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Salvation is not a thing accomplished once for all. We have only to consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those who have tried to portray the joy of the Redeemed in heaven, in order to realize what a bore it would soon become, if that were all.

Inspiration, achievement, and eternal progress, with more and more helpfulness to others, with plane after plane achieved, revealing plane after plane beyond – does not this appeal far more strongly to the highest and best in us all?

And pray, what is this, but the Great Work, that I have tried herein to outline, and as taught and lived by Jesus, and every great Master the world has ever known? Each has achieved in his own degree, worded it in his own way, and “stepped out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others.”

Long before the birth of Jesus, it was said, “The wise and peaceful ones live, renewing the earth like the coming of Spring.” And having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help all those who try to do the same thing, without personal motive.

I have endeavored to give a general outline of the Great Work, drawn from history, tradition, philosophy, and symbolism, down to the present year of grace. I find many corroborations, many things pointing in the same general direction. But I find but one concise and definite formulation of the scientific theorem, in which the outline is clear, and the analogy complete, and thereby made accessible and apprehensible to the open-minded and intelligent student.

Such students need experience no real difficulty in finding a clew to the labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to the Magnum Opus– “a key to the closed palace of the king.”

This is the purpose of the “Harmonic Series” of books. They need rest upon no authority beyond the intrinsic evidence of truth, on every page. If they are not consistent in themselves, then they must fall in pieces. The only appeal to the reader is: read them carefully, analyze your own mind and soul, and come to your own conclusions. If they find no response, no answering chord in you, then they were written for someone else, or in vain.

One further consideration remains to be noted at this time, as the question is sure to arise: “How about woman in the Great Work?” Seldom in the past has she received recognition, since the earliest days in Old India, though here and there have been the most noble women.

I heard Anna Dickinson, many years ago, open one of her famous lectures with these words, “I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and win. I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and fail.”

It seems to me to-day, as it did more than thirty years ago, that this is the whole problem in a nutshell, and that any number of words could add nothing to the statement.

The Great Work is as open to woman as to man, and on the same terms. They have perhaps more to overcome in some directions, and men more in others. This is like saying, “man and woman are different,” that is all.

One thing is certain; there will never be an ideal social state on earth, or a heaven anywhere, except as men and women co-operate together for the happiness of each, and the highest, noblest, cleanest good of all, and this is only another phase or department of the Great Work.

CHAPTER VII
THE MODULUS OF NATURE AND THE THEOREM OF PSYCHOLOGY

The Science of Psychology, like any other science, must deal with demonstrated facts, classify them, and systematize the resulting categories.

Strictly logical conclusions drawn from categories of facts so derived, deserve the name of Science.

Science is, therefore, a definite method of arriving at exact conclusions. No other method can legitimately bear the name of science.

No one pretends to dispute the conclusions logically involved in the Binomial Theorem; or in the Parallelogram of forces; or in correlative mechanical equivalents; or in many of the known laws of chemistry and physiology.

When, however, we come to mental processes and psychical phenomena, the facts are so redundant, and so differently reported and apprehended, that argument, belief and prejudice, credulity and incredulity, overshadow and drown with a war of words all clear, scientific methods or conclusions.

But if man, as a whole, is a fact in nature; or if “God made Man a Living Soul,” then the whole nature of man exists under law, and is apprehensible to science.

Man’s function as a scientist is to read, to reflect, to weigh, to measure, and to understand.

There are those who object to Natural Science as applied to “Divine” things. They would preserve the mystery, and seem to prefer miracle and dogma to knowledge and law.

Their preference is to be respected, even though ignorance and superstition result. Since the domain of science, in America at least, is no longer restricted by ecclesiastic law, the conflict between Religion and Science has gradually disappeared, and the conflict is rather that between knowledge and ignorance, with ignorance on the wane.

“Things settled by long use, if not absolutely good, at least fit well together.”

This transition period seems confusing to many earnest souls with its “New Thought,” its “occultisms” and its “Lo here’s” and “Lo there’s.” But through and beneath it all, may be heard a note of harmony, the promise and the potency of the triumph of light and knowledge.

