Chapter 18

Place your teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing against the lower teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close lips immediately, exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe again; if saliva forms in your mouth, hold your breath so you can swallow it first before you exhale. You thus take out of the air the metal-substance contained therein; you can even taste the iron which you convert into substance required for making the blood. Should you feel that, although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there is a lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over lower, keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe and you can even taste the metals named. Then should you feel you need more gold element for your brain functions, place your back teeth together just as if you were to grind the back teeth, taking short breaths only. You will then learn to know that there is gold and silver all around us. That our bodies are filled with quite a quantity of gold.

#Black Magic#

What all this means is that we have a continent, with a hundred million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually starving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way strange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice--such a man can find followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere, Persia or Patagonia, Pekin or Pompei. I would be willing to wager that if I cared to come out and announce that I had had a visit from _God_ last night, and to devote such literary and emotional power as I possess to communicating a new revelation, I could have a temple, a university, and a million dollars within five years at the outside. And if at the end of five years I were to announce that I had played a joke on the world, some one of my followers would convince the faithful that I had been an agent of God without knowing it, and that the leadership had now been turned over to him.

I would not be understood as believing that all our cults are undiluted fakery, for that would be doing injustice to some earnest people. There are, in this country, many followers of the Persian reformer, Abbas Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and who have what I am inclined to think is the purest and most dignified religion in existence. There was a man named Jacob Beilhardt, who founded a cult in Illinois with the painful name of "Spirit Fruit Colony", who nevertheless was a man of spiritual insight, a true mystic; he was honest, and so he failed, and died of a broken heart. Also there are the Christian Scientists and the Theosophists, so exasperating that one would like to throw them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us to sift over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth which will bear fruit in future.

While we western races have been exploring the natural world and perfecting the mechanical arts, the Hindoo students have been exploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and Lodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us today they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have hints of other things, upon which our scientists have not yet come. I have friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who tell me that they can see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging character. Shall I say that there are no auras, simply because I do not happen to have this gift of seeing them? In the same way, having read Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living," I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the Yogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body, and to communicate with one another from distant places. But granting such occult powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply new floods of charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of ritual and metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the credulous.

I have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me. A young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work; but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless and had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got himself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could see him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding. Today he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen mystic cults at his tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many wealthy ladies. I have never tried to break through his guard, but I feel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.

This is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as the manufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the adulterator, so the worker of miracles drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we have here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with "swamis" using soft yellow robes and soft brown eyes to win the souls of idle society ladies. These teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of barbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or woman, I do not pretend to say.

There are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and institutes and temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex and detailed and fantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to the writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian army officer's daughter, whose career reads like a tale out of the Arabian Nights. And there is Annie Besant, who was once an ardent worker in the Social-democratic Federation; H.M. Hyndman tells of his dismay when she went to India and walked in a procession between two white bulls! Here in California is Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of followers in a minature paradise. Men work at money-lending or manufacturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they make the thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists cultivate these souls and they leave their money to the soul-cause, and there are lawsuits and exposés in the newspapers. For, you see, there is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating millionaire souls; there are slanders and feuds, just as in soulless affairs. "Don't have anything to do with Madame Tingley," whispers a Theosophist lady to my Wife; and when my wife in all innocence inquires, "Why not?" the awe-stricken answer comes, "She practices black magic!"

Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not believe that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image of the Babylonian fire-god:

Let them die, but let me live! Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper! Let them perish, but let me increase! Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!

#Mental Malpractice#

This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there not also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No religion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by Satan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the exorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the unreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism".

Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is the price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.

That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her "Science" made its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy miracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has nothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build marble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have experimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the subconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be powerfully influenced by the will.

I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily changes you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon them, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess anything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any theories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity, ancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve to persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with persistence and intensity. So it has come about that "miracles" of healing are associated with "faith"; and so it comes about that scientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical in nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion. Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the miracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of people pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am convinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a universe as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.

The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute. What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them. There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney, and to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith, and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.

It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the punishment.

As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian Science healer who was listed as an "authorized practitioner", and who withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions. He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the "Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He writes:

I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is that he is one of the richest men in the movement.

After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and trained crews. The "Christian Science Monitor" opposed this bill; and when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of metaphysical logic, as follows:

One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded down with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not understood!

#Science and Wealth#

The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible "Mother" Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business have said this science was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in her advertisements she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her work "Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can accumulate a fortune." When her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of their success; nor did she neglect her own accumulating.

It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a street corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign: "Christian Science Literature." I take four sample copies of a magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the Mother Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of Healing". In the issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames, England, testifies: "Through a number of circumstances unnecessary to relate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but from God, employment was found." In the issue of December 2, 1916, Frances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was successfully treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner. "Every condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D. Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful truth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola, Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and removed two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4, 1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly occurred to her that because God is All, she would drop her planning and outlining in regard to real estate properties, "upon which for nine months all available material methods were tried to no effect." The result was a triumph of "Principle".

While working in the yard one morning and gratefully communing with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command, and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They had been directed to our place by what to material sense would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of harmony in its universal operation.

After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:

My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian Science is the only system which has intelligently related religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business belongs to Him.

As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot help flock to the healers of the "Church of Christ, Scientist". According to the custom of those who are healed by "faith", they swallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw in B.C. twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers; giving their worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and harvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and destinies of others.

And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of her students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only offense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for the benefit of his own pocket-book:

Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent, befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say, Behold the "cloud" no bigger than a man's hand already rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty head the hailstones of doom.

And again:

The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing. When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of justice.

#New Nonsense#

In a certain city of America is a large building given up entirely to the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but "Promenades", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you stroll, you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from Japan, fortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and "naturopaths" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual count, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a pretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion she calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a "Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called "New Thought."

We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth; Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept; Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore and magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together with the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.

As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of the blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He has certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is our business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting our fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our sentimentality.

Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we shall plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it. Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree that we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in freight cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from a national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the plaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have the intelligence to form an effective political party and establish Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God in the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these agencies of starvation? You do not!

What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady practitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and pronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital Letters and LARGE TYPE: "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, #GOD WILL PROVIDE.# Bread is coming to you! #Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS COMING TO YOU!!!"

You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess Elizabeth tells you:

I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.

I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials and advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity. "Are you in the success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next tells you "How to enter the silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called "Power of Will." And here is another book:

Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success, can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.

#"Dollars Want Me"#