Right And Wrong Thinking And Their Results
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A wise modern writer, following a declaration of Socrates, has said that we should never ask who are the advocates of any teaching, but only, is it true? A statement of philosophy or principle once made clear and understood is not strengthened by appeal to any authority. While all this is undeniably true, yet it is also true that the wisest of men feel added confidence in their opinions when they know that other wise men agree with them; hence any man may be excused if he feels more comfortable when he finds that others, who have given the subject more careful and thorough investigation than he himself has been able to give it, unite in the declaration that mind action precedes bodily-action as cause precedes consequence.

President Hali, of Clark University, is reported as saying, before a session of the American Medico-Psychological Society in Boston, that "the relations between the body and the emotions are of the closest," and "there can be no change of thought without a change of muscle." He also suggests the possibility that the right course in thinking might develop muscle as well as the right course of exercise. On President Hall's basis, if the proper course of thinking is maintained the muscles will take care of themselves.

Professor J. M. Baldwin, of Princeton, italicizing his statement, says: "Every state of consciousness tends to realize itself in an appropriate muscular movement."

Professor C. A. Strong, of Columbia University, says: "Recent psychologists tell us that all mental states are followed by bodily changes -- that all consciousness ideas to action. This is true of desires, of emotions, of pleasures and pains, and even of such seemingly non-impulsive states as sensations and ideas. It is true, in a word, of the entire range of our mental life. The bodily effects in question are of course not limited to the voluntary muscles, but consist in large part of less patent changes in the action of heart, lungs, stomach, and other viscera, in the caliber of blood-vessels and the secretion of glands.""

Professor James, of Harvard University, says: 'All mental states (no matter what their character as regards utility may be) are followed by bodily activity of some sort. They lead to inconspicuous changes in breathing, circulation, general muscular tension, and glandular or other viscera! activity, even if they do not lead to conspicuous movements of the muscles of voluntary life. Not only certain particular states of mind, then (such as those called volitions, for example), but states of mind as such; all states of mind, even mere thoughts and feelings, are motor in their consequences." Language can- not be more positive or unequivocal, yet later he stated the case with equal clearness though perhaps in language a little less technical: --

"The fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be it sensation, feeling, or idea, which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge into some motor effect. The motor effect need not always be an outward stroke of behavior. It may be only an alteration of the heartbeats or breathing, or a modification of the distribution of the blood, such as blushing or turning pale; or else a secretion of tears, or what not. But, in any case, it is there in some shape when any consciousness is there; and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last attained that con-merely as such, must pass over into motion, open or concealed."

Professor Ladd, of Yale, says: "Even the most purely vegetative of the bodily processes are dependent for their character upon antecedent states of mind."

Professor Munsterberg, of Harvard, said, in his Lowell Institute lectures, that the slightest thought influences the whole body; and, further: "There is never a particle of an idea in our mind which is not the starting-point for external discharge," or in less technical language, the starting-point for some bodily action. In illustration he said that thinking increases the activity of the minute perspiration glands of the skin. This has been measured so accurately by the proper apparatus that it is possible to determine the activity or intensity of a person's thinking by its effects upon those glands.

Hudson says: "No scientist will deny the existence within us of a central intelligence which controls the bodily functions, and through the sympathetic nervous system actuates the involuntary muscles, and keeps the bodily machinery in motion."

An eminent French psychologist has stated the conditions correctly regarding fear, and incidentally of other emotions as well, when he says: "If we are ignorant of danger, we do not fear it;" and this is a plain statement of the experience of every one. Fear, as all know, is a mental action or condition, and therefore it follows that the acts caused by fear are the consequences of mental action.

The whole is admirably stated in the declaration: "He (the psychologist) acknowledges, in response to a logical demand, that every single psychical (mental) fact has its physiological counterpart." But this is no more than Professor James has said in his book, Talks to Teachers: "Mentality terminates naturally in outward conduct," and he might have added that this is unavoidable, for that idea is included in the preceding quotations from his pen.

Following in the same direction, the great English naturalist, Romanes, says the fact of selective contraction is the criterion of mind and the indication of consciousness, and he finds this fact of selective contraction in the lowest known creatures. He says also that "all possible mental states have their signs." These signs must necessarily be those of external physical conditions which result from mental states.

