Foundation of Ethics,
presented at the Royal Society of
Sciences of Copenhagen, Schopenhauer expressed the opinion that the moral principle
has its basis in our nature. In other terms, human beings possess innate tendencies to
selfishness, meanness, or pity. These tendencies appear very early in life. They are
obvious to any careful observer. There are, writes Gallavardin, the pure egoists,
completely indifferent to the happiness or misery of their fellow men. There are the
malicious, who take pleasure in witnessing the misfortunes or sufferings of others, and
even in causing them. There are those who suffer themselves from the sufferings of any
human being. This power of sympathy engenders kindness and charity, and the acts
inspired by those virtues. The capacity of feeling the pain of others is the essential
characteristic of the human being who endeavors to alleviate, among his brothers, the
burden and the misery of existence. Each one, in a certain measure, is born good,
mediocre, or bad. But, like intelligence, moral sense can be developed by education,
discipline, and will power.
The definition of good and evil is based both on reason and on the immemorial
experience of humanity. It is related to basic necessities of individual and social life.
However, it is somewhat arbitrary. But at each epoch and in each country it should be
very clearly defined and identical for all classes of individuals. The good is equivalent to
justice, charity, beauty. The evil, to selfishness, meanness, ugliness. In modern
civilization, the theoretical rules of conduct are based upon the remains of Christian
morals. No one obeys them. Modern man has rejected all discipline of his appetites.
However, biological and industrial morals have no practical value, because they are
artificial and take into consideration only one aspect of the human being. They ignore
some of our most essential activities. They do not give to man an armor strong enough to
protect him against his own inherent vices.
In order to keep his mental and organic balance, man must impose upon himself an
inner rule. The state can thrust legality upon people by force. But not morality. Everyone
should realize the necessity of selecting the right and avoiding the wrong, of submitting
himself to such necessity by an effort of his own will. The Roman Catholic Church, in its
deep understanding of human psychology, has given to moral activities a far higher place
than to intellectual ones. The men, honored by her above all others, are neither the leaders
of nations, the men of science, nor the philosophers. They are the saints-- that is, those
who are virtuous in a heroic manner. When we watch the inhabitants of the new city, we
fully understand the practical necessity of moral sense. Intelligence, will power, and
morality are very closely related. But moral sense is more important than intelligence.
When it disappears from a nation the whole social structure slowly commences to
crumble away. In biological research, we have not given so far to moral activities the
importance that they deserve. Moral sense must be studied in as positive a manner as
intelligence. Such a study is certainly difficult. But the many aspects of this sense in
individuals and groups of individuals can easily be discerned. It is also possible to
analyze the physiological, psychological, and social effects of morals. Of course, such
researches cannot be undertaken in a laboratory. Field work is indispensable. There are
still today many human communities which show the various characteristics of moral
sense, and the results of its absence or of its presence in different degrees. Without any
doubt, moral activities are located within the domain of scientific observation.
In modern civilization individuals whose conduct is inspired by a moral ideal are very
seldom encountered. However, such individuals still exist. We cannot help noticing their
aspect when we meet them. Moral beauty is an exceptional and very striking
phenomenon. He who has contemplated it but once never forgets its aspect. This form of
beauty is far more impressive than the beauty of nature and of science. It gives to those
who possess its divine gifts, a strange, an inexplicable power. It increases the strength of
intellect. It establishes peace among men. Much more than science, art, and religious
rites, moral beauty is the basis of civilization.
4
Esthetic sense exists in the most primitive human beings as in the most civilized. It
even survives the disappearance of intelligence. For the idiot and the insane are capable
of artistic productions. The creation of forms, or of series of sounds, capable of
awakening an esthetic emotion, is an elementary need of our nature. Man has always
contemplated with delight animals, flowers, trees, sky, ocean, and mountains. Before the
dawn of civilization he used his rough tools to reproduce the profile of living beings on
wood, ivory, and stone. Today, when his esthetic sense is not dulled by his education, his
habits of life, and the stupidity of factory work, he takes pleasure in making objects after
his own inspiration. He enjoys an esthetic feeling in concentrating on such work. In
Europe, and especially in France, there are still cooks, butchers, stone-cutters, sabot-
makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, cutlers, and mechanics who are artists. Those who make
pastry of beautiful shape and delicate taste, who sculpture in lard houses, men, and
animals, who forge majestic iron gates, who build handsome pieces of furniture, who
carve a rough statue from stone or wood, who weave beautiful wool or silk materials,
experience, as much as great sculptors, painters, musicians, or architects, the divine
pleasure of creation.
