Mental Chemistry
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Senator Wadsworth recently said: “I pray that the time will come when American public opinion will come to any appreciation of what organic chemistry means, of what research means, in the way of progress. We have been interested as a propel in the development of material resources--the digging of iron and coal from the ground, the raising of crops upon the surface, and the engaging in transportation and other forms of commercial effort. As a people we have paid little attention and given little encouragement to scientific research, but Mr. President and Senators, the progress of the future depends upon scientific research. It is the man working in the chemical laboratory who is to blaze the way for human progress.”

He went on to say: “I believe that in organic chemistry lies the solution of the secrets of the past and of the future. I believe that its establishment and maintenance in this country, even under an embargo, means the happiness, the progress, and the security of 100,000,000 people.”

Senator Frelinghuysen added: “When we realize that it was due to the genius of the German chemists, and the advance in the science by the German industries, that enabled Germany to get almost to the channel ports; when we realize that the next war will be fought with chemicals, I think it is our patriotic duty to give this industry the highest protection that can be imposed.”

It is true that many of the more important discoveries in science are due to the genius of German Chemists; it is also true that the next war, if there be one, will be fought with chemicals, but the next and all future wars will be won by an understanding of mental chemistry.

Try to realize the situation, think for a moment, see an army of men pass in review, four abreast, all men in the prime of life, see them march on and on, men from Germany, men from France, from England, from Belgium, from Austria, from Russia, from Poland, from Rumania, from Bulgaria, from Servia, from Turkey, yes and from China and Japan, India, New Zealand, Australia, Egypt and America, on they go, marching all day long, all the next day and the day after, all the week they keep coming and the next week, and the next week, and the next month, for if we would take months for this army of ten million men to pass any given point. All dead, and dead only because a few men in high places were more concerned about organic chemistry than they were about mental chemistry.

They did not know that force can always be met with equal or superior force; they did not know that a higher law always controls a lower law, and because intelligent men and women allowed a few men in high places to control their thinking processes, the entire world must sit in sack-cloth and ashes, for the living will find it necessary to work the rest of their lives in order to even pay the interest on the obligations assumed and their children will find these obligations an inheritance, and they in turn will pass them on to their children and their children’s children.

Marion Leroy Burton, President of the University of Michigan, says: “Perhaps the most solemn question that can be put to a person today is, ‘Can you think?’ The test of individual efficiency and usefulness to society centers in a man’s ability to use his mind. Emerson never erected a more arresting danger signal than when he exclaimed: ‘Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on the planet.’ If we could only harness the mental power of America today we could solve the gigantic problems of the world.

Not by appeals to prejudice and class interest, not by the hurling of epithets, not by the ready acceptance of half truths, not by superficial, but by careful, painstaking, scientific scholarly thought combined with wise and timely action, will civilization be rescued and human freedom made secure. Upon Education depends the future of Democracy. Therefore, every loyal citizen, every self-respecting person, must utilize his opportunities to strengthen his grip on knowledge and to stimulate his mind. The truth has always made men free, and truth is available only for him who thinks.”

That people are beginning to think is evident; formerly when men were discontented or dissatisfied they met in a near-by saloon, had a few drinks and promptly forgot their discontent and dissatisfaction. The situation is very different under existing conditions, men spend their time reading, studying and thinking, and the more they think the less satisfied they become.

Leaders of men all know this, for this reason England has her ale, Scotland her whiskey, France her absinthe, Germany her beer and we of America who are recruited from all of these have had all forms of alcohol, it is by far the easiest way of keeping the people “happy and contented.” A man who has access to a fair percentage of alcohol, will not ask too many questions, if he does give him another drink.

This method of reducing the citizens of a country to a kind of idiotic servility has the additional advantage in that it produces enormous revenues which may be used for reducing them to economic slavery as well as spiritual slavery, for the man who cannot think has but small prospect of ever coming into any understanding of spiritual truth.

But because the opium traffic furnishes millions of revenue of Englishmen, millions of Chinese must be sacrificed, and because the sale and distribution of alcohol furnishes million dollar accounts for large banks and trust companies, $100,000.00 fees for corporation attorneys, because it makes it possible to lead large masses of men to the polls for the purpose of voting for political parties who are both morally and politically bankrupt, there are those who would again inflict this deadly curse upon the citizens of our country.

Dr. Woods Hutchinson tells us that the death rate for the United States has fallen in the last three years from 14.2 to 12.3 a thousand, which represents a saving of over 200,000 lives a year since the brewers’ business was closed down. “Almost unanimous reports from public school teachers, school and district nurses, welfare workers among the poor, intelligent police chiefs and heads of charitable organizations, show that never, in all their experience, has there been so striking an improvement in the feeding, the clothing, the general comfort and welfare of school children as within the last two years.

And yet there are those who favor the modification of the Volstead act. There is probably not a single individual in existence whose thinking processes are in such an infantile stage of development that he does not know that when a door has been partly opened it requires but the pressure of the little finger to push it wide open, so that modification is but another word for annulment with all of its physical, mental, moral and spiritual degradation and disaster, and all of the sorrow, suffering, infamy, shame and horror which this most monstrous curse has inflicted upon suffering humanity.

