion by the action of the air'soxygen upon the blood. In this treatise wemay repel that imputation. From our pointof view the physician sees and proclaims heal-ing in that quarter whence priest and moralistassert it to arise. " Who can fail to under-stand," wrote Schiller in his youth, " that aconstitution able to draw pleasure from everyevent and to sink every personal sorrow in theperfection of the universe must also be mostprofitable to this bodily machine?" Andsuch a constitution is virtue.

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Health and SuggestionMorality has its geniuses no less than art.

Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Howard, Penn,were what they were and present the imagesof lives so exquisitely harmonious, becausekindly nature, by gifting them with organismsof a native capacity for the highest develop-ment, met their ethical tendencies half-way.In common mortals we can observe, on theother hand, how the agonized wrestling ofthe spirit forces from the clogging body afew sparing blossoms of true freedom. Allthe more gloriously, however, will such straygleams of the heavenly light break throughour mortal integuments, and the saying ofApollonius that even wrinkles have theirbeauty will fulfill itself again and again. Forwhat is beauty, after all, but the spirit break-ing through the flesh, or health but beauty inthe functioning of the organism? Wherethe soul finds an instrument attuned to itspurposes the ease with which virtue is prac-ticed will often obscure its glory. There theresult will seem inevitable. But where a

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Health and Suggestionsingle harmony must be extracted from many-jarring discords there the miracle willstand confessed. And as, in some great, sol-emn moment, its hidden beauty will illuminea good man's face, so may the sacred posses-sion of health be often achieved by a singlebold and deep determination.

" Let no one," exclaims the enthusiasticand prophetic physiognomist, " aspire tomake man beautiful without making himbetter! " And let no one, we may add fromthe innermost depth of our convictions, let noone without making man better, seek to pre-serve his health.

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Ill

IMAGINATION

THE psychologists of our day are wont toreproach those of an earlier time withhaving split up the oneness of the hu-

man spirit by the assumption of a number ofsegregated higher and lower faculties, such asreason, understanding, desire, will, imagina-tion and memory. So far as these facultiesare thought of as being independent powersworking out the laws of their individual na-ture the critics are right in their objection.For the spirit of man is single, whole andindivisible, and the only distinction to bemade is one among the varying forms ofan identical activity. But these forms canreally be discriminated from each other andthe process has its undeniable practical value.

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Health and SuggestionAnd such distinctions have always served thecause of knowledge better than any indis-criminate lumping together. Hence we shallhere follow the analytical methods of thatolder school.We may analyze ourselves (to use a geo-metrical analogy) in the directions of as manyradii as are conceivable from the centre ofour innermost being to the circumference ofinfinity. Despite that possibility, there willalways be three tendencies to which all otherscan be referred: thought, emotion (in whichimagination and feeling blend) , and volition.These three form the whole inner being ofman. Thought is the food, emotion the air,volition the gymnastic of the spiritual life.So it becomes our business to discover howby means of each of these three forms ofactivity the soul seeks to repel the invadingills of the body.

If now among these powers of the soulthere is to be an arrangement in the order orrank or dignity, we must assign the lowest

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Health and Suggestionto the imagination, a middle station to voli-tion, the highest to thought or the power ofreasoning. This, at least, is the order inwhich these activities develop in the courseof the individual's life. The boy imaginesor dreams, the youth desires and acts, theman thinks. And if it be true that natureproceeds from the lower to the higher, thenour scale of values stands approved. Butnature also begins the processes of spirituallife with the imagination. From this pointof view, too, we may follow her guidance.

Imagination is the bridge between theworlds of the body and the spirit. It is astrange, changeful and mysterious faculty.One hardly knows whether to assign it to thebody or the soul; whether we rule it or areruled by it. But for that very reason it iseminently powerful in transmitting the energyof the soul to the body and hence of specialimport to us as a mediator. And some in-trospection will, as a matter of fact, demon-strate that neither thought nor desire may be

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Health and Suggestionimmediately embodied, but need the touch ofthe imagination before they can truly appear.Imagination is the mediator among, the mov-ing power behind, the various members of thespiritual organism. Without it the power ofrepresentation stagnates, all concepts remaintorpid and dead, and all emotion crass andsensual. Hence the vitalizing magic ofdreams, the dear children of imagination,hence the might of genius, of poetry the art,and of poetry the spirit of all lofty humanendeavor.