Esthetic activity remains potential in most individuals because industrial civilization
has surrounded them with coarse, vulgar, and ugly sights. Because we have been
transformed into machines. The worker spends his life repeating the same gesture
thousands of times each day. He manufactures only single parts. He never makes the
complete object. He is not allowed to use his intelligence. He is the blind horse plodding
round and round the whole day long to draw water from a well. Industrialism forbids man
the very mental activities which could bring him every day some joy. In sacrificing mind
to matter, modern civilization has perpetrated a momentous error. An error all the more
dangerous because nobody revolts against it, because it is accepted as easily as the
unhealthy life of great cities and the confinement in factories. However, those who
experience even a rudimentary esthetic feeling in their work are far happier than those
who produce merely in order to be able to consume. In its present form, industry has
deprived the worker of originality and beauty. The vulgarity and the gloom of our
civilization are due, at least partly, to the suppression from our daily life of the simpler
forms of esthetic pleasure.
Esthetic activity manifests itself in both the creation and the contemplation of beauty. It
is completely disinterested. In the joy of creation, consciousness escapes from itself and
becomes absorbed in another being. Beauty is an inexhaustible source of happiness for
those who discover its abode. It is hidden everywhere. It springs up from the hands which
model or decorate homemade earthenware, which carve wood, which weave silk, which
chisel marble, which open and repair human flesh. It animates the bloody art of the
surgeons, as well as that of the painters, the musicians, and the poets. It is present also in
the calculations of Galileo, in the visions of Dante, in the experiments of Pasteur, in the
rising of the sun on the ocean, in the winter storms on the high mountains. It becomes
still more poignant in the immensity of the sidereal and atomic worlds, in the prodigious
harmony of the brain cells, or in the silent sacrifice of the man who gives his life for the
salvation of others. Under its multiple forms it is always the noblest and most important
guest of the human cerebrum, creator of our universe.
The sense of beauty does not develop spontaneously. It exists in our consciousness in a
potential state. At certain epochs, in certain circumstances, it remains virtual. It may even
vanish in nations which formerly were proud of their great artists and their masterpieces.
Today, France despises the majestic remnants of her past and even destroys her natural
beauties. The descendants of the men who conceived and erected the monastery of Mount
Saint-Michel no longer understand its splendor. They cheerfully accept the indescribable
ugliness of the modern houses in Normandy and Brittany, and especially in the Paris
suburbs. Like Mount Saint-Michel and the majority of French cities and villages, Paris
has been disgraced by a hideous commercialism. During the history of a civilization, the
sense of beauty, like moral sense, grows, reaches its optimum, declines, and disappears.
5
In modern men, we seldom observe the manifestations of mystical activity, or religious
sense.
2
The tendency to mysticity, even in its most rudimentary form, is exceptional.
Much more exceptional than moral sense. Nevertheless, it remains one of the essential
human activities. Humanity has been more thoroughly impregnated with religious
inspiration than with philosophical thought. In the ancient city, religion was the basis of
family and social life. The cathedrals and the ruins of the temples erected by our
ancestors still cover the soil of Europe. Indeed, their meaning is today scarcely
understood. To the majority of modern men the churches are only museums for dead
religions. The attitude of the tourists visiting the cathedrals of Europe clearly shows how
completely religious sense has been eliminated from modern life. Mystical activity has
been banished from most religions. Even its meaning has been forgotten. Such ignorance
is probably responsible for the decadence of the churches. The strength of a religion
depends upon the focuses of mystical activity where its life constantly grows. However,
religious sense remains today an indispensable activity of the consciousness of a number
of individuals. It is again manifesting itself among people of high culture. And, strange to
say, the monasteries of the great religious orders are too small to receive all the young
men and women who crave to enter the spiritual world through asceticism and mysticity.
2
Although religious activity has played an important part in the history of humanity, one cannot acquire
easily a superficial knowledge of this form, now so rare, of our mental functions. Indeed, the literature
concerning asceticism and mysticity is immense. The writings of the great Christian mystics are at our
disposal. One may meet also, even in the new city, men and women who are centers of true religious
activity. Generally, however, the mystics are out of our reach in monasteries. Or they occupy humble
positions and are completely ignored. The author became interested in asceticism and mysticity at the same
time as in metapsychical phenomena. He has known a few genuine mystics and saints. He does not hesitate
to mention mysticity in this book, because he has observed its manifestations. But he realizes that his
description of this aspect of mental activity will please neither men of science nor men of religion.