President McCosh, of Princeton, says of emotion: "It begins with a mental act, and throughout is essentially an operation of the mind. Examine any case of emotion and you will always discover an idea as a substratum of the whole."

Professor Mosso, the Italian psychologist already quoted, constructed an apparatus by which the body of a man could be balanced in a horizontal position. This was made so sensitive that it oscillated according to the rhythm of the respiration. He says: "If one speaks to a person while he is lying on the balance horizontally, in equilibrium and perfectly quiet, it inclines immediately toward the head. The legs become lighter and the head heavier. This phenomenon is constant, whatever pains the subject may take not to move, however he may endeavor not to alter his breathing, to suspend it temporarily, not to speak, to do nothing which may produce a more copious flow of blood to the brain."

He says of the same experiment when the subject was sleeping; "Scarcely had some one about to enter touched the handle of the door, than the balance inclined toward the head, remaining immovable in this position for five or six or even ten minutes, according to the disturbance produced in the sleep . . .. When all was quiet, one of us would intentionally make a slight noise by coughing, scraping a foot on the ground, or moving a chair, and at once the balance inclined again toward the head, remaining immovable for four or five minutes, without the subject's noticing anything or waking. ... It was proved by my balance that, at the slightest emotion, the blood rushes to the head."

These experiments show beyond question that the slightest possible mental activity changes the course of the blood and sends it to the head in such quantities as to destroy the equilibrium and to overweight that end of the body. They show also how the slightest thought has its physical effect, and, as in the case of the sleeping man, that the thought which is not perceived and does not awaken him is as certain to affect his condition as the one of which he is conscious.

Dr. William G. Anderson, director of the Yale gymnasium, has made similar observations upon the athletes of that University with like results. A man perfectly balanced on the table would find his feet sinking if he went through mental leg gymnastics, thinking about moving his legs without making the movements. This shows that it is thinking which sends the blood to the legs even when they are entirely at rest. He balanced students before and after their written examinations, and after the mental test found that the centre of gravity had changed toward the head, varying in different cases from only a sixteenth of an inch to almost two and a half inches.

Dr. Anderson says: "Experiments comparing agreeable exercises with those that are not so agreeable showed that movements in which men took pleasure set in motion a richer supply of blood than did those which were not to their liking. . . . Pleasurable thoughts send blood to the brain; disagreeable ones drive it away." Not merely the thinking but its character or quality influences the physical actions, and the old poet was right when he wrote: "In whate'er you sweat indulge your taste."

The stigmata are among the most extreme examples of the action of thinking in producing abnormal physical conditions. St. Francis of Assisi furnishes the earliest historical case. His contemplation of the wounds of Jesus was of such an intense character and so long continued that his own body finally presented appearances similar to the mental picture which he had so long entertained. Not only were there similar wounds in his hands, in his feet, and in his side, but the appearance of nails in the wounds was so realistic that after his death the attempt was made to draw them out, supposing them to be really nails. There have been something like ninety or a hundred well-authenticated cases of a similar character since the time of St. Francis. For a long while it was believed by many that these conditions were results of self-inflicted wounds or that the story of them was mere fabrication. Some were probably fraudulent, but others were so well authenticated as to remove ail doubt. Parallel cases of physical effects due to mental suggestion are well known. Experiments are now often performed in psychological laboratories which, by means of mental action, produce appearances similar to the stigmata. If abnormal physical conditions of such extreme character can be produced by thinking, certainly healthy and normal ones can be produced and maintained by the same means.

Professor Elmer Gates, of the Laboratory of Psychology and Psychurgy, Washington, D.C., showed the same motor influence and effect of mind action in an entirely different way. He plunged his arm into a jar filled with water up to the point of overflow. Keeping his position without moving, he directed his thinking to the arm, with the result that the blood entered the arm in such quantities as to enlarge it and cause the water in the jar to overflow. This is merely demonstrating by another method the same facts that were shown by Professor Mosso and Dr. Anderson.

Professor Gates went even further than this. By directing his thoughts to his arm for a certain length of time each day for many days he permanently increased both its size and strength, and he instructed others so that they could produce the same effect on various organs of the body, thus demonstrating the accuracy of President Hall's statement that muscle can be developed by a proper course of thinking as well as by exercise.