Imagination, we may add, is the least ex-plored and the least explicable of all thefaculties of the soul. As many curious dis-eases show, it seems to cohere with the verystructure of the body, primarily with thebrain and nerves. It seems to be not onlythe foundation of all the more delicate facul-ties of the soul, but, in truth, the connectinglink between soul and body. Kant, thephilosopher par excellence, who was hardlythe man to sing a hymn to that goddess " ever

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Health and Suggestionchangeable and ever new," yet observes thatthe power of the imagination is deeper seatedthan 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 whohas been on horseback for two hours, andcheerful reading is more healthful than gym-nastics. From this point of view he con-siders dreams as nature's method of sustainingthe vitality of the soul even in sleep. Andin his profoundest work he asserts that thepleasures of congenial society are due to theincreased peristaltic action of the stomach andlooks upon the resultant increase of health asthe 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 thesoul alone, they would be errors and vices, ifin the body, they would not be ailments ofthe soul. But in the twilight of the imagina-tion where soul and body meet, where the

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Health and Suggestionbody throws its shadow across the light ofthe soul there arises that final terror andinfirmity of man whose destruction is theultimate end of spiritual healing. Imagina-tion is ever a tendency toward the unreal andin such a tendency there are the seeds of bothhappiness and misery. If it take root andgrow rank so as to produce waking dreams,we are already on the way to madness. Andeven

" 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 repelby fixing its gaze on the eternal star ofbeauty? To sum up: What the world ofexternal phenomena with all its potent in-fluences is to the outer man, the world ofimagination is to the inner. Hence it is clearhow the quality of its activity must be adecisive factor in questions of disease andhealth.When I said, a moment ago, that feeling

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Health and Suggestionavoid the necessity of a finer distinction. Butin truth feeling and imagination are but thepassive and active sides of a single element.Any one who is practiced in introspection willrecognize here far more than a play on words.We suffer when we turn the sensitive surfaceof our emotions toward the harsh world; weliberate ourselves from suffering if we offerthe resistance of an active imagination. Sohere, as always, man's sorrow and joy flowfrom the same source. That which haspower to hurt must equally have power toheal.How destructive the imagination may be,is sufficiently well-known. The unhappy vic-tim of a monomania will not fail finallyto create the evil he has so long feared andinvited. The story of Boerhave's pupil isapposite. This youth, while pursuing hiscourse of medical studies, was so profoundlyimpressed by the great teacher's descriptionof diseases, that, in due order, the symptomsof each declared themselves in him. Having

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Health and Suggestionendured, in the order in which the science ofeach was taught, fever and inflammation andnervous weakness, he finally gave up a courseof study that had brought him to the brinkof the grave. Again: In September, 1824,an English waiter read in a newspaper an ac-count of a certain John Drew who, havingbeen bitten by a mad dog, fell a victim tohydrophobia. In the very act of reading, theunhappy fellow was overtaken by the samedread disorder and scarcely saved by the phy-sicians at Guy's hospital. Very striking isthe frequent instance presented by those un-happy persons who are troubled by remorsefor a youth spent in debauchery and by afear of the lagging but as they imagine cer-tain consequences of their errors. In thetruest sense do they create the bodily evilsthat they fear, and induce disease and debilitythrough mere worry.

Every practicing physician must have ob-served analogous phenomena in others and inhimself. Many a medical student, specializ-

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Health and Suggestioning on the diseases of the eye, sees themouches volantes floating before his retinaand so really impairs his sight; or even, inextreme cases, lives in constant fear of acataract. During the frightful epidemic thatraged in Europe some years ago one oftenheard the members of a social gathering, sosoon as the conversation struck that fatal sub-ject, complain of and really exhibit symptomsof the evil that terrorized their imaginations.I have purposely taken instances from theliving facts of contemporary life. Muchthat is more wonderful could be cited frombooks. But the point I desire to make mustnow be clear. If the imagination can makeman sick, can it not make him well? If Ican grow ill because I imagine myself to beso, must I not be able to preserve my healthby the aid of the same faculty?Let us consider now such cases as answerthis question in the affirmative. I do notcare to repeat here all that is said and canbe said of the influence of confidence, music,

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Health and Suggestionsympathy, and hope upon disease. I maymerely intimate that whatever can healorgans that have begun to disintegrate mustbe all the more potent to keep them whole.All such methods of cure belong to the realmof the imagination, but as time progresses,our children will learn to attribute to thesame source many results that are but ill un-derstood to-day. Nor does that fact robsuch methods of any dignity or value. For,because the imagination has cured me, it doesnot follow that my cure is an imaginary one.A patient, to take a typical instance, askedhis physician to give him certain pills. The

latter considered them useless in the specificinstance but, being urged constantly, finallygave 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 buthad also worked as a powerful emetic! Wasthe result less real because it was, in a sense,imaginary? An English physician desired to