Scientists will consider such an attempt as puerile or insane. Ecclesiastics, as improper and aborted,
because mystical phenomena belong only in an indirect way to the domain of science. Both these criticisms
will be justified. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to count mysticism among fundamental human activities.
Religious activity assumes various aspects, as does moral activity. In its more
elementary state it consists of a vague aspiration toward a power transcending the
material and mental forms of our world, a kind of unformulated prayer, a quest for more
absolute beauty than that of art or science. It is akin to esthetic activity. The love of
beauty leads to mysticism. In addition, religious rites are associated with various forms of
art. Song easily becomes transformed into prayer. The beauty pursued by the mystic is
still richer and more indefinable than the ideal of the artist. It has no form. It cannot be
expressed in any language. It hides within the things of the visible world. It manifests
itself rarely. It requires an elevation of the mind toward a being who is the source of all
things, toward a power, a center of forces, whom the mystic calls God. At each period of
history in each nation there have been individuals possessing to a high degree this
particular sense. Christian mysticism constitutes the highest form of religious activity. It
is more integrated with the other activities of consciousness than are Hindu and Tibetan
mysticisms. Over Asiatic religions it has the advantage of having received, in its very
infancy, the lessons of Greece and of Rome. Greece gave it intelligence, and Rome, order
and measure.
Mysticism, in its highest state, comprises a very elaborate technique, a strict discipline.
First, the practice of asceticism. It is as impossible to enter the realm of mysticity without
ascetic preparation as to become an athlete without submitting to physical training.
Initiation to asceticism is hard. Therefore, very few men have the courage to venture
upon the mystic way. He who wants to undertake this rough and difficult journey must
renounce all the things of this world and, finally, himself. Then he may have to dwell for
a long time in the shadows of spiritual night. While asking for the grace of God and
deploring his degradation and undeservedness, he undergoes the purification of his
senses. It is the first and dark stage of mystic life. He progressively weans himself from
himself. His prayer becomes contemplation. He enters into illuminative life. He is not
capable of describing his experiences. When he attempts to express what he feels, he
sometimes borrows, as did St. John of the Cross, the language of carnal love. His mind
escapes from space and time. He apprehends an ineffable being. He reaches the stage of
unitive life. He is in God and acts with Him.
The life of all great mystics consists of the same steps. We must accept their
experiences as described by them. Only those who themselves have led the life of prayer
are capable of understanding its peculiarities. The search for God is, indeed, an entirely
personal undertaking. By the exercise of the normal activities of his consciousness, man
may endeavor to reach an invisible reality both immanent in and transcending the
material world. Thus, he throws himself into the most audacious adventure that one can
dare. He may be looked upon as a hero, or a lunatic. But nobody should ask whether
mystical experience is true or false, whether it is autosuggestion, hallucination, or a
journey of the soul beyond the dimensions of our world and its union with a higher
reality. One must be content with having an operational concept of such an experience.
Mysticism is splendidly generous. It brings to man the fulfillment of his highest desires.
Inner strength, spiritual light, divine love, ineffable peace. Religious intuition is as real as
esthetic inspiration. Through the contemplation of superhuman beauty, mystics and poets
may reach the ultimate truth.
6
These fundamental activities are not distinct from one another. Their limits are
convenient, but artificial. They may be compared to an ameba whose multiple and
transitory limbs, the pseudopods, consist of a single substance. They are also analogous
to the unrolling of superposed films, which remain undecipherable unless separated from
one another. Everything happens as if the bodily substratum, while flowing in time,
showed several simultaneous aspects of its unity. Aspects, which our techniques divide
into physiological and mental. Under its mental aspect, human activity ceaselessly
modifies its form, its quality, and its intensity. This essentially simple phenomenon is
described as an association of different functions. The plurality of the manifestations of
the mind is bom from a methodological necessity. In order to describe consciousness we
are obliged to separate it into parts. As the pseudopods of the ameba are the ameba itself,
the aspects of consciousness are man himself, and blend in his oneness.