“There can be no argument on the assertion that this country is in need of constructive legislation and administration as never before. There never was a time in our history when sound judgment, broad vision, great knowledge, and practical initiative were so necessary to the preservation and promotion of our national and individual welfare. There never was a time when statesmanship and leadership of the highest qualities were so essential to our advancement and prosperity. The country has before it, and has long had, an impressive proof of the futility of mediocrity in Government under the conditions that have oppressed us since the war. It has seen a Congress without leadership, hopelessly confused by the tremendous problems that confront it, accomplishing little toward their solution, and that little badly. There never has been a time, we repeat, when able, constructive statesmanship was so greatly needed and there never has been a time when there was so little of that quality of statesmanship in office.

The following editorial entitled “Where are we going?” recently appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

“Whose fault is this? Who is primarily to blame for the fact that our resources are so small when our needs are so great? There can be no other answer to that. The people of the United States. The men who are responsible for legislation and administration are chosen by the people. Within the people rests the sole power of election. That is the fundamental principle of our Government, and we have no right to complain when our affairs are badly managed if we do nothing to obtain better managers. But what do we see in this perilous situation? Are the people seeking and supporting men whose brains and judgment and knowledge and character justify expectation of improvement in our governmental conditions? Most conspicuously they are not. On the contrary, they are turning to men who are most lacking in the qualities needed for this emergency, to men, indeed, whose qualities are the opposite, men who are mainly distinguished, if distinguished at all, by their abilities as obstructionists and destructionists, or if they are new aspirants, by their capacity to condemn whatever is and to propose strange and weird political nostrums for popular enticement.

“How is the Government of the world’s greatest nation to function greatly and maintain its greatness with such materials? How is construction, the supreme need of this time, to be accomplished by men who know not how to build, who do not want to build, and whose counsels are but confusion? And what is the meaning of this popular trend which sets these men in the high places of Government? Undoubtedly, we think, it is the voicing of a great protest against present conditions, a great outpouring of popular discontent over many things that disturb and irritate the public. That there are numerous reasons for dissatisfaction is not to be questioned, but far from providing a remedy for these conditions the course taken by the people must inevitably make them worse. The problems that are pressing upon us must somehow be solved before we can be restored and resume our progress, and their solution can only come from constructive minds. There can be no disagreement as to that. Yet it is not constructive but destructive statesmanship to which we are trusting our affairs. What is to be the outcome?”

The unit of the Nation is the individual. The Government represents only the average intelligence of the unites comprising that Nation. Therefore, our work is with the unit. When the thought of the individual changes, the collective thought will take care of itself, but we try to reverse the process. We try to change Governments instead of individuals. But with a little intelligent organized effort, the present destructive thought could be readily charged into a constructive thought, in which case the situation would rapidly change.

Ten years ago the securities of German corporations, sold side by side with those of England and America, no one dreamed that they were not absolutely safe. The Municipal bonds of any large German city sold freely on a 4 per cent basis in London, Paris and New York. The mark was as stable as the dollar or pound sterling.

The interest is still being paid upon these securities and the principal will be paid at maturity, but in money that is hardly worth the paper it is printed upon, and so the conservative German investor, the man who made only “safe” investments, who was careful to buy only first mortgage bonds that yielded not more than 4 or 5 per cent is practically penniless, but as a compensation he can reflect that a liberal Government allowed the people to have plenty of beer, and when men have plenty of beer they will usually be glad to let some one else do the thinking for them, for the use of beer is not calculated to produce deep, clear, sustained or logical thought.

And so we find that during the past week in November, 1922, there were issued 61,644,000,000 of these marks, which was exceeded only by the number issued during the preceding week, which was 67,579,000,000. The value of a German mark is now something like one one-hundredth part of one cent.

Thousand and tens of thousands of American citizens are slowly and painfully creating a fund which they hope will protect them in the days to come, is it impossible that they, too, will be paid in valueless dollars ten years from now?

The reason that the dollar will probably remain at par is because we do not desire the kind of personal liberty that enriches a few at the expense of the many, the kind of liberty that attempts to reduce American citizens to automatons in order that a few may dictate the destiny of the nation.

Happiness, prosperity and contentment are the result of clear thinking and right action, for the thought precedes and predetermines the nature of the action. A little artificial stimulation in the form of intoxicating liquor may temporarily still the senses and thus serve to confuse the issue, but as in economics and mechanics every action is followed by a reaction, so in human relations every action is followed by an equal reaction, and so we have come to know that the value of things depends upon the recognition of the value of person. Whenever a creed becomes current that things are of more importance than people programs become fixed which set the interest of wealth above the interests of people, this action must necessarily be followed by a reaction.

We of America must remember that the large business of life is not economically conducted unless we succeed in transforming our resources into the highest grade of physical, mental and moral persons evolvable. Then and then only shall we know that our investments are safe.