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Health and Suggestiontest the value of a new instrument of whichhe entertained great hope. It was to be ef-fectual against a paralysis of the tongue oflong standing. First, however, he introduceda clinical thermometer into the patient'smouth. The latter, believing the thermome-ter to be the new instrument, at once declaredwith ecstatic pleasure that the paralyzed mus-cles had regained their power. Were themovements of his tongue less real because, ina sense, imaginary?

This is not the place to consider how manyof these effects are due to hypnotic influence.That the body can be affected by imaginationand will consciously directed toward a certainend is one of the oldest observations of hu-manity. Practices based upon this observa-tion have been common in the Orient formany ages. The Eastern peoples are unques-tionably more at home in the world of theimagination than we of the harder and morepractical Western temperament. Neverthe-less the influences which, in our daily life, we

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Health and Suggestionsee powerful and positive natures exert upondelicate and undecided ones, are all referableto similar causes. Even the reasoning of adistinguished individuality does not becomeours wholly until the individuality itself hastouched our imagination. The man of geniusaffects the world long before he is understood.He touches the imagination of men and drawsthem 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 physicalone, surrounds the world surrounds eachcentury and even each day. This atmosphereis the combined result of the influences ofall the individuals in a given epoch. Onceformed, however, it reacts again upon eachunit in the human mass. Thoughts, percep-tions and images float unseen about us. Webreathe them in, assimilate them and com-municate them again without being consciousof any of these processes. One could then

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Health and Suggestioncall this atmosphere the outer soul of theworld. The spirit of an age (Zeitgeist) isits historical manifestation; the curious phe-nomenon of fashion a Fata Morgana withinits wide domain. The smallest social groupsare permeated by this spirit of the world andthe age; our most intimate thoughts aretouched by it.We may now consider how the individualin his narrower sphere of activity helps toshape this world-spirit. The hero's couragecommunicates itself potently and at once tohis half-paralyzed comrades; the tremor offear is involuntarily infectious. A heartylaugh, the sign of an invincible cheerfulnessof heart, will change the spirit of a wholecompany and force an answering smile to thelips of the most disgruntled. The yawn ofboredom will pass from face to face and worklike the presence of a traitor among friends.Thus it has never surprised me to hear thathonest and intelligent persons declare them-

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Health and Suggestionselves to have really seen the ghosts which theexorcist banished by his questionable art. Ina good sense as well as in an evil, faith isstill omnipotent; it can still bring miraclesto pass and still move mountains. Assumethat your brother is good, and he will begood; trust the erring and he will err nomore. Believe that your pupil has gifts andhe will develop them; consider him a dunceand he will prove your assertion. The wholeof nature is but an expression of the divinespirit and its highest law is this: to translatethe real into the ideal, so that the DivineIdea may at last shape the world in its ownimage.

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 itshealing power, the imagination and will ofanother may be used as a source of healthand strength. A feeble imagination be-

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Health and Suggestiontokens a hectic condition of the soul; for theimagination may be likened to the lungs ofthe 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 andpurity of the female frame. How often dowe not see such tender natures, woven ap-parently of air and light, outlast, by the powerof fair imaginings, the coarser-fibered broth-ers of the race. Is not hope, even accordingto 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 offair and noble imaginings is not the least ofthe forces that produce longevity. But thebeauty of our lives, too, is in the hands ofthe imagination. A famous woman of ourown day asserts that along with the fittingmaturity of age she has been able to preservethe flexible energies of youth. That, surely,

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Health and Suggestioni.s due to the imaging imaginative powerwhich we enjoy in her works. The catastro-phies that destroyed such natures as Novalis,Kleist or Heine, would never have takenplace, had the fire of their imaginations beenused to ward off the ills which, by a prodigaland violent use, it served rather to consum-mate. And this brings me to a desired pointthe imagination is the dreamy side of theemotive faculty, it is feminine and shouldnever wholly lose a certain passivity. It is asoft and virgin flame which if carefullyguarded illumines and warms. Let it breakfrom such wise bondage and it will consumethe world.We should not forget that humor and witare both the children of imagination witand humor that free us from pretense andhollowness in the moral world, and, in thephysical, act as sources of infinite refresh-ment and strength.