Professor Gates has shown the causative character of thinking in a long series of most comprehensive and convincing experiments. He found that change of the mental state changed the chemical character of the perspiration. When treated with the same chemical reagent, the perspiration of an angry man showed one color, that of a man in grief another, and so on through the long list of emotions, each mental state persistently exhibiting its own peculiar result every time the experiment was repeated. These experiments show clearly, as indicated by Professor James's statements, that each kind of thinking, by causing changes in glandular or visceral activity, produced different chemical substances which were being thrown out of the system by the perspiration.

When the breath of Professor Gates's subject was passed through a tube cooled with ice so as to condense its volatile constituents, a colorless liquid resulted. He kept the man breathing through the tube but made him angry, and five minutes afterward a sediment appeared in the tube, indicating the presence there of a new substance which had been produced by the changed physical action caused by a change of the mental condition. Anger gave a brownish substance; sorrow, gray; remorse, pink; etc.

This is distinctly a case where none of the actions were intended, and yet were clearly caused by thinking. In the experiments with the perspiration, that each kind of thinking had produced its own peculiar substance, which the system was trying to expel.

Professor Gates's conclusions are very definite: "Every mental activity creates a definite chemical change and a definite anatomical structure in the animal which exercises the mental activity." And again he says: "The mind of the human organism can, by an effort of the will, properly directed, produce measurable changes of the chemistry of the secretions and excretions." He also says: "If mind activities create chemical and anatomical changes in the cells and tissues of the animal body, it follows that all physiological processes of health or disease are psychologic processes and that the only way to inhibit, accelerate, or change these processes is to resort to methods properly altering the psychologic, or mental, processes." * That is, the most effective and best way to change these physical processes is to change the thinking. And again he says: "All there is of health and disease is mind activity." And once more: "If we can know how to regulate mind processes, then we can cure disease-- all disease." In another place he says: "Mind activity creates organic structure, and organisms are mind embodiments."

In full accord with this is Professor Andrew Seth, of the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, who, at the close of a long argument showing the priority of mind, concludes: "But mechanism is thus, in every sense, posterior to intelligence and will; it is a means created and used by will. In a strict sense, will creates the reflex mechanism to which it afterwards deputes its functions." But will is a mental action or condition, therefore mind action is veritably first in the order of occurrence.

Cope, in summing up his exhaustive arguments on the subject, clearly and concisely declares the priority of mind and its creative power in these words: "Structure is the effect of the control over matter exercised by mind." A more definite statement is not possible; all physical structure is created and determined by mind as its cause.

Christison says: "It is a biologic axiom that function precedes organism; for while we may also say that necessity develops function in much the same sense that we say that it is the mother of invention, it is evident that the use of means to a given end implies the preexistence of a specific potentiality, having a plan in the abstract, for only the preexisting can be the cause of a necessity. Thus it follows that something of a mind must exist before a brain can be formed." ' In other words, the necessity must be recognized before it can produce any action; but that recognition of necessity is the mental action which precedes all the other actions.

The great Lamarck, the pioneer of Darwin, says: "It is not the organ, that is, the nature and form of the parts of the body, which have given origin to its habits and peculiar functions, but it is, on the contrary, its habits, its manner of life, and the circumstances in which individuals from which it came found themselves, which have, after a time, constituted the form of the body, the number and character of its organs, and the functions which it possesses."

Cope says: "The general proposition that life has preceded organization in the order of time, may be regarded as established." In connection with some consideration of "the law of use and effort," he says that "animal structures have been produced, directly or indirectly, by animal movements," and that, "as animal movements are primitively determined by sensibility, or consciousness, consciousness has been and is one of the primary factors in the evolution of animal forms." He adds further on: "The origin of the acts is, however, believed to have been in consciousness."' All this points to the one fact that mind was the originator of organic structure, because consciousness is an action of mind.

Evans, discussing the initial activities, says the same thing: "In the germ of the animal body, as in the seed of the plant, there is the living idea of the future organism. And that idea forms the body after the pattern of itself. It is function (or idea) that creates the appropriate organ, and not the organ that makes the function. For instance, the heart is made to beat, and this action commences before its tissues are formed, even when it is only a mass of protoplasmic jelly. So it is always the function, the idea, which creates its organic expression. Thus it is, and of necessary must be, in regard to the whole body."

This array of authorities might be increased indefinitely. Enough have been quoted to show great unanimity of opinion on the fundamental proposition that thinking is first in the order of occurrence and that bodily actions follow thinking as consequence follows cause.