Intelligence is almost useless to those who possess nothing else. The pure intellectual is
an incomplete human being. He is unhappy because he is not capable of entering the
world that he understands. The ability to grasp the relations between phenomena remains
sterile unless associated with other activities, such as moral sense, affectivity, will power,
judgment, imagination, and some organic strength. It can only be utilized at the cost of an
effort. Those who want to conquer real knowledge have to endure a long and hard
preparation. They submit themselves to a kind of asceticism. In the absence of
concentration, intelligence is unproductive. Once disciplined, it becomes capable of
pursuing truth. But to reach its goal it requires the help of moral sense. Great scientists
always have profound intellectual honesty. They follow reality wherever led by it. They
never seek to substitute their own desires for facts, or to hide these facts when they
become troublesome. The man who longs for the contemplation of truth has to establish
peace within him. His mind should be like the still water of a lake. Affective activities,
however, are indispensable to the progress of intelligence. But they should consist only of
enthusiasm, that passion which Pasteur called the inner god. Thought - grows only within
those who are capable of love and hate. It requires the aid of the whole body, besides that
of the other mental functions. When intelligence ascends the highest summits and is
illuminated by intuition and creative imagination, it still needs a moral and organic frame.
The exclusive development of the affective, esthetic, or mystic activities brings into
being inferior individuals, idle dreamers, narrow, unsound minds. Such types are often
encountered, although intellectual education is given nowadays to everybody. However,
high culture is not necessary to fertilize esthetic and religious senses and to bring forth
artists, poets, and mystics, all those who disinterestedly contemplate the various aspects
of beauty. The same is true of moral sense and judgment. These activities are almost
sufficient within themselves. They do not require to be associated with great intelligence
to supply man with an aptitude for happiness. They seem to strengthen organic functions.
Their development must be the supreme goal of education, because they give equilibrium
to the individual. They make him a solid building-stone of the social edifice. To those
who constitute the multitudes of industrial civilization, moral sense is far more necessary
than intelligence.
The distribution of mental activities varies greatly in the different social groups. Most
civilized men manifest only an elementary form of consciousness. They are capable of
the easy work which, in modern society, insures the survival of the individual. They
produce, they consume, they satisfy their physiological appetites. They also take pleasure
in watching, among great crowds, athletic spectacles, in seeing childish and vulgar
moving pictures, in being rapidly transported without effort, or in looking at swiftly
moving objects. They are soft, sentimental, lascivious, and violent. They have no moral,
esthetic, or religious sense. They are extremely numerous. They have engendered a vast
herd of children whose intelligence remains rudimentary. They constitute a part of the
population of the three million criminals living in freedom, of those inhabiting the jails,
and of the feeble-minded, the morons, the insane, who overflow from asylums and
specialized hospitals.
The majority of criminals, who are not in penitentiaries, belong to a higher class. They
are marked, however, by the atrophy of certain activities of consciousness. The born
criminal, invented by Lombroso, does not exist. But there are born defectives who
become criminals. In reality, many criminals are normal. They are often more clever than
policemen and judges. Sociologists and social workers do not meet them during their
survey of prisons. The gangsters and crooks, heroes of the cinema and the daily papers,
sometimes display normal and even high mental, affective, and esthetic activities. But
their moral sense has not developed. This disharmony in the world of consciousness is a
phenomenon characteristic of our time. We have succeeded in giving organic health to
the inhabitants of the modern city. But, despite the immense sums spent on education, we
have failed to develop completely their intellectual and moral activities. Even in the elite
of the population, consciousness often lacks harmony and strength. The elementary
functions are dispersed, of poor quality, and of low intensity. Some of them may be quite
deficient. The mind of most people can be compared to a reservoir containing a small
quantity of water of doubtful composition and under low pressure. And that of only a few
individuals to a reservoir containing a large volume of pure water under high pressure.
The happiest and most useful men consist of a well-integrated whole of intellectual,
moral, and organic activities. The quality of these activities, and their equilibrium, gives
to such a type its superiority over the others. Their intensity determines the social level of
a given individual. It makes of him a tradesman or a bank president, a little physician or a
celebrated professor, a village mayor or a president of the United States. The
development of complete human beings must be the aim of our efforts. It is only with
such thoroughly developed individuals that a real civilization can be constructed. There is
also a class of men who, although as disharmonious as the criminal and the insane, are
indispensable to modern society. They are the men of genius. These are characterized by
a monstrous growth of some of their psychological activities. A great artist, a great
scientist, a great philosopher, is rarely a great man. He is generally a man of common
type, with one side over-developed. Genius can be compared to a tumor growing upon a
normal organism. These ill-balanced beings are often unhappy. But they give to the entire
community the benefit of their mighty impulses. Their disharmony results in the progress
of civilization. Humanity has never gained anything from the efforts of the crowd. It is
driven onward by the passion of a few abnormal individuals, by the flame of their
intelligence, by their ideal of science, of charity, and of beauty.