Finally there is art, the noblest daughterof imagination, the loftiest of the efforts of

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Health and Suggestionman. Art creates those waking dreams thatconsole us for the contrast between the realand the ideal in our human lives. The plas-tic arts and the arts of music and eloquenceappeal half to the body, half to the soul.Music, especially, as an acute observer pointsout, 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 deepestneeds. Music embodies the harmony of ouremotions : all the arts strive after a harmonyof relations not found in the real world.Hence it is that they are guardians of thehighest health, but they must be guided bya virile spirit that leads to peace and to rec-onciliation with life and with the universe.Their lovely light will illumine for us the

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Health and Suggestionpath of life, and in death they will surroundus with harmonies, such as Jacob Boehmeheard harmonies that will blend at lastwith the ineffable music of the spheres.

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IVTHE WILL

IN speaking of the will I do not mean thefaculty of desiring, whether in a higheror a lower sense. I mean that active en-

ergy of our being, regnant over all other pow-ers, which is more easily felt and recognizedthan defined, but which may fitly be calledthe practical faculty of man. Every one,even the weakest, knows that he possessesthis faculty to will which the strong man de-velops into character. This power is theessence of the individual; it puts reason andimagination in motion and thus reveals themarvels of man's spiritual life. It is thispower which the moralist, the lawgiver, theteacher, the physician and, above all, the die-tetitian of the soul seek to utilize. Through

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Health and Suggestionit the mastery of the spirit over the bodymust be consummated. Consider the won-ders that it performs when, as instinct, itdwells in the night of unconscious minds.Shall it not equal those marvels when, aswill, it rises into the clear field of the con-sciousness of man?

In vain does one seek to reason a madmanout of his delusions, the monomaniac out ofhis fixed idea. But if the patient's activitybe 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. Butif he who is sick in soul and body could sum-mon a portion of this energy from the depthsof his own being, the benefits would be cor-respondingly great. Let it be rememberedthat the will can be trained and developed,and that there was never greater need of thatprocess than in our day when reason and im-agination are in the highest state of cultiva-tion but the faculty of action in frequentabeyance. And if character be, as Harden-

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Health and Suggestionberg, says, a completely cultivated will, thenthe building of character is a perfectly definiteprocess. Reason can be alienated, emotionwaver 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 theterms of one faculty. To strengthen thatfaculty and turn it to righteousness that isour task. With Goethe in Clavigo onewould exclaim: "Consider too curiouslyand your soul will languish and your verydeeds be sick. Will, and you are freed fromsorrow. The most wretched condition is thatin which we cannot will. Rouse yourself andyou will be all that you were, all that you canbe ! " Body and soul languish in an hundredbonds which are indestructible. But thereare an hundred others which a single act ofdetermination will tear asunder. These arethe bonds with which we bind ourselves andcall by the traditional names of indecision,

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Health and Suggestioninattention, moodiness and moroseness. Weseek to excuse in ourselves these undermin-ing demons of soul and body against whichthe healing soul should direct its specific ef-forts.

Indecision is a cramp of the soul whicheasily ends in complete paralysis. Not deathis cruel to man ; man is cruel to himself. Forhe 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 andthe healing power of a decisive attitude thanone communicated by Herz. He had a pa-tient in the last stages of a consuming fever.The hope which the physician felt it hisduty 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 heroicmeasure. He told the patient that deathwas inevitable. A terrible excitement en-sued, then sorrowful resignation. That

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Health and Suggestionevening the patient's pulse was regular; dur-ing the night it was quiet. The fever grewless from day to day; at the end of threeweeks the patient was well. Of course, Herzmust have known his man to risk the experi-ment. But the foundation of that experi-ment is deeply rooted in the general natureof man. Incapacity to decide often growsfrom the unhappy thought : It is too late

But that very thought should aid decision.If it is really too late, determine to meet yourcertain fate calmly. If it be not too late,make your effort at once, for your success isworth it. There is a beautiful significancein that touch in the old legends that the knightwho would win the treasure must not lookback!

Inattention, which is but an indecision ofthe mental faculties, is a condition of thesoul analogous to tremors in the body. Itis an oscillation indicative of the fact that thepower of the soul is insufficient to assume asteady and certain direction, so that rest,

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Health and Suggestionchange and entire cessation of activity arenecessary. Experience teaches us that astrong volitional impulse may moderate andfinally remove bodily weakness. How muchmore effectual will it be in controlling themotions of the mind. I have observed in myown case that those wavering spots beforethe eye called mouches volantes, as well asthe dancing of the letters upon the printedpage, both disappear so soon as I fix a con-centrated attention upon the objects beforeme. Thus an act of the will can direct, sup-port and strengthen the phenomena of theinner life.

