The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencethe American people has never been better shown than by the factthat this, their only decidedly original contribution to the systematicphilosophy of life, should be so intimately knit up with concrete therapeutics.To the importance of mind-cure the medical and clerical professionsin the United States are beginning, though with much recalcitrancyand protesting, to open their eyes. It is evidently bound todevelop still farther, both speculatively and practically, and its latestwriters are far and away the ablest of the group.45 It matters nothingthat, just as there are hosts of persons who cannot pray, so there aregreater hosts who cannot by any possibility be influenced by the mindcurers’ideas. For our immediate purpose, the important point is thatso large a number should exist who CAN be so influenced. Theyform a psychic type to be studied with respect.4645 I refer to Mr. Horatio W. Dresser and Mr. Henry Wood, especially theformer. Mr. Dresser’s works are published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, NewYork and London; Mr. Wood’s by Lee & Shepard Boston.46 Lest my own testimony be suspected, I will quote another reporter, Dr.H. H. Goddard, of Clark University, whose thesis on “the Effects of Mindon Body as evidenced by Faith Cures” is published in the American Journalof Psychology for 1899 (vol. x.). This critic, after a wide study of thefacts, concludes that the cures by mind-cure exist, but are in no respectdifferent from those now officially recognized in medicine as cures bysuggestion; and the end of his essay contains an interesting physiologicalspeculation as to the way in which the suggestive ideas may work (p. 67 ofthe reprint). As regards the general phenomenon of mental cure itself, Dr.Goddard writes: “In spite of the severe criticism we have made of reportsof cure, there still remains a vast amount of material, showing a powerfulinfluence of the mind in disease. Many cases are of diseases that have beendiagnosed and treated by the best physicians of the country, or whichprominent hospitals have tried their hand at curing, but without success.People of culture and education have been treated by this method withsatisfactory results. Diseases of long standing have been ameliorated, andeven cured… . We have traced the mental element through primitive medicineand folk-medicine of to-day, patent medicine, and witchcraft. We areconvinced that it is impossible to account for the existence of these practices,if they did not cure disease, and that if they cured disease, it musthave been the mental element that was effective. The same argument appliesto those modern schools of mental therapeutics—Divine Healing92