7
Mental activities evidently depend on physiological activities. Organic modifications
are observed to correspond to the succession of the states of consciousness. Inversely,
psychological phenomena are determined by certain functional states of the organs. The
whole consisting of body and consciousness is modifiable by organic as well as by
mental factors. Mind and organism commune in man, like form and marble in a statue.
One cannot change the form without breaking the marble. The brain is supposed to be the
seat of the psychological functions, because its lesions are followed by immediate and
profound disorders of consciousness. It is probably by means of the cerebral cells that
mind inserts itself in matter. Brain and intelligence develop simultaneously in children.
When senile atrophy occurs, intelligence decreases. The presence of the spirochetes of
syphilis around the pyramidal cells brings about delusions of grandeur. When the virus of
lethargic encephalitis attacks the brain substance, profound disturbances of personality
appear. Mental activity suffers temporary changes under the influence of alcohol carried
by blood from the stomach to the nervous cells. The fall of blood pressure due to a
hemorrhage suppresses all manifestations of consciousness. In short, mental life is
observed to depend on the state of the cerebrum.
These observations do not suffice to demonstrate that the brain alone is the organ of
consciousness. In fact, the cerebral centers are not composed exclusively of nervous
matter. They also consist of fluids in which the cells are immersed and whose
composition is regulated by blood serum. And blood serum contains the gland and tissue
secretions that diffuse through the entire body. Every organ is present in the cerebral
cortex by the agency of blood and lymph. Therefore, our states of consciousness are
linked to the chemical constitution of the humors of the brain as much as to the structural
state of its cells. When the organic medium is deprived of the secretions of the suprarenal
glands, the patient falls into a profound depression. He resembles a cold-blooded animal.
The functional disorders of the thyroid gland bring about either nervous and mental
excitation or apathy. Moral idiots, feeble-minded, and criminals are found in families
where lesions of this gland are hereditary. Everyone knows how human personality is
modified by diseases of the liver, the stomach, and the intestines. Obviously, the cells of
the organs discharge into the bodily fluids certain substances that react upon our mental
and spiritual functions.
The testicle, more than any other gland, exerts a profound influence upon the strength
and quality of the mind. In general, great poets, artists, and saints, as well as conquerors,
are strongly sexed. The removal of the genital glands, even in adult individuals, produces
some modifications of the mental state. After extirpation of the ovaries, women become
apathetic and lose part of their intellectual activity or moral sense. The personality of men
who have undergone castration is altered in a more or less marked way. The historical
cowardice of Abelard in face of the passionate love and sacrifice f Héloïse was probably
due to the brutal mutilation imposed upon him. Almost all great artists were great lovers.
Inspiration seems to depend on a certain condition of the sexual glands. Love stimulates
mind when it does not attain its object. If Beatrice had been the mistress of Dante, there
would perhaps be no Divine Comedy. The great mystics often used the expressions of
Solomon's Song. It seems that their un-assuaged sexual appetites urged them more
forcibly along the path of renouncement and complete sacrifice. A workman's wife can
request the services of her husband every day. But the wife of an artist or of a philosopher
has not the right to do so as often. It is well known that sexual excesses impede
intellectual activity. In order to reach its full power, intelligence seems to require both the
presence of well-developed sexual glands and the temporary repression of the sexual
appetite. Freud has rightly emphasized the capital importance of sexual impulses in the
activities of consciousness. However, his observations refer chiefly to sick people. His
conclusions should not be generalized to include normal individuals, especially those
who are endowed with a strong nervous system and mastery over themselves. While the
weak, the nervous, and the unbalanced become more abnormal when their sexual
appetites are repressed, the strong are rendered still stronger by practicing such a form of
asceticism.
The dependence of mental activities and physiological functions does not agree with
the classical conception that places the soul exclusively in the brain. In fact, the entire
body appears to be the substratum of mental and spiritual energies. Thought is the
offspring of the endocrine glands as well as of the cerebral cortex. The integrity of the
organism is indispensable to the manifestations of consciousness. Man thinks, invents,
loves, suffers, admires, and prays with his brain and all his organs.
8
Each state of consciousness probably has a corresponding organic expression.