For this reason I have always held diver-sion to be a more than questionable cure fordiseases both of the body and the soul. Thecollection of all the faculties, on the con-trary, and a wisely directed will, have seemedto me truly beneficial in such cases. For lifeworks from within outward, but the attack ofdeath is an external one. If the patienturges the objection that he has not the

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Health and Suggestionstrength to summon his will, or to engage hisfaculties in a given direction, my advice isthat he place himself in a situation that forcesexertion upon him. Granted that you haveno definite occupation nor the inclination toengage in one. You may still, in the serviceof your own good, offer yourself to anotheror to the state, you may still bind yourselfand enter -upon a situation where the dictatesof honor will force your will to take up thehealing work. And do not hesitate longamong the possible objects of choice. It isthe first step that counts. Act counter toyour inclination in the first instance and theinclination will come. Plunge into the move-ment of life. The social duties will soon be-come pleasures and the dreary thoughts taketheir leave. In diseases of the mind andnerves, reason is ineffectual, the passage oftime only palliative, but resignation and ac-tivity omnipotent.

It is an unfailing law that a stronger stim-ulus will displace a weaker. Permeate soul

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Health and Suggestionand body with the diffusive power of the willand all the alien forces of life become feebleand 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 beingtensely in a definite direction, to embrace adefinite aim that is a possible way of weak-ening the attack of hostile influences. Theaim should be an active rather than a con-templative one. But even one of the latterkind can work wonders if the soul but plumbits own depths, if time and space disappearand eternity be contracted into the spiritualexperience of a moment.

Moodiness is the detestable demon thatpretends to an aesthetic elegance and distinc-tion. To be sure, we all have varying moods,but woe be to us if our moods have usThe poet should use his moods as the sculp-tor uses a block of marble as the materialof art. You and I can not do that. But wecan use our moods to shape life, which maybe the noblest and completest of all the works

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Health and Suggestionof art. Lavater has written an ethical dis-course against "ill humors"; I am temptedto write a medical one. No man can avoidsadness, but every one moroseness. In sad-ness there is a certain magic, an element ofpoetry; but moroseness is the prose of lifeand akin to ennui and sloth. It is a sinagainst the holy spirit in man.The source of this poison is custom, " the

nurse of man," and its resultant vices. Ifwe were accustomed from childhood on toshun idleness, and always to exchange the seri-ous business of life for some cheerful andrefreshing occupation, we would not knowthe meaning of ill-humor. If we had nevergrown accustomed to sleeping through theserene hours of early morning, we wouldnever awaken in that state of moody indo-lence which usually follows a recognition ofthe lateness of the hour. If we had alwaysinsisted on order in the things about us, afiner harmony would rule our souls. A wellordered room strengthens the morale of the

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Health and Suggestioninner 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 thingshould employ and satisfy us. For change isthe law of life.

Isolation produces moroseness and, accord-ing to Plato, self-will. Conversation withthe world may have the same effects: it is awise admixture of the two that will make ourspirits healthy and serene. Above all, how-ever, will a recognition of the Divine Lovethat guards our steps free us from evil moods.A nature truly grateful for all the good lifeholds will bear the evil with hope and pa-tience. And if any mortal be so unhappyas to have brought with him into the worlda native heritage of ill-humor, let him notthink himself wise, but sick, and let him notrefuse the most drastic curatives to free hisspirit from torture.To turn now from the phenomenon of ill-

humor to the methods of its cure, to the power[75]


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Health and Suggestionof the will over conditions which are deeplyrooted in the nervous organization of man.Instances of this power are not far to seek.I have read of a man who by mere willingcould produce inflammation on any desiredpart of his body.* Similarly there are peo-ple who have learned to regulate voluntarilythe action of the heart. The savages of acertain tribe of American Indians, if they be-lieve that their necessary work on earth isdone, lie down, although they may be in the:;ii vigor of bodily strength and die. Thevictorious 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 acquiredhis art. Physiologically, psychologicallyand ethically the process was a curious oneand highly symbolic of the nature of humaneffort. First there was a presentiment of the* Feuchtersleben might have added the still more strik-

ing instance of the physical stigmata of Christ actuallyappearing in many authenticated cases upon the bodiesof nuns. Translator.