We may not know the final results, but every sincere and earnest seeker may have the peaceful assurance that he is on the open highway that leads to the noblest and the best.

The assurance of knowledge but makes clearer the revelations of faith.

That “absentee God” – of which Carlyle wrote, has been discerned as the Universal Intelligence, and equally Love and Law.

Among recent writers and books on the subject of psychology, Professor Hugo Münsterberg’s “Psychotherapy” occupies a very high place. It appeals especially to the physician, more familiar than others with morbid psychical states. Here I can look back on almost half a century of experience, the most active, in dealing with these cases.

But I am at present less concerned with mental pathology and therapy, than with the general psychological basis; the causative categories upon which they are based, and which occupy the first half of Münsterberg’s book.

Dividing the whole subject – the content of consciousness, all the faculties, capacities and powers, all processes and sequences – into two general groups or classes, the purposive and the causal, Münsterberg declares that “the causal view only is the view of psychology”; “the purposive view lies outside of psychology.” (P. 14.)

I hold, that without the purposive view equally included and co-ordinated, there can be no such thing as Scientific Psychology. Half views will hardly admit of synthetic generalizations.

The complete separation here instituted, between the purposive and causal factors, in itself, for purposes of definition and study, need not be objected to, if it were consistently carried out, which it is not. He so nearly pre-empts the whole ground for the causal, giving scant courtesy to the purposive, merely a few crumbs of comfort, so that it cannot be said to be ignored altogether, and drops the scientific method entirely in dealing with it; assenting to moral precepts and principles, without a clew to any scientific basis, that one must object to the name– Psychology – as being applied to it at all. It contains no hint of a “knowledge of the Soul.”

It is the Vito-Motor mechanism of the Mind. The Automatism of the elements, incidents, changes, and sequences of our states of consciousness; based upon, and including all that we know of physiology. Along these lines, Münsterberg’s work has probably never been equaled. It is concise, comprehensive, and exhaustive.

His physical, physiological, and mental syntheses are well-nigh complete.

Whenever, in the future, what he calls “the purposive view” shall be resurrected from the obscurity and nescience to which he has assigned it, and really habilitated in the garb of Science, and recognized as the lawful spouse of the causal, we shall indeed have a true Psychology, a Science of the Human Soul.

Münsterberg neither scouts nor denies the possibility of such a future discovery. In the meantime, his viewpoint, and necessarily some of his conclusions and generalizations, are one-sided, and out of focus.

Emphasizing the causal as he does, this could hardly be otherwise; and from this point of view, and for this reason, his practical Psychotherapy is purely empirical.

We need not deny his facts, or his results, even when mixed with hypnosis, more than he does the “cures” in “Christian Science,” “Faith Cures,” at Lourdes, or by the “laying on of hands.” All these things are too well known, and not one of them deserves the name of Science. They are solely empirical methods. Münsterberg’s broader view and deeper analysis give to his methods great prominence, and he can point to no results that transcend the others. These facts and these results are as old as the history of man. They have, even as he points out, constituted epidemics of “cure.”

There is, moreover, a scientific view and method regarding what he calls the purposive view which he overlooks entirely, and which by emphasis of the causal, makes seemingly impossible. It is our purpose to try and make this clear.

His analysis of Suggestion, though largely automatic, is well-nigh exhaustive. Awareness, and Attention, are illustrated copiously; but not clearly differentiated as they may be, and actually are in the experience of individual life.

Fortunately, and wisely, he eliminates the “Subconscious” as having no real meaning or scientific value as now used.

But it might be applied to the Mental awareness of physiological automatism (bodily habits, often beginning in an act of will, or attention; writing, speaking, music, dancing, and the like, and in less degree, all life impulses and movements below the line of attention or awareness).

If, by courtesy, these might be called sub-conscious, then there is another group above the habitual plane of awareness, that, by equal courtesy, might be called Supra-conscious. But, unless it is remembered, as Münsterberg points out, that, regardless of phenomena, Consciousness is one, these terms can only lead to confusion.

