THE GENERAL TONE OP HEALTH.

The word "tone" means, "sound in relation to volume, quality, duration and pitch," then, "peculiar characteristic sound as of a voice or instrument," then, "characteristic style or tendency, predominating aim or character, tenor, strain, spirit."

Hence, in the sense of health, tone signifies "the state of tension or firmness proper to the tissues of the body; the state in which all the parts and organs have due tension or are well strung; the strength and activity of the organs on which healthy functions depend; that state of the body in which all the normal functions are performed with healthy vigor."

We thus see that health-tone involves the whole personality, physical, mental and moral.

But the truth of the matter hides in a deeper region than that of mere material flesh or organ. Matter is a form of the Universal Ether, so far as science seems to declare, or, at least, matter presupposes the ether in a state of vibration. Your body is a "field" in which etheric vibrations are constantly taking place.

All its reality and all its activities involve such vibrations.

The brain, regarded as the organ of conscious life, of thought and feeling, and the entire nervous system, involve such vibrations.

And as your thought and feeling const.i.tute the foundation of your moral character, the latter also becomes a matter of movements in the ether.

In the case of heat, light, electricity, etc., differing kinds of such vibrations determine the kinds of phenomena. We may say, then, that there is one general kind of ether-movement for matter, and another for thought and feeling, and another for the moral life. Each individual, however, presents variations of these general kinds of vibrations,--a particular variation for his body, and for his mental person, and for his right or wrong self-spirit.

We individualize the ether, Or, we are individualized as we use the ether.

The tone of a person's health is determined by the state of the etheric movements characteristic to himself.

If the vibrations underlying the body life are full and harmonious according to their individual character for a person, his organs are all sound and active. He possesses physical tone. If there is a similar fullness and harmony within his mental life, he must exhibit health of mind. If a corresponding condition obtains in the moral personality, the highest health of the deeper self prevails.

These three individualized varieties of ether-movement in man mutually interact and determine one another's character. I know that this law does not always seem to operate. Poor minds and wrong morals are sometimes found in apparently healthy bodies, and great minds and n.o.ble spirits in feeble bodies. But the bodies of the one cla.s.s do NOT represent the finest physical health, involving coa.r.s.eness, flabbiness, susceptibility to disorder, etc., etc., and are not contradictions of the law. Moreover, the inner life is not always fully expressed by apparent departures from right living: as you may frequently see in some sudden burst of n.o.bility, generosity, tenderness, heroism, in those who possess sound bodies but are outwardly not particularly refined. The rough exterior may hide a splendid germ of true spiritual manhood or womanhood. Could we look deeply into the physical nature, we should always find the law holding good that our three-fold ether- movements do influence and in the long run determine one another for weal or ill. Where the inner self is right yet the physical tone weak or disturbed, we should perceive, if we had the "spirit of discernment," that the better life within has surely influenced and enn.o.bled the essential nature of the body. It should be remembered that two confusing factors prevail where a fine spirit dwells in a diseased body: first, the thought-life of centuries has, so to speak, warped the character of the inherited body and its vibrations to such an extent that they may not, perhaps (I do not know), be altogether reformed within a human lifetime; secondly, the thought-life of the individual, however nearly right in many respects, is wrong in one particular, the belief, feeling, conviction--an inheritance of ages--that disease of the body must necessarily obtain in some cases at least, no matter what the inner life may be. This conviction is a tremendous force for harm.

Invalids accept it as true, and try to be reconciled. But it is not true. The belief prevails, and so prevents the real truth from appearing: that PERFECT HEALTH IS THE PRIMARY INTENTION OF THE NATURE OF THINGS FOR ALL. When we can believe this magnificent truth, we shall be able to see that right vibrations underlying the mental and moral personality must tend to reform wrong vibrations underlying the body. So long as the former conviction prevails, that disease is somehow a part of Nature, the better life contends with a double difficulty, the existing physical conditions and the false suggestion that the individual must continue to be ill in the nature of things or as the will of Deity. The false suggestion should be displaced by the affirmation and realization of physical health. Such a reforming suggestion, made effective by mental realization and proper regimes, tends to counteract the existing effects of previous wrong suggestions and positively to change conditions of ill-health, because fullness and harmony of the three kinds of ether-movements are the designed ideals of our lives and the laws of perfect well-being (what other design can we possibly imagine?), and the good suggestion operates to bring about that ideal.