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Health and Suggestionlatent power, stirred by mere accident; nexta mild attempt followed first by apparentsuccess, then by failure. Then came bitterstrife to recapture the fortunate moment, areal success next, and then untiring practiceuntil an ultimate facility was reached thatmerged into habit. Thus many modificationsof muscular action that are almost unknownmay be revived or learned anew by a voli-tional activity. And in the whole marvellousorganism of man many other powers arelatent which an iron will may awaken andreveal.The doctrine of the stoics, the loftiest and

purest of pre-Christian teachings certainlyproved, through its numerous disciples, thepotency of the will. It was not the forceof an arid syllogism that steeled the souls ofthe stoa's followers it was the might of thehuman will that effected the highest ethicalmovement of the pagan world. Experienceprecedes ratiocination, nor has the latter everproduced the former. It was no formal

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Health and Suggestiondemonstration which inspired that stoic whoproved the might of his doctrine, as Cicerorelates, 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. Itwas no formal demonstration that inspiredhim, I repeat it was the living emotionof his faith's significance that urged on thewill of the man to a miracle. The stoa firsttaught its disciples to will. Having learnedthat, they began to reflect and philosophizeand so left us that great saying : The spiritwills and the body must.Not teaching nor reflection nor yet enthusi-

asm, shining upon man like a light fromabove, can warm or vitalize. Deeper thanthat must be the source of salvation. Totranslate into living action the doctrines ab-stracted from the experience of the ages andhere set down that is a task requiring allwe have of strength and nobleness, but atask, with God's help, not impossible of ful-fillment.

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REASON AND CULTUREWE have delivered a eulogy upon themight of the will, we have insistedthat it be exercised untiringly in a

given direction. The question now comes:what are we to will? what direction shall wcgive to our efforts? It is knowledge thatmust answer this vital question, knowledge,the fairest fruit upon the tree of life ripenedunder the light of reason. Imagination islost in wandering dreams, the will leaveschaos still unformed, unless the directing soulstand behind both. This is our loftiesttheme : to show how spiritual and mental cul-ture can avail over the dark forces of ourmaterial nature, and establish the health notonly of men but of Man.

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Health and SuggestionThe investigator of human nature is met

by no more wonderful phenomenon than thepower of purely intellectual conceptions overthe bodily organism. That is the great pre-rogative of man's nature, that in him ideascan be transformed into emotions and thatthrough such a process the spirit may rulethe body, even as ordinary emotions trans-late the action of the body into spiritualterms. In the possibility of such intellectual-ized emotion the ethico-religious, for in-stance lies the differentiation of Humanityfrom all else. Lower beings do not thinkthe causes of their emotions conceivable, andpurely rational beings cannot share our emo-tional life. In man alone the blending is afact of consciousness. No further medita-tion concerning the fact that such is the caseis needful here. It is our duty7 to apply it.He whose cultivation has been in the rightdirection will acknowledge the might ofthought over his entire being.Anyone who is accustomed in his psycho-

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Health and Suggestionlogical thinking to regard the spiritual andthe bodily life as one, will have no difficultyin grasping the trend of my argument. Notso he who is wont to think of body and mindas two entities struggling in the bonds of anunnatural union, and who shares the opinionthat every gratification of the senses is adeadly attack upon the spirit which can becultivated only at the expense of the body.This unfortunate asceticism condemns manto certain failure, for every energy that livesin him must slay one part of him for the sakeof another. It may be thought that the fre-quent instances of delicate scholars and stoutignoramuses 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 conceptionof the true nature and ends of human cul-ture.A certain scholar, for instance, has spenthalf his life in the contemplation of geomet-

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Health and Suggestionrical figures, and neglected the contempla-tion of man; or else, he has delved into themines of history and left the gold of the pres-ent lying untouched at his side. Seeking thekernel of things, he has not touched the husk.Yonder stout fellow, on the other hand, maynot be as foolish as our scholar thinks. Buthe has made the art of enjoyment his study.The so-called country bumpkin may knowquite enough to fulfill his moral and civic du-ties no small equipment for any man. Thearrogant townsman may not know so much.True culture is the harmonious developmentof all our powers. It will make us healthy,good and happy. It will teach us to knowthe sphere of our talents and their nature;it will show us how to subordinate, withoutdestroying, the imagination of childhood andthe impetuous will of youth to our mature*reason. Here, then, is that part of the soul'shealing which will culminate in the sunnynoonday of our lives.