Emotions, as is well known, determine the dilatation or the contraction of the small
arteries, through the vasomotor nerves. They are, therefore, accompanied by changes in
the circulation of the blood in tissues and organs. Pleasure causes the skin of the face to
flush. Anger and fear turn it white. In certain individuals, bad news may bring about a
spasm of the coronary arteries, anemia of the heart, and sudden death. The affective states
act on all the glands by increasing or decreasing their circulation. They stimulate or stop
the secretions, or modify their chemical constitution. The desire for food causes
salivation, even in the absence of any aliment. In Pavlov's dogs, salivation followed the
sound of a bell, if the bell had previously rung while the animal was being fed. An
emotion may set in activity complex mechanisms. When one induces a sentiment of fear
in a cat, as Cannon did in a famous experiment, the vessels of the suprarenal glands
become dilated, the glands secrete adrenalin, adrenalin increases the pressure of the blood
and the rapidity of its circulation, and prepares the whole organism for attack or defense.
Thus, envy, hate, fear, when these sentiments are habitual, are capable of starting
organic changes and genuine diseases. Moral suffering profoundly disturbs health.
Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young. The old clinicians thought
that protracted sorrows and constant anxiety prepare the way for the development of
cancer. Emotions induce, in especially sensitive individuals, striking modifications of the
tissues and humors. The hair of a Belgian woman condemned to death by the Germans
became white during the night preceding the execution. On the arm of another woman, an
eruption appeared during a bombardment. After the explosion of each shell, the eruption
became redder and larger. Such phenomena are far from being exceptional. Joltrain has
proved that a moral shock may cause marked changes in the blood. A patient, after
having experienced great fright, showed a drop in arterial pressure, and a decrease in the
number of the white corpuscles, and in the coagulation time of blood plasma. The French
expression, se faire du mauvais sang, is literally true. Thought can generate organic
lesions. The instability of modern life, the ceaseless agitation, and the lack of security
create states of consciousness which bring about nervous and organic disorders of the
stomach and of the intestines, defective nutrition, and passage of intestinal microbes into
the circulatory apparatus. Colitis and the accompanying infections of the kidneys and of
the bladder are the remote results of mental and moral unbalance. Such diseases are
almost unknown in social groups where life is simpler and not so agitated, where anxiety
is less constant. In a like manner, those who keep the peace of their inner self in the midst
of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous and organic disorders.
Physiological activities must remain outside the field of consciousness. They are
disturbed when we turn our attention toward them. Thus, psychoanalysis, in directing the
mind of the patient upon himself, may aggravate his state of unbalance. Instead of
indulging in self-analysis, it is better to escape from oneself through an effort that does
not scatter the mind. When our activity is set toward a precise end, our mental and
organic functions become completely harmonized. The unification of the desires, the
application of the mind to a single purpose, produce a sort of inner peace. Man integrates
himself by meditation, just as by action. But he should not be content with contemplating
the beauty of the ocean, of the mountains, and of the clouds, the masterpieces of the
artists and the poets, the majestic constructions of philosophical thought, the
mathematical formulas which express natural laws. He must also be the soul which
strives to attain a moral ideal, searches for light in the darkness of this world, marches
forward along the mystic way, and renounces itself in order to apprehend the invisible
substratum of the universe.
The unification of the activities of consciousness leads to greater harmony of organic
and mental functions. In the communities where moral sense and intelligence are
stimultaneously developed, nervous and nutritive diseases, criminality, and insanity are
rare. In such groups, the individual is happier. But when psychological activities become
more intense and specialized, they may bring about certain disturbances of the health.
Those who pursue moral, scientific, or religious ideals do not seek physiological security
or longevity. To those ideals they sacrifice themselves. It seems also that certain states of
consciousness determine true pathological changes. Most of the great mystics have
endured physiological and mental suffering, at least during a part of their life. Moreover,
contemplation may be accompanied by nervous phenomena resembling those of hysteria
and clairvoyance. In the history of the saints, one reads descriptions of ecstasies, thought
transmission, visions of events happening at a distance, and even of levitations.
According to the testimony of their companions, several of the Christian mystics have
manifested this strange phenomenon. The subject, absorbed in his prayer, totally
unconscious of the outside world, gently rises above the ground. But it has not been
possible so far to bring these extraordinary facts into the field of scientific observation.