Certain cases designated “multiple” or “dissociated personalities” have only served to increase this confusion still further; and more especially, when the effort has been made to patch them together, or to control them from without, by hypnosis. The well-known case of “Sally,” reported by Dr. Morton Prince, stands at last, as a “personally conducted” psychological excursion, with Sally still preserving her incognito, and as much a mystery as ever.

That automatism incident to all progressive organization and perfection of function, and through which physical, physiological, mental, and psychic synthesis becomes possible, has been allowed to usurp the place of the “Builder of the Temple,” the “Driver of the Chariot,” and the “Player” upon the “Harp of a thousand strings.” Harmony and equilibrium are incidents resulting from causative processes! We need only to know the construction, relations of parts, and principles involved in the vibrations of the Harp, in order to understand and appreciate the music. The player, the musician – drunk, or sober, tone-blind or genius – is a mere incident, and however purposive or competent, is admitted by courtesy only, and warned not to interfere too much with the Harp!

To build, and keep in order, and tune the Harp, constitutes the science of music. Some day, when we have leisure and inclination, we may turn our attention to the Musician, but that day seems far off. We admit that his function is purposive. He, no doubt, has designs on the Harp, and upon us, but we are handling musical instruments at present, and if he objects to our calling ourselves “Musicians” (psychologists) he is impertinent, and should study the science of music, or keep silent.

I am not “begging the question” in regard to the human soul. I am simply emphasizing the fact of the Individual Intelligence, which, at the point of equilibrium, sweeps the strings with that harmony which is the soul of music.

This Harp of a thousand strings, is indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Its physics and kinetics; its consonants and dissonants; its shifting keyboards; its changes in pitch, rhythm, and harmony from atom and molecule, to neurons, cells and mass; with the tides of life – blood, plasma, water, air, magnetism – sweeping the whole at every breath or pulse beat, to the cry of the builder – Life – “out with the old! in with the new!” and yet the conscious identity in health, typically unchanged and unchanging —causative, designed, scientific– yea verily! and purposive, human, intelligent, spiritual, divine, but a dead corpse, given over to decomposition the moment it is bereft of that something we feel, and know, and name – the Individual Intelligence– the Master Musician; or the staggering, drunk, crazy fiddler, with this Harp of a thousand strings, twanging perhaps in a mad-house!

Put the house in order; analyze, and classify; adjust the furniture with the handmaids of science, art, and beauty in evidence and at call; but for goodness’ sake! stop hypnotizing the musician – “Just a little” – under the fallacy or the pretense of strengthening the Will by weakening it just a little more! This is “giving your patients fits, because you are death on fits”! Rescue Science from this atheromatous degeneration, and then suppress the dabblers in “black magic” who pose as Hypnotists, as Münsterberg advises.

For clear intelligence and exhaustive analysis, Münsterberg’s “Psychotherapy” is a masterpiece, but his psychic equation of causative and purposive, with all his mathesis, not only remains unsolved, but leads to confusion, from the false light shed on the unknown quantity, and his failure to indicate the gnosis; the demarcation between automatism and purposive Intelligence.

That this confusion exists in the daily life of the average individual whose evolution is still incomplete; that it constitutes a large per cent. of all cases of “dominant ideas,” obsessions, riotous emotions and passions; that it is nowhere recognized and defined in modern psychology, or made synthetically clear in modern philosophy, all these lapses make it all the more necessary that it should be clearly defined and made plain as the basis of Scientific Psychology.

In addition to all this, if Münsterberg’s conclusions and applications are unsound because psychologically unscientific at the point; for example, where he almost hesitatingly indorses hypnosis, however qualified or safeguarded, he is certain to be quoted as authority on the subject by those who will ignore all his qualifications to justify the practice.

In order to meet these imperative conditions, the attempt to formulate any philosophy of psychology will not be made.

Even were such an attempt made successfully, that would remove the discussion from the field of science, where it should by all means remain. What we need is a real science of life, and this should involve the whole mental and psychical realm, and lead ultimately to a knowledge of the human soul.

Recognized facts in common experience only need be appealed to, though different values will have to be placed upon some of these facts as their importance is made plain.

We begin with the fact of consciousness. What it is, we do not know. What it means and does, we know very largely and broadly. In itself, it is purely passive. It never acts. Like space, it is the “all container.” It is the background, the theatre of our intelligence.

