This fundamental and self-evident truth is continually overlooked in our present age. The education of the intellect for the purpose of attaining selfish interests is made of paramount interest and the heart is neglected and left to starve.[1] The life-energy which ought to be employed to educate the heart and to render the will good and pure, is wasted in the top story of the temple of man in idle speculations about external and worthless things, in scientific quarrels and dogmatic disputations, which have usually no other object but to tickle personal vanity and to give to ignorance an external coat of learning. Many of our modern scientific authorities resemble ants, which crawl over a leaf which fell from a tree: they know all about the veins and cells of that leaf, but they know nothing whatever of the living tree, which produces such leaves, and moreover flowers and fruits. Likewise the rational medicine based upon reason and understanding, the science springing from a true knowledge of man will forever remain an enigma to the legally-authorized guardians of the health of humanity, as long as they know nothing of man except his external form and refuse to open their eyes and to see the eternal internal power, of which the external form is merely an evanescent image, a transient manifestation.
Hoping that with the appearance of the Journal of Man a new era of truly rational medicine will begin in progressive America,
I am yours truly and fraternally,
Franz Hartmann, M.D.
Kempten, Bavaria, April 7, 1887.
[While reaching my conclusions in a different manner by careful and prolonged experimental investigation, and expressing them differently, I agree with Dr. Hartmann in his most important principle,—the importance of love as the best element of life, in sustaining health and intelligence, and the necessity of its culture in education, which has been so long neglected, and which I have endeavored to enforce in the “New Education.” The structure and functions of the brain demonstrate that its love region is the chief support of its life, that it supports both will and intelligence, and that it not only sustains the highest health of him in whom it is developed and exercised, but ministers also to the health of all whom he meets, and is the great healing power in those whose presence or touch relieves the sick. The existence of this beneficent power in the human constitution, more restorative and pleasant than all medicines when present in sufficient fulness, is rapidly becoming known throughout our country, and is made intelligible as to its origin, nature and application by Sarcognomy, as I am teaching in the College of Therapeutics. Medical colleges, in their ignorance and jealousy, unwisely exclude and war against this nobler and more ethical method of healing, thus compelling its development and practice as a distinct profession, which is rapidly undermining their influence and diminishing their patronage by showing that, in many cases where drug remedies have totally failed as applied by colleges, the psycho-dynamic faculty of man may accomplish wonders.]
Miscellaneous Intelligence.
Religion and Science are exceedingly harmonious in assisting each other, but theologians and scientists are exceedingly discordant. Who is in fault? It is the fault of both. Both are bigoted and narrow-minded. Neither can see the truths that belong to the other party; theologians dislike science, not being able to see that science is a grander and more unquestionable revelation than any they have derived from tradition, and scientists deride religion and theology, not being able in their narrowness to recognize the higher forms of science in the great spiritual truths which have been apparent to all races from the most ancient limits of history. Of the scientific class the majority are averse to the religion of the times, partly from their own sceptical nature, and partly because religion has been presented in the repulsive forms of an absurd theology.
Prof. E. S. Morse, the president of the American Association, is a very sceptical agnostic.
Proud Huxley’s the Prince of Agnostics, you see,