Is it possible to distinguish the cultivation[82]


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Health and Suggestionof the will, which we have already discussed,from that of the faculty of knowledge? Thequalities of will and emotion result directlyfrom the point of view with which we en-visage life, and that point of view, again, isthe direct result of our culture. In ourselvesare dread and consolation, in ourselves para-dise and hell. To the clear eye the worldwill be serene, and our convictions, origina-ting our moods as they must, are at the foun-dation of all our being. That, at least, istrue, if our intellectual view of the world istruly native to our soul and has become onewith our entire being. In that case it willbe a support to the weary, a pillow of restto the suffering, a source of new strength tothe strong. The frail body of Spinoza wouldhave failed long before it did but for the en-during might of his lofty convictions. Thatis the great secret. Think of the universein its oneness, and your soul will be serene.Consider the ultimate ends of the cosmicprocess, and the evils of this world will dis-

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Health and Suggestionappear. Have no regard for the approvalof man and its lack will not wound you.Think of the complement somewhere inlife of all that gives you pain and striveto serve the necessary harmony of the All.If the Egoist is most keenly aware of evil,because so few things contribute to the endshe desires, he reaps the just punishment ofthe narrowness of his attitude in which lieshis undoing. To broaden one's attitude, tolive with great thoughts that is healingLife is a gift, but it is more than that: it iscommitted to our care. We have the rightto rule it, but only in the service of duty.

If the main cause of half the valetudina-rianism we observe be a morbid attentionfixed on the processes of our own body, howcan we better meet the evil than by rising, inthe commerce with lofty thought, above thepettiness of personal preoccupations? It ispitiful to see wretched folk so anxiously con-cerned over their material well-being thatthey are in the best way of undermining it.

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Health and SuggestionThe very physician whom they consult isfilled with contempt. They perish of a fu-tile yearning after life. For they lack thatculture of the spirit which alone can liberateman from such miseries by freeing the im-mortal part of his being and giving it chargeconcerning the rest. No more need be saidconcerning the glory of the stoic's life. Weattributed it rather to the will than to thesources of the will. But observe that thosespirits, from Pythagoras to Goethe, havereached in the fullness of power the utmostlimits of the life of man, who have livedceaselessly in the presence of high and im-personal thoughts. Only a serene envisag-ing of the All can give us true health; onlyinsight can give us that serenity. The acut-est of thinkers and he who plumbed deepestthe abysses of the spirit; who through calmcontemplation prolonged a life the naturalmeasure of which was of the shortest, andwho has ever been thought of as broodingand dark Spinoza himself utters, in his

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Health and Suggestionformally geometrical fashion, this saying:" Serenity can never exceed its just measureit is always of good. Sadness, on the otherhand, is always an evil. The more our spiritcomprehends, the more blessed are we."Such is the high and calm might of true phi-losophy, that it can assign a station to manfrom which, not without sympathy, but ut-terly devoid of struggle, he can contemplatethe shifting pictures of the phenomenal world.From the fullness and unity of his truly cul-tured soul the philosopher will regard thepast as a sacred inheritance, the future as thecertain goal of a clearly recognized effort, thepresent 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 thekeenness of unending youth. That is themight of philosophy. Not of such philoso-phy, however, as makes the head glow butleaves the heart to freeze. It must proceedfrom the thinker's innermost soul and

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Health and Suggestionirradiate his whole being. It must notmerely have been learned; it must have beenlived! Its beginning and its end must bethe proving and the knowing of oneself.How foolish, then, to yearn for a happinessof which we know nothing. Only in themind can happiness be found, for happinessis itself but a conception of human thought.Whoever has contrasted, in his own experi-ence, the dull state of mere sensual well-beingwith the emotion that attends spiritual clar-ity such an one will know that a profoundand living reality underlies my words. Suchclarity of the spirit, then, is the guardian andthe cure of our being.The most important result of all culture

is the knowledge of self. To each humanbeing God has granted a certain measure ofpower, and a certain relation of the facultiesamong 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

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Health and Suggestionextent is the crown of human wisdom. Be-yond that no man can go : the inscription uponthe temple at Delphi required but that. Andthe man who can fill this measure of his ca-pacities with such true culture as is not onlya possession, but a condition of his whole soul he will be able to guard his life and hishealth. He will live in a free and unfetteredstate, belonging only to himself and able tocommand nature to purge each alien or in-fected drop of blood from his bodily frame." The highest good," says Herder, " whichGod has given to all his creatures was andremains the individual's existence." If thatbe so, then culture is the key to our greatesttreasure. Nature has set for us the naturalspace of life by giving us an innate powerof resistance and self-renewal. But we canlengthen this space and strengthen those qual-ities by the influence of a trained soul.