Let us be rid of the notion that anyone is ill because a Divine Being wants him to be ill.

But we must remember that while these principles cannot be otherwise than true, every individual has behind him, at any present moment, two great forces--the past of his ancestors and the past of his own life. Let us be sensible, even while we insist upon truths which are among the most beautiful in the world. The past means much to all of us. Such is law. We cannot get away from law, whatever our theories or religious belief. To me all Nature's laws are of the White Life and untellably beneficent. The idea that law is something hard and disagreeable is itself a false suggestion and a wrong thought. Law is good. The law that life is determined more or less by the past is a fine example of this goodness. If it seems to go against us in some cases, it surely goes for us in a.s.sisting a right past to make for a right future.

When it seems to work hardship, the fact is the law is trying to face us about for a right time to come. That is the meaning of experience: it is law talking, to us out of our past. The law that our past and that of our ancestors must be reckoned with in all our efforts to reform the etheric vibrations in our personal fields involves the element of time, which element may be greater than we can control in the material life. This element of time is important because there is another law, that great real reforms in the individual require effort continued more or less in order that all laws involved may properly and fully operate. If the person who is a n.o.ble self in a weak body could add to his thought-life the sufficiently powerful affirming realization of physical health for himself and live long enough, I certainly believe the suggestion would ultimately prevail. For I do not for a moment accept disease as a necessary part of human life. Is disorder in your machinery a part of the machine? I cannot see how a continuously perfect self, starting with a sound body, could ever come to possess a diseased body. I must believe that the self, growing to the ideal, may bring into harmony a diseased body, provided its health-suggestion is strong enough and sufficient time is afforded for the full working of the law. The law does not, of course, cover such cases as broken bones, because treatment then calls for mechanical operations, which involve laws altogether distinct from those that govern harmony among the functions and organs of the body as underfounded by etheric vibrations within the physical, mental and moral fields.

The limits set to self-healing power we do not know for any individual case. The splendid general law is not overwhelmed, is not contradicted, by such limits, whatever they may be, because the limits are not set by the original intention of the nature of things, but by wrong living and false ideas running through centuries. As we may not know the limits in any case, and as the great law shines ever before us and is equally for all so far as it may be claimed, and not for a favored few of some particular religious or semi-religious belief, it is ours to seize all advantages afforded by the best medical science together with every atom of power in the white life affirming and realizing physical health at its best. You do not know your own limits; therefore lay hold upon the law, the universal, age-long law, for all you can derive from its beneficence. You are not required to turn your back upon any other advantage, but only to swing the law into harmony with that advantage.

Health-tone, then, is really a triune series of full and harmonious ether-movements within the personal field working together for a buoyant right self in a sane and truth-loving mind in a spiritually expressing physical organism. By so much as it is yours, by so much, in the nature of the case, must fear be an alien and courage the breath of your life.

We may now go on to the general consideration of

PHYSICAL TONE.

It would seem almost unnecessary to suggest the ordinary regimes for health of body. Nevertheless, I shall refer to these regimes because, first, their importance cannot be overestimated, and secondly because they involve certain laws of laws in relation to health which are seldom worked out in hygienic instruction.

What may be called the laws of laws of health would seem to be as follows:

1. Scrupulous Cleanliness of the Body, Without and Within, Makes for Royal Health-Tone. The law should be given rational, not slavish, obedience. Your body and your deeper self are in a constant state of interaction. Material uncleanness consented to contaminates that self. Uncleanness of the self also contaminates the body. The white life requires the clean dress of honored flesh. You are invited, therefore, to affirm always and practically,

This robe I wear of unsoiled flesh Keeps mind and spirit ever fresh.