Certain spiritual activities may cause anatomical as well as functional modifications of
the tissues and the organs. These organic phenomena are observed in various
circumstances, among them being the state of prayer. Prayer should be understood, not as
a mere mechanical recitation of formulas, but as a mystical elevation, an absorption of
consciousness in the contemplation of a principle both permeating and transcending our
world. Such a psychological state is not intellectual. It is incomprehensible to
philosophers and scientists, and inaccessible to them. But the simple seem to feel God as
easily as the heat of the sun or the kindness of a friend. The prayer which is followed by
organic effects is of a special nature. First, it is entirely disinterested. Man offers himself
to God. He stands before Him like the canvas before the painter or the marble before the
sculptor. At the same time, he asks for His grace, exposes his needs and those of his
brothers in suffering. Generally, the patient who is cured is not praying for himself. But
for another. Such a type of prayer demands complete renunciation--that is, a higher form
of asceticism. The modest, the ignorant, and the poor are more capable of this self-denial
than the rich and the intellectual. When it possess such characteristics, prayer may set in
motion a strange phenomenon, the miracle,
In all countries, at all times, people have believed in the existence of miracles, in the
more or less rapid healing of the sick at places of pilgrimage, at certain sanctuaries.
3
But
after the great impetus of science during the nineteenth century, such belief completely
disappeared. It was generally admitted, not only that miracles did not exist, but that they
could not exist. As the laws of thermodynamics make perpetual motion impossible,
physiological laws oppose miracles. Such is still the attitude of most physiologists and
physicians. However, in view of the facts observed during the last fifty years this attitude
cannot be sustained. The most important cases of miraculous healing have been recorded
by the Medical Bureau of Lourdes. Our present conception of the influence of prayer
upon pathological lesions is based upon the observation of patients who have been cured
almost instantaneously of various affections, such as peritoneal tuberculosis, cold
abscesses, osteitis, suppurating wounds, lupus, cancer, etc. The process of healing
changes little from one individual to another. Often, an acute pain. Then a sudden
sensation of being cured. In a few seconds, a few minutes, at the most a few hours,
wounds are cicatrized, pathological symptoms disappear, appetite returns. Sometimes
functional disorders vanish before the anatomical lesions are repaired. The skeletal
deformations of Pott's disease, the cancerous glands, may still persist two or three days
after the healing of the main lesions. The miracle is chiefly characterized by an extreme
acceleration of the processes of organic repair. There is no doubt that the rate of
cicatrization of the anatomical defects is much greater than the normal one. The only
condition indispensable to the occurrence of the phenomenon is prayer. But there is no
need for the patient himself to pray, or even to have any religious faith. It is sufficient
that some one around him be in a state of prayer. Such facts are of profound significance.
They show the reality of certain relations, of still unknown nature, between psychological
and organic processes. They prove the objective importance of the spiritual activities,
which hygienists, physicians, educators, and sociologists have almost always neglected to
study. They open to man a new world.
3
Miraculous cures seldom occur. Despite their small number, they prove the existence of organic and
mental processes that we do not know. They show that certain mystic states, such as that of prayer, have
definite effects. They are stubborn, irreducible facts, which must be taken into account. The author knows
that miracles are as far from scientific orthodoxy as mysticity. The investigation of such phenomena is still
more delicate than that of telepathy and clairvoyance. But science has to explore the entire field of reality.
He has attempted to learn the characteristics of this mode of healing, as well as of the ordinary modes. He
began this study in 1902, at a time when the documents were scarce, when it was difficult for a young
doctor, and dangerous for his future career, to become interested in such a subject. Today, any physician
can observe the patients brought to Lourdes, and examine the records kept in the Medical Bureau. Lourdes
is the center of an International Medical Association, composed of many members. There is a slowly
growing literature about miraculous healing. Physicians are becoming more interested in these
extraordinary facts. Several cases have been reported at the Medical Society of Bordeaux by professors of
the medical school of the university and other eminent physicians. The Committee on Medicine and
Religion of the New York Academy of Medicine, presided over by Dr. F. Peterson, has recently sent to
Lourdes one of its members in order to begin a study of this important subject.