The question is how may this be accomplished, what combinations of thought shall be made in order to bring about the chemicalization which will result in the greatest good for the greatest number. Shall we encourage the spirit of anarchy and discontent and follow the example of Italy by turning over the machinery of Government to those who are interested only in the exaltation of personality, for in Italy there is today no authority but that of Mussolini, the Chamber has none, the Senate has none, the King has none, his power is absolute. He may abrogate all laws appertaining to finance and apply new laws of his own making, already he has indicated that he will levy a tax upon workmen drawing high wages, “not so much for fiscal reasons as for political and moral reasons.”

This is the result of fostering a spirit of discontent, disorder and social unrest, and nowhere do these conditions obtain except in countries where it has been easy to mislead the people through the distribution of alcoholic beverages which destroy the power to think.

A celebrated European statesman visions the present situation as follows:

“Unfortunately, the ills of a war like that of 1914-1918 are repaired but with difficulty. Given even the entire good faith of the conquered, if the latter by conscientious labor genuinely desired to help the world out of its sanguinary nightmare and back to normal life, that world would none the less remain for a long time hopelessly adrift and at sea. We are assisting today at the prolongation of a war which is not even likely to approach a conclusion unless there is a new orientation of a peace-time energy. Finances upside down, budgets artificially met, rates of exchange giving 65 francs to the pound and 14 to the dollar, and terribly distorted fiduciary circulation, an ever-increasing cost of living, strikes, rapid changes in the stock markets, making commerce and industry impossible; accumulation of stocks--such is the ransom of these four years of war. It was materially impossible that either for conqueror or conquered aught else should result from this world catastrophe than complete chaos for all. Millions of men are not consecrated for 52 months to a work of death and destruction for the world to be re-established on the morrow of peace. Such rapidity reacquired equilibrium is beyond the bounds of human practicability.”

It will be remember that the Master Metaphysician said the same thing in somewhat different language many years ago:

“Then shall be great tribulation such as never was since the beginning of the world, nor never shall be afterwards, and if that period would not be shortened no flesh at all would be saved, but for the elect’s sake that period will be shortened.”--Matt. 24:21,22.

The stomach is the great organ of accelerated circulation to the blood, of elasticity to the animal spirits, of pleasurable or painful vibration to the nerves, of vigor to the mind, and of fullness to the cheerful affections of the soul. Here is the silver cord of life, and the golden bowl at the fountain, and the wheel at the cistern; and as these fulfill their duty, the muscular and mental and moral powers act in unison, and fill the system with vigor and delight. But as these central energies are enfeebled, the strength of mind and body declines, and lassitude and depression and melancholy and sighing succeed to the high beating of health and the light of life becomes as darkness.

Experience has decided that any stimulus applied statedly to the stomach, which raises its muscular tone above the point at which it can be sustained by food and sleep, produces, when it has passed away, debility--a relaxation of the overworked organ proportioned to its preternatural excitement. The life-giving power of the stomach falls of course as much below the tone of cheerfulness and health, as it was injudiciously raised above it. If the experiment be repeated often, it produces an artificial tone of stomach, essential to cheerfulness and muscular vigor, entirely above the power of the regular sustenance of nature to sustain, and creates a vacuum which nothing can fill but the destructive power which made it; and when protracted use has made the difference great between the natural and this artificial tone, and habit has made it a second nature, the man is a drunkard, and in ninety-nine instances in a hundred is irretrievably undone.

Beer has been recommended as a substitute, and a means of leading back the captive to health and liberty. But though it may not create intemperate habits as soon, it has no power to allay them. It will even finish what alcohol has begun, and with this difference only, that it does not rasp the vital organs with quite so keen a file, and enables the victim to come down to his grave by a course somewhat more dilatory, and with more of the good-natured stupidity of the idiot and less of the demoniac frenzy of the madman.

Wine has been prescribed as a means of decoying the intemperate from the ways of death. But habit cannot be thus cheated out of its dominion, nor ravening appetite be amused down to a sober and temperate demand. It is not true that wine will restore the intemperate, or stay the progress of the disease. Enough must be taken to screw up nature to the tone of cheerfulness, or she will cry, “Give,” with an importunity not to be resisted; and long before the work of death is done, wine will fail to minister a stimulus of sufficient activity to rouse the flagging spirits, or will become acid on the enfeebled stomach, and whisky and brandy will be called in to hasten to its consummation the dilatory work of self-destruction. So that if no man becomes a sot upon wine, it is only because it hands him over to more fierce and terrible executions of Heaven’s delayed vengeance.

To the action of a powerful mind, a vigorous muscular frame is, as a general rule, indispensable. Like heavy ordnance, the mind, in its efforts, recoils on the body, and will soon shake down a puny frame.

The history of the world confirms this conclusion. Egypt, once at the head of nations, has, under the weight of her own effeminacy, gone down to the dust. The victories of Greece let in upon her the luxuries of the East, and covered her glory with a night of ages. And Rome, who iron foot trod down the nations and shook the earth, witnessed in her latter days faintness of heart and the shield of the mighty vilely cast away.