2. Sweet, Sound and Early Sleep Gives the Universal Forces their Perfect Opportunity for Good. During sleep the Universal Thought strives to restore, as our conditions permit, harmony of vibrations between its manifests in matter within the body and its manifests in the non-material self. The degree of harmony is made less in all cases by centuries of wrong living, the effects of which are more or less acc.u.mulated by inheritance in every man and woman (right living, however, promising in the future perfect freedom there-from on earth), and by the disturbing power of individual wrong living. In order, then, to secure the best results of sleep, our waking thought should be kept in attune, by all practical as well as by all idealizing methods, with reality, truth, beauty and goodness. You are invited, for the reason suggested, to live during the day in such a manner that your last fearless thought at night may be,

"Let my soul walk softly in me, Like a saint in heaven unshod, For to be alone with Silence Is to be alone with G.o.d."

3. The Utility of Nourishment Issues From Conformity to the Plan of the Universal Forces for Each Individual. For every human body there is a plan on which it is intended to be evolved and maintained. The individual plan is merely a variation of the general plan of our common human nature. That general plan provides for certain foods and kinds of drink, for the manner in which they are to be taken and digested, and for their utilization in building and sustaining the body. This general plan is varied for different persons in the primary intention of the nature of things. Your food and drink, therefore, should depend upon your own peculiar needs. The science of the matter investigates the kinds of nourishment which you in particular require and advises all items furnishing the material elements you demand. But some individual variations, in respect to questions of taste, usefulness and harmfulness, digestibility and adaptation, are undoubtedly results of restrained liberty and wrong thought-life in the past, either of your ancestors or of yourself. That degree of liberty, therefore, which ought to be yours, has perhaps, come to be more or less limited. It is possible for you to secure a desirable enlargement of freedom with regard to food and drink. Of course you have no liberty in the way of natural poisons and beverages which dethrone common sense. Aside from the limits set by Nature, you may acquire the largest measure of personal freedom in the matter if you will determine therefor in the exercise of sound reason. I have had my experience with things not liked and things harmful--apricots, chickens, salmon---and today I eat all that's eatable by civilized man, and I drink whatever I choose to drink--alcohol tabooed because I want and need all the brains I possess. It is for you to bring yourself more nearly to the original plan for human bodies in this respect, if you will begin with your inner thought-life and proceed more or less in the following manner:

(a). By insisting upon a LARGER FREEDOM, not in the way of demanding one thing or another, but in the way of realizing in your deeper self the idea of power therefor;

(b). By endeavoring constantly to bring your thought-life more and more into HARMONY WITH THE WHITE LIFE IN NATURE;

(c). By affirming that the food and drink of which you partake will surely MAKE FOR HEALTH and buoyancy of the body; not merely stating the proposition, but, while so partaking, believing the truth and a.s.suming it to be true--actual for you;

(d). By manifesting at all times the mood of blended COURAGE, HOPE, CONFIDENCE, HAPPINESS;