9
Mental activities are influenced by social environment as profoundly as by the fluids of
the body. Like physiological activities, they improve with exercise. Driven by the
ordinary necessities of life, organs, bones, and muscles work without interruption. Thus,
they are compelled to develop. But, according to the mode of existence of the individual,
they become more or less harmonious and strong. The constitution of an Alpine guide is
much superior to that of an inhabitant of New York. Nevertheless, the organs and
muscles of the latter suffice for sedentary life. Mind, on the contrary, does not unfold
spontaneously. The son of a scholar inherits no knowledge from his father. If left alone
on a desert island, he would be no better than Cro-Magnon men. The powers of the mind
remain virtual in the absence of education and of an environment bearing the stamp of the
intellectual, moral, esthetic, and religious accomplishments of our ancestors. The
psychological state of the social group determines, in a large measure, the number, the
quality, and the intensity of the manifestations of individual consciousness. If the social
environment is mediocre, intelligence and moral sense fail to develop. These activities
may become thoroughly vitiated by bad surroundings. We are immersed in the habits of
our epoch, like tissue cells in the organic fluids. Like these cells, we are incapable of
defending ourselves against the influence of the community. The body more effectively
resists the cosmic than the psychological world. It is guarded against the incursions of its
physical and chemical enemies by the skin, and the digestive and respiratory mucosas.
On the contrary, the frontiers of the mind are entirely open. Consciousness is thus
exposed to the attacks of its intellectual and spiritual surroundings. According to the
nature of these attacks, it develops in a normal or defective manner.
Intelligence depends largely on education and environment. Also, on inner discipline,
on the current ideas of one's time and one's group. It has to be molded by the habit of
logical thinking, by that of mathematical language, and by a methodical study of
humanities and sciences. School-teachers and university professors, as well as libraries,
laboratories, books, and reviews, are adequate means for developing the mind. Even in
the absence of professors, books could suffice for this task. One may live in an
unintelligent social environment and yet acquire a high culture. The education of the
intelligence is relatively easy. But the formation of the moral, esthetic, and religious
activities is very difficult. The influence of environment on these aspects of
consciousness is much more subtle. No one can learn to distinguish right from wrong,
and beauty from vulgarity, by taking a course of lectures. Morality, art, and religion are
not taught like grammar, mathematics, and history. To feel and to know are two
profoundly different mental states. Formal teaching reaches intelligence alone. Moral
sense, beauty, and mysticity are learned only when present in our surroundings and part
of our daily life. We have mentioned that the growth of intelligence is obtained by
training and exercise, whereas the other activities of consciousness demand a group with
whose existence they are identified.
Civilization has not succeeded, so far, in creating an environment suitable to mental
activities. The low intellectual and spiritual value of most human beings is due largely to
deficiencies of their psychological atmosphere. The supremacy of matter and the dogmas
of industrial religion have destroyed culture, beauty, and morals, as they were understood
by the Christian civilization, mother of modern science. The small social groups,
possessing their own individuality and traditions, have also been broken up by the
changes in their habits. The intellectual classes have been debased by the immense spread
of newspapers, cheap literature, radios, and cinemas. Unintel-ligence is becoming more
and more general, in spite of the excellence of the courses given in schools, colleges, and
universities. Strange to say, it often exists with advanced scientific knowledge. School
children and students form their minds on the silly programs of public entertainments.
Social environment, instead of favoring the growth of intelligence, opposes it with all its
might. However, it is more propitious to the development of the appreciation of beauty.
America has imported the greatest musicians of Europe. Its museums are organized with
a magnificence so far unequaled. Industrial art is growing rapidly. Architecture has
entered into a period of triumph. Buildings of extraordinary splendor have transformed
the aspect of large cities. Each individual, if he wishes, may cultivate his esthetic sense in
a certain measure.
Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact,
suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern
good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as
morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education,
instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for
his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising
financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to
want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and
economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and
wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are
protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children
admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may
discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted
their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. Homosexuality
flourishes. Sexual morals have been cast aside. Psychoanalysts supervise men and
women in their conjugal relations. There is no difference between wrong and right, just
and unjust. Criminals thrive at liberty among the rest of the population. No one makes
any objection to their presence. Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed
its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty
churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of
policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present
society. Or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.
Man is powerless against such psychological attacks. He necessarily yields to the
influence of his group. If one lives in the company of criminals or fools, one becomes a
criminal or a fool. Isolation is the only hope of salvation. But where will the inhabitants
of the new city find solitude? "Thou canst retire within thyself when thou wouldst," said
Marcus Aurelius. "No retreat is more peaceful or less troubled than that encountered by
man in his own soul." But we are not capable of such an effort. We cannot fight our
social surroundings victoriously.
10
The mind is not as robust as the body. It is remarkable that mental diseases by
themselves are more numerous than all the other diseases put together. Hospitals for the
insane are full to overflowing, and unable to receive all those who should be restrained.
In the State of New York, according to an article in the
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