If the cultured man achieves a knowledgeof self, however, it is by learning to under-stand himself as a part of the great Whole,

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Health and S u g g e s t i o nand by cooperating with the other parts.With this vital conception indeed, a truly hu-man culture must begin. From it alonesprings spiritual content. If you observe thehypochondriac you will learn that, in the lastanalysis, the evils that beset him spring froma murky egoism. He lives, thinks and suf-fers wholly for the sake of his wretched littleself whose interests he fancies threatened.Blind to all the sources of beauty and good-ness that nature and man oiler, withoutpathy for the joy and what is worse the sorrows of his kind, he lies in wait forthe least phenomenon in the dark corners oihis timid heart and dies daily throughout thespan of life. Others are but the objects ofhis envy. To himself he is a source of anx-iety that ceases only with his own life. Life,

h he constantly pursues and which, asconstantly, escapes him. at last becomes indif-ferent to him and he lapses into an almostanimal condition. He can no longer sa;. ith:':.t sane and health": man: nothing human

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Health and Suggestionis alien to me, for, in truth, everything is.In Orestes-like desperation he clings to thebit of mortality that is himself. What tohim are nature, humanity, culture? Hypo-chondria is egoism and egoism is alwayscoarse and crude. Direct the spirit of suchan unfortunate, if there still be time, towarda contemplation of the All. Present to hisbefogged vision the fate of his race: in aword, cultivate him, and the demon whichno medication was strong enough to attackwill hide its face from the light of day.

If a sense of community with the worldand the race is curative in so high a degree,it must be equally potent in exercising a pre-ventive function. From such a humanitarianpoint of view, in fact, the most importantpractical 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 exertthe strength of an energetic will at the rightmoment, it is even more important to know

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Health and Suggestionin what hour to curb it. Such restraint,which shows that the spirit has risen to atrue conception of law and abhors the fortui-tous, can only be gained through culture. Thestimulation of the will is most effective intemporary 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 otherhand, is constantly healing, supporting, and,in a sense, nourishing. A genuine elevationof feeling, it has been said, is the best wayof avoiding collisions both with society as awhole and with individuals. But man mayelevate himself only through contemplation,the daughter of reason. The thoughts ofGod fill the immeasurable All, and man, indeveloping his own thoughts, blends his lifewith the divine life and becomes a part of thespiritual springs that flow through creation.The Brahmin who submerges his soul in asea of contemplation and blends his will withthe Will of God lives temperately and hap-

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Health and Suggestion1 Ill [I1M1IIH1II Ml IHH III III IMIIlll IM|pily through a length of years which no Eu-ropean, busied with a thousand nothings, canattain. Similarly Kant, so imperfectlyequipped by nature for the struggle of life,draws strength and the power of extremelongevity from great and impersonal thoughtsand seems to corroborate the theory whichasserts the common origin of the Indie andGermanic races. It was not alone the powerof imagination which shaped the harmonyof Wieland's life; it was the equal cultiva-tion of every faculty, the directing of hisbright understanding toward the laws of theuniverse these, aided by a happy tempera-ment, gave him that blithe old age whichshines like some friendly legend in the annalsof German literature. High meditation, infact, is truly human and truly blessed. Itleads man gently on to the highest point ofhis destination and helps him in the practiceof his mortal life. How beneficent is it toattain to an insight into that great concatena-tion of the world's forces that seems to point

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Health and Suggestionto some final divine unit}'! How excellentis it to regard reverentially those shiningsouls who have conquered mortal frailtythrough the might of the spirit and stand likethe images of gods in the temple of history.Plato learned and taught though in hiseightieth year, Sophocles composed the CEd'i-pus Coloneus in his old age, Cato in yearsequally advanced felt no distaste of life; Iso-crates shone as an orator in his ninety-fourthyear, Fleury as a statesman in his ninetieth.Meditations which wrung from nature thesecret of the archetype of her creatures ac-companied Goethe far beyond the ordinarylimits 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 manythat the refinement of the understanding, theenlightment of the intellect have rathertended to produce a feeble and sickly genera-tion. But, in the first place, mere refinementof the understanding is not true culture.

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Health and Suggestion - Dietetics of the Mind 1910

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Transcript of Health and Suggestion - Dietetics of the Mind 1910