4. THE VALUE OF WORK AND PLAY IS THE OUTCOME OF BALANCING REACTIONS OR RESTORATIONS AMONG OUR PERSONAL ACTIVITIES. If we conceive of any individual as a "field" of vibrations in matter and the ether, induced by muscular and nervous action and by feeling and thought, we see at once that there ought to be an ideal "field" in which all such vibrations are in a state of harmony. The state indicated would be a condition of balance. When activities in one direction are over intense and unduly prolonged, all vibrations tend to a strain in that direction. Such strain-- all in one direction--is not normal, because it signifies disturbance of balance. If harmony in the "field" is to be restored, the one direction-strain must be released so that all right activities may recur and all vibrations proper to the "field" may again take place. Always the ideal is general harmony throughout the personal field. Now, some of the activities of our life are normally those of work, inducing corresponding vibrations in the individual "field," and some of them are normally those of recreation, which is a true word because it means recreation, that is, action or rest inducing corresponding vibration differing from those of work, running, so to speak, in different directions, and so restoring harmony. Work and recreation are, therefore, equally essential to the normal life. We have, however, built up wrong ideas of each of these important functions, so that most of us distinguish work as essentially different in its basic nature from recreation, and more or less an evil, and distinguish recreation as altogether and in itself a good. Both ideas are surely erroneous. I know that too much work, and work under certain conditions, cannot be regarded as a good in itself. Precisely the same is true of recreation. Neither, then, is to be valued or condemned because of the kind of activities involved or vibrations induced, but always and solely with reference to the state of balance or harmony represented in the field of the personal self.

The limit of permitted work should be determined by that question alone; work should always be offset, so to speak, by recreation.

The limit of recreation permitted should be determined by the same question. It should always be offset by work. In other words, the value of either work or play consists in change of activities restoring balance in the personal field.

But work and recreation are not essentially different in their true nature. In both cases we have activities and vibrations. In all cases some portion of the body is involved. In all cases some features of the mind are active. Action in either case is called work or recreation according to the idea entertained regarding it.

If the idea is that of TASK, the thing is work. If the idea is RELAXATION, the thing is recreation. I have taken the task-idea into recreation, and soon wearied. I have taken the recreation- idea into work, and have been obliged to call self to account under that law of balance or harmony. A boy, for example, is sawing wood alone: this is work. Neighboring boys join him, and soon invest the whole place with imagination, all busy sawing, splitting,--playing. It is the idea--that is, the real thought, which determines the names we give the two general sets of activities. Nature will check work-vibrations and restore recreation-vibrations, FOR A TIME, until harmony of the field is comparatively restored, if only suggestion use the magic word.

You are now invited to maintain, IN ALL YOUR WORK, THE IDEA OF HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES OF NATURE, and the inspiration of the idea that your WORK IS GOOD and is building your self to better.

You are invited also to maintain, IN ALL YOUR RECREATION, THE IDEA OF HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES and the inspiration of the thought that YOUR RECREATION IS GOOD and is building your self to better.

5. PURITY IN THE s.e.x-LIFE CHARGES THE PERSONAL FIELD WITH THE MAGNETIC POWER OF THE UNIVERSAL FORCES. In this respect the individual should be as a G.o.d. The human body is designed for Temple-Presence of the Infinite White Life. Epicurus regarded it as a husk, but Aristotle defined the soul as the "perfect expression of the body," meaning, not that the soul is a product of physiological conditions, but that it is the TRUTH of body, the idea, purpose, in which only do the bodily conditions gain their real meaning. To this great Greek the chief of human virtues was HIGH-MINDEDNESS, a crowning Self-Respect. This att.i.tude of the self toward the house in which it lives recognizes the perfect interaction of self and body, the one being influenced by the other, and so it insists that no injury shall come to the body from the inner s.e.x-life, or from the s.e.x-life to the inner self, but that both shall be maintained in harmony with the absolute whiteness of Eternal Being.

You are invited, then, to maintain purity under the law of liberty, and to adopt this thought as a permanent law: MY PERSONAL DIGNITY STOOPS NOT TO PHYSICAL DEGRADATION.

6. THE LIBERTY OF CONSCIOUS HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES EMBRACES THE INTELLIGENT USE OF THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE. The science of medicine is fairly indicated for our present purpose in the following quotation--from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"What is the honest truth about the medical art? That by far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called upon to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad treatment. That of the other fraction, a certain number will certainly die, whatever is done. That there remains a small number of cases where the life of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. That drugs now and then save life; that they often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but that they are second in importance to food, air, temperature, and the other hygienic influences. Throw out opium; throw out wine, and the vapors which produce the miracle of anesthesia, and I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind."

"It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line, Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be--I think I may venture to say there is--a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The 'dynamo'

which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its temporary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,--a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living organism."

There is also in our life a periodicity of the deeper self--a curve of the soul's condition, which varies from time to time.

When the curve is downward in both the physical and the spiritual case, drugs are of no more value than stones. When the curve is upward in both cases, drugs may be totally gratuitous, and they may actually r.e.t.a.r.d the combined movements. When the health-curve is downward, the psychic curve may follow suit, but it need not necessarily do so. When the psychic curve is downward, the health- curve tends in the same direction. When the health-curve is upward, the psychic curve usually follows. When the psychic curve is upward, we have the best condition for the cure of disease. But Nature always does the curing. The physician never cures any disease; he merely a.s.sists Nature.

It is the function of medical science to arrest downward curves by any tried methods, to take advantage of upward curves, and to know what the curves are in any given case. I call my physician because I may want him when I cannot help myself in these important respects. I will have in my hands the greatest number of the best forces when I am subject to abnormal conditions. I believe that is common sense, and I know it is perfectly permissible to the most exalted faith in the Soul of our Universe.

I am ready to concede that in a sublime state of ultimate evolution there is nothing which a drug or a doctor can do except surgery that may not better be accomplished by the power of harmonic WHITE-LIFE THOUGHT claiming health. But in such a future state disease will long since have vanished. Nevertheless, we do now certainly know a great law of mental power over the body. I do not concede any limits, except as above indicated, to the operation of that law if we could get it fully under control. Its scope, even as matters are, is immense. The law is real, and it belongs to no particular age or body of people. It is as long as time and as wide as earth. Any human being may claim the benefit in total disregard of any philosophy or form of religious belief, provided the WHITE LIFE and the health-claim are with him, under the sole limitations imposed by thousands of years of wrong thought-life in ancestry and similar error in personal past decreasing ability to affirm and realize in a way to secure the full benefits of the law. It is for every human being, nevertheless, to strive for the inner harmony, to invoke the law of spiritual mastery over the body, and to put forth all possessed and obtainable power of thought and realization for health, in good cheer, with valiant heart, and inspired by the truth that, whatever betide, nought can really harm the abiding self. "Be not faithless; but believing."

And so I think that our great Nature-Universe bids us hear these words from the Infinite White Life: "Sons and daughters of the All-Good, the power of thought and harmony are surely for you. If you realize your highest liberty and its greatest efficiency as you now are, you will use, not deny, those instrumentalities which are provided in my ministers, Science and Faith. Must you be a slave either to the material or to the immaterial? Can you not employ both for your welfare? May not the king call in whomsoever he will? All things are yours."

Let us not fall into the old-time religious error of a.s.suming that some particular philosophy or faith which we have discovered embraces all truth and value. Let us not label this or that with our little words, and say: "This is law--this only." The law of thought-power in the physical realm is older than any present civilization. The law of harmony as the supreme health-restorer and health-builder is not a law created by the Infinite during the last twenty-five years. I uncover my heart to every soul who is trying for the best things and believes he has found a true way; but I must not believe that this world has been left in stark ignorance of the most fundamental law of our earth-life--that health in its triune wholeness comes of the WHITE LIFE and the realizing claim--to await the birth and word of any man or woman in these times. It is a little too late. Therefore I say to you who may read these pages: "Stand free! Use every means and all methods, material and spiritual (for the material is but a phase of the spiritual), for health and happiness."

7. THE SECRET OF THOUGHT IN RELATION TO HEALTH IS THE CLAIM OF THE WHITE LIFE CONSCIOUSLY PUT FORTH FOR PHYSICAL WELL-BEING. In explanation of this principle, let us try to obtain certain true conceptions concerning the material and pyschic nature of man.

All existences come to being through the activity of one Infinite and Eternal Reality.

The medium in which all material existences exhibit is the universal ether of science, vibrations in this medium const.i.tuting light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., etc.