With the individual intelligence, plus, or with consciousness, we have awareness. This is perception, or cognition, still negative.

These basic conditions, faculties and capacities, are like a company of soldiers on parade. Now comes the “word of command” —Attention!

Latent consciousness – awareness – now becomes concentrated, focalized on one point, one feeling, or emotion, or act. The soldiers “dress up,” glance down the line, and are ready to act. Then comes the action, the movement, the drill, or the fight.

The drill master is also a soldier, but he is in command. He is called the Will. Without him and his recognized authority, the soldiers may be a mob, or a rabble. With him, they “fall in line,” give “attention,” “dress up,” and are ready to act.

These are facts, and are basic and primary in our conscious awareness and attention in consciousness; the one negative, though inclusive; the other positive, and motor, or active.

In his “Psychotherapy” under the heading “The Subconscious,” Münsterberg has much to say upon the meaning and differentiation of awareness, attention, and recognition, but he fails to point out in direct relation, at this point, the primary power – the Will, moved by the Individual Intelligence.

Later in his work the will is recognized and frequently referred to, but from beginning to end he makes it incidental, rather than basic. When he comes to broad groups of psychic phenomena, or pathological symptoms, the sounding board of Rational Volition is cracked and there is where hypnosis slips in.

Broad as he has laid his foundations in physical and physiological synthesis, he loses sight of its importance in the psychological; regarding as an incident that which is a basic principle of prime importance. Schopenhauer went, perhaps, as far to the opposite extreme. Perhaps “the truth will be found in the middle of the road.”

The heir apparent, the prince regent, the lawful Sovereign, by heredity, by the laws of Nature, and “by the Will of God,” in this Tabernacle of Man, is the Individual Intelligence; no matter whether we recognize or dispute his rightful authority. His Prime Minister is the Human Will; whether conspiring against, or co-operating with, the King. We may analyze the foundation of the kingdom, and the affairs of state, and designate them as causative, or purposive. We may see monarchy, or anarchy; democracy or republicanism; we may dethrone the king, and turn the state, literally, into a mad-house; but all the facts of nature, conscious awareness, and Scientific Psychology, cry, with one voice, Hail to the King! Long Live the King! I! Me! Mine! Myself! A fact so basic, that it is as patent to the child as to the man.

Now comes the Juggler, the little Joker. Münsterberg has sufficiently revealed the variety-stage, “the Subconscious,” and his biography of the various individual players and troupes is very elaborate. They are, one and all, Suggestions. And suggestion is the “Juggler,” and the “little Joker.”

After the Intelligence and the Will, our awareness finds subjects and objects, ideas, images, pictures, percepts and concepts.

That all these, both within and without, are Suggestive; that one idea, or image, or object, suggests another, or others, no one will deny, who has ever thought about his own thinking. It is like saying, all mental pictures are composite; the elements of many kinds coming from many sources.

So far, Suggestion is all right. It is awareness of an idea, percept, concept, or act awakened, called to attention by another, with the question, how does it strike you? what do you think of it? what, if anything, do you wish, or propose to do about it?

It is purely negative, and suggests action or inhibition, without the slightest domination.

Remember that the Will – rational Volition – is that power, which, from the point of attention enables the individual to act, or refuse to consider, as he pleases.

If I suggest to my friend here in my library, that it is near train time; that he can go if he chooses or remain with me all night, he is free to act on the suggestion and go or stay as he chooses. I have called to his attention certain facts of time, place, or circumstance, but left his will untrammeled. If I am tired of him and wish him to go, or really wish him to stay, in either case it is still a suggestion, because I have left him free to act or not. But in this case certain tones of my voice, not direct by touching the will, but coloring the feelings or emotions, color both his preferences and my own. Even persuasion, the power of another example, the placing of certain views or considerations before another, all these but make the more clear and specific the suggestion. They reach the will through the inside, in the realm of ideation, and not from the outside, in the way of domination. All these things are essential elements in social intercourse.

If, however, I have a motive in wishing my friend to go, or to stay, and have determined in my own mind which it shall be; ignoring or overriding his own choice; and if I use my will, or passes, or touch his eyes, or forehead, with the purpose of concentrating his attention or will, on my wish, or idea, or command, it is no longer free choice with him, but domination; no longer suggestion, but hypnosis, pure and simple.

The confusion and juggling at this point has been made the sole excuse for hypnotism, through belittling or ignoring the importance, normal action, and supremacy of the human will.

No one denies that the exchange or forcible expression of ideas, percepts, mental pictures, or concepts, is suggestive. But the normal individual is free to accept or reject them.

Education, bias, prejudice, and the like, have also much to do in determining results.

But the moment you interfere with the free choice of the individual and dominate toward your choice, regardless of his own, you enter the realm of hypnosis; deprive him, just to that degree, of free choice, and might as well call it “fiddlesticks” as “suggestion.” It is domination, the mastery, so far as it goes or exists at all, of the will, voluntary powers, and sensory organs of one individual, by the will of another; thus reversing completely the process of nature.

To dominate the will of another is to weaken it. Timidity, apprehension, fear, are in inverse ratio to confidence, self-assurance, courage, and self-control.

Health, happiness, and self-development lie along the lines of man’s higher evolution, and the basic principle, the primary power, the minister of state, is the rational and intelligent Will.

The scientific theorem of Psychology can be nothing else than Nature’s Modulus of Man, with its root in Universal Intelligence. Man individualizes and involves this Intelligence as he evolves form, function, adaptation, and adjustment, and at least secures and maintains perfect equilibrium.

This is Nature’s Modulus, else the whole of human life is purposeless and meaningless.

Given, then, an Individual Intelligence, endowed with self-consciousness; with Rational Volition, the power to choose and to act or refuse to act; how shall it master its environment; adapt itself to any conditions; secure adjustment and become Master?

The starting point and the keynote from first to last is Self-Control.

Then come high Ideals, intelligent choice, and the will backed by discrimination and judgment. These lead to understanding and wisdom.

The “courage of one’s convictions,” can be neither conceited nor blatant egotism, but a readiness to assume full responsibility of motives, acts, and results.

This recognition of Personal Responsibility is what we call Conscience. It is the Judgment-seat of the Individual Intelligence in the Kingdom of its own Soul, or realm of consciousness. The moment this throne totters, or is obscured, devolution begins, and degeneration, insanity, and Inferno lie that way.

It does not change one principle involved, or weaken either Modulus or Theorem when we reflect that most equations are ended by death, long before being brought to successful solution. For the time they are certainly interrupted.

Neither do the babel of tongues, the theories, theologies, or philosophies change either Modulus or Theorem, because they are grounded in demonstrated facts, recognized, either vaguely or clearly, in the conscious experience of every intelligent thinking man and woman.

Constructive Psychology, based upon Science, for the building of character by persistent effort, increasing continually all personal resources, means the normal higher evolution of man.

So-called religions and the life after death have been purposely left unconsidered.

If we really have a Science of the Soul – the Individual Intelligence – based upon psychological facts, demonstrated in the daily experience of every healthy individual, it touches religion at its most vital point, viz.: ethics or morals. If these ethical principles are true and demonstrable, they must constitute the foundation of religion as of ethics. If morals are strengthened and made clear, and Personal Responsibility as Conscience, is recognized and accepted, the Vicarious Atonement will have to go, and Theologians will have to change their mystical and miraculous interpretations from Vicarious Atonement to personal at-one-ment with Christos.

The “miraculous conception,” and “virgin birth,” held equally in regard to Christna centuries before, and also the literal resurrection of the physical body will have to be otherwise explained.

The purposive view as one full term of the psychological equation, will find uniform law and order in place of the credulous legends of ignorant and superstitious monks, while the Divine Man will be taken down from the cross and restored to the heart of humanity, as the Modulus of Nature, realized as a normal evolution, under natural and spiritual law.

Salvation from sin, ignorance, superstition, and fear, will be recognized as the result of “Leading the Life,” and Vicarious only through a divine example; or, if you please, legitimate Suggestion; with personal effort, rational volition, and personal responsibility working in harmony